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 Macho Sluts (1988)

  A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia is probing interstate transportation of obscene materials, and has subpoenaed the corporate records of two New York porn distributors, one distributor in Los Angeles, and some local corporations. These businesses handle S/M material along with other types of porn. The subpoenas were handed out after the FBI raided Washington, D.C. area video rental stores and confiscated tapes and “marital aids.” This stepped up activity against sadomasochists and S/M imagery by the feds and local vice squads is a direct response to the Meese Commission’s report on pornography, which claims (in language provided by the feminist anti-porn movement) that “violent pornography” (i.e., S/M material) is itself violence against women and fosters it in the rest of society. After the report was issued, Attorney General Edwin Meese committed the Justice Department to an intensified campaign against pornography, and called for federal prosecutors to go after “child pornography, sadomasochistic scenes, rape scenes, depiction of bestiality or excretory functions and violent and degrading images of explicit sexual conduct, and other similar hardcore material.” He specifically exempted “soft-core pornography” from this vendetta. (He also vowed, “There will be no censorship while I am attorney general.”) Well, this is one woman who doesn’t feel that these law enforcement officials are making my life safer. It may seem odd for me to include information about specific cases in a book introduction since it will quickly become dated. But this anti-S/M moral panic is not being covered in a systematic, comprehensive way in the gay press or other progressive publications. Gayle Rubin has given a series of lectures about these disturbing events at several S/M and leather conferences, but it appears that nobody outside of the sexual minority that is under attack knows what is going on—or cares. The same anti-censorship forces that mustered to protest the dangerous biases of the Meese Commission have not called any press conferences, written any articles, or issued any public statements to denounce this witch-hunt. It would please me to be wrong about this, but I get the impression that most anti-censorship feminists are just relieved that it’s “only” S/M material, which they never approved of anyway, which is being threatened. When they attacked the Meese Commission or criticized obscenity legislation authored by anti-porn activists, these women were repeatedly characterized by their opponents as sadomasochists, supporters of child abuse, advocates of rape, pimps, fascists, etc. They resented being associated with what they think of as the sexual lunatic fringe. I don’t think many of them will have the guts to risk getting smeared again by trying to arouse some public indignation over gross violations of S/M people’s First Amendment rights and right to privacy. But somebody needs to say that this is censorship, that it is not okay, that we cannot afford to ignore it.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  into the hereafter, Leany might want to repent for certain sins some of the Toquerville brethren had accused him of committing. Leany replied angrily that “God shall bear me witness that I am clean of all of which they accuse me & they guilty of all that I accuse them & much more.” What Leany accused his fellow Saints of, the letter revealed, was “thieving whoredom murder and Suicide & like abominations.” He reminded Steele, moreover, that “you are far from ignorant of these deeds of blood from the day the picket fence was broke on my head to the day those three were murdered in our ward & the murderer killed to stop the shedding of more blood.” Five paragraphs later, Leany made another allusion to “the killing the three in one room of our own ward.” Baffled and intrigued by these provocative references to murder, Wesley Larsen deduced from historical records that the killings alluded to by Leany had occurred in 1869. Then he determined that only three men had been murdered that year in southern Utah: William Dunn and the Howland brothers. But why would the good Saints of Toquerville want to take the lives of three wayward explorers? Toquerville was founded in 1858, a year after the Mountain Meadows massacre, and most of the first families to settle there were headed by men who had participated in the slaughter. Many of these same men were living in Toquerville in 1869 when Powell floated down the Grand Canyon. The year prior to Powell’s expedition, Ulysses S. Grant had been elected president, and his administration had made it a priority to capture the perpetrators of the massacre and bring them to justice. Even before this new dragnet, moreover, a $5,000 bounty had been placed on the heads of Isaac Haight, John Higbee, and John D. Lee. By the time Dunn and the Howlands decided to abandon Powell’s expedition and walk to the Mormon settlements, many of Toquerville’s leading citizens were living in constant fear of arrest. The climate of paranoia that pervaded the region was at a particularly high pitch in the summer of 1869 thanks to Brigham Young, who had made a trip through southern Utah that season stoking hatred for the Gentiles. Cautioning that federal troops were about to launch a new invasion of Deseret, Brigham ordered sentries to stand watch at strategic points along the territory’s southern border. This was the volatile atmosphere that awaited Dunn and the Howlands as

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  Escape she must from the unbearable tension! And the patient can do so only by exaggerating her weakness and her disarray, by distracting his attention from the task in hand and turning it upon herself (how unhappy I am!). Her own demeanour will transform Janet from her judge into her comforter by exteriorising and 'playing up' the very impossibility she finds in speaking, by commuting the precise need to give such and such information into a heavy, undifferentiated pressure of the whole world upon her. It is then that the sobbing and the nervous crisis ensue. Similarly it is easy to understand the fit of anger that seizes me when I can think of nothing more to reply to a mocker. Here anger does not play quite the same part as in the example given by Dembo. My need is to switch the discussion on to another plane. I have not been witty enough, so I become formidable and intimidating. I want to arouse fear. At the same time I make use of inferior alternatives (ersatze) to vanquish my adversary — insults, threats which have to 'do instead of' the shaft of wit I failed to think of; for the abrupt change of attitude that I impose upon myself makes me less exacting about the choice of means. And yet, at the point we have come to, we still feel unsatisfied. The emotional behaviour theory is perfect, but in its purity and perfection we can see its insufficiency. In all the examples we have quoted, the functional part played by emotion is indubitable. But as it stands, it is also incomprehensible. I mean that, for Dembo and the Gestalt psychologists, the passage from the state of seeking to the state of anger is explained as the break-up of one form and the reconstitution of another. And I can understand, if need be, the breakup of the form 'problem without solution'; but how can I admit the appearance of the other form? We must suppose that it presents itself clearly as the substitute for the previous form. It exists only in relation to this. We have, then, a single process — a transformation of form. But I cannot comprehend this transformation without first positing consciousness. Consciousness alone, by its synthetic activity, can break up and reconstitute forms without ceasing. It alone can account for the finality of emotion. Moreover, we have seen that the whole of the description of anger given by Guillaume according to Dembo shows that its aim is to transform the aspect of the world. It serves to 'weaken the barriers between the real and the unreal', to 'destroy the differentiated structure that the problem has imposed upon the world'.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He was a more excited lover that night, with his strange, small boy's frail nakedness. Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness; she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries. When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice: "You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to run the show!" This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of her life. Because that passive sort of giving himself was so obviously his only real mode of intercourse. "What do you mean?" she said. "You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I've gone off ... and I have to hang on with my teeth till you bring yourself off by your own exertions." She was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality, at the moment when she was glowing with a sort of pleasure beyond words, and a sort of love for him. Because after all, like so many modern men, he was finished almost before he had begun. And that forced the woman to be active. "But you want me to go on, to get my own satisfaction?" she said. He laughed grimly: "I want it!" he said. "That's good! I want to hang on with my teeth clenched, while you go for me!" "But don't you?" she insisted. He avoided the question. "All the darned women are like that," he said. "Either they don't go off at all, as if they were dead in there ... or else they wait till a chap's really done, and then they start in to bring themselves off, and a chap's got to hang on. I never had a woman yet who went off just at the same moment as I did." Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine information. She was only stunned by his feeling against her ... his incomprehensible brutality. She felt so innocent. "But you want me to have my satisfaction too, don't you?" she repeated. "Oh, all right! I'm quite willing. But I'm darned if hanging on waiting for a woman to go off is much of a game for a man...."

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  As he too was connected with Dada Abdulla & Co, he sent me word through Sheth Abdulla to go and see him. He talked with me quite frankly, and inquired about my antecedents, which I gave. Then he said: ‘I have nothing to say against you. I was only afraid lest you should be some Colonial-born adventurer. And the fact that your application was unaccompanied by the original certificate supported my suspicion. There have been men who have made use of diplomas which did not belong to them. The certificates of character from European traders you have submitted have no value for me. What do they know about you? What can be the extent of their acquaintance with you? ‘But,’ said I, ‘everyone here is a stranger to me. Even Sheth Abdulla first came to know me here.’ ‘But then you say he belongs to the same place as you? It your father was Prime Minister there, Sheth Abdulla is bound to know your family. if you were to produce his affidavit, I should have absolutely no objection. I would then gladly communicate to the Law Society my inability to oppose your application.’ This talk enraged me, but I restrained my feelings. ‘If I had attached Dada Abdulla’s certificate.’ said I to myself, ‘it would have been rejected, and they would have asked for Europeans’ certificates. And what has my admission as advocate to do with my birth and my antecedents? How could my birth, whether humble or objectionable, be used against me?’ But I contained myself and quietly replied: continue from here ‘Though I do not admit that the Law Society has any authority to require all these details, I am quite prepared to present the affidavit you desire.’ Sheth Abdulla’s affidavit was prepared and duly submitted to the counsel for the Law Society. He said he was satisfied. But not so the Law Society. it opposed

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  until this day been able to decide whether I was right or wrong in using the ruler. Probably it was improper, for it was prompted by anger and a desire to punish. Had it been an expression only of my distress, I should have considered it justified. But the motive in this case was mixed. This incident set me thinking and taught me a better method of correcting students. I do not know whether that method would have availed on the occasion in question. The youngster soon forgot the incident, and I do not think he ever showed great improvement,. But the incident made me understand better the duty of a teacher towards his pupils. Cases of misconduct on the part of the boys often occurred after this, but I never resorted to corporal punishment. Thus in my endeavour to impart spiritual training to the boys and girls under me, I came to understand better and better the power of the spirit. 114. TARES AMONG THE WHEAT It was at Tolstoy Farm that Mr. Kallenbach drew my attention to a problem that had never before struck me. As I have already said, some of the boys at the Farm were bad and unruly. There were loafers, too, amongst them. With these my three boys came in daily contact, as also did other children of the same type as my own sons. This troubled Mr. Kallenbach, but his attention was centred on the impropriety of keeping my# boys with these unruly youngsters. One day he spoke out: ‘Your way of mixing your own boys with the bad ones does not appeal to me. It can have only one result. They will become demoralized through this bad company.’ I do not remember whether the question puzzled me at the moment, but I recollect what I said to him: ‘How can I distinguish between my boys and the loafers? I am equally responsible for both. The youngsters have come because I invited them. If I were to dismiss them with some money, they would immediately run off to Johannesburg and fall back into their old ways. To tell you the truth, it is quite likely that they and their guardians believe that, by having come here, they have laid me under an obligation. That they have to put up with a good deal of inconvenience here, you and I know very well. But my duty is clear. I must have them here, and therefore my boys also must needs live with them. And surely you do not want me to teach my boys to feel from today that they are superior to other boys. To put that sense of superiority into their heads would be to lead them astray. This association with other boys will be a good discipline for them. They will, of their own accord, learn to discriminate between good and evil. Why should we not believe that, if there is really anything good in them, it is

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I tell thee that Madam Ginevra thy wife hath under her left pap a pretty big mole, about which are maybe half a dozen little hairs as red as gold.' When Bernabo heard this, it was as if he had gotten a knife-thrust in the heart, such anguish did he feel, and though he had said not a word, his countenance, being all changed, gave very manifest token that what Ambrogiuolo said was true. Then, after awhile, 'Gentlemen,' quoth he, 'that which Ambrogiuolo saith is true; wherefore, he having won, let him come whenassoever it pleaseth him and he shall be paid.' Accordingly, on the ensuing day Ambrogiuolo was paid in full and Bernabo, departing Paris, betook himself to Genoa with fell intent against the lady. When he drew near the city, he would not enter therein, but lighted down a good score miles away at a country house of his and despatched one of his servants, in whom he much trusted, to Genoa with two horses and letters under his hand, advising his wife that he had returned and bidding her come to him; and he privily charged the man, whenas he should be with the lady in such place as should seem best to him, to put her to death without pity and return to him. The servant accordingly repaired to Genoa and delivering the letters and doing his errand, was received with great rejoicing by the lady, who on the morrow took horse with him and set out for their country house. As they fared on together, discoursing of one thing and another, they came to a very deep and lonely valley, beset with high rocks and trees, which seeming to the servant a place wherein he might, with assurance for himself, do his lord's commandment, he pulled out his knife and taking the lady by the arm, said, 'Madam, commend your soul to God, for needs must you die, without faring farther.' The lady, seeing the knife and hearing these words, was all dismayed and said, 'Mercy, for God's sake! Ere thou slay me, tell me wherein I have offended thee, that thou wouldst put me to death.' 'Madam,' answered the man, 'me you have nowise offended; but wherein you have offended your husband I know not, save that he hath commanded me slay you by the way, without having any pity upon you, threatening me, an I did it not, to have me hanged by the neck. You know well how much I am beholden to him and how I may not gainsay him in aught that he may impose upon me; God knoweth it irketh me for you, but I can no otherwise.' Whereupon quoth the lady, weeping, 'Alack, for God's sake, consent not to become the murderer of one who hath never wronged thee, to serve another! God who knoweth all knoweth that I never did aught for which I should receive such a recompense from my husband.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  He spent all his time in class drawing out, encouraging, and praising the brighter and better-looking boys. I couldn’t even get him to argue with me. He would call on me when my nuisance factor reached a certain level, let me talk as long as I wanted to, stare out the window, then take up where he had left off as soon as I shut up. Coincidentally, Students for Solidarity was running short of targets. Everybody had pulled in and tightened up and battened down so carefully that we were in danger of becoming obsolete. Who needs cops in a law-abiding society? Everyone insisted we had to put this rogue professor up against the wall. We had been assigned reading from the annotated version of Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.” When I walked into the classroom, I noticed that Roger, the only boy who dared sit in the front row, was not there. When the professor stood to begin his lecture, he seemed to have a cold. “I invite,” he said, “your predictable comments on this so-called piece of history.” I was astonished, and gleefully stood to object. “It would seem to me that you are calling fundamental truths into question,” I said. He actually, for a change, responded to me. He said, “Young lady, you do not know what you are talking about.” The insult was mind-ripping. My single cell of hatred fissioned, and I was hosting a colony of feverishly reproducing and breeding and multiplying rage. He then lambasted what he called the matriarchal “theory.” According to him, there was no evidence to support the belief that women had controlled all pre-industrial cultures. Nor was there any reason to believe that these societies, regardless of who ran them, were any more ecologically balanced, less violent, or more evolved than any other “community of homo sapiens.” He was repeatedly interrupted by a chorus of hisses from all the students. Some of the more timid boys were sneaking out the back door. “Cite your sources!” I shouted at him. He had to answer me. I was the only one saying something instead of drumming my feet on the floor and making a noise like a rabid goose. “If I were allowed to teach any anthropology in this benighted institution, I would!” he shouted back. Was this man having a nervous breakdown? He could not be that stupid. “The very name of that pseudoscientific cult discredits it,” I yelled. “How dare you call yourself a historian?” Another member of StudSolid, this girl who had ignored my tactful suggestion that one observer would attract less attention than two, was drowning us both out by shouting, “Boycott! Walk out! Boycott! Walk out!” And people were doing what she said. The small auditorium was emptying out. I was somehow going in the other direction, down to the front.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Come on, EZ, you been starin’ at her basket all night long, now it’s right in your face and you damn well better look good and hard. ” Michael was not being nice. She ran her tongue around her mouth, pushed down on her cock with two fingers, then wrapped her hand around it and jacked it off. “See, you don’t want to suck it because you figure that makes you pussy, but welcome to the twentieth century, EZ, where it takes a real man to suck cock. Blow it.” Five weapons in female hands circled her head, and the sixth went down her throat. “I am glad to see you’re not pretendin’ you don’t know how this is done,” Kay said calmly. “D’you think none of our tricks ever told me what went on every time I stepped out to take a leak or get a beer? You got quite a reputation, girl, for sneakin’ around doin’ something most people think is American as apple pie. Don’t think you’re gonna hide your light under a bushel no more, cocksucker. We just found something socially useful for that nasty mouth of yours to do.” With her hands behind her back, EZ had very little control over the depth of Michael’s penetration. She tried holding her neck stiff, but the prick of steel against her scalp took the starch right out of her. She gave up and let Michael make full use of her. When they hauled her to her feet, her face was covered with tears and less attractive substances, and Kay took the red bandana off her jacket to mop her off. EZ permitted this, but when Kay reached into her jeans again, she bolted. Michael and Joy caught her by the belt-loops and dragged her back, and Kay slapped her backhanded, a serious penalty when she was wearing all of her rings. EZ had to let that hand worm its way into her crotch and bring up a handful of female lubrication, which Kay smeared across her face. “I just gotta make sure you get brought down a notch or two and stay there,” Kay said, “about at the height of my spurs. See, I think you not only believe that the faggots you suck off will forget all about it, I think you also believe that I forgot how we ever got together in the first place. Tyre, go ask Alex if there’s any room on the horse.” “No!” EZ shouted. “Not ever there. Not by her. I won’t! You can’t make me!” “Nonsense, dear,” Anne-Marie said, and they dragged her bodily to where Alex stood, beckoning them to join her, and threw her onto the horse by Roxanne. “This is not consensual!”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I shall if I possibly can. I should be fearfully proud if I had a child by him." It was no use talking to her. Hilda pondered. "And doesn't Clifford suspect?" she said. "Oh, no! Why should he?" "I've no doubt you've given him plenty of occasion for suspicion," said Hilda. "Not at all." "And tonight's business seems quite gratuitous folly. Where does the man live?" "In the cottage at the other end of the wood." "Is he a bachelor?" "No! His wife left him." "How old?" "I don't know. Older than me." Hilda became more angry at every reply, angry as her mother used to be, in a kind of paroxysm. But still she hid it. "I would give up tonight's escapade if I were you," she advised calmly. "I can't! I _must_ stay with him tonight, or I can't go to Venice at all. I just can't." Hilda heard her father over again, and she gave way, out of mere diplomacy. And she consented to drive to Mansfield, both of them, to dinner, to bring Connie back to the lane-end after dark, and to fetch her from the lane-end the next morning, herself sleeping in Mansfield, only half an hour away, good going. But she was furious. She stored it up against her sister, this baulk in her plans. Connie flung an emerald-green shawl over her window sill. On the strength of her anger, Hilda warmed towards Clifford. After all, he had a mind. And if he had no sex, functionally, all the better: so much the less to quarrel about! Hilda wanted no more of that sex business, where men became nasty, selfish little horrors. Connie really had less to put up with than many women, if she did but know it. And Clifford decided that Hilda, after all, was a decidedly intelligent woman, and would make a man a first-rate helpmeet, if he were going in for politics for example. Yes, she had none of Connie's silliness, Connie was more a child: you had to make excuses for her, because she was not altogether dependable. There was an early cup of tea in the hall, where doors were open to let in the sun. Everybody seemed to be panting a little. "Good-bye, Connie girl! Come back to me safely." "Good-bye, Clifford! Yes, I shan't be long." Connie was almost tender. "Good-bye, Hilda! You will keep an eye on her, won't you?" "I'll even keep two!" said Hilda. "She shan't go very far astray." "It's a promise!" "Good-bye, Mrs. Bolton! I know you'll look after Sir Clifford nobly." "I'll do what I can, your Ladyship." "And write to me if there is any news, and tell me about Sir Clifford, how he is." "Very good, your Ladyship, I will. And have a good time, and come back and cheer us up."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as co-respondent: then we must get Clifford to divorce Connie: and you must go on with your divorce, and you must both keep apart till you are free." "Sounds like a lunatic asylum." "Possibly! And the world would look on you as lunatics: or worse." "What is worse?" "Criminals, I suppose." "Hope I can plunge in the dagger a few more times yet," he said grinning. Then he was silent, and angry. "Well!" he said at last. "I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best. But you're right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can." He looked in humiliation, anger, weariness and misery at Connie. "Ma lass!" he said. "The world's goin' to put salt on thy tail." "Not if we don't let it," she said. She minded this conniving against the world less than he did. Duncan, when approached, also insisted on seeing the delinquent gamekeeper, so there was a dinner, this time in his flat: the four of them. Duncan was a rather short, broad, dark-skinned, taciturn Hamlet of a fellow with straight black hair and a weird Celtic conceit of himself. His art was all tubes and valves and spirals and strange colours, ultra modern, yet with a certain power, even a certain purity of form and tone: only Mellors thought it cruel and repellent. He did not venture to say so, for Duncan was almost insane on the point of his art; it was a personal cult, a personal religion with him. They were looking at the pictures in the studio, and Duncan kept his smallish brown eyes on the other man. He wanted to hear what the gamekeeper would say. He knew already Connie's and Hilda's opinions. "It is like a pure bit of murder," said Mellors at last; a speech Duncan by no means expected from a gamekeeper. "And who is murdered?" asked Hilda, rather coldly and sneeringly. "Me! It murders all the bowels of compassion in a man." A wave of pure hate came out of the artist. He heard the note of dislike in the other man's voice, and the note of contempt. And he himself loathed the mention of bowels of compassion. Sickly sentiment! Mellors stood rather tall and thin, worn-looking, gazing with flickering detachment that was something like the dancing of a moth on the wing, at the pictures. "Perhaps stupidity is murdered; sentimental stupidity," sneered the artist. "Do you think so? I think all these tubes and corrugated vibrations are stupid enough for anything, and pretty sentimental. They show a lot of self-pity and an awful lot of nervous self-opinion, seems to me." In another wave of hate, the artist's face looked yellow. But with a sort of silent hauteur he turned the pictures to the wall. "I think we may go to the dining-room," he said. And they trailed off, dismally. After coffee, Duncan said:

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "How much do the servants know?" asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room. "Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever." "Mrs. Bolton knows." He changed colour. "Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants," he said. "Oh, I don't mind." There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room. Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and looked down at her hands. "I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?" he said at last. "I can't help it," she murmured. "But if you can't, who can?" "I suppose nobody." He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this derangement of his personality! "And for _what_ do you want to go back on everything?" he insisted. "Love!" she said. It is best to be hackneyed. "Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything else in life?" "One changes," she said. "Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to convince me of the importance of the change. I merely don't believe in your love of Duncan Forbes." "But why _should_ you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings." "And why should I divorce you?" "Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want me." "Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours." After a time of silence she said: "I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child." He too was silent for a time. "And is it for the child's sake you must go?" he asked at length. She nodded. "And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?" "Surely keener than you would be," she said.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Better than with its eyes!" he said. "Will you drink?" "Will you?" She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little herself. "So icy!" she said gasping. "Good, isn't it! Did you wish?" "Did you?" "Yes, I wished. But I won't tell." She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the blue. "Clouds!" she said. "White lambs only," he replied. A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out onto the soft yellow earth. "Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him," said Clifford. "Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit," said she. She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him. "New-mown hay!" he said. "Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!" She was looking at the white clouds. "I wonder if it will rain," she said. "Rain! Why! Do you want it to?" They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light. "Now old girl!" said Clifford, putting the chair to it. It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair plugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped. "We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come," said Connie. "He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps." "We'll let her breathe," said Clifford. "Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?" Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises. "Let me push!" said Connie, coming up behind. "No! Don't push!" he said angrily. "What's the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!" There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than before. "You _must_ let me push," she said. "Or sound the horn for the keeper." "Wait!" She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good. "Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push," she said. "Hell! Be quiet a moment!" She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little motor. "You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford," she remonstrated; "besides wasting your nervous energy."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  And I need to have her tied up so she can’t get away. You want her to come, don’t you? Well, I suspect that’ll make her come real good.” “Oh? Yeah, you’re probably right. She’s just a slut, but she’s a masochistic slut. Fix her the way you want her.” She was too tired to fight. Mike rolled her onto her stomach and slapped leather restraints on each wrist, then manacled her hands to the iron rails at the head of the bed. He also fastened restraints around each ankle, had her draw her legs up until she was kneeling, then fastened them at the sides of the bed. Then he reached under her and clamped her nipples into gleaming silver jaws. If she didn’t keep her ass in the air and her shoulders arched, she would be lying on the clamps. He knelt behind her and ran his hands over her body once, twice. Then he used his nails. She twisted, but could not get away from him or close her legs. Every time she moved, she brought her slippery, vulnerable folds into contact with his jutting cock. He leaned over her and played with her tits, sending jolts of pain through her nipples, made her tell him how much it hurt and how wet it made her cunt. He slapped her ass with the flat of his hand until it began to glow and burn again. His hand fell with more and more weight. Bottoms, she thought, are so much meaner than tops. They have no sense of pacing. She screamed as much because he was making her angry as because it hurt a lot, but she doubted that he cared as long as he knew he was hurting her. Unlike Joe, he went into her in one vicious thrust, and she screamed. Tears sprang into her eyes. His long, skinny cock was stretching her in a very different way. It was much easier for her cunt to open wider than it was for it to become deeper. He was not waiting for her to open up, and she would be damned if she would ask him. She did not want to come with him. Her vagina was a little sore, but his attitude bothered her more.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I don't know. She sort of kept her will ready against me, always, always: her ghastly female will: her freedom! A woman's ghastly freedom that ends in the most beastly bullying! Oh, she always kept her freedom against me, like vitriol in my face." "But she's not free of you even now. Does she still love you?" "No, no! If she's not free of me, it's because she's got that mad rage, she must try to bully me." "But she must have loved you." "No! Well in specks, she did. She was drawn to me. And I think even that she hated. She loved me in moments. But she always took it back, and started bullying. Her deepest desire was to bully me, and there was no altering her. Her _will_ was wrong, from the first." "But perhaps she felt you didn't really love her, and she wanted to make you." "My God, it was bloody making." "But you didn't really love her, did you? You did her that wrong." "How could I? I began to. I began to love her. But somehow, she always ripped me up. No, don't let's talk of it. It was a doom, that was. And she was a doomed woman. This last time, I'd have shot her like I shoot a stoat, if I'd but been allowed: a raving, doomed thing in the shape of a woman! If only I could have shot her, and ended the whole misery! It ought to be allowed. When a woman gets absolutely possessed by her own will, her own will set against everything, then it's fearful, and she should be shot at last." "And shouldn't men be shot at last, if they get possessed by their own will?" "Ay!--the same! But I must get free of her, or she'll be at me again. I wanted to tell you. I must get a divorce if I possibly can. So we must be careful. We mustn't really be seen together, you and I. I never, _never_ could stand it if she came down on me and you." Connie pondered this. "Then we can't be together?" she said. "Not for six months or so. But I think my divorce will go through in September, then till March." "But the baby will probably be born at the end of February," she said. He was silent. "I could wish the Cliffords and Berthas all dead," he said. "It's not being very tender to them," she said. "Tender to them? Yea, even then the tenderest thing you could do for them, perhaps, would be to give them death. They can't live! They only frustrate life. Their souls are awful inside them. Death ought to be sweet to them. And I ought to be allowed to shoot them." "But you wouldn't do it," she said. "I would though! and with less qualms than I shoot a weasel. It anyhow has a prettiness and a loneliness. But they are legion. Oh, I'd shoot them."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  EZ fumed. For Anne-Marie, this was the last straw. The ritualistic etiquette of S/M; the titles, forms of salutation, provocation, and response— each varying with one’s level of experience, role, and specialty—were her first love. “That is highly irrelevant, you pipsqueak, you popinjay, you buffoon,” she cried. “Did you ask any of us for our permission before proceeding to insult and harry us? Those unfortunate few who behave as badly as you have given their consent to be taken in hand and punished severely. You are worse than the most loutish male submissive I ever had to put up with before I met Tyre and came to work at the Calyx. For shame, for shame.” Instead of using wrist and ankle cuffs, Joy threw a couple of half hitches around EZ’s waist and the horse, which made it impossible for her to rear up off of it. By now, Anne-Marie had fetched one of her canes and was rolling up her sleeves. Alex heard Roxanne say, “Oh, shit, she’s in real trouble now.” Kay yanked EZ’s Levis down and slammed her fists once into the exposed buttocks before stepping away, shaking her head in disgust, and gesturing that Anne-Marie could do what she would. The cane was a yellow blur. Alex had stopped plying her cat and stood watching in open-mouthed astonishment. Roxanne was screaming in sympathy. There was a reason why she treated Anne-Marie with impeccable courtesy. The British are practically the inventors of imperialism, and it doesn’t do to forget that beneath the grand style of Victoria’s Empire there was brute force and a great appetite for wielding it. EZ screamed for a long time before she made any coherent sound, which was Kay’s name. “Fuck ya,” Kay said stubbornly. “Hope she cuts you in half, you dumbshit, badboy bitch, you.” Apparently, EZ felt this was not an impossibility, because her screams trebled in volume and range. But her ordeal continued until the cane broke. Anne-Marie felt it split and lowered her arm at once. The edges would be sharp as razors. “Let that be a lesson to you,” she advised the distraught victim, and stalked to the bar to throw the ruined and bloody implement away. “Fuck her,” Kay told Michael, uncapping one of the cans of Crisco she had stashed by the horse when the evening was still young. “Why don’t you just shove that big fat cock of yours up her ass, the same place I got my fist up the night I made the mistake of drag gin’ this snot-nosed case of arrested development home to cure a hangover.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The whore in turn gives nothing away, laughs at him while she keeps her secrets and pockets his cash. In this country, machismo is a survival mechanism by which minority men try to preserve their self-esteem and their culture. In the best sense of the word, it describes a person who is outnumbered, misunderstood, and outlawed who nevertheless strives to preserve a sense of pride and honor. Someone who has machismo insists on his right to dignity, and defends himself and what belongs to him even if it is a hopeless cause, even if he will be punished for making the attempt. Women are not supposed to have machismo, to be macho, but then, we’re not supposed to be sluts, either. And without machismo, a slut is just a commodity. In the midst of theoretical discussions, it’s important to remember that the state has power to take action against obscenity, and does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value; appeals to prurient interests; goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters; and depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, explicit sexual conduct of a specifically defined nature—that book is obscene, and it is contraband. Reading this won’t make you an outlaw (it’s not that easy, sweetheart), but if you enjoy it, you might think about why the law is trying to get in between you and your prurient interests. I’m afraid that the opprobrium of right-wing, pro-censorship feminists is not the worst thing that will confront this book. We are in the middle of a crackdown on porn, especially S/M porn. For my birthday this year, I took a trip to Times Square to watch some loops in the peep show booths at my favorite porn store. This store used to feature a great diversity of material, and was always friendly to women. But all their S/M stuff was gone from the peep shows and the magazine racks. They had moved all their kinky magazines and videos to just one store, to protect the rest of them if that one got busted. If I wanted to look at an S/M movie now, I would have to buy the whole tape. I checked out several other adult bookstores on Times Square. Most of them were not selling any S/M material. I was very upset, but not because this meant I would be cut off from a primary source of arousal. The typical commercial S/M flick or magazine does not turn me on. Most of it is made by people who think S/M is weird and sick, and just want to make some easy money off the leather freaks.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I feel my temper awaken, stretch, and glare at her. I knew I was going to have a bad time when Ms Homespun-and-Wholesome, cheerful as always in the face of other people’s problems, insisted I apply for the janitorial job at a women-only clinic. It had taken me all morning to find someone who knew about the job opening, and it took her another hour to find the application forms and figure out who was supposed to be doing the interviews. They had refused to give me an appointment, promising me that the woman in question would see me as soon as she had a minute (and implying that an unemployed parasite like myself didn’t have anything more important to do than wait on my betters anyway), so I’d waited three hours for this cosy little session of a consciousness-raising. This comes on top of a week in which I’ve been interrogated, harassed, interviewed, shunted from one desk jockey to another, and stood in a dozen rooms in front of people who despised the way I looked, talked, thought, and got my eggs off. I do not like being told that I am not good enough to empty the garbage, make coffee, and straighten up the literature table. I’m not some moron. After my six years of basic education, I didn’t go to a trade school, I made it into college-prep. The fact that I got expelled in disgrace does not make me forget that I could have been somebody, maybe even a doctor. I’m a street person, but I’m not a bag lady or a wino. I am royalty out there, even if this party hack is too dumb to recognize the flora and fauna of the urban wilderness. The women who want to polish my boots and eat my pussy pay highly for the privilege (well, they pay me in cash, anyway). I have no desire whatsoever to take their dirty examination drapes to the laundry, wash off the day’s used speculums, dust the desks, and mop their floors. I have lied, bowed, scraped, apologized, and held my tongue under more abuse than I can stand. Now this upright, tight-assed committee commando is going to stamp my application “under consideration” and sit on it and delay my claim at rehab until I get evicted and starve to death. I just can’t take it any more. As soon as I make this decision, self-possession returns. I feel cold and deadly and righteous. I even run my finger around my necklace and haul out my little gold cross, dangle it so she will have to notice, and drop it into my T-shirt. So many of the Wiccan devout really get off on thinking you’re a secret Christian.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile Arriguccio betook himself in all haste to the house of his wife's brothers and there knocked so long and so loudly that he was heard and it was opened to him. The lady's three brothers and her mother, hearing that it was Arriguccio, rose all and letting kindle lights, came to him and asked what he went seeking at that hour and alone. Whereupon, beginning from the twine he had found tied to wife's toe, he recounted to them all that he had discovered and done, and to give them entire proof of the truth of his story, he put into their hands the hair he thought to have cut from his wife's head, ending by requiring them to come for her and do with her that which they should judge pertinent to their honour, for that he meant to keep her no longer in his house. The lady's brothers, hearing this and holding it for certain, were sore incensed against her and letting kindle torches, set out to accompany Arriguccio to his house, meaning to do her a mischief; which their mother seeing, she followed after them, weeping and entreating now the one, now the other not to be in such haste to believe these things of their sister, without seeing or knowing more of the matter, for that her husband might have been angered with her for some other cause and have maltreated her and might now allege this in his own excuse, adding that she marvelled exceedingly how this [whereof he accused her] could have happened, for that she knew her daughter well, as having reared her from a little child, with many other words to the like purpose. When they came to Arriguccio's house, they entered and proceeded to mount the stair, whereupon Madam Sismonda, hearing them come, said, 'Who is there?' To which one of her brothers answered, 'Thou shalt soon know who it is, vile woman that thou art!' 'God aid us!' cried she. 'What meaneth this?' Then, rising to her feet, 'Brothers mine,' quoth she, 'you are welcome; but what go you all three seeking at this hour?' The brothers,--seeing her seated sewing, with no sign of beating on her face, whereas Arriguccio avouched that he had beaten her to a mummy,--began to marvel and curbing the violence of their anger, demanded of her how that had been whereof Arriguccio accused her, threatening her sore, and she told them not all. Quoth she, 'I know not what you would have me say nor of what Arriguccio can have complained to you of me.' Arriguccio, seeing her thus, eyed her as if he had lost his wits, remembering that he had dealt her belike a thousand buffets on the face and scratched her and done her all the ill in the world, and now he beheld her as if nothing of all this had been.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Today, fundamentalist Christians go after MTV, and some women’s bookstores try to incise pornography from the lesbian body of literature. There is no easier, faster way to transmit information or a system of values than by presenting it in a format that makes people laugh, dance, get turned on, or just feel good. What is it that they don’t want you to hear? I do not believe that sex has an inherent power to transform the world. I do not believe that pleasure is always an anarchic force for good. I do not believe that we can fuck our way to freedom. But this is not what the discourse of sexual repression tells us. In that discourse unleashed sex has enormous disruptive potential. Minority forms of sex have to be repressed or the social contract will hang in tatters. People will look to their friends and lovers for warmth, affection, love, and support instead of to their biological families. Women and children will have no protection from male violence. Work for the sake of work will cease to be valued. The nine-to-five, five-days-a-week wage labor that is the foundation of commerce will be disrupted by bored and frustrated workers who use any excuse to come in late, get high as often as possible to alleviate their tedium, rip off their employers, and spend their evenings trying to pick somebody up in a bar or going to political meetings organized by antisocial elements. Nobody will go to church. Children will be thoughtlessly conceived and carelessly reared, and venereal diseases will flourish. This is, of course, in wild opposition to our present system. I suspect that what is really being protected by censorship, antiabortion, and homophobic campaigns is the self-image of the so-called majority. Consider how narrow the range of acceptable sexual behavior is. Nobody comes out looking normal once you know the whole truth about how they fuck and what they think about when they jerk off. The citizens are terrified of losing their heterosexual privilege, which will happen if the assumption that there is a sexual consensus, a few simple sexual things that are (or should be) enough for any normal person, is challenged. Sex alone can’t liberate us, but in the meantime, it comforts us. Women want and need the freedom to be outrageous, out-of-doors, out-of-bounds, out after dark, without being silenced or punished by stigma, battery, forced reproduction, or murder. We have a right to pleasure ourselves, and access to pornography is a part of that. There’s another reason why some of the new lesbian porn doesn’t get me wet.