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 Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Push against the past. You may feel a deep need to create something new and more relevant to your generation, but the past will almost always exercise a strong pull on you, in the form of the values of your parents that you internalized at a young age. Inevitably you are a bit fearful and conflicted. And because of this, you might hesitate to go full throttle with whatever you do or express, and your defiance of the past ways of doing things will tend to be rather tepid. Instead you must force yourself in the opposite direction. Use the past and its values or ideas as something to push against with great force, using any anger you might feel to help in this. Make your break with the past as sharp and clear as possible. Express what is taboo; shatter the conventions that the older generation adheres to. All of this will excite and attract the attention of people of your generation, many of whom will want to follow your lead. It was by being so audacious and defiant of the older generation that the Earl of Essex epitomized the new, confident spirit of post- armada England and became the darling of his generation (see chapter 15 for more on this). Danton gained power by how far he went in defying the monarchy and fomenting for the republic. In the 1920s, the African American dancer Josephine Baker came to exemplify the new spirit of spontaneity among the lost generation by making her performances as unfettered and shocking as possible. By breaking so deeply with the past images of previous first ladies and their usual demure manner, Jacqueline Kennedy became the icon for the new spirit of the early 1960s. In going further in this direction, you create a shock of the new and spark desires among others that are waiting to come out. Adapt the past to the present spirit. Once you identify the essence of the zeitgeist, it is often a wise strategy to find some analogous moment or period in history. The frustrations and rebellions of your generation were certainly felt to some degree by some previous generation and were expressed in dramatic fashion. The leaders of such past generations resonate through history and take on a kind of mythic hue the more time passes. By associating yourself with those figures or times, you can give added weight to whatever movement or innovation you are promoting. You take some of the emotionally loaded symbols and styles of that historical period and adapt them, giving the impression that what you are attempting in the present is a more perfect and progressive version of what happened in the past.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Life has no savor for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline—the noble life. —José Ortega y Gasset O 16 See the Hostility Behind the Friendly Façade The Law of Aggression n the surface, the people around you appear so polite and civilized. But beneath the mask, they are all inevitably dealing with frustrations. They have a need to influence people and gain power over circumstances. Feeling blocked in their endeavors, they often try to assert themselves in manipulative ways that catch you by surprise. And then there are those whose need for power and impatience to obtain it are greater than others. They turn particularly aggressive, getting their way by intimidating people, being relentless and willing to do almost anything. You must transform yourself into a superior observer of people’s unsatisfied aggressive desires, paying extra attention to the chronic aggressors and passive aggressors in our midst. You must recognize the signs—the past patterns of behavior, the obsessive need to control everything in their environment—that indicate the dangerous types. They depend on making you emotional—afraid, angry—and unable to think straight. Do not give them this power. When it comes to your own aggressive energy, learn to tame and channel it for productive purposes— standing up for yourself, attacking problems with relentless energy, realizing great ambitions. The Sophisticated Aggressor In late 1857, Maurice B. Clark, a twenty-eight-year-old Englishman living in Cleveland, Ohio, made the most important decision yet in his young life: he would quit his comfortable job as a high-level buyer and seller for a produce firm and start his own business in the same line. He had the ambition of becoming yet another new millionaire in this bustling city, and he had nothing but confidence in his powers to get there: he was a born hustler with a nose for making money. Clark had fled England some ten years earlier, fearing imminent arrest for having struck his employer and knocked him unconscious. (He always had a bit of a temper.) He had emigrated to the United States, traveled west from New York, landed all kinds of odd jobs, and then ended up in Cleveland, where he quickly rose through the ranks of merchants. Cleveland was something of a boomtown, located on a river and Lake Erie and serving as a key transportation hub connecting the East to the West.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Inside a single-use life, there are no second chances. That’s a lie but we live it. We live anyway. That’s a lie but the boy opens his eyes. The room a grey-blue smear. There’s music coming through the walls. Chopin, the only thing she listens to. The boy climbs out of bed and the corners of the room tilt on an axis, like a ship. But he knows this too is a trick he’s making of himself. In the hallway, where the spilled lamp reveals a black mess of broken vinyl 45s, he looks for her. In her room, the covers on the bed are pulled off, the pink lace comforter piled on the floor. The night-light, only halfway in its socket, flickers and flickers. The piano drips its little notes, like rain dreaming itself whole. He makes his way to the living room. The record player by the love seat skips as it spins a record long driven to its end, the static intensifying as he approaches. But Chopin goes on, somewhere beyond reach. He follows it, head tilted for the source. And there, on the kitchen table, beside the gallon of milk on its side, the liquid coming down in white strings like a tablecloth in a nightmare, a red eye winking. The stereo she bought at Goodwill, the one that fits in her apron pocket as she works, the one she slides under her pillowcase during rainstorms, the Nocturnes growing louder after each thunderclap. It sits in the pool of milk, as if the music was composed for it alone. In the boy’s single-use body, anything’s possible. So he covers the eye with his finger, to make sure he’s still real, then he takes the radio. The music in his hands dripping milk, he opens the front door. It is summer. The strays beyond the railroad are barking, which means something, a rabbit or possum, has just slipped out of its life and into the world. The piano notes seep through the boy’s chest as he makes his way to the backyard. Because something in him knew she’d be there. That she was waiting. Because that’s what mothers do. They wait. They stand still until their children belong to someone else. Sure enough, there she is, standing at the far end of the little chain-link yard, beside a flattened basketball, her back to him. Her shoulders are narrower than he remembers from hours ago, when she tucked him into bed, her eyes glazed and pink. Her nightgown, made from an oversized T-shirt, is torn in the back, exposing her shoulder blade, white as a halved apple. A cigarette floats to the left of her head. He walks up to her. He walks up to his mother with music in his arms, shaking. She’s hunched, distorted, tiny, as if crushed by the air alone. “I hate you,” he says.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Ts she still aliver” I asked. Silence. I took a deep breath and addressed Jan with words meant for Edna to hear. “You know Al meant the world to me. If Pd known I might never see her again, there’s a lot of things I would’ve told her. When I was young, I thought I had all the time in the world. I don’t feel that way anymore. If she’s still living, I want to see hee” Edna stared at her beer bottle, apparently unmoved. I was so afraid P’'d explode in anger that I got up and stormed into the women’s bathroom without realizing how long it had been since ?’'d been inside of one. I splashed cold water on my face. I was surprised when Edna came in. “I’m sorry, > she said in a gentle voice. “I know you’re real mad at a3 me. 310 = Leslie Feinberg We both knew she was talking about more than Al, but I refused to admit it. “Goddamn it, Edna! I don’t care if Al is on Death Row or married with kids and wearing high heels. I love her and I want to see her.” My teeth clenched. “TI just want to say goodbye. Is that so hard to understand?” Edna shook her head. “No. It’s just hard to do.” She put out her hand as though I were a dog that might bite. “Please, Jess. Please don’t be mad at me. It’s just that some things are better left alone.” “T have a right to learn my own lessons.” I tried to soften my voice. “Look, Edna. There’s some things that eat me up more than pain—like always feeling so damn powerless. I wanted to find Theresa, but nobody can tell me where she went. I promised a little girl years ago I’d come back, and her mother just refused to tell me where she is. Now you’te telling me Al is alive and I can’t see her.” Edna turned away from me as I continued. “Tl tell you what I’m already discovering on this visit, Edna. I can deal with a lot more pain than I realized. But I don’t know where to go with this frustration. I want to find Butch Al.” “It’s not a good idea.” Edna said it so simply, like the subject was closed. “How date your” I raged at her. “You have no right to keep that information from me.” Jan opened the bathroom door. Frankie and Grant came in behind her. Jan frowned. “Is everything OK in here?” Edna and I were locked in a glare. Grant rose to the occasion. “Let’s leave them alone in here,” she tugged Jan’s sleeve. Jan yanked her arm away. “What’s going on in here?” She was getting the picture. I never took my eyes off Edna’s. My voice was wintry with irony. “Now you’re gonna protect me, Edna? Now you're gonna save me?” “Damn you, Jess,” Edna whispered. “Damn you. Al’s in the asylum.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Teacher Wen was radical in her beliefs but was judged a revisionist based on her fondness for Western-style fashion. In the old order, the students were supposed to give total obedience to their all-powerful teachers. Suddenly freed from all that, they remained just as emotionally tied to the past. The teachers still seemed all-powerful, but now as scheming counterrevolutionaries. The students’ repressed resentment at having to be so obedient now boiled over into anger and the desire to be the ones doing the punishing and oppressing. When the teachers confessed to crimes they mostly had never committed, to avoid the escalating punishments, that only seemed to confirm the students in their paranoia. They had shifted roles from obedient students to oppressors, but their thinking had become even more simplistic and irrational, the opposite of Mao’s intentions. In the power vacuum that Mao had now created, another timeless group dynamic emerged: those who were naturally more assertive, aggressive, and even sadistic (in this case Fangpu and Little Bawang) pushed their way forward and assumed power, while those who were more passive (Jianhua, Zongwei) quietly receded into the background, becoming followers. The aggressive types at YMS now formed a new class of elites, doling out perks and privileges. Similarly, amid all the confusion the Cultural Revolution had spawned, the students became even more obsessed with status within the group. Who was in the red category among them, and who in the black, they wondered? Was it better now to come from the peasantry or the proletariat? How could they finagle membership in the Red Guards and garner that beautiful red armband that signified revolutionary elite status? Instead of naturally inclining toward a new egalitarian order, the students kept straining to occupy superior positions. Once all forms of authority were removed and the students ran the school, there was nothing to stop the next and most dangerous development in group dynamics—the split into tribal factions. By nature, we humans reject attempts by anyone to completely monopolize power, as Fangpu tried to do. This cuts off opportunities for other ambitious, aggressive people. It also creates large groupings in which individual members can feel somewhat lost. Almost automatically, groups will split into rival smaller factions and tribes. In the rival tribe, a new, charismatic leader (Mengzhe in this case) can assume power and members can identify more easily with the smaller number of comrades. The bonds are tight and made even tighter by the struggle against the tribal enemy. People may think they are joining because of the different ideas or goals of this tribe or the other, but what they want more than anything is the sense of belonging and a clear tribal identity. Look at the actual differences between the East-Is-Red Corps and the Red Rebels. As the battle between them intensified, it was hard to say what they were fighting for, except to assume power over the other group.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Because I am your son, what I know of work I know equally of loss. And what I know of both I know of your hands. Their once supple contours I’ve never felt, the palms already callused and blistered long before I was born, then ruined further from three decades in factories and nail salons. Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream. How you’d come home, night after night, plop down on the couch, and fall asleep inside a minute. I’d come back with your glass of water and you’d already be snoring, your hands in your lap like two partially scaled fish. What I know is that the nail salon is more than a place of work and workshop for beauty, it is also a place where our children are raised—a number of whom, like cousin Victor, will get asthma from years of breathing the noxious fumes into their still-developing lungs. The salon is also a kitchen where, in the back rooms, our women squat on the floor over huge woks that pop and sizzle over electric burners, cauldrons of phở simmer and steam up the cramped spaces with aromas of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, mint, and cardamom mixing with formaldehyde, toluene, acetone, Pine-Sol, and bleach. A place where folklore, rumors, tall tales, and jokes from the old country are told, expanded, laughter erupting in back rooms the size of rich people’s closets, then quickly lulled into an eerie, untouched quiet. It’s a makeshift classroom where we arrive, fresh off the boat, the plane, the depths, hoping the salon would be a temporary stop—until we get on our feet, or rather, until our jaws soften around English syllables—bend over workbooks at manicure desks, finishing homework for nighttime ESL classes that cost a quarter of our wages. I won’t stay here long, we might say. I’ll get a real job soon. But more often than not, sometimes within months, even weeks, we will walk back into the shop, heads lowered, our manicure drills inside paper bags tucked under our arms, and ask for our jobs back. And often the owner, out of pity or understanding or both, will simply nod at an empty desk—for there is always an empty desk. Because no one stays long enough and someone is always just-gone. Because there are no salaries, health care, or contracts, the body being the only material to work with and work from. Having nothing, it becomes its own contract, a testimony of presence. We will do this for decades—until our lungs can no longer breathe without swelling, our livers hardening with chemicals—our joints brittle and inflamed from arthritis—stringing together a kind of life. A new immigrant, within two years, will come to know that the salon is, in the end, a place where dreams become the calcified knowledge of what it means to be awake in American bones—with or without citizenship—aching, toxic, and underpaid.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " I think," said Parlamente, " I know where the ad- venture happened, and the name of the prothonotary. He has already governed many ladies' houses, and when he cannot win the good graces of the mistress, he never misses one of the demoiselles ; with that exception, he is a well-behaved and worthy man." "Why do you say with that exception," said Hircan, "since it is for that very thing that I esteem him a worthy man .-*" " I see," said Parlamente, " that you know the malady and the patient, and that if he needed an apology you would not fail to be his advocate. However, I should not like to trust an intrigue to a man who did not know much learning, but to enjoy themselves, hunt, make love, and generally to cuckold the poor gentlemen who were gone to the wars. There was a song in those days in which a lady says : ' Passerez vous tousjours par cy {bis) Prothenotaire sans soucy ? ' " * This novel was omitted in the first edition of the Heptameron It was in 1548 that Antoine dc Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, mar- ried Jeanne de Navarre, only daughter of Margaret, and mother of Henri IV., King of franco. goS THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {Navel d^. how to conduct his own without letting it be known even to the chamber-women." " Do you suppose," said Nomerfide, " that men care whether such things are known or not ? Provided they attain their end, that is enough for them. Be assured that if nobody spoke of the matter they would publish it themselves." " There is no need for men to say all they know," said Hircan, angrily. " Perhaps," replied Nomerfide, blushing, "they would say nothing to their own advantage." " To hear you talk," said Simontault, " it seems as though men took pleasure in hearing women spoken ill of, and I am sure you think me one of that sort. For that reason I have a great mind to say some good of them, that I may not be regarded as a slanderer." " I give you my vote," said Ennasuite, " and pray you to constrain yourself a little in order to do your devoir to our honour." " It is no new thing, ladies," said Simontault, " to hear of your virtues. In my opinion, when some one of your noble actions presents itself, far from being hidden it ought to be written in letters of gold, to serve as an ex- ample to women, and to give men cause for admiration, to see in the weaker sex what weakness recoils from. It is this that prompts me to relate what I heard from Cap- tain Robertval and several of his company." Seventh ^ay.] QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 5 09 NOVEL LXVII. Love and extreme hardships of a woman in a foreign land.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  mercy if an}'thing else ever happened in our tetc-a-tetcs, or if he ever asked me for more, or my own heart ever harboured a thought of granting anything besides ; for I was so happy, that it seemed to me there could not be in the world a greater pleasure than that which I en- joyed. " But you, sir, who are the sole cause of my misfor- tunes, would you desire to be revenged for conduct of which you have so long been setting me an example, with this difference, that what you have done you have done without honour and without conscience ? You know, and I know too, that she whom you love does not content her- self with what God and reason command. Though the laws of men condemn to infamy women who love any others than their husbands, the law of God, which is in- finitely more venerable, and more august, condemns men who love any other women than their own wives. If the faults we have both committed be weighed in the balance, you will be found more guilty than I. You are a wise man ; you have age and experience enough to know evil, and shun it ; but I am young, and have no experience of the force and might of love. You have a wife who loves you, and to whom you are dearer than her own life ; and I have a husband who shuns me, hates me, and treats me with such harshness as he would not show to a servant woman. You love a woman in years, lean and lanky, and not so handsome as I am ; and I love a gentleman, younger than you, handsomer, and more agreeable. You love the wife of your best friend and the mistress of your sovereign, thus violating friend- ship and the respect you owe to both ; and I love a gen- tleman who has no other ties than his love for me. Judge now, sir, without partiality, which of us two is the more to be condemned or excused, I do not believe 1^2 THE HEPTAMEROM OF THE [N,n>el 15. there exists a man of sense and knowledge of the world who would not give his verdict against you. seeing that I am young and ignorant, despised by you and loved by the handsomest and best-bred gentleman in France, and that notwithstanding all that, I love him only because I despair of being loved by you."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On the contrary, The Apostle says (Titus 3:10,11): “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted.” I answer that, With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death. On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but “after the first and second admonition,” as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome commenting on Gal. 5:9, “A little leaven,” says: “Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame.” Reply to Objection 1: This very modesty demands that the heretic should be admonished a first and second time: and if he be unwilling to retract, he must be reckoned as already “subverted,” as we may gather from the words of the Apostle quoted above. Reply to Objection 2: The profit that ensues from heresy is beside the intention of heretics, for it consists in the constancy of the faithful being put to the test, and “makes us shake off our sluggishness, and search the Scriptures more carefully,” as Augustine states (De Gen. cont. Manich. i, 1). What they really intend is the corruption of the faith, which is to inflict very great harm indeed. Consequently we should consider what they directly intend, and expel them, rather than what is beside their intention, and so, tolerate them.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  'Yes, yes,' she said, 'I've heard sad things, Tony. And I understand it all very well, my poor little wench, for I am not only your mama, but also a woman like you... I see now how justified your pain is, how completely your husband, during a moment of weakness, has forgotten what he owes you..." "For a moment?!" Tony exclaimed. She jumped up. She took two steps back and feverishly dried her eyes. »For a moment, Mama?!... He has forgotten what he owes me and our name... He didn't know that from the start! A man who simply retires with his wife's dowry! A man without ambition, without striving, without goals! A man who, instead of blood, has a viscous mush of malt and hops in his veins ... yes, I am convinced of that! ... who then allows himself to be so mean as this with Babette, and when he is accused of his worthlessness, answers with one word... one word..." She had come back to the word, this word that she did not repeat. Suddenly she took a step forward and said in a voice that was suddenly calm and gently interested: "How lovely. Where's that from, Mama?' She nodded with her chin at a small case, a cane basket, a dainty little stand adorned with satin bows, in which the consul had been accustomed for some time to preserve her handwork. "I got him," answered the old lady; "I needed him." 'Elegant!' said Tony, glancing at the frame with her head tilted to one side. The Consul also let her eyes rest on the subject, but without seeing it, in deep thought. 'Well, my dear Tony,' she said at last, stretching out her hands once more to her daughter, 'however things may be, you are here, and so be most heartily welcome, my child. Everything can be discussed with a calmer mind... Take off, in your room, make yourself comfortable... Ida!?' she called into the dining room in a raised voice. "That envelopes will be presented for Madame Permaneder and Erika, dear!" Tenth Chapter Tony had retired to her bedroom immediately after dinner, because during the meal the Consul had confirmed her suspicion that Thomas knew of her arrival... and she didn't seem particularly anxious to meet him. At six o'clock in the afternoon the consul came up. He went into the landscape room, where he had a long conversation with his mother. "And how is she?" he asked. "How is she acting?" "Oh, Tom, I'm afraid she's being unforgiving... My God, she's so irritated... And then that word... if I only knew the word he said..." "I am going to her." 'Do that, Tom. But knock softly so that she doesn't startle, and stay calm, do you hear? Her nerves are in turmoil...

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Finally, we can turn it inward in the form of self-loathing, directing our anger and aggression at our own failings and activating our internal saboteur (more on this later). You need to analyze how you handle your assertive energy. A way to judge yourself is to see how you handle moments of frustration and uncertainty, situations in which you have less control. Do you tend to lash out, grow angry and tense, and do things you later regret? Or do you internalize the anger and grow depressed? Look at those inevitable moments in which you have gone past the guardrails and analyze them. You are not as peaceful and gentle as you imagine. Notice what pushed you into this behavior, and how during such times you found ways to rationalize your behavior. Now, with some distance, you can perhaps see through those rationalizations. Your goal is not to repress this assertive energy but to become aware of it as it drives you forward and to channel it productively. You need to admit to yourself that you have a deep desire to have an effect on people, to have power, and to realize this you must develop higher social and technical skills, must become more patient and resilient. You need to discipline and tame your natural assertive energy. This is what we shall call controlled aggression , and it will lead to accomplishing great things. (For more on this, see the last section of this chapter.) Your second task is to make yourself a master observer of aggression in the people around you. When you look at your work world, for instance, imagine that you can visualize the continual war between people’s different levels of will, and all of the intersecting arrows of such conflicts. Those who are more assertive seem to rise to the top, but they inevitably display signs of submission to those higher up. It is not much different from the hierarchies we can observe among chimpanzees. If you stop focusing on people’s words and the façade they present, and concentrate on their actions and their nonverbal cues, you can almost sense the level of aggressiveness they emanate. In looking at this phenomenon, it is important that you be tolerant of people: we have all crossed the line at some point and turned more aggressive than usual, often because of circumstances. When it comes to those who are powerful and successful, it is impossible in this world to reach such heights without higher levels of aggression and some manipulation.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  the pine street palace Friday the 13th, 1989 (January) Dear Nick, What does it feel like to drive a van for Pine Street—scooping bodies off our filthy streets to carry them to the well run Pine Street Palace?— A gentle-old man—in our fully fucked up clothing line this morning—smiled—as he said to me—behind him—“This place has died since Mr. Sullivan died. This new man is an asshole—he hires assholes and they work like assholes—!” I fully agree—Up Pine Street! A Palace of Serfs— Respectfully—Jonathan This letter comes a few days after another in which he tells me, “I did apply for a job at Pine Street in a letter to Mr. Ring several weeks ago—a job as a counselor—No answer. I have since found out through the grapevine that one must be out of Pine Street one full year before he or she can get a job there.—So it goes. I must struggle on.” One night in late January the counselor working Housing will be unable to rouse my father. Slumped and naked, he will stare at himself in the funhouse mirror, repeating, But I’m only twenty-eight years old, why do I look like this? What happened to my body? The counselor, new to the shelter, half believes this man is twenty-eight, half believes the telescoping of thirty years. This counselor will work with me later that night on the Van, and apologize for being late, explain he was with a drunk who kept saying he was twenty-eight, but his body looked forty years older, his body ruined. I knew he was talking about my father even before he said his name. I was the one who was twenty-eight. Within a week this note will appear in the log: 6 February 1989 8:20 Jonathan Flynn responded to a guest’s request that he share a can of deodorant with an intense verbal assault toward the other guest on racial and sexual themes. Mr. Flynn would not respond to intervention. In fact he accelerated his verbal assault still on racial and sexual themes, but with more focus on verbal ridicule and perhaps a more colorful group of slurs. 8:50 The SPO, Chris, Paul, Greg and Brian escorted Mr. Flynn to the Brown Lobby wrapped in a sheet, as he had refused to dress himself. I come in to work at nine that night, stopping first to read the log. I see the note about my father, see the way the woman at the desk watches me as I read. Then I pass through the lobby to pick up the Van, to drive it to the back door, to load it with food, coffee, blankets, the nightly stopover before heading out. Passing through the lobby I see my father, upright and ranting, his head lolling from side to side, his naked body wrapped in a sheet. I walk past him, past my co-workers, who had spent the last hour wrestling him down from the showers, who had finally given up trying to get the motherfucker dressed again, grabbed a sheet, wrapped him in it, dragged him down. I’d never seen this before, never seen a man dressed only in a sheet in the Brown Lobby. Roman, almost Imperial.

• 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 The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Led by Little Bawang, the students imposed the same fate on more teachers, the dunce caps becoming unbearably tall and the boards heavier. Imitating their revolutionary brothers and sisters in Beijing, the students initiated “struggle meetings” in which they forced certain teachers into the jet-plane position—a student standing on either side, pushing teachers to their knees, pulling their hair back with a jerk, then holding their arms out and back, like the wings of a jet plane. It was a most painful position, but it seemed to work, as after an hour or two of this, with students jeering at them, many teachers began to confess. The students were right in their suspicions—the school had been teeming with revisionists, right under their noses! Soon the students’ attention turned to the vice principal, Lin Sheng, who they discovered was the son of a notorious landlord. He was the third-highest official at school, which made this bit of news all the more salacious. Jianhua had been sent to his office once for misbehavior, and Sheng had been quite lenient with him, which he had appreciated at the time. The students locked Lin Sheng in a room, where he was to stay between the struggle meetings, but one morning Jianhua, serving as the guard on duty, opened the room to discover the vice principal had hung himself. Once again Jianhua struggled to repress his discomfort, but he had to admit the suicide made it seem as if Lin Sheng was indeed guilty of something. One day, in the midst of all this, Jianhua ran into Fangpu, who was bursting with excitement. Since his forced public apology over his poster attacking Ding, he had been laying low. He had spent his time devouring the writings of Mao and Marx and plotting his next move. Word had come from Beijing that the work teams were to be withdrawn from all schools. Students were to form their own committee, choose a school official to be its head, and run the school itself through the committee. Fangpu planned on becoming the student leader of the committee. And he was going to wage open revolution against Secretary Ding. Jianhua could only admire his bravery and persistence. Through Little Bawang, who had forced more and more confessions from teachers, Fangpu learned that Secretary Ding had had affairs with at least two female teachers, revealing his audacious hypocrisy. He was the one continually ranting against Western decadence and was always admonishing the male and female students at Yizhen to keep their distance from each other. Bawang and Fangpu ransacked his office and found that he had been hoarding food coupons and possessed a fancy radio and bottles of nice wine, all hidden away. Now posters attacking Ding filled the walls. Even Jianhua felt indignant at his behavior. Soon Ding Yi was paraded through school and then through the town of Yizhen, on his head the most enormous dunce cap, decorated with drawings of monsters, and a

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

  150 The History of Christianity II PIETY ON THE EVE OF 1776 õ From the 1720s onward, the religious revivals of the First Great Awakening were bringing sinners to Christ throughout the colonies. Yet for every ex-sinner who stayed in church, there were probably 10 or more who drifted back to their non-believing ways. õ As far as historians can tell, the revolutionary era was a real low point for organized religion in America. Several scholars, including the eminent evangelical historian Mark Noll, have found that less than 10% of Americans in the revolutionary era were formal members of local congregations, even if they may have affiliated with a Protestant denomination on paper. õ These pioneers had plenty of rebellious feelings, but in many cases their gripes had little to do with religion. They were mad about the increasing tax burden foisted on the colonies to pay for Britain’s wars against France and Spain, especially since the colonies were not represented in Parliament. Some drew inspiration from the ideas of English philosopher John Locke, particularly his notion that a government must have the consent of the governed to be legitimate. õ Despite relatively low church attendance, Protestant Christianity complemented the American colonists’ secular grievances and inflamed their passion. They fused Locke’s ideas with earlier Puritan theology that understood human nature as totally depraved, and so they concluded that one should never trust a human king with too much power. õ Another religious motivation was anti-Catholicism. Most American colonists thought of themselves as Protestants, even if they didn’t necessarily go to church. They were none too pleased with the crown’s insistence on tolerating the presence of a huge number of French Roman Catholics to the north in Quebec. 151Lecture 16—Religion and Revolution in the 18 th Century õ A handful of America’s founders, like John Witherspoon and Patrick Henry, had evangelical sympathies. But the more important ones, like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, were either lax about their faith or openly skeptical of Christianity. Some were apathetic Anglicans. Others were deists who believed in a distant God who set the universe in motion but was no longer involved in humans’ affairs. õ However, historians know that the founders did not want to strip Christianity out of American culture. They saw it as an important ethical resource for society. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was the most skeptical of all the founders, saw some value in the social influence of churches. He collaborated with evangelicals and respected their faith.

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

  280 The History of Christianity II õ Filipino Catholic leaders like the radical bishop Julio Labayen adapted the Latin American idea of base communities. These were self-reliant worship communities of peasants and poor workers who often lived many miles from the nearest parish church. This strategy drew on the spirit of Vatican II: the call to empower laypeople to play a more active role in worship and Catholic community. õ In the Filipino context, under the oppressive Marcos regime with communists using the ideas of Mao Zedong to compete for the hearts of peasants and workers, Catholic progressives used these base communities to cultivate a generation of lay Catholic leaders. They would push for political reform while encouraging their followers to reject atheistic communism. õ But there were also Catholic leaders who embraced Maoist ideas a little too fondly, and that gave Marcos’s allies the ammunition they needed to accuse the bishops of being communist dupes and train the sights of the military on the church. During the years when Marcos ruled through martial law, from 1972 to 1981, the regime arrested church workers, shut down Catholic radio stations, deported missionaries, and murdered some lay Catholic activists. õ Marcos’s security and intelligence staff were pretty confident that they could keep the Catholic would-be reformers in check. But gradually, the regime became alarmed at the way Catholic base communities were becoming a lasting political network for the opposition. After 1982, Marcos stepped up arrests of Catholic workers. õ All this time, the Filipino middle class—who were mostly Catholic— were getting angrier and angrier at the greed, corruption, and brutality of Marcos and his cronies. His wife, Imelda, became world-famous for her collection of hundreds of pairs of designer shoes. õ The last straw came when Marcos’s henchmen murdered the main leader of the reform movement, a former senator named Benigno Aquino, as he was getting off a plane at the Manila airport. The middle class revolted and joined the radicals in mass demonstrations known as the People Power Revolution.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  To distract her from her loneliness, Mary befriended a beautiful young woman named Isabel Robinson who needed help—she had given birth to an illegitimate child and her father would certainly disown her if he discovered the truth. For weeks Mary conspired to help her, planning to send Isabel to Paris to live with a “man” who would act as the father—the man in this case being a woman known as Miss Dods, a notorious lesbian who loved to dress as a man and could easily pass for one. Mary delighted in furthering this plot, but before accompanying Isabel to Paris, one afternoon she received the shock of her life: Isabel confided to her in complete detail the stories that Jane had been telling her for months about Mary—that Shelley had never really loved his wife; that he had admired her but had had no feelings for her; that she was not the woman he had needed or wanted; that Jane was in fact the great love of his life. Jane had even hinted to Isabel that Mary had made him so unhappy that he had secretly wanted to die the day he left on his fatal sailing venture, and that Mary was somehow responsible for his death. Mary could hardly believe this, but Isabel had no reason to make up such a story. And as she thought about it more deeply, suddenly things began to make sense—the sudden coldness of Hogg, Leigh Hunt, and others who must have heard these stories; the looks Jane occasionally threw at Mary when she was the center of attention in a group; that look on her face when she threw Mary out of her house; the vehemence with which she wanted Mary to stay away from London and give up her child, which meant giving up their inheritance. All these years she had been not a friend but a competitor, and now it seemed clear that it was not Mary’s husband who had pursued Jane but Jane who had actively seduced him with her poses, her coquettish looks, her guitar, her put-on soft manner. She was false to the core. It was, after the death of Mary’s husband, the harshest blow of all. Not only did Jane believe these monstrous stories, but she had made others believe them. Mary knew how well her husband had loved her over so many years, and after so many shared experiences. To spread the story that she had somehow caused his death was beyond hurtful; it was like a knife being plunged into an old wound. She wrote in her journal: “My friend has proved false & treacherous. Have I not been a fool?” After several months of brooding over this, Mary finally confronted her. Jane burst into tears, creating a scene.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Nevertheless, the French people held great hopes for the Estates General, and Louis had been extremely reluctant to call for it. Only a month before the convening of the Estates General, riots in Paris had broken out over the price of bread, and royal troops had shot into the crowds, killing dozens. Danton had witnessed the bloodshed and he felt a turning point in the mood of the people, particularly the lower classes, and in himself. He shared their desperation and anger; they could no longer be placated with the usual rhetoric. He began to address the angry crowds on street corners, attracting followers and making a name for himself. To a friend who was surprised at this new direction in his life, he responded that it was like seeing a strong tide in the river, jumping in, and letting it carry him where it might. — As he prepared for the convening of the Estates General, King Louis could barely contain his resentment and anger. In the years since he had become king, various finance ministers had warned him of an impending crisis if France did not reform its tax system. He had understood this and had tried to initiate reforms, but the nobility and clergy, fearing where this might lead, had become so hostile to such ideas that the king had been forced to back down. And now, with the state’s coffers nearly empty, the nobility and the Third Estate were holding him hostage, making him convene the Estates General and putting him in the position of begging for funds from his people. The Estates General was not a traditional part of French government; it was an anomaly, a challenge to the divine right of the king, a recipe for anarchy. Who knew what was best for France—his subjects, with their million different opinions? The nobility, with their own narrow interests and hunger to grab more power? No, only the king could navigate the nation through this crisis. He had to regain the upper hand over these rowdy children. The king decided upon a plan: he would impress upon them all the majesty of the monarchy and its absolute necessity as the supreme power in France. To do so, he would hold the Estates General at Versailles, something his advisers warned him not to do, considering Versailles’s closeness to Paris and all its agitators.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Everything had to flow through Hughes himself. He had to be consulted on the smallest decision. Frustrated by all of his interference in their work, several top-notch engineers had already quit. Hughes saw the problem and hired a general manager to help with the Hercules project and straighten the company out, but the general manager quit after two months. Hughes had promised him carte blanche in restructuring the company, but only several days into the job he began vetoing his decisions and undermining his authority. By the late summer of 1943, $6 million of the $9 million set aside for the production of the first Hercules plane had already been spent, but the plane was nowhere near completion. Those in the Defense Department who had endorsed Hughes for the job began to panic. The photo-reconnaissance order was a critical one for the war effort. Did the internal chaos and delays with the Hercules bode problems with the more important reconnaissance order? Had Hughes duped them with his charm and his publicity campaign? By early 1944, the order for the reconnaissance planes had fallen hopelessly behind schedule. The military now insisted he hire a new general manager to salvage something from the order. Fortunately one of the best men for the job was available at the time: Charles Perelle, the “boy wonder” of aircraft production. Perelle did not want the job. He knew, like everyone in the business, of the chaos within Hughes Aircraft. Now Hughes himself, feeling desperate, went on a charm offensive. He insisted he had realized the error of his ways. He needed Perelle’s expertise. He was not what Perelle had expected—he was completely humble and made it seem as if he were the victim of unscrupulous executives within the company. He knew all the technical details of producing a plane, which impressed Perelle. He promised to give Perelle the authority he needed. Against his better judgment, Perelle took the job. After only a few weeks, however, Perelle regretted his decision. The planes were further behind schedule than he had been led to believe. Everything he saw reeked of a lack of professionalism, down to the shoddy drawings of the planes. He went to work, cutting wasteful spending and streamlining departments, but nobody respected his authority. Everybody knew who really ran the company, as Hughes kept undermining Perelle’s reforms. As the order fell further behind and the pressure mounted, Hughes disappeared from the scene, apparently having a nervous breakdown. By the end of the war, not a single reconnaissance plane had been produced, and the air force canceled the contract. Perelle himself, broken by the experience, quit his job in December of that year. Hughes, trying to salvage something from the war years, could point to the completion of one of the flying boats, later known as the Spruce Goose. It was a marvel, he claimed, a brilliant piece of engineering on a massive scale.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He concludes that she has deceived him or has changed. Such a betrayal makes him angry. This male projection generally stems from a particular type of relationship with the mother—she adores her son and showers him with attention. Perhaps this is to compensate for never quite getting what she wants from her husband. She fills the boy with confidence; he becomes addicted to her attention and craves her warm, enveloping presence, which is what she wants. When he grows up, he is often quite ambitious, always trying to live up to the expectations of his mother. He pushes himself hard. He chooses a certain type of woman to pursue and then subtly positions her to play the mother role—to comfort, adore, and pump up his ego. In many instances, the woman will come to understand how he has manipulated her into this role, and she will resent it. She will stop being so soothing and reverential. He will blame her for changing, but in fact he is the one projecting qualities that were never exactly there and trying to make her conform to his expectations. The ensuing breakup will be very painful for the man, because he has invested energy from his earliest years and will feel this as abandonment from the mother figure. Even if he is successful in getting the woman to play the role, he himself will feel resentment at his dependency on her, the same dependency and ambivalence he had toward his mother. He may sabotage the relationship or withdraw. His anima has a sharp, recriminating edge, always ready to complain and blame. The man in this case must see the pattern of these relationships in his life. What this should signal to him is that he needs to develop from within more of the mothering qualities that he projects onto women. He must see the nature of his ambition as stemming from his desire to please his mother and live up to her expectations. He tends to drive himself too hard. He must learn to comfort and soothe himself, to withdraw from time to time and be satisfied with his accomplishments. He needs to be able to care for himself. This will drastically improve his relationships. He will give more, instead of waiting to be adored and taken care of. He will relate to women as they are, and in the end they will perhaps feel unconsciously impelled to provide more of the comfort he needs, without being pushed into this. The Original Man/Woman A common experience for us humans is that at a certain point in life —often near the age of forty—we go through what is known as a midlife crisis. Our work has become mechanical and soulless. Our intimate relationships have lost their excitement and spirit. We crave change, and we look for it through a new career or relationship, some new experiences, even some danger.