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 Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  had on sheer bluff alone and now they were telling me I could go no farther. “You’ll have to go to the back of the convention hall, son. Let’s go,” said the guard who was holding my chair. In a move of desperation I swung around facing all three of them, shouting as loud as I could so Walter Cronkite and the CBS camera crew that was just above me could hear me and maybe even focus their cameras in for the six o’clock news. “I’m a Vietnam veteran and I fought in the war! Did you fight in the war?” One of the guards looked away. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said. “I bet none of you fought in the war and you guys are trying to throw me out of the convention. I’ve got just as much right to be up front here as any of these delegates. I fought for that right and I was born on the Fourth of July.” I was really shouting now and another officer came over. I think he might have been in charge of the hall. He told me I could stay where I was if I was quiet and didn’t move up any farther. I agreed with the compromise. I locked my brakes and looked for other veterans in the tremendous crowd. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had made it in. People had begun to sit down all around me. They all had Four More Years buttons and I was surprised to see how many of them were young. I began speaking to them, telling them about the Last Patrol and why veterans from all over the United States had taken the time and effort to travel thousands of miles to the Republican National Convention. “I’m a disabled veteran!” I shouted. “I served two tours of duty in Vietnam and while on my second tour of duty up in the DMZ I was wounded and paralyzed from the chest down.” I told them I would be that way for the rest of my life. Then I began to talk about the hospitals and how they treated the returning veterans like animals, how I, many nights in the Bronx, had lain in my own shit for hours waiting for an aide. “And they never come,” I said. “They never come because that man that’s going to accept the nomination tonight has been lying to all of us and spending the money on war that should be spent on healing and helping the wounded. That’s the biggest lie and hypocrisy of all—that we had to go over there and fight and get crippled and come home to a government and leaders who could care less about the same boys they sent over.” I kept shouting and speaking, looking for some kind of reaction from the crowd. No one seemed to want to even look at me. “Is it too real for you to look at? Is this wheelchair too much for you to take?

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

  Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan cloaked themselves in the symbols of the Confederate South to intimidate and victimize thousands of black people. Nothing unnerved rural black settlements more than rumors about nearby Klan activity. For a hundred years, any sign of black progress in the South could trigger a white reaction that would invariably invoke Confederate symbols and talk of resistance. Confederate Memorial Day was declared a state holiday in Alabama at the turn of the century, soon after whites rewrote the state constitution to ensure white supremacy. (The holiday is still celebrated today.) When black veterans returned to the South after World War II, Southern politicians formed a “Dixiecrat” bloc to preserve racial segregation and white domination out of fear that military service might encourage black veterans to question racial segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings. Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and state institutions shut down in his honor. At a pretrial hearing, I once argued against the exclusion of African Americans from the jury pool. In this particular rural Southern community, the population was about 27 percent black, but African Americans made up only 10 percent of the jury pool. After presenting the data and making my arguments about the unconstitutional exclusion of African Americans, the judge complained loudly. “I’m going to grant your motion, Mr. Stevenson, but I’ll be honest. I’m pretty fed up with people always talking about minority rights. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans…When is someone going to come to my courtroom and protect the rights of Confederate Americans?” The judge had definitely caught me off guard. I wanted to ask if being born in the South or living in Alabama made me a Confederate American, but I thought better of it. —

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Hence, I tried to stay close to her in her rage, to face down her anger—as Jack had done. I had to engage her, wrestle with her fury, refuse to let her push me away. Her anger took many shapes—she was forever setting tests and traps for me. One particularly treacherous trap provided an auspicious opportunity for the therapeutic act. After several months of severe agitation and discouragement, she arrived one day at my office inexplicably calm and content. “It’s wonderful to see you so tranquil,” I remarked. “What’s happened?” “I just made a landmark decision,” she said. “I’ve jettisoned all expectations for personal happiness or self-fulfillment. No more yearning for love, for sex, for companionship, for artistic creation. From now on I’m going to devote myself entirely to fulfilling my job description—being a mother and a surgeon.” All this she said with an air of great composure and well-being. During the previous few weeks I had become greatly concerned about the intensity and relentlessness of her despair and wondered how much more she could endure. So despite the odd abruptness of her change, I was so grateful that she had found some way, any way, to diminish her pain that I chose not to inquire further into its source. Instead I took it as a blessed event—not unlike the peace achieved by many Buddhists who, through meditative practice, alleviate suffering by systematically detaching themselves from all personal cravings. To be honest, I did not expect Irene’s transformation to endure, but I hoped that even a temporary respite from her relentless pain might initiate a more positive cycle in her life. If a state of calm permitted her to stop tormenting herself, to make adaptive decisions, to develop new friends, perhaps even to meet a suitable man, then I believed it made little difference how she initially achieved that state of mind: she could simply pull up the ladder and ascend to the next level. The next day, however, she phoned in a fury: “Do you realize what you’ve done? What kind of therapist are you? Your caring for me! All pretense! Pretense! The truth is, you’re willing to sit back and calmly watch me renounce everything vital in my life—all love, joy, excitement—everything! No, no, it’s more than just sitting back; you’re willing to be an accomplice to my self-murder!” Once again she threatened to leave therapy, but I finally persuaded her to return for the next hour.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  And I thought things were going to be better now. She called Marlene and asked if she could come back to work. It was shipping week and they needed her desperately. She dropped me at school, to start the eighth grade at Le Conte Junior High. As if nothing had ever happened. And I thought it was over. It was not over. She began to follow Barry, as he had followed her in the beginning. She went everywhere he might be, hunting him so that she could polish her hatred on the sight of him. “My hatred gives me strength,” she said. She took Marlene to lunch at his favorite restaurant, where they found him eating at the bar, and she smiled at him. He pretended he didn’t notice her, but he kept touching his face along the jaw. “Searching for acne that was no longer there,” she told me that night. “The force of my gaze threatened to call it back into being.” She seemed so happy, and I didn’t know which was worse, this or before, when she wanted to shave her head. We shopped at his market, driving miles out of our way to meet him over the cantaloupes. We browsed at his favorite music store. We went to book signings for books written by his friends. SHE CAME HOME one night after three. It was a school night but I’d stayed up watching a white hunter movie starring Stewart Granger on cable. Michael was passed out on the couch. The hot winds tested the windows like burglars looking for a way in. Finally I went home and fell asleep on my mother’s bed, dreaming about carrying supplies on my head through the jungle, the white hunter nowhere to be seen. She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes. “I found him. A party at Gracie Kelleher’s. We crossed paths by the diving board.” She lay down next to me, whispering in my ear. “He and a chubby redhead in a transparent blouse were having a little tête-à-tête. He got up and grabbed me by the arm.” She pushed up her sleeve and showed me the marks on her arm, angry, red. “‘Are you following me?’ he hissed. I could have cut his throat right there. ‘I don’t have to follow you,’ I replied. ‘I can read your mind. I know every move you make. I know your future, Barry, and it doesn’t look good.’ ‘I want you to leave,’ he said. I smiled. ‘I’m sure you do.’ I could see his red flush even in the dark. ‘It’s not going to work,’ he said. ‘I’m warning you, Ingrid, it’s not going to work.’” My mother laughed, her arms twined behind her head. “He doesn’t understand. It’s already working.” A SATURDAY AFTERNOON , hot and scented with fire, a parched sky.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  199 Life Together “in Christ” you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? (11:21–22) The issue here is that not everybody got to eat the same food. The wealthy had their own food and drink, and others had little or nothing. This practice was common in the Roman world when a wealthy patron hosted a meal that included people from lower social classes. The patron would serve finer food and wine to others from his social rank and less fine food and wine to those of lower rank. Meals, even when they crossed social boundaries, would nevertheless mirror those boundaries. Paul’s counsel near the end of the section suggests an addi- tional problem: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11:33). The implication is clear: some arrived early and began to eat and drink at once. Who would arrive early? Not those who had to work for a living, but those who had leisure—that is, the wealthy and powerful. And so eating together a shared meal framed by the breaking of the bread and the passing of the cup was not happening. Thus the way the Lord’s Supper was practiced at Corinth re- flected the social hierarchy and inequality of that world. This is what Paul protests against, and this is the context for his warning: Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. (11:27–29) In some Chris tian denominations, the words about partak- ing “in an unworthy manner” have been understood to mean in an unworthy state of repentance, and “without discerning the

• From Untrue (2018)

  Consider one such assertion, on no less an arbiter of mainstream scientific ideas than PsychologyToday.com, where an article blares, “It’s official: Men are hornier than women.” The piece purports to prove that women “aren’t quite so driven by strong urges and cravings as men are” because they supposedly masturbate and fantasize about sex less often (some data contradict this). The piece, as many such pieces do, refers to a study conducted at Florida State University between 1978 and 1982 that found women propositioned by handsome male strangers are less likely to say yes than are men propositioned by attractive female strangers. But as critics of this study have already pointed out, women are more likely to get murdered by strangers with whom they have sex than men are. If they aren’t killed, they are more likely to become pregnant, get an STI, not have an orgasm, and be called names and looked at askance by neighbors and even friends who find out they’ve had casual sex. Context is everything. If women were told, “Imagine you are propositioned by this guy, and there is no way he will kill you and there is no way he’ll be a jerk and it’s guaranteed that he’ll be skilled enough to give you an orgasm and you won’t get pregnant or get an infection or disease, and your mom will never know and neither will anyone in your dorm or neighborhood. He won’t make disparaging remarks about your body or gossip afterward. He will text you after or not, and want to see you again or not, depending on what you wish he would do.” And so on. These are the kinds of conditions we would have to engineer in order to get an accurate sense of what a woman’s sex drive might be like under circumstances conducive to actually feeling entitled to have and admit to having a sex drive. Until such a test exists, we need to consider the likelihood that we are only measuring men’s willingness to admit they are sexual compared to women’s willingness to do the same. Guess who wins that contest? D-I-V-O-R-C-E and the Double StandardSome studies suggest that men who find out their wives are cheating are more likely to divorce them than are wives who discover their husbands have stepped out. Other experts tell us that female infidelity can be especially destructive for a marriage or partnership. These findings make sense when we consider the gendered double standard that has long prevailed in matters of extra-pair sex.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  I like to watch the people.” “So do I.” “Sometimes I have this fantasy that the opera house is suddenly taken over by psychos or terrorists or something, and that I save everybody.” She stopped sucking her mint and turned to look at him. “How?” “I jump from the balcony railing and scale down the curtain until I’m parallel with the cord. Then I jump for the cord, swing through the air—” “That’s impossible.” “Well, yes, I know. It’s a fantasy.” “Why would you have a fantasy like that?” She looked disturbed. “I don’t know. It’s not important.” She continued to stare at him, almost stricken. “I think it’s because you feel estranged from people. You want something extreme to happen so you can show that you love them, and that you deserve love from them.” He pulled her head against his shoulder and kissed it. He said, “Sometimes I just want to tear you apart.” She put her box of mints in her lap and grabbed him tightly around the waist. It was after midnight when they left the opera. They went to a neon-lit deli manned by aging waiters wearing red jackets, several of whom had violent tics in their jaws. Daisy persuaded him to order a salad and a milk shake; she was worried that he didn’t eat enough. He sipped his shake uncomfortably and watched her eat cream cheese and salmon. She talked about her unhappy relationship with her father, pausing to bend her head so she could nip up the fallen croissant flakes with her tongue. Waiters ran around the table, some of them bearing three food-loaded plates in each hairy hand. He tried to make her take some pills and stay out with him longer, but she said she felt too guilty about David. There was also some art work she wanted to do. She sighed and looked at the ground. She pulled away from him four times before he let her go. He watched her walk away and thought, “Now it’s too late to buy jelly beans.” When he opened the door to his apartment, Diane hit him in the face. He was so startled, he stood there and let her hit him three more times before he grabbed her wrist. “You filthy bastard!” she screamed. “You went to the opera with her! We always go to the opera together and you went with that cunt!” “I hardly thought you wanted to go.” “Well, I did. I waited for you to come home from work.” Her voice hobbled tearfully. “I never thought you would go with that cunt.” “She’s not a cunt.” She swung her free hand, catching his ear.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Because in the bottom of my heart there was murder: I wanted to see America destroyed, razed from top to bottom. I wanted to see this happen purely out of vengeance, as atonement for the crimes that were committed against me and against others like me who have never been able to lift their voices and express their hatred, their rebellion, their legitimate blood lust. I was the evil product of an evil soil. If the self were not imperishable, the “I” I write about would have been destroyed long ago. To some this may seem like an invention, but whatever I imagine to have happened did actually happen, at least to me . History may deny it, since I have played no part in the history of my people, but even if everything I say is wrong, is prejudiced, spiteful, malevolent, even if I am a liar and a poisoner, it is nevertheless the truth and it will have to be swallowed. As to what happened . . . Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of a contradiction. Until the one for whom this is written came along I imagined that somewhere outside, in life, as they say, lay the solution to all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to—and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for—myself . I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live—if what others are doing is called living—but to express myself. I realized that I had never the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live. Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of effort, I cannot say what I think and feel—that bothers me, that rankles. From childhood on I can see myself on the track of this specter, enjoying nothing, desiring nothing but this power, this ability. Everything else is a lie—everything I ever did or said which did not bear upon this. And that is pretty much the greater part of my life. I was a contradiction in essence, as they say. People took me to be serious and high-minded, or to be gay and reckless, or to be sincere and earnest, or to be negligent and carefree.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The conversations which took place between the leaning tower of Pisa, the whipping post, the snoring machine and the pterodactyl in human flesh were, to say the least, a bit queer. Anything might be the subject of conversation—a bread crumb which the “sister” had overlooked in brushing the tablecloth or Joseph’s coat of many colors which, in the old man’s tailoring brain, might have been either double-breasted or cutaway or frock. If I came from the ice pond, where I had been skating all afternoon, the important thing was not the ozone which I had breathed free of charge, nor the geometric convolutions which were strengthening my muscles, but the little spot of rust under the clamps which, if not rubbed off immediately, might deteriorate the whole skate and bring about the dissolution of some pragmatic value which was incomprehensible to my prodigal turn of thought. This little rust spot, to take a trifling example, might entrain the most hallucinating results. Perhaps the “sister,” in searching for the kerosene can, might overturn the jar of prunes which were being stewed and thus endanger all our lives by robbing us of the required calories in the morrow’s meal. A severe beating would have to be given, not in anger, because that would disturb the digestive apparatus, but silently and efficiently, as a chemist would beat up the white of an egg in preparation for a minor analysis. But the “sister,” not understanding the prophylactic nature of the punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams and this would so affect the old man that he would go out for a walk and return two or three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece of paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle royal which was very bad for my dream life, because in my dream life I frequently changed places with my sister, accepting the tortures inflicted upon her and nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of shrieks, curses, groans and sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It might begin with a scene from real life—the sister standing by the blackboard in the kitchen, the mother towering over her with a ruler, saying two and two makes how much? and the sister screaming five . Bang! no , seven , Bang! no , thirteen , eighteen , twenty! I would be sitting at the table, doing my lessons, just as in real life during these scenes, when by a slight twist or squirm, perhaps as I saw the ruler come down on the sister’s face, suddenly I would be in another realm where glass was unknown, as it was unknown to the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenape.

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

  They now have one. Alan W. Scheflin, who is Professor Emeritus at Santa Clara University School of Law, in an important paper, argues that all human beings have the right to protection from undue influence, a concept the law has recognized for at least five centuries. With this legal precedent in place, the remaining issue is qualifying experts to testify on the basis of science. In his paper, “Supporting Human Rights by Testifying Human Wrongs,” which appeared in the International Journal of Cultic Studies,214 Scheflin describes what he calls the Social Influence Model, or SIM, for determining whether undue influence has occurred. This model provides a structure for the presentation of scientific data. It involves an analysis of six elements: the influence itself; the influencer’s motives; the influencer’s methods; the circumstances under which the influence occurred; the influencee’s receptivity or vulnerability (regardless of their designation as a minor, a vulnerable adult, or a non-vulnerable adult); and the consequences for both parties. For each of these elements, there is abundant social science data that an expert may use to give the judge and jury a clear picture of why the communications that occurred should be labeled undue influence. Currently, the law tends to protect cults more than it protects their victims. In part, this is because of the enormous wealth of some mind control groups, which allows them to hire the best attorneys and to file harassment lawsuits (unwinnable, but very troublesome to the person or organization being sued). In addition, there is the first amendment issue. Sadly, some of the leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have historically sided with cults, invoking the First Amendment and ignoring mind control research. Still, brave former members of many different cults have initiated civil lawsuits against their groups. The results have been mixed. But when the Moonies sued the London Daily Mail newspaper for libel over two articles it published in 1978, they lost. In the longest libel suit in the history of England, the court found that the Moonies did “brainwash their members and did try to cut people off from their families.” Because British law requires that whichever party loses the suit is responsible for the expenses of both sides, the Moonies were required to pay some $2 million in expenses.215

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  There was also some art work she wanted to do. She sighed and looked at the ground. She pulled away from him four times before he let her go. He watched her walk away and thought, “Now it’s too late to buy jelly beans.” When he opened the door to his apartment, Diane hit him in the face. He was so startled, he stood there and let her hit him three more times before he grabbed her wrist. “You filthy bastard!” she screamed. “You went to the opera with her! We always go to the opera together and you went with that cunt!” “I hardly thought you wanted to go.” “Well, I did. I waited for you to come home from work.” Her voice hobbled tearfully. “I never thought you would go with that cunt.” “She’s not a cunt.” She swung her free hand, catching his ear. She yanked at the lobe, tearing out his tiny blue earring. It pinged on the floor, sparkled and rolled away. “Shit!” he screamed. He dropped to his knees and felt the floor with his palms. “Don’t you have any self-control?” “I don’t give a shit about self-control. Get the fuck out.” “Will you just wait until I find my earring?” “I don’t care about your fucking earring. Get out before I kill you.” “God, you’re so irrational.” He listened for sobbing from outside the slammed door. There was none. His ear was bleeding and his face burned, but he was oddly exhilarated. He was sorry Diane was so upset, but there was something stirring about a violent tantrum. It was the sort of thing he liked to tell stories about. — The street was buzzing with junkies and kids with big radios. They stood in a jumbled line against buildings and crawled out of holes in the walls and fences. They mumbled at him as he walked past. “I got the blues, I got the reds, I got the greens and blacks, the ones from last week.” He walked three blocks to Eliot’s apartment; he didn’t expect Eliot to answer the door, but he buzzed anyway. He was startled when Eliot’s suspicious voice darted from the cluster of tiny holes that served as an intercom. “It’s the F.B.I.,” said Joey. There was a grudging silence before the buzzer squawked. When Joey reached the apartment door, Eliot poked his head out, one finger to his lips. His wispy brown hair stuck out in a ratty halo; his round, thin-lashed eyes were hysterically wide and moist. “Whatever you do, don’t mention drugs,” he whispered. “If you have to refer to them at all, say ‘gum’ or something. Only don’t be conspicuous.” “All right,” said Joey. “They’ve got the place wired,” explained Eliot. “We tore the apartment apart and we still can’t find the bug. Are you sure you weren’t followed?” Joey nodded. Eliot stretched his neck and stared into the empty hall, blinking his damp eyes hard. Satisfied, he let Joey in.

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

  Scientology has also used legal warrants to raid databases around the world, including the counter-cult site factnet.org. Fortunately, this aspect of their legal maneuvering backfired, leading to greater public interest in the group, and sending Jon Atack’s masterful exposé, Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, into the Amazon top 100. The media has done many stories on Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, John Travolta and other celebrities associated with Scientology. Former top executives of the group have left and gone public, revealing how they managed, after 25 years of fighting and dirty tricks, to force the IRS to give them tax exempt status as a “religion” which it is not in my opinion. In the years since the first edition of Combating Cult Mind Control was published, some of the larger mind control groups spent millions of dollars to retain top law firms, public relations agencies, and private investigators. Some of these professionals are paid handsomely to threaten former group members; to underwrite significant disinformation campaigns; to undermine the fundamental human rights of current members; and to defend the mind control organizations against prosecution for blatantly criminal acts. Destructive cults have tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to discredit other activists and me. Most of this has taken the form of disinformation campaigns, but some of it has been much shadier. For example, cult members would call my office, pretending to be ex-members or distraught parents, and ask for help. Their goal was to deceive or manipulate me into saying or doing something that could hurt my reputation. Cult agents have been sent out to sow seeds of distrust among cult activists by telling untruths about fellow activists. By undermining these collaborations and friendships, cult agents have occasionally disrupted or neutralized efforts to help victims of destructive cults. Courageous former members who dare to speak out often suffer significant harm to their reputations, finances, or both. Careers and often marriages destroyed, people followed, tires punctured, dwellings broken into, and frivolous lawsuits filed. A book could be written just telling the stories of the heroes of the mind control awareness movement. Part of the reason I am republishing and updating this book is to share some of those critical and inspiring accounts. Changes Since The 1988 Edition This edition marks the 30th anniversary of this book. So many things have changed since it was first published. I still hear from people all over the world who tell me it was transformative and even saved their lives. Over the years, I have heard from hundreds of people that the stories in Combating Cult Mind Control provided many parallels to their own experiences, and helped transform their lives. I am delighted to republish it fundamentally intact, but with many important updates and additions. Let me describe some of the changes and factors to consider as you read this new edition.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was after midnight when they left the opera. They went to a neon-lit deli manned by aging waiters wearing red jackets, several of whom had violent tics in their jaws. Daisy persuaded him to order a salad and a milk shake; she was worried that he didn’t eat enough. He sipped his shake uncomfortably and watched her eat cream cheese and salmon. She talked about her unhappy relationship with her father, pausing to bend her head so she could nip up the fallen croissant flakes with her tongue. Waiters ran around the table, some of them bearing three food-loaded plates in each hairy hand. He tried to make her take some pills and stay out with him longer, but she said she felt too guilty about David. There was also some art work she wanted to do. She sighed and looked at the ground. She pulled away from him four times before he let her go. He watched her walk away and thought, “Now it’s too late to buy jelly beans.” When he opened the door to his apartment, Diane hit him in the face. He was so startled, he stood there and let her hit him three more times before he grabbed her wrist. “You filthy bastard!” she screamed. “You went to the opera with her! We always go to the opera together and you went with that cunt!” “I hardly thought you wanted to go.” “Well, I did. I waited for you to come home from work.” Her voice hobbled tearfully. “I never thought you would go with that cunt.” “She’s not a cunt.” She swung her free hand, catching his ear. She yanked at the lobe, tearing out his tiny blue earring. It pinged on the floor, sparkled and rolled away. “Shit!” he screamed. He dropped to his knees and felt the floor with his palms. “Don’t you have any self-control?” “I don’t give a shit about self-control. Get the fuck out.” “Will you just wait until I find my earring?” “I don’t care about your fucking earring. Get out before I kill you.” “God, you’re so irrational.” He listened for sobbing from outside the slammed door. There was none. His ear was bleeding and his face burned, but he was oddly exhilarated. He was sorry Diane was so upset, but there was something stirring about a violent tantrum. It was the sort of thing he liked to tell stories about. — The street was buzzing with junkies and kids with big radios. They stood in a jumbled line against buildings and crawled out of holes in the walls and fences. They mumbled at him as he walked past. “I got the blues, I got the reds, I got the greens and blacks, the ones from last week.” He walked three blocks to Eliot’s apartment; he didn’t expect Eliot to answer the door, but he buzzed anyway. He was startled when Eliot’s suspicious voice darted from the cluster of tiny holes that served as an intercom.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  One of the most revelatory enactments of Constantine’s entire legislative package was his thunderous decree against abduction marriage. Abduction marriage, in which the girl was often a conspiring partner, was simply part of life in a world of arranged marriages. Classical Roman law had the sense to ignore the phenomenon and leave society to sort out the distinctions between rape and voluntary seizure, offering the young man a chance to persuade the girl’s father to relent. Constantine preferred to impose his strict will. If the girl did not consent, the man was no more than a rapist. If she did consent, she was to be punished as harshly as her ravisher. Even the victim was punished, because the girl should have stowed herself safely at home or secured the help of neighbors by her screams. If the girl’s nurse, charged to protect her, was found complicit, she was to have molten lead poured down her throat. Again, Constantine encouraged slaves to report such an egregious crime should the families attempt to cover it up. The values of the Constantinian reforms are strictly traditionalist. But the means of enforcing them are more direct, more aggressive, and more violent than in the classical dispensation.54 What is distinctive about late antique law, in the words of an authority, is that “it comes to reflect prevailing social morality less ambiguously than in previous centuries.” This shift was subtle, and it truly accelerates in the reign of Constantine. In some sense Constantine’s legal program was more radical but less Christian than much of what followed. The law of divorce is an especially revealing domain for examining the subtle dynamics of continuity and change, of vigorous moralism and traditional restraint. In 331 Constantine abolished the ancient system of unilateral divorce. He restricted the grounds for divorce to crimes that hardly qualify as ordinary domestic tensions—murder, the violation of tombs, and the manufacture of poisons. If a woman repudiated her husband for any lighter cause, she not only lost her dowry, she was deported. If a man repudiated his wife without just cause (limited to a restricted class of offenses, but including adultery), he had to return the dowry and remain unmarried. Constantine’s policy was an extraordinary reversal of classical principles, but his reforms were not to endure. Julian, his apostate nephew, repealed the measure. We are informed about this development only by Ambrosiaster, who complained that Julian’s law had allowed women to divorce their husbands “freely” and “constantly.” Thus, the dynasty of Constantine saw a swing from a completely classical system of divorce, to a radically new and restricted regime, back to the classical model.55

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  But the married sister, the one who was “built too small,” as she used to say, was a wily bitch and besides she felt guilty toward her sister and if her sister had ever caught her in the act she’d probably have pretended that she was having a fit and didn’t know what she was doing. Nothing on earth could make her admit that she was actually permitting herself the pleasure of being fucked by a man. I knew her quite well because I was giving her lessons for a time, and I used to do my damnedest to make her admit that she had a normal cunt and that she’d enjoy a good fuck if she could get it now and then. I used to tell her wild stories, which were really thinly disguised accounts of her own doings, and yet she remained adamant. I had even gotten her to the point one day—and this beats everything—where she let me put my finger inside her. I thought sure it was settled. It’s true she was dry and a bit tight, but I put that down to her hysteria. But imagine getting that far with a cunt and then having her say to your face, as she yanks her dress down violently—“you see, I told you I wasn’t built right!” “I don’t see anything of the kind,” I said angrily. “What do you expect me to do—use a microscope on you?” “I like that,” she said, pretending to get on her high horse. “What a way of talking to me!” “You know damned well you’re lying,” I continued. “Why do you lie like that? Don’t you think it’s human to have a cunt and to use it once in a while? Do you want it to dry up on you?” “Such language!” she said, biting her underlip and reddening like a beet. “I always thought you were a gentleman.” “Well, you’re no lady,” I retorted, “because even a lady admits to a fuck now and then, and besides ladies don’t ask gentlemen to stick their fingers up inside them and see how small they’re built.” “I never asked you to touch me,” she said. “I wouldn’t think of asking you to put your hand on me, on my private parts anyway.” “Maybe you thought I was going to swab your ear for you, is that it?’ “I thought of you like a doctor at that moment, that’s all I can say,” she said stiffly, trying to freeze me out. “Listen,” I said, taking a wild chance, “let’s pretend that it was all a mistake, that nothing happened, nothing at all. I know you too well to think of insulting you like that. I wouldn’t think of doing a thing like that to you—no, damned if I would. I was just wondering if maybe you weren’t right in what you said, if maybe you aren’t built rather small.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  We don’t want to hear about the logic of events—or any kind of logic. “Je ne parle pas logique,” said Montherlant, “je parle générosité.” I don’t think you heard it very well, since it was in French. I’ll repeat it for you, in the Queen’s own language: “I’m not talking logic, I’m talking generosity.” That’s bad English, as the Queen herself might speak it, but it’s clear. Generosity—do you hear? You never practice it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don’t know the meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses to the front, or the Salvation Army, is generosity. You think a bonus twenty years too late is generosity; you think a little pension and a wheel chair is generosity; you think if you give a man his old job back it’s generosity. You don’t know what the fucking word means, you bastards! To be generous is to say Yes before the man even opens his mouth. To say Yes you have to be first a surrealist or a Dadaist, because you have understood what it means to say No. You can even say Yes and No at the same time, provided you do more than is expected of you. Be a stevedore in the daytime and a Beau Brummel in the nighttime. Wear any uniform so long as it’s not yours. When you write your mother ask her to cough up a little dough so that you may have a clean rag to wipe your ass with. Don’t be disturbed if you see your neighbor going after his wife with a knife: he probably has good reason to go after her, and if he kills her you may be sure he had the satisfaction of knowing why he did it. If you’re trying to improve your mind, stop it! There’s no improving the mind. Look to your heart and gizzard— the brain is in the heart. Ah yes, if I had known then that these birds existed—Cendrars, Vaché, Grosz, Ernst, Apollinaire—if I had known that then, if I had known that in their own way they were thinking exactly the same things as I was, I think I’d have blown up. Yes, I think I’d have gone off like a bomb. But I was ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that almost fifty years previously a crazy Jew in South America had given birth to such startlingly marvelous phrases as “doubt’s duck with the vermouth lips” or “I have seen a fig eat an onager”—that about the same time a Frenchman, who was only a boy, was saying: “Find flowers that are chairs” . . . “my hunger is the black air’s bits” . . . “his heart, amber and spunk.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The conversations which took place between the leaning tower of Pisa, the whipping post, the snoring machine and the pterodactyl in human flesh were, to say the least, a bit queer. Anything might be the subject of conversation—a bread crumb which the “sister” had overlooked in brushing the tablecloth or Joseph’s coat of many colors which, in the old man’s tailoring brain, might have been either double-breasted or cutaway or frock. If I came from the ice pond, where I had been skating all afternoon, the important thing was not the ozone which I had breathed free of charge, nor the geometric convolutions which were strengthening my muscles, but the little spot of rust under the clamps which, if not rubbed off immediately, might deteriorate the whole skate and bring about the dissolution of some pragmatic value which was incomprehensible to my prodigal turn of thought. This little rust spot, to take a trifling example, might entrain the most hallucinating results. Perhaps the “sister,” in searching for the kerosene can, might overturn the jar of prunes which were being stewed and thus endanger all our lives by robbing us of the required calories in the morrow’s meal. A severe beating would have to be given, not in anger, because that would disturb the digestive apparatus, but silently and efficiently, as a chemist would beat up the white of an egg in preparation for a minor analysis. But the “sister,” not understanding the prophylactic nature of the punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams and this would so affect the old man that he would go out for a walk and return two or three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece of paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle royal which was very bad for my dream life, because in my dream life I frequently changed places with my sister, accepting the tortures inflicted upon her and nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of shrieks, curses, groans and sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It might begin with a scene from real life—the sister standing by the blackboard in the kitchen, the mother towering over her with a ruler, saying two and two makes how much? and the sister screaming five. Bang! no, seven, Bang! no, thirteen, eighteen, twenty! I would be sitting at the table, doing my lessons, just as in real life during these scenes, when by a slight twist or squirm, perhaps as I saw the ruler come down on the sister’s face, suddenly I would be in another realm where glass was unknown, as it was unknown to the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenape.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  He hadn’t intended to do anything with her because, as he said, she was a repulsive little Lesbian, but one day he happened to walk in on her as she was taking a bath, and that started things off. It was getting to be too much for him, he confessed, because the three of them were hot on his trail. He liked the cousin best because she had some dough and she wasn’t reluctant to part with it. Valeska was too cagey, and besides she smelled a little too strong. In fact, he was getting sick of women. He said it was his Aunt Sophie’s fault. She gave him a bad start. While relating this he busies himself going through the bureau drawers. The father is a mean son of a bitch who ought to be hanged, he says, not finding anything immediately. He shows me a revolver with a pearl handle . . . what would it fetch? A gun was too good to use on the old man . . . he’d like to dynamite him. Trying to find out why he hated the old man so, it developed that the kid was really stuck on his mother. He couldn’t bear the thought of the old man going to bed with her. You don’t mean to say that you’re jealous of your old man, I ask. Yes, he’s jealous. If I wanted to know the truth it’s that he wouldn’t mind sleeping with his mother. Why not? That’s why he had permitted his Aunt Sophie to seduce him . . . he was thinking of his mother all the time. But don’t you feel bad when you go through her pocketbook, I asked. He laughed. It’s not her money, he said, it’s his . And what have they done for me? They were always farming me out. The first thing they taught me was how to cheat people. That’s a hell of a way to raise a kid. . . . There’s not a red cent in the house. Curley’s idea of a way out is to go with me to the office where he works and while I engage the manager in conversation go through the wardrobe and clean out all the loose change. Or, if I’m not afraid of taking a chance, he will go through the cash drawer. They’ll never suspect us , he says. Had he ever done that before, I ask. Of course . . . a dozen or more times, right under the manager’s nose. And wasn’t there any stink about it? To be sure . . . they had fired a few clerks. Why don’t you borrow something from your Aunt Sophie, I suggest. That’s easy enough, only it means a quick diddle and he doesn’t want to diddle her any more. She stinks, Aunt Sophie. What do you mean, she stinks? Just that . . . she doesn’t wash herself regularly. Why, what’s the matter with her? Nothing, just religious.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Why this, that in her eagerness she had forgotten to take the usual precautions, and maybe now she was pregnant and then what? They wanted to know what I thought should be done and I said: “Nothing.” And then Valeska takes me aside and she asks me if I wouldn’t care to sleep with her cousin, to break her in, as it were, so that there wouldn’t be a repetition of that sort of thing. The whole thing was cockeyed and we were all laughing hysterically and then we began to drink—the only thing they had in the house was kümmel and it didn’t take much to put us under. And then it got more cockeyed because the two of them began to paw me and neither one would let the other do anything. The result was I undressed them both and put them to bed and they fell asleep in each other’s arms. And when I walked out, toward five A.M ., I discovered I didn’t have a cent in my pocket and I tried to bum a nickel from a taxi driver but nothing doing so finally I took off my fur-lined overcoat and I gave it to him—for a nickel. When I got home my wife was awake and sore as hell because I had stayed out so long. We had a hot discussion and finally I lost my temper and I clouted her and she fell on the floor and began to weep and sob and then the kid woke up and hearing the wife bawling she got frightened and began to scream at the top of her lungs. The girl upstairs came running down to see what was the matter. She was in her kimono and her hair was hanging down her back. In the excitement she got close to me and things happened without either of us intending anything to happen. We put the wife to bed with a wet towel around her forehead and while the girl upstairs was bending over her I stood behind her and lifting her kimono I got it into her and she stood there a long time talking a lot of foolish, soothing nonsense. Finally I climbed into bed with the wife and to my utter amazement she began to cuddle up to me and without saying a word we locked horns and we stayed that way until dawn. I should have been worn out, but instead I was wide-awake, and I lay there beside her planning to take the day off and look up the whore with the beautiful fur whom I was talking to earlier in the day. After that I began to think about another woman, the wife of one of my friends who always twitted me about my indifference.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The truth is, I was so damned impatient to get away that I thought if I kept my hat on I’d be off quicker. Instead I was there all night with her. She put up such a row that I couldn’t get her quiet. . . . But listen, that’s nothing. Once I had a drunken Irish bitch and this one had some queer ideas. In the first place, she never wanted it in bed . . . always on the table. You know, that’s all right once in a while, but if you do it often it wears you out. So one night—I was a little tight, I guess—I says to her, no, nothing doing, you drunken bastard . . . you’re gonna go to bed with me tonight. I want a real fuck—in bed . You know, I had to argue with that bitch for an hour almost before I could persuade her to go to bed with me, and then only on the agreement that I was to keep my hat on. Listen, can you picture me getting over that stupid bitch with my hat on? And stark naked to boot! I asked her . . . I said, ‘why do you want me to keep my hat on?’ You know what she said? She said it seemed more genteel. Can you imagine what a mind that cunt had? I used to hate myself for going with that bitch. I never went to her sober, that’s one thing. I’d have to be tanked up first and kind of blind and batty—you know how I get sometimes. . . .” I knew very well what he meant. He was one of my oldest friends and one of the most cantankerous bastards I ever knew. Stubborn wasn’t the word for it. He was like a mule—a pigheaded Scotchman. And his old man was even worse. When the two of them got into a rage it was a pretty sight. The old man used to dance, positively dance with rage. If the old lady got between she’d get a sock in the eye. They used to put him out of the house regularly. Out he’d go, with all his belongings, including the furniture, including the piano too. In a month or so he’d be back again—because they always gave him credit at home. And then he’d come home drunk some night with a woman he’d picked up somewhere and the rumpus would start all over again. It seems they didn’t mind so much his coming home with a girl and keeping her all night, but what they did object to was the cheek of him asking his mother to serve them breakfast in bed. If his mother tried to bawl him out he’d shut her up by saying—“What are you trying to tell me? You wouldn’t have been married yet if you hadn’t been knocked up.” The old lady would wring her hands and say—“What a son! What a son!