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.

Page 163 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “What mountain?” Charles asked. The mountains of Tennessee. Math camp, yes, the sound of rain striking the tin of the outhouses. The perfect, succulent light of late summer in the cabins, riddled with dust motes. Running between the trees. Rain, so much rain. Their papers covered in scrawl, their handwriting silly, messy. The trim beards of the counselors. Their warm hands steering Lionel, age five, a scraped knee on the gravel path, down to the canoes, where they were forbidden to go. Ben Tovelson, nineteen, bearish, kind, green, winking eyes, showing Lionel how to write his name in the dust with piss. The damp wet of his mouth on Lionel, down there. No. Another way. Another memory. The vacations he had taken with his parents. The damp, chuffing sounds of their arguments trailing into throaty moans when they thought he was asleep. The soft rustle of the nylon sleeping bag. The cold enamel of the cups. The crack of the branches in the fire. Their car striking ruts in the road as they drove up the trail and then back out. The slow slope of the green hills, the vastness of the pine forest, the terrible distance, so far up, high above everything and everyone. That memory condensed, intensified—the rushing, clear air, the water, the call of animals, the emptiness of the perfect darkness that descends on a mountain where few people are living. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some mountain.” Charles reached for his hand. Lionel pivoted away. They passed again through the liberal arts building. Their steps echoed. Charles had parked near the campus. Lionel wished that he were as carefree as Sophie. He wished that he was the sort of person to run up the steep wall and wait to be drawn back down. He wished that he could manage some careless, easy gesture. But he was not. And Charles had noticed that he was avoiding contact. There was a distance between them. A quiet that grew bigger as they walked on. In the car, Lionel rolled down the window. Charles looked at him. “Are you nuts?” As they pulled out of the parking lot and into the street, Lionel closed his eyes. The cold air against his face seemed to open, leaving a cavity that was warm and hollow, deeper down in the flow of air. He pressed his face into it as if into a clear stream, and he could feel the cold rushing out and away, sliding past him. He opened his eyes, and the night was a gray smear of other lights, yellow and red and white, all of them blending until they were indistinct. He couldn’t breathe. He was drowning.

• From Escape (2007)

  Warren’s hold over the FLDS kept increasing as his father continued to decline. Uncle Rulon was rarely seen in public anymore, and no one was ever allowed to have an appointment with him. Merril’s daughters said that none of his wives was allowed to see him unless Warren gave them permission. The girls also circulated stories that said Uncle Rulon complained that Warren had taken his job away and that he wanted it back. On the rare occasions when Uncle Rulon appeared in public, no one was allowed to talk to him and only a few of the chosen were allowed to shake his hand. One of the most noticeable changes was that girls were being assigned in marriages at younger and younger ages. When Uncle Rulon first came to power, girls didn’t marry until they were over twenty. After his first stroke, the age dropped into the late teens. The sicker he got, the younger the brides in the community became. I remember when Uncle Rulon married a fourteen-year-old girl to her stepfather. Warren had taken the girl’s biological father away from her mother and excommunicated him. Then he assigned her mother to another man. Several months later, the fourteen-year-old girl was married to the same man as her mother. I was determined to protect Betty. But I also knew I couldn’t do it and stay in the community. Harrison was still too sick to attempt an escape. Bryson was fragile, but gaining strength. Making them stable and strong was my priority. All our lives depended on it. Harrison’s infection cleared, but a week later he developed another. This went on for months. He would be admitted to the hospital, be discharged, but yo-yo back in a week or two. Dr. Smith thought Harrison would need to have the port out because it was causing his infections. The surgeon felt that we should give it a little more time and see if the condition could resolve itself. Then Luke had his accident. Luke was Merril and Ruth’s seventeen-year-old son. He was working construction in Page and had a dirt bike—something usually frowned upon in our culture because they’re unsafe. Boys who ride them are considered rebellious. So no one in the rest of the family knew about it. A police officer found Luke unconscious by the side of the road. A life flight took him from the local hospital in Page to the one in St. George. Merril’s office was notified that a parent needed to be there soon after Luke’s flight arrived to sign papers in case he needed emergency surgery. Luke was in critical condition. His spleen was bleeding and surgery might be the only way it could be stopped.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel knew the café where Sophie worked—he avoided it because it was popular with undergraduates. It was crowded, noisy, the last place you could get any work done or be alone with your thoughts. But when he arrived via the seldom-used entrance from the adjoining library, he was surprised to find it empty except for Sophie and another barista. Sophie sat at a table near the window, looking out. Lionel wondered if she was looking for him—the window faced onto the quad and the usual entrance—and the thought touched him. But when the door shut behind him, she looked up and frowned in mock surprise. “You have your tricks,” she said. “Some.” At her table, he unwound his scarf and unzipped his jacket. She reached out and stuck her finger through a hole in the collar of his shirt. “What happened there?” she said. Lionel pulled his chin back and looked down as she traced the hole, then flattened the collar with a little pat. “There we go.” “Oh, thanks.” “Do you want something? To eat, to drink?” She had gotten up, rested her knuckles against her hip. She was wearing black tights and a sweater the color of weak tea. Lionel found it a little hard to make eye contact with her. He pressed his hands to his cheeks. “Oh, I’m fine. Well. Yes. A coffee,” Lionel said, and when she returned a few minutes later with the coffee in a small carafe, he asked, “How much do I owe you?” She slapped his arm. She had already touched him twice. It felt like he was racking up a debt he wouldn’t be able to repay. Yes, she’d said she knew about Charles, but about what did she know? Did she know the whole of it? About this morning, too? The more he let her touch him, be kind to him, the worse it would be when she found out everything. The harder it would be to salvage anything like friendship. “I can afford a cup of coffee at least,” she said. Lionel could feel the small mound of his wallet in his pocket. “Next time’s on you.” “Is it always so busy?” Lionel asked. Overhead, Christmas music was playing. It was only November. “Very funny.” Sophie said. “It’s our slow season, I guess. The calm before the storm.” “Finals.” “Bingo. You must get busy, too, around then,” she said. “I don’t really know. It’s my first finals season as a proctor,” Lionel said. The coffee burned his tongue. “You proctored today, right? What kind of test? Can you say?” She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. Her eyes seemed lit with real curiosity. “History,” Lionel said. She had a mole on her neck, black as a pupil. She had bright blue eyes. She had painted her fingernails pale matte pink. The tips of her fingers were cracking and white. She caught him looking at her hands.

• From Escape (2007)

  Harrison was almost four, unable to walk or talk, and still in diapers. He couldn’t eat food by mouth. He had a feeding tube that sent high-calorie liquids directly into his stomach. To help build up his strength, I began expressing my breast milk—I was still nursing my youngest baby—and adding it to Harrison’s feeding tube. I did this for six months, and it seemed to work. Before I started Harrison on breast milk, I was taking him to the hospital about once a week. But in that six-month period before we fled, I didn’t have to take him at all. But I did have to get him to eat food by mouth. Harrison screamed and fought me whenever I put food into his mouth. He hated it. But I knew I couldn’t take all his equipment and feeding supplies with us when we escaped. Pizza saved the day. Harrison loved it. I finally got him to chew and swallow bits of pizza. It took almost four months, but I finally convinced him to eat small bits of other foods. Harrison was profoundly handicapped, but he helped save us. He needed nearly 24/7 care. I know my husband thought I would never be able to escape with Harrison. How could I? Harrison needed oxygen to sleep. I kept an oxygen machine by his crib so he’d be able to breathe. I was worried about taking him off the oxygen, but it was a risk I just had to take. At 4:00 A.M. I started getting everybody up. I was very matter-of-fact when I awakened each of my children. I said Harrison was sick and needed to go to the doctor. This was completely plausible—Harrison went to doctors a lot. The younger children thought this would be a great adventure. They didn’t get to leave the community very often. I told the older children that since Arthur was home, everyone had to come with me so we could take family pictures afterward at Sears. My older children were annoyed. They didn’t want to come. I insisted. One of Merril’s other wives walked in as my daughter Betty was getting dressed. She was suspicious and started questioning Betty. It was about 4:20 A.M. She then apparently called my husband and reported that I was up and dressing my children. My father told me later that Merril called him about 4:25 A.M. and said, “What the hell is Carolyn doing? She’s up and getting all her children dressed.” Dad was telling him the truth when he said he had no idea what was happening. I think Merril was caught off guard. I’d been so careful not to arouse any suspicions in him in recent weeks. We’d even had sex two days before.

• From Querelle (1953)

  It is one that can be seen functioning in everybody's consciousness, not only in those who have attained an awareness of their complexity. Nevertheless it should be pointed out that Querelle who needed to have all his resources at his disposal any given moment was thus obliged to rely more or less constantly on extracting them from his own inner contradictions. When Dede had told him about the fight.between the two brothers, gleefully dwelling on the insults Robert had been hurling at Querelle, Mario at once experienced a feeling of tremendous deliverance while not yet knowing from what it was he had been saved. It originated in a sudden and as yet hazy notion that Querelle had had something to do With the murder of the sailor called Vic. It was hazy, because the dominant feeling was one of relief, sweetness and light. Mario felt himself saved, by this single, far from lucid idea. Slowly, and taking this sense of salvation for his point of departure, he then established .. effective connections between that murder and what he thought he knew about homosexuals : if it were true that Nona had buggered him, then Querelle had to be a "queer." And that immediately made him a very plausible candidate for the murderer of that or any sailor. l\1ario's fantasies about Querelle were inaccurate, no doubt, yet they enabled him to discover the truth. Continuing his musings about Querelle and the murder, he immediately came up against the idea regarded as quite 142 I JEAN GENET certain by the police authorities-that Gil had committed both murders; for fear of betraying himself, he could not contradict it openly. Then he proceeded to establish his own conclusions, by methodical guesswork, and finally decided to give in to the lovely dance of hypotheses. He thought of Querelle in love with Vic, then killing him in a fit of jealous rage; or vice versa, Vic, overwhelmed by similar emotion, trying to kill Querelle and becoming his victim. Mario spent an entire day juggling these ideas, none of which were verifiable, but slowly becoming more and more certain of Querelle's guilt. Mario conjured up Querelle's face, pale despite its sailor's tan, pale and so similar to his brother's. That resemblance provoked a kind of charming confusion in �1ario's mind, a witches' cauldron of thoughts that were not to Querelle' s advantage. One evening, down by the old moat, the appearance of the two brothers made him feel ill �t ease in a way not dissimilar to Madame Lysiane's experience. Mario found he could take every one of Querelle's traits and effortlessly recombine them into a mental image of Robert's face. Slowly this image filled out and took the place of the face Mario was looking at. In the dark of the night, under the trees, Mario remained motionless for a few seconds. He was tom between the actual face he saw and the superimposed image.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle jumped to salute the vague figure that had appeared in front of him. First and foremost, he saluted the severe voice that pierced the fog, with all the assurance emanating from a place that was light and warm and real, framed in gold. 38 I JEAN GENET "Under orders to report to the Naval Police, Lieutenant." The officer came closer. "You're ashore?" Querelle held himself to attention but contrived to hide, under his sleeve, the wrist on which he was wearing the gold watch. "You'll take the next boat back. I want you to take an order ·to the Paymaster's Office." Lieutenant Seblon scrawled a few words on an envelope and gave it to the seaman. He also gave him, in too dry a tone of voice;· a few commonplace instructions. Querelle heard the tension in his voice. His smile flickered over a still trembling upper lip. He felt both uneasy at the officer's unexpectedly early return and pleased about it; pleased, above all, at meeting him there, after emerging from a state of panic-the ship's Lieutenant, whose steward he was. "Go." Only this word the Lieutenant pronounced with regret, without that customary harshness, even without the serene authority that a firm mouth ought to have given it. Querelle cracked a cautious smile. He saluted and headed toward the Customs House, then once again ascended the steps to the main road. That the Lieutenant should have caught him unawares, before there was time for recognition, was deeply wounding : it ripped open the opaque envelope which, he liked to believe, hid him from men's view. It then worked its way into the cocoon of daydreams he had been spinning the past few minutes, and out of which he now drew this thread, this visible adventure, conducted in the world of men and objects, already turning into the drama he half suspected, much as a tubercular person tastes the blood in his saliva, rising in his throat. Querelle pulled himself together: he had to, to safeguard the integrity of that domain into which even · the highestranking officers were not permitted any insight. Querelle rarely responded even to the most distant familiarity. Lieutenant 39 I QUERELLE Seblon never did anything-whether he thought he did, or not-to establish any familiarity with his steward; such were the excessive defenses the officer armoreq himself with. While making Querelle smile, he left it to him to take any step toward intimacy. As bad luck would have it, such awkward attempts only served to put Querelle out. A few moments ago he had smiled because his Lieutenant's voice had been a reassuring sound. Now a sense of danger made the old Querelle bare his teeth. He had gone off with a gold watch from the Lieutenant's cabin drawer, but it was only because he had believed that the Lieutenant had really departed on a long furlough.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Also, if we have one more start-up left in us, it will be a school for organizers. Wilma can pass on her gift for creating independence; I can explain why stories and listening are part of change that comes from the bottom up. Organizers from this and other countries can come to teach and brainstorm solutions to one another’s problems. In March I’m at a conference at my own college, where I always imagine my former self on campus, a little scared and out of place. Yet now I’m about to be seventy-six and planning to live to a hundred. I’m doing work I love, with friends I love. What could be better than that? Then I get an unusual message from Wilma: Can I come now instead of waiting for May ? I know what this means. I cancel conference and birthday plans. On the phone with Charlie, I learn that Wilma has been diagnosed with fourth-stage pancreatic cancer. It is one of the least curable and most painful forms. Two plane flights and a long drive later, I arrive at Wilma and Charlie’s house on Mankiller Flats. Her caregiving team is assembling. Besides Charlie, there are Gina and Felicia, her two daughters, who come and go from their nearby homes; Dr. Gloria Grim, a young physician who heads the Cherokee Rural Health Clinics that Wilma started; also two of Wilma’s longtime women friends, one a nurse. They have had a lifetime pact to come and stay whenever one of Wilma’s many health crises seems likely to be her last. Wilma herself is lying in a hospital bed next to the big four-poster she shares with Charlie, so they will still be in the same room. She is calm, honest, laconic, even funny, and as clear as any doctor about what is happening inside her body. She can tell I haven’t accepted any of this yet. As if to comfort me, she says most Americans want to die at home, but many spend their last weeks in a hospital without friends and family. I ask her if she’s now organizing a campaign for the right to die at home. This makes her laugh, and I buy some time. All I can think of is her description of her near-death experience after the head-on car crash years earlier. She told me it felt as if she were flying through space, faster than any living thing could fly, feeling warm and loved in every pore of her being, as if she were one with the universe, then realizing: This is the purpose of life! Only the thought of her two young daughters made her turn back. I’ve always remembered that and hoped other people I love would share this last feeling. One day I hope I will, too.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Now he was just a copper again, but lacking a counterpart (or adversary) he felt diminished. He could only be a true policeman at his own outer limits, which was where he carried on his war against the criminal world. He was unable to create, within himself, the sense of consistency and profound unity that is the internal battle of contrary desires. Although he was most definitely a policeman, Mario knew that he carried in himself a delinquent, perhaps even a criminal-in any case, the shady character he would have become, had he not chosen to be a policeman-but his betrayal of Tony had cut him off from the criminal world, had made it impossible for him to refer himself to it. Now he had to stand outside and be the judge. No longer 247 I QUERELLE could he enter into it as if it were a sympathetic and malleable element. That love every artist feels for his material, in his case the n1aterial did not reciprocate. Thus he could only wait and worry. In that one glimmer of hope of salvation he somehow connected the revenge of the dockers with the glaring evidence for Querelle's guilt. During the day he talked and cracked jokes with his colleagues whom he had never told about the threats that had been addressed to him. Almost every evening he met Querelle by the railroad embankment. It had not occurred to him that the discovery of the cigarette lighter lying next to Vic's dead body could indicate complicity behveen Gil and the sailor; thus he hadn't thought of putting Querelle under surveillance. On his way back from the old prison Querelle came by the embankn1ent. He felt no friendly emotion toward the detective, but kept meeting him out of a habit that was based on his being at Mario's mercy. He also believed that the relationship afforded him some protection. He felt the roots growing. In the dark of one evening he whispered : . ''If you caught me swiping something, would you put me in the cooler?" Taken literally, the expression "you could have knocked him down with a feather" isn't exactly true, yet the state of fragility to which it reduces the person who provokes it obliges us to use it : "you could have knocked" Mario "down with a feather." His reply, though, was foxy enough : usure, why not? I'd be doing my duty." "So it would be your duty to have me put away? That's not very funny!" "That's the way it is, though. And if you killed someone, I'd send you on your way to the old chopper." "I see." Back on his feet again after what neither he nor the detective would have gone so far as to call an act of love, Querelle became a man again, facing another man . He had a little smile on his face as he stood there, buttoning up, closing the buckle 248 I JEAN GENET

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel climbed the stairs and tried to arrange his stiff face into a friendly expression, the effort of which made his scalp tingle. He had walked only part of the way, about ten minutes in all. The bus had dropped him on the other side of Orton Park. When the host realized that Lionel wasn’t going to answer, he said, “Well, you’re right on time.” “I didn’t have a chance to go to the store—I just got back,” Lionel said. The several pairs of shoes in the front hall indicated to him that this was not the small gathering he had thought it would be. It also indicated that he was not right on time, but he knew that already. “Long trip?” The host wrapped his arm around Lionel’s lower back and pulled at him until they were very close, at the threshold of the apartment, but not yet inside. “Good?” “Couple weeks,” Lionel said. “Sorry for not being in touch more.” “It’s a busy time,” the host said in a way that wasn’t entirely not passive aggressive. Lionel turned his head a little out of reflexive guilt, and the host’s dry lips grazed the corner of his mouth. “Thank you,” Lionel said. “It’s good to see you. Let’s talk tonight. Catch up. It’s been forever.” “Yeah, let’s.” A few of the guests sat around on mismatched chairs and on the floor, holding plates of damp vegetables and grains. The improvised nature of the gathering diluted the strangeness he felt standing there alone, because although he was clearly a latecomer, the rest of them didn’t seem to belong to one another in the way that friends sometimes could. There was no operating logic to their association that he could see. They were all awkward, anxious strangers in the host’s living room. He waved to them, and they waved back. Their having seen him and his having seen them moved him. Lionel felt alive, in the world. The larger, noisier contingent of guests assembled their food in the kitchen. Lionel waited his turn, watching as they pirouetted and collided. They touched the smalls of each other’s backs and shoulders. Men and women. They hugged and kissed and pressed against each other. Looped arms and hooked thumbs into each other’s pockets. They poured wine and spooned things onto each other’s plates. The loud whack of plastic trays and the tinkle of ice, the hiss of seltzer. As they finished and squeezed by Lionel, he saw that they were about his age, twenty-four, or a little older. They smelled like tobacco and bright, vegetal things—orchids, hydrangeas. They said hey and hi and excuse me, and he stepped back to let them pass.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “No way,” Sophie said. “You stay put.” He felt her foot then against his knee, keeping in place. She smiled at him, but it was not a joke. Then she turned to Charles and asked him if he wanted some water or a coffee. Charles said that he wanted an espresso, with a tonic back. She made an elaborate bow at him and got up. Charles took her chair, and when she was around the corner, when they could hear her tamping out the used coffee, Charles turned to Lionel. “What’s all this?” “She asked me here,” Lionel said. “I’m not trying anything.” “That is so typical of her.” Charles shook his head, leaned back in the chair. “She’s playing a game. She thinks everything is fucking hilarious.” “She said she knew already. About last night.” “Yeah, I told her earlier—sorry if that was supposed to be a secret or something,” Charles said. Lionel watched his lips shape into an amused smirk, the little dimple in his right cheek appearing, then vanishing. “She seemed fine with it.” Charles turned and gripped the back of the chair, gave his body a hard wrench. Lionel’s breath caught at the mobility of his joints. How easy it was for him to attain such a ridiculous position. The espresso machine hissed. “You all right?” “I can go if you want.” “No, don’t. She’d just make a whole case about it,” Charles said. “Better to let her have her way.” Sophie returned with the espresso and the small glass boot filled with tonic water. Charles shifted over to the empty chair closer to the window, away from Lionel, and Sophie reclaimed her seat. The small espresso cup was a deep caramel color. The crema was beautiful, perfect, and Charles sipped it to test the heat. Sophie had her chin on her palm, appraising his reaction. They had a whole routine down. One that excluded Lionel, made him feel extraneous, with his collar with the hole in it and his scarf and his anxiety. He rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them, and in the process drew Sophie’s attention. Not in any obvious way, but he could feel the tension in her gaze shift slightly in his direction. Charles had seen him naked, of course, and had touched him. But that touching and that seeing had been focused in its particulars. They hadn’t talked about their bodies, only used them. It was different in the café. He had that feeling again, the one like watching an intimate function at a friend’s house, the way two people who loved each other shared a context that had nothing to do with him. He was stupid for staying, for listening, when Charles and Sophie told him to stay put. He should have listened to himself. After all, his duty was to himself. Like that old line from his doctors: Your duty is to your health. You owe yourself that much.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “It’s fine,” Mats said, voice leaping. “It’s so fine. Don’t even worry about it.” “About what?” Octavius said, cutting his eyes across the two of them. “Please,” Mats said, rolling his eyes, this time putting a fine point at the end of the word. Alek coughed into the crook of his arm, and the noise overrode everything else. “You said you’d go to the doctor.” “I did,” Alek said. “I went.” “And?” “It’s nothing,” he said, tossing it off as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “It’s fine.” “It’s been weeks? Months? Is it fine?” “I knew someone with a cough like that once,” Octavius said. “Turned out to be a pretty nasty infection.” “Well, the doctor said I was fine, so I’m fine.” Mats dug an elbow into Alek’s side, which dislodged some hard knot and made the coughing worse. He could taste blood again. The world blotted, shifting. He took a deep breath. “You don’t look so hot, Alek,” Mats said. “Maybe you should go home.” “I’ve never missed a class.” “You should go home,” Octavius pressed. “Do you want me to walk with you?” “You just want to cut class,” Alek said wryly, trying to smile, but there was a hard, jagged heat running down his body, and it hurt to breathe. “Come on, let’s go,” Octavius said, reaching for him, but Alek pulled away. “No, it’s fine.” Mats put his palm to Alek’s back, and Alek looked away from him because he didn’t want to see Mats’s fine features screwed up in a mask of worry. Alek was always causing so much trouble. “I’ll go, I’ll go,” he said. “You two stay. Cavort, whatever it is you do.” He pulled himself up to a standing position, put his palms up as if to say that he had been disarmed by their care, by their love, and he gathered his things and left. • • • On the way home, he paused in the cold and dialed Grigori. Night was not yet upon them. The sky was a bowl of blue light pierced from some other, outer light glowing on the horizon. He stood outside his favorite coffee shop and thought of going in, but he didn’t because it would be loud there and Grigori would complain about the noise on the line. “Hello?” came Grigori’s voice, a bellow even at low volume. “Grigori,” Alek said. “What do you want?” Alek paused on the line. He didn’t know how to begin it, his request, if it was a request. He didn’t know how to say the words. “Hello? Sasha? Hello?” “I went to the doctor today.” “For what? You sick?” “I’ve been coughing.” “So you have a cold? Flu? What?” “I don’t know,” Alek said. He could feel Grigori’s irritation growing. Grigori’s voice was hard when he said: “What do you mean you don’t know? What did the doctor say? Who is this doctor? Some midwestern quack? Who is this? What did he say?”

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  At last, a majority agreed that feminism meant all females as a caste, and that antilesbian bias could be used to stop any woman until it could stop no woman. Up to then, I had feared that our opposition was more unified than we were. For instance, the same groups that opposed contraception and abortion also opposed sexual relationships between two people of the same sex. It was irrational on the surface, but the religious right wing was against any sex that couldn’t end in conception. Now a representative majority was united, too, in recognizing that human sexual expression was not only a way to reproduce if we chose to, but also a way of pleasuring and bonding. By the end of the first day’s marathon, Bella got laughter and cheers when she broke the tension by saying, “Good night, my loves!” —MY SURPRISE DUTY AT the conference was a last-minute request from the various women-of-color caucuses to be a kind of scribe. I was to go from one hotel room to the next, one meeting to the next, writing down concerns that were shared by all, combining language for their approval, and appending issues that were unique to each. The goal was to compose a substitute for the so-called Minority Women’s Plank that had come up from individual state conferences, yet women of color hadn’t been able to meet as a group. Asian Americans were spread from Hawaii to New York. The Hispanic Caucus was mainly Chicanas on one coast and Puerto Ricans on the other. African Americans came from everywhere, and members of the American Indian and Alaskan Native Caucus were the most spread out of all. Houston was their first and only chance to meet and come up with a plank that included their shared and specific issues. Yet if they met during the day, they would miss crucial floor votes. As usual, double discrimination meant double the work. I was to be what they referred to cheerfully as “our token,” that is, the only one who wasn’t a woman of color, going early in the morning or after hours at night from one drafting group to the next as they met in different hotel rooms. I would combine language where possible and list unique issues, then give the result back for the approval of all. This was an honor, but it also upped my already high anxiety level. I was afraid I would mess up. I wasn’t even sure I could physically get to each meeting in the midst of conference chaos. As I went from one caucus to the next, I saw women camped out on every surface around breakfast or late-night snacks, from Houston’s idea of bagels to Tex-Mex pizzas.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Staring into the darkness. Feeling his own presence, electric, in the silently whispering dark. He returns to the concrete grotto. Along the path a shadowy figure emerges slowly. Jim moves into an arc of light. The figure advances, looks at him, and avoids the concrete grotto—and Jim—by climbing over the slight incline to one side. Without looking back, he crosses the road to the other side. Am I looking too tough? Jim wonders. Unapproachable? He remembers the two in Griffith Park this afternoon who turned to each other in the arena while he was there. His present need increases. Time. He feels a retreating hint, like a brushing wing, of the hellish judgment the streets and dark parks can hurl in empty hours, the hunt turning vengeful. He reminds himself that times of similar despair have invariably been followed by surfeit, mere islands in an ocean. And, Christ, he tries to laugh at himself, there's no one here to be desired by! … Just that one man who ignored him. And the driver of the car earlier. He glances at his watch. He drives to the area of a costume bar on Oak Street. The bar caters to makebelieve motorcyclists, makebelieve construction workers with steel helmets, makebelieve cowboys, even makebelieve foresters. The bar itself doesn't thrive until after 2:00 in the morning, when it becomes an after-hours club. But nearby, in an abandoned garage, outlaws gather sporadically throughout the night. Two cars, single hunters in each, are parked before it. Anxious for his sexuality to be acknowledged, Jim gets out of his car. He waits before the crumbling garage. Its sides and back are cluttered with weeds, papers, cans, broken bottles. Barbed wire perhaps at one time meant to keep out the outlaws has been pushed back sternly, a tangle of iron and weeds. The site of orgies late at night is now a deserted battlefield. Across the street is another world, a clutter of apartments and small houses. The garage is flanked by empty weedy lots. Neither of the drivers of the two cars gets out. Still, Jim waits. Longer. One car drives away. The other driver remains seated. Jim walks by slowly. The man gives him no signal. Suddenly Jim returns to his car, drives around the block. When he returns, another car has joined the one still there. Again, Jim stands by the tangled barbed wire. A third car drives, pauses, drives on. Jim feels the brutal passing of time. Nothing is happening! It does not matter that earlier he was paid for sex, that he was abundantly desired in the park, does not matter that he has survived, triumphantly, season after seasons that have spewed others out of the demanding arena.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  A few cars cruise the blocks of pretty houses and new condominiums. Jim wants a close connection beyond what he's experienced all day today. He sees no one here he really wants. Moments later he's standing on upper Santa Monica Boulevard near a strip of gaybars. Just standing. Not hitchhiking. A man stops his car; he's not especially attractive—ordinary. But Jim gets in, to push time. “God, you've got a beautiful body! How old are you?” Jim's heart freezes. The man guesses—way below Jim's actual age. The warmth flows. Jim let the man blow him in the car for moments. On Santa Monica Boulevard he walks back to his car. The restiveness grows. He drives back to Selma. Tonight this beloved street is being raided by ugliness: Two cops are frisking three hustlers, the spectacle framed harshly by the icy lights of the squad car. Motherfuckers. Jim drives along Sunset Boulevard. The hunt. Sunday night's hunt different from Saturday's, but almost as heavy, with the fresher waves of hunters who will be off tomorrow instead of Saturday. And Monday's hunt is different from Sunday's. Tuesday's, subdued. Wednesday's different from Thursday's, and Thursday's different from Friday's. The varying but unstopping cycle of sex in the city of lost angels, paused only once each day—vengefully—at dawn. The Bierce Place garages. Two hunters draped in the darkness under a stairway. As Jim walks along the deserted alley, a car drives along the intersecting street. It stops. Jim waits. He hears a door open, close. The memory of the violent scene on Selma alerts his body for quick motion. Footsteps. He sees a shirtless man. The same muscleman he left flexing in the bushes and then again earlier in the bar! And there he is posing again in the dark, expecting Jim to “reciprocate” in kind. Jesus, Jim thinks, we're practically lovers! … For a moment, he considers pulling out his cock in overt invitation of sex; the other will then approach, and then they'll make it, yes, at home. But, no, that's clearly not the other's trip. Driving to another dark alley. No one here, but within minutes the soundless dark may explode with moaning shadows. Near Sutton, the man still guards his tunnel. Parking on another street, to avoid the old man rapping on the window, Jim walks into the gray cavity of the tunnel. But there is another man there too, and Jim moves away. At Greenstone, several cars are parked in the concrete arc. Many hunters in the arena. As Jim crosses the street toward the stone grotto, he sees the kid he made it with last night—Steve; they exchanged phone numbers, came so close. They both stop suddenly, facing each other. For a moment they seem about to smile, even to speak. They move slightly closer. Then simultaneously they turn from each other, walking away quickly in opposite directions. VOICE OVER: Attack! VOICE OVER: Attack!

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  And so, every lesson, Alek tried to be more than good. Every lesson, he tried to be perfect. Every position, every line, every angle, every turn, everything perfect. If he didn’t get something right, he tried harder, again and again, each time imagining himself going sharper and sharper, until he was so sharp he felt he might cut himself. It was a ferocity in him that he’d never known he possessed—a ferocity that gave him something—and for the first time, he felt his parents were proud of him, that he wasn’t just messing up. It was not an original story. Every ballet parent was a monster of ambition. Every ballet parent knew the terrible math. Only a few people got to be elite dancers. Everything else was just preparation for a time when dance would be something they used to do, a person they used to be. Starting ballet was like entering a second, more intense gravitational field. At any moment, an injury could end it all. Or the mind could snap and there you went, done, burned out, exhausted. A mass in his body meant that something had gone wrong, and if that was true, he might not be able to dance again. If he couldn’t dance again, what would he do? And there was the possibility that the mass meant cancer, and cancer might mean death. What would he tell his mother? What would she do? How could he tell her this, so soon after his father had died in a way that was somehow both slow and quick? He’d be betraying her. Alek climbed out of the bath and wrapped a towel around himself. He made a sandwich and sat on his bed. The afternoon was over. He had a view of the lake from his window. People were skating. Their voices were lost to him, but he could hear the sounds of their happiness. • • • The rehearsal hall was empty when he arrived. How long would it be before the evening class began? True, there were fewer people in the evening class because, unlike the morning class, attendance was not compulsory. Instead of one of the main ballet masters, evening class was led by a retired senior soloist. The evening class was mainly a way of working out things that had gone wrong during the day or had been skipped in the morning. It was during an evening class that he had first begun to cough, back in the summer. The cough had come on slowly, small little fits of tension in his chest, an irritating heat, a scratchiness in his throat and chest. At first, he didn’t notice at all, or he didn’t think very much of it. In the morning he was phlegmy, spitting yolky goop into the sink or the toilet. But he couldn’t get it all out. Inside he felt both wet and dry.

• From Escape (2007)

  When Arthur was seven months old, Merril started pressuring me to get pregnant again. We were driving somewhere together and he said that Arthur was old enough for me to have another child and we should start trying to make that happen. I felt sickened at the thought because I was still so exhausted. But I knew most of Merril’s other wives became pregnant three months after giving birth. I was still nursing Arthur and weak when I conceived again in October, and I became violently ill. It felt like my body was allergic to being pregnant. My weight plummeted. I lost about twenty pounds and looked anorexic. Wives targeted one another constantly, but when I was so sick, it felt like I was in the bull’s-eye. They attacked my character and made fun of my illness. They didn’t understand why I hadn’t repented after Arthur’s pregnancy so I wouldn’t continue to have the same problems. Merril finally realized how sick I was and, to my amazement, bought me vitamins. He bought them because I didn’t have enough money of my own. I could charge things only where we had an account, so anything I bought came from the grocery store, which usually didn’t carry vitamins. After a few months, I began to feel myself getting slightly stronger. But I still had massive headaches and sometimes vomited nearly every hour. It was hard to keep anything down, but some days were better than others, and on those I might vomit only three times. Since I had not been able to find a babysitter for the whole week and I couldn’t bear being apart from Arthur for more than three days, on Wednesdays I would make the one-hour drive from Cedar back to Colorado City to pick him up and bring him back to school. If I didn’t have someone lined up at school to watch him, I’d bring one of Merril’s daughters back with me to help out. A light snow was falling when I got into the van to head back to Colorado City. In the three years I’d been at school, I’d traversed many snowstorms without a problem. I hadn’t been listening to the radio that day, but there was nothing unusual about the snow that was falling. But fifteen miles outside of Cedar on Black Ridge, I found myself in the middle of a whiteout. Even with the headlights on I could barely see more than a foot or two in front of the van. I slowed down to a crawl of just a few miles an hour. Because I was going so slowly and hugging the side of the road I felt reasonably safe. The van didn’t have snow tires because it was rare to have storm conditions like this in southern Utah. I thought this was a freak occurrence and that it would clear soon.

• From Querelle (1953)

  223 I QUERELLE was doomed: his name would always and everywhere �e accom panied by the word "murders." 'We11, here's a plan, old buddy. You go out and get yourself a little hard cash, and then you take off to Spain. Or America. I'm a sailor, I can get you aboard a ship. I'll take care of that." Gil dearly wanted to believe in Quere11e. Surely a sailor had to be we11 connected to a11 the sailors of the world, to be in secret communication with the most mysterious crews, with the sea itself. This notion pleased GiL He snuggled up in it, it rom forted him, and as he derived a sense of security from it, he was not about to analyze it at aU. "So what have you got to lose? If you pull a stick-up job, and they catch you at it, that won't make any difference at aU. \\'hat's a stick-up compared to murder?" Quere11e no longer mentioned the murder of the sailor so as not to ca11 forth Gil's denials, not to rouse that sense of true justice that lives in everyone and that might cause him to go and give himself up. Coming from the outside world as he did, calm and co11ected, Querelle knew that the young mason dung to him with anguished intensity. His anxiety betrayed Gil, betrayed the slightest inner tremor and amplified it, played it out loud, like the needle passing over the grooves of a record. Querelle was able to register aU these shifts and fluctuations and made use of them. "If I wasn't just a sailor ... but, that's what I am, and there's little I can do to help you. But there's one thing, I can give you some advice. And I believe you can do it." Gil listened, in silence. By this time it had become clear to him that the sailor would never bring him anything else but a chunk of bread, a can of sardines, a pack of cigarettes, but never any money. Hanging his head, his mouth bitter, he feU to pondering the notion of those two murders. An enormous weariness forced him to resign himself to them, to admit them, to admit that he would henceforth travel the high road to he11. Toward Querelle he felt great anger and at the same time he

• From Querelle (1953)

  She couldn't go on. T\1adame Lysiane sat up, switched on the light again. Robert looked at her, surprised. "Listen, I don't care what you say, man . . . ( Robert's awkwardness, his basic indifference toward women had prevented him from acquiring an even minimally courteous way of addressing them. To speak tenderly to a woman, to acknowledge her femininity, woul3 have made Robert look ridiculous to himself) . . . you're just being difficult. Jo and me, we're the way we are because that's the way we are, goddammit. Right from the start . . ." "But it does bother me. And I have no reason to keep it a secret." She was the boss lady. For a long time now that resemblance had tortured and persecuted her lovely flesh. She was the patronne. The brothel was a great piece of property. If Robert was a handsome male-one •'who could afford to"-she herself was a strong female, strong by virtue of her money, her authority over the girls, and the solidity of her prose. 441t exhausts me! it exhausts me, to think about how alike you are." She suddenly heard herself, plaintive as any weak little woman. "Now you just stop that, do you hear me. I'm telling you, there ain't nothing one can do about it." Robert sounded angry. At the beginning of the scene he had thought, mistakenly, that his mistress was alluding to some very tenuous sentiments that only a woman as distinguished as herse1f was able to experience, but as she kept on about it, he became annoyed . .. I can't help it, how could I. Back when we were little kids they couldn't tell us apart." l\.1adame Lysiane drew a deep breath, as if preparing for her very last sigh. Before he opened his mouth and while he was saying what he had just said, Robert knew, although vaguely, that it would hurt her terribly, but while he didn't really want to do that, maliciously, with a clean yet obviously dim conscience, he 184 I JEAN GENET

• From Escape (2007)

  Barbara was typical of a woman exalted in her status as the favorite wife. She genuinely believed she was superior to us all. As a favorite wife, both she and her children were untouchable. Her children looked down on their half siblings as inferior, which was also common in these large polygamous families. The caste system in Merril’s family was entrenched before I even arrived. But in that our family was an exception. Warren’s new decree meant other families would now become more like ours. Many men in the FLDS tried to be fair to all their wives. They felt it was their religious duty not to play favorites. There were schedules for sex in the home so no one felt hurt or left out. If a man had three wives, each woman knew that according to the schedule, she would sleep with her husband every third night. But this new sex policy gave men a freedom they never had. There was no longer any obligation to sleep with a woman unless he wanted to have a child with her. So expectations about decency were off. Once free from sleeping with a wife, most men singled out their favorites and locked in a caste system in their families. Caste systems in families are breeding grounds for family members to harm one another. As the months and years wore on, Warren would underscore this by preaching that a man had the right to treat one wife better than another if she was more worthy of love. Sex was the only hope a woman had in this life. If she pleased her husband sexually, she and her children would be protected by him. Since he was her passport to eternal life, she could not risk displeasing him sexually. So it was emotionally destabilizing to women when their husbands only had sex with them once a month or stopped altogether when they were pregnant. Their chances to seduce, impress, and satisfy their husbands were so drastically limited it threatened their very being. But, like everything else, this new decree was done in the name of God. Warren was preaching that Christ would come to our community because we were pure and abstained from sex except to create children. He preached that we were now living at a higher spiritual plane, but to me, it felt that we had crossed a new and dangerous threshold. One morning when I was in the bathroom vomiting, Tammy came and pounded on the door. “Carolyn, Merril had a heart attack this morning. The ambulance is here to take him to the hospital. Barbara’s going with him and the rest of us will meet them at the ER.” Tammy drove the small family car and I sat in the backseat, upset and so sick it was hard to stop vomiting. What if Merril died?

• From Escape (2007)

  Harrison had a hard time sleeping at night. I gave him chloral hydrate, a strong sedative, but it did not always work. In an effort to wean him off the IV therapy, his doctors had given him a drug to control his neuropathy, but it sent him into major anxiety attacks. For weeks, it felt that I was always on the phone with Harrison’s doctors, constantly juggling medications, adding here, subtracting there, to try and find the balance that would stop the spasms and his screaming. One day blurred into the next. Despite his feeding tube, which pumped nutrition into him twenty-four hours a day, Harrison had a hard time maintaining weight. He was switched from a high-calorie formula to a lower-calorie one because he had a leak of his lymphatic fluids. Lymphatic fluids are produced by fat, so with less fat in his system, the leak slowed. The fat content of his diet had to be closely monitored until he healed. But he lost weight with the low-calorie formula. I was supposed to try to wean him off the feeding pump and feed him directly because I could get more food into him that way. But when I tried that he’d get sick and throw up. I didn’t have time to think. I was sleep-deprived and burned out from the relentless stress and fear of seeing my healthy baby boy, who had been just on the verge of walking, reduced to screaming spasms that were stripping him of every ability he once had. His vomiting led to a case of aspiration pneumonia. Do I call an ambulance today or not? That thinking went on for months. The minute it looked like he was having difficulty breathing I called for help. The local ambulance had to come (even without Merril’s okay) because Harrison was now known to the system and was being watched. I was on the phone with his doctor all the time, and if the ambulance refused to transport us there would have been an uproar. Finally, Harrison’s doctor in St. George said he needed to go back on IV therapy because he was not improving enough and was still constantly plagued by spasms. With two IV treatments a week, he got a little relief from the spasms. Initially, his doctor felt it wasn’t helping him enough to warrant continuing, but finally she realized that any relief at all was a plus for both of us. So we made regular trips to St. George for IV therapy and frequent trips to Phoenix to see his oncologist. Cathleen volunteered to drive me to Phoenix, which was an enormous relief because it was eight hours away. I was terribly concerned when I had to leave my other children at home to take Harrison to the doctors. This was the first time in my married life when I hadn’t also had a full-time job. So I was home more, but consumed by the demands of Harrison’s care.