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 Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  For westerners the penis has, over the centuries, linguistically lent itself to little more than jokes and euphemisms; no other human body part is more naturally clownish or taken more seriously: it is the goose’s neck, the live rabbit, a hot pudding, the flute, a sugar stick or lollipop, a roaring jack, arbor vitae, and love’s dribbling dart—and the stick, the foe, the bald-headed hermit, the terror of virgins. (The Hawaiians called boy toddlers, who spent their days naked, “danglers.”) The undignified balls are the dojiggers, talliwags, and whirlygigs, among a lot else, many of them variations of rocks, jewels, berries, and nuts. The ancient Chinese were more poetic than Europeans; they called the penis the Jade Stalk, Heavenly Dragon Pillar, the Swelling Mushroom, the Vigorous Peak. Japanese penis slang today still uses natural images like mushrooms, eels, and snakes. In some Tantric literature, the penis was classed as one of five kinds, depending on its relative vigor, size, and thickness. The Kundari Myō-ō penis is “long, vigorous, and full of passion … [it] can drive a woman wild,” according to John Stevens, a Buddhist historian. The Gonzanze Myō-ō penis is average in size. “This kind of penis puts women at ease. It has great staying power.” In The Perfumed Garden, many names are given: El heurmak, “the indomitable”; El âouame, “the swimmer”; El naourekhi, “the flabby one”; and more. In 1963, Gilbert Oakley, the author of Sane and Sensual Sex, advised bridegrooms not to expose their genitals too abruptly lest their new wives be terrified. When the groom shows her what she’s married for the first time, Oakley explained, it’s better that he not be aroused, “so that his wife will not immediately get the impression of over-eagerness, lust or overpowering masculine aggressiveness.” But respect, perhaps approaching awe, seemed inevitable. “A female has little to no argument in revolting against the sight of male testicles and penis. It may well be that in them she sees a potential ‘weapon’ of aggression but since woman’s ultimate goal is to be attacked (in the nicest possible way) by just this weapon, denial of its existence appears merely hypocritical.” All men are anxious narcissists when it comes to the penis, which each compares constantly and secretly to the penises of other men. Comparison is bound to be distressing. Where did it come from, this male fear of a small penis? Did women start it? And wouldn’t that be just like a woman? (What’s penis envy? The desire to be red, wrinkled, and four inches long.)

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  He took the phone and began chatting with her and then excused himself and went into Lisa and Matthew’s bedroom, which was just off the kitchen. (In the latest game of Musical Beds, Limori’s former husband was now paired with Lisa.) He was gone for two hours and when he hung up and came and found me in the library, he was a changed man. His face looked dour and drawn and there was none of the usual spark of life in his eyes. I asked what was wrong and he said he couldn’t talk about it, so I left it alone. But I guessed that whatever had transpired during his phone call with Limori had to do with me and that it wasn’t good news. I guessed this because of the way he was closed off from me, in a way that he only ever was after he’d talked to his guru. I was certain that she’d delivered the latest message from God that said I was failing Him and also failing Limori and Michael. But I couldn’t know for sure because Michael wasn’t talking. So I tried not to think about it. During dinner that night he was obviously more comfortable because we were with Matthew, Lisa and John. Some of his normal lightheartedness began to return. But as we got ready for bed that night, we sat on top of the bedspread for a while, chatting. I tentatively made another query into the topic of his conversation with Limori and, surprisingly, he revealed a tiny bit. “You’re not doing very well,” he said. I knew he meant “energetically.” “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?” “I can’t tell you.” I paused, trying to get my head around what was going on, “So . . . something’s wrong but you can’t tell me what it is. Is that it?” “Yes,” he said. He was having trouble meeting my eyes and his dour expression was back. I made an exasperated noise and moved to get up off the bed to brush my teeth. “You’re angry,” he said, and somehow I could tell that he was talking not just about the present moment, but about my state of being in general. “No, I’m not.” I defended myself automatically. “Or at least, I wouldn’t be if you would tell me what was going on.” “I told you, I can’t.” I gave up on the conversation because I could tell it was going nowhere and only making me more nervous than I already was. After we’d cleaned our teeth and added more fuel to the woodstove in our cabin, we snuggled up against one another under the warm blankets. I felt like crap because of the cold we’d both caught at Christmas, and his nose was red and running, too. “Do you want to make love?” he asked. “No,” I said.

• From Little Women (1868)

  He is a truly excellent young man, and we could not refuse to listen to him, but I will not consent to Meg's engaging herself so young." "Of course not. It would be idiotic! I knew there was mischief brewing. I felt it, and now it's worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family." This odd arrangement made Mrs. March smile, but she said gravely, "Jo, I confide in you and don't wish you to say anything to Meg yet. When John comes back, and I see them together, I can judge better of her feelings toward him." "She'll see those handsome eyes that she talks about, and then it will be all up with her. She's got such a soft heart, it will melt like butter in the sun if anyone looks sentimentlly at her. She read the short reports he sent more than she did your letters, and pinched me when I spoke of it, and likes brown eyes, and doesn't think John an ugly name, and she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cozy times together. I see it all! They'll go lovering around the house, and we shall have to dodge. Meg will be absorbed and no good to me any more. Brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry her off, and make a hole in the family, and I shall break my heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable. Oh, dear me! Why weren't we all boys, then there wouldn't be any bother." Jo leaned her chin on her knees in a disconsolate attitude and shook her fist at the reprehensible John. Mrs. March sighed, and Jo looked up with an air of relief. "You don't like it, Mother? I'm glad of it. Let's send him about his business, and not tell Meg a word of it, but all be happy together as we always have been." "I did wrong to sigh, Jo. It is natural and right you should all go to homes of your own in time, but I do want to keep my girls as long as I can, and I am sorry that this happened so soon, for Meg is only seventeen and it will be some years before John can make a home for her. Your father and I have agreed that she shall not bind herself in any way, nor be married, before twenty. If she and John love one another, they can wait, and test the love by doing so. She is conscientious, and I have no fear of her treating him unkindly. My pretty, tender hearted girl! I hope things will go happily with her." "Hadn't you rather have her marry a rich man?" asked Jo, as her mother's voice faltered a little over the last words.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  In the United States it is considered legal fraud if a sexual problem is not disclosed prior to marriage; annulments have been granted because of impotence, infertility, a fetish. Marriage grants the state a long-standing and carefully delineated interest in the sexual relations between adults. We generally disdain the idea of public nudity, prostitution, and sex shows because we disdain making one’s sexual relations public, showing them off. But every marriage is a public sexual relationship, legally sanctioned, and its emblem is the hymen. We must have reverence for “the greatest gift a girl can give.” Husbands in some societies still sew up their wives’ labia before going on a trip out of town. The male fascination with virgins has created a myth, a quest for the grail of the maidenhead—which invariably, in men’s stories, is “torn open” or “ripped” or “broken” with copious blood and great pain. Followed by the young girl’s swooning appreciation for the man who has at last shown her the depth of sexual passion. To deflower a virgin has long been considered a special treat by certain men, especially certain classes of men—men with an edge of sadism who had leisure time and the wealth to afford the purchasing of female bodies. The historian Reay Tannahill says that London brothels used to supply medical certificates of virginity to customers. But since lots of virgins don’t have complete hymens, and broaching one often doesn’t have the dramatic impact myth leads men to expect, prostitutes became skilled at faking the imagined symptoms of virginity—astringents to make the vagina seem tight and dry, blood-filled sponges inside, dramatic skills to pretend pain. “In some brothels, professional virgins were patched up several times a week, and not only in London, but in Paris, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans, where some houses at the turn of the century offered defloration as part of the floor show.” Hymen repair before marriage is still common in Japan. Thus we come to the neat and probably inevitable intersection of the virgin and the whore. They are both women defined solely and completely by their sexual behavior, women who don’t exist but for their perceived sexual behavior. Why does the word “penetration” carry such discomfort and anxiety with its longing? Perhaps the best explanation is simply that the word is rarely spoken, but I suspect there’s more involved. Even when we think we’re comfortable talking about sex, even after an hour’s deconstruction of fellatio with three friends, I’m not comfortable discussing the nuances of sensation, the little dreams that crop up here and there, the sudden urges of my body. There was a fad for a while among heterosexual feminists to talk about intercourse as “engulfment,” trying to turn the power of the act on its head. But engulfment is as mushy a word as I can imagine for an experience that can feel so direct. Penetration is entry, submersion, binding, war.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Much of the lush landscape on the island was destroyed by the hurricane and it would take years to recover. Before this, Limori had been travelling to Kauai regularly for several years. She described the Hawaiian Islands as having particular spiritual significance, and Kauai was specifically touted to be one of the most spiritual places on Earth. Whenever Limori returned from her trips to the island, she shared stories of the spectacular spiritual energy that was there and the increasingly significant messages that she received from God and from other spirits whenever she was there. She and Alice would stay for weeks or months at a time and return to the group tanned and replete with the spirit of Aloha. Limori used Hurricane Iniki to her advantage. Because the hurricane landed on Kauai during daylight hours, and because of the prevalence of video recorders in private homes, there was a tremendous amount of recorded footage of the destruction as it occurred. A few months after the hurricane, a documentary film was released, using people’s recordings of the storm, and Limori screened the movie for us one night at the meditation circle. The hurricane was described as the work of the Devil. Limori had been doing so much good energy work while in Kauai, she said, and so many positive things were happening in the universe because of it that the Devil felt he had to strike back, and this was what he’d done. “But we will not be defeated!” she said. “Michael and Jessica’s wedding will go ahead as planned in Kauai and the spiritual work that will be accomplished by the wedding itself will help tremendously to begin to restore the damage done by the Devil and his hurricane.” During the lead-up to the wedding, I was struggling mightily with my banishment from Limori’s house and with the feelings that living at the house had stirred up in me and the ones that were coming to the surface while I processed what had happened. I had moved into a studio apartment, and while I was secretly relieved to be living on my own again, I was experiencing for the first time what being an outcast among the group was like. Shunning was a strategy that Limori’s followers had adopted and used from the earliest days of my involvement, but this was the first time I had experienced the fuzzy side of this particular lollipop. We never used the word shunning ; it is a word I have applied to the particular set of behaviours that occurred when someone was thought to have “dark energy” taking them over. Reflecting on how shunning was applied in the group, I realize that Limori never gave us instructions about how or when or why to shun. It was something we learned by modelling her and something that felt necessary because of the culture of fear that we lived in.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  This was another reminder that we had to constantly be on guard and wary; doing God’s work incited the wrath of the “dark forces,” and coming to Wolf’s Den en masse like this meant that the Devil would be really pissed at us. Cabin assignments were to be strictly followed – as with everything else, the cabin assignments were decided upon with Spirit’s guidance and the “energies” were balanced by pairing certain people together. Meals would be taken communally in the main lodge with breakfast at 8:00 a.m. Alice was in charge of the kitchen and would be preparing the meals for us, but we would help with cleanup. Whatever happened or was shared by anyone at the workshop was strictly secret and was not to be shared with anyone once we’d returned to our regular lives. After these rules had been outlined, we were free to spend the first evening as we wished, catching up with our compatriots and winding down from the long drive. Limori floated among us and held court. She continually provided bossy instruction to those who lived at Wolf’s Den about tasks to be done immediately or in the coming days or weeks. “Open a window; we need some fresh air. Close the door or the cats will get out. Brent, is there firewood stacked at each cabin? Alice, what is that smell? Turn off the stove—you’re burning the soup. Rosemary, get me a platter to put this on. No! Not that one. The blue one. Ugh, I’ll do it myself. John, is there enough toilet paper in each outhouse? Go check. No, I said, go check. ‘I think so’ isn’t a good enough answer,” etc. This bossiness was one of the things that always bothered me the most about Limori, and being here in close quarters with her for several days in a row made my discomfort with the relentlessness of it, and her control over those around her, begin to grow. Everyone around her was always treated as if they were four years old and couldn’t make the smallest decisions for themselves. But, as with every other warning sign and feeling of discomfort, I dismissed how I was feeling. “She’s not bossy,” I thought. “She’s just particular.” The first night, the cabin I was assigned to was warm with both heat from the wood stove and the intimacy and community of the four women who were my bunk-mates. We took turns stoking the fire and brushed our teeth using water from a jerry can balanced on an old wooden chair in the corner. Some of the women in my cabin were the ones I’d driven up with; others were not, but we all knew each other and shared the common bond of a deepening desire to do good spiritual work. Ironically, I was assigned to share a double bed with Michael’s girlfriend Jessica; Amber and Debbie were each on a tier of a bunk bed on the other side of the room.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I sometimes went to Michael for counsel about the predicament that my feelings had me in. He had disagreed with me about my decision to move in with Limori. Michael was wary of the commitment that he felt the move entailed and thought that as someone in my mid-twenties I should be sowing my wild oats. However, I was hypnotized by the status boost I felt the move gave me and the underlying message I felt the move symbolized, that I mattered to God. My monastic tendencies and my driving need to belong to God’s family eclipsed any desire I might have to be free and irresponsible. This was the first time in our friendship where we’d encountered such a philosophical difference of opinion and it surprised and confused me, given that I felt Michael was closer to Limori than I was. As well, during the months I was living at the house, Michael and I didn’t see each other as often as before. Limori’s house was in a suburb of Vancouver and therefore not nearly as close or as convenient to Michael’s apartment as my previous apartment had been. Fighting for supremacy among the reasons for the distance between Michael and me at this time was the fact that he and Jessica were now living together and preparing for their legal wedding in Hawaii. Since Michael and Jessica’s spiritual wedding at Wolf’s Den, Michael had become conflicted, to say the least, about getting married. He felt (and rightly so) that he was being forced into a marriage that he wouldn’t otherwise choose to commit to. During his adult life he had always been something of a free spirit; he had never married (he was forty-two at the time) and had no desire to settle down. He loved to travel and had spent a year when he was twenty-nine circling the globe, an adventure that was the highlight of his life up to that point. He was not naturally inclined toward the so-called normal trappings of life: career, family and real estate. He usually lived very centrally in Vancouver, and enjoyed the restaurants, nightlife and other activities of a large cosmopolitan city. He was self-employed and had been from the earliest days of his adulthood. All these aspects of his character clearly indicated that this was a person who was more interested in freedom than conventionality or security. Limori used all these natural inclinations against him. If he really wanted to serve God, she said, he would get over his ego position about not wanting to be married. This trump card of Limori’s, “get over your ego position,” was supremely powerful because it could be used any time she wanted to control or manipulate someone, no matter how large or small the request was that she was making. Ultimately, every request she made of us had to be accepted because it was God who was asking, and if we refused we were giving in to an ego position.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  It was not a pattern I could see until I had taken a step back from what was going on, but it was there. At the conclusion of each workshop we would be praised for the hard work we’d done and for how much progress we were facilitating for God in the battle between Light and Dark. But inevitably our confidence and pride would be crushed by a word from God, delivered through Limori, that He was disappointed by our lack of commitment and saddened by our apparent lack of love for Him. If we loved Him we’d work harder. And so we did. 5Living the Li(f)eSometimes all the prisoner has is the guard. —From the television program Life B y the summer of 1992 I had been living in Vancouver and going to the circle for three years. I had been to numerous workshops, both weekend and weeklong ones, at Wolf’s Den and I had been asked to join the invitation-only Thursday night meditation group. Limori’s brand of spirituality had become my whole life. I longed to learn more, do more and sacrifice myself more for Limori’s God, who I believed was my God too. Limori had brought me along to the point where I was utterly devoted to her. I considered the members of the group to be my true family and working for this god she represented to be my truest calling. I was a feverish devotee, rarely missing a Wednesday night and never missing the sacred Thursday nights. My life revolved around the group and the people in it. I socialized with them on weekends and meditated with them at our meetings. I spoke to at least one person from the group every day. When I re-read my journals from this time, it is easy to see that I was a very young, twenty-something girl who had almost no sense of herself. It is clear to me now that I swallowed whole almost everything Limori said. I had no critical thinking skills to apply to her claims that she was enlightened, nor did I ever question the merit or the veracity of what she said. I wanted so badly to believe in something, anything, that I became enchanted and enraptured by what Limori said and did. I wanted what she had: a close and intimate relationship with God and a strong sense of herself. It would take me two decades to figure out that these are not things anyone else can give you; we each have to build them inside ourselves, for ourselves. But at twenty-five years old I thought that if I just kept trying harder, doing more and pleasing Limori more, I would achieve them. I would find the inner peace I was looking for. My mother left the group in 1992. She and I had been attending Wednesday nights together for three years or so, but then two things happened.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  When news broke of a Florida: Laurie Roberts, “Boy Allegedly Molested by Goodyear Teacher Brittany Zamora Is . . . Lucky?” AZCentral, March 26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6r7kj3v; Stewart Perrie, “Why Is There a Double Standard When Female Teachers Have Sex with Students?” Lad Bible, March 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4727wl8; Hollie McKay, “Female Teachers Having Sex with Students: Double Standards, Lack of Awareness,” Fox News, June 30, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y55uhj67. Shortly before he won: Marlow Stern, “‘The Daily Show’ Digs Up Creepy Clip of Trump Defending a Statutory Rape,” The Daily Beast, September 29, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y5uesyap. as many as one in six boys: Dube, Anda, Whitfield, et al., “Long-term Consequences of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Gender of Victim.” A freshman at Brown: Emily Kassie, “Male Victims of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out ‘We’re Up Against a System That’s Not Designed to Help Us,’” Huffington Post, January 27, 2105, https://tinyurl.com/yxkc6c8v. The SHIFT study found that: Khan, Hirsch, Wamboldt, et al., “‘I Didn’t Want to Be “That Girl”’: The Social Risks of Labeling, Telling, and Reporting Sexual Assault.” Chapter 8: A Better Man A national survey of students: Cantor, Fisher, Chibnall, et al., Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. See also Carey, Durney, Shepardson, et al., “Incapacitated and Forcible Rape of College Women.” One woman, whose son: Anemona Hartocollis and Christina Capecchi, “Mothers ‘Willing to Do Everything,’ Mothers Defend Sons Accused of Sexual Assault,” New York Times, October 24, 2017, A12. Another, who was among a: Ibid. Although its primary emphasis: For more on best practices in restorative justice, see Karp, The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities; Bargen, Edwards, Hartman, et al., Serving Crime Victims Through Restorative Justice; Kaplan, “Restorative Justice and Campus Sexual Misconduct.” In his study of 659: Karp and Sacks, “Student Conduct, Restorative Justice, and Student Development.” What’s more, as Judith: Herman, “Justice from the Victim’s Perspective.” There is no perfect system: See, for instance, Yung, “Concealing Campus Sexual Assault.” Chapter 9: Deep Breath: Talking to Boys Yet, realistically, only twenty-four states: Christina Capatides, “A Cup Full of Spit, a Chewed Up Piece of Gum. These Are the Metaphors Used to Teach Kids About Sex,” CBS News, April 29, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y5cg744y. Well, right this minute: Ibid. See also, US House of Representatives, The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs; Santelli, Kantor, Grilo, et al., “Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage.” despite a federal investment in abstinence-only: Jessica Boyer, “New Name, Same Harm,” Guttmacher Policy Review, February 28, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y5evxj3h; Andrea Zelinski, “Rewrite of Texas Sex Education Standards Could Include Lessons on Contraception, Gender Identity,” Houston Chronicle, June 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4nekl8f; Advocates for Youth, “Sexual Education: Research and Results,” Fact Sheet, Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2009, https://tinyurl.com/y5uf7g97. Equally concerning, while pleasure-based: Santelli, Grilo, Choo, et al., “Does Sex Education Before College Protect Students from Sexual Assault in College?”; Tina Rosenberg, “Equipping Women to Stop Campus Rape,” New York Times, May 30, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y4brgua7.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "I can't bear saints. Just be a simple, honest, respectable boy, and we'll never desert you. I don't know what I should do if you acted like Mr. King's son. He had plenty of money, but didn't know how to spend it, and got tipsy and gambled, and ran away, and forged his father's name, I believe, and was altogether horrid." "You think I'm likely to do the same? Much obliged." "No, I don't—oh, dear, no!—but I hear people talking about money being such a temptation, and I sometimes wish you were poor. I shouldn't worry then." "Do you worry about me, Jo?" "A little, when you look moody and discontented, as you sometimes do, for you've got such a strong will, if you once get started wrong, I'm afraid it would be hard to stop you." Laurie walked in silence a few minutes, and Jo watched him, wishing she had held her tongue, for his eyes looked angry, though his lips smiled as if at her warnings. "Are you going to deliver lectures all the way home?" he asked presently. "Of course not. Why?" "Because if you are, I'll take a bus. If you're not, I'd like to walk with you and tell you something very interesting." "I won't preach any more, and I'd like to hear the news immensely." "Very well, then, come on. It's a secret, and if I tell you, you must tell me yours." "I haven't got any," began Jo, but stopped suddenly, remembering that she had. "You know you have—you can't hide anything, so up and 'fess, or I won't tell," cried Laurie. "Is your secret a nice one?" "Oh, isn't it! All about people you know, and such fun! You ought to hear it, and I've been aching to tell it this long time. Come, you begin." "You'll not say anything about it at home, will you?"

• From Little Women (1868)

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX UNDER THE UMBRELLA While Laurie and Amy were taking conjugal strolls over velvet carpets, as they set their house in order, and planned a blissful future, Mr. Bhaer and Jo were enjoying promenades of a different sort, along muddy roads and sodden fields. "I always do take a walk toward evening, and I don't know why I should give it up, just because I happen to meet the Professor on his way out," said Jo to herself, after two or three encounters, for though there were two paths to Meg's whichever one she took she was sure to meet him, either going or returning. He was always walking rapidly, and never seemed to see her until quite close, when he would look as if his short-sighted eyes had failed to recognize the approaching lady till that moment. Then, if she was going to Meg's he always had something for the babies. If her face was turned homeward, he had merely strolled down to see the river, and was just returning, unless they were tired of his frequent calls. Under the circumstances, what could Jo do but greet him civilly, and invite him in? If she was tired of his visits, she concealed her weariness with perfect skill, and took care that there should be coffee for supper, "as Friedrich—I mean Mr. Bhaer—doesn't like tea." By the second week, everyone knew perfectly well what was going on, yet everyone tried to look as if they were stone-blind to the changes in Jo's face. They never asked why she sang about her work, did up her hair three times a day, and got so blooming with her evening exercise. And no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion that Professor Bhaer, while talking philosophy with the father, was giving the daughter lessons in love. Jo couldn't even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried to quench her feelings, and failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated life. She was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering, after her many and vehement declarations of independence. Laurie was her especial dread, but thanks to the new manager, he behaved with praiseworthy propriety, never called Mr. Bhaer 'a capital old fellow' in public, never alluded, in the remotest manner, to Jo's improved appearance, or expressed the least surprise at seeing the Professor's hat on the Marches' table nearly every evening. But he exulted in

• From Another Country (1962)

  I’ll only be a minute.” He jumped out of bed and entered the bathroom. She listened to the water splashing and flushing and looked around his apartment, which already seemed terribly familiar. She would try to get down and clean it up sometime in the next few days. It would be difficult to get away in the daytime, except, perhaps, on Saturdays. Then it occurred to her that she needed a smoke screen for this affair and that she would have to use Vivaldo and Ida. Eric came out of the bathroom and pulled on his shorts and his trousers and his T-shirt. He stuck his feet into his sandals. He looked scrubbed and sleepy and pale. His lips were swollen and very red, like those of heroes and gods of antiquity. “All ready?” he asked. “All ready.” He picked up her bag and gave it to her. They kissed briefly again, and walked down the stairs into the streets. He put his arm around her waist. They walked in silence, and the street they walked was empty. But there were people in the bars, gesticulating and seeming to howl in the yellow light, behind the smoky glass; and people in the side streets, loitering and skulking; dogs on leashes, sniffing with their masters. They passed the movie theater, and were on the Avenue, facing the hospital. And in the shadow of the great, darkened marquee, they smiled into each other’s faces. “I’m glad you called me,” he said. “I’m so glad.” She said, “I’m glad you were home.” They saw a cab coming crosstown and Eric put up his hand. “I’ll call you in a few days,” she said, “around Friday or Saturday.” “All right, Cass.” The cab stopped and he opened the door and put her in, leaned in and kissed her. “Be good, little gal.” “You, too.” He closed the door on her, and waved. The cab began to move, and she watched him move, alone, into the long, dark street. There were no phone booths on deserted Fifth Avenue and Vivaldo walked the high, silent block to Sixth Avenue and entered the first bar he came to, heading straight for the phone booth. He rang the number of the restaurant and waited quite a while before an irritated male voice answered. He asked for Miss Ida Scott.” “She didn’t come in tonight. She called in sick. Maybe you can get her at home.” “Thank you,” he said. But the man had already hung up. He felt nothing at all, certainly not astonishment; yet, he leaned against the phone for an instant, freezing and faint. Then he dialed his own number. There was no answer. He walked out of the phone booth into the bar, which was a workingman’s bar, and there was a wrestling match on the TV screen.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then, as the man gave him change and he moved toward the turnstile, other people came, rushing and loud, pushing past him as though they were swimmers and he nothing but an upright pole in the water. Then something began to awaken in him, something new; it increased his distance; it increased his pain. They were rushing—to the platform, to the tracks. Something he had not thought of for many years, something he had never ceased to think of, came back to him as he walked behind the crowd. The subway platform was a dangerous place—so he had always thought; it sloped downward toward the waiting tracks; and when he had been a little boy and stood on the platform beside his mother he had not dared let go her hand. He stood on the platform now, alone with all these people, who were each of them alone, and waited in acquired calmness, for the train. But suppose something, somewhere, failed, and the yellow lights went out and no one could see, any longer, the platform’s edge? Suppose these beams fell down? He saw the train in the tunnel, rushing under water, the motor-man gone mad, gone blind, unable to decipher the lights, and the tracks gleaming and snarling senselessly upward forever, the train never stopping and the people screaming at windows and doors and turning on each other with all the accumulated fury of their blasphemed lives, everything gone out of them but murder, breaking limb from limb and splashing in blood, with joy—for the first time, joy, joy, after such a long sentence in chains, leaping out to astound the world, to astound the world again. Or, the train in the tunnel, the water outside, the power failing, the walls coming in, and the water not rising like a flood but breaking like a wave over the heads of these people, filling their crying mouths, filling their eyes, their hair, tearing away their clothes and discovering the secrecy which only the water, by now, could use. It could happen. It could happen; and he would have loved to see it happen, even if he perished, too. The train came in, filling the great scar of the tracks. They all got on, sitting in the lighted car which was far from empty, which would be choked with people before they got very far uptown, and stood or sat in the isolation cell into which they transformed every inch of space they held. The train stopped at Fourteenth Street. He was sitting at the window and he watched a few people get on. There was a colored girl among them who looked a little like his sister, but she looked at him and looked away and sat down as far from him as she could. The train rolled on through the tunnel. The next stop was Thirty-fourth Street, his stop. People got on; he watched the stop roll by.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Later, Jessica told me that she had been almost ready to move out of their home. Neither of us made these moves, though, primarily because we were trying to follow God’s orders, despite how horrifically painful and humiliating it was. Finally, in the summer of 1998, Limori declared that Michael and Jessica’s marriage was officially over and they should move apart and begin divorce proceedings. 8The BeginningThe significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. —Albert Einstein O ur flight to Wolf’s Den was delayed, so Michael and I sat playing cards at a small table in the south terminal of the Vancouver airport. It was December 28, 1999, and we were headed up to the fishing resort to spend the final days of the millennium with those members of our “family” who lived there. Even though Limori would not be there, I was nervous about making this trip. It had been Michael’s choice to spend the last part of our Christmas holiday this way, and I had gone along with the idea simply because I didn’t have the backbone to oppose it. I didn’t like being at Wolf’s Den; I didn’t like the food Limori had Lisa cooked, and I didn’t like that we would essentially be trapped in the lodge from morning until night because of the frigid temperatures and the remoteness of the location. Limori, Susan, Alice and Rosemarie (another member of Limori’s travelling entourage) were all in Arizona for Christmas that year. Limori had been renting a home near Tucson for a while; Arizona had replaced Hawaii as her second base-camp. And though she wouldn’t be at Wolf’s Den physically, I knew from experience that her presence would be felt almost as strongly as if she were. Sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the lodge and settled in the cabin that would be ours, the phone calls from Arizona began. Limori called to see if we’d arrived safely, then she called back to tell Lisa what she should make us for supper that night, and she called after supper to speak to Michael about the importance of this week, when the world was moving into a new “energetic era” as the calendar brought us into a new millennium. She was so present in the lodge that we should have set a place for her at the table. That first evening passed unremarkably; it was the next day that things began to go pear-shaped. There were no guests at the lodge while we were there so Michael and I were free to do as we wished. We read in the library and went for a short walk, although the temperature soon drove us back inside. Mid-afternoon the phone rang for the umpteenth time, and, after speaking to Lisa for a while, Limori asked to speak to Michael.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  We all knew the routine well and settled down quickly, assuming the position of the good meditation student: hands clasped in our laps, feet flat on the floor, spines straight, breathing deeply and slowly. I had a vague idea of what to expect, but I also knew there would be experiences I had not anticipated. I had never been on a weeklong spiritual retreat, or any other kind of retreat for that matter, but given my experience with the group on Wednesday nights and at the weekend workshops, I assumed this would be much the same, only on a larger scale. Limori began by tuning in and channelling to us about the spiritual work that would be done that week, a theme continued from the night before, only now in a less warm and welcoming tone. We were getting down to business and it was impressed upon us that this week held enormous significance in God’s plan and in order for that plan to come to fruition we would have to be willing to step up and do whatever was required of us. As usual there was a tenor of gravity to what Limori was saying, and I was filled with the now-familiar twin feelings of urgency and self-doubt. There wasn’t enough time to get everything done that God wanted done and, even if there were, I was probably not up to the task. This always left me feeling that I must work as hard as possible and go to whatever lengths were required to meet this bar that had been set so high, which, of course, was how the message was supposed to make me and everyone else feel. We were it. The twenty or twenty-two people here in the room with Limori were God’s only true servants on Earth, and if we couldn’t face the darkness within ourselves in order to bring more light to the world, then all was lost. So, with that twisted bit of logic firmly in place, we were assigned our task for the day. We were each given a pad of paper and a pen and instructed to go off on our own and write down all the secrets we held in our hearts and minds and anything we were ashamed of having done, large or small. “The only way to serve God,” Limori instructed, “is to clear yourself of these things that you are holding onto. Write down what you are ashamed of and what you hide from others. Get these things out of your body and onto the paper and you will be free of them. In this way you will become a clearer vessel for God to work through. Secrets and shame that hide in the darkness are magnets for the Devil. He will use every bit of darkness that hides inside you to thwart God and to ensure that God’s plan can never be fulfilled.

• From Little Women (1868)

  Of course this is all very private, but I wished you to know what was going on. Don't be anxious about me, remember I am your 'prudent Amy', and be sure I will do nothing rashly. Send me as much advice as you like. I'll use it if I can. I wish I could see you for a good talk, Marmee. Love and trust me. Ever your AMY CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO TENDER TROUBLES "Jo, I'm anxious about Beth." "Why, Mother, she has seemed unusually well since the babies came." "It's not her health that troubles me now, it's her spirits. I'm sure there is something on her mind, and I want you to discover what it is." "What makes you think so, Mother?" "She sits alone a good deal, and doesn't talk to her father as much as she used. I found her crying over the babies the other day. When she sings, the songs are always sad ones, and now and then I see a look in her face that I don't understand. This isn't like Beth, and it worries me." "Have you asked her about it?" "I have tried once or twice, but she either evaded my questions or looked so distressed that I stopped. I never force my children's confidence, and I seldom have to wait for long." Mrs. March glanced at Jo as she spoke, but the face opposite seemed quite unconscious of any secret disquietude but Beth's, and after sewing thoughtfully for a minute, Jo said, "I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them. Why, Mother, Beth's eighteen, but we don't realize it, and treat her like a child, forgetting she's a woman." "So she is. Dear heart, how fast you do grow up," returned her mother with a sigh and a smile. "Can't be helped, Marmee, so you must resign yourself to all sorts of worries, and let your birds hop out of the nest, one by one. I promise never to hop very far, if that is any comfort to you." "It's a great comfort, Jo. I always feel strong when you are at home, now

• From Little Women (1868)

  It was no paler and but littler thinner than in the autumn, yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty. Jo saw and felt it, but said nothing at the time, and soon the first impression lost much of its power, for Beth seemed happy, no one appeared to doubt that she was better, and presently in other cares Jo for a time forgot her fear. But when Laurie was gone, and peace prevailed again, the vague anxiety returned and haunted her. She had confessed her sins and been forgiven, but when she showed her savings and proposed a mountain trip, Beth had thanked her heartily, but begged not to go so far away from home. Another little visit to the seashore would suit her better, and as Grandma could not be prevailed upon to leave the babies, Jo took Beth down to the quiet place, where she could live much in the open air, and let the fresh sea breezes blow a little color into her pale cheeks. It was not a fashionable place, but even among the pleasant people there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another. Beth was too shy to enjoy society, and Jo too wrapped up in her to care for anyone else. So they were all in all to each other, and came and went, quite unconscious of the interest they excited in those about them, who watched with sympathetic eyes the strong sister and the feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long separation was not far away. They did feel it, yet neither spoke of it, for often between ourselves and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is very hard to overcome. Jo felt as if a veil had fallen between her heart and Beth's, but when she put out her hand to lift it up, there seemed something sacred in the silence, and she waited for Beth to speak. She wondered, and was thankful also, that her parents did not seem to see what she saw, and during the quiet weeks when the shadows grew so plain to her, she said nothing of it to those at home, believing that it would tell itself when Beth came back no better. She wondered still more if her sister really guessed the hard truth, and what thoughts were passing through her mind during the long hours when she lay on the warm rocks with her head in Jo's lap, while the winds blew healthfully over her and the sea made music at her feet. One day Beth told her. Jo thought she was asleep, she lay so still, and putting down her book, sat looking at her with wistful eyes, trying to see signs of hope in the faint color on Beth's cheeks.

• From Another Country (1962)

  A sound of singing and guitar-playing came from the center of the park; idly, they walked toward it; they each seemed to be waiting and fearing the resolution of their evening. There was a great crowd gathered in the small fountain; this crowd broke down, upon examination, into several small crowds, each surrounding one, two, or three singers. The singers, male and female, wore blue jeans and long hair and had more zest than talent. Yet, there was something very winning, very moving, about their unscrubbed, unlined faces, and their blankly shining, infantile eyes, and their untried, unhypocritical voices. They sang as though, by singing, they could bring about the codification and the immortality of innocence. Their listeners were of another circle, aimless, empty, and corrupt, and stood packed together in the stone fountain merely in order to be comforted or inflamed by the touch and the odor of human flesh. And the policemen, in the lamplight, circled around them all. Ida and Vivaldo walked together, Eric and Ellis walked together: but all of them were far from one another. Eric felt, dimly, that he ought to make some attempt to talk to the man beside him, but he had no desire to talk to him; he wanted to leave, and he was afraid to leave. Ida and Vivaldo had also been silent. Now, as they walked from group to singing group, intermittently, through romanticized Western ballads and toothless Negro spirituals, he heard their voices. And he knew that Ellis was listening, too. This knowledge forced him, finally, to speak to Ellis. He heard Ida. “—–sweetie, don’t be like that.” “Will you stop calling me sweetie? That’s what you call every miserable cock sucker who comes sniffing around your ass.” “ Must you talk that way?” “Look, don’t you pull any of that lady bullshit on me.” “—–you talk. I’ll never understand white people, never, never, never! How can you talk that way? How can you expect anyone else to respect you if you don’t respect yourselves?” “ Oh . Why the fuck did I ever get tied up with a house nigger? And I am not white people! ” “—–I warn you, I warn you!” “—– you’re the one who starts it! You always start it!” “—–I knew you would be jealous. That’s why!” “You picked a fine way to keep me from being—jealous, baby.” “Can’t we talk about it later? Why do you alway have to spoil everything?” “Oh, sure, sure, I’m the one who spoils everything, all right!” Eric said, to Ellis, “Do you think any of these singers have a future on TV?” “On daytime TV maybe,” Ellis said, and laughed. “You’re a hard man,” said Eric. “I’m just realistic,” Ellis said. “I figure everybody’s out for himself, to make a buck, whether he says so or not.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  She had us perpetually over a barrel. In the case of Michael’s marriage, all she had to do was wait him out and not back down, knowing that eventually he would fold and do her bidding because he was fully committed to his spiritual path, to the God she had sold him and to not giving in to ego positions. Normally, Michael was my bedrock of support and encouragement. He helped me understand the way the world worked in ways I never would have figured out on my own. So I was sad and bereft during this time because he was not as available to me as usual. He was dealing with his own problems, and I was left to figure out for myself why I was filled with such anxiety most of the time. Anytime I was able to discuss this with him, he simply told me what anyone in the group would have: “Be in your heart. Don’t be afraid of The Truth,” etc. Coincidentally, that was exactly what I was telling him with regard to his impending marriage. We were both at war with ourselves: each trying to convince ourselves that doing something that felt wrong was actually right and that if our instinct told us we were uncomfortable or disagreed with God’s guidance, our instinct was wrong. Limori was raising the temperature with both of us to see how far we would go for her. She would be successful with Michael and a little less successful with me. After two and a half months of living in Limori’s house, during an informal chat with her and Alice one evening I was given a new name. This was surprising to me because I was still deep in the struggle with my feelings of utter failure about living in God’s presence and not being able to relax. Limori said that God said I was to be called Chaye Kaley (pronounced cha-ee ka-lay) from now on. I was surprised but also thrilled by this development. I felt it was another momentous step in my evolution into a true spiritual warrior. By carrying a name that God had given me and living under God’s roof I felt I would really be making a statement to the world about who I was and what mattered to me. And once again I thought, “Now I will really belong somewhere and feel at home in myself.” I made plans to change my name legally to this new moniker, but this spiritual carrot was dangled and then, just as quickly, pulled away. A few days after I was given the name Limori said that God had asked me to hold off legally changing it until the New Year. Limori, Alice and Susan spent Christmas that year in Hawaii. The night before they left I gave them each a gift to take with them to open on Christmas Day, but I was nervous and self-conscious as I did it and Limori’s hawk-like stare didn’t help.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  “Yeah,” Emmett agreed. “They are really trying to make themselves look better. But, you know, some of them—like, you Google SAE and the first thing that comes up is how they’ll never have a black man there.” That’s true: the University of Oklahoma chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the country’s largest fraternity, made national news in 2015 when its members were caught on video belting out a racist ditty; “black man” is a euphemism for the word they actually used. It turned out they had learned the song on a leadership cruise (the lyrics of another version promote violence against women). In 2016, a brother at Yale’s SAE chapter was accused of chanting “white girls only” while screening guests for a party and only admitting blond women (racism and misogyny tend to coexist: over just a few weeks in 2014, other campuses’ members of that fraternity, colloquially known as “Sexual Assault Expected,” were named in rape allegations at Emory, Iowa State, and Johns Hopkins, and at an off-campus house at Loyola Marymount). SAE is not unique. Also in 2016, a notebook belonging to the North Carolina State chapter of Pi Kappa Phi surfaced, containing such lines as “That tree is so perfect for lynching,” “If she’s hot enough she doesn’t need a pulse,” and “It will be short and painful, just like when I rape you.” During one week in April 2018, two separate frats at Cal Poly were suspended for racist incidents, and at Syracuse University, brothers at Theta Tau were caught on video during a “roast” making racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic comments as well as simulating the sexual assault of a disabled person. A frat at Xavier and Emmett’s university had been suspended two years before, after members shouted racial epithets and threw beer bottles at two black female students walking past their house. At a certain point, one has to wonder whether the issue here is a “few bad apples” or, as sociologist Matthew Hughey, who studies the role of race in fraternities, has said, “more of a rotten orchard.” “I do go to the parties sometimes, though,” Emmett said, reiterating that, as a black guy, he was automatically considered the coolest dude in the room. “But I don’t really like drinking with those people. Or [doing] anything else with them. Sometimes I’ll get really bad anxiety at those parties because . . . You just feel eerie. Anything can go wrong. And if it does, you’re screwed. Because if you’re the only black kid at the party, then you’re the only black kid at the party, you know what I’m saying? So if the party is shut down by cops, they’ll be asking, ‘Why are you here?’ and they won’t think that you actually go to this school. Or what if I accidentally break something? When you’re participating in extracurricular activities with people you don’t trust, it just doesn’t make for a really good time.”