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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  As a result, Roy comes off as excruciatingly mousy and confused, presumably because it never occurred to either Wilkinson or Anderson that a man who wanted to be female could be any other way.For someone who claims to have little interest in making a film about the “adventures of a transgender person,” Anderson sure does fancy her film up in all of the accoutrements of the transsexual transitioning process: The dialogue includes discussions about electrolysis, a play-by-play description of how a vagina is created during MTF sex reassignment surgery, and even talk about what breast size Roy can expect after she goes on hormones. At one point in the movie, close-ups of Roy’s hormone prescriptions—Premarin and Spironolactone—precede an early morning family breakfast scene in which Roy, her wife, and her daughter (who has recently had her first period) all start arguing with each other in an apparent hormone-induced frenzy. (Upon watching that scene, I wasn’t quite sure if I should be more offended as a woman or as a transsexual.)In the end, the most damaging aspect of Normal is that it gives the impression of being a serious film about transsexuality without ever incorporating the perspectives of real-life transsexuals. There are countless other movies that, on the surface, seem to be more demeaning or insulting toward transsexuals, but I find Normal to be more damaging than most. At least the Ace Ventura s and South Park s of the world don’t even bother to pretend that they know what they’re talking about when they create transsexual characters. Anderson, on the other hand, did just enough homework about transsexuality to make her film dangerous. She poached and pilfered the transsexual experience without any sense of respect or responsibility for the very people she exploited in the process.Another writer who knows just enough to be dangerous is Jeffrey Eugenides. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex centers on an intersex person named Cal, who is raised female until he discovers his condition during puberty. The book follows Cal as he develops male physical attributes and eventually a male identity. So why did Eugenides set out to write a book about an intersex person? In an interview, he explained that he simply “used a hermaphrodite” (a word most intersex people find stigmatizing) as a metaphor for the confusing changes in identity and sexuality that all people face during adolescence.8 So, this time, a main character is ungendered to make a larger point about puberty and metamorphosis.Eugenides says he was initially inspired to write Middlesex after reading Herculine Barbin, a real-life account of an intersex person who lived during the nineteenth century, published by French philosopher Michel Foucault in 1978. Eugenides was fascinated by the book, but he found that, “as an expression of what it is like to be a hermaphrodite, from the inside, Herculine Barbin’s memoir is quite disappointing.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In early July 2016, a researcher named Lisa Littman, who had no prior experience with trans children or trans healthcare, surveyed parents recruited from these same three websites about a supposed “new type” of gender dysphoria that presumably spreads by “social contagion,” which she dubbed “rapid onset gender dysphoria” or “ROGD.” By August, based solely on Littman’s survey recruitment posts and other claims made on these three websites, conservative organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and American College of Pediatricians and conservative media outlets like The American Conservative and National Review were writing about ROGD and “transgender social contagion” as though they were already settled science. All of this happened within six short months! By the time Littman’s study was finally published two years later, ROGD had already been uncritically discussed in numerous mainstream publications and cited by gender-disaffirming practitioners in academic journals. The study itself was roundly critiqued for its obvious sampling bias, the fact that it interviewed only parents and not their trans children, its inability to distinguish ROGD from regular gender dysphoria, and its mistaking correlation for causation (Littman presumed that trans peers and trans-themed social media sites were causing children to adopt trans identities, rather than the more likely scenario that the children were seeking out said peers and social media because they were trans). 20 In fact, there were so many problems with Littman’s study that the journal that published it later issued a correction and apology. As I write this, at least nine peer-reviewed studies have tested ROGD and “transgender social contagion,” and all yielded results inconsistent with, or that directly contradict, these hypotheses. 21 Despite having been refuted in the scientific literature, these concepts continue to persist in the public imagination. I often see people use “social contagion” as shorthand for “the increased number of trans children today relative to the past” without a shred of evidence that trans identities have suddenly become “contagious.” Indeed, the very concept of “social contagion” has long been critiqued for being poorly defined and conflating several potentially distinct social phenomena. 22 One such phenomenon is a reduction of restraints: If there is a social norm prohibiting a particular behavior, many people who are inclined to engage in said behavior may refrain from doing so—in queer communities, we colloquially call this “being in the closet.” But once that social restraint is lifted, these people may start expressing that behavior publicly for the first time (which onlookers may misperceive as a “rapid increase” due to “social contagion”).

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It’s all I’ve talked about the past few days, how I’m trying to eat healthier, how tortured I am without my sugary treats at night?” I asked. “Yes, I know,” he said matter-of-factly. “These are for when you eat sugar again.” “But I’m not going to eat it again. The point is I stopped eating it. Why would you give this to me? It’s like you’re mocking me, openly predicting I will fail at this, instead of perhaps showing a little support,” I said angrily. Daisy shot me a look of dismay, incredulous at my lack of gratitude for the second time that day. “So don’t eat it. Give it to the kids, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have it,” he said. “Do you ever listen to me? I’m just wondering. When I talk, do you hear me?” I asked. His insistent cheerfulness started to fade and all three kids turned to scold me for being so cranky and unappreciative. I knew I sounded like a petulant child; I hated myself for it and for how the kids were looking disdainfully at me, but I was alarmed. We knew each other so well, and these gifts were puzzling to me; it was so obvious I would not like them. Then the kids’ school break arrived. Mid-winter recess in February, aka the absolute coldest, dreariest time of the year. Daisy headed to Boston to visit her friends and I took Hudson and Georgia to our house upstate. Michael joined us on Friday, the last day of the break. He called me when he went to pick up Hudson at the ski mountain to let me know that our son was injured with what appeared to be a broken hand. I let out a long, angry sigh. This kid’s skiing was the bane of my existence – he was passionate and talented, but every season we weathered broken bones or concussions. Michael applauded his fearlessness while all I could see in it was more trips to orthopedic surgeons and an open checkbook. I blamed Michael for encouraging this and was further angry that I had to be the one to figure out what to do with every accident. When they arrived home later with Hudson’s broken hand in a cast, I had warm bowls of chicken tortilla soup waiting for them. As we ate dinner, I tried to catch Michael’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. I kept my eyes on him as he stared down at his bowl of soup resolutely. As strained as things had become between us, this felt egregiously harsh, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me. It was at that moment that the gravity of what he had been trying to tell me weeks earlier clicked and I realized with growing alarm that something in our home had gone terribly awry. After dinner, Michael said he was exhausted and would put Georgia to sleep in our bed and go to sleep with her.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then Rochelle called. “The girl he is seeing is a scientist,” she said. “She’s blond.” “He’s seeing someone?” “I thought you knew,” she said. Apparently the woman’s name was Megan and she was five years younger than me. Rochelle knew nothing more about her. She had bumped into them at a Chinese restaurant. “Well, can you find out?” “I’ll try,” said Rochelle. I could tell she was getting sick of me. Or more than sick of me, actually, she was scared of me. She had always thought we were both safe from the crazy-woman disease: that desperation and need. But now I had fallen into it, fallen all the way under, and she saw how a person could just go. One minute you were playfully complaining to friends about a man’s farts and the next minute you would kill to have the farts back. Could she catch the disease from me? Was her own contentment in danger? I texted her three times to get the info but she just wrote back: rly busy I wanted to tell her I was pissed off, that I felt she had abandoned and betrayed me. I wanted to say that the only reason she had any confidence in her Brillo-self—the only reason she was “okay”—was that there was too much inertia in her relationship for her husband to leave. I wanted to say that this wasn’t a reason for confidence, or something to be proud of. As I had seen, that inertia could be disturbed at any moment by an accidental slip of the tongue. But I didn’t want her to quarantine me entirely. I might need her. So I wrote my own narratives. Megan was not only a scientist but an award-winning geologist. They hiked together and discussed the reproduction of cacti. They fucked on a rock. Nothing is more beautiful than the sex your ex-boyfriend is having with his new lover. Nothing more magical and full of gasps. Meanwhile I was in Hersheyland. I could no longer play it cool. One night I parked down the street from his house until I saw him pull in to the driveway and get out of his car. He was alone. I waited until the lights turned on. Then I got out of the car. Walking down his driveway I realized that I had butterflies for the first time in years. Maybe this was what it took to maintain butterflies in your partner’s driveway? A blond scientist named Megan. I rang the bell. He took a minute, did not ask who it was, then opened the door. “Lucy,” he said. I felt rage in my chest, in every part of me. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” I yelled. And then I hit him in the face. I had never hit anyone before. This was not what I had planned. I hadn’t planned anything actually.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Luke in the Acts of the Apostles agrees with that general picture, but he also adds some details better taken as enthusiasm rather than as history. He has Paul declare, “I am a Jew” (21:39); “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [ Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today” (22:3); “I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees” (23:6); and, finally, “I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee” (26:5). It is probably safer to bracket Pharisaic ancestry and especially Jerusalem education as a Lukan upgrading of Paul’s status and as part of his theme that everything starts from Jerusalem. Another Lukan upgrading of Pauline status concerns his Tarsian citizenship in Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3 (impossible?) and his Roman citizenship in Acts 16:37; 22:27–28; 23:27 (improbable?). In any case, Paul himself never mentions that latter status, and, if his Roman beatings are any indication, he was never a Roman citizen. Those are first warnings about distinguishing the Pauline Paul from the Lukan Paul by separation and discrimination rather than by combination and conflation. To that we will return in Chapter 1 below and quite often thereafter. A ZEALOUS PERSECUTOR. Paul and Luke agree that he persecuted the early church, but, once again, some Lukan details require bracketing. Paul mentions this point twice with a close conjunction between violent persecution and religious zeal. “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it…. I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (Gal. 1:13–14). And again, “As to zeal, [I was] a persecutor of the church” (Phil. 3:6). He also notes, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9). “Zeal” indicates religious vigilantism based on personal and individual responsibility after the model and in the tradition of Phineas, who, in Numbers 25:6–8, slew an Israelite and the Midianite woman he had married. That is how, for example, the treatise The Special Laws by the contemporary Jewish philosopher Philo understands such religious “zeal.” It allows any outraged person “to exact the penalties offhand and with no delay without bringing the offender before jury or council or any kind of magistrate at all” (1.55). Luke agrees on Paul as persecutor, but adds that he went from the high priests at Jerusalem with authority to punish Christians at Damascus (Acts 9:1–2). Still, apart from the historical implausibility of such Jewish authority exercised in Nabatean Damascus, Acts has the same combination of zeal and violence (or zeal as violence) found in Paul. Luke has Paul say, “Being zealous for God…I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison” (22:3–4).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In setting aside the vested rights of chapters and other electors, the pope often joined hands with kings and princes. In the Avignon period a regular election by a chapter was the exception.171 The Chronicles of England and France teem with usurped cases of papal appointment. In 1322 the pope reserved to himself all the appointments in episcopal, cathedral, and abbey churches, and of all priors in the sees of Aquileja, Ravenna, Milan, Genoa, and Pisa.172 In 1329 he made such reservation for the German dioceses of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and in 1339 for Cologne.173 There was no living in Latin Christendom which was safe from the pope’s hands. There were not places enough to satisfy all the favorites of the papal household and the applicants pressed upon the pope’s attention by kings and princes. The spiritual and administrative qualities of the appointees were not too closely scrutinized. Frenchmen were appointed to sees in England, Germany, Denmark, and other countries, who were utterly unfamiliar with the languages of those countries. Marsiglius complains of these "monstrosities "and, among other unfit appointments, mentions the French bishops of Winchester and Lund, neither of whom knew English or Danish. The archbishop of Lund, after plundering his diocese, returned to Southern France. To the supreme right of appointment was added the supreme right to tax the clergy and all ecclesiastical property. The supreme right to exercise authority over kings, the supreme right to set aside canonical rules, the supreme right to make appointments in the Church, the supreme right to tax Church property, these were, in their order, the rights asserted by the popes of the Middle Ages. The scandal growing out of this unlimited right of taxation called forth the most vigorous complaints from clergy and laity, and was in large part the cause which led to the summoning of the three great Reformatory councils of the fifteenth century.174 Popes had acted upon this theory of jurisdiction over the property of the Church long before John XXII. They levied taxes for crusades in the Orient, or to free Italy from rebels for the papal state. They gave their sanction to princes and kings to levy taxes upon the Church for secular purposes, especially for wars.175 In the bull Clericis laicos, Boniface did not mean to call in question the propriety of the Church’s contributing to the necessities of the state. What he demanded was that he himself should be recognized as arbiter in such matters, and it was this demand which gave offence to the French king and to France itself. The question was much discussed whether the pope may commit simony. Thomas Aquinas gave an affirmative answer. Alvarus Pelagius176 thought differently, and declared that the pope is exempt from the laws and canons which treat of simony. Augustinus Triumphus took the same ground.177 The pope is not bound by laws. He is above laws. Simony is not possible to him.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The pope and clergy are given to worldliness and self-indulgence. Boniface is a heretic. The prelates squander the Church’s money in wars and litigations, prefer the atmosphere of princely courts, and neglect theology and the care of souls. The avarice of the curia and the pope leads them to scandalous simony and nepotism.79 Constantine’s donation marked the change to worldliness among the clergy. It was illegal, and the only title the pope can show to temporal power over the patrimony of Peter is long tenure. The first step in the direction of reforms would be for clergy and pope to renounce worldly possessions altogether. This remedy had been prescribed by Arnold of Brescia and Frederick II. Dubois also criticised the rule and practice of celibacy. Few clergymen keep their vows. And yet they are retained, while ordination is denied to married persons. This is in the face of the fact that the Apostle permitted marriage to all. The practice of the Eastern church is to be preferred. The rule of single life is too exacting, especially for nuns. Durante had proposed the abrogation of the rule, and Arnald of Villanova had emphasized the sacredness of the marriage tie, recalling that it was upon a married man, Peter, that Christ conferred the primacy.80 Dubois showed the freshness of his mind by suggestions of a practical nature. He proposed the colonization of the Holy Land by Christian people, and the marriage of Christian women to Saracens of station as a means of converting them. As a measure for securing the world’s conversion, he recommended to Clement the establishment of schools for boys and girls in every province, where instruction should be given in different languages. The girls were to be taught Latin and the fundamentals of natural science, and especially medicine and surgery, that they might serve as female physicians among women in the more occult disorders. A review of the controversial literature of the age of Philip the Fair shows the new paths along which men’s thoughts were moving.81 The papal apologists insisted upon traditional interpretations of a limited number of texts, the perpetual validity of Constantine’s donation, and the transfer of the empire. They were forever quoting Innocent’s famous bull, Per venerabilem.82 On the other hand, John of Paris, and the publicists who sympathized with him, as also Dante, corrected and widened the vision of the field of Scripture, and brought into prominence the common rights of man. The resistance which the king of France offered to the demands of Boniface encouraged writers to speak without reserve.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The style of the English discourses is simple and direct. No more plainly did Luther preach against ecclesiastical abuses than did the English Reformer. On every page are joined with practical religious exposition stirring passages rebuking the pope and worldly prelates. They are denounced as anti-christ and the servants of the devil—the fiend—as they turn away from the true work of pasturing Christ’s flock for worldly gain and enjoyment. The preacher condemns the false teachings which are nowhere taught in the Scriptures, such as pilgrimages and indulgences. Sometimes Wyclif seems to be inconsistent with himself, now making light of fasting, now asserting that the Apostles commended it; now disparaging prayers for the dead, now affirming purgatory. With special severity do his sermons strike at the friars who preach out of avarice and neglect to expose the sins of their hearers. No one is more idle than the rich friars, who have nothing but contempt for the poor. Again and again in these sermons, as in his other works, he urges that the goods of the friars be seized and given to the needy classes. Wyclif, the preacher, was always the bold champion of the layman’s rights. His work, The Pastoral Office, which is devoted to the duties of the faithful minister, and his sermons lay stress upon preaching as the minister’s proper duty. Preaching he declared the "highest service," even as Christ occupied himself most in that work. And if bishops, on whom the obligation to preach more especially rests, preach not, but are content to have true priests preach in their stead, they are as those that murder Jesus. The same authority which gave to priests the privilege of celebrating the sacrament of the altar binds them to preach. Yea, the preaching of the Word is a more precious occupation than the ministration of the sacraments.582 When the Gospel was preached, as in Apostolic times, the Church grew. Above all things, close attention should be given to Christ’s words, whose authority is superior to all the rites and commandments of pope and friars. Again and again Wyclif sets forth the ideal minister, as in the following description:— "A priest should live holily, in prayer, in desires and thought, in godly conversation and honest teaching, having God’s commandments and His Gospel ever on his lips. And let his deeds be so righteous that no man may be able with cause to find fault with them, and so open his acts that he may be a true book to all sinful and wicked men to serve God. For the example of a good life stirreth men more than true preaching with only the naked word." The priest’s chief work is to render a substitute for Christ’s miracles by converting himself and his neighbor to God’s law.583 The Sermon on the Mount, Wyclif pronounced sufficient for the guidance of human life apart from any of the requirements and traditions of men.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Under the combined influences of Christianity, civilization, and oeconomic and political considerations, the slave trade was forbidden, and slavery gradually changed into serfdom, and finally abolished all over Europe and North America. Where the spirit of Christ is there is liberty. Notes. In Europe serfdom continued till the eighteenth century, in Russia even till 1861, when it was abolished by the Czar Alexander II. In the United States, the freest country in the world, strange to say, negro slavery flourished and waxed fat under the powerful protection of the federal constitution, the fugitive slave-law, the Southern state-laws, and "King Cotton," until it went out in blood (1861–65) at a cost far exceeding the most liberal compensation which Congress might and ought to have made for a peaceful emancipation. But passion ruled over reason, self-interest over justice, and politics over morals and religion. Slavery still lingers in nominally Christian countries of South America, and is kept up with the accursed slave-trade under Mohammedan rule in Africa, but is doomed to disappear from the bounds of civilization. § 78. Feuds and Private Wars. The Truce of God. A. Kluckhohn: Geschichte des Gottesfriedens. Leipzig 1857. Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force. Essays on the Wager of Law—the Wager of Battle—the Ordeal—Torture. Phila. 1866 (407 pages). Among all barbarians, individual injury is at once revenged on the person of the enemy; and the family or tribe to which the parties belong identify themselves with the quarrel till the thirst for blood is satiated. Hence the feuds346 and private wars, or deadly quarrels between families and clans. The same custom of self-help and unbridled passion prevails among the Mohammedan Arabs to this day. The influence of Christianity was to confine the responsibility for a crime to its author, and to substitute orderly legal process for summary private vengeance. The sixteenth Synod of Toledo (693) forbade duels and private feuds.347 The Synod of Poitiers, A.D. 1000, resolved that all controversies should hereafter be adjusted by law and not by force.348 The belligerent individuals or tribes were exhorted to reconciliation by a sealed agreement, and the party which broke the peace was excommunicated. A Synod of Limoges in 1031 used even the more terrible punishment of the interdict against the bloody feuds. These sporadic efforts prepared the way for one of the most benevolent institutions of the middle ages, the so-called "Peace" or "Truce of God."349 It arose in Aquitania in France during or soon after a terrible famine in 1033, which increased the number of murders (even for the satisfaction of hunger) and inflicted untold misery upon the people.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  On Nov. 28, 1407, the king’s cousin, Louis, duke of Orleans, was murdered at the command of the king’s uncle, John, duke of Burgundy. The duke’s act was defended by the Franciscan and Paris professor, John Petit,—Johannes Parvus,—in an address delivered before the king March 8, 1408. Gerson, who at an earlier time seems to have advocated the murder of tyrants, answered Petit in a public address, and called upon the king to suppress Petit’s nine propositions.393 The University of Paris made Gerson’s cause its own. Petit died in 1411, but the controversy went on. Petit’s theory was this, that every vassal plotting against his lord is deserving of death in soul and body. He is a tyrant, and according to the laws of nature and God any one has the right to put him out of the way. The higher such a person is in rank, the more meritorious is the deed. He based his argument upon Thomas Aquinas, John of Salisbury, Aristotle, Cicero and other writers, and referred to Moses, Zambri and St. Michael who cast Lucifer out of heaven, and other examples. The duke of Orleans was guilty of treason against the king, and the duke of Burgundy was justified in killing him. The bishop of Paris, supported by a commission of the Inquisition and at the king’s direction, condemned Petit and his views. In February, 1414, Gerson made a public address defending the condemnation, and two days later articles taken from Petit’s work were burnt in front of Notre Dame. The king ratified the bishop’s judgment, and the duke of Burgundy appealed the case to Rome.394 The case was now transferred to the council, which at its fifteenth session, July 6, 1415, passed a compromise measure condemning the doctrine that a tyrant, in the absence of a judicial sentence, may and ought to be put to death by any subject whatever, even by the use of treacherous means, and in the face of an oath without committing perjury. Petit was not mentioned by name. It was this negative and timid action, which led Gerson to say that if Huss had had a defender, he would not have been found guilty. It was rumored that the commission which was appointed to bring in a report, by sixty-one out of eighty votes, decided for the permissibility of Petit’s articles declaring that Peter meant to kill the high priest’s servant, and that, if he had known Judas’ thoughts at the Last Supper, he would have been justified in killing him. The duke of Burgundy’s gold is said to have been freely used.395 The party led by the bishop of Arras argued that the tyrant who takes the sword is to be punished with the sword.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I explained that I had asked Michael to leave, at least for a week, to give me time to digest this, but that he wouldn’t, that he planned to stay in the family room. Erika agreed that it was only fair to give me space right now. “He refuses,” I said. “He won’t stay with a friend either, he says that’s demoralizing. I was looking up cheap hotel options when you came.” “Laura, stop. You’ve done everything for him for years. He’s a grown man and can find a place to stay on his own. You can’t solve his problems right now,” she told me. “OK, but if I don’t solve this he’ll stay and I can’t tolerate that,” I said. “You’re going to have to take a step back and let him handle this by himself. All you have to do now is take care of yourself and the kids. Stand your ground and focus on what you need to get through a terrible situation he created. You didn’t do this, he did. And he has to clean it up. If you need space, he can at least give you that.” When I arrived home, I was relieved to see my bed empty and Georgia’s door closed; Michael had had the decency to give me privacy for the night. When I awoke in the morning after a fitful sleep, I staggered down the hall to the kitchen to find him typing on his laptop at the table. “Oh, hey,” he said, cheerfully. “So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m writing you a letter. I’m going to write you a letter every day to tell you how I’m feeling so that I can be totally honest with you.” “What? Why? How is that going to help me?” “You said you wanted the truth, so I’m going to give it to you and share my feelings with you on a daily basis.” “No, please don’t,” I cried out. “I don’t want to know what you’re thinking. It’s a moot point now.” “This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to us,” he said with an incessant chipperness. “I see this as an opportunity for us to improve our marriage and reinvent what we once had!” “Wow, Michael. Look at me, I’m a wreck,” I sobbed. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t stop crying. The rug has been pulled out from under me and I’m still falling. I am questioning everything about our lives together since we first met. You’ve always been an optimist but to call this an opportunity? The best thing that could ever happen to us? That’s delusional. You have destroyed me,” I said, and with that, put my head down on the table and convulsed with sobs. When I picked my head up, he looked at me with something between compassion and pity and asked, “What can I do to help you through this?” “You can leave. You can find a place to stay.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Daisy and Hudson have complained to me that my efforts at reuniting them feel heavy-handed, that when they’re ready to see him they will, but I shouldn’t expect it for a long time. I didn’t cause this disturbance in our family and I can’t fix it. I’m doing my best on my own to keep it all together, but this latest news is going to be my downfall – proof that I have neither authority nor control and that I am failing woefully short of the parenting my kids need. I send Georgia into Michael’s car so that we can speak privately. Shaking and crying, I relay the phone call. “I’m sorry,” he says sympathetically. “Can I give you a hug?” “A hug?” I hurl back at him, the word becoming a grenade. “A fucking hug? What I need is a co-parent and a partner. I need a husband, a father for my kids. I need you back but the you that was you before. I’ve never felt so alone. What I don’t need is a fucking hug.” With that, I storm back into my car. The camp director calls again from Israel. I am usually respectful and polite, but, truly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. What little self-control I’ve been able to cling onto until now slips away. I have constructed a delicate and precarious house of cards and I am watching it spectacularly topple down, so I don’t have an update for this man, just a broken heart, a troubled son and a husband whom I no longer recognize. I scoff that he is overreacting, that Hudson was caught with marijuana not a gun, and demand that he put my son on the phone right away. In a moment, I hear Hudson’s voice, faraway, subdued and angry. If he wants to be angry, I will meet him there, I will show him a new level of anger he’s never seen from me. It erupts out of me, grief and rage spewing across the international phone line. “Mom, you have to calm down, I can’t talk to you like this,” he pleads. “Calm down? Calm down? I just got a call from a man telling me they’ll call the police if I don’t immediately get my son off premises in a foreign country in which I know no one and don’t speak the language!” I scream. “I know,” he says. “I’m really sorry. But please, I need you to help me.” I breathe deeply to suppress my internal squall and let the silence instead speak between us. Finally, I hear his voice again, humbled and softer now. “I’m so depressed,” he says. “What’s happening with you and Dad is killing me. I can’t get away from it. The only time I feel good is when I’m high.” I suck my breath in. This is the worst possible response he could have given me.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That was nothing.” “No!” I said. “Don’t do it, please. I’m done. I’m done.” “I can’t leave you like this. You’re going to go to mans like this?” she asked, pointing to my torn-up vagina. “I don’t care!” “I go gentler,” she said. I didn’t know what to do. We were sort of fighting. I was pushing her hands away and she was applying the wax. With the second strip I started to cry. “This is fucking insane,” I said. But I let her do my lips, which felt like she was searing off my vulva. I couldn’t believe that other women did this. Who were these people? Then she did my asshole, which she said she had to do, because it was “carrying around stink.” I’d been carrying around stink for thirty-eight years. When I got home I lay down with Dominic and held a package of frozen edamame to my vagina. I hated everything. Now the dress, the lipstick, even my hair color seemed stupid. I realized I didn’t care about any of this stuff, even the dress, which I had loved. It wasn’t about the dress. It was in the acquisition of the dress that there had been beauty. I thought about different kinds of happiness. There was the happiness I felt in all of the adrenaline of running around, a crazed happiness. This was a different happiness from the quiet peace of just being with Dominic. I kissed his ear. “Sorry I get so distracted,” I said. He sniffed at me. Suddenly I didn’t want to go out with Adam anymore. I fell asleep with the edamame defrosting on my vagina. But the next morning, my excitement—that sense of purpose—was oddly restored. I woke up to a text from Adam that said, see you tonight gorgeous. There was something about the morning of a date that tricked me. It tricked me out of the haze of being alive. Or perhaps it tricked me out of the sadness of knowing that one day I would die. It punctured the nothingness. Now I felt passion and love for everything. 14. I found myself out on the rocks again later that night. I was throwing shells into the water when Theo the swimmer came paddling up, shoulders white in the moonlight. I hoped he would be there. He seemed happy to see me too. “You came back,” he said. “I did.” “Hi,” he said. “Hi. You’re really not freezing?” “No, it feels natural.” “Crazy. So I have a question. Do you like Bukowski?” I asked. “Who?” he said. “Charles Bukowski; he’s a poet.” “I don’t know who that is,” he said, treading water. “Why?” “It’s not important,” I said. “No, tell me why. Do you like him?” “Definitely not,” I said. “But I just went on a date with someone who is a big fan.” “You did?” said Theo. “How was that for you?”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The four mendicant orders, the Carmelites, Augustinians, Jacobites or Dominicans, and Minorites or Franciscans gave their first letters to the word Caim, showing their descent from the first murderer. Their convents, Wyclif called Cain’s castles. His relentless indignation denounced them as the tail of the dragon, ravening wolves, the sons of Satan, the emissaries of anti-christ and Luciferians and pronounced them worse than Herod, Saul and Judas. The friars repeat that Christ begged water at the well. It were to their praise if they begged water and nothing else.597 With the lighter hand of ridicule, Chaucer also held up the mendicants for indictment. In the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales he represents the friar as an— ... easy man to yeve penaunce, Ther as he wiste to have a good pitaunce For unto a powre order for to give Is signe that a man is well y-shrive. * * * * * * * His wallet lay biforn him in his lappe Bretful of pardoun come from Rome all hoot, A voys he hadde as smal as hath a goot Ne was ther swich another pardonour For in his male he hadde a pilwe-beer [pillow] Which that, he seyde, was our Lady’s veyl: And in a glas he hadde a pigges bones. Skeat’s ed., 4:7, 21. If it required boldness to attack the powerful body of the monks, it required equal boldness to attack the mediaeval dogma of transubstantiation. Wyclif himself called it a doctrine of the moderns and of the recent Church—novella ecclesia. In his treatise on the eucharist, he praised God that he had been delivered from its laughable and scandalous errors.598 The dogma of the transmutation of the elements he pronounced idolatry, a lying fable. His own view is that of the spiritual presence. Christ’s body, so far as its dimensions are concerned, is in heaven. It is efficaciously or virtually in the host as in a symbol.599 This symbol "represents"—vicarius est—the body. Neither by way of impanation nor of identification, much less by way of transmutation, is the body in the host. Christ is in the bread as a king is in all parts of his dominions and as the soul is in the body. In the breaking of the bread, the body is no more broken than the sunbeam is broken when a piece of glass is shattered: Christ is there sacramentally, spiritually, efficiently—sacramentaliter, spiritualiter et virtualiter. Transubstantiation is the greatest of all heresies and subversive of logic, grammar and all natural science.600

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  As late as 1215 the ferocious inquisitor Conrad of Marburg freely used the hot iron against eighty persons in Strassburg alone who were suspected of the Albigensian heresy. The clergy prepared the combatants by fasting and prayer, and

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  All I hear is blame for a situation I didn’t cause and an acknowledgement of the obvious fact that I can’t make it better. Fixing things has always been one of my most important roles as a mother: problems with friends, problems at school, problems sleeping or eating or with health – fix, fix, fix. Without my maternal superpower, I am unrecognizable to him and to myself. But is our separation the cause of his ruin or is it an easy excuse? I am incensed, but I refuse to be the only one carrying the burden of responsibility. When I get home an hour later, I chug the remains of an open bottle of white wine straight from the bottle and get to work, calling the airline – which I learn is now closed for Shabbat – and the mothers of the other boys. I am usually the take-charge mother, the one who easily manages logistics, and I’m attempting to do so now but without grace or presence of mind. The other mothers beseech me to calm down, reminding me that the boys are safe and there’s no need to panic. I don’t know how to relay the root of my hysteria, that my beautiful family is crumbling before my eyes and I am powerless to stop it. Getting him home from Israel? That’s the easy part, requiring phone calls and money. Getting him out of this vast pit of unhappiness? No phone calls or handfuls of money will help. I text #3 to tell him I have to cancel our weekend plans as I will be returning to the city to receive Hudson, who will arrive at 5am on Sunday. As angry as I’ve been at Michael these past months, it’s got nothing on the fury I’ve turned toward myself. I have been foolishly pouring time and effort into rebuilding my life. What right did I have to turn any of my attention away from my kids? I believed I might have a relationship? Find love again? What a joke. I need to be a mother right now, nothing more and nothing less. The idea that I thought I might be entitled to my own personal life is at best laughable and at worst tragically unrealistic. #3 calls me immediately. He says that in his limited experience with teenage boys, smoking weed is quite common and that the extenuating circumstance of his being in a foreign country makes it more complicated, but not necessarily a more heinous offense. I explain that Hudson has been in trouble at school before for this same reason and that I am terrified we are on our way down a slippery, dangerous slope. Being a single mother to an angry teenage boy who despises me for being the parent he is stuck with feels way beyond my pay grade. “I’m sorry that I have to cancel. I suspect I’m more trouble than I’m worth.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  No one welcomed the advent of the Mendicant Friars to England with more enthusiasm than did Grosseteste. He regarded their coming as the dawn of a new era, and delivered the first lectures in their school at Oxford, and left. them his, library, though he never took the gray cowl himself, as did Adam Marsh. On being raised to the see of Lincoln, 1235, Grosseteste set out in the work of reforming monastic and clerical abuses, which brought him uninterrupted trouble till the close of his career. He set himself against drinking bouts, games in the churches and churchyards, and parish parades at episcopal visitations. The thoroughness of his episcopal oversight was a novelty. He came down like a hammer upon the monks, reports Matthew Paris, and the first year be removed seven abbots and four priors. At Ramsey he examined the very beds, and broke open the monks’ coffers like "a burglar," destroying their silver utensils and ornaments.1998 To the monks, who were about to choose an abbot, He wrote: "When you choose one to look after your swine, you make diligent search for a person possessing proper qualifications. And you ask the questions, Is he physically capable? Has he the requisite experience? Is he willing to take them into fitting pastures in the morning, to defend them against thieves and wild beasts, to watch over them at night? And are not your souls of more value than many swine?" The most protracted contest of his life was with his dean and chapter over the right of episcopal visitation.1999 The canons preached against him in his cathedral. But Grosseteste cited the cases of Samuel, who visited Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and David, who defended his father’s flocks. He was finally sustained by the pope. In no way did the great bishop win a more sure place in history than by his vigorous resistance to the appointment of unworthy Italians to English livings and to other papal measures. In 1252, he opposed the collection of a tenth for a crusade which had the pope’s sanction. He declined to execute the king’s mandate legitimatizing children born before wedlock. His most famous refusal to instal an Italian, was the case of the pope’s nephew, Frederick of Lavagna. The pope issued a letter threatening with excommunication any one who might venture to oppose the young man’s induction. Grosseteste, then seventy-five years old, replied, declaring, "I disobey, resist, and rebel."2000 Matthew Paris (III. 393), professing to describe the scene in the papal household when the letter was received, relates that Innocent IV., raved away at the deaf and foolish dotard who had so audaciously dared to sit in judgment upon his actions." Notwithstanding this attitude to the appointment of unworthy Italians, the bishop recognized the principle that to the pope belongs the right of appointing to all the benefices of the church.2001

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I don’t know how to pretend I’m one of the divorced moms’ crew while also maintaining the steadfast belief that I am not, that if one of them would just give me a map back to the road I had been on, I would gladly stay on the recommended route forever. A memory comes back to me in a painful flash. Months earlier, in the spring, when I was at Georgia’s school selling tickets to the talent show I was organizing, a mother approached with her daughter. When I realized that she was the mother of the one child from whom I did not yet have music, I asked her to please get it to me right away. She dramatically rolled her eyes and shook her head at me, saying, “That’s her father’s job.” “OK,” I said, “well then can you tell him I need it today?” “We’re divorced,” she said. “I feel your pain, I’m going through it myself right now. I just need the music though,” I said. She became animated then, leaning across the table toward me conspiratorially as she asked, “Who’s your judge?” “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “There are only two judges at the court who handle divorce. I’m curious if you have the good one,” she said. “Oh, no, we’re not up to that yet,” I said. “Who’s your lawyer?” she asked as I continued to shake my head. “We’re not up to that yet either,” I said. “Anyway, I just really need the music.” “I’ll tell him, but I can’t promise that he’ll send it,” she said brusquely, while her daughter stood next to her, silently listening to our interaction. I wanted to reach over the table and hug her, reassure her that we would make this work for her no matter what, but she turned, shoulders drooping, and went into the school building while her mother strode purposefully down the sidewalk. I watched her until she turned the corner, absorbing the critical information I had just unwittingly received: this is what bitterness and anger look like after years of unchecked growth. If I buy into the negative behavior I’ve read about in newspaper accounts of ugly divorces or in dramatic retellings on TV or in books – or in live exchanges like the one that just took place – I will soon be a hostile, spiteful shadow of myself. Standing now at Georgia’s camp, having rejected Michael’s hug, I know I have to do better. If I am resolute that I want to move forward in my life without him, I have to find a way to soften my anger so that my kids are not in the line of fire – or better yet, so there is no line of fire, just a soft dissolution. I won’t be hugging him any time soon – after all, I’m still working on making eye contact – but the venom inside me has to be treated before it poisons me.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I felt rage in my chest, in every part of me. “Fuck you, you fucking asshole!” I yelled. And then I hit him in the face. I had never hit anyone before. This was not what I had planned. I hadn’t planned anything actually. We were both in shock. I didn’t know what to say. Two drops of blood ran from his nose, down his lip, and splattered onto the floor. He put his hands up to his face. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Jamie,” I said. “Jamie, wait, let me see. Let me see.” “Just go,” he said. “Go!” He slammed the door. I pivoted on my heel and walked back down the street to my car. I felt worse. Later that night I got a visit from a police officer investigating the incident. Apparently, Megan had called the police from the hospital—or she had coerced him into it. I had broken Jamie’s nose. The cop said that the couple would not be pressing charges if I agreed to go to therapy. The couple? Now they were making decisions as a unit? “What did she look like?” I asked him. “Uh—” he faltered. “Would you say she’s better-looking than me?” “Ma’am,” said the cop, “I’m going to strongly recommend that you seek help for your anger issues. This time we’re only going to give you a warning. But if the couple hadn’t been so forgiving, you could be facing serious charges of battery right now.” “Battery!” I said. “Do I look like a batterer?” He was silent. “Can you just tell me. Aside from the broken nose, did they seem happy?” 20. I arrived at the Shalimar wearing the lingerie under a trench coat that I found in Steve’s closet. I’d done a lot of snooping in Annika’s house, looking for I wasn’t sure what. Something to help me know my sister better? Something to show me that the life she and Steve had together wasn’t as beautiful as it seemed to be? But there were no private journals with any confessionals, no secret passageways or locked boxes. Their relationship was like her ample ass: out in the open, giving no fucks, proudly just there. It was what it was. The trench made me feel petite and Hepburn-esque. Garrett texted to say that he was running late. I got nervous. It felt like my vagina and butthole were sweating. I went into one of the bathrooms in the lobby. It was big, like its own little room, with a marble floor and sink. It smelled like geraniums and I noticed an expensive candle burning. For some reason I thought about stealing it. I decided to hide in the bathroom until Garrett arrived. I stripped down out of the coat and wiped down my vagina and ass with soap.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It’s all I’ve talked about the past few days, how I’m trying to eat healthier, how tortured I am without my sugary treats at night?” I asked. “Yes, I know,” he said matter-of-factly. “These are for when you eat sugar again.” “But I’m not going to eat it again. The point is I stopped eating it. Why would you give this to me? It’s like you’re mocking me, openly predicting I will fail at this, instead of perhaps showing a little support,” I said angrily. Daisy shot me a look of dismay, incredulous at my lack of gratitude for the second time that day. “So don’t eat it. Give it to the kids, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have it,” he said. “Do you ever listen to me? I’m just wondering. When I talk, do you hear me?” I asked. His insistent cheerfulness started to fade and all three kids turned to scold me for being so cranky and unappreciative. I knew I sounded like a petulant child; I hated myself for it and for how the kids were looking disdainfully at me, but I was alarmed. We knew each other so well, and these gifts were puzzling to me; it was so obvious I would not like them. Then the kids’ school break arrived. Mid-winter recess in February, aka the absolute coldest, dreariest time of the year. Daisy headed to Boston to visit her friends and I took Hudson and Georgia to our house upstate. Michael joined us on Friday, the last day of the break. He called me when he went to pick up Hudson at the ski mountain to let me know that our son was injured with what appeared to be a broken hand. I let out a long, angry sigh. This kid’s skiing was the bane of my existence – he was passionate and talented, but every season we weathered broken bones or concussions. Michael applauded his fearlessness while all I could see in it was more trips to orthopedic surgeons and an open checkbook. I blamed Michael for encouraging this and was further angry that I had to be the one to figure out what to do with every accident. When they arrived home later with Hudson’s broken hand in a cast, I had warm bowls of chicken tortilla soup waiting for them. As we ate dinner, I tried to catch Michael’s eye, but he wouldn’t look at me. I kept my eyes on him as he stared down at his bowl of soup resolutely. As strained as things had become between us, this felt egregiously harsh, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me. It was at that moment that the gravity of what he had been trying to tell me weeks earlier clicked and I realized with growing alarm that something in our home had gone terribly awry. After dinner, Michael said he was exhausted and would put Georgia to sleep in our bed and go to sleep with her.