Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I stumbled from class to class in a numb haze. Strangely enough, I was afraid I’d run into Helen. I didn’t feel up to her. I was too tired. In home room I yawned, rested my head on my desk and longed for the privacy of my bed and the saving grace of night. I wanted to be alone with my wraith. In my confusion the real Helen Paper seemed irrelevant, even intrusive. That night I wrote her a letter. I chose a special yellow parchment, a spidery pen point and black ink. In gym class as I’d stumbled through calisthenics and in study hall as I’d half dozed behind a stack of books, phrases for the letter had dropped into my mind. Now I sat down with great formality at my desk and composed the missive, first in pencil on scratch paper. If I reproduced it (I still have the pencil draft) you’d laugh at me or we would laugh together at the prissy diction and the high-flown sentiment. What would be harder to convey is how much it meant to me, how it read to me back then. I offered her my love and allegiance while admitting I knew how unworthy of her I was. And yet I had half a notion that though I might be worthless as a date (not handsome enough) I might be of some value as a husband (intelligent, slated for success). In marriage merits outweighed appeal, and I could imagine nothing less eternal than marriage with Helen. Naturally I didn’t mention marriage in the letter. A week went by before I received her answer. Twice I saw her in the halls. The first time she came over to me and looked me in the eye and smiled her sweet, intense smile. She was wearing a powder-blue cashmere sweater and her breasts rose and fell monumentally as she asked me in her soft drawl how I was doing. Nothing in her smile or voice suggested a verdict either for or against me. I felt there was something improper about seeing her at all before I got her letter. I mumbled, “Fine,” blushed and slinked off. I felt tall and dirty. I was avoiding Tommy as well. Soon enough I would have to tell him about my proposal to Helen, which I suspected he’d disapprove of. Then one afternoon, a Friday after school, there was her letter to me in the mailbox. Even before I opened it I was mildly grateful she had at least answered me.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I kept a phone list of the people I thought I knew well enough to call in the afternoon and evening, and I’d work my way down systematically through all the names. Soon the list was so long, a good thirty names, that I needed three days to complete a full cycle. “Hi, it’s me. What are you doing? Yeah, I mean right now—what’d you think I meant, stupid? Geez … chewing gum? You call that doing something? Naw … I’m staying in. My mom’s on my back about the old homework. ’Sides, there’s that weird new sci-fi thing on TV—yeah, that’s the one. You? Janey coming over to study? I like that blue sweater she had on, but the black loafers looked sort of hoody. I know she’s not a hood—just see you two on a motorcycle, vrmm, vrmm—can you picture it? You are there: vrmm, vrmm.” And so on for hours, pure ventriloquism, nausea of small talk, a discipline nearly Oriental in its exclusion of content and its focus on empty locutions, the chatter of social fear confused with yearning, for I not only feared my friends, I also wanted to make them love me. Until now, until this great conversion, friendship for me had been more a minor pleasure than a science. Friends had been people to sit with in the cafeteria, people who had the same hobbies or the same study hall, boys equally hopeless in gym class or girls in assembly whose last names started with the same letter as mine. I hadn’t courted those acquaintances. I made no effort to draw them out, to elicit or reflect on their confidences, or to advise them. I required almost nothing of them, for if I wasn’t attentive neither was I demanding. Practically anyone could be my friend. For me friendship was an innocent, unconscious habit that didn’t confer prestige on anyone, that led nowhere, that scarcely bore thinking about, unremarkable as breath.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Up the road, almost every good area is taken. Jim drives farther up, to the water tank. Another cop car races down the road. Jim returns to the hill where he sunbathed yesterday. Hunters emerge throughout the tall brush. They stand against the clear sky. There are too many on this hill, Jim decides. He descends to the main road, back to his car. Some of the red signs lie on the paths. Intense and ominous, the heat pulses in the stirless air. At a sandy outpost where Jim stands, dozens of other shirtless men cruise each other, soon moving into the secluded paths across the road. Here too are the ones who come to meet others, invite them home. The tall blond muscleman in strapped sandals is here again with his equally muscular dog. Again he and Jim turn instantly from each other. A short distance away from an inviting branch-tangled cove, Jim stands later, showing off on an indentation off the road beyond the water tank. A very goodlooking brown-haired youngman has been driving slowly back and forth, glancing at him. Unfortunately, another man stops before he does. Jim doesn't want to hurt this man, but he prefers the other; so he begins to walk away idly from the cove until the man leaves. The brown-haired youngman drives in. “Hi.” Now another car drives in. Two unattractive men eye them slowly. “Got a match?” one asks. No. “Got a lighter?” the man persists. There is something uncomfortable about them. Jim and the brown-haired youngman say no. The car drives off. Jim and the youngman, also shirtless—body slender and hard—slide down the hill into the cove. Whrrrrrrrrrrr! The helicopter! The two men look up. The cop helicopter is circling the hill where Jim was only minutes earlier. From here, they hear its muffled speakers, electronically amplifying harsh voices. The youngman and Jim move out of the cove, farther down the path. “I wonder what's happening,” the youngman says. “I don't know,” Jim says. 1:12 P.M. Griffith Park. The Beginning of the Invasion. As Jim and the youngman move farther down the path, they hear the roar of cars, clearly different from the more flowing sound of outlaws’ cruising cars. “It sounds like an invasion,” Jim laughs. In the distance and above, the helicopter swirls angrily. Undefined electronically magnified voices echo distantly. “Jesus,” the brown-haired youngman says, laughing too, “it does sound like an invasion!” As they continue down the path, they instinctively avoid being in view of the helicopter, now circling widely. Startled, they hear the distant clap of horses’ hooves. They reach an alcove and move into it. “I'm on probation,” Jim thinks aloud, not knowing why that occurred to him at this moment. “Me too,” the other says. As far as they are from the main road, they can hear heavy tires. Trucks? The screeching of rushing cars.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel thought of Sophie. Looked to her. Casually, she lay on her side, watching them. “Why are you always trying to get away? You don’t like me anymore?” “I’m not,” Lionel said. “Maybe it’s because you bit him,” Sophie said. “Oh? I’m sorry,” Charles murmured, and there was a soft, brushing kiss against Lionel’s neck. He shivered from both the softness of the touch and the breath, the closeness of it. “It’s all right.” “Look at him, poor little fawn, shivering,” Sophie said. She left the sofa again. It gave a whine of protest, the springs shifting. She knelt near them both, close enough that Lionel could feel her, would have brushed against her if he moved. He held still. “Are you cold, Lionel? Do you need a blanket?” Lionel tried to hold himself still, but a tremor spread from the tips of his fingers back up to his wrist, to his arm, to his shoulder. He could feel something vibrate in his lower lip, the side of his face a slow-motion spasm. He tried to be still. To be easy. To be good. But they had hemmed him in. He had nowhere to go. He looked from Charles to Sophie and back, and then to the bookcase, which seemed so comically small compared to all the things it had to hold. Charles kissed his neck again, and Lionel shivered. He hated the simple, easy mechanism of it. How obvious. “What about last night, huh? You didn’t mind me biting you then.” “I don’t mind,” Lionel said. “I don’t mind it.” Charles flicked his tongue against Lionel’s ear. “God,” he said under his breath. “Please.” “How polite,” Sophie said dryly. She was close again, but she was leaning against Charles’s back, her arms wrapped around him. “So well behaved.” Lionel saw Charles look back at her, the cut of his eyes. Then he pulled his arm from Lionel and reached back to grip both of Sophie’s ankles. “Okay, that’s enough,” Charles said. Sophie ruffled Charles’s hair, and then pulled her feet free of him. She hummed to herself as she went down the hall. When they were alone, just him and Charles, Lionel tried to catch his breath. “Why is she doing this?” Lionel asked. “Doing what?” “You know what. You’re as bad as she is.” Lionel heard his voice shake. “She doesn’t care, Lionel. She doesn’t care at all.” “I know. That’s what she said.” “Then what?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said. “I don’t know. I feel weird.” Charles gave him a look that was not lacking sympathy but was a little impatient. He leaned in and pressed their mouths together. He cupped Lionel’s jaw and kissed deeper, more thoroughly, and Lionel relaxed under the steady gentleness of it. He thought of Sophie.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I went to the headmaster’s secretary to make an appointment. “I must see him now.” “What is it exactly?” she asked. “Do you want to argue over a grade? It’s too late for that—” “No, no,” I said disdainfully. “It has nothing to do with me personally. It concerns the reputation of the school and it can’t wait a moment.” She nodded and went into the headmaster’s paneled, carpeted office for a moment. When she emerged she told me to come back at four. I was agitated. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet I feared what Chuck would say when Mr. Beattie was fired. Would Chuck drop me, persecute me, organize a cabal against me, tell everyone I was a hateful little prig? I knew I wouldn’t be able to face Mr. Beattie. I’d never spoken out against anyone before. Would his wife and children go hungry? Would he ever find another job? Never before had I wielded so much power over an adult man; the power excited and scared me. Paradoxically, I who didn’t much like Eton, I who concealed sexual longings most Etonians would have condemned far sooner than dope peddling, I who had rejected the school’s religion and slept with a master and his wife, I who had once bought a hustler ten years older than I and last summer had slept with a boy three years younger, I who’d serviced Ralph, the special camper—paradoxically I was the one whom circumstance had chosen to defend this institution I despised. I was to be the guardian of public morality. Anxiety swept through me. Like most of the other students I refused to wear an overcoat even on the coldest days. Now I was trembling as I hugged myself and hurried down the brick walkway toward the music building. My teeth were chattering by the time I ducked in the door. There was Mr. Beattie picking out chords on the piano. No one else was around. “Hi,” he said. He stood and gave me his limp hand, a courtesy that puzzled me. No other master routinely shook hands with students. I felt shame rise to my face. I looked at the clock: it was three-fifteen. He asked me if I played the piano and I said just a bit. He surrendered the instrument to me. I played a recital piece from long ago, something simple by Brahms my father used to like. “Hey, Mr. Beattie,” I said, “Chuck tells me some famous jazz guy’s coming to visit you this weekend.” “Bugs Tice,” he said. He was standing in the incurve of the grand piano’s embrace, one hand pressing down on the polished black lid. “He’s staying in the parents’ suite here at school. You’ll have to hear us jam—he’s the greatest on the horn.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I kept a phone list of the people I thought I knew well enough to call in the afternoon and evening, and I’d work my way down systematically through all the names. Soon the list was so long, a good thirty names, that I needed three days to complete a full cycle. “Hi, it’s me. What are you doing? Yeah, I mean right now—what’d you think I meant, stupid? Geez … chewing gum? You call that doing something? Naw … I’m staying in. My mom’s on my back about the old homework. ’Sides, there’s that weird new sci-fi thing on TV—yeah, that’s the one. You? Janey coming over to study? I like that blue sweater she had on, but the black loafers looked sort of hoody. I know she’s not a hood—just see you two on a motorcycle, vrmm, vrmm—can you picture it? You are there: vrmm, vrmm.” And so on for hours, pure ventriloquism, nausea of small talk, a discipline nearly Oriental in its exclusion of content and its focus on empty locutions, the chatter of social fear confused with yearning, for I not only feared my friends, I also wanted to make them love me. Until now, until this great conversion, friendship for me had been more a minor pleasure than a science. Friends had been people to sit with in the cafeteria, people who had the same hobbies or the same study hall, boys equally hopeless in gym class or girls in assembly whose last names started with the same letter as mine. I hadn’t courted those acquaintances. I made no effort to draw them out, to elicit or reflect on their confidences, or to advise them. I required almost nothing of them, for if I wasn’t attentive neither was I demanding. Practically anyone could be my friend. For me friendship was an innocent, unconscious habit that didn’t confer prestige on anyone, that led nowhere, that scarcely bore thinking about, unremarkable as breath.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I got pulled over in Hillbrow. Cops in South Africa don’t give you a reason when they pull you over. Cops pull you over because they’re cops and they have the power to pull you over; it’s as simple as that. I used to watch American movies where cops would pull people over and say, “You didn’t signal” or “Your taillight’s out.” I’d always wonder, Why do American cops bother lying? One thing I appreciate about South Africa is that we have not yet refined the system to the point where we feel the need to lie. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” “Because you’re a policeman and I’m a black person?” “That’s correct. License and registration, please.” When the cop pulled me over, it was one of those situations where I wanted to say, “Hey, I know you guys are racially profiling me!” But I couldn’t argue the case because I was, at that moment, actually breaking the law. The cop walked up to my window, asked me the standard cop questions. Where are you going? Is this your car? Whose car is this? I couldn’t answer. I completely froze. Being young, funnily enough, I was more worried about getting in trouble with my parents than with the law. I’d had run-ins with the cops in Alexandra, in Soweto, but it was always more about the circumstance: a party getting shut down, a raid on a minibus. The law was all around me, but it had never come down on me, Trevor, specifically. And when you haven’t had much experience with the law, the law appears rational—cops are dicks for the most part, but you also recognize that they’re doing a job. Your parents, on the other hand, are not rational at all. They have served as judge, jury, and executioner for your entire childhood, and it feels like they give you a life sentence for every misdemeanor. In that moment, when I should have been scared of the cop, all I was thinking was Shit shit shit; I’m in so much trouble when I get home. The cop called in the number-plate registration and discovered that it didn’t match the car. Now he was really on my case. “This car is not in your name! What’s going on with these plates?! Step out of the vehicle!” It was only then that I realized: Ohhhhh, shit. Now I’m in real trouble. I stepped out of the car, and he put the cuffs on me and told me I was being arrested on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. He took me in, and the car was impounded.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I started flashing back through all the times I’d been with Babiki, meeting at her flat, hanging out with her friends, introducing her to Abel. Did I talk to her then? No. Did I talk to her then? No. It was like the scene in Fight Club where Ed Norton’s character flashes back and realizes he and Brad Pitt have never been in the same room with Helena Bonham Carter at the same time. He realizes he’s been punching himself the whole time. He’s Tyler Durden. In all the excitement of meeting Babiki, the times we were hanging out and getting to know each other, we were never actually speaking to each other. It was always through Tom. Fucking Tom. Tom had promised he’d get me a beautiful date for the dance, but he hadn’t made any promises about any of her other qualities. Whenever we were together, she was speaking Pedi to Tom, and Tom was speaking English to me. But she didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Pedi. Abel spoke Pedi. He’d learned several South African languages in order to deal with his customers, so he’d spoken with her fluently when they met. But in that moment I realized I’d never actually heard her say anything in English other than: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.” That’s it: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.” Babiki was so shy that she didn’t talk much to begin with, and I was so inept with women that I didn’t know how to talk to her. I’d never had a girlfriend; I didn’t even know what “girlfriend” meant. Someone put a beautiful woman on my arm and said, “She’s your girlfriend.” I’d been mesmerized by her beauty and just the idea of her—I didn’t know I was supposed to talk to her. The naked women on my computer, I’d never had to talk to them, ask them their opinions, ask them about their feelings. And I was afraid I’d open my mouth and ruin the whole thing, so I just nodded and smiled along and let Tom do the talking.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I desperately needed a new beginning. The thought of resuming my life made me want to end it—unless I could change it completely. If my homosexuality was due to a surfeit of female company at home (for so ran the most popular psychological theory of the day), then I should correct the imbalance by entering an all-male world. In order to become a heterosexual I decided I should attend a boys’ boarding school (for so ran my wonderfully logical addendum to the theory). I phoned my father long-distance and pleaded with him to help me escape my mother. Whereas I loved her I dreaded her mysterious influence, as though she were a plant like rhubarb, stalk nourishing, leaves poisonous. “I don’t think you should talk about your mother that way, young fellow,” my father said. “She’s a fine woman.” I heard him gasp as he drew on his cigar. I could picture him at his blond mahogany desk. Perhaps he’d rolled up a pipe cleaner into a hoop and was throwing it for his cat, Baby, to fetch while my cat, Herr Pogner, stretched on the sill, yawned, raised her fluffy tail and arched her feathery back, then sank down on all fours, front paws neatly tucked under her downy tortoise shell chest. The smell of the cigar, the way my father tilted his head back so that he could watch through the close-up lenses of his bifocals as Baby batted the pipe cleaner across his desk, scattering business papers as she went, then tumbled over the edge onto the carpet, then dashed off to a corner (look down, through the upper lenses), the distant drone of a carpet sweeper a black maid was pushing downstairs—this whole dense world came rushing back toward me with his first words. “But, Daddy,” I exclaimed, my voice breaking and rising up, up the scale into a soprano delirium, “I love my mother.” “Like. Like,” he said. “A man likes things. Girls love, men like.” “But that’s just the problem,” I wailed. “I’m too involved with Mommy. I’m not”—and here I put the decisive card on the table—“I’m not turning out … as I should. I need to be with men.” Long pause. The faint transmitted sound of the sweeper had died away. A click revealed to me that my stepmother had picked up on an extension phone. Three pairs of eyes blinked as three hands held three silent receivers. “I need male role models,” I said, delighted that I had remembered the very word my mother liked to use. “Role what?” my father asked, annoyed. “To hell with that.” I subsided into silence. Then suddenly he and I were both speaking at once, both stopped, he resumed: “As I was saying, you could come live here, I suppose.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And yet his silences did not guarantee that he was altogether without thought or feeling. At unexpected moments he’d blush or stutter or in mid-sentence his mouth would go dry—and I could never figure out what had prompted these symptoms of anxiety. One night, after our captain had lingered longer than usual in his cloud of Scotch and then passed on to the next tent, I asked my rommate why the captain always stayed longer beside him than me. “I don’t know. He rubs me.” “What do you mean?” “Doesn’t he rub you?” the boy whispered. “Sometimes,” I lied. “All over?” “Like how?” I asked. “Like all”—his voice went dry—“down your front?” “That’s not right,” I said. “He shouldn’t do that. He shouldn’t. It’s abnormal. I’ve read about it.” A few nights later I woke up with a fever. My throat was so sore I couldn’t swallow. My sheets were wet and cold with sweat. Even when I lay still I could feel the blood running through my veins; a metronome was ticking loudly within me and with each tick an oar of sensation cut into the water and pulled against it. No, now I could detect a line of divers jumping off the prow to the right, the left, right, left—the columns of marching boys advanced across the floor of the chlorinated pool. I closed my eyes and felt my heartbeat pluck a string in the harp of my chest. Was the night really so cold? I had to get help; the infirmary; otherwise pneumonia. My roommate was propped up on his elbow speaking giddy nonsense to me (“I like, I like, I like the Lackawanna”) until I opened my eyes and saw him serenely asleep, his face the cutting edge of the prow as it parted a sea of liquid mercury. The flow, clinging to itself, boiling but cold, had swept me overboard with a chipmunk who was singing snatches from the Top Ten through the painful red hole in his neck—I sat up. I could barely swallow. I whispered my roommate’s name. When he didn’t respond I put on my regulation cotton robe and regulation black slippers and walked up and down the raw clay roads between the rows of tents. Was that the first streak of dawn or the lights of a town? Should I wait till reveille? Or should I wake our captain up now? I walked and walked and watched the night sky phosphoresce like plankton in the August sea. Gold would glimmer at the horizon and then feed its way up through delicate glass circuits into the main switchboard, where it would short out in a white explosion that would settle into a fine jeweler’s rouge. Were those bats overhead? I’d heard that bats lived in the school towers.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I phoned my father long-distance and pleaded with him to help me escape my mother. Whereas I loved her I dreaded her mysterious influence, as though she were a plant like rhubarb, stalk nourishing, leaves poisonous. “I don’t think you should talk about your mother that way, young fellow,” my father said. “She’s a fine woman.” I heard him gasp as he drew on his cigar. I could picture him at his blond mahogany desk. Perhaps he’d rolled up a pipe cleaner into a hoop and was throwing it for his cat, Baby, to fetch while my cat, Herr Pogner, stretched on the sill, yawned, raised her fluffy tail and arched her feathery back, then sank down on all fours, front paws neatly tucked under her downy tortoise shell chest. The smell of the cigar, the way my father tilted his head back so that he could watch through the close-up lenses of his bifocals as Baby batted the pipe cleaner across his desk, scattering business papers as she went, then tumbled over the edge onto the carpet, then dashed off to a corner (look down, through the upper lenses), the distant drone of a carpet sweeper a black maid was pushing downstairs—this whole dense world came rushing back toward me with his first words. “But, Daddy,” I exclaimed, my voice breaking and rising up, up the scale into a soprano delirium, “I love my mother.” “Like. Like,” he said. “A man likes things. Girls love, men like.” “But that’s just the problem, ” I wailed. “I’m too involved with Mommy. I’m not”—and here I put the decisive card on the table—“I’m not turning out … as I should. I need to be with men.” Long pause. The faint transmitted sound of the sweeper had died away. A click revealed to me that my stepmother had picked up on an extension phone. Three pairs of eyes blinked as three hands held three silent receivers. “I need male role models,” I said, delighted that I had remembered the very word my mother liked to use. “Role what?” my father asked, annoyed. “To hell with that.” I subsided into silence. Then suddenly he and I were both speaking at once, both stopped, he resumed: “As I was saying, you could come live here, I suppose.” “That would never work. You’re always at the office, Daddy. Last summer we were in the same house three months and I didn’t spend more than an hour with you altogether. You slept all day. I was working the Addressograph machine. No, what I want is to go to a boarding school. I want to live with a bunch of guys my own age and just, well, learn sports”—could he tell how much I was lying? I ended on a rehearsed phrase—“and be with the fellows . You know.” “Don’t say ‘you know.’

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  People did try to kill themselves—some of them succeeded and some of them did not. • • • IN THE HOST’S BATHROOM, Lionel tried to be easy. His pulse thumped in his thighs, and he thought the force of it would make him slip from his perch on the edge of the toilet. The motion of it made him dizzy. He hated that he had let Charles’s remark, casual and dismissive as it was, jam him up. He’d let it rule him, but worse still, he’d let on how much it bothered him. Lionel stood, bent over the sink, and splashed cold water onto his face. The faucet handles screamed when he twisted them, and the head gave a jittery, anxious stream. He drank from his cupped palms, trying to get his pulse down. He found the water a little soapy, and the dizziness remained, that teetering, swaying sensation, as if his legs might go out from under him. There was a hard knock on the door. “Two minutes,” Lionel said. He ran the faucet again to give the person on the other side the idea that he was washing his hands. His mother would have told him to comb his hair and said that he had the bad habit of letting white people see him nappy and disheveled. He always wanted to tell her when she got on him about it that white people were just people, but he knew that it was a naive and stupid thing to say, because white people were white people. Back in the care facility, his mother had told him that his aunts and uncles down home, which was what she called her own hometown in eastern Georgia, thought his current state was because he’d been ripping and running with all them white kids at school and math camp. His aunts and uncles saw his desire to kill himself as an extension of all those things they didn’t like or understand—how he talked, how he saw things—and they blamed his father and his father’s ways for that. It was dumb. It was pointless. It was nobody’s fault. Things happened. When he cracked the door open, he didn’t immediately see anyone. It was only after emerging fully into the narrow hallway, lined with photos of the host and his family, that Lionel saw Charles leaning against a shut door with his eyes closed. “You good?” Charles asked. “Looks like I should be asking you that.” “I didn’t want to come to this thing.” “Then why did you?” Lionel rested his back against the wall. Directly across from him was a photo of the host as a child, head thrown back in ecstasy.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  In the host’s bathroom, Lionel tried to be easy. His pulse thumped in his thighs, and he thought the force of it would make him slip from his perch on the edge of the toilet. The motion of it made him dizzy. He hated that he had let Charles’s remark, casual and dismissive as it was, jam him up. He’d let it rule him, but worse still, he’d let on how much it bothered him. Lionel stood, bent over the sink, and splashed cold water onto his face. The faucet handles screamed when he twisted them, and the head gave a jittery, anxious stream. He drank from his cupped palms, trying to get his pulse down. He found the water a little soapy, and the dizziness remained, that teetering, swaying sensation, as if his legs might go out from under him. There was a hard knock on the door. “Two minutes,” Lionel said. He ran the faucet again to give the person on the other side the idea that he was washing his hands. His mother would have told him to comb his hair and said that he had the bad habit of letting white people see him nappy and disheveled. He always wanted to tell her when she got on him about it that white people were just people, but he knew that it was a naive and stupid thing to say, because white people were white people. Back in the care facility, his mother had told him that his aunts and uncles down home, which was what she called her own hometown in eastern Georgia, thought his current state was because he’d been ripping and running with all them white kids at school and math camp. His aunts and uncles saw his desire to kill himself as an extension of all those things they didn’t like or understand—how he talked, how he saw things—and they blamed his father and his father’s ways for that. It was dumb. It was pointless. It was nobody’s fault. Things happened. When he cracked the door open, he didn’t immediately see anyone. It was only after emerging fully into the narrow hallway, lined with photos of the host and his family, that Lionel saw Charles leaning against a shut door with his eyes closed. “You good?” Charles asked. “Looks like I should be asking you that.” “I didn’t want to come to this thing.” “Then why did you?” Lionel rested his back against the wall. Directly across from him was a photo of the host as a child, head thrown back in ecstasy. He looked happy. Pleased. A woman in white shorts stood next to a tall bush with a muted expression. “Sophie,” Charles said. “Sophie wanted to come.” “Which one is she?” “The blond one.” Lionel turned his head enough to look through the kitchen doorway and out into the living room. “The flexible one?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  It felt too much after too long a night. “Can you?” Lionel asked. “Would you?” “You’re such a little weirdo,” Charles said. But he took the keys from Lionel’s hand. He tried the first one, but when it wouldn’t undo the lock of the main door, he turned back to look at Lionel. He tried another, still no luck. “You want to help out here?” “It’s the one with the red tape,” Lionel said. A car passed on the street, kicking up gray slush into the air. Some of it landed near the rim of light at the edge of the yard. Charles unlocked the door and the warmth of the lower hall wafted out to them. It smelled like boiled cabbage and floor wax. Lionel stepped into the warm lobby and pointed down the long hall with its red tiles and row of dented gray mailboxes. “The blue key,” Lionel said. Charles looked down at the keys, noticing that they were all different colors. Lionel had retaped them just the morning before, as a way of remembering which did what. “Handy,” Charles said. “Good system.” “It helps,” Lionel said, but he could only lean against the wall by the mailboxes. • • • In Lionel’s apartment, they took off their coats and boots. Lionel turned on the light, and the intensity of its sudden brightness made them both flinch. “Sorry.” “It’s okay.” Charles sat at the tiny kitchen table, his mere presence making everything in the apartment seem small and ineffectual, like a child’s toy house. Lionel felt shy about it now, letting someone see where and how he lived. “Do you want some coffee? I only have cheap beans—they’re a little old.” “Sure thing.” Lionel ran some water into the kettle and dumped the grounds into the French press. Charles’s chair scraped back, and the boards strained beneath his weight as he walked through the apartment. His step had an uneven hitch. “This where you live?” “No, we just broke into a stranger’s apartment,” Lionel said. Charles stood near his bookcase, dragging a finger along the spines of his books. His humming filled the apartment. He turned to Lionel. “Are you nervous?” “A little.” “Why? Because of me?” Charles came nearer to him. “No, me. You, too, I guess.” “What about me makes you nervous?” Charles pressed him against the counter. Lionel felt himself receding. “You have a girlfriend,” Lionel said. “I do.” “Okay.” The electric kettle turned itself off. “I should pour this.” Charles stepped back to let him pour the water into the French press. Lionel poured slowly, watching the level of the water rise higher and higher. It brought him pleasure to do such things, to pay attention to ordinary tasks. They watched it steep in silence.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years. At Marta’s house, Lenny walked her to the door, though she told him it wasn’t necessary. She pulled out her key and put it in the lock, and she felt his stomach against her back, and he pushed against her. The world was dim under his shadow. His hand was on her arm, its coarse heat. She stiffened, like some stupid, frightened animal. She turned to him and looked up, and he was coming in for a kiss.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She left the sofa again. It gave a whine of protest, the springs shifting. She knelt near them both, close enough that Lionel could feel her, would have brushed against her if he moved. He held still. “Are you cold, Lionel? Do you need a blanket?” Lionel tried to hold himself still, but a tremor spread from the tips of his fingers back up to his wrist, to his arm, to his shoulder. He could feel something vibrate in his lower lip, the side of his face a slow-motion spasm. He tried to be still. To be easy. To be good. But they had hemmed him in. He had nowhere to go. He looked from Charles to Sophie and back, and then to the bookcase, which seemed so comically small compared to all the things it had to hold. Charles kissed his neck again, and Lionel shivered. He hated the simple, easy mechanism of it. How obvious. “What about last night, huh? You didn’t mind me biting you then.” “I don’t mind,” Lionel said. “I don’t mind it.” Charles flicked his tongue against Lionel’s ear. “God,” he said under his breath. “Please.” “How polite,” Sophie said dryly. She was close again, but she was leaning against Charles’s back, her arms wrapped around him. “So well behaved.” Lionel saw Charles look back at her, the cut of his eyes. Then he pulled his arm from Lionel and reached back to grip both of Sophie’s ankles. “Okay, that’s enough,” Charles said. Sophie ruffled Charles’s hair, and then pulled her feet free of him. She hummed to herself as she went down the hall. When they were alone, just him and Charles, Lionel tried to catch his breath. “Why is she doing this?” Lionel asked. “Doing what?” “You know what. You’re as bad as she is.” Lionel heard his voice shake. “She doesn’t care, Lionel. She doesn’t care at all.” “I know. That’s what she said.” “Then what?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said. “I don’t know. I feel weird.” Charles gave him a look that was not lacking sympathy but was a little impatient. He leaned in and pressed their mouths together. He cupped Lionel’s jaw and kissed deeper, more thoroughly, and Lionel relaxed under the steady gentleness of it. He thought of Sophie. He closed his eyes. “It’s okay,” Charles said. “It’s all right.” “What about Sophie?” “Don’t overthink it. This can be whatever you want it to be.” “I don’t know what I want it to be,” Lionel said. Charles kissed him again and then pulled away. “Okay,” Charles said. He stood up. “Okay.” Sophie came back. She was wearing pajamas and her face was newly washed. Lionel and Charles were not speaking to each other. He had come up against the thing that felt most frustrating about this—the inability to articulate simply what he felt or what he wanted. She sat between them—lay down between them, really, her head on Charles’s lap and her feet across Lionel’s knees. She stretched.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Not that Miri had shared her secret about Mike Monsky, but there was a difference between having a secret no one suspected and having one you dropped hints about, wasn’t there? “Maybe you should tell your parents about Ruby,” Miri said. “Maybe they can help.” “Help? I don’t need help. I’ve never been happier.” She pressed the play button and the jukebox came to life. She snapped her fingers a few times and began to tap as Judy Garland’s voice sang, “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.” She tapped across the room and back, then paused, looked at Miri and smiled a smile Miri didn’t recognize, a hard smile—maybe it was Ruby’s, maybe not, but it sent shivers down Miri’s spine. She took a couple of slow turns around the floor, then began to turn faster and faster until she was spinning, spinning like some kind of whirling dervish right out of their social studies book. “Stop…” Miri called. “Stop!” But Natalie didn’t stop. Her eyes glazed over, as she twirled faster and faster, until her face turned almost purple. Miri ran upstairs, found Dr. O and Corinne in the kitchen eating bagels. “What is it?” Corinne asked, reading Miri’s face. “Natalie,” Miri said. They both jumped up and followed Miri downstairs, where Natalie was still spinning to Judy Garland. “Get ready for the Judgment Day…” Miri pressed the off button on the jukebox. The room fell silent, except for Natalie’s taps. Dr. O grabbed her. “Natalie…sweetheart…” He lifted her into his arms. “My god. She’s light as a feather,” he said to Corinne. Natalie’s feet kept moving. Somewhere she or Ruby was still tapping. “Call Harry Reiss,” Dr. O said to Corinne. Dr. Reiss was a doctor, but also their friend. He was at their New Year’s Eve party, in the conga line. “It’s Sunday,” Corinne said. “Call him at home,” Dr. O said. “No.” “Call him, Corinne, or I’m taking her straight to the hospital.” “You have no idea what’s going on in this house, Arthur. You’re too busy solving everyone else’s problems to see that your son is in despair and your daughter is losing her mind. You think giving her a dance studio at home is going to fix this?” She swept her arm around the room. “Don’t you see…” Corinne began to cry. “I’m utterly alone. I don’t even have Mrs. Barnes to help and she’s never coming back.” “You have friends.” “I wouldn’t tell my friends one word about what’s happening to us. Not one word.” Miri didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to witness the end of the perfect family. The end of her fantasies. Now Natalie was slumped against her father like a rag doll. Miri snuck up the stairs and out the back door while Corinne’s and Dr. O’s voices rose and fell and rose again. She rode her bike home and collapsed into Irene’s arms. “What’s wrong, sweetie pie?” Irene asked, holding her.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  You know the Osners, don’t you? He’s a dentist.” “Yes, I’ve met them at the Club.” “So while the Osner girl and her friend were trying on sneakers I told them they looked so cute together I just had to snap their picture with my new Polaroid camera.” She fished a photo out of her pocketbook and passed it to Frekki. Frekki was surprised, but tried not to show it. “What do you think?” Sherry asked. “Makes me wish I had a daughter,” Frekki told her. “About the resemblance, I mean.” “I don’t see any resemblance.” “Really? I’ve always thought your brother had the most unusual eyes, almond-shaped and hazel. And so does she. Of course I haven’t seen Mike in ages, not since he left town in a hurry.” “He didn’t leave in a hurry. He enlisted.” “Either way. We went to all the same parties that spring. He and Rusty Ammerman were crazy for each other. She was in my class at Battin.” “I don’t remember that name.” The redhead. She hoped her face wasn’t giving anything away. Mike had brought her to the house in Weequahic a couple of times. And Frekki had been to the Ammermans’ house, too. Had enjoyed Mrs. Ammerman’s delicious chocolate cake. “She’s still around,” Sherry said. “And this is her daughter, Miri.” “What are you getting at?” “Do I have to spell it out?” “What you’re suggesting isn’t possible.” “Are you sure? There was a story going around back then that Rusty had run off and married a boy that summer, a boy who was going overseas.” “She didn’t marry my brother.” “Well, she’s never married anyone else that I know of.” “I think you should forget about this, Sherry. There’s no truth to it and all you can do is make trouble for both families.” Frekki glanced at the photo again. “She looks like a nice girl.” “She is. The Osners love her like a daughter.” Frekki dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, applied fresh lipstick and pushed back her chair. “I have to get back to the boys. Thanks for the lunch. Next time it’s on me.” Before she put on her jacket she said, “Oh, do you mind if I keep the picture?” “Of course,” Sherry said. Was that a smirk on her face? Frekki called her brother that night, made sure he could talk privately, then told him the story. “I just want to know one thing. Is it possible, yes or no?” “No,” her brother said, convincingly. She probably would have let it go if it hadn’t been for the plane crash. She didn’t need any more tsoris in her life. But by then she knew where Rusty lived, and how close the plane had come to her house and that beautiful young girl with Mike’s eyes, that girl who very likely was her niece. She couldn’t sleep that night thinking about it, or the night after that.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She felt like she might cry or scream or both. Suzanne took the Bible from her and finished reading the psalm. “I’m sorry,” Suzanne said when the bell rang and they left for their first-period classes. “I didn’t know she’d make you read the morning psalm.” “It’s okay,” Miri told her. “Just, please, don’t tell anyone else.” “I won’t.” No other teacher mentioned the crash. Right after fifth-period algebra, Natalie took Miri aside in the girls’ room and said, “I have this buzzing inside my head.” “You want to go to the nurse?” “No, it’s not like that.” “Maybe it’s your period,” Miri said. “This is different,” Natalie told her. “And when the buzzing stops, Ruby starts talking to me.” “Ruby?” “The dancer who was on that plane. Didn’t you listen to Walter Winchell last night? He spent half his show talking about her.” As soon as she admitted Ruby was talking to her, before Miri even had the chance to take it in, Natalie grabbed her shoulders. “Swear you won’t tell anyone what I just said.” What could Miri do? Natalie was her best friend. She had no choice but to swear she would never tell. For the rest of the day, whenever the other kids were buzzing about the crash, Miri was thinking about the buzzing in Natalie’s head. OBITUARIES — Mrs. Estelle Sapphire of Bayonne was among the first identified at the makeshift morgue set up in the two garages behind Haines Funeral Home. She was identified by her wedding ring. Her husband, Benjamin Sapphire, collapsed at the scene and was taken by police car to the home of a friend. —THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT WAS just days away, and Miri had choir rehearsal after school. When she got home she found a strange man in Irene’s living room, sitting in the wing chair, wrapped in one of Irene’s crocheted afghans, his feet soaking in a pan of warm water, his trouser legs rolled up to reveal the hairiest legs Miri had ever seen. Even his toes were covered with dark hair. If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn they were animal legs. “Miri, darling, this is Ben Sapphire,” Irene said, handing him a steaming cup of tea, or maybe it was soup. “He was freezing cold,” Irene told her. “His hands and feet were blue. I thought for sure they’d have to take him to the hospital.” He was still shivering but he managed to say, “Irene was serving home-baked coffee cake.” “Which one?” Miri asked. “Sour cream with cinnamon and walnuts, or streusel?” He looked to Irene for an answer. “Sour cream,” she said, leading Miri into the kitchen where she whispered, “We knew each other in the old days, in Bayonne. He lost his wife in the crash.” Miri didn’t want to think about the crash. “I’ll be upstairs,” she told Irene. “Call me when it’s time to set the table for supper.” She and Rusty and Uncle Henry ate at Irene’s every night.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Richard knew that Damian had been in contact with Stan via the Internet and moved out to L.A. the day he turned eighteen. He’d had such a horrible relationship with his father and older brothers that he’d run away from home three times. Once he was eighteen, there was no way to drag him back. Damian had said he wouldn’t have minded staying in the country and working on the family dairy farm, but not with the intolerance that surrounded him. “Stan keeps wanting me to let guys bareback my ass for the website, but I won’t.” Richard frowned. “If Stan promised college and isn’t delivering, and if he is encouraging you to be unsafe, then yes, you should leave.” “Could I stay with you?” Richard hesitated. There had been so many untrustworthy hustlers and unstable addicts coming through his clinic that he kept a Taser on hand. Damian seemed angelic compared to most of them, but he wasn’t sure. “I…suppose, but maybe—” “It’s okay. I can tell you’re uncomfortable with the idea. I’ll figure something out.” That night Richard purchased a membership to DaddiesinDamian. com. The number of videos of Damian getting fucked numbered in the hundreds (the boy was only twenty!), and his dick stirred seeing how much Damian loved getting plowed by older men. On the other hand, it bothered him that many of the newest comments said things like, “If you want to keep me as a member, Damian needs to start getting barebacked.” Others said, “Not just barebacked, but gangbanged.” With a little research, he was able to discover that the full name of the owner of DaddiesInDamian was Stan Latham. Digging deeper revealed that Latham had once been arrested for dealing crystal meth but got off on a technicality. Richard had figured Damian’s “master” was up to no good, but this was worse than he expected. Maybe he would have to put past experience behind him and help Damian. Maybe he had to stop worrying about protecting his heart, at least for now. Damian’s depression briefly lifted when he saw the elation in Richard’s eyes. Damian had brought a bouquet of daisies to Richard’s house, and he wore his yard-work clothes, hoping to please Richard as much as possible. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise? Come in, young man.” Damian looked down. “I have to leave Los Angeles, Dr. Preston. I made the mistake of getting on Stan’s computer. I wanted to see how much money he was making from guys fucking my ass, and it’s…a lot. I also saw some other stuff, and Stan and Bob caught me. Now they won’t let me out of the house. I had to sneak out just to see you.” Damian saw the sadness in Richard’s eyes. “Damian, don’t go back. Call the police from here.”