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 City of Night (1963)

  In a bar with two men from out of town who have come to explore, on vacation, this make-out world of Times Square, I agree to meet them later at their hotel room in the East 20s. When I got there that night—and after I had knocked loudly several times—the door opened cautiously on a dark room. One of the men peeked out, said, hurriedly in order to close the door quickly: “Im sorry but weve got someone else now; lets make it tomorrow.” But there were others to feed that quickly starved craving. In theater balconies; the act sometimes executed in the last rows, or along the dark stairways.... In movie heads—while someone watched out for an intruder; body fusing with mouth hurriedly—momentarily stifling that sense of crushing aloneness that the world manifests each desperate moment of the day—and which only the liberation of Orgasm seemed then to be able to vanquish, if only momentarily.... Behind the statue in Bryant park; figures silhouetted uncaringly in the unstoppable moments.... Still, for me, there were those days of returning to what had once constituted periods of relative calmness, in my earlier years, when—to Escape!—I would read greedily.... Now, at that library on Fifth Avenue, I would try often to shut my ears to the echoes of that world roaring outside, immediately beyond these very walls. Again, I would read for hours. And this would be a part of the recurring pattern, when impulsively I would get a job, leave the streets, return to those books to which I had fled as a child. But because there would always be, too, that boiling excitement to be in that world which had brought me here—and, equally, the powerful childhood obsession with guilt which threatened at times to smother me—emotionally I was constantly on a seesaw. And I began to sense that this journey away from a remote childhood window was a kind of rebellion against an innocence which nothing in the world justified. In the library one night as I sit in the reading room surrounded by serene-masked people like relics from a distant world, a handsome youngman said hello to me. He sat at the same table. Noticing that he kept smiling and looking at me—at the same time that I felt his leg sliding against mine—I left Sharply, I resented that youngman. His gesture had an implied attraction within the world of mutually interested men. While I could easily hang out with other youngmen hustling the same streets (although, since Pete, I seldom did for more than a few minutes, preferring to be alone), with them there was a knowledge—verbally proclaimed—that we were hunting scores, not each other. With this youngman just now, there had been the indication that he felt he could attract me to him as clearly as he had been attracted to me.... The youngman followed me outside.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  So Werschkul spent months writing a breakdown—and in the process suffered a breakdown. What was supposed to be a summary, a brief, had ballooned into an exhaustive history, The Decline and Fall of the Nike Empire, which ran to hundreds of pages. It was longer than Proust, longer than Tolstoy, and not a fraction as readable. It even had a title. Without a shred of irony Werschkul called it: Werschkul on American Selling Price, Volume I. When you thought about it, when you really thought about it, what really scared you was that Volume I . I sent Strasser back east to rein in Werschkul, check him into a psych ward if necessary. Just calm the kid down, I said. That first night they went to a local pub in Georgetown for a cocktail or three, and at the end of the night Werschkul wasn’t any calmer. On the contrary. He got up on a table and delivered his stump speech to the patrons. He went full Patrick Henry. “Give me Nike or give me death!” The patrons were ready to vote for the latter. Strasser tried to coax Werschkul down off the chair, but Werschkul was just getting warmed up. “Don’t you people realize,” he shouted, “that freedom is on trial here? FREEDOM! Did you know that Hitler’s father was a customs inspector?” On the plus side, I think Werschkul scared Strasser straight. He seemed like the old Strasser when he returned and told me about Werschkul’s mental condition. We had a good laugh, a healing laugh. Then he handed me a copy of Werschkul on American Selling Price, Volume I . Werschkul had even had it bound. In leather. I looked at the title: WASP. How perfect. How Werschkul. “Are you going to read it?” Strasser said. “I’ll wait for the movie,” I said, plopping it on my desk. I knew right then that I’d have to start flying back to Washington, D.C., take on this fight myself. There was no other way. And maybe it would cure my burnout. Maybe the cure for any burnout, I thought, is to just work harder.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Wallace rapped his pen on the table. My credit was maxed out, he said. Officially, irrevocably, immediately. He wasn’t authorizing one more cent until I put some cash in my account and left it there. Meanwhile, henceforth, he’d be imposing strict sales quotas for me to meet. Miss one quota, he said, by even one day, and, well... He didn’t finish the sentence. His voice trailed off, and I was left to fill the silence with worst-case scenarios. I turned to White, who gave me a look. What can I do, pal? DAYS LATER WOODELL showed me a telex from Onitsuka. The big spring shipment was ready to hit the water and they wanted twenty thousand dollars. Great, we said. For once they’re shipping the shoes on time. Just one hitch. We didn’t have twenty thousand dollars. And it was clear I couldn’t go to Wallace. I couldn’t ask Wallace for change of a five. So I telexed Onitsuka and asked them to hold the shoes, please, until we brought in some more revenue from our sales force. “Please don’t think we are in financial difficulty,” I wrote. It wasn’t a lie, per se. As I told Bowerman, we weren’t broke, we just had no money. Lots of assets, no cash. We simply needed more time. Now it was my turn to say: Little more days. While awaiting Onitsuka’s response, I realized that there was only one way to solve this cash flow problem once and for all. A small public offering. If we could sell 30 percent of Blue Ribbon, at two bucks a share, we could raise three hundred thousand dollars overnight. The timing for such an offering seemed ideal. In 1970 the first-ever venture capital firms were starting to sprout up. The whole concept of venture capital was being invented before our eyes, though the idea of what constituted a sound investment for venture capitalists wasn’t very broad. Most of the new venture capital firms were in Northern California, so they were mainly attracted to high-tech and electronics companies. Silicon Valley, almost exclusively. Since most of those companies had futuristic-sounding names, I formed a holding company for Blue Ribbon and gave it a name designed to attract tech-happy investors: Sports-Tek Inc. Woodell and I sent out fliers advertising the offering, then sat back and braced for the clamorous response. Silence. A month passed. Deafening silence. No one phoned. Not one person. That is, almost no one. We did manage to sell three hundred shares, at one dollar per. To Woodell and his mother. Ultimately we withdrew the offering. It was a humiliation, and in its wake I had many heated conversations with myself. I blamed the shaky economy. I blamed Vietnam. But first and foremost I blamed myself. I’d overvalued Blue Ribbon. I’d overvalued my life’s work. More than once, over my first cup of coffee in the morning, or while trying to fall asleep at night, I’d tell myself: Maybe I’m a fool?

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  AFTER TURNING OUT the light next to Matthew’s bed, I’d usually go and sit in the living room with Penny. We’d talk about the day. Which meant the looming trial. Growing up, Penny had watched several of her father’s trials, and it gave her an avid fondness for courtroom drama. She never missed a legal show on TV. Perry Mason was her favorite, and I sometimes called her Della Street, after Mason’s intrepid secretary. I kidded her about her enthusiasm, but I also fed off it. The final act of every evening was my phone call to my father. Time for my own bedtime story. By then he’d left the newspaper, and in his retirement he had loads of time to research old cases and precedents, to spin out arguments that might be useful to Cousin Houser. His involvement, plus his sense of fair play, plus his bedrock belief in the rightness of Blue Ribbon’s cause, was restorative. It was always the same. My father would ask about Matthew and Penny, and then I’d ask about Mom, and then he’d tell me what he’d found in the law books. I’d take careful notes on a yellow legal pad. Before signing off he’d always say that he liked our chances. We’re going to win, Buck. That magical pronoun, “we”—he’d always use it, and it would always make me feel better. It’s possible that we were never closer, maybe because our relationship had been reduced to its primal essence. He was my dad, I was his son, and I was in the fight of my life. Looking back, I see that something else was going on. My trial was providing my father with a healthier outlet for his inner chaos. My legal troubles, my nightly phone calls, were keeping him on high alert, and at home. There were fewer late nights at the bar of the club. “I’M BRINGING SOMEONE else onto the team,” Cousin Houser told me one day. “Young lawyer. Rob Strasser. You’ll like him.” He was fresh out of UC Berkeley School of Law, Cousin Houser said, and he didn’t know a damn thing. Yet. But Cousin Houser had an instinct about the kid. Thought he showed tremendous promise. Plus, Strasser had a personality that was sure to mesh with our company. “The moment Strasser read our brief,” Cousin Houser told me, “he saw this case as a holy crusade.” Well, I liked the sound of that. So the next time I was at Cousin Houser’s firm I walked down the hall and poked my head into the office of this Strasser fellow. He wasn’t there. The office was pitch-dark. Shades drawn, lights off. I turned to leave. Then I heard… Hello? I turned back. Somewhere within the darkness, behind a big walnut desk, a shape moved. The shape grew, a mountain rising from a dark sea.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He grunted. “Either way,” he said, “wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to pay athletes? Legally?” Lastly, Bowerman told me he’d bumped into Kitami at the Games. He didn’t much care for the man. “Doesn’t know a damn thing about shoes,” Bowerman grumbled. “And he’s a little too slick. Little too full of himself.” I was starting to have the same inklings. I’d gotten a sense from Kitami’s last few wires and letters that he might not be the man he’d seemed, and that he wasn’t the fan of Blue Ribbon he’d appeared to be when I was last in Japan. I had a bad feeling in my bones. Maybe he was getting ready to jack up our prices. I mentioned this to Bowerman, and told him I was taking measures to protect us. Before hanging up I boasted that, though I didn’t have enough cash or cachet to pay athletes, I did have enough to buy someone at Onitsuka. I had a man on the inside, I said, a man acting as my eyes and ears and keeping tabs on Kitami. I sent out a memo saying as much to all Blue Ribbon employees. (By now we had around forty.) Though I’d fallen in love with Japanese culture—I kept my souvenir samurai sword beside my desk—I also warned them that Japanese business practices were thoroughly perplexing. In Japan you couldn’t predict what either your competition or your partner might do. I’d given up trying. Instead, I wrote, “I’ve taken what I think is a big step to keep us informed. I’ve hired a spy. He works full-time in the Onitsuka Export Department. Without going into a lengthy discussion of why I will just tell you that I feel he is trustworthy. “This spy may seem somewhat unethical to you, but the spy system is ingrained and completely accepted in Japanese business circles. They actually have schools for industrial spies, much as we have schools for typists and stenographers.” I can’t imagine what made me use the word “spy” so wantonly, so boldly, other than the fact that James Bond was all the rage just then. Nor can I understand why, when I was revealing so much, I didn’t reveal the spy’s name. It was Fujimoto, whose bicycle I’d replaced. I think I must have known, on some level, that the memo was a mistake, a terribly stupid thing to do. And that I would live to regret it. I think I knew. But I often found myself as perplexing as Japanese business practices. KITAMI AND MR. Onitsuka both attended the Games in Mexico City, and afterward they both flew to Los Angeles. I flew down from Oregon to meet them for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Santa Monica. I was late, of course, and by the time I arrived they were full of sake. Like schoolboys on holiday: Each was wearing a souvenir sombrero, loudly woohooing. I tried hard to mirror their festive mood.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  It has to be the A Team, I thought, so I sat with a yellow legal pad in my lap, making lists of names, scratching them out, making new lists. Chang, of course. Strasser, naturally. Hayes, surely. I notified everyone who was going on the trip to get their papers and passports and affairs in order. Then I spent the days leading up to our departure reading, cramming on Chinese history. The Boxer Rebellion. The Great Wall. Opium Wars. Ming dynasty. Confucius. Mao. And darned if I was going to be the only student. I made a syllabus for all members of our traveling party. In July 1980 we boarded a plane. Beijing, here we come. But first, Tokyo. I thought it would be a good idea to stop there along the way. Just to check in. Sales were starting to grow again in the Japanese market. Also, Japan would be a nice way to ease everyone into China, which was going to be a challenge for all of us. Baby steps. Penny and Gorman—I’d learned my lesson. Twelve hours later, walking the streets of Tokyo, alone, my mind kept spinning back to 1962. My Crazy Idea. Now I was back, on the verge of taking that idea into a mammoth new market. I thought of Marco Polo. I thought of Confucius. But I also thought of all the games I’d seen through the years—football, basketball, baseball—when one team had a big lead in the final seconds, or innings, and relaxed. Or tightened. And therefore lost. I told myself to stop looking back, keep my gaze forward. We ate a few wonderful Japanese dinners, and visited a few old friends, and after two or three days, rested and ready, we were all set to go. Our flight to Beijing was the next morning. We had one last meal together in the Ginza, washed down with several cocktails, and everyone turned in early. I took a hot shower, phoned home, and poured myself into bed. A few hours later I woke to frantic knocking. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. Two a.m. “Who’s there?” “David Chang! Let me in!” I went to the door and found Chang looking very un-Chang. Rumpled, harried, regimental tie askew. “Hayes isn’t going!” he said. “What are you talking about?” “Hayes is downstairs in the bar and he says he can’t do it, he cannot get on that plane.” “Why not?” “He’s having some kind of panic attack.” “Yes. He has phobias.” “What kind of phobias?” “He has... all the phobias.” I started to get dressed, to go down to the bar. Then I remembered who it was we were dealing with. “Go to bed,” I said to Chang. “Hayes will be there in the morning.” “But—” “He’ll be there.” First thing in the morning, dull-eyed, deathly pale, Hayes was standing in the lobby. Of course, he made sure to pack enough “medicine” for his next attack.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  When the articles of the treaty had been fully agreed on, the stipulated payments duly secured, and nothing now remained but the execution of the main point, which centered in the surrender of my person up to his free disposal and use, Mrs. Cole managed her objections, especially to his lodgings, and insinuations so nicely, that it became his own mere notion and urgent request, that this copy of a wedding should be finished at her house: “At first, indeed, she did not care, not she, to have such doings in it... she would not for a thousand pounds have any of the servants or apprentices know it... her precious good name would be gone for ever...,” with the like excuses. However, on superior objections to all other expedients, whilst she took care to start none but those which were most liable to them it came round at last to the necessity of her obliging him in that conveniency, and of doing a little more where she had already done so much. The night then was fixed, with all possible respect to the eagerness of his impatience, and in the mean time Mrs. Cole had omitted no instructions, nor even neglected any preparation, that might enable me to come off with honour, in regard to the appearance of my virginity, except that, favoured as I was by nature with all the narrowness of stricture in that part requisite to conduct my designs, I had no occasion to borrow those auxiliaries of art that create a momentary one, easily discovered by the test of a warm bath; and as to the usual sanguinary symptoms of defloration, which, if not always, are generally attendants on it, Mrs. Cole had made me the mistress of an invention of her own, which could hardly miss its effect, and of which more in its place. Every thing then being disposed and fixed for Mr. Norbert’s reception, he was, at the hour of eleven at night, with all the mysteries of silence and secrecy, let in by Mrs. Cole herself, and introduced into her bedchamber, where, in an old-fashioned bed of her’s, I lay, fully undressed, and panting, if not with the fears of a real maid, at least with those perhaps greater of a dissembled one which gave me an air of confusion and bashfulness that maiden-modesty had all the honour of, and was indeed scarce distinguishable from it, even by less partial eyes than those of my lover: so let me call him, for I ever thought the term “cully” too cruel a reproach to the men, for their abused weakness for us.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  how distressed I was by this Marlboro Man encroaching on my turf. I said I’d been under the impression that I’d made a personal connection with the executives I’d met the previous year, and the impression was underscored by a letter from Mr. Miyazaki saying the thirteen western states were exclusively mine. I was therefore at a loss to explain this treatment. I appealed to Morimoto’s sense of fairness, to his sense of honor. He looked uncomfortable, so I took a breath, paused. I raised it from the personal to the professional. I cited my robust sales. I dropped the name of my partner, the legendary coach whose reputation had cachet even on the other side of the Pacific. I emphasized all that I might do for Onitsuka in the future, if given a chance. Morimoto took a sip of tea. When it was clear that I’d talked myself out, he set down his cup and looked out the window. Slowly we rotated above Kobe. “I will get back to you.” ANOTHER FITFUL NIGHT. I got up several times, went to the window, watched the ships bobbing on Kobe’s dark purple bay. Beautiful place, I thought. Too bad all beauty is beyond me. The world is without beauty when you lose, and I was about to lose, big-time. I knew that in the morning Morimoto would tell me he was sorry, nothing personal, it was just business, but they were going with the Marlboro Man. At 9:00 a.m. the phone by the bed rang. Morimoto. “Mr. Onitsuka... himself... wishes to see you,” he said. I put on my suit and took a taxi to Onitsuka headquarters. In the conference room, the familiar conference room, Morimoto pointed me to a chair in the middle of the table. The middle this time, not the head. No more kei. He sat across from me and stared at me as the room slowly filled with executives. When everyone was there, Morimoto nodded to me. “Hai,” he said. I plunged in, essentially repeating what I’d said to him the previous morning. As I built to my crescendo, as I prepared to close, all heads swiveled toward the door, and I stopped midsentence. The temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. The founder of the company, Mr. Onitsuka, had arrived. Dressed in a dark blue Italian suit, with a head of black hair as thick as shag carpet, he filled every man in the conference room with fear. He seemed oblivious, however. For all his power, for all his wealth, his movements were deferential. He came forward haltingly, with a shuffling gait, giving no sign that he was the boss of all bosses, the shogun of shoes. Slowly he made his way around the table, making brief eye contact with each executive. Eventually he came to me. We bowed to each other, shook hands. Now he took the seat at the head of the table and Morimoto tried to summarize my reason for being there. Mr.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Again I found myself boarding a flight for Japan. Again I found myself underlining and memorizing my copy of How to Do Business with the Japanese. Again I found myself taking the train to Kobe, checking into the Newport, pacing in my room. At zero hour I took a cab over to Onitsuka. I expected that we’d go into the old conference room, but no, they’d done some remodeling since my last visit. New conference room, they said. Sleeker, bigger, it had leather chairs instead of the old cloth ones, and a much longer table. More impressive, but less familiar. I felt disoriented, intimidated. It was like prepping for a meet at Oregon State and learning at the last minute that it had been moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A man walked into the conference room and extended his hand. Kitami. His black shoes were brightly polished, his hair equally polished. Jet black, swept straight back, not a strand out of place. He was a great contrast to Morimoto, who always looked as if he’d dressed blindfolded. I was put off by Kitami’s veneer, but suddenly he gave me a warm, ready smile, and encouraged me to sit, relax, tell him why I’d come, and now I got the distinct sense that, despite his slick appearance, he wasn’t altogether sure of himself. He was in a brand-new job, after all. He didn’t yet have much—equity. The word sprang to mind. It occurred to me also that I had high value for Kitami. I wasn’t a big client, but I wasn’t small, either. Location is everything. I was selling shoes in America, a market vital to the future of Onitsuka. Maybe, just maybe, Kitami didn’t want to lose me just yet. Maybe he wanted to hold on to me until they’d transitioned to the Marlboro Man. I was an asset, I was a credit, for the moment, which meant I might be holding better cards than I thought. Kitami spoke more English than his predecessors, but with a thicker accent. My ear needed a few minutes to adjust as we chatted about my flight, the weather, sales. All the while other executives were filing in, joining us at the conference table. At last Kitami leaned back. “Hai...” He waited. “Mr. Onitsuka?” I asked. “Mr.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I was laying it on thick, putting on the hard sell, extra hard, because I always hated selling, and because this particular sell had zero chance. My father had just forked out hundreds of dollars to the University of Oregon, thousands more to Stanford. He was the publisher of the Oregon Journal, a solid job that paid for all the basic comforts, including our spacious white house on Claybourne Street, in Portland’s quietest suburb, Eastmoreland. But the man wasn’t made of money. Also, this was 1962. The earth was bigger then. Though humans were beginning to orbit the planet in capsules, 90 percent of Americans still had never been on an airplane. The average man or woman had never ventured farther than one hundred miles from his or her own front door, so the mere mention of global travel by airplane would unnerve any father, and especially mine, whose predecessor at the paper had died in an air crash. Setting aside money, setting aside safety concerns, the whole thing was just so impractical. I was aware that twenty-six of twenty-seven new companies failed, and my father was aware, too, and the idea of taking on such a colossal risk went against everything he stood for. In many ways my father was a conventional Episcopalian, a believer in Jesus Christ. But he also worshipped another secret deity—respectability. Colonial house, beautiful wife, obedient kids, my father enjoyed having these things, but what he really cherished was his friends and neighbors knowing he had them. He liked being admired. He liked doing a vigorous backstroke each day in the mainstream. Going around the world on a lark, therefore, would simply make no sense to him. It wasn’t done. Certainly not by the respectable sons of respectable men. It was something other people’s kids did. Something beatniks and hipsters did. Possibly, the main reason for my father’s respectability fixation was a fear of his inner chaos. I felt this, viscerally, because every now and then that chaos would burst forth. Without warning, late at night, the phone in the front hall would jingle, and when I answered there would be that same gravelly voice on the line. “Come getcher old man.” I’d pull on my raincoat—it always seemed, on those nights, that a misting rain was falling—and drive downtown to my father’s club. As clearly as I remember my own bedroom, I remember that club. A century old, with floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases and wing-backed chairs, it looked like the drawing room of an English country house. In other words, eminently respectable. I’d always find my father at the same table, in the same chair. I’d always help him gently to his feet. “You okay, Dad?” “Course I’m okay.” I’d always guide him outside to the car, and the whole way home we’d pretend nothing was wrong. He’d sit perfectly erect, almost regal, and we’d talk sports, because talking sports was how I distracted myself, soothed myself, in times of stress.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He stopped banging. Silence filled the courtroom. Now he started yelling. He spent a full twenty minutes tearing into us. One day after his gag order, he said, one day, someone on Team Blue Ribbon had walked into a local store and run his mouth. We stared straight ahead, like naughty children, wondering if we were about to be a mistrial. But as the judge wound down his tirade, I thought I detected the tiniest twinkle in his eye. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, James the Just is more performer than ogre. Johnson redeemed himself with his testimony. Articulate, dazzlingly anal about the tiniest details, he described the Boston and the Cortez better than anyone else in the world could, including me. Hilliard tried and tried to break him, and couldn’t. What a pleasure it was to watch Hilliard bang his head against that cement-like Johnson unflappability. Stretch versus the crab was less of a mismatch. Next we called Bowerman to the stand. I had high hopes for my old coach, but he just wasn’t himself that day. It was the first time I ever saw him flustered, even a bit intimidated, and the reasons quickly became obvious. He hadn’t prepared. Out of contempt for Onitsuka, and disdain for the whole sordid business, he’d decided to wing it. I was saddened. Cousin Houser was annoyed. Bowerman’s testimony could have put us over the top. Ah well. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that at least he hadn’t done anything to hurt us. Next Cousin Houser read into the record the deposition of Iwano, the young assistant who’d accompanied Kitami on his two trips to the United States. Happily, Iwano proved to be as guileless, as pure of heart, as he’d first seemed to me and Penny. He’d told the truth, the whole truth, and it flatly contradicted Kitami. Iwano testified that there was a firm, fixed plan in place to break our contract, to abandon us, to replace us, and that Kitami had discussed it openly many times. We then called a noted orthopedist, an expert on the impact of running shoes on feet, joints, and the spine, who explained the differences among the many brands and models on the market, and described how the Cortez and Boston differed from anything Onitsuka ever made. Essentially, he said, the Cortez was the first shoe ever that took pressure off the Achilles. Revolutionary, he said. Game-changing. While testifying, he spread out dozens of shoes, and pulled them apart, and tossed them around, which agitated James the Just. Apparently the judge was OCD. He liked his courtroom neat, always. Repeatedly he asked our orthopedist to stop making a mess, to keep the shoes in orderly pairs, and repeatedly our orthopedist ignored him. I started to hyperventilate, thinking James the Just was going to find our expert witness in contempt.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  There were one or two obstacles to be overcome, of course, before I could begin to put my daring plan into practice. Firstly, I must properly reacquaint myself with the city: it took another week of wandering every day about the streets of Farringdon and St Paul’s, before I could accept the jostling and the roars, and the stares of the men, without smarting. Then there was the problem of where - if I really was to stroll about in costume - I should change. I did not want to live as a boy full-time; nor did I want, just yet, to give up my room at Mrs Best’s. I could imagine that lady’s face, however, if I presented myself before her one day in a pair of trousers. She would think that I had lost my mind, entirely; she might call for a doctor or a policeman. She would certainly throw me out - and then I would be homeless again. I didn’t want that, at all. I needed somewhere, away from Smithfield; I needed, in fact, a dressing-room. But so far as I knew, there were no such places for hire. The gay girls of the Haymarket, I believe, transformed themselves in the public lavatories of Piccadilly - put their make-up on at the wash-hand basins, and changed into their gaudy frocks while the latch on the door said Occupied. This seemed to me a sensible scheme - but hardly one that I could copy, since it would blue my project, rather, to be seen emerging from a ladies’ lavatory in a suit of serge and velvet and a boater. It was indeed amidst the gay life of the West End, however, that I at last found the answer to the problem. I had begun to walk, each day, as far as Soho; and I had noticed there the tremendous number of houses bearing signs that advertised Beds Let By The Hour. In my naivety I wondered at first, who would want to sleep there, for an hour? Then, of course, I realised that no one would: the rooms were for the girls to bring their customers to; to lie abed in, certainly - but not to sleep.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Would Kitty think it mean? Would she see the tears in the drugget, the smears on the walls; would she see that the armchairs sagged, that the rugs were faded, that the shawl which Mother had tacked to the mantel, so that it fluttered in the draught from the chimney, was dusty and torn, its fringes unravelling? I had grown up with these things, and for eighteen years had barely noticed them, but I saw them now, for what they really were, as if through her own eyes. I saw my family, too, anew. I saw my father - a gentle man, but prone to dullness. Would Kitty think him dull? And Davy: he could be rather brash; and Rhoda - horrible Rhoda - would certainly be over-pert. What would Kitty make of them? What would she think of Alice - my dearest friend, until a month ago? Would she think her cold, and would her coldness puzzle her? Or would she - and this thought was a dreadful one - would she think her pretty, and like her more than me? Would she wish it had been Alice in the box for her to throw that rose to, and invite backstage, and call a mermaid ... ? Waiting for her that afternoon I was by turns anxious, gay and sullen - now fussing over the setting of the tea-table, now snapping at Davy and grumbling at Rhoda, now earning scolds from everyone for fretting and complaining, and generally turning what should have been a glad day for myself into a gloomy one, for us all. I had washed my hair and it had dried peculiarly; I had added a new frill to my best dress, but had sewn it crooked and it wouldn’t lie flat. I stood at the top of the stairs, sweating over the silk with a safety-pin, ready to weep because Kitty’s train was due and I must run to meet her, when Tony emerged from our little kitchen, carrying bottles of Bass for the tea-table. He stood and watched me fumbling. I said, ‘Go away’, but he only looked smug. ‘You won’t want to hear my bit of news, then.’ ‘What news?’ The frill was flat at last. I reached for my hat on the peg on the wall. Tony smirked and said nothing. I stamped my foot. ‘Tony, what is it? I’m late and you’re making me later.’ ‘Well then, nothing at all, I expect. I dare say Miss Butler will tell you herself ...’ ‘Tell me what?’ Now I stood with my hat in one hand, a hat-pin in the other. ‘Tell me what, Tony?’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They looked up when we arrived, and smiled, most of them; and when Kitty took out her packet of Weights and a match, someone cried, ‘Thank God, a woman with a cigarette! Give us one, ducks, would you? I’m quite broke till pay-day.’ Kitty was booked to appear, that night, a little way into the first half of the show. While I helped her with her collar and her neck-tie and her rose, I felt quite steady; but when we walked to the wing to wait for her number to go up, to gaze from the shadows at the unfamiliar theatre and its vast and careless crowd, I felt myself begin to tremble. I looked at Kitty. Her face was white beneath its layer of paint - though whether with fear, or with fierce ambition, I could not tell. With no other motive, I swear, than to comfort her - so mindful was I of that new resolve, to play her sister and nothing more - I took her hand, and pressed it. When the stage-manager finally gave her his nod, however, I had to turn my eyes away. There was no chairman at this hall to bring the crowd to order, and the act Kitty had to follow was a popular one - a comedian, who had been called back upon the stage four times, and who had had to plead with the audience, in the end, to let him make his exit. They had done so grudgingly; they were disappointed and distracted now when the orchestra struck up with the first bars of Kitty’s opening song. When Kitty herself stepped out into the glare of the footlights to wave her hat and call ‘Hallo!’, there was no answering roar from the gallery, only a half-hearted ripple of applause from the boxes and stalls - for the sake, I suppose, of her costume. When I forced my gaze at last into the hall I saw that the audience was restless - that people were on their feet, heading for the bar or the lavatory; that boys were perched upon the gallery rail with their backs to us; that girls were calling to friends three rows away, or gossiping with their neighbours, looking everywhere but at the stage, where Kitty - lovely, clever Kitty - sang and strode and sweated. But slowly, slowly, the mood of the theatre changed - not tremendously, but enough. When she finished her first song a man leaned from a balcony to shout, ‘Now bring Nibs back on!’ - meaning Nibs Fuller, the comedian whom Kitty had replaced. Kitty didn’t blink; while the band played the warm-up to her next number she raised her hat to the man and called, ‘Why, does he owe you money?’

• From Educated (2018)

  They’ll shut down.” “Can’t they fix it?” “Nope, can’t be done,” Dad said. “Man trusted his own strength, and his strength was weak.” At church, Dad warned everyone about Y2K. He advised Papa Jay to get strong locks for his gas station, and maybe some defensive weaponry. “That store will be the first thing looted in the famine,” Dad said. He told Brother Mumford that every righteous man should have, at minimum, a ten-year supply of food, fuel, guns and gold. Brother Mumford just whistled. “We can’t all be as righteous as you, Gene,” he said. “Some of us are sinners!” No one listened. They went about their lives in the summer sun. Meanwhile, my family boiled and skinned peaches, pitted apricots and churned apples into sauce. Everything was pressure-cooked, sealed, labeled, and stored away in a root cellar Dad had dug out in the field. The entrance was concealed by a hillock; Dad said I should never tell anybody where it was. One afternoon, Dad climbed into the excavator and dug a pit next to the old barn. Then, using the loader, he lowered a thousand-gallon tank into the pit and buried it with a shovel, carefully planting nettles and sow thistle in the freshly tossed dirt so they would grow and conceal the tank. He whistled “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story while he shoveled. His hat was tipped back on his head, and he wore a brilliant smile. “We’ll be the only ones with fuel when The End comes,” he said. “We’ll be driving when everyone else is hotfooting it. We’ll even make a run down to Utah, to fetch Tyler.” —I HAD REHEARSALS MOST NIGHTS at the Worm Creek Opera House, a dilapidated theater near the only stoplight in town. The play was another world. Nobody talked about Y2K. The interactions between people at Worm Creek were not at all what I was used to in my family. Of course I’d spent time with people outside my family, but they were like us: women who’d hired Mother to midwife their babies, or who came to her for herbs because they didn’t believe in the Medical Establishment. I had a single friend, named Jessica. A few years before, Dad had convinced her parents, Rob and Diane, that public schools were little more than Government propaganda programs, and since then they had kept her at home. Before her parents had pulled Jessica from school, she was one of them, and I never tried to talk to her; but after, she was one of us. The normal kids stopped including her, and she was left with me. I’d never learned how to talk to people who weren’t like us—people who went to school and visited the doctor. Who weren’t preparing, every day, for the End of the World. Worm Creek was full of these people, people whose words seemed ripped from another reality.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He absorbed it, like a black hole. Everybody at Blue Ribbon liked Sumeragi—we invited him to every office party. But I don’t think we ever invited Ito to anything. In my mind I called him the Ice Man. I still had difficulty making eye contact with people, but Ito wouldn’t allow me to divert my gaze. He looked directly into my eyes, down into my soul, and it was hypnotizing. Especially when he felt he had the upper hand. Which was almost always. I’d played golf with him once or twice, and I was struck, even after he’d hit a terrible shot, at the way he turned and looked straight at me as he came off the tee. He wasn’t a good golfer, but he was so confident, so self-assured, he always gave the impression that his ball was sitting 350 yards away, atop a tuft of grass in the center of the fairway. And now I remember this in particular. His golf attire, like his business attire, was meticulous. Mine, of course, was not. During one of our matches, the weather was cool, and I was wearing a shaggy mohair sweater. As I approached the first tee Ito asked under his breath if I planned to go skiing later. I stopped, wheeled. He gave me a half smile. It was the first time I’d ever known the Ice Man to try humor. And the last. This was the man I needed to keep happy. It wouldn’t be easy. But I thought: Always do well in his eyes, and credit will continue to expand, thus enabling Blue Ribbon to expand. Stay in his good graces and all will be well. Otherwise... My obsession with keeping Nissho happy, with keeping Ito happy, combined with my refusal to ease up on growth, created a frantic atmosphere around the office. We struggled to make every payment, to Bank of California, to all our other creditors, but that Nissho payment at the end of the month was like passing a kidney stone. As we’d begin scraping together our available cash, writing checks with barely enough to cover them, we’d start to sweat. The Nissho payment was sometimes so big that we’d be dead broke for a day or two. Then every other creditor would have to wait. Too bad for them, I’d tell Hayes. I know, I know, he’d say. Pay Nissho first. Hayes didn’t like this state of affairs. It was hard on his nerves. “So what do you want to do,” I’d ask him, “slow down?” Which would always draw a guilty smile. Silly question. Occasionally, when our cash reserves were really stretched thin, our account at the bank wouldn’t just be empty, it would be overdrawn. Then Hayes and I would have to go down to the bank and explain the situation to Holland. We’d show him our financial statements, point out that our sales were doubling, that our inventory was flying out the door.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Our cash flow “situation,” we’d say, is merely temporary. We knew, of course, that living on the float wasn’t the way to do things. But we’d always tell ourselves: It’s temporary. Besides, everyone did it. Some of the biggest companies in America lived on the float. Banks themselves lived on the float. Holland acknowledged as much. “Sure, boys, I get it,” he’d say with a nod. As long as we were up-front with him, as long as we were transparent, he could work with us. And then came that fateful rainy day. A Wednesday afternoon. The spring of 1975. Hayes and I found ourselves staring into the abyss. We owed Nissho $1 million, our first-ever million-dollar payment, and, hello, we didn’t have $1 million lying around. We were about $75,000 short. I recall that we were sitting in my office, watching raindrops race down the windowpane. Occasionally we’d look through the books, curse the numbers, then look back at the raindrops. “We have to pay Nissho,” I said quietly. “Yes, yes, yes,” Hayes said. “But to cover a check this large? We’ll have to drain all our other bank accounts dry. All. Dry.” “Yes.” We had retail stores in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, New England, each with its own bank account. We’d have to empty them all, divert all that money to the home office account for a day or two—or three. Along with every cent from Johnson’s factory in Exeter. We’d have to hold our breath, like walking past a graveyard, until we could replenish those accounts. And still we might not be able to cover that massive check to Nissho. We’d still need a little luck, a payment or two to land from one of the many retailers who owed us money. “Circular funding,” Hayes said. “Magical banking,” I said. “Son of a bitch,” Hayes said, “if you look at our cash flow over the next six months, we’re in good shape. It’s just this one payment to Nissho that’s screwing up everything.” “Yes,” I said, “if we can get past this one payment, we’re home free.” “But this is some payment.” “We’ve always covered checks to Nissho within a day or two. But this time it might take us—what—three? Four?” “I don’t know,” Hayes said, “I honestly don’t know.” I followed two raindrops racing down the glass. Neck and neck. You are remembered for the rules you break. “Damn the torpedoes,” I said. “Pay Nissho.” Hayes nodded. He stood. We looked at each other for one long second. He said he’d tell Carole Fields, our head bookkeeper, what we’d decided. He’d have her start moving the money around. And come Friday he’d have her cut the check to Nissho. These are the moments, I thought. TWO DAYS LATER Johnson was in his new office at the Exeter factory, doing paperwork, when a mob of angry workers suddenly appeared at his door. Their paychecks had bounced, they said. They wanted answers.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  1965 I got a letter from that Jeff Johnson fellow at the start of the year. After our chance meeting at Occidental, I’d sent him a pair of Tigers, as a gift, and now he wrote to say that he’d tried them on and gone for a run. He liked them, he said. He liked them a whole lot. Others liked them, too. People kept stopping him and pointing at his feet and asking where they could buy some neat shoes like those. Johnson had gotten married since I last saw him, he said, and there was already a baby on the way, so he was looking for ways to earn extra cash, apart from his gig as a social worker, and this Tiger shoe seemed to have more upside than Adidas. I wrote him back and offered him a post as a “commissioned salesman.” Meaning I’d give him $1.75 for each pair of running shoes he sold, two bucks for each pair of spikes. I was just beginning to put together a crew of part-time sales reps, and that was the standard rate I was offering. He wrote back right away, accepting the offer. And then the letters didn’t stop. On the contrary, they increased. In length and number. At first they were two pages. Then four. Then eight. At first they came every few days. Then they came faster, and faster, tumbling almost daily through the mail slot like a waterfall, each one with that same return address, P.O. Box 492, Seal Beach, CA 90740, until I wondered what in God’s name I’d done in hiring this guy. I liked his energy, of course. And it was hard to fault his enthusiasm. But I began to worry that he might have too much of each. With the twentieth letter, or the twenty-fifth, I began to worry that the man might be unhinged. I wondered why everything was so breathless. I wondered if he was ever going to run out of things he urgently needed to tell me, or ask me. I wondered if he was ever going to run out of stamps. Every time a thought crossed Johnson’s mind, seemingly, he wrote it down and stuck it into an envelope. He wrote to tell me how many Tigers he’d sold that week. He wrote to tell me how many Tigers he’d sold that day. He wrote to tell me who’d worn Tigers at which high school meet and in what place they’d finished. He wrote to say that he wanted to expand his sales territory beyond California, to include Arizona, and possibly New Mexico. He wrote to suggest that we open a retail store in Los Angeles. He wrote to tell me that he was considering placing ads in running magazines and what did I think? He wrote to inform me that he’d placed those ads in running magazines and the response was good. He wrote to ask why I hadn’t answered any of his previous letters.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Calmly I said that Blue Ribbon might increase its sales if we could order more shoes, and we might order more shoes if we had more financing, and our bank might give us more financing if we had more security, meaning a longer contract with Onitsuka. Again he waved his hand. “Excuses,” he said. I raised the idea of funding our orders through a Japanese trading company, like Nissho Iwai, as I’d mentioned in my wire months before. “Baah,” he said, “trading companies. They send money first—men later. Take over! Work way into your company, then take over.” Translation: Onitsuka was only manufacturing a quarter of its own shoes, subcontracting the other three-quarters. Kitami was afraid that Nissho would find Onitsuka’s network of factories, then go right around Onitsuka and become a manufacturer and put Onitsuka out of business. Kitami stood. He needed to go back to his hotel, he said, have a rest. I said I’d have someone drive him, and I’d meet him for a cocktail later at his hotel bar. The instant he was gone I went and found Woodell and told him what had happened. I held up the folder. “I stole this from his briefcase,” I said. “You did what?” Woodell said. He started to act appalled, but he was just as curious as I was about the folder’s contents. Together we opened it and laid it on his desk and

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Apparently the judge was OCD. He liked his courtroom neat, always. Repeatedly he asked our orthopedist to stop making a mess, to keep the shoes in orderly pairs, and repeatedly our orthopedist ignored him. I started to hyperventilate, thinking James the Just was going to find our expert witness in contempt. Lastly we called Woodell. I watched him wheel his chair slowly to the stand. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a coat and tie. He’d recently met a woman, and gotten married, and now, when he told me that he was happy, I believed him. I took a moment to enjoy how far he’d come since we’d first met at that Beaverton sandwich shop. Then I immediately felt awful, because I was the cause of his being dragged through this muck. He looked more nervous up there than I’d been, more intimidated than Bowerman. James the Just asked him to spell his name and Woodell paused as if he couldn’t remember. “Um... W, double o, double d,...” Suddenly, he started to giggle. His name didn’t have a double d. But some ladies had double Ds. Oh boy. Now he was really laughing. Nerves, of course. But James the Just thought Woodell was mocking the proceedings. He reminded Woodell that he was in the courtroom of James the Just. Which only made Woodell giggle more. I put a hand over my eyes. WHEN ONITSUKA PRESENTED their case, they called as their first witness Mr. Onitsuka. He didn’t testify long. He said that he’d known nothing about my conflict with Kitami, nor about Kitami’s plans to stab us in the back. Kitami interviewing other distributors? “I never informed,” Mr. Onitsuka said. Kitami planning to cut us out? “I not know.” Next up was Kitami. As he walked to the stand the Onitsuka lawyers rose and told the judge they would need a translator. I cupped my ear. A what? Kitami spoke perfect English. I recalled him boasting about learning his English from a record. I turned to Cousin Houser, my eyes bulging, but he only extended his hands, palms facing the floor. Easy. In two days on the stand Kitami lied, again and again, through his translator, through his teeth. He insisted that he’d never planned to break our contract. He’d only decided to do so when he discovered we’d done so by making Nikes. Yes, he said, he’d been in touch with other distributors before we manufactured the first Nike, but he was just doing market research. Yes, he said, there was some discussion of Onitsuka’s buying Blue Ribbon, but the idea was initiated by Phil Knight.