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 Filthy Animals (2021)

  The homes in the subdivision are all the same two levels, squat in the front and narrow in the back. They’re in shades of pale blue and ecru, with hunter-green shutters. Even the mailboxes are the same matte black plastic at the ends of the driveways. It’s a wonder that they don’t all wander into and out of one another’s homes by accident, so remarkably identical are these houses, and as they wind past them, Milton wonders, as he always does, if each house harbors some better, happier version of himself, and if so, who does that make him, on the sidewalk with Nolan, if not the failed twin—the bad news come to rest at the door of his true self, the real Milton, the one not meant for Idaho in the spring. “You on one tonight,” Nolan says. “You could have stayed in your basement.” “I wish you would drop that,” Milton snaps. “Titty Baby’s all upset.” “Stop pretending to know shit about how I feel,” Milton says. They’re outside Hank Dayton’s place at the edge of the subdivision. Hank’s beat-up Chevy drips oil onto the pavement. Nolan frowns, then scowls, then takes a step toward him. “This is the shit I’m talking about,” Nolan says as he sticks a finger directly into Milton’s chest. “Just what is up your ass?” “I said I’m good.” Milton pushes up against Nolan’s finger, and Nolan shoves him. Milton shoves back, and they grip at each other’s shoulders, their feet shifting for purchase. Their shoes scrape across the pavement, and Nolan calls him a pussy, a fag, a bitch-ass nigga. But the heat has gone out of the grappling, and they’re wheezing for breath by the end of it. “You lucky it’s your birthday,” Nolan says. He spits thick and white down between his knees. Milton finds his breath more easily than Nolan. His pulse slows. “We can go again.” “Quit playing.” Nolan puts his hand up to stop Milton from getting closer. Milton slaps at his palm. They knock fists, let it go. They cut into the woods, and as they go, Milton raises his fingertips to his neck where Nolan had put him in a headlock. He’s burning there. Alive with heat. • • • As kids, they had made a game of testing each other’s courage by seeing who could go farthest into the woods at night. They’d shut their eyes and dart ahead as if they could beat their fear with speed. “Do you remember that game we used to play out here?” he asks. “What game?” Milton steps over a thick branch downed in his way, and Nolan scrapes up alongside him, almost tripping. “Jesus.” “We used to go through here without looking,” Milton says. “Used to.” “Funny.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  And someone called for the wine. “Yeah,” the host said slowly. He put his hand at the small of Lionel’s back, leaned over, and kissed him. His lips were animal warm. Startlingly so. He seemed feverish. The host withdrew and winked at Charles. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you all about it.” Then he lifted the bottle over his head and posed at the doorway. There was a loud, shrill cheer. Charles turned to Lionel. “You okay?” Lionel set his glass on the counter. The host went out to adoring noise, and Lionel eased himself down to the floor. He braced his back against the cupboard. Charles took a seat opposite him, but sinking to the floor, he winced and hissed in pain. “I know what that’s like,” he said. “What?” “I know a couple assholes in my program, too.” Lionel nodded, then shook his head. “No, he’s not an asshole. He’s talented.” “You can be both.” “If you’re talented, don’t you deserve to be an asshole?” “I’m not sure that’s true,” Charles said. “But people seem to think it is.” “Maybe I’d be an asshole too if I hadn’t gone on leave. If I were graduating early.” But then Lionel didn’t like how bitter he sounded, in part because it felt like giving the host credit or power over him. “Anyway, it’s fine.” The wind through the screen chilled his neck. Charles rested the back of his head against the drawer. “It’s okay to be mad,” Charles said. “Mad about what?” “Your life.” Charles stretched his knee out gingerly and then rubbed it flat with his palm. “Did you hurt yourself?” “Overworked. It’s nothing.” It was easy to see how Charles might have overextended himself. He had the kind of body you could only get at great personal risk. He was good-looking, in a way that seemed incongruous with ordinary life. Like the kind of attractiveness only people on TV or with large social media followings could have. But he looked pained, too. All that body had cost him something. Lionel could understand that. The cost of the life you wanted. The way it could bound back on you. Extract its due. The kitchen tile crackled, and they both looked toward the door. It was Sophie. She looked down at them. Her eyes moved quickly from Lionel to Charles, to his knee. “Do we need to go?” she asked. “It’s all right,” he said. “We can stay.” “It might be better if we iced it at home.” Charles inhaled and then said, sharply, “I’m not a pussy.” “Oh, brother,” Sophie said.

• From Escape (2007)

  The only way Merril’s daughters could express their resentment over being treated like maids was in the careless way they did their work. The house was cleaned sporadically; most of the time it was filthy. The dishes usually got done because one of the wives would get so fed up she’d do them herself. We rarely had enough bread because they never baked enough. With nearly twenty children in grade school and younger, it was almost impossible to keep up with the laundry. It had to be done on a schedule. But that never happened. The children’s bedrooms were a mess. Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere. The house looked like the dumping ground it was. Despite her pandering to Merril and Barbara, Tammy hated the chaos we dealt with every day. We decided to tackle what we could to bring more order to our lives. “I like to get up in the morning,” Tammy said. “I’m usually up by five, so there is no reason why I can’t fix breakfast every day. I can also bake a batch of bread the night before. When there is no bread in the house, it feels like there’s nothing to eat. While I’m waiting for the bread I’ll mop the kitchen floor.” “The thing that is driving me crazy is dinner,” I said. “The babies are crying and I can’t feed them because someone is cooking dinner in the kitchen and won’t let the babies be fed until that’s finished. We never eat until after eight and sometimes not until midnight, which is unacceptable.” I wasn’t eager to take on the responsibility, but said I’d make dinner every night. We still had the issue of money. There simply wasn’t enough cash. Tammy and I decided to triage the shopping list and purge it of all personal items. People would have to go without. We had children still in diapers, which took a big bite out of our budget. I planted a huge garden that summer and we managed to eat every meal from its harvest. We bought flour for bread and had some beans in the cellar, bottled vegetables, and fruit. But despite our best efforts, the tension at home because of sheer want kept building. Rather than appreciating our efforts, Merril and Barbara were offended. Merril made it clear that Tammy and I should have checked with Barbara before we implemented changes in the daily household routine. Merril once refused to eat dinner because I hadn’t checked with Barbara before preparing it. I could not believe the ego of that man.

• From Escape (2007)

  Barbara returned to the kitchen the day before the trip. The tables and countertops were covered with sweet rolls Cathleen and I had baked the night before. We’d made over a hundred and left them out overnight to cool. Barbara went to Merril’s office and reported on us. Tammy was always coming to Cathleen and me and reporting on what Barbara was saying to Merril. Either Barbara would tell her or Tammy would eavesdrop outside Merril’s office. “Father, I have a concern that Cathleen and Carolyn are making too much food. I have spoken to them several times about this. It’s an enormous expense and a huge amount of food will be wasted. They have also packed almost all of the clothing in the children’s closets. This will all have to be cleaned when we get back. I also don’t understand why they are packing any bedding because we’ll be in a hotel. Things seem out of control and they need to be disciplined.” Merril was realistic and told her that disciplining us at this stage wouldn’t fix anything, especially since the food was purchased, packed, and baked. His attitude was that we’d have to live with the consequences of our actions. Barbara didn’t give up easily. “I had no input into what they prepared for the children. I would have far preferred that the children eat bread sticks instead of sweet rolls,” she said. “These girls have no concern for the health of your children.” We were both summoned to Merril’s office. Neither of us was surprised by Merril’s interrogation. It was clear to us that since we had bypassed Barbara and not asked her permission for everything we were doing to get ready for the trip, she’d see to it that we were in trouble with Merril. There had been many episodes before this where she’d been complaining about us to Merril and Tammy came to give us the full report. Merril’s interrogation began as soon as we sat on the couch. “I am getting information that you girls haven’t prepared anything healthy for the children to snack on during the trip. I’m also concerned that you’ve made too much food and there will be a lot of waste.” Cathleen jumped right in. She was not intimidated by Merril, but she stopped short of defying him. “Merril, we’ve purchased several cases of apples and oranges for the children to eat on the way,” she said. “We have sandwich bags with vegetables and carrot sticks. Most of what we’ve prepared is healthy.” “Sweet rolls are not healthy.” I interrupted Merril. “We only made enough for each person to have two. After that, the rest of the snacks will all be healthy.” Merril seemed confident that he now had the upper hand. He laughed nervously. “I think you should work with Barbara on making something healthy. Barbara has always been a wife who is interested in doing what her husband wants.”

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Similarly, powerful gays who could afford to be daring remain in silence. The quiet rich, the closeted politicians, uncommitted gay movie directors, cowardly producers, clowning gay writers. And the often politically reactionary gay middleclass threatened by the prospect of having to see the prosecution of homosexuals in the context of all other minority prosecution; they cringe—these uptight middleclass homosexuals—in stylishly décored, ferned homes— at the thought of street sex (which nevertheless gives them a closet hard-on). Soothed by the now-reactionary soft lisps of the largest-circulation gay newspaper— The Advocate (whose editorials seem to be written by a gay William Buckley but whose money-bringing classified advertisements balk at nothing)—they forget, the silent rich, the cozy students, the “quiet” couples—that the outlaw absorbs the hatred that would otherwise swallow them. Complacency and indifference about our own are among the ugliest aspects of the gay world. Two cops invade a gay area to bust two men—and other gays often watch as if at a circus—making no protest. We read deliciously the details of gay busts. And savage, sexually repressed criminals raid gay areas. So what?— we weren't there…. Not this time. A sad commentary, that the minority that could be among the most powerful ever has no organization to thwart violence in our sex-hunting areas—we squander our rage in rituals of self-hatred. We reduce “gaypride” to a matter of holding hands in public. After the cleansing rebellion of the Stonewall riot came a few activist lawyers, small radical groups of proud fighters and daring revolutionaries—and more sexual outlaws—but not enough, not nearly enough. And there came as well too many tacky parades of bickering contingents, “gay leaders” riding like grand marshals on limousines flanked by acolytes. On sweet floats, coy boys posed in loincloths. It may be that overall—and with marked exceptions—the gay minority cares less for its own, does less for its own, than any other minority. That may be in large part because what holds other minorities together—ready identification, familial ties—is absent from the gay minority: It is very easy, and tempting, to “pass.” (A homosexual psychiatrist claims the “gay problem” would be resolved instantly if overnight all homosexuals turned a definite, defining color.) Unlike blacks, say, who have black fathers, black mothers, black sisters, black brothers, the homosexual is gay in total isolation in his family. He is often cast out when he is “discovered.” There is this additional factor: Since his is a minority defined by its sexual preference, the gay energy flows into two areas—the revolution of the sexhunt and the revolution against bigotry.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  What did any of them know about art? About anything? Charles half wished that Farnland would make a scene now. That he’d do something. But he didn’t. Farnland waved him off and pushed out into the hall. The noise from the class next door, the music, filled the room briefly, and then was gone. Charles flexed his fist and worked over his knee. Little old man, full of spite. But Charles had done nothing to stop him. • • • Charles cut through the courtyard, scattering a group of smoking students. They trailed white smoke, legible in the piercing daylight. His sweat had turned to a chalky crust, and he could feel it breaking up when he moved, cold sneaking in against his skin. The class had done its work. His muscles were warm, and he felt pliant, alive. He’d pulled the brace on to give his knee some relief. On the other side of the courtyard, he slipped into the dance library. Sophie often haunted the upper levels of the library in the media room, looking over old choreography. She could have streamed it on her phone in high definition, but she liked browsing through the years of archival footage, poring over little-known, minor dancers, taking bits here and there from everyone like a magpie. He found her sitting on the floor with an enormous album covering her entire lap. She was running her finger up and down the list, deciding which to take out. She leaned down over it, exposing the tender white nape of her neck. He kissed her there before she knew he was present, and she jumped, screaming. “Shh,” he said as he crouched. His knee crackled like static. “You are a menace,” she hissed, her eyes flashing. “What are you looking at?” He sat down to take the weight off. “Old shit.” She handed him the book, the pages yellowed, little black disks tucked inside plastic wrap, neat type glued next to each one. “God, you stink.” “I had practice.” “That’s not practice smell,” she said. “That’s not practice smell at all.” He squeezed his legs together, thinking that might help, but she just snorted at him. “Where’s your phone?” “I don’t know, dead probably,” he said, looking but not looking at the album. “I called you,” she said. “After you left last night.” “Oh, well, it died, so.” Charles felt her staring at him very intently. There was no anger in the gaze. She knew the truth already, where he’d gone and what he’d done—there had been no mystery to it—but what she wanted was confirmation of the act. Say it: I went home with Lionel. “What?” Sophie leaned back onto her hands. She arched her back and let her head hang. “You’re such a shitty liar,” she said. “Why must you lie?” “I’m not.” “How boring, Charlie.” “I’m sorry for boring you.” “How was it?” “How was what?” “Jesus, Charlie.”

• From Escape (2007)

  I was angry. How could they be so cruel both to Jackson and to me? Then Merril said I was to come to Page the next day and travel with him to Phoenix and California. I felt blindsided. Barbara had made it clear that she didn’t want me to travel with Merril. Who was going to take care of Jackson? “That will not be a problem,” Merril said. “I will arrange for his care. All you need to worry about is getting ready to come with me.” I was numb from shock and dizzy from the constant changes. There was no time to adjust to anything. I did not want be alone with Merril both day and night. Jackson was up much of the second night and I slept little. When I finally dozed off I slept right through the alarm. I didn’t get to Page until midafternoon, but that didn’t matter. Merril was running late. Barbara treated me like ice. I’m sure she hated that I was leaving with Merril. We drove to Flagstaff, where we were to have dinner. But Merril got a migraine en route and could not continue to drive. We checked into a hotel and went to sleep. It was late the next morning before Merril felt well enough to travel. But it was too late. Uncle Roy and the others we were going to meet had already left for California. We went on to Phoenix, where Merril had some business. But late the next day we turned around and went back to Page and then home. Merril and I didn’t talk much in the car. He seemed preoccupied with business. He was always jotting down notes and stopping to make calls. We didn’t know each other at all and he didn’t seem interested in getting to know me. The risk for him, I suppose, was that if he started to like me, he’d complicate his life with Barbara. The tension in the household was always high on weekends, especially after I returned from the trip with Merril. Barbara was sulking and refused to come into the house. Merril spent a long time talking to her in her van. After a while he emerged and told me to put her four daughters and son Danny to bed. Merril said he would sleep with me after he took Barbara for a drive. Barbara had a small nursery off her room with bunk beds for her four daughters. Danny, who was three, had a small bed of his own on the floor. It took me a while to get the children bathed and ready for bed. By that time, Merril and Barbara had returned and were in her bedroom. The girls had heard their mother come in, but it was Danny who ran into her room before I could stop him.

• From Escape (2007)

  He exploded and said I had no right to challenge him, the man who was my priesthood head. “Do you want to have your way or do you want to be in harmony with your husband? I would think you would want to do the will of the one you belong to! I won’t allow you to insist on something else. It will cost you heavily if you do. Falling out of favor with me is not something you want to have happen.” When he calmed down he pretended that it was a compliment from my loving husband to include me in the celebration of his newest marriage. He said that as an obedient wife I surely would want to come and please him. I felt like he was tightening the chains around me. I also realized that if I didn’t go to Salt Lake City, it would appear that I was angry that my husband had married another woman. One of the worst sins a woman can commit in the FLDS is to resist the will of the prophet in giving her husband another wife. Even appearing to be unhappy about the new wife could reflect badly on me. After Merril’s explosion on the phone, I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. I could not have imagined that we would have eight children together. Not then. The peace of the day was shattered. The relaxing evening at home that I’d looked forward to was ripped apart. Merril’s daughters came home just as I was sitting down to dinner with the small children. We were having soup and rolls that I’d baked. Sheets of unbaked cookies were ready to go in the oven. They noticed the shining house and the children’s clothes and bedding hanging on the line. Several of them said God must have inspired me and something wonderful was about to happen. When they heard that their father had taken a fifth wife they were thrilled. The world had just rotated in their direction. The girls had hoped that their father would marry again. They couldn’t stand being dominated by Barbara, and now her reign of terror might be over. This new marriage had the potential to tip the balance of power in their direction. All I did was get in the way of their relationship with their father.

• From Escape (2007)

  Tammy was on the warpath. She’d tell anyone who’d listen that she was being forced to go on a trip to Hawaii with me. In an about-face, she’d managed to turn me into the villain, even while knowing I had no desire to go. She started obsessing about everything I did. If I bought something for the trip, she needed to buy five of them. Cathleen, who was also pregnant, stayed in the background and out of the line of fire. I tried reasoning with Tammy, but she wanted no part of it. I said that since it appeared that the trip was a fait accompli, why didn’t we all just make the best of it? If we tried, we could have a good time, or at the very least not make things any worse or stranger than they already were. Tammy was dismissive. She had a new mission: pregnancy. Tammy was the only one of Merril’s wives who’d never had a baby. This was a disaster for her, especially since her mother had twenty children and was the wife who had substantial influence over her husband’s entire family. In comparison to her mother, she was nothing. Without children, a woman had no power or status. None of us in plural marriages had even remotely normal relationships with men, but Tammy’s was unique, even in our bizarre culture. At eighteen, she had been married to the prophet Uncle Roy. He was eighty-eight. In ten years, they’d never had sex because he was too old and incapacitated. Even though she’d been married for a decade, she was still a virgin when she married Merril shortly after Uncle Roy’s death. She was upset when I gave birth because she’d been so unsuccessful in getting pregnant. She’d had an ectopic pregnancy before I gave birth to Arthur. Tammy had been taking Clomid, a fertility drug. When Merril found out that one of the side effects of Clomid was ectopic pregnancy, he was furious and told Tammy to quit the drug. She refused. Merril stopped having sex with her. (I knew this because she told us. We also had heard her screaming at Merril for three years that it was his priesthood duty to get her pregnant.) Her desperation for a child kept escalating. Before the trip she went to the doctor again for more Clomid and began taking a double dose. She was determined to conceive in Hawaii. The more she focused on pregnancy, the less of a threat I became. Tammy stopped attacking me and suddenly became enthusiastic about Hawaii. There was never a moment when Merril sat down with us and told us we were all going to Hawaii and explained the plan. Our lives were never that logical. We heard about the trip, and then learned that tickets were purchased with our names on them, and each of us began making our own unilateral preparations.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  No matter, here, that consent was involved—and among adults in a private gathering; no matter that the “slaves” would not be friendly witnesses either. Parallel situations between the cop defendants and the gay defendants had produced opposite results—and the double standard glared. With what rage had the prosecuting attorney waged his fight to bind the defendants over for trial: The paraphernalia confiscated at the auction was flaunted in evidence— the manacles, wooden stock, studded collar, riding crop, cat-o'-nine-tails, leather shackles, paddle, rings and clamps for parts of the body, leg chains—all the nasty “toys” of S & M with which some homosexuals play self-hating charades. The objects had no bearing on the charges; but their presence in the courtroom was meant to stir the same bigotry the cops had sought to create in their televised spectacle of the raid. At first the judge had seemed almost sympathetic to the defendants. He observed that, during three days’ testimony, no connection with pimping had been made. He summarily dismissed the testimony of one cloudy cop who kept consulting a police transcript. He defended laughter as salutary. He criticized the prosecution for not providing the defense with copies of the transcript of a crucial tape secretly recorded by the cops at the auction. As the prosecutor fought ferociously to bring the case to trial, it was obvious that much more was at stake than the four defendants. Why, think of the police chief for whom this operation had been so dear!—and now he was making noises about running for governor. Think of the one hundred brave men in blue, and the helicopters, the cop whose tooth got knocked out, the cameras, the buses, the command post! And think of those thousands of dollars poured into the daring raid on the gay bathhouse. Okay, so maybe you were raped, robbed, or mugged on the night of the raid because the cops were out busting homosexuals. We got the fucking perverts! So what if each “slave” knew he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to, didn't even have to go with whoever bid for him? Yes, a lot of consent, as the police spokesman had pointed out in the matter of the cops and the underage girls. None of that mattered, here. We got the fucking queers! All four of them. (Sure, we wanted to get a hundred, busted forty, had to settle for four. But we got ‘em!) The cops, the district and city attorney's offices (hadn't both had representatives at the raid, in effect condoning it?) had looked, at best, ridiculous after the bathhouse bust, and citizens angered by the squander in the jungle-city had let them know it. Now, to vindicate the wasteful homophobia, ran the demented logic, more money must be poured into the trial of four random martyrs. Additional waste would justify waste!

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  RAPE WAS WHERE MY REBELLION STARTED. HIS SMALL SENSE that—small as I was, an infant—I needed to be controlled was my hint that I had power that had to be curtailed. That I was alive enough to be annihilated. That my survival was a threat that needed to be contained. Rape and sexual abuse made me nothing, and in doing so made me something. Something other than the evacuated, erased nobody that my father hoped to produce. The puppet-daughter, obedient to the Law. Jephtha’s daughter, sent where she’s bidden. Lot’s daughter, fixated on patriarchal propagation. It’s the end of the world. It’s not. It’s not not. It’s what we have. It’s what we create from “to survive.” The walls of the suburban conservative religious worldview in which I was raised were paper-thin, the surface of a shadow-play of stick figures (Father, Rabbi, Policeman) performing the same old, same old drama of power. Rendering something worthless—tearing something down—is powerful. It’s a weapon of power. We know it in our bodies. It’s time to pull out the scalpel and turn it around. Slash vents in the paper walls of this master’s house of heteropatriarchal colonialist mass hallucination that claims to be our reality. Give vent to our rage. Be bad. Dare to survive. The Life RuinerNora SalemI KNOW A GUY I LIKE TO CALL THE LIFE RUINER. HE WAS born in a small Egyptian village with big city ambitions. He moved into my family’s then-home in Cairo to make those dreams a reality. He was eighteen; I was eight. And for a period just short of a year, he regularly sexually abused me. I mostly say “the Life Ruiner” in my own head. It makes him sound kind of like an old-timey criminal, and I try to picture him as such when I do think of him: in a yellow silk shirt, hair slicked back, floppy leather shoes just a little too big for his feet, leaning casually against a beat-up VW bug in which, after his dastardly deed is done, he drives off, cackling maniacally. Here’s a real memory: me in the kitchen of our Cairo apartment, garnishing a very large knife. Eight years old, fed up, and telling him that, if he ever came near me again, I’d stick it in his throat. He laughed. Still, I didn’t tell anyone what he’d done. IT’S BEEN TWO DECADES SINCE THEN AND ONE DECADE SINCE I managed to tell my parents. Oddly enough, it’s especially since I told them that the memories have become more powerful, even occasionally all-consuming. A couple counselors have called it PTSD. It feels more like running my fingers over the rupture between the life I lived then and the one I live now.

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril was furious. “This is not Carolyn’s trip. You, Tammy, are out of order for trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with my family. Carolyn has a right to go with me alone only if that’s what I want her to do. You have a responsibility to be obedient to your husband, but you do not have any right to ask questions!” Cathleen was equally incensed when she found out that one of the tickets was in her name. She called Merril at his office in Page and said she should be the sole wife traveling with him to Hawaii. Cathleen called from a phone in the house that was very public and was talking so loudly we all could hear. She felt entitled to go alone because she had only ever taken short trips with Merril. There was no logic to her argument—she was just angling to get a trip for herself. We all had been married to Merril for about four years. If the trip had been based on seniority, then I should have been the one to go alone because I’d been married to Merril seven months longer than they. By the time Cathleen finished talking to Merril she was in tears and stormed off to her room. I was furious, but I knew confronting Merril would be unproductive. We’d already had several major fights in our marriage and I knew there was no way to reason with him or refuse to acquiesce to whatever he desired. I was in the early stages of my third pregnancy and in the throes of morning sickness so severe I’d vomit several times a day. The thought of getting on an airplane and leaving my children, Arthur and Betty, behind made me feel even worse. Nor would I have any say about their care while I was away. I couldn’t even ask my sister or a friend to watch them. I had to leave them at the mercy of the wives remaining at home. Quiet and resigned, I started making preparations for the trip. I knew I couldn’t miss more than a week of school without making arrangements for my class, so I started doing lesson plans in advance. I bought some fabric and started sewing some lightweight dresses for the trip. Tammy saw me working on my dress and felt threatened. She had a closet full of beautiful clothes but now felt she needed seven new dresses for the trip. She bought fabric and then asked her sisters to make her new dresses.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  With the palm of his left hand he kept the beat of the song against the steering wheel. His right arm rested on the back of the empty seat beside him, which would not remain empty for long. He was on his way to pick someone up. We held no conference. One look was enough to see that he was everything we were not, his life a progress of satisfactions we had no hope of attaining in any future we could seriously propose for ourselves. The first egg hit the street beside him. The second egg hit the front fender. The third egg hit the trunk and splattered his shoulders and neck and hair. We looked down just long enough to tally the damage before pulling our heads back. A moment passed. Then a howl rose skyward. No words—just one solitary soul cry of disbelief. We could still hear the music coming from his radio. The light must have changed, because a horn honked, and honked again, and someone yelled something, and another voice answered harshly, and the song was suddenly lost in the noise of engines. We rolled back and forth on the roof for a while. Just as we were getting ready to go back down to Silver’s apartment, the Thunderbird screeched around the corner up the block. We could hear the driver cursing. The car moved slowly toward the light, combusting loudly. As it passed below we peered over the parapet again. The driver was scanning the sidewalks with stiff angry jerks of his head. He seemed to have no idea where the eggs had come from. We let fly again. One hit the hood with a loud boom, another landed in the seat beside him, the last exploded on the dashboard. Covered with egg and eggshell, he rose in his seat and bellowed. There was more honking at the light. Again he tore away and again he came back, still bellowing. Six eggs were left in the carton. Each of us took two. Silver knelt by the edge, risking a few hurried glances into the street while holding his arm out behind him to keep us in check until the moment was right. Then he beckoned furiously and we reared up beside him and got rid of our eggs and dropped back out of sight before they hit. The driver was looking up at the building across the street; he never laid eyes on us. We heard the eggs smack the pavement, boom against the car. This time there was no cry of protest. The silence made me uncomfortable and in my discomfort I grinned at Silver, but Silver did not grin back. His face was purple and twitching with anger as if he had been the one set upon and outraged. He was beside himself.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  (Early in 1976, the Internal Affairs Division of the Los Angeles Police Department was quietly investigating a matter that could turn against them: At least one off-duty cop was reputedly beating up homosexuals in Hollywood.) Why, then, do homosexuals continue summoning the police to report crime with homosexual overtones? Because there is in all of us, gay and straight, that indoctrination which makes us continue to demand that cops be the good guys, no matter how often they prove otherwise. A man is cruising. Two men drive by and call him a “fucking queer.” Through their window, you swing at one angrily. They turn out to be vice cops, and you're charged with assaulting an officer. A report written by a vice cop in an arrest charging two men with a felonious oral-copulation contact punishable by up to ten years in prison was challenged by the defense on the basis that from the position he located himself (on a winding, heavily treed path at least twenty feet away from a branch-sheltered alcove where he placed the two defendants), he could not have possibly witnessed the details he so heatedly described in his report. Excerpts: “… Officer observed X standing on the trail. X had no shirt on and his pants were around his ankles and his right hand was on the shoulder of def Y. Def Y was on both knees directly in front of def X. Def X's penis was inserted in the mouth of def Y. Y was moving his head back and forth in a back and forth motion with his eyes closed.…” In a tiny theater attracting gays, a cop screams: “Roundup time!” Six cops go on a rampage knocking men to the floor. A man in a public restroom sees another playing suggestively with himself. He answers the signal. Another man rushes in, knocks the first to the ground. You're busted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison because you have a previous record and the judge says you're a “menace.” A youngman in prison on a “sex charge” sits before shifting slides of nude men on a screen. Each time he becomes aroused, he feels the nausea-wrenching pain of “therapy.” Imagine the horror of living with that constant fear, those threats. Imagine being forbidden by law to seek out a sexual partner. Imagine that—and you begin to understand the promiscuous rage of the sexual outlaw. Each time a homosexual is arrested, law and order suffers. In a city in which, in 1975, homicides rose over 600 for the first time—an increase of 17.5% over 1974—the Los Angeles Police Department was still able in 1976 to spare 103 men and over $100,000 to raid a gay bathhouse!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  A similar quid pro quo occurs in the same hotel when “Humbert” is misunderstood and distorted into a Jewish-sounding “ Humberg ,” just as “Professor Hamburg” now finds the hotel full. “Refugee” H.H. is often mistaken for a Jew; see here , where John Farlow is on the point of making an anti-Semitic remark and is interrupted by sensitive Jean. Quilty thinks H.H. may be a “German refugee,” and reminds him, “This is a Gentile’s house, you know” ( a Gentile’s house ). Nabokov’s father was an outspoken foe of anti-Semitism. He wrote “The Blood Bath of Kishinev,” a famous protest against the 1903 pogrom, and was fined by the tsarist government for the fiery articles he wrote about the Beiliss trial (Maurice Samuel mentions him several times in his book on the Beiliss case, Blood Accusation [1966]—coincidentally published at the same time as Bernard Malamud’s novel based on it, The Fixer —and quotes from Nabokov’s reportage). Nabokov fils was also outraged by anti-Semitism, and, because his wife is Jewish, was sensitive to it in a most acutely personal way (witness the empathy for “poor Irving” [ Irving ]). Nabokov recalled going into a New England inn years ago, accompanied by his son and his son’s friend. Opening the menu, Nabokov noticed therein the succinct stipulation “Gentiles Only.” He called over the waitress and asked her what the management would do if there appeared at the door that very moment a bearded and berobed man, leading a mule bearing his pregnant wife, all of them dusty and tired from a long journey. “What … what are you talking about?” the waitress stammered. “I am talking about Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Nabokov, as he pointed to the phrase in question, rose from the table, and led his party from the restaurant. “My son was very proud of me,” said Nabokov. In Pale Fire , Kinbote and Shade discuss prejudice at length (note to line 470; pp. 216–218). Reader! Bruder! : German; “brother.” An echo of the last line of Au Lecteur , the prefatory poem in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857): “— Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable, —monfrère! ” (“Hypocrite reader —my fellow man—my brother.”). See oh Baudelaire! . the Gazette’s … Dr. Braddock and his group : see here . Gazette was not italicized in the 1958 edition; the error has been corrected. portrait … as a … brute : an obvious play on Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). In searching for a title for his manuscript, the narrator of Despair considers “Portrait of the Artist in a Mirror,” but rejects it as “too jejune, too à la mode ” (p. 201). For Joyce, see outspoken book: Ulysses . Brute Force : the actual title of a movie released by Universal Pictures in 1947, directed by Jules Dassin, and starring Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, and Yvonne De Carlo.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Oh, she simply hated her daughter! What I thought especially vicious was that she had gone out of her way to answer with great diligence the questionnaires in a fool’s book she had (A Guide to Your Child’s Development), published in Chicago. The rigmarole went year by year, and Mom was supposed to fill out a kind of inventory at each of her child’s birthdays. On Lo’s twelfth, January 1, 1947, Charlotte Haze, née Becker, had underlined the following epithets, ten out of forty, under “Your Child’s Personality”: aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient, irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) and obstinate. She had ignored the thirty remaining adjectives, among which were cheerful, co-operative, energetic, and so forth. It was really maddening. With a brutality that otherwise never appeared in my loving wife’s mild nature, she attacked and routed such of Lo’s little belongings that had wandered to various parts of the house to freeze there like so many hypnotized bunnies. Little did the good lady dream that one morning when an upset stomach (the result of my trying to improve on her sauces) had prevented me from accompanying her to church, I deceived her with one of Lolita’s anklets. And then, her attitude toward my saporous darling’s letters! DEAR MUMMY AND HUMMY, Hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the candy. I [crossed out and re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. It has been cold here for the last few days. I’m having a time. Love. DOLLY “The dumb child,” said Mrs. Humbert, “has left out a word before ‘time.’ That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candy without consulting me.” 20There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake—not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning. We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip “in the ebony” (as John had quipped) at five o’clock in the morning last Sunday. “The water,” I said, “must have been quite cold.” “That is not the point,” said the logical doomed dear. “He is subnormal, you see. And,” she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), “I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron.” Feeling. “We feel Dolly is not doing as well” etc. (from an old school report). The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When they reach Glad Hill, people are gathered around an orange fire in a barrel. Music plays from a portable speaker nearby. Milton doesn’t recognize anyone except for Tate and Abe, of course, and one or two others. Abe is enormous, well over six feet and bulky. He resembles a large, white bull, with a massive head and a forehead that juts forward. Tate is almost hilariously thin, reedy and short. He has crooked teeth but a good, kind face. He is neither good nor kind, however, and his favorite act of violence is to burn holes into people’s clothes when they aren’t looking. Compared with Nolan, they are rough and dull. But then, compared with Nolan, anyone would seem lesser, made of inferior stuff, Milton included. Abe and Tate bring out the worst in Nolan, excite the animal part in him. The last time they were all together, smoking in the woods and drinking cheap beer, Tate gripped Nolan’s arm, hauled him up, and punched him. Not a hard punch. Tate could never hurt Nolan. But the surprise of the act, the vicious courage of it, made Nolan stagger. Milton was up off the ground in an instant, gripping Tate’s throat, but Nolan pushed him aside, and head-butted Tate one hard time. And then, in the evening, they were all over each other, he and Tate and Abe and Milton, throwing fists and elbows. They fought for what felt like hours, but for what must have been only minutes, biting and scratching and punching. After that fight, Abe and Tate went home together, shouting and shoving. Nolan reached for Milton’s raw, ugly hand. The scabbed edges of their fingertips brushed once, and then no more. Here, tonight, with the fire going loud and brilliant, Milton tightens up. Abe cracks a loose grin. “Millie,” he says. “Fuck you, Abraham.” Abe smiles—a cold dagger in the night. “ ’Sup, No Dick?” Nolan gives Abe the finger, which elicits a hoot. Abe slaps his hand against his thick thigh and then stands up. “Beer’s in the cooler, ladies.” “God, I hate him,” Nolan says with a shake of his head. “Could have fooled me,” Milton says. “Well.” There’s nothing to say. They’re here. Milton finds a place under some trees and squats. Around the tree from him, some skinny kid is going at it with a girl. Their wet kissing sounds to him like slugs being peeled apart. Nolan’s standing with Abe and Tate, talking. He’s gesturing broadly with his hands, telling some story or another. Abe’s expression is placid and gentle. Abe used to be good—sweet, even. They were all in Sunday school together, the four of them. But then something had gone wrong in each of them, something turning suddenly hard and cold and malicious. A wildness in them waking up after a long hibernation. Milton hears Nolan’s voice over the music—he’s making a sound like gunfire, spraying all the people around them with bullets made of air.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  “TRACEY,” I HEARD, JUST AS MY TOE HIT THE HALLWAY AFTER a shower. It was as if he’d been listening, waiting for me. “You’ll have to wait,” I told my father not looking in his direction. “I need to get dressed.” “No, you don’t.” It was three years later; I was sixteen. My hand clutched the brown antique doorknob when I turned to look at him. “What!?” “I just want to look at you. Just look.” I stared in disbelief. “Let me look and you can practice your driving hours in my truck.” It wasn’t going to stop. He was never going to stop. The therapist, my mother, they had been so wrong. I knew then that I wasn’t safe—how could I ever be safe sleeping just one room away from my rapist?—and I ran to the kitchen to grab a knife. My father was in the doorway of his bedroom when I returned, waiting. I brandished the knife, but my rage only seemed to amuse him. He raised his eyebrows and I lunged toward him. But my towel slipped off, landing at his feet on the midnight blue carpet and three years of running from him, avoiding him, carefully concealing myself, of constant vigilance was all undone. I was naked before him. He’d gotten everything he wanted, and all he’d had to do was wait. I knew what was next on his wish list. “You are a sick motherfucker,” I yelled, running into my bedroom and pushing the heavy five-dresser bureau in front of my door. I wasn’t sure if I was protecting myself from my father’s advances or myself from a murder charge. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Tracey?” he admonished. He was deranged, I thought, thinking he could slip back into fatherly privilege just moments after he propositioned me, his daughter, like a five-dollar hooker. “Come near me and I’ll kill you,” I yelled. There was no safe place for me to go, no relatives nearby or close family friends that I could trust. I’d lost all my faith in adults, so I called my friend Robin to pick me up; she wasn’t afraid of adults. I also called my mother. “Your husband did it again,” I spat in a mix of shouting, crying, screaming, and yelling. “He did it again.” “What are you talking about?” my mother asked as if she had no idea what “it” could possibly be. “He did it again,” I shouted toward the bottom receiver. And I hung up the phone. The phone rang but my father answered it right away. I looked out the window, waiting for Robin to arrive before I moved the bureau. I would’ve gone out the window, but they were all nailed shut: shortly after he raped me, my father caught me with a boy and thought that not being able to open the windows would keep me inside. As far as I was concerned, the real danger was on this side of the glass.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  She privily stole away her husband's ring, and went into the country, whereas she commanded one of her servants that was trusty to her, but otherwise a faithless varlet, to take the ring and to carry it to the maiden: to whom he should declare that her brother did pray her to come into the country to him, and that she should come alone, as soon as she might, without any other person. And to the end she should not delay, but come with all speed, he did deliver her the ring, to be a sufficient testimony of his message. The maiden, being very willing and desirous to obey his commandment (for she alone knew that he was her brother) and out of respect also for his signet, went in all haste alone as the messenger willed her to do. But when she was fallen into the snare and engine which was prepared 515 LUCIUS APULEIUS extremae lapsa decipulo laqueos insidiarum accessit, tune illa uxor egregia sororem mariti libidinosae furiae stimulis efferata primum quidem nudam flagris ultime verberat, dehinc, quod res erat, clamantem, quodque frustra paelicatus indignatione bulliret, fratrisque no- men saepius iterantem, velut mentitam atque cuncta fingentem titione candenti inter media femina de- truso erudelissime necavit. 5 Tunc acerbae mortis exciti nuntiis frater et maritus accurrunt, variisque lamentationibus defletam puellam tradunt sepulturae. Nec iuvenis sororis suae mortem tam miseram et a qua! minime par erat illatam aequo tolerare quivit animo, sed medullitus dolore commo- tus acerrimaeque bilis noxio furore perfusus exin flagrantissimis febribus ardebat, ut ipsi quoque iam medela videretur necessaria. Sed uxor, quae iam- pridem nomen uxoris cum fide perdiderat, medicum convenit quendam notae perfidiae, qui iam multarum palmarum spectatus proeliis magna dexterae suae tropaea numerabat, eique protinus quinquaginta pro- mittit sestertia, ut ille quidem momentarium vene- num venderet, ipsa autem emeret mortem mariti sui. Quo confecto simulatur necessaria praecordiis lenien- dis bilique subtrahendae illa praenobilis potio, quam sacram doctiores nominant, sed in eius vice ! MSS quae; a qua is the suggestion of Seioppius, THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X for her with such infinite cunning, the mischievous woman, like one that were mad and possessed with some ill spirit, did strip her husband’s sister and scourge her first with rods from top to toe; and when the poor maiden called for help with a loud voice and declared the truth of the matter, declaring oft that he was her brother, the wicked harlot (boiling with jealousy and weening that she had invented and feigned the matter) took a burning firebrand and thrust it betwixt her thighs, whereby she died miserably.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  The woman that slew the Maiden having lost the name of wife together with her faith, went to a traiterous Physician, who had killed a great many persons in his dayes and promised him fifty peeces of Gold, if he would give her a present poyson to kill her husband out of hand, but in presence of her Husband, she feined that it was necessary for him to receive a certaine kind of drink, which the Maisters and Doctours of Physicke doe call a sacred Potion, to the intent he might purge Choller and scoure the interiour parts of his body. But the Physitian in stead of that drinke prepared a mortall and deadly poyson, and when he had tempered it accordingly, he tooke the pot in the presence of the family, and other neighbours and friends of the sick yong man, and offered it to his patient. But the bold and hardy woman, to the end she might accomplish her wicked intent, and also gaine the money which she had promised the Physitian, staid the pot with her hand, saying: I pray you master Physitian, minister not this drinke unto my deare Husband, untill such time as you have drunke some part thereof your selfe: For what know I, whether you have mingled any poyson in the drinke or no, wherein I would have you not to be offended: For I know that you are a man of wisedome and learning, but this I do to the intent the conscience and love that I beare to the health and safeguard of my husband, may be apparent. The Physitian being greatly troubled at the wickednesse of this mischievous woman, as voyd of all counsell and leysure to consider of the matter, and least he might give any cause of suspition to the standers by, or shew any scruple of his guilty conscience, by reason of long delay, tooke the pot in his hand, and presently drunke a good draught thereof, which done, the young man having no mistrust, drunke up the residue. The Physitian would have gone immediately home to receive a counterpoyson, to expell and drive out the first poyson: But the wicked woman persevering in her mischiefe, would not suffer him to depart a foot, untill such time as the poyson began to worke in him, and then by much prayer and intercession she licensed him to goe home: By the way the poyson invaded the intrailes and bowels of the whole body of the Physitian, in such sort that with great paine he came to his owne house, where he had scarce time to speake to his wife, and to will her to receive the promised salitary of the death of two persons, but he yeelded up the ghost: And the other young man lived not long after, but likewise dyed, amongst the feined and deceitfull teares of his cursed wife.