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 165 of 501 · 20 per page

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  When I hustle, yes; when I'm into “numbers,” mostly. But there are other times of mutual exchange, yes. Yes; and I do cherish those times. There's a pause. I speak about the need to do away with all laws against consenting sex acts. “But if sex in the streets became legal,” he voices the familiar argument, “don't you think that when the danger disappeared, so would most of the excitement?” If so, then cops and judges and closeted police chiefs should be the first to talk it up! I answer: “It would merely result in another kind of joy, an unthreatened excitement.” I think now of the remark by an ex-vice cop turned writer, who in an interview voiced the stupid cliché of bigoted psychologists and sex-threatened cops that the main element in gay public sex is “the chance to be caught, the chance to be punished.” Wrong, wrong, ignorant bullshit. Public sex is revolution, courageous, righteous, defiant revolution. He asks: “Does your ‘numbers’ trip help you avoid the realization that time is passing?” Again. I answer nervously: “Of course.” I don't tell him what I'm remembering, the initial terror I experienced on returning to Selma after years away. I go on: “In my book Numbers there's a place where Johnny Rio thinks that if he keeps going sexually, time and death can't reach him.” (I began—literally—to write Numbers as I drove out of Los Angeles back to El Paso, with my mother—who had stayed with my sister—holding a writing pad on the console and me steering with one hand, writing with the other, veering off the road now and then, and my mother warning gently, “Be careful, my son.” … I had returned to the sexual arena of Los Angeles after years of relative seclusion in El Paso, preparing my body with weights—and the arena soon centered in Griffith Park, that Eiffel Tower of the sexual underground. I went there every day, counting sexual contacts, the frenzy increasing to make up for “lost time”—which, of course, is never done; and years later I would spookily return to break “Johnny Rio's”—my character's, based on my own—”record” in that park. That book was written in three months with a compulsion as fierce as that which had propelled the sexual hunt in the park.) I should have told the interviewer that perhaps I feel totally alive only when I'm working out with weights, when I'm having sex, and when I'm writing a book. The interviewer asks, “Where does a sexual life like yours lead?” The outlaw hunt, the precarious balance, dangers, excitement, the joy, freedom, defiance, the aloneness (the times when I can taste aloneness like ashes in my mouth), all that—and the acute sense of being in touch every single moment with life.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She tried on a two-piece navy wool, then a sleeveless blouse with a swirly clathrate skirt, but the first was too tight and the second too ample, and when I begged her to hurry up (the situation was beginning to frighten me), Lo viciously sent those nice presents of mine hurtling into a corner, and put on yesterday’s dress. When she was ready at last, I gave her a lovely new purse of simulated calf (in which I had slipped quite a few pennies and two mint-bright dimes) and told her to buy herself a magazine in the lobby. “I’ll be down in a minute,” I said. “And if I were you, my dear, I would not talk to strangers.” Except for my poor little gifts, there was not much to pack; but I was forced to devote a dangerous amount of time (was she up to something downstairs?) to arranging the bed in such a way as to suggest the abandoned nest of a restless father and his tomboy daughter, instead of an ex-convict’s saturnalia with a couple of fat old whores. Then I finished dressing and had the hoary bellboy come up for the bags. Everything was fine. There, in the lobby, she sat, deep in an overstuffed blood-red armchair, deep in a lurid movie magazine. A fellow of my age in tweeds (the genre of the place had changed overnight to a spurious country-squire atmosphere) was staring at my Lolita over his dead cigar and stale newspaper. She wore her professional white socks and saddle oxfords, and that bright print frock with the square throat; a splash of jaded lamplight brought out the golden down on her warm brown limbs. There she sat, her legs carelessly highcrossed, and her pale eyes skimming along the lines with every now and then a blink. Bill’s wife had worshiped him from afar long before they ever met: in fact, she used to secretly admire the famous young actor as he ate sundaes in Schwab’s drugstore. Nothing could have been more childish than her snubbed nose, freckled face or the purplish spot on her naked neck where a fairytale vampire had feasted, or the unconscious movement of her tongue exploring a touch of rosy rash around her swollen lips; nothing could be more harmless than to read about Jill, an energetic starlet who made her own clothes and was a student of serious literature; nothing could be more innocent than the part in that glossy brown hair with that silky sheen on the temple; nothing could be more naïve—But what sickening envy the lecherous fellow whoever he was—come to think of it, he resembled a little my Swiss uncle Gustave, also a great admirer of le découvert —would have experienced had he known that every nerve in me was still anointed and ringed with the feel of her body—the body of some immortal daemon disguised as a female child. Was pink pig Mr.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I had also to be careful in regard to a Mrs. Holigan, a charwoman and cook of sorts whom I had inherited with the vacuum cleaner from the previous tenants. Dolly got lunch at school, so that this was no trouble, and I had become adept at providing her with a big breakfast and warming up the dinner that Mrs. Holigan prepared before leaving. That kindly and harmless woman had, thank God, a rather bleary eye that missed details, and I had become a great expert in bedmaking; but still I was continuously obsessed by the feeling that some fatal stain had been left somewhere, or that, on the rare occasions where Holigan’s presence happened to coincide with Lo’s, simple Lo might succumb to buxom sympathy in the course of a cozy kitchen chat. I often felt we lived in a lighted house of glass, and that any moment some thin-lipped parchment face would peer through a carelessly unshaded window to obtain a free glimpse of things that the most jaded voyeur would have paid a small fortune to watch.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel had nightmares in which he fell through a slot of air, and he’d wake into another dream about being trapped under a thick sheet of ice. He’d cut his way down through sequential layers of dreams, waking into steadily more dire situations until at last he woke from a too-high bonfire or from wolves chasing him or from feeling lost in the woods at the base of an erupting volcano. The tachycardia left him winded just getting out of bed. He spent his time reading or lying under the gravity blanket his mother had brought him. When he’d been there a few weeks, he got permission to open his window. An aide unlocked it and explained that there was no screen and that he should look out for mosquitoes in the spring. The delicate security bars were impossible to remove. Unless you’re really persistent, the aide said with a wink. Even these had been designed. Their appearance. Their material. The interlocking mechanism that prevented their removal. All of it made to look not threatening. An affirming cage, Lionel thought. They wanted the people at the facility to feel affirmed by their captivity. He was there for six months, and then they cut him loose. His mother wanted him to stay with her, but Lionel wanted to go back to his life and his research. He wanted to be himself again. In Madison, Lionel was okay through the spring and the summer. He had a doctor, a routine. His leave of absence was ending, and he’d go back to the program in the new year. He was not yet himself, but he was getting there. Then, a couple weeks ago, he had been startled on the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon by a crystalline image of himself stepping out in front of a car and getting obliterated. The next day, he checked himself back into UW Hospital to be monitored. When the sense of danger passed, when he no longer thought he’d hurt himself, he went home. And there was the invitation from the host. Like a call from the world he’d left behind. People did try to kill themselves—some of them succeeded and some of them did not. • • •

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  At the window, Grace watches her grandfather’s progress in the garden as he makes his way toward the house, stopping to pull up stray weeds or nudge a brick back into place. Dense clouds push in from the west, and the plum trees lining the long driveway rustle. The wind combs through the screen, pulls, releases. Her mother, Enid, has just arrived from her shift at the nursing home. She’s peeling one of the oranges from the fruit bowl with a kind of pointed nonchalance. The tension in her shoulders and the stiffness in her neck give the game away. Grace knows that when the orange is peeled and set in segments upon the little plate, Enid will offer them to her as though it were nothing, a trick she learned from the other nurses. Take some for yourself and destigmatize the process. It’s all so transparent. Now that Grace lives with Enid again, plates of food materialize on almost every surface. Crackers, fruit, soup, runny grits, bits of fish, or slices of low-sodium ham. It’s like being haunted by some sort of hospitable ghost. She pretends not to sense Enid’s desperation for her to eat. “The bottom’s going to drop out,” Grace says. Enid comes around the kitchen island, carrying the plate with the furry orange slices. “That so? Here, have some.” Grace wants to scream, but instead asks, “Heard from Davis?” “He’s doing well, last I heard. Not that he calls like he should,” she says, plucking pith from the oranges. She’s across from Grace at the table now, still wearing her uniform, the deep purple scrubs under the poly-cotton white coat. Orange stains speck the hem. The plastic ID tag is smeary in the light. “I suppose you hear from him more regularly than I do.” “He wants me to try with Granddaddy again,” Grace says. The oranges lie there like sad, soft worms. Sour spit fills the back of her throat, but it dries almost instantly, leaving a coppery residue on her tongue. “He should fight his own battles,” Enid says sharply. Grace sighs. Her brother, Davis, is a third-year at Hopkins. He wants to be a cardiologist like their grandfather, for whom he is named. Their grandfather no longer speaks to Davis, however, because Davis is gay and they are from Virginia. When Davis came out, it had gone as well as it could go, which was to say that a veil had descended between the two of them, and Davis, like their father, had ceased to exist to their grandfather. There was no argument. No recitation of Scripture. No blowup or passionate speeches. Only instant and deep cold. It’s harder to argue with apathy.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hartjes turned in a slow circle. Hartjes held his breath. Hartjes waited. The quiet of the house droned. It gave no answers. The light overhead did not flicker. It did not waver. It was steadfast. The faucet dripped. The candle had burned itself out. Their bowls were on the counter. Everything was as it should have been. Upstairs, there was a thud like footsteps. Hartjes went to the front door and pulled and pulled at the bolt. It would not budge. He pulled harder. It would not budge. The door itself was so thin and shabby that Hartjes felt he could have jerked it right off the hinges, but he didn’t. He kept at the bolt, pulling on it, but the bolt just rattled and spun, and when Hartjes pulled on the knob, it twisted uselessly. There was quiet upstairs. Hartjes got the door open. The cold was on him right away. He had left his coat upstairs. At his car, he looked back toward the house. Two lights, the first floor and the second, burned like one yellow column. In Simon’s window, a shadow passed back and forth as if pacing. In the cold, Hartjes watched the shadow glide across the curtain like the second hand of a clock, the persistent beat of its passage. Then both lights went out, and it was impossible to tell the shadow from the rest of the house. And overhead, the tips of the trees brushed the night sky like the wingbeats of a thousand starlings. PROCTORING Lionel always felt a kind of secondhand embarrassment when he proctored exams. It was like visiting a friend’s house during a family function: everyone behaving in a formal, context-determined way that at once applied to you as a guest but also did not apply to you, because you were not family, so the level of artifice was clear, yet you weren’t supposed to comment on it. The department head was teaching an advanced seminar on early modern French history. Lionel’s job was to write the prompt for the essay on the board, wait the two hours for the students to fill their blue books with everything they knew, and then deposit the blue books with the departmental secretary. It was as easy a chain of events as he could have asked for. He was late getting to the room in the basement of the art library and found the fifteen white boys clustered in the hall, some standing and leaning against the wall, others on the floor, shuffling note cards, flicking them front to back. Their anxiety scuffed up the quiet. He let them into the room and wrote the prompt on the board: French Absolutism

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  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?” “He said I might have a mass.” “Might? What mass? You a Catholic now?” Alek wanted to laugh and to cry, both, simultaneously, but he just coughed into the phone. He tried to block the sound of it, but he could feel Grigori’s judgment. Snow was falling now. It clung to his eyelashes. The streetlight was staggering into life. “Yes, I guess, something like that.” “Like what?” “I don’t know, Grigori. I don’t know. I don’t know.” “So what do you want?” “I don’t know.” “Stop saying that!”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Eventually the coughing subsided—it had been bronchial in nature, that hollow, echoing sound—and he could breathe again. He felt stunned, slapped, like he’d been dipped into some other world tucked just under this one and brought back too quickly. Sophie was sitting next to him, one hand gripping his, the other making circles on his back. A bead of sweat clung to the corner of her mouth. A red clip kept hair off her face. He had always admired her, thought her talent terrifying. Sophie. She gave him a tentative, sad smile. She let him drink from her bottle. The water was flat and warm. It had a coppery taste. “We better get inside,” she said. “All right,” he said, and he let her take him by the arm again, to get him on his feet. But then he was ready to stand on his own, or else he didn’t want her to think that he couldn’t. She put her arm around his waist to steady him and they went into the hall, where they could already hear the music starting up again. How long had it been since he’d spoken to Sophie? Alek sat on the floor now and began to stretch. First his legs. Then his back. He stretched to the tips of his toes, pressing himself flush against the tops of his thighs, holding the position for as long as he could. He could feel the cough gathering along the edge of his lungs, that tickling heat. He suppressed it as best he could. He counted to twenty and released the stretch, then lay on his back. The cough came quickly, loudly, and filled the empty room in the way a lonely prayer might fill a cathedral.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  The tips of his curls were beaded with something chalky: sweat or shampoo that he hadn’t washed out entirely, melting snow. Charles hung his head, his expression hidden from Lionel, which was just as well, because Lionel felt at that moment that he probably should leave. He pulled his scarf free from the back of the chair and turned to take up his coat. “I’ll let you guys be,” he said. “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.

• From Escape (2007)

  Only Annette could think this was so funny. She was slapping her hands on the floor of our bedroom, still laughing. Words were not getting through. I grabbed a pillow off my bed and threw it on her and yelled, “Annette, shut up! I am in terrible trouble. He could make it so I can’t go to school. I have fought so hard to get my high school diploma and now this dumb boy could destroy everything.” For the next six weeks he kept trying to follow me home, and eventually someone reported to my father that we were walking home from school together. My father called me in and said I was disobedient in the ways of God. I should be saving my affections for the man I’d be assigned to in marriage. I pleaded with my father and tried to explain that I’d been trying to ditch him. Annette came to my rescue and insisted to my father that I was telling the truth. This saved me. My father believed her and told Brigham’s father to make him stop bothering me. I felt deeply relieved. Now I knew I was really going to graduate and, I hoped, continue on to college. I knew my parents wouldn’t let me go directly to college. My goal was to start at the community college and then move on. I had been on the honor roll my senior year of high school and had made mostly straight A’s. I was so excited about graduating by the time May arrived. This was the biggest achievement of my life. Since we were the first graduating class of Colorado City High School, nearly the entire community turned out. Our accomplishment was an accomplishment for everyone in the community. Once again, FLDS children were getting a high school education, after nearly a seven-year lapse. We were told to arrive two hours early for picture taking and goodbyes. As the time drew near, we all lined up to march across the stage. Nothing happened. More time elapsed. Still nothing. I asked someone why. “We’re waiting for Audrey.” After what felt like an interminable wait, the teachers decided that we would start the show without her. If Audrey missed her graduation, it was her own fault. Music started to play and we began marching, but then we were ordered to stop and come back. I felt that I was never going to walk across that stage, never going to graduate. Then I noticed heads turning. Audrey, who had stayed home to finish her graduation dress, walked into the hall in one of the most elaborate dresses I had ever seen.

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

  Twenty-two was a move out west and a first year of law school, going out but not staying out, annotating case law, and settling into the comfort of a long-distance girlfriend and thousands of miles and a computer screen separating our bodies. My mother never taught me to knit but somehow I taught myself and managed to deeply and expertly weave delusion and denial into the threads of the blanket I buried my feet under to keep warm in the new Colorado nights. Yes, it was cold out here, I told my friends, but not as cold as you would think. II. “There must be the utmost resistance by the woman by all means within her power.” STATE V. MCCLAIN, 149 N.W. 771, 771 (WIS. 1914) That summer I was twenty-one, just before my senior year in college, I worked as an intern at a prep school in a small town in the Northeast. I took the train up from Baltimore to get there. I was the only person to get off at the stop. The train had emptied in New York and never filled back up, so I’d spent much of the ride staring out the window and romanticizing the upcoming months. My bags were spread across several seats, and I found a safety in the isolation that did not surprise me. My stop had no train station, no platform. I dragged my bags down the steps and found myself facing a one-room train depot and a gazebo draped in patriotic flags. I waited for my cab for two hours, thinking that everyone who passed me must know that I wasn’t from around these parts. In the cab, the driver offered a knowing sigh when I told him where to take me. We drove up the hill. There were parts of the job that were exactly as I imagined: taking residents of my dorm to visit the family-owned candy shop in town, teaching writing to eighth graders already primed to write their college admissions essays, supervising the Fourth of July lawn games and cookouts (that summer was too dry for fireworks), beholding the steps and rooms boasting plaques and the names of presidential alumni. But there were other parts I hadn’t imagined. The twenty-minute walk to the single town bar that we made every night in heels. The spot under the tree where people would go to smoke, steps away from the campus perimeter. Daily breakfast with other interns who would show up with a bruised eye and smile (“I couldn’t feel my face”) and talk about the drugs they took last night. Drinking on the campus was not allowed, and so those of us with IDs and nights off would make that nightly pilgrimage to the one bar. Some nights we came back early, others we returned with our heels in our hands, and a few nights we took a cab (it was the same driver every time). The drinks were cheap and I was newly twenty-one.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  comes et infortunii socia, tonso capillo 1n mascu- linam faciem reformato habitu, pretiosissimis moni- lium et auro monetali zonis refertis incincta, inter ipsas custodientium militum manus et gladios nudos intrepida, cunctorum periculorum particeps et pro mariti salute pervigilem curam suscipiens, aerum- nas assiduas ingenio masculo sustinebat. lamque plurimis itineris difficultatibus marisque terroribus exanclatis Zacynthum petebat, quam sors ei fatalis 7 decreverat temporariam sedem. Sed cum primum litus Actiacum, quo tune Macedonia delapsi gras- sabamur, appulisset, nocte promota tabernulam quan- dam litori navique proximam, quam! vitatis maris fluctibus incubabant, invadimus et diripimus omnia, nec tamen periculo levitemptati discessimus. Simul namque primum sonum ianuae matrona percepit, pro- turrens in cubiculum clamoribus inquietis cuncta miscuit, milites suosque famulos nominatim, sed et omnem viciniam suppetiatum convocans, nisi quod pavore cunctorum, qui sibi quisque metuentes deli- tescebant, effectum est, ut impune discederemus. Sed protinus sanctissima—vera enim dicenda sunt— et unicae fidei femina, bonis artibus gratiosa, preci- bus ad Caesaris numen porrectis, et marito reditum celerem et aggressurae plenam vindictam impetravit : denique noluit esse Caesar Haemi latronis collegium, et confestim interivit; tantum potest nutus etiam 1 The insertion of quam seems to be necessary here, ag suggested by Luetjohann. $08 i THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII

• From Escape (2007)

  Three months after Arthur’s birth, I panicked when I began menstruating again. I knew my body couldn’t handle a pregnancy so soon, but I also knew I didn’t dare refuse sex. My world clearly centered around Arthur now, and I could tell Merril was feeling threatened. Merril would cut off my money if I stopped having sex with him. Money was a prime means of control for Merril, as it was for some men in the FLDS. Women who worked were required to turn over all their income to their husbands as well as any money gotten from welfare. Merril had plenty of money, but that didn’t mean we had enough food. Merril gave us $500 a week to feed at least thirty people every night and more than fifty on weekends, when relatives joined us for Sunday dinner. But Merril let his teenage daughters do the shopping. They would squander the majority of the money on other things. Merril would be traveling many nights with Barbara, but those of us at home often would have nothing more than a bowl of soup or some beans. Some nights we’d have something like a few cans of cream of chicken soup mixed into a big pot of rice. (One of the reasons I had easy deliveries was because my babies were small.) Complaining was out of the question. While I could tell my mother that I was hungry and not getting enough food, if I became at all critical of Merril, she’d refuse to hear any more and would stop listening to me. A man has the absolute right to control his house in any way he chooses. I returned to college after Arthur was born and took him with me. I had a relative there whose husband was in school, and she watched Arthur while I went to classes for that first year. I didn’t want more children right away but was too intimidated to ask any of the women at school about birth control. I felt insecure among them. When I walked into a classroom everyone looked as though they were afraid I might sit next to them. In my long dresses, I stood out as strange, someone from a distant century, if not a different planet. No one made any effort to associate with me, and I lacked the confidence to try to connect with them.

• From Escape (2007)

  I thanked him and sat stiff in my bed. The phone rang again. It was James. “Carolyn, I have a bad feeling. We are coming down and staying. What you heard on the roof might have just been the first step of something. If we keep a presence there for a few hours, it will be too close to morning for Jason to do anything.” James and Jimmy spent the next few hours right next to the motel lobby. At regular intervals they circled around the house with their flashlights and guns drawn. They might have saved my life. I know they saved my sanity. The next morning I told Merril I was sure I’d heard people on the roof during the night and that James was on patrol to make sure nothing happened. Merril was furious and told me I’d blown everything out of proportion. He accused James of playing into my paranoid behavior. After he gave me a tongue-lashing he left for home with Barbara. I told them I needed to clean the laundry room before I returned to Colorado City. The last thing I wanted to do was travel with them. By the time I got back to Colorado City, Merril and Barbara were gone. I was a nervous wreck. On top of everything I still was sick and vomiting from being pregnant. The trauma hit me hard when I got home and I started crying so hard I couldn’t stop. The next day I felt desperately sick and broke out in hives. I was so weak it was hard to stand. I had never felt so sick in my life before. I had to crawl to the bathroom to throw up. The hives were all over my body. Merril called and wanted to talk to me. I told him that I was terribly ill and that I’d broken out in hives. “Well, that’s good,” he said. I thought he was joking. “Good?” His rage shot through the phone. “After the way you’ve been acting, I think so.” I said goodbye and hung up the phone. I knew I needed help. I couldn’t go back there without protection. My sister Annette was married to Merril’s half brother Bob. They had managed the motel for over four years in the past. I was betting they knew Jason. A week later I went to see them. The hives were gone and I was feeling a little better. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I got in my van and drove to St. George, which was about forty-five minutes away. I hadn’t seen Annette and Bob for years, but I knew they were still at the same address. They were glad to see me, and after catching up a bit I asked Bob if he knew Jason. He told me he knew a lot about him, and wanted to know why I was asking.

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

  I’m far from the only child of the ’80s whose understanding of sexual violence was impacted by that particular Little House episode. It’s inspired fan pages and strange obsessions, things like Sylvia’s dying dream sequence set to “Hallelujah,” for example. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it, or any of the scenes from the original episodes. My avoidance probably just makes the anxiety I feel about clowns, Little House, and Michael Landon (he wrote and directed both “Sylvia” episodes) worse, but I’ll take the walls I’ve constructed over the panic that those scenes might induce. I see no benefit in desensitizing myself to that particular trauma. Despite the lingering damage it did to some of us, the show is a minor skirmish on the killing fields of growing up female in America. Looking back, I can almost rationalize those episodes as an attempt at social commentary on rape culture. Perhaps Landon was trying to portray Sylvia’s plight as a microcosm for the very real situations girls and women face and was trying to call attention to it, rather than just calling it entertainment. But really, I don’t buy it: his portrayal of the way a girl’s body and the community betray her as she goes through puberty never felt like a full-throated critique even before Mrs. Oleson’s character reinforced everything I would later internalize about the unwanted attention girls got from boys at school. She insisted that Sylvia was leading the boys on, that she should be blamed for attracting their attention and that, by extension, she should be blamed for the rape. Mrs. Oleson was the stereotypical small-minded gossip. Even though the episode contains a scene with the school council siding against Mrs. Oleson on the matter of whether or not Sylvia was encouraging the boys’ attention, that message was not nearly as strong or as clear as it needed to be. I didn’t even recall that the council sided with Sylvia until I recently read a synopsis of the episode. When I was ten, I couldn’t get past the fact that there was even a school council meeting held to discuss whose fault it was that boys were sneaking up on a girl’s house to peek in at her getting undressed. All these years, I only remembered that Sylvia had to get up and defend herself. If this was social commentary, an attempt to decry the hostility women regularly face on all fronts, it failed miserably.

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

  These are little bits of things that happened, or things you think about. They’re light on tension, you know that. There’s no real peril. There’s no resolution. Still, they stick with you. You think about them even after they’re over, sometimes for a long time. Sometimes for a very long time. That’s how you know they’re important somehow. It’s why you can recall the smell of that party, even many years after the smell of your grandfather’s cologne has faded from your memory. WHEN YOU BECOME A WRITING INSTRUCTOR, EVENTUALLY, you end up with stories about rape stories. The first story is a rape story on purpose. A student hands it in for a fiction assignment in the composition class you are teaching. In it, the hero finds his petite, brunette English teacher alone in a church. He pulls out a 24k gold–plated gun with a pearl handle, holds it to her head, and rapes her, bending her over the back of a pew. When he’s finished, he drives off in a convertible and leaves a bag of money at the police station to avoid arrest. You are the petite, brunette English teacher. You’re only twenty-two, just a few years older than this student who now sits in your office with his hat pulled down over his eyes. You’re too timid to call him out on this threatening misogynistic bullshit. What if you’re wrong? What if he complains to your boss? What if he gives you a low score on your teaching evaluations? Instead, you critique the story, which isn’t hard: It’s a horrible story. “The hero is unlikable and the ending is ludicrous.” You say all this to your student as he smirks beside you. “And look here,” you say, “a slip in verb tense; here, a comma splice.” In the second rape story, the hero meets a girl at a party. She’s beautiful, drunk, glassy-eyed, and nearly incoherent. When she’s no longer able to walk, the hero, who hasn’t had anything to drink, carries her outside, to the beach. He strips off her clothes and has sex with her while she makes soft moaning sounds. Then he dresses her again and lies beside her on the sand. “The tone is a bit confusing,” you tell your student when he comes in for a conference. “It seems romantic, almost. Are we supposed to feel sympathy for this character, even as he’s raping her?” The student looks taken aback, surprised. “He’s not raping her. They’re having sex.” You point out all of the evidence that he is, in fact, raping her. She’s clearly very drunk. She can’t even walk by herself. She never takes any agency, just lies there while it’s happening. The student cuts you off. “This is, like, based off me hooking up with my girlfriend for the first time.” It hadn’t occurred to you that the student might not have realized he was writing a rape story.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “You’re welcome to have some!” “I’d love to,” he said. Each of them had a bowl of the pasta and Sophie’s tomato sauce. Lionel didn’t remember seeing any at the potluck last night, but then there’d been so many options, and he hadn’t been especially hungry. He ate slowly, chewing through the whole-wheat noodles and sucking the sauce from them discreetly. He enjoyed the heat of the food, the way its flavor settled beneath the pain of his tongue burning. Chewing also made his cheek sting, and he found himself faintly aroused by the discomfort, thinking each time his jaws shifted of how Charles had bitten him. Charles sucked down the food so fast that Lionel doubted he even tasted it. Sophie also ate quickly, but neatly. She had a small piece of fish on the side, but she hadn’t offered him any. Lionel put his head down and tried to focus on the act of eating. Lifting his fork to his mouth and getting the food inside. Chewing it. Swallowing. Looking pleased and complacent. Content. “Do the dishes, Charlie,” Sophie said after they were done. She took both her bowl and Lionel’s, and she handed them to Charles, who didn’t even blink. He took the bowls to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Sophie stretched and drummed her hands against her stomach. “I’m full.” “That was great,” he said. “Thanks.” “Where’s your roommate?” “Oh, who knows? She’s probably in a lab somewhere. She studies chemistry.” “Cool,” Lionel said. “Chemistry is intense.” “She’s intense,” Sophie said. “Way intense.” “Is that bad?” “No, she’s great. I like her a lot, but . . . well.” “I think I get that,” Lionel said. He wondered if this was how people saw him. Intense. Way intense. If they said things like I like him a lot, but . . . well. The pause hanging off like something heavy with meaning. Was it weird that he was here, that he’d accepted her invitation to come along? He was never really sure when people were being polite or when they were actually being nice. Since his time at the hospital, his life had become a series of outstretched hands, gently guiding, so it was hard, even now, to tell when someone wanted him to come along or when they didn’t. Why should she have wanted him there? Surely, she and Charles had better things to do, things to do with their naked bodies. He saw, in his mind, the flash of Charles’s bare skin, the intimidating solidity of his chest, the broadness of his shoulders, that expanse of dense, coarse follicles on his chest and stomach. And Sophie, smooth, faultless, a surface as pristine as milk. “What’s on your mind, Lionel?” she asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  courtiers struggle to get closer to the king, who controls everything. Hyperperfectionists will often have health problems, as they work themselves to the bone. They like to blame others for everything that goes wrong—nobody is working hard enough. They have patterns of initial success followed by burnout and spectacular failures. It is best to recognize the type before getting enmeshed on any level. They cannot be satisfied by anything you do and will chew you up slowly with their anxieties, abusiveness, and desire to control. The Relentless Rebel: At first glance such people can seem quite exciting. They hate authority and love the underdog. Almost all of us are secretly attracted to such an attitude; it appeals to the adolescent within us, the desire to snub our nose at the teacher. They don’t recognize rules or precedents. Following conventions is for those who are weak and stodgy. These types will often have a biting sense of humor, which they might turn on you, but that is part of their authenticity, their need to deflate everyone, or so you think. But if you happen to associate with this type more closely, you will see that it is something they cannot control; it is a compulsion to feel superior, not some higher moral quality. In their childhood a parent or father figure probably disappointed them. They came to mistrust and hate all those in power. In the end, they cannot accept any criticism from others because that reeks of authority. They cannot ever be told what to do. Everything must be on their terms. If you cross them in some way, you will be painted as the oppressor and be the brunt of their vicious humor. They gain attention with this rebel pose and soon become addicted to the attention. In the end it is all about power—no one shall be above them, and anyone who dares will pay the price. Look at their past history—they will tend to split with people on very bad terms, made worse by their insults. Do not be lured in by the hipness of their rebel pose. Such types are eternally locked in adolescence, and to try work with them will prove as productive as trying to lock horns with a sullen teenager. The Personalizer: These people seem so sensitive and thoughtful, a rare and nice quality. They might seem a little sad, but sensitive people can have it rough in life. You are often drawn in by this air of theirs, and want to help. Also, they can appear quite intelligent, considerate, and good to work with. What you come to realize later on is that their sensitivity really only goes in one direction—inward. They are prone to take everything that people say or do as personal. They tend to brood over things for days, long after you have forgotten some innocuous comment that they have taken personally. As children, they had a gnawing feeling that they never got enough

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

  Luckily for him, he was no judge of men. If he had seen the fissures in my character he might have known what he was in for. He might have known that he was headed for all kinds of trouble, and, knowing this, he might have lost heart before the game even got started. But he saw nothing to alarm him. He took a step forward, stuck his hands in his pockets, threw back his shoulders and cocked his head. There was a dash of swagger in his pose, something of the stage cavalier, but his smile was friendly and hopeful. Chuck had spent the afternoon at a double feature. I met him outside the theater and we drove over to Pioneer Square. I had kept him waiting for more than an an hour, and he was worried about the business still ahead of us, so he didn’t say much. I could tell he was at the end of his rope where I was concerned. His mouth was set in a line. He lit one cigarette off another. He drove with dowdy rectitude, now and then sighing heavily. I went into three pawnshops before I found anyone who would give me the time of day. The third shop was run by a woman. She was as tall as I was, and had the stiff blond hair, spiky eyelashes and smooth, waxy face of a doll. When I said I had some things to sell she busied herself with the merchandise on the back shelf. Her hands were red and big and covered with turquoise jewelry. She didn’t look at me, not then or at any other time while I was in her shop. What kinds of things, she wanted to know. Her voice was low and flat. Four rifles, I told her. Also two shotguns. A couple of other items. “Where’d you get them?” “My father left them to me,” I said. “After he died.” When she didn’t say anything, I added, “My mom needs the money.” She grunted. This was the moment when the other pawnbrokers had told me to get lost. “Get your thieving ass out of here,” was what the first one had said. I watched her pick things up and set them down again, record players, clarinets, toasters, cameras, whatever came to hand. The shop was long and narrow. Electric guitars hung from the ceiling. Rifles and shotguns were locked in racks against the far wall, beneath a pipe holding up a row of shiny suits with flyaway lapels. “I’m about to close up,” she said. Then she added, as if I had begged her, “All right, maybe I can take a look.” Chuck opened and closed the trunk while I carried the stuff inside. He looked ready to bolt.

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

  We had, after all, plenty to talk about. I patronized her shamelessly and she let me do it, listening without argument to my frank opinions on the measures she should take to make herself cuter and more popular. In fact she wasn’t so bad, especially since my mother had taken her to a doctor to have her bald spot fixed. She had a gaunt sinewy beauty, but I didn’t see it. I thought she was pathetic and so did she. On a warm Friday afternoon in May we carried our lunches to the bleachers overlooking the football field. Other kids were eating and smoking in bunches around us, staring out at the brilliant grass as if a game were in progress. We talked about one thing and another, and Pearl mentioned that Dwight was planning to drive down to Seattle that night, supposedly to spend the weekend with Norma but really to see my mother and try to talk her into getting back together. He was bringing Pearl along for extra ammunition. I didn’t like hearing this. Chuck would be driving me down to Seattle the next day so I could have lunch with Mr. Howard and get fitted for my clothes, and I had hoped to go see my mother on the way home. Now that there was a chance of running into Dwight I had to give the idea up. But later that day I saw exactly what to do. Chuck agreed to help, though with certain conditions. An hour or so past midnight we pushed his car out to the main road, then drove up the valley to Chinook. Chuck kept to the speed limit and did not drink. The camp was dark and silent. When we got close to the house, Chuck turned off the lights and cut the engine and coasted to a stop. Dwight’s Ford was nowhere in sight. I got out and looked around back, just to be sure. Chuck stayed in the car. We both believed that as long as he did not enter the house or touch anything he could not be held legally responsible if I got caught. The door was unlocked, as always. I put on the gloves I had brought along and let myself into the utility room. I knew I should tend to business and get out of there fast, but instead I wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator was almost empty. I put together a peanut butter sandwich and poured myself a glass of milk and carried them in my gloved hands from one room to the next, flipping on light switches until the house was ablaze. Pearl’s room smelled of perfume. I sat at her desk and read her diary. She hadn’t written in it since the last time I looked. I got up and went down the hall to my old room. Both beds were bare.