Anxiety

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help us—diphtheria, and off she went. “It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had the belief that ‘God has given, God has taken away,’ that the soul of the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die innocent than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like this faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their children. But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet it is necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly believe in medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One believes in X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see the idiocy of their beliefs. They believe quia absurdum , because, in reality, if they did not believe in a stupid way, they would see the vanity of all that these brigands prescribe for them. Scarlatina is a contagious disease; so, when one lives in a large city, half the family has to move away from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every man in the city is a centre through which pass innumerable diameters, carrying threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no obstacle: the baker, the tailor, the coachman, the laundresses. “And I would undertake, for every man who moves on account of contagion, to find in his new dwelling-place another contagion similar, if not the same. “But that is not all. Every one knows rich people who, after a case of diphtheria, destroy everything in their residences, and then fall sick in houses newly built and furnished. Every one knows, likewise, numbers of men who come in contact with sick people and do not get infected. Our anxieties are due to the people who circulate tall stories. One woman says that she has an excellent doctor. ‘Pardon me,’ answers the other, ‘he killed such a one,’ or such a one. And vice versa . Bring her another, who knows no more, who learned from the same books, who treats according to the same formulas, but who goes about in a carriage, and asks a hundred roubles a visit, and she will have faith in him. “It all lies in the fact that our women are savages. They have no belief in God, but some of them believe in the evil eye, and the others in doctors who charge high fees.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Robbie came toward her from the north side of camp through the stinging smoke. He had blood on the side of his face, and more crusted the shoulder of his hoodie. It was one of hers, actually. She took a panicked half step toward him, then stopped short. He hadn’t opened his arms for her. He stopped not far away, looking relieved, but not much more. The familiar leaden pressure of rejection squeezed Fran’s throat. Did I lose him? “What happened?” she asked. He told her. His voice was flat, his eyes averted. The fertility clinic. The men and the fight with Doe and the mad drive back to Exeter where he’d met up with Zia’s people. Beth and the twins and the chain gang and the bus in the woods. When he talked about shooting his way into the Screw to get Indi, his shoulders grew so tense, his neck so rigid that she wanted to run to him and hug him close. Instead she let him talk until his words dried up while around them ash blew in the chilly predawn wind. Until all he had left to say was a dull, cold “I told you.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat, casting around desperately for some reason she hadn’t believed, for “Robbie, I—” “Apologize later.” He did look at her, then, and the anger in his pinched mouth and narrowed eyes silenced her as quickly and as totally as a slap. “I have a car hidden downhill. Not far. We have to go before the TERFs get here.” “What?” Viv whispering in her ear on the dance floor. Viv clutching the front of Ramona’s shirt as blood ran down her chin. Teach in the woods, her huge pale eyes retracing the path of Beth’s arrow to find them standing in among the waving ferns. “Why would they come?” “Because we helped half the workers Sophie promised them escape,” he said, watching a woman Fran had seen once in the gym pick through a pile of greasy ash that might have been a tent. “And if they haven’t figured it out already, they will soon.” “What happened to her?” Blond hair and hungry mouth.

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

  Here he had unquestionably a logical advantage over the Pelagians, who retained the traditional usage of infant baptism, but divested it of its proper import, made it signify a mere ennobling of a nature already good, and, to be consistent, should have limited baptism to adults for the forgiveness of actual sins. The Pelagians, however, were justly offended by the revolting inference of the damnation of unbaptized infants, which is nowhere taught in the Holy Scriptures, and is repugnant to every unperverted religious instinct. Pelagius inclined to assign to unbaptized infants a middle state of half-blessedness, between the kingdom of heaven appointed to the baptized and the hell of the ungodly; though on this point he is not positive.1825 He evidently makes salvation depend, not so much upon the Christian redemption, as upon the natural moral character of individuals. Hence also baptism had no such importance in his view as in that of his antagonist. Augustine, on the authority of Matt. xxv. 34, 46, and other Scriptures, justly denies a neutral middle state, and meets the difficulty by supposing different degrees of blessedness and damnation (which, in fact, must be admitted), corresponding to the different degrees of holiness and wickedness. But, constrained by the idea of original sin, and by the supposed necessity of baptism to salvation, he does not shrink from consigning unbaptized children to damnation itself,1826 though he softens to the utmost this frightful dogma, and reduces the damnation to the minimum of punishment or the privation of blessedness.1827 He might have avoided the difficulty, without prejudice to his premises, by his doctrine of the election of grace, or by assuming an extraordinary application of the merits of Christ in death or in Hades. But the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of outward baptism to regeneration and entrance into the kingdom of God, forbade him a more liberal view respecting the endless destiny of that half of the human race which die in childhood. We may recall, however, the noteworthy fact, that the third canon of the North-African council at Carthage in 418, which condemns the opinion that unbaptized children are saved, is in many manuscripts wanting, and is therefore of doubtful authenticity. The sternness of the Augustinian system here gave way before the greater power of Christian love. Even Augustine, De civitate Dei, speaking of the example of Melchisedec, ventures the conjecture, that God may have also among the heathen an elect people, true Israelites according to the spirit, whom He draws to Himself through the secret power of His spirit. Why, we may ask, is not this thought applicable above all to children, to whom we know the Saviour Himself, in a very special sense (and without reference to baptism) ascribes a right to the kingdom of heaven?

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I tried to stay out of way. I figured I’d die if he ran me over. But he just smiled all the time, played hard, and slapped me hard on the back. We all shot basketballs for a while. And then Coach stepped onto the court. [image "An illustration of a person with large lips and ears, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, with various annotations about their appearance and characteristics." file=image_rsrc4SX.jpg] Forty kids IMMEDIATELY stopped bouncing and shooting and talking. We were silent, SNAP, just like that. “I want to thank you all for coming out today,” Coach said. “There are forty of you. But we only have room for twelve on the varsity and twelve on the junior varsity.” I knew I wouldn’t make those teams. I was C squad material, for sure. “In other years, we’ve also had a twelve-man C squad,” Coach said. “But we don’t have the budget for it this year. That means I’m going to have to cut sixteen players today.” Twenty boys puffed up their chests. They knew they were good enough to make either the varsity or the junior varsity. The other twenty shook their heads. We knew we were cuttable. “I really hate to do this,” Coach said. “If it were up to me, I’d keep everybody. But it’s not up to me. So we’re just going to have to do our best here, okay? You play with dignity and respect, and I’ll treat you with dignity and respect, no matter what happens, okay?” We all agreed to that. “Okay, let’s get started,” Coach said. The first drill was a marathon. Well, not exactly a marathon. We had to run one hundred laps around the gym. So forty of us ran. And thirty-six of us finished. After fifty laps, one guy quit, and since quitting is contagious, three other boys caught the disease and walked off the court, too. [image "An illustration labeled ‘The Eimoutaheer Virus’ with a speech bubble saying ‘No can do.’" file=image_rsrc4SY.jpg] I didn’t understand. Why would you try out for a basketball team if you didn’t want to run? I didn’t mind. After all, that meant only twelve more guys had to be cut. I only had to be better than twelve other guys. Well, we were good and tired after that run. And then Coach immediately had us playing full-court one-on-one. That’s right. FULL-COURT ONE-ON-ONE. That was torture. Coach didn’t break it down by position. So quick guards had to guard power forwards, and vice versa. Seniors had to guard freshmen, and vice versa. All-stars had to guard losers like me, and vice versa. Coach threw me the ball and said, “Go.” So I turned and dribbled straight down the court. A mistake. Roger easily poked the ball away and raced down toward his basket. Ashamed, I was frozen. “What are you waiting for?” Coach asked me. “Play some D.” Awake, I ran after Roger, but he dunked it before I was even close.

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

  In 868 Cyrillus and Methodius went to Rome, and a perfect agreement was arrived at between them and Pope Adrian II., both with respect to the use of the Slavic language in religious service and with respect to the independent position of the Slavic church, subject only to the authority of the Pope. Cyrillus died in Rome, Feb. 14, 869, but Methodius returned to Moravia, having been consecrated archbishop of the Pannonian diocese. The organization of this new diocese of Pannonia was, to some extent, an encroachment on the dioceses of Passau and Salzburg, and such an encroachment must have been so much the more irritating to the German prelates, as they really had been the first to sow the seed of Christianity among the Slavs. The growing difference between the Eastern and Western churches also had its effect. The German clergy considered the use of the Slavic language in the mass an unwarranted innovation, and the Greek doctrine of the single procession of the Holy Spirit, still adhered to by Methodius and the Slavic church, they considered as a heresy. Their attacks, however, had at first no practical consequences, but when Rastislaw was succeeded in 870 by Swatopluk, and Adrian II. in 872 by John VIII., the position of Methodius became difficult. Once more, in 879, he was summoned to Rome, and although, this time too, a perfect agreement was arrived at, by which the independence of the Slavic church was confirmed, and all her natural peculiarities were acknowledged, neither the energy of Methodius, nor the support of the Pope was able to defend her against the attacks which now were made upon her both from without and from within. Swatopluk inclined towards the German-Roman views, and Wichin one of Methodius’s bishops, became their powerful champion. After the death of Swatopluk, the Moravian kingdom fell to pieces and was divided between the Germans, the Czechs of Bohemia, and the Magyars of Hungary; and thereby the Slavic church lost, so to speak, its very foundation. Methodius died between 881 and 910. At the opening of the tenth century the Slavic church had entirely lost its national character. The Slavic priests were expelled and the Slavic liturgy abolished, German priests and the Latin liturgy taking their place. The expelled priests fled to Bulgaria, whither they brought the Slavic translations of the Bible and the liturgy.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  This was my game, this was my game. I mean, I was still just the second guy off the bench, just the dude who provided instant offense. But it was all sort of warrior stuff, too. We were all boys desperate to be men, and this game would be a huge moment in our transition. “Okay, everybody, let’s go over the game plan,” Coach said. We all walked over to the chalkboard area and sat on folding chairs. “Okay, guys,” Coach said. “We know what these guys can do. They’re averaging eighty points a game. They want to run and run and run. And when they’re done running and gunning, they’re going to run and gun some more.” Man, that wasn’t much of a pep talk. It sounded like Coach was sure we were going to lose. “And I have to be honest, guys,” Coach said. “We can’t beat these guys with our talent. We just aren’t good enough. But I think we have bigger hearts. And I think we have a secret weapon.” I wondered if Coach had maybe hired some Mafia dude to take out Rowdy. “We have Arnold Spirit,” Coach said. “Me?” I asked. “Yes, you,” Coach said. “You’re starting tonight.” “Really?” “Really. And you’re going to guard Rowdy. The whole game. He’s your man. You have to stop him. If you stop him, we win this game. It’s the only way we’re going to win this game.” Wow. I was absolutely stunned. Coach wanted me to guard Rowdy. Now, okay, I was a great shooter, but I wasn’t a great defensive player. Not at all. There’s no way I could stop Rowdy. I mean, if I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons—without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague—I had zero chance of competing directly with Rowdy. If I guarded him, he was going to score seventy points. “Coach,” I said. “I’m really honored by this. But I don’t think I can do it.” He walked over to me, kneeled, and pushed his forehead against mine. Our eyes were, like, an inch apart. I could smell the cigarettes and chocolate on his breath. “You can do it,” Coach said. Oh, man, that sounded just like Eugene. He always shouted that during any game I ever played. It could be, like, a three-legged sack race, and Gene would be all drunk and happy in the stands and he’d be shouting out, “Junior, you can do it!” Yeah, that Eugene, he was a positive dude even as an alcoholic who ended up getting shot in the face and killed. Jeez, what a sucky life. I was about to play the biggest basketball game of my life and all I could think about was my dad’s dead best friend. So many ghosts. “You can do it,” Coach said again. He didn’t shout it. He whispered it. Like a prayer.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  It would be better if she had already done it, to relieve me of my uncertainty. “In short, I could not say what I desired. I desired that she might not want what she must want. It was complete madness.” CHAPTER XXVI. “At the station before the last, when the conductor came to take the tickets, I took my baggage and went out on the car platform, and the consciousness that the climax was near at hand only added to my agitation. I was cold, my jaw trembled so that my teeth chattered. Mechanically I left the station with the crowd, I took a tchik , and I started. I looked at the few people passing in the streets and at the dvorniks . I read the signs, without thinking of anything. After going half a verst my feet began to feel cold, and I remembered that in the car I had taken off my woollen socks, and had put them in my travelling bag. Where had I put the bag? Was it with me? Yes, and the basket? “I bethought myself that I had totally forgotten my baggage. I took out my check, and then decided it was not worth while to return. I continued on my way. In spite of all my efforts to remember, I cannot at this moment make out why I was in such a hurry. I know only that I was conscious that a serious and menacing event was approaching in my life. It was a case of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious because I thought it so? Or had I a presentiment? I do not know. Perhaps, too, after what has happened, all previous events have taken on a lugubrious tint in my memory. “I arrived at the steps. It was an hour past midnight. A few isvotchiks were before the door, awaiting customers, attracted by the lighted windows (the lighted windows were those of our parlor and reception room). Without trying to account for this late illumination, I went up the steps, always with the same expectation of something terrible, and I rang. The servant, a good, industrious, and very stupid being, named Gregor, opened the door. The first thing that leaped to my eyes in the hall, on the hat-stand, among other garments, was an overcoat. I ought to have been astonished, but I was not astonished. I expected it. ‘That’s it!’ I said to myself. “When I had asked Gregor who was there, and he had named Troukhatchevsky, I inquired whether there were other visitors. He answered: ‘Nobody.’ I remember the air with which he said that, with a tone that was intended to give me pleasure, and dissipate my doubts. ‘That’s it! that’s it!’ I had the air of saying to myself. ‘And the children?’ “‘Thank God, they are very well.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As soon as Clement was asleep, Armande came near to me. "He will awake shortly," she said; "he will behave like a madman: Nature only puts his senses to sleep in order to give them, after a little rest, a much greater energy; one more scene and we will have peace until tomorrow." "But you," I said to my companion, "aren't you going to sleep a little while ?" "How can I ?" Armande replied, "when, were I not to remain awake and standing by his side, and were my negligence to be perceived, he would be the man to stab me to death." "O Heaven!" I sighed, "why! even as he sleeps the villain would that those around him remain in a state of suffering !" "Yes," my companion responded, "it is the very barbarity of the idea which procures the furious awakening you are going to witness; upon this he is like unto those perverse writers whose corruption is so dangerous, so active, that their single aim is, by causing their appalling doctrines to be printed, to immortalize the sum of their crimes after their own lives are at an end; they themselves can do no more, but their accursed writings will instigate the commission of crimes, and they carry this sweet idea with them to their graves: it comforts them for the obligation, enjoined by death, to relinquish the doing of evil." "The monsters!" I cried.... Armande, who was a very gentle creature, kissed me as she shed a few tears, then went back to pacing about the roue's bed. Two hours passed and then the monk did indeed awake in a prodigious agitation and seized me with such force I thought he was going to strangle me; his respiration was quick and labored, his eyes glittered, he uttered incoherent words which were exclusively blasphemous or libertine expressions; he summoned Armande, called for whips, and started in again with his flogging of us both, but in a yet more vigorous manner than before having gone to sleep. It seemed as if he wished to end matters with me; shrill cries burst from his mouth; to abridge my sufferings, Armande excited him violently, he lost his head entirely, and finally made rigid by the most violent sensations, the monster lost both his ardor and his desires together with smoking floods of semen. Nothing transpired during the rest of the night; upon getting up, the monk was content to touch and examine each of us; and as he was going to say Mass, we returned to the seraglio. The superintendent could not be prevented from desiring me in. the inflamed state she swore I must be in; exhausted I indeed was and, thus weakened, how could I defend myself ? She did all she wished, enough to convince me that even a woman, in such a school, soon losing all the delicacy and restraint native to her sex, could only, after those tyrants' example, become obscene and cruel.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “Are you sure?” my parents asked. “You could maybe wait until the semester break. Or until next year. Get a fresh start.” “No, if I don’t go now, I never will. I have to do it now.” “Okay,” they said. Yep, it was that easy with my parents. It was almost like they’d been waiting for me to ask them if I could go to Reardan, like they were psychics or something. I mean, they’ve always known that I’m weird and ambitious, so maybe they expect me to do the weirdest things possible. And going to Reardan is truly a strange idea. But it isn’t weird that my parents so quickly agreed with my plans. They want a better life for my sister and me. My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don’t want their kids to be drunks. “It’s going to be hard to get you to Reardan,” Dad said. “We can’t afford to move there. And there ain’t no school bus going to come out here.” “You’ll be the first one to ever leave the rez this way,” Mom said. “The Indians around here are going to be angry with you.” Shoot, I figure that my fellow tribal members are going to torture me. [image "A hand-drawn illustration depicts a person with glasses who is partially buried, surrounded by ants. A thought bubble reads ‘Hope?’" file=image_rsrc4S2.jpg] Rowdy Sings the Blues [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] So the day after I decided to transfer to Reardan, and after my parents agreed to make it happen, I walked over to the tribal school, and found Rowdy sitting in his usual place on the playground. He was alone, of course. Everybody was scared of him. “I thought you were on suspension, dickwad,” he said, which was Rowdy’s way of saying, “I’m happy you’re here.” “Kiss my ass,” I said. I wanted to tell him that he was my best friend and I loved him like crazy, but boys didn’t say such things to other boys, and nobody said such things to Rowdy. “Can I tell you a secret?” I asked. “It better not be girly,” he said. “It’s not.” “Okay, then, tell me.” “I’m transferring to Reardan.” Rowdy’s eyes narrowed. His eyes always narrowed right before he beat the crap out of someone. I started shaking. “That’s not funny,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be funny,” I said. “I’m transferring to Reardan. I want you to come with me.” “And when are you going on this imaginary journey?” “It’s not imaginary. It’s real. And I’m transferring now. I start school tomorrow at Reardan.” “You better quit saying that,” he said. “You’re getting me mad.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She sat down with that false air in front of the piano, and then began the usual preliminaries,—the pizzicati of the violin and the arrangement of the scores. I remember then how they looked at each other, and cast a glance at their auditors who were taking their seats. They said a few words to each other, and the music began. They played Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’ Do you know the first presto? Do you know it? Ah!” . . . Posdnicheff heaved a sigh, and was silent for a long time. “A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for myself), but not in an ennobling way. It acts neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating way. How shall I say it? Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. I become confounded with his soul, and with him I pass from one condition to another. But why that? I know nothing about it? But he who wrote Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ knew well why he found himself in a certain condition. That condition led him to certain actions, and for that reason to him had a meaning, but to me none, none whatever. And that is why music provokes an excitement which it does not bring to a conclusion. For instance, a military march is played; the soldier passes to the sound of this march, and the music is finished. A dance is played; I have finished dancing, and the music is finished. A mass is sung; I receive the sacrament, and again the music is finished. But any other music provokes an excitement, and this excitement is not accompanied by the thing that needs properly to be done, and that is why music is so dangerous, and sometimes acts so frightfully. “In China music is under the control of the State, and that is the way it ought to be.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But love with a husband polluted by jealousy and ill-nature was no longer her ideal. She began to think of some other tenderness; at least, that is what I thought. She looked about her as if expecting some event or some being. I noticed it, and I could not help being anxious. “Always, now, it happened that, in talking with me through a third party (that is, in talking with others, but with the intention that I should hear), she boldly expressed,—not thinking that an hour before she had said the opposite,—half joking, half seriously, this idea that maternal anxieties are a delusion; that it is not worth while to sacrifice one’s life to children. When one is young, it is necessary to enjoy life. So she occupied herself less with the children, not with the same intensity as formerly, and paid more and more attention to herself, to her face,—although she concealed it,—to her pleasures, and even to her perfection from the worldly point of view. She began to devote herself passionately to the piano, which had formerly stood forgotten in the corner. There, at the piano, began the adventure. “The man appeared.” Posdnicheff seemed embarrassed, and twice again there escaped him that nasal sound of which I spoke above. I thought that it gave him pain to refer to the man, and to remember him. He made an effort, as if to break down the obstacle that embarrassed him, and continued with determination. “He was a bad man in my eyes, and not because he has played such an important rôle in my life, but because he was really such. For the rest, from the fact that he was bad, we must conclude that he was irresponsible. He was a musician, a violinist. Not a professional musician, but half man of the world, half artist. His father, a country proprietor, was a neighbor of my father’s. The father had become ruined, and the children, three boys, were all sent away. Our man, the youngest, was sent to his godmother at Paris. There they placed him in the Conservatory, for he showed a taste for music. He came out a violinist, and played in concerts.” On the point of speaking evil of the other, Posdnicheff checked himself, stopped, and said suddenly: “In truth, I know not how he lived.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  adopted. This tenuousness can (indeed must) be mitigated by seeking more broadly based plausibility structures. Typically, these are the churches or other wider religious groupings. By the very nature of their social character as voluntary associations “located” primarily in the private sphere, however, such churches can only augment the strength and durability of the required plausibility structures to a limited extent. The “polarization” of religion brought about by secularization, and the concomitant loss of commonality and/or “reality,” can also be described by saying that secularization ipso facto leads to a pluralistic situation. The term “pluralism,” to be sure, has usually been applied only to those cases (of which the American one is prototypical) in which different religious groups are tolerated by the state and engage in free competition with each other. There is little point to arguments over terminology and there is nothing wrong with this limited use of the term. If, however, one looks at the underlying social forces producing even this limited kind of pluralism, the deeper linkage between secularization and pluralism becomes apparent. One may then say that, as we have seen, secularization brings about a demonopolization of religious traditions and thus, ipso facto, leads to a pluralistic situation. Through most of human history religious establishments have existed as monopolies in society—monopolies, that is, in the ultimate legitimation of individual and collective life. Religious institutions really were institutions properly speaking, that is, regulatory agencies for both thought and action. The world as defined by the religious institution in question was the world, maintained not just by the mundane powers of the society and their instruments of social control, but much more fundamentally maintained by the “common 156

• From Going Clear (2013)

  In July 1977, thirteen-year-old Tom De Vocht signed the billion-year contract for the Sea Org. De Vocht became one of Miscavige’s allies and moved up the bureaucratic ladder quickly. In 1986, he was appointed the Commanding Officer of the Commodore’s Messengers Org at Flag. In 2001, Miscavige called him, complaining, “Tom, I can’t get my building done.” The new headquarters for the Religious Technology Center at Gold Base, Building 50, was years behind schedule and well over budget. Miscavige directed De Vocht to come to Gold Base and oversee the construction. The first day he got there, De Vocht realized that “this building is going to be the end of me.” Forty-seven million dollars—more than a thousand dollars per square foot—had previously been spent on the new center. The building had already been completed a couple of times, using the highest-grade materials—cold rolled steel, and anigre, a beautiful but extremely hard, pinkish African wood—only to have components ripped out because they didn’t meet Miscavige’s standards. Miscavige’s desk, also made of steel, was so heavy that De Vocht worried whether the structure would support it. He discovered that there were no actual architectural drawings for the building; there were only renderings of what it should look like. The stucco exterior walls were already cracked because the whole edifice was at a 1.25-inch tilt. The walls weren’t actually connected to the floors. Even a minor earthquake (Gold Base was just west of the San Andreas Fault) might cause the whole building to collapse. De Vocht recommended that the building be torn down and rebuilt from scratch, but Miscavige rejected that idea. The expense of essentially rebuilding a poorly constructed building from the inside was immense. When De Vocht had almost finished construction, having spent an additional $60 million, Miscavige still had a list of complaints. He was also critical of the landscaping. Gold Base is in a desert, but Miscavige demanded that the building appear to be set in a forest. One morning, De Vocht says, Miscavige and his wife were inspecting the large vault in the legal department of Building 50, when the leader stopped in his tracks and began rubbing his head. He turned pale. “Where did we put the gold bullion?” he asked his wife. For a full minute, Miscavige kept rubbing his head and asking about the gold, but then he snapped out of it and went on as if nothing had happened. De Vocht recalls that forty-five minutes later, Shelly Miscavige called him and asked him, “What are we going to do? He’s losing it.” She told him that Dave had gone “Type 3”—psychotic—because of all the Suppressive Persons at the base.3 While De Vocht was working on Building 50, he was forced to attend a séance with five hundred other Sea Org members on Gold Base.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The very sight of her was enough to frighten one. She was like a spirited carriage-horse that has long been idle, and suddenly finds itself without a bridle. As for my wife, she had no bridle, as for that matter, ninety-nine hundredths of our women have none.” CHAPTER XIX. Posdnicheff’s face had become transformed; his eyes were pitiable; their expression seemed strange, like that of another being than himself; his moustache and beard turned up toward the top of his face; his nose was diminished, and his mouth enlarged, immense, frightful. “Yes,” he resumed “she had grown stouter since ceasing to conceive, and her anxieties about her children began to disappear. Not even to disappear. One would have said that she was waking from a long intoxication, that on coming to herself she had perceived the entire universe with its joys, a whole world in which she had not learned to live, and which she did not understand. “‘If only this world shall not vanish! When time is past, when old age comes, one cannot recover it.’ Thus, I believe, she thought, or rather felt. Moreover, she could neither think nor feel otherwise. She had been brought up in this idea that there is in the world but one thing worthy of attention,—love. In marrying, she had known something of this love, but very far from everything that she had understood as promised her, everything that she expected. How many disillusions! How much suffering! And an unexpected torture,—the children! This torture had told upon her, and then, thanks to the obliging doctor, she had learned that it is possible to avoid having children. That had made her glad. She had tried, and she was now revived for the only thing that she knew,—for love. But love with a husband polluted by jealousy and ill-nature was no longer her ideal. She began to think of some other tenderness; at least, that is what I thought. She looked about her as if expecting some event or some being. I noticed it, and I could not help being anxious. “Always, now, it happened that, in talking with me through a third party (that is, in talking with others, but with the intention that I should hear), she boldly expressed,—not thinking that an hour before she had said the opposite,—half joking, half seriously, this idea that maternal anxieties are a delusion; that it is not worth while to sacrifice one’s life to children. When one is young, it is necessary to enjoy life. So she occupied herself less with the children, not with the same intensity as formerly, and paid more and more attention to herself, to her face,—although she concealed it,—to her pleasures, and even to her perfection from the worldly point of view.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In order to console himself for the sale of the said box, the good Monsieur du Harpin projected its theft, and it was to me he entrusted the execution of his plan. After having delivered a long speech upon the indifference of robbery, upon, indeed, its usefulness in the world, since it maintains a sort of equilibrium which totally confounds the inequality of property; upon the infrequence of punishment, since out of every twenty thieves it could be proven that not above two dies on the gallows; after having demonstrated to me, with an erudition of which I had not dreamt Monsieur du Harpin capable, that theft was honored throughout Greece, that several races yet acknowledge it, favor it, and reward it for a bold deed simultaneously giving proof of courage and skill (two virtues indispensable to a warlike nation), after having, in a word, exalted his personal influence which would extricate me from all embarrassments in the event I should be detected, Monsieur du Harpin tendered me two lock picks, one to open the neighbor's front door, the other his secretary within which lay the box in question; incessantly he enjoined me to get him this box and, in return for so important a service, I could expect, for two years, to receive an additional crown. "Oh Monsieur!" I exclaimed, shuddering at his proposal, "is it possible a master dare thus corrupt his domestic ! What prevents me from turning against you the weapons you put into my hands? Du Harpin, much confused, fell back on a lame subterfuge; what he was doing, said he, was being done with the simple intention of testing me; how fortunate that I had resisted this temptation, he added... how I should have been doomed had I succumbed, etc. I scoffed at this lie; but I was soon enough aware of what a mistake it had been to answer him with such asperity: malefactors do not like to find resistance in those they seek to seduce; unfortunately, there is no middle ground or median attitude when one is so unlucky as to have been approached by them: one must necessarily thereupon become either their accomplices, which is exceedingly dangerous, or their enemies, which is even more so. Had I been a little experienced, I would have quit the house forthwith, but it was already written in Heaven that every one of the honest gestures that was to emanate from me would be answered by misfortunes.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  practical as well as theoretical difficulties for the religious groups in question, especially those that retain the institutional and intellectual habits deriving from the happy days when they were monopolies. For the individual, existing in a particular religious world implies existing in the particular social context within which that world can retain its plausibility. Where the nomos of individual life is more or less co-extensive with that religious world, separation from the latter implies the threat of anomy. Thus travel in areas where there were no Jewish communities was not only ritually impossible but inherently anomic (that is, threatening an anomic disintegration of the only conceivable “correct” way of living) for the traditional Jew, as travel outside India was for the traditional Hindu. Such journeys into darkness were to be shunned not only because the company of pork-eaters or cow-defilers caused ritual impurity but, more importantly, because their company threatened the “purity” of the Jewish or Hindu world—that is, its subjective reality or plausibility. Thus the agonizing question of the Babylonian exiles, “How can one worship Yahweh in an alien land?,” has a decisive cognitive dimension, which indeed has been the decisive question for diaspora Judaism ever since. Since every religious world is “based” on a plausibility structure that is itself the product of human activity, every religious world is inherently precarious in its reality. In other words, “conversion” (that is, individual “transference” into another world) is always possible in principle. This possibility increases with the degree of instability or discontinuity of the plausibility structure in question. Thus the Jew whose social ambience was limited by the confines of the ghetto was much less conversion-prone than the Jew existing in the “open societies” of modern Western countries (conversion here referring to “emigration” 63

• From Going Clear (2013)

  80 Aum’s membership: Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It , p. 6. 81 with resources close to $1 billion: Ibid., p. 37. 82 “Hitler was thinking”: Russ Baker, “Clash of the Titans,” George , April 1997. 83 friends or clients of Fields: Bertram Fields, response to Lauren Wolf queries. 84 “fact-finding mission”: David Hudson, “Scientology’s ‘Holocaust,’ ” Salon Daily Clicks , Feb. 25, 1997. 85 “Individuals and businesses throughout”: Testimony of John Travolta, “Religious Intolerance in Europe Today,” hearing before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), Sept. 18, 1997. 86 “He said he wanted to help”: Josh Young, “Bill Clinton’s Grand Seduction,” George , March 1998. 87 “Scientology point person”: Ibid. 88 The Germans were puzzled: Stephen A. Kent, “Hollywood’s Celebrity-Lobbyists and the Clinton Administration’s American Foreign Policy toward German Scientology,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 1 (Spring 2002). 89 “This is not a church”: Jennifer Tanaka, “Hollywood versus Germany over Scientology,” Maclean’s , Jan. 20, 1997. 8. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY 1 “mother school”: Interview with Lauren Haggis. 2 “I guess I’m not supposed”: Ibid. 3 “Oh, yeah”: Interview with Alissa Haggis. 4 Miscavige was hopeful: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun; Anna Schecter, “Tom Cruise’s Former Scientology Auditor Speaks about Cruise/Kidman Divorce,” Rock Center with Brian Williams , July 11, 2012. The church issued a denial that Kidman was considered a Suppressive Person; see Maureen Orth, “What Katie Didn’t Know: Marriage, Scientology-Style,” Vanity Fair , Oct. 2012. 5 “He was not in good shape”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 6 she had suffered a miscarriage: Meryl Gordon, “Nicole Kidman Tells It Like It Is,” Marie Claire , Nov. 11, 2007. 7 “Nic knows exactly”: Dickerson, Nicole Kidman , pp. 146–47. 8 He paired Cruise with: Interview with Jason Beghe. Cruise’s attorney says, “Mr. Cruise may have had a chance encounter with Jason Beghe at the Celebrity Center, but had no meeting with him.” 9 He had known Cruise: Interview with Tommy Davis. 10 reporting directly to Shelly Miscavige: Interview with Claire Headley. 11 Rathbun assigned Davis to: Interview with Jason Beghe. 12 One of the issues: One Day One Destiny , French documentary produced by Magneto Presse, 2009. 13 “Tommy told them over and over”: Dana Kennedy, “Katie Holmes ‘Biggest Nightmare’ in Scientology History, Say Experts,” Hollywood Reporter , July 4, 2012. 14 Rathbun’s auditing sessions: Interview with Tom De Vocht. Marc Headley told Vanity Fair that there were cameras behind a piece of furniture and in a lamp recording Cruise’s sessions: “There were two views—one close-up of the E-Meter dial and the other a long shot over Marty’s shoulder, showing Tom Cruise holding the cans.” Maureen Orth, “What Katie Didn’t Know,” Vanity Fair , Oct. 2012. 15 “I think I’m done”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 16 “I have never met”: 2004 International Association of Scientologists Freedom Medal of Valor Ceremony. 17 Cruise poured millions: Reitman, Inside Scientology , p. 290. 18 “would understand the details”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun; www.themortonreport.com/celebrity/notables/exclusive-bill-clinton-tom-cruise-plotted-to-use-tony-blair-to-gain-tax-breaks-for-scientology/ .

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The storm lasted ten days, propelling the ship eight hundred miles north, all the way to the Azores. Portuguese postcard of the Apollo Looking for a safe port, Hubbard turned toward Morocco. He thought that an Arab country might be safer and less conspicuous for the Scientology fleet, which had gained too much unfavorable attention in European ports. In October 1969, he dropped anchor in Safi, near Marrakesh. At last the crew, shaken and hungry, could take on stores. Hubbard began sizing up the country as a possible Scientology homeland. He picked Kit Harrington and Richard Wrigley, another redhead, to lead an exploratory mission to the capital, Rabat. The only order they got from Hubbard was to “secure Morocco.” Wrigley and Harrington set up in the Hôtel La Tour Hassan, where diplomats typically stayed. Wrigley became friendly with an African envoy and drifted off to the Ivory Coast, leaving Kit to secure Morocco by herself. She established an office titled the American Institute of Human Engineering and Development, and sold a project to develop hydroponic farming to the Moroccan government. That project went nowhere, but it gave her legitimate cover. With her social skills, she soon found herself hobnobbing with the royal palace’s inner circles—in particular, she made friends among some high-ranking military officers, including a tall, handsome intelligence officer named Colonel Allam. As it happened, Colonel Allam and Kit shared a birthday, May 17, so she found herself invited to a soiree at the governor’s palace in Marrakesh. In the middle of the party, there was a great stir caused by the arrival of General Mohammed Oufkir, the truculent minister of the interior. General Oufkir cast a long shadow over the nation, which had long been terrorized by the tyrannical rule of King Hassan II. Kit immediately sized him up as a shady figure—tall, hollow-cheeked, his eyes hidden by dark glasses, the blood of so many of his countrymen on his hands. Her Moroccan friends bluntly warned Kit to keep her distance from the military, but Hubbard was pressing her to do the very opposite. He and Mary Sue rented a villa in Tangier. Mary Sue was thrilled; she hated being cooped up aboard ship. The prospect of taking over Morocco began to seem not so farfetched. For most of the next year, Kit lived in Rabat, reporting to the Apollo every couple of months. In July 1971, Colonel Allam invited her and two other Scientologists to watch a war-games exercise on the occasion of the king’s forty-second birthday. The games, which were held at the king’s summer palace in Skhirat, were a panoramic fantasia of Berber tribesmen on camels, followed by infantry formations and tank maneuvers.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Amid all the anxiety, Suzette had a miscarriage. After Suzette blew, Guy recalls being sent to Happy Valley and being told he would have to divorce his wife. Jonathan Horwich, Roanne’s father, was also in Happy Valley, along with Arthur Hubbard, Ron and Mary Sue’s youngest child. One night, while Horwich was supposed to be standing guard, Arthur blew and was never recovered. In October 1988, Guy also decided to escape. Each evening, he went for a stroll along the fence line, a little farther each time, carrying a snack for the German shepherd guard dogs. One night, he jumped the fence, but the dogs betrayed him and began barking. He had to dive off the road when he saw the lights of the blow team coming after him. For hours, he stumbled through the brush, bleeding, his clothes torn, until he made it to Hemet, where he pounded on the door of a bowling alley. In broken Spanish, he told the person who peeked out that he had been in a car wreck. Guy finally rejoined Suzette. (They had two other children before he came out to her as gay. They divorced in 1998.) LIKE PAUL HAGGIS, Tom Cruise had been raised Catholic, although he was more religiously inclined than Paul. His family moved frequently, and he spent part of his childhood in Canada, where he had the reputation of being a headstrong, troublesome, charismatic, and charming boy. His schoolwork suffered because of dyslexia, and he later said that when he graduated from high school he was “a functional illiterate.” However, he excelled in sports and drama. His family, like the Haggis family, threw themselves into theater, founding an amateur troupe of players in Ottawa. His antisocial, bullying father was a disruptive force in the family, and early one morning, when Cruise was twelve, his mother packed up her three daughters and her precocious son and fled back to America. “We felt like fugitives,” Cruise later recalled. Spiritual questing and a tendency toward piety were already features of Cruise’s personality. He spent a year in seminary in Cincinnati, with a view toward joining the priesthood. But there was another, intensely ambitious side that was focused entirely on stardom. He went to Hollywood when he was eighteen, and managed to get a role in Endless Love, a movie starring Brooke Shields. He was a natural actor, but also persistent and choosy, quickly finding his way into memorable roles. The longing to express his spiritual side had never gone away, but it was difficult, in Hollywood, to know exactly how to fit that in.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Brown, whose conscience was not entirely clear upon my account, as knowing as she was of the town as hackneyed as she was in bluffing through all the dangers of her vocation, could not help being alarmed at the questions, especially when he went on to talk of a Justice of peace, Newgate, the Old Bailey, indictments for keeping a disorderly house, pillory, carting, and the whole process of that nature. She, who, it is likely, imagined I had lodged an information against her house, looked extremely blank, and began to make a thousand protestations and excuses. However, to abridge, they brought away triumphantly my box of things, which, had she not ben under an awe, she might have disputed with them; and not only that, but a clearance and discharge of any demands on the house, at the expense of no more than a bowl of arrack-punch, the treat of which, together with the choice of the house conveniences, was offered and not accepted. Charles all the time acted the chance companion of the lawyer, who had brought him there, as he knew the house, and appeared in no wise interested in the issue; but he had the collateral pleasure of hearing all that I told him verified, as far as the bawd’s fears would give her leave to enter into my history, which, if one may guess by the composition she so readily came into, were not small. Phœbe, my kind tutoress Phœbe, was at the time gone out, perhaps in search of me, or their cooked-up story had not, it is probable, passed smoothly. This negociation had, however, taken up some time, which would have appeared much longer to me, left as I was, in a strange house, if the landlady, a motherly sort of a woman, to whom Charles had liberally recommended me, had not come up and borne me company. We drank tea, and her chat helped to pass away the time very agreeably, since he was our theme; but as the evening deepened, and the hour set for his return was elapsed, I could not dispel the gloom of impatience, and tender fears which gathered upon me, and which our timid sex are apt to feel in proportion to their love. Long, however, I did not suffer: the sight of him over-paid me; and the soft reproach I had prepared for him, expired before it reached my lips.