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 The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  Otherwise agriculture is of course there for me.’ So I had to be Ravishankar’s teacher. Time I had enough. I began to do half the cooking myself and introduced the English experiments in vegetarian cookery. I invested in a stove, and with Ravishankar began to run the kitchen. I had no scruples about interdining, Ravishankar too came to have none, and so we went on merrily together. There was only one obstacle. Ravishankar had sworn to remain dirty and to keep the food unclean! But it was impossible for me to get along in Bombay for more than four or five months, there being no income to square with the ever- increasing expenditure. This was how I began life. I found the barrister’s profession a bad job – much show and little knowledge. I felt a crushing sense of my responsibility. 30THE FIRST CASEWhile in Bombay, I began, on the one hand, my study of Indian law and, on the other, my experiments in dietetics in which Virchand Gandhi, a friend, joined me. My brother, for his part, was trying his best to get me briefs. The study of Indian law was a tedious business. The Civil Procedure Code I could in no way get on with. Not so however, with the Evidence Act. Virchand Gandhi was reading for the Solicitor’s Examination and would tell me all sorts of stories about barristers and vakils. ‘Sir Pherozeshah’s ability,’ he would say, ‘lies in his profound knowledge of law. He has the Evidence Act by heart and knows all the cases on the thirty- second section. Badruddin Tyabji’s wonderful power of argument inspires the judges with awe.’ The stories of stalwarts such as these would unnerve me. ‘It is not unusual,’ he would add, ‘for a barrister to vegetate for five or seven years. That’s why I have signed the articles for solicitorship. You should count yourself luckly if you can paddle your own canoe in three years’ time.’ Expenses were mounting up every month. To have a barister’s board outside the house, whilst still preparing for the barrister’s profession inside, was a thing to which I could not reconcile myself. Hence I could not give undivided attention to my studies. I developed some liking for the Evidence Act and read Mayne’s Hindu Law with deep interest, but I had not the courage to conduct a case. I was helpless beyond words, even as the bride come fresh to her father-in- law’s house! About this time, I took up the case of one Mamibai. It was a ‘small cause.’ ‘You will have to pay some commission to the tout,’ I was told. I emphatically declined. ‘But even that great criminal lawyer Mr. So-and-So, who makes three to four thousand a month, pays commission!’ ‘I do not need to emulate him,’ I rejoined. ‘I should be content with Rs. 300 a month. Father did not get more.’ ‘But those days are gone. Expenses in Bombay have gone up frightfully.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  The next afternoon she went to the wood again. She followed the broad riding that swerved round and up through the larches to a spring called John's Well. It was cold on this hillside, and not a flower in the darkness of larches. But the icy little spring softly pressed upwards from its tiny well-bed of pure, reddish-white pebbles. How icy and clear it was! brilliant! The new keeper had no doubt put in fresh pebbles. She heard the faint tinkle of water, as the tiny overflow trickled over and down hill. Even above the hissing boom of the larchwood, that spread its bristling, leafless, wolfish darkness on the downslope, she heard the tinkle as of tiny water-bells. This place was a little sinister, cold, damp. Yet the well must have been a drinking-place for hundreds of years. Now no more. Its tiny cleared space was lush and cold and dismal. She rose and went slowly towards home. As she went she heard a faint tapping away on the right, and stood still to listen. Was it hammering, or a woodpecker? It was surely hammering. She walked on, listening. And then she noticed a narrow track between young fir trees, a track that seemed to lead nowhere. But she felt it had been used. She turned down it adventurously, between the thick young firs, which gave way soon to the old oak-wood. She followed the track, and the hammering grew nearer, in the silence of the windy wood, for trees make a silence even in their noise of wind. She saw a secret little clearing, and a secret little hut made of rustic poles. And she had never been here before! She realised it was the quiet place where the growing pheasants were reared; the keeper in his shirtsleeves was kneeling, hammering. The dog trotted forward with a short, sharp bark, and the keeper lifted his face suddenly and saw her. He had a startled look in his eyes. He straightened himself and saluted, watching her in silence, as she came forward with weakening limbs. He resented the intrusion, he cherished his solitude as his only and last freedom in life. "I wondered what the hammering was," she said, feeling weak and breathless, and a little afraid of him, as he looked so straight at her. "Ah'm gettin' th' coops ready for th' young bods," he said, in broad vernacular. She did not know what to say, and she felt weak. "I should like to sit down a bit," she said. "Come and sit 'ere i' th' 'ut," he said, going in front of her to the hut, pushing aside some timber and stuff, and drawing out a rustic chair, made of hazel sticks. "Am Ah t' light yer a little fire?" he asked, with the curious naiveté of the dialect. "Oh, don't bother," she replied.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  No one answered. Mellors was slinging his gun over his shoulder, his face queer and expressionless, save for an abstracted look of patience. The dog Flossie, standing on guard almost between her master's legs, moved uneasily, eyeing the chair with great suspicion and dislike, and very much perplexed between the three human beings. The _tableau vivant_ remained set among the squashed bluebells, nobody proffering a word. "I expect she'll have to be pushed," said Clifford at last, with an affectation of _sang froid_. No answer. Mellors' abstracted face looked as if he had heard nothing. Connie glanced anxiously at him. Clifford too glanced round. "Do you mind pushing her home, Mellors!" he said in a cool, superior tone. "I hope I have said nothing to offend you," he added, in a tone of dislike. "Nothing at all, Sir Clifford! Do you want me to push that chair?" "If you please." The man stepped up to it: but this time it was without effect. The brake was jammed. They poked and pulled, and the keeper took off his gun and his coat once more. And now Clifford said never a word. At last the keeper heaved the back of the chair off the ground, and with an instantaneous push of his foot, tried to loosen the wheels. He failed, the chair sank. Clifford was clutching the sides. The man gasped with the weight. "Don't do it!" cried Connie to him. "If you'll pull the wheel that way, so!" he said to her, showing her how. "No! You mustn't lift it! You'll strain yourself," she said, flushed now with anger. But he looked into her eyes and nodded. And she had to go and take hold of the wheel, ready. He heaved and she tugged, and the chair reeled. "For God's sake!" cried Clifford in terror. But it was all right, and the brake was off. The keeper put a stone under the wheel, and went to sit on the bank, his heart beating and his face white with the effort, semi-conscious. Connie looked at him, and almost cried with anger. There was a pause and a dead silence. She saw his hands trembling on his thighs. "Have you hurt yourself?" she asked, going to him. "No. No!" he turned away almost angrily. There was dead silence. The back of Clifford's fair head did not move. Even the dog stood motionless. The sky had clouded over. At last he sighed, and blew his nose on his red handkerchief. "That pneumonia took a lot out of me," he said. No one answered. Connie calculated the amount of strength it must have taken to heave up that chair and the bulky Clifford: too much, far too much! If it hadn't killed him! He rose, and again picked up his coat, slinging it through the handle of the chair. "Are you ready, then, Sir Clifford?" "When you are!"

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Until then she had been so frightened by the frequent attacks of autointoxication I have already mentioned that she had forbidden me to eat all "blue-skinned" fish. My diet had been carefully limited: of fish, I was allowed only such white-flesh kinds as halibut, turbot, or red snapper; of potatoes, only those mashed and strained through a colander; of sweets, all bean-jams were forbidden and there were only light biscuits, wafers, and other such dry confections; and of fruits, only apples cut in thin slices, or small portions of mandarin oranges. Hence it was on this visit that I ate my first blue-skinned fish—a yellowtail—which I devoured with immense satisfaction. Its delicate flavor signified for me that I had finally been accorded the first of my adult rights, but at the same time it left a rather bitter tang of uneasiness upon the tip of my tongue—uneasiness at becoming an adult—which still recalls me to a feeling of discomfort whenever I taste that flavor. Sugiko was a healthy girl, overflowing with life. I myself had never been able to go to sleep easily, and when staying at her house and lying in the same room on the pallet next to hers, I would watch with a mixture of envy and admiration how Sugiko always fell asleep instantly upon lowering her head to the pillow, exactly like a machine. I had many times more freedom at Sugiko's house than at my own. As the imaginary enemies who must want to steal me away—my parents, in short—were not present, my grandmother had no qualms about giving me more liberty. There was no need to keep me always within reach of her eyes, as when at home. And yet I was unable to take any great pleasure in this freedom that was allowed me. Like an invalid taking his first steps during convalescence, I had a feeling of stiffness as though I were acting under the compulsion of some imaginary obligation. I missed my bed of idleness. And in this house it was tacitly required that I act like a boy. The reluctant masquerade had begun. At about this time I was beginning to understand vaguely the mechanism of the fact that what people regarded as a pose on my part was actually an expression of my need to assert my true nature, and that it was precisely what people regarded as my true self which was a masquerade. It was this unwilling masquerade that made me say: "Let's play war."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  My paraphernalia is a problem. Some of it is probably illegal. The law is vague. One hustler I know got raided, and the only kinky thing they could find was a riding crop, so they busted him on an old statute against cruelty to animals. Vibrators are okay if they can’t be inserted, but dildoes are “a device which demeans women.” So I’ve got a secret hiding place. It’s actually a crate, but it looks like a window seat. It doubles as a whipping bench. I try to keep everything put away in there under a false bottom. But there’s no way to really hide what I do and still be able to do it. Besides, if the public safety officers want to get you, all they need to do is drop a nickel bag of junk on your pillow and “discover” it. My pride and joy is a complete set of leather restraints. I ripped them off when I left a residential drug-rehab program. It was stupid of me to have ever gone there. I am not an addict. I can stop getting high any time I want to. And if I was hooked on something, well, I wouldn’t do anything but that, would I? I try to be flexible. If you don’t stay flexible the street will eat you up, one big mouthful of crunch and juice. I also have some acupuncture needles, a hairbrush, some candles, clothespins, a riding crop, and a cat-o’-nine tails I braided myself. I’ve gussied up an old ping-pong paddle—drilled holes in it and painted it black—and I have a nice handful of willow switches cut from the vacant lot on the corner. Most of the scene is me, my imagination, and my intuition. Clients give me equipment sometimes, things they get hot for that they don’t dare keep, and I’m always looking around for new gimmicks, but this is not exactly a dungeon. There are some unrealistic M’s who can’t overlook a few flaws in their surroundings. They may see me once but they don’t come back. I don’t know where I’m supposed to find the elaborate costumes and torture devices that some of these janes think you need to do “real” S/M. Sometimes they even bring me pictures of what I’m supposed to look like—and scripts! I prefer the ones who need it to be a little rough and raunchy, who like it impoverished and spontaneous. There must be people doing this who make a lot more money than I do, maybe the people who advertise. I don’t dare run one of those ads. I don’t see how they can get away with it, why they don’t get busted.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Maybe it started in group care. As soon as I learned how to read, I started getting chastised for being verbally aggressive. We had one teacher who kept taking me aside for long talks about the stabilizing and calming influences of manual labor. She gave me biographies of union organizers for holiday gifts. But I knew I wasn’t headed for the fucking proletariat. Nobody wants to be sent to the farms, the road crews, the decon teams, or the factories. But we need farmers and ditch-diggers and machinists very badly. It’s okay to grouse about that kind of work if you’re going to end up doing it. If you ain’t, you better pretend nothin’ could make you happier than throwing a shovel full of mud over your shoulder all day. It was like the future was chasing me. I learned as fast as I could. I used big words like magic spells to keep the other fetuses away from me. (That was what we called each other, and we lost dessert or even got smacked if the teachers heard us.) I couldn’t tolerate the kids who were as smart as me because they were my competition. And the faster I learned, the faster I propelled myself into classes full of older kids who resented the smartass mouth on my pint-sized body. So I learned even faster to stay ahead of them, get away from them— which landed me in a one-year, college-prep program at the ripe old age of fifteen. I wasn’t the youngest one there, but I came close. For a while I thought I would be a historian. But there aren’t many gigs in esoteric fields like history, unless you have a minor in political education. Then you wind up writing draft propaganda for the Ministry of Self-Defense or some eagle job like that. Doctors, though, they always need more doctors. I wasn’t too sharp in the hard sciences, but I had a hell of a class consciousness that I hoped would make up for it. See, doctors are part of the elite. They almost never get remanded to rural re-education even if they get caught doing abortions. Sometimes the courts sentence them to learn to take joy in the dignity of labor, but they usually wind up just doctoring the inmates and guards and any farmer within traveling distance. The powers that be (that-aren’t-supposed-to-be) get worried about subversion and intellectualism in such a powerful profession. I tried to make it clear that wouldn’t be a problem with righteous little jargon-spieling me. The college-prep program was a privileged slot no matter where you were headed. I had a room of my own. This was supposed to leave me with lots of peace and quiet to concentrate on my studies. But it also gave me freedom to do other things, things I had wanted to do since childhood. Like masturbate.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  As a matter of fact, he was tired. This evening had tired him. He would rather have been with his technical books, or his pit manager, or listening-in to the radio. Mrs. Bolton came in with two glasses of malted milk: for Clifford, to make him sleep, and for Connie to fatten her again. It was a regular night-cap she had introduced. Connie was glad to go, when she had drunk her glass, and thankful she needn't help Clifford to bed. She took his glass and put it on the tray, then took the tray, to leave it outside. "Good night Clifford! _Do_ sleep well! The Racine gets into one like a dream. Good night!" She had drifted to the door. She was going without kissing him good night. He watched her with sharp, cold eyes. So! She did not even kiss him good night, after he had spent an evening reading to her. Such depths of callousness in her! Even if the kiss was but a formality, it was on such formalities that life depends. She was a bolshevik, really. Her instincts were bolshevistic! He gazed coldly and angrily at the door whence she had gone. Anger! And again the dread of the night came on him. He was a network of nerves, and when he was not braced up to work, and so full of energy: or when he was not listening-in, and so utterly neuter: then he was haunted by anxiety and a sense of dangerous impending void. He was afraid. And Connie could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn't, she wouldn't. She was callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her. He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her own way. "The lady loves her will." Now it was a baby she was obsessed by. Just so that it should be her own, all her own, and not his! Clifford was so healthy, considering. He looked so well and ruddy, in the face, his shoulders were broad and strong, his chest deep, he had put on flesh. And yet, at the same time, he was afraid of death. A terrible hollow seemed to menace him somewhere, somehow, a void, and into this void his energy would collapse. Energyless, he felt at times he was dead, really dead. So his rather prominent pale eyes had a queer look, furtive, and yet a little cruel, so cold: and at the same time, almost impudent. It was a very odd look, this look of impudence: as if he were triumphing over life in spite of life. "Who knoweth the mysteries of the will--for it can triumph even against the angels--"

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "There's a lot of Tevershall men left and gone to Stacks Gate and Whiteover," said Mrs. Bolton. "You've not seen the new works at Stacks Gate, opened after the War, have you Sir Clifford? Oh you must go one day, they're something quite new: great big chemical works at the pit-head, doesn't look a bit like a colliery. They say they get more money out of the chemical by-products than out of the coal--I forget what it is. And the grand new houses for the men, fair mansions! Of course it's brought a lot of riff-raff from all over the country. But a lot of Tevershall men got on there, and doin' well, a lot better than our own men. They say Tevershall's done, finished: only a question of a few more years, and it'll have to shut down. And New London'll go first. My word, won't it be funny, when there's no Tevershall pit working. It's bad enough during a strike, but my word, if it closes for good, it'll be like the end of the world. Even when I was a girl it was the best pit in the country, and a man counted himself lucky if he could get on here. Oh, there's been some money made in Tevershall. And now the men say it's a sinking ship, and it's time they all got out. Doesn't it sound awful! But of course there's a lot as'll never go till they have to. They don't like these new fangled mines, such a depth, and all machinery to work them. Some of them simply dreads those iron men, as they call them, those machines for hewing the coal, where men always did it before. And they say it's wasteful as well. But what goes in waste is saved in wages, and a lot more. It seems soon there'll be no use for men on the face of the earth, it'll be all machines. But they say that's what folks said when they had to give up the old stocking frames. I can remember one or two. But my word, the more machines, the more people, that's what it looks like! They say you can't get the same chemicals out of Tevershall coal as you can out of Stacks Gate, and that's funny, they're not three miles apart. But they say so. But everybody says it's a shame something can't be started, to keep the men going a bit better, and employ the girls. All the girls traipsing off to Sheffield every day! My word, it would be something to talk about if Tevershall Collieries took a new lease on life, after everybody saying they're finished, and a sinking ship, and the men ought to leave them like rats leave a sinking ship. But folks talk so much. Of course there was a boom during the war. When Sir Geoffrey made a trust of himself and got the money safe for ever, somehow. So they say! But they say even the masters and the owners don't get much out of it now. You can hardly believe it, can you! Why I always thought the Pits would go on for ever and ever. Who'd have thought, when I was a girl! But New England's shut down, so is Colwick Wood: yes, it's fair haunting to go through that coppy and see Colwick Wood standing there deserted among the trees, and bushes growing up all over the pit-head, and the lines red rusty. It's like death itself, a dead colliery. Why whatever we should do if Tevershall shut down--? it doesn't bear thinking of. Always that throng it's been, except at strikes, and even then the fanwheels didn't stand, except when they fetched the ponies up. I'm sure it's a funny world, you don't know where you are from year to year, you really don't."

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  But my friend's words seemed to bring my "bad habit" —that solitary life which I had been unconsciously keeping strictly segregated—into an inseparable relationship with this game, with this my communal life. That such a connection had been established in my mind was made certain by the fact that suddenly, whether I would or no, his words "feel and see" had become charged with a special significance for me, a significance that none of my innocent friends would ever have understood.From that time on I no longer participated in games of Dirty. I was fearful of the moment when I might have to attack Omi, and even more of the moment when Omi might attack me. I was always on the lookout, and when there were indications that the game might break out—like a riot or rebellion, it could arise from the most casual event—I would get out of the way and keep my eyes glued on Omi from a safe distance. . . . As a matter of fact, Omi's influence had already begun to seduce us even before we were aware of it. For example, there were the socks. By those days the corrosion of an educational system that aimed at producing soldiers had already reached even our school; General Enoki's deathbed precept—"Be Simple and Manly" —had been reheated and served up ; and such things as gaudy mufflers or socks were taboo. In fact, any muffler at all was frowned upon, and the rule was that shirts be white and socks black, or at least of a solid color. It was Omi alone who never failed to wear a white-silk muffler and bold-patterned socks. This first defier of the taboo possessed an uncanny skill for clothing his wickedness in the fair name of revolt. Through his own experience he had discovered what a weakness boys have for the charms of revolt. In front of the drillmaster—this country bumpkin of a noncommissioned officer was a bosom friend of Omi's or, rather, it seemed, his henchman—he would deliberately take his time in wrapping his muffler about his neck and ostentatiously turning back the lapels of his gold-buttoned overcoat in the Napoleonic manner. As is ever the case, however, the revolt of the blind masses did not go beyond a niggardly imitation. Hoping to escape the dangers entailed and taste only the joys of revolt, we pirated nothing from Omi's daring example except his socks. And, in this instance, I too was one of the crowd. Arriving at school in the morning, we would chatter boisterously in the classroom before lessons began, not sitting in the seats, but on the tops of the desks.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  In the projects, there’s a large bathroom with showers on every floor. That, along with the communal kitchen, is why they call these “luxury individual living quarters” when they put an add in the paper. My floor is pretty good, there’s me, a flock of he-shes, a couple of realmen, a painter, a band that practices infrequently (but for hours at a time), and two would-be junkies who spend most of their time looking for this exotic and scarce drug they’re supposedly hooked on or getting sick on substitutes. So when I go to the bathroom, the shower head usually hasn’t been ripped off and the drain usually hasn’t been clogged up with shit, and I don’t find broken glass on the floor or somebody else’s works in the sink too often. But people come up from other floors or from outside the building and wait in there to rip you off. It’s a problem if I get a jane who wants an enema. The chamber pot isn’t big enough to handle that. I usually give them the bag in my room, then escort them down the hall to get rid of it. We talk about putting a lock on the bathroom, but somebody would have to go out and get some keys made, and I know I’m not going to go to all that trouble. The kitchen, however, is locked, so you will never find any derelicts asleep under the tables in there. Part of our rent pays for the kitchen’s gas and electricity, but nobody can eat down there unless they’ve got a chit that says they contributed to the food and did a shift of cleanup. Sorry, I can’t stomach sermons or housework. The Christers can have it. My room also has a shallow closet that used to hold a folding bed. I tore that out and sold it. I’ll deal with the consequences when I move. I sleep in a homemade mummy bag, stitched together from army blankets and foam rubber that I can roll up and store during the day. Inside the closet there are screw-eyes and ropes, and that’s where I do the bondage. But really, most of my tricks don’t want to be tied up too much. Maybe a little bit so they can pretend. But they’re too scared. A nice jane who panics can do as much damage as an andro. If I was bigger I’d be less worried about being able to handle the ones who flip out, but the really big girls like Black Hawk don’t get as much trade. The janes look them over and drool, but they feel safer being alone with me.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's Kensington house, and mixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for "freedom" and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did. Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigeants, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her "friend" was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform. Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still _it_. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter. But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more "society," was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow "great world," that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle and lower class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day. Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world of chaos than he was master of himself. Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old duffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  By this time it seemed to Calandrino that he had the fevers, when, lo, up came Bruno and the first thing he said was, 'Calandrino, what manner of face is this?' Calandrino, hearing them all in the same tale, held it for certain that he was in an ill way and asked them, all aghast, 'what shall I do?' Quoth Bruno, 'Methinketh thou wert best return home and get thee to bed and cover thyself well and send thy water to Master Simone the doctor, who is, as thou knowest, as our very creature and will tell thee incontinent what thou must do. We will go with thee and if it behoveth to do aught, we will do it.' Accordingly, Nello having joined himself to them, they returned home with Calandrino, who betook himself, all dejected, into the bedchamber and said to his wife, 'Come, cover me well, for I feel myself sore disordered.' Then, laying himself down, he despatched his water by a little maid to Master Simone, who then kept shop in the Old Market, at the sign of the Pumpkin, whilst Bruno said to his comrades, 'Abide you here with him, whilst I go hear what the doctor saith and bring him hither, if need be.' 'Ay, for God's sake, comrade mine,' cried Calandrino, 'go thither and bring me back word how the case standeth, for I feel I know not what within me.'

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  Over a truly long period of time I had my erections, and also indulged in that "bad habit" which incited them whenever I was alone, without ever becoming aware of the significance of my actions. Although already in possession of the usual information concerning sex, I was not yet troubled with the sense of being different. I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my "life." And yet some instinct within me demanded that I seek solitude, that I remain apart as something different. This compulsion was manifested as a mysterious and strange malaise. I have already described how during my childhood I was weighed down by a sense of uneasiness at the thought of becoming an adult, and my feeling of growing up continued to be accompanied by a strange, piercing unrest. During my growing years a deep tuck was sewn into every pair of new trousers so that they could be lengthened each year, and just as in any other family, my steadily increasing height was recorded by successive pencil marks on one of the pillars of the house. The little ceremony of these periodic measurings always took place in the sitting room under the eyes of all the family, and each time they teased me and found a simpleminded pleasure in the fact that I had grown taller. I would respond with forced smiles. Actually, the thought that I might reach the height of an adult filled me with a foreboding of some fearful danger. On the one hand, my indefinable feeling of unrest increased my capacity for dreams divorced from all reality and, on the other, drove me toward the "bad habit" that caused me to take refuge in those dreams. The restlessness was my excuse. . . . "You'll surely die before you're twenty," a friend once said to me jokingly, referring to my weak constitution. "What an awful thing to say!" I replied, screwing my face up into a bitter smile. But actually his prediction had a strangely sweet and romantic attraction for me.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  My father’s friend and adviser, who is a learned Brahman, sees no objection to my gong to England, and my mother and brother have also given me their permission.’ ‘But will you disregard the orders of the caste?’ ‘I am really helpless. I think the caste should not interfere in the matter.’ This incensed the Sheth. He swore at me. I sat unmoved. So the Sheth pronounced his order: ‘This boy shall be treated as an outcaste from today. Whoever helps him or goes to see him off at the dock shall be punishable with a fine of one rupee four annas.’ The order had no effect on me, and I took my leave of the Sheth. But I wondered how my brother would take it. Fortunately he remained firm and wrote to assure me that I had his permission to go, the Sheth’s order notwithstanding. The incident, however, made me more anxious than ever to sail. What would happen if they succeeded in bringing pressure to bear on my brother? Supposing something unforeseen happened? As I was thus worrying over my predicament, I heard that a Junagadh vakil was going to England, for being called to the bar, by a boat sailing on the 4th of September. I met the friends to whose care my brother had commended me. They also agreed that I should not let go the opportunity of going in such company. There was no time to be lost. I wired to my brother for permission, which he granted. I asked my brother-in-law to give me the money. But he referred to the order of the Sheth and said that he could not afford to lose caste. I then sought a friend of the family and requested him to accommodate me to the extent of my passage and sundries, and to recover the loan from my brother. The friend was not only good enough to accede to my request, but he cheered me up as well. I was so thankful. With part of the money I at once purchased the passage. Then I had to equip myself for the voyage. There was another friend who had experience in the matter. He got clothes and other things ready. Some of the clothes I liked and some I did not like at all. The necktie, which I delighted in wearing later, I then abhorred. The short jacket I looked upon as immodest. But this dislike was nothing before the desire to go to England, which was uppermost in me. Of provisions also I had enough and to spare for the voyage. A berth was reserved for me by my friends in the same cabin as that of Sjt. Tryambakrai Mazmudar, the Junagadh vakil. They also commended me to him. He was an experienced man of mature age and knew the world. I was yet a stripling of eighteen without any experience of the world. Sjt. Mazmudar told my friends not to worry about me.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Picking up Macho Sluts again has been a little frightening; maybe because I’m still suffering from a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder after the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s in which Patrick Califia’s work figured so prominently. The last time I had the honor of introducing Califia was almost twenty years ago before a talk s/he gave in California; the next day, I found graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall of my favorite café that read “Wendy Chapkis promotes violence against women.” But my anxiety isn’t entirely about ghosts from the past. It would be daunting in any situation to be asked to write something about Patrick Califia’s work. Califia is one of the most important writers on sexual politics of my generation. Over the past thirty years, I have read and re-read his essays, taught a number of them in college seminars, and referenced them in my own writing. Califia has had a profound effect on my identity, too, on what it means to me to be queer and on how I think of myself as a woman (even as he transitioned out of that shared identity). Califia is also an iconic top who knows exactly how to take down those foolish enough to talk back. But there was an even more basic challenge for me in writing this essay. Despite my constant engagement with his nonfiction work, when I dug out my old copy of Macho Sluts, I was surprised to realize that I hadn’t picked it up in years. As I began re-reading it, I remembered why: Califia’s fiction makes me uncomfortable. It took a couple of stories for me to remember that the discomfort is intentional. In a 1979 essay, “The Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality,” Califia wrote: “If someone wants to know about my sexuality, she can deal with me on my own terms. I don’t particularly care to make it easy. S/M is scary. That’s at least half its significance … S/M is a deliberate, premeditated, erotic blasphemy. It is a form of sexual extremism and sexual dissent.”1 In the 1980s, when I first read that essay and was introduced to lesbian S/M, Califia’s provocation was nothing less than electrifying. Like many feminists and queer nationals of the time, I was unwilling to see women’s liberation and gay liberation reduced to a polite equal rights campaign—especially if equality was modeled on the lives of those who were straight, male, or conventionally gendered.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  conscience was clear. I tried to run away from the Congress and suggested to Pandit Malaviyaji and Motilalji that it would be in the general interest if I absented myself from the Congress for the rest of the session. It would save me from having to make an exhibition of my difference with such esteemed leaders. But my suggestion found no favour with these two seniors. The news of my proposal was somehow whispered to Lala Harkishanlal. ‘This will never do. It will very much hurt the feelings of the Punjabis,’ he said. I discussed the matter with Lokamanya, Deshabandhu and Mr. Jinnah, but no way out could be found. Finally I laid bare my distress to Malaviyaji. ‘I see no prospect of a compromise,’ I told him, ‘and if I am to move my resolution, a division will have to be called and votes taken. But I do not find here any arrangements for it. The practice in the open session of the Congress so far has been to take votes by a show of hands with the result that all distinction between visitors and delegates is lost, while, as for taking a count of votes in such vast assemblies, we have no means at all. So it comes to this that, even if I want to call a division, there will be no facility for it, nor meaning in it.’ But Lala Harkishanlal came to the rescue and undertook to make the necessary arrangements. ‘We will not,’ he said, ‘permit visitors in the Congress pandal on the day on which voting is to take place. And as for taking the count, well, I shall see to that. But you must not absent yourself from the Congress.’ I capitulated; I framed my resolution, and in heart trembling undertook to move it. Pandit Malaviyaji and Mr. Jinnah were to support it. I could notice that, although our difference of opinion was free from any trace of bitterness, and although our speeches too contained nothing but cold reasoning, the people could not stand the very fact of a difference; it pained them. They wanted unanimity. Even while speeches were being delivered, efforts to settle the difference were being made on the platform, and notes were being freely exchanged among the

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  To which I replied: ‘I do not think it is at all against our religion to go to England. I intend going there for further studies. And I have already solemnly promised to my mother to abstain from three things you fear most. I am sure the vow will keep me safe.’ ‘But we tell you,’ rejoined the Sheth, ‘that it is not possible to keep our religion there. You know my relations with your father and you ought to listen to my advice.’ ‘I know those relations.’ said I. ‘And you are as an elder to me. But I am helpless in this matter. I cannot alter my resolve to go to England. My father’s friend and adviser, who is a learned Brahman, sees no objection to my gong to England, and my mother and brother have also given me their permission.’ ‘But will you disregard the orders of the caste?’ ‘I am really helpless. I think the caste should not interfere in the matter.’ This incensed the Sheth. He swore at me. I sat unmoved. So the Sheth pronounced his order: ‘This boy shall be treated as an outcaste from today. Whoever helps him or goes to see him off at the dock shall be punishable with a fine of one rupee four annas.’ The order had no effect on me, and I took my leave of the Sheth. But I wondered how my brother would take it. Fortunately he remained firm and wrote to assure me that I had his permission to go, the Sheth’s order notwithstanding. The incident, however, made me more anxious than ever to sail. What would happen if they succeeded in bringing pressure to bear on my brother? Supposing something unforeseen happened? As I was thus worrying over my predicament, I heard that a Junagadh vakil was going to England, for being called to the bar, by

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  WOOING On arrival in Poona, we found ourselves, after the performance of the #shradha# ceremonies, discussing the future of the Society, and the question as to whether I should join it or not. This question of membership proved a very delicate matter for me to handle. Whlist Gokhale was there I did not have to seek admission as a member. I had simply to obey his wish, a position I loved to be in. Launching on the stormy sea of Indian public life, I was in need of a sure pilot. I had one in Gokhale and had felt secure in his keeping. Now that he was gone, I was thrown on my own resources, and I felt that it was my duty to seek admission. That, I thought, would please Gokhale’s spirit. So, without hesitation and with firmness, I began the wooing. Most of the members of the Society were in Poona at this juncture. I set about pleading with them and tried to dispel their fears about me. But I saw that they were divided. One section favoured my admission, the other was strongly against it. I knew that neither yielded to the other in its affection for me, but possibly their loyalty to the Society was greater, at any rate not less than their love for me. All our discussions were therefore free from bitterness, and strictly confined to matters of principle. The section that was opposed to me held that they and I were as the poles asunder in various vital matters, and they felt my membership was likely to imperil the very objects for which the Society was founded. This naturally was more than they could bear. We dispersed after prolonged discussions, the final decision being postponed to a later date. I was considerably agitated as I returned home. Was it right for me to be admitted by a majority vote? Would it be consonant with my loyalty to Gokhale?

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The blows began to sting, and I put my hand up to ward them off. She grabbed my wrist. “What happened to all that sweet submission, huh? You promised to do anything for me, remember? I do. You owe me, honey.” She got out, came around to my door, and dragged me out of the car. Tugging on the scarf, she said, “Heel,” and headed for her door. I almost stumbled, then recovered my footing and followed her. I couldn’t guess where we were going. All I could see were storefronts. But she stopped in front of an iron grating and took out her keys. “No neighbors,” she told me with a grin. “It took me three months to find this place. I couldn’t afford to soundproof my last apartment, and I got kicked out for making too much noise. The rent is cheap, too.” Nobody could hear us? I felt a twinge of alarm. I hardly knew her. Anything could happen. How could I trust her? Because she never once showed any sign of doubting herself, something in me responded. There are plenty of people I’ve known for years that I’d never consider allowing to tie me up. Who knows why I trusted her and not them? It was an arbitrary decision, after all, and one perhaps not totally in my control. She held the grating open behind her. We climbed the stairs, our heels clicking on the stone steps. Her key rattled in the lock. She pushed me in ahead of her, locking the door behind us. It was absolutely dark. I could not tell if I stood in a room or a hallway. She moved closer to me until her breasts kissed my shoulders and stood, not quite touching me, for several seconds. Then she sighed. Her expelled breath contained such weariness and resignation—I was overcome by an irrational desire to hug her knees and weep. She seized my wrists, brought the scarf back through my crotch, and tied my hands together. The deftness of her movements provoked my lust again. Being tied makes me feel safe and somehow confident and very, very sexy. She moved away from me, returning with a fat, lit candle. “We’ll go that way to the bathroom—she said, pointing down the hall. I took a step in that direction. She slapped me, hard. I rocked back on my heels, and she hit me again. My face burning, I stared at the floor and tried to control my tears. “Not so goddamn fast,” she hissed. “Who gives the orders here? You?” “No, no,” I stuttered. She struck out again. “Get down on you knees, damn you. Get down.” I almost fell in my hurry to avoid any more blows. I could not balance with my hands tied behind me.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She heard the curious satisfaction in his voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. There she heard the loud-speaker begin to bellow, in an idiotically velveteen-genteel sort of voice, something about a series of street-cries, the very cream of genteel affectation imitating old criers. She pulled on her old violet-coloured mackintosh, and slipped out of the house at the side door. The drizzle of rain was like a veil over the world, mysterious, hushed, not cold. She got very warm as she hurried across the park. She had to open her light waterproof. The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half-unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark as if they had unclothed themselves, and the green things on earth seemed to hum with greenness. There was still no one at the clearing. The chicks had nearly all gone under the mother hens, only one or two lost adventurous ones still dibbed about in the dryness under the straw roof-shelter. And they were doubtful of themselves. So! He still had not been. He was staying away on purpose. Or perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps she could go to the cottage and see. But she was born to wait. She opened the hut with her key. It was all tidy, the corn put in the bin, the blankets folded on the shelf, the straw neat in a corner; a new bundle of straw. The hurricane lamp hung on a nail. The table and chair had been put back where she had lain. She sat down on a stool in the doorway. How still everything was! The fine rain blew very softly, filmily, but the wind made no noise. Nothing made any sound. The trees stood like powerful beings, dim, twilit, silent and alive. How alive everything was! Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her. But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half-saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night. At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch. "You come then," he said, using the intonation of the dialect. "Yes," she said, looking up at him. "You're late!" "Ay!" he replied, looking away into the wood. She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool. "Did you want to come in?" she asked. He looked down at her shrewdly. "Won't folks be thinkin' somethink, you comin' here every night?" he said. "Why?" She looked up at him, at a loss. "I said I'd come. Nobody knows." "They soon will, though," he replied. "An' what then?" She was at a loss for an answer.