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 Post Office (1971)

  Already, out of our original group of 150 to 200, there were only 17 or 18 of us left. “How can I work 12 hours a night, sleep, eat, bathe, travel back and forth, get the laundry and the gas, the rent, change tires, do all the little things that have to be done and still study the scheme?” I asked one of the instructors in the scheme room. “Do without sleep,” he told me. I looked at him. He wasn’t playing Dixie on the harmonica. The damn fool was serious. 6I found that the only time to study was before sleeping. I was always too tired to make and eat breakfast, so I would go out and buy a tall six-pack, put it on the chair beside the bed, rip open a can, take a good pull and then open the scheme sheet. About the time I got to the third can of beer I had to drop the sheet. You could only inject so much. Then I’d drink the rest of the beer, sitting up in bed, staring at the walls. With the last can I’d be asleep. And when I awakened, there was just time to toilet, bathe, eat, and drive back on in. And you didn’t adjust, you simply got more and more tired. I always picked up my six-pack on the way in, and one morning I was really done. I climbed the stairway (there was no elevator) and put the key in. The door swung open. Somebody had changed all the furniture around, put in a new rug. No, the furniture was new too. There was a woman on the couch. She looked all right. Young. Good legs. Blonde. “Hello,” I said, “care for a beer?” “Hi!” she said. “All right, I’ll have one.” “I like the way this place is fixed up,” I told her. “I did it myself.” “But why?” “I just felt like it,” she said. We each drank at the beer. “You’re all right,” I said. I put my beercan down and gave her a kiss. I put my hand on one of her knees. It was a nice knee. Then I had another swallow of beer. “Yes,” I said, “I really like the way this place looks. It’s really going to lift my spirits.” “That’s nice. My husband likes it too.” “Now why would your husband … What? Your husband? Look, what’s this apartment number?” “309.” “309? Great Christ! I’m on the wrong floor! I live in 409. My key opened your door.” “Sit down, sweetie,” she said. “No, no …” I picked up the four remaining beers. “Why rush right off?” she asked. “Some men are crazy,” I said, moving toward the door. “What do you mean?” “I mean, some men are in love with their wives.” She laughed. “Don’t forget where I’m at.” I closed the door and walked up one more flight. Then I opened my door. There was nobody in there.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I took my glass from the table and with a grimace drank what was left. The same song was still playing, only a couple of minutes had passed. As soon as I set my glass down Z. was filling it, gallant again, and then N. was back from the bathroom, lifting his own glass expectantly, so Z. filled it, too, and then his own, and once more we were toasting one another. I glanced around, aware that everything I had felt would have been obvious to anyone watching us, but no one was watching us; in the dim light I could see the other tables and beyond them the crowded floor unchanged. I put my arm around N.’s shoulders, friendly, trying to normalize touch, and he and I danced a little. Another song had come on, one I didn’t know but that didn’t matter, you can always dance to chalga , that’s the whole point of it, its single virtue. I had turned away from Z. to dance with N., who wasn’t a good dancer at all, he didn’t even try to dance well: he made all his movements ironic, self-deprecating, an extension of the persona he had taken on in class, which was endearing but also a product of uncertainty or doubt, a kind of abnegation. I wanted him to grow out of it but now I played along, laughing, dancing in the same way, our motions silly and shuffling, a game that was in a way the opposite of eros and so a relief to me. I had only lost track of him for a minute or two, but when I looked over again Z. had disappeared. He must have gone to the bathroom, I thought, and immediately I stopped dancing. I shouted to N. that I was going to piss, at which he nodded, and I left him without a thought for how odd it was, to leave him there alone, how transparent it must have been, I would think of it only later. I moved as quickly as I could, twisting through the crowd, finding openings between the groups of drinkers; I wasn’t so drunk, I thought. I had almost reached an open space near the entrance when I stumbled into a man’s back. He turned quickly, muscular and affronted, but smiled when I held up both hands in apology, Izvinyavaite , pardon me, suzhalyavam , I’m sorry, and he put a large hand on my shoulder and squeezed, friendly and forgiving, welcoming me into the camaraderie of happy drinking. And then in the dimness ahead there was a sudden rectangle of porcelain light as a door opened and I was in a large bright room, tiled and clean. There were three urinals along one wall, and a man was stepping away from one of them, zipping himself up.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was a comfortless room. There was an armoire of some sort, a table, a plush chair, all from an earlier era. These spaces are passed from generation to generation; people can spend their whole lives amid the same objects and their evidence of other lives, as almost never happens in my own country, or never anymore. And yet it was impossible to imagine friends or family gathering there. I stood for a moment just in front of the door, and then the man told me to kneel. I could feel him looking at me in the clinical light, inspecting or evaluating me, and when he spoke it was as if with distaste. Mnogo si debel, he said, you’re very fat, and I looked down at myself, at my thighs and the flesh folded over them, the flesh I have hated my entire life, and though I remained silent, I thought Not so very fat. It was part of our contract, that he could say such things and I would endure them. I wasn’t as fat as he was, anyway: he was larger in person than in the photos he had sent, as you come to expect, larger and older, too; he was as old as my father, or almost, anyway nearer to him than to me. But he stood there as though free of both vanity and shame, with an indifference that seemed absolute and, in my experience of such things, unique. Even very beautiful men are eager to be admired, wherever you touch them they harden their muscles, turning their best angles to the light; but he seemed to feel no concern at all for my response to him, and it was then that I felt the first stirrings of unease. He neither spoke nor gestured, and the longer he appraised me, the more I feared that having come all this way I would be told to leave. It wasn’t the lost time I would resent, but the waste of the anticipation that had mounted in me over the several days I had chatted with him online, an anticipation that wasn’t exactly desire, as it wasn’t desire that I felt now, though I was hard, though I had been hard even as I climbed the stairs, even in the taxi that had brought me there. He was an unhandsome man, though in the way of some older men he seemed solid in his corpulence, thick through the chest and arms. His face was blunt-featured, generic somehow; it was clear that he had never been attractive, or rather that his primary attraction had always been the bearing he had either been born with or had cultivated, the pose of uncaring that seemed to draw all value into itself, that seemed entirely self-sufficient. He would never be called a faggot, I thought, whatever the nature of his desires.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  She was gracious, too, and she had thanked me once for my influence, as she put it; You are the only teacher he works hard for, she said, this is the only class he likes. He isn’t a stupid boy, she said, as she always did when we discussed his poor grades, his late or missing assignments, but oh, he is so lazy. But this time I demurred, It isn’t exactly that he’s lazy, I said. I saw her face tighten slightly with the wariness I often saw in parents when I began to speak about their children, a knitting of the brow that might have meant a special kind of attention but was usually the opposite, was usually their attention shutting down. When N. is interested he will work, I said, if it’s something he likes—and here she turned her head to the side, she made a thick sound with her tongue in the back of her throat. Please, N.’s mother said, turning back to me, her tone at once dismissive and imploring, please, if he likes it? What will he do when he has a job, he can’t only work when he wants to. I nodded and started to speak but she went on, Please, she said, I know what you will say, N. has told me many times, you tell them they should do what they love, it’s beautiful what you tell them. I see why they like you so much, she said, with a tight, conciliatory smile. I do tell them that, I said, I believe it. I took a breath. He has a talent, I said, I think he’s lucky to have found it, and yes, I think he should follow what he loves and build his life around it. I paused. I had been wringing my hands beneath the table, knitting and unknitting my fingers, and now I laid them flat on top of it. I worry about N. in law school, I said, I worry that he will keep doing badly. I think, and here I tried to make my voice lighter somehow, I think he should do what he feels called to do, I think he should study what he wants. She sat very still as I spoke, her tight smile unchanging. Yes, she said again, it’s very beautiful what you say, very inspiring. And what does he do then, she said, after he studies what he wants, what does he do when he has to get a job? Things are different here, Gospodine , maybe in America what you say is true; you try something there and if you fail it is no problem, you try something else, Americans love starting over, you say it’s never too late.

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

  His long face was sunburned, making his teeth look strangely prominent. “Let’s ask the big fella,” he said. “What say, big fella? You want to watch the fun from my place?” He pointed at a large brick house on the edge of the park. I ignored him. “Mom,” I said. “I’m hungry.” “He hasn’t had lunch yet,” my mother said. “Lunch,” the man said. “That’s no problem. What do you like?” he asked me. “What’s your absolute favorite thing to have for lunch?” I looked at my mother. She was in high spirits and that made me even grimmer, because I knew they were not due to my influence. “He likes hamburgers,” she told him. “You got it,” he said. He took my mother’s elbow and led her across the park toward the house. I was left to follow along with the other man, who seemed to find me interesting. He wanted to know my name, where I went to school, where I lived, my mother’s name, the whereabouts of my father. I was a sucker for any grown-up who asked me questions. By the time we reached the house I had forgotten to be sullen and told him everything about us. The house was cavernous inside, hushed and cool. The windows had stained-glass medallions set within their mullioned panes. They were arched, and so were the heavy doors. The living room ceiling, ribbed with beams, curved to an arch high overhead. I sat down on the couch. The coffee table in front of me was crowded with empty beer bottles. My mother went to the open windows on the harbor side of the room. “Boy!” she said. “What a view!” The sunburned man said, “Judd, take care of our friend.” “Come on, Bub,” said the man I’d been talking to. “I’ll rustle you up something to eat.” I followed him to the kitchen and sat at a counter while Judd pulled things out of the refrigerator. He slapped together a baloney sandwich and set it in front of me. He seemed to have forgotten about the hamburger. I would have said something, but I had a pretty good idea that even if I did there still wasn’t going to be any hamburger. When we came back to the living room, my mother was looking out the window through the binoculars. The sunburned man stood beside her, his head bent close to hers, one hand resting on her shoulder as he gestured with his beer bottle at some point of interest. He turned as we came in and grinned at us. “There’s our guy,” he said. “How’s it going? You get some lunch? Judd, did you get this man some lunch?” “Yes sir.” “Great! That’s the ticket! Have a seat, Rosemary. Right over here. Sit down, Jack, that’s the boy. You like peanuts? Great! Judd, bring him some peanuts.

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

  advice and squeezed my mind around them so they would sink in deep and change my game. Bobby had a very soft voice, and this made what he said seem confidential, even a little shady. I PLAYED MY first game in street shoes against Van Horn. Bobby and Norma let me off outside the school and drove away. They had been glum and prickly with each other on the way down. In a few months they’d be graduating, and their plans didn’t agree. I knew I was in trouble as soon as we started our lay-up drills. The shoes were heavy and squarish, chosen by Dwight to go with both my school clothes and my Scout uniform. They clomped loudly as I ran and the slick new soles slipped like skates on the profoundly varnished floor. I fell down twice before the game began. By tip-off the kids from the other school were already hooting at me. I didn’t want to play, but only five of us had shown up that night so I had no choice. My shoes clomped as I ran blindly up and down the court. Sometimes the ball came at me. I dribbled it once or twice and threw it at someone else in red. Jumped when I saw everyone else jumping. Ran back and forth. Fell down whenever I tried to stop too fast. In the din of voices I heard one in particular, a woman’s, shrieking high above the rest. It was like the crazy voice on laugh tracks. Once I picked it up I couldn’t stop listening for it. It distressed me and made me even clumsier. Every time I slipped or fell down she shrieked higher and louder, and then there came a time when she didn’t stop between falls but kept on shrieking in a breathless, broken voice that had no trace of laughter. I wasn’t the only one to notice. The gym grew quiet. Eventually hers was the only voice to be heard. She didn’t stop. Our coach called time-out, and we went to the sidelines to towel off and slake our thirst. People were turning in their seats to look up at her. She was standing in the top row of the bleachers, a woman I’d never seen before, a huge broad- shouldered woman wearing curlers and toreador pants. She had her hands over her face. Her shoulders jerked as muffled barking sounds escaped her. A short man with scarlet cheeks and downcast eyes was leading her by the elbow. They passed along their row and down the steps, then across the gym floor to the exit, the woman barking convulsively through her fingers. The game resumed, but with a difference. The crowd was quieter now, almost hushed. When the other team had the ball, a few scattered voices called polite

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

  She looked me up and down. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “A scarf.” “Something in navy,” Mr. Howard said. She shook her head. “He’d look like an undertaker. Claret.” Franz gave her a choice of three scarves. She moved her hand over them, wiggling her fingers like someone deciding on a chocolate, then picked one up and draped it around my neck. It had the same silky texture as the overcoat. Mrs. Howard arranged the scarf so it hung casually between the lapels of the overcoat. She glanced at me again and then stepped back so that I was alone before the mirror. The elegant stranger in the glass regarded me with a doubtful, almost haunted expression. Now that he had been called into existence, he seemed to be looking for some sign of what lay in store for him. He studied me as if I held the answer. Luckily for him, he was no judge of men. If he had seen the fissures in my character he might have known what he was in for. He might have known that he was headed for all kinds of trouble, and, knowing this, he might have lost heart before the game even got started. But he saw nothing to alarm him. He took a step forward, stuck his hands in his pockets, threw back his shoulders and cocked his head. There was a dash of swagger in his pose, something of the stage cavalier, but his smile was friendly and hopeful. Chuck had spent the afternoon at a double feature. I met him outside the theater and we drove over to Pioneer Square. I had kept him waiting for more than an an hour, and he was worried about the business still ahead of us, so he didn’t say much. I could tell he was at the end of his rope where I was concerned. His mouth was set in a line. He lit one cigarette off another. He drove with dowdy rectitude, now and then sighing heavily. I went into three pawnshops before I found anyone who would give me the time of day. The third shop was run by a woman. She was as tall as I was, and had the stiff blond hair, spiky eyelashes and smooth, waxy face of a doll. When I said I had some things to sell she busied herself with the merchandise on the back shelf. Her hands were red and big and covered with turquoise jewelry. She didn’t look at me, not then or at any other time while I was in her shop. What kinds of things, she wanted to know. Her voice was low and flat. Four rifles, I told her. Also two shotguns. A couple of other items. “Where’d you get them?” “My father left them to me,” I said. “After he died.” When she didn’t say anything, I added, “My mom needs the money.” She grunted.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  For his part, Nat was not especially responsive to Amanda’s sensibilities. He was cavalier about the effect all these tapes were having on her, and (contrary to his own objections) he was being a bit coy about not understanding what it all meant. His argument that he loved her too much to be able to eroticize her that way was too glib. Exposing one’s inner erotic life demands more sensitivity and tact than Nat exhibited. Likewise, entering the fantasy world of our partner requires more sense of separateness than Amanda was able to muster. Some people get off on peeking behind the curtain of their partner’s secret imaginings; for others, this is a disaster. It not only fails to enrich but actually hurts their erotic complicity. Inviting someone into the recesses of our erotic mind is risky. When the fantasy is poorly received it can be devastating. But when it’s received in a way that makes us feel recognized and accepted, it can be richly affirming. While the fantasy itself may not be an intimate scenario, its disclosure expresses and fosters deep love and trust. At the same time, entering the erotic mindscape of another requires an effort of understanding and a considerable degree of emotional separateness. We may not like what we hear; we may not find it sexy. This level of compassionate objectivity is not easy to achieve, especially with regard to desire. If our partner is aroused by something foreign to us, something other, the temptation is to judge first and ask questions later, if at all. What begins as an open inquiry can rapidly degenerate into a mutually defensive withdrawal. When the erotic mind senses criticism, it goes into hiding. No longer private, it becomes secretive. I am a proponent of privacy, and I prefer a cautious approach in matters of sexual self-disclosure. Exploring one’s eroticism is not synonymous with making it public; and acknowledging need not mean detailed sharing. There are many ways to bring our erotic selves into our intimate relationships; they don’t all require words or literal exposés. How to go about it will depend on the particular relationship and the compatibility of the partners. Our cultural taboos about erotic fantasy are so strong that for many people the very idea of discussing it creates anxiety and shame. Yet fantasies are maps of our psychological and cultural preoccupations; exploring them can lead to greater self-awareness, an essential step in creating change. When we cordon off our erotic interiors, we are left with sex that is truncated, devoid of vibrancy, and not particularly intimate. What people fail to see is that dull, boring sexual relationships are often a consequence of shutting down the imagination in just this way.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Some of these even mimic the death state. When you consider how the thought of something as routine as being compelled to sit rigidly still in the dentist’s chair can cause you to wince, you begin to understand the challenge of voluntarily entering immobility mode. You may anticipate the pain of being trapped with no way to escape. For anxious or traumatized individuals, having to lie immobile during an MRI or CT scan can be downright terrifying. For children, these procedures may be vastly more difficult. Sitting quietly at one’s desk, unable to move for hours at a stretch, is a challenge for any youngster. For an anxious or “sensitive” child, it can be unbearable, perhaps even contributing to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. This may be especially true for children who have had to undergo immobilizing procedures, such as when casts or metal braces are required for orthopedic correction of hips, legs, ankles or feet during the developmental stage when a child would normally be learning how to walk, run and explore the world. Even adults who meditate often struggle with sitting still. Those few fortunate ones who can crawl into a warm bed, lie absolutely still, and drift quickly off into a restorative sleep are bestowed a most precious blessing. However, for many (perhaps even a majority), bedtime is often fraught with anxiety. It can become a nightmare in itself. In frustration, you may try to lie still while “counting sheep.” Mind spinning, you are unable to let go and surrender into Morpheus’s waiting arms. And then when some people awaken during (or shortly after) REM sleep, their bodies are still literally paralyzed by the neurological mechanisms designed to inhibit running or fighting (or even actively moving) in a dream for self-protection and prevention against hurting someone else. Waking up from this normal “sleep paralysis” can be terrifying, particularly when people experience themselves detaching from their bodies, a frequent component of immobility. For others, the sleep-induced REM paralysis is a curious, enjoyable, even “mystical,” out-of-body experience. For those who perceive this detaching from their bodies as terrifying, panic reactions are typical. In traumatized people, fear-potentiated immobility is their wrenching companion, day and night. Although avoidance of immobility is understandable, it has a price. Whatever experiences you turn away from, your brain-body registers as dangerous; or colloquially, “that which we resist persists.” Thus, the time-honored expression, “time heals all wounds,” simply does not apply to trauma. In the short run, the suppression of immobility sensations appears (to our denial-biased mind) to keep the paralysis and helplessness at bay. However, in time, it becomes apparent that evasive maneuvers are an abject failure.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  We liked to look out on the garden, where even in mid-October there would usually have been diners talking and smoking at the tables that were empty now, stripped of their umbrellas and chairs, black metal chains locked around their legs. It was a lovely garden, its shrubs and flowers rare in Mladost, a green relief among the concrete desolation of so much of the neighborhood. There was nothing to be done about the sound of traffic nearby, or the exhaust that tainted the air, and of course one only had to look up to see the gray of the apartment blocks, which put an end to all greenness. We enjoyed it best from inside, we had learned, it was a place to rest our eyes. But tonight everything outside was movement and agitation, as it had been all week, ever since a great wind had swept into or descended upon or laid siege to the city, it’s hard to know how to put it, or my sense of it shifted with the days. It came up from Africa, the guards at my school said, old men who greeted it with resignation; it carries sand from Africa, you’ll feel it, it is a horrible wind. And they were right, there was something almost malevolent about it, as if it were an intelligence, or at least an intention, carrying off whatever wasn’t secure, worrying every loose edge. It made the city’s cheap construction seem cheaper, more provisional and tenuous, a temporary arrangement—as is true of all places, I know, though it’s a truth I’d rather not acknowledge, of course I came to hate the wind. R. was late, as always, and after half an hour I had begun to wonder whether he would come at all. He often canceled our plans, usually after I had rearranged my own schedule to accommodate his, however inconvenient it was; and sometimes he didn’t give any notice, just an apology hours after I had given up waiting. It was a popular restaurant, busy with the dinner rush, and I could feel myself becoming a spectacle, quiet in a convivial room, a bit of negative space. I had already fended off several approaches from the servers, saying I was waiting for a friend, he was on his way, gesturing to my lifeless phone as though I had heard from him, though in fact he hadn’t responded to the texts I sent. The waiters had become more insistent as the tables around me filled; soon I would have to order something or leave. Even inside we could hear the wind; it was a sound above our human voices, a sound beyond the scale of living things. I always forgave R. when he didn’t appear, I accepted any excuse he offered, whatever my annoyance I never complained. I wanted to think of this as patience, but really I knew it was fear; I would push him away if I demanded too much.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  R. had been watching me, but at this he lowered his eyes. He brought his hand to his face and then bent his head forward, spreading his fingers as if to run them through his hair, which had been long until a few days before, when he buzzed it down to a centimeter or two. He rubbed his scalp a few times, and then dropped his hand back to the table. Skupi , he said, his tone imploring me for something, I don’t know, what if we can’t make it work once I leave, maybe this is my chance and I’m ruining it, he said, maybe I only have one chance to be happy. Am I doing the wrong thing, he said, looking at me, tell me what I should do. He met my eyes, and I felt that he really did want me to choose for him, that he would accept the decision I made; I can say yes to him, I thought, I can say yes, stay with me, I can grab hold of him. The words were on my tongue, I even took a breath to speak them, but I couldn’t speak them, and I looked back down at my food. It would have violated something to say them, his freedom, I suppose, the choice he was so ready to hand over. You have to decide, I said finally, I can’t tell you what to do. He looked out the window, nodded, then turned back. Well, he said, we’ve already decided, right, we bought the ticket, it would be stupid to change our minds. Besides, he said, we’re not giving up, we’ll make it work, you’ll come to Lisbon when you’re on vacation, and there’s the job fair in London this winter, you’ll find something. I had been looking for a teaching job in a city where he would want to live, somewhere in the north, in a clean place, he had said, a country where things worked like they should. But jobs were hard to come by, and it was hard for me to believe that R. would find in those countries, in any country, the life he thought he wanted. Though that wasn’t the right way to put it, I thought, he didn’t have a particular life in mind, something we could work for together; he acted as though life were something that would find him, in some city he had yet to see. Still, I pretended to be sure, as much for myself as for him, we would figure it out, I said, of course we would, we belonged with each other, I was his.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I knew I had to meet Ratu, and I did. Bright and articulate, she was like a spokesperson for one of those generations with a letter attached to it—X or Y or whatever they’re up to now. She gave me an illuminating description of the sexual scene on campus. “We don’t really have time to date. So the quick fix is the Friday or Saturday night hookup. You go to a party or you go to a bar; everyone gets drunk, really drunk, and everyone pairs off. It’s over and done with by the time Monday rolls around, after everyone has shared hookup stories over lunch. ‘Hookup’ is sort of a broad term that covers everything from just fooling around to oral sex to full-on sex. “The ideal college relationship is the ‘friends-with-benefits’ scenario. You have a close male friend who you have a lot of fun with and with whom there is a bit of sexual tension. It starts one night when you’re both drunk and run into each other at a bar or something. You go home together, have sex (great or not so great, it doesn’t matter) and then pretend it didn’t happen. The next week this is repeated with the same person, and so on and so forth, until you feel as though you don’t need the pretense of going out and getting drunk. Instead you just call him when you feel like hooking up or if you’re just bored.” This is what Ratu and her friends unapologetically refer to as the booty call. There is an emotional downside, even to this stunningly abbreviated form of coupling. “There comes a point,” Ratu says, “when one party gets more involved than the other and it’s time for the uncomfortable talk. Ground rules are established: this is simply a friends-with-benefits scenario, nothing more, nothing less; and if he or she isn’t OK with that, then it’s over. And then you move on to another friend. We try very hard not to let our emotions get in the way,” says Ratu without a trace of irony. What’s interesting for me in Ratu’s description is that there’s no arc to this narrative—no ascending plot, no unfolding, no climax, no closure. In fact, there’s no story to the story at all. Sex is separated from the story that brought it into being. “There is a deliberate attempt to keep emotions out of sex, and not just for the boys,” Ratu elaborates. “The girls as well as the boys speak of love on one hand and sex on the other, as though they have nothing to do with each other.” She pauses, “Though I suspect that a lot of my girlfriends would rather be in relationships, whether or not they want to admit it.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  She doesn’t want to hurt Angela. Armed with an ideology of love that advocates togetherness, we are awkward about pursuing autonomy. This is especially true of the individuality of our desire. Even couples who grant one another considerable space elsewhere—separate vacations, nights out on the town, close friends of the opposite sex—grapple with the idea that they might have an erotic life independent of each other. I’m not talking about extramarital sex. I’m talking about a sexual self that is discrete, that generates its own images, responds to others, and is delighted when it gets turned on unexpectedly. It is all these contingencies of desire that I bring to bear on my work with couples. Monogamous Marriage in a Promiscuous Society Generally, the role of therapists is to challenge the cultural status quo. We regularly encourage our patients to examine their assumptions about what’s normal, acceptable, and expected. Yet sexual boundaries are one of the few areas where therapists seem to mirror the dominant culture. Monogamy is the norm, and sexual fidelity is considered to be mature, committed, and realistic. Nonmonogamy, even consensual nonmonogamy, is suspect. It points to a lack of commitment or a fear of intimacy. It undermines the couple. As one of my colleagues firmly stated, “Open marriage doesn’t work. Thinking you can do it is totally naive. We tried it in the seventies and it was a disaster.” “That may be so, but the closed marriage is hardly a guarantee against disaster,” I cautioned. “And the monogamous ideal, which a decent chunk of married folks don’t live up to, may be no less naive. If anything, it seems to invite transgressions that are excruciatingly painful.” My colleague, an excellent family therapist, was nevertheless taking an all-or-nothing approach to fidelity. In this view, emotional commitment demands sexual exclusivity, and brooks no gradations. Yet we live in a world that offers us little help with staying put or making do. In our consumer culture, we always want the next best thing: the latest, the newest, the youngest. Failing that, we at least want more: more intensity, more variety, more stimulation. We seek instant gratification and are increasingly intolerant of any frustration. Nowhere are we encouraged to be satisfied with what we have, to think, “This is good. This is enough.” Sex is part and parcel of this economy—some people might even say that sex propels it. That dress, that car, those shoes, this lotion, a new tattoo, buns of steel, all carry the promise of a more sexually fulfilled life. We are convinced that sexual gratification and personal happiness go hand in hand. Earthly delights are everywhere, a veritable banquet, and we feel entitled to join the feast. No wonder people often feel restless in marriage. The fantasy of infinite variety is thwarted by commitment.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  By telling them not to touch I was mapping a space that would give her room to go after him. That, in turn, would give him the feeling of being desired. “I’ll make this clear for you. No contact. No pecks, no kissing, no massage, no strokes. Nothing. Sorry, you guys. You can write, you can send notes, you can make eyes—whatever else you want to do. Because at this point you have smothered sizzle with affection, leaving it with no way to ignite.” Candace was ready to comply with my suggestion. “OK,” she agreed. “It’s hateful, but it’s a good idea.” I wondered who would have the harder time following my prescription. While Candace presented herself as the “touch whore,” I suspected that Jimmy would be the first to break the agreement, for he had more at stake. He had been furious for years, and he had never known how to be angry with a person he also loves—how to be mad and connected at the same time. Behind his restraint, behind the sweet caresses, lay the unarticulated fear that ire inevitably leads to separation. During the first several weeks, Jimmy repeatedly slipped. So I instructed Candace to become more forceful in maintaining the hands-off rule. I was looking to up the ante. Eventually, Jimmy got worked up enough to comply. “About a month into it, I wanted nothing to do with her.” Removing the protective layer of affection turned out to be more effective than I had anticipated. “Safe might not be attractive to me,” Candace admitted. “But I’ve come to rely on it. These last few weeks he’s been more removed, and it’s been really uncomfortable. We’re not used to being this way. I got what I asked for, but I’m not sure it’s what I wanted.” Candace and Jimmy had constructed an intimacy that precluded conflict of any sort. All the tension was crystallized in their sexual impasse. It was the one place where they maintained their distinction. By upsetting the balance of their harmonious but sexually flat relationship, I hoped to introduce an increased sense of otherness; for without that, there was no way desire would emerge. A few months into our work together, Candace and Jimmy reported that they had noticed a difference, but they still had a long trek ahead. “In a lot of ways we have so much in terms of our relationship. We have a lot to be thankful for, and I know that,” Candace told me. “But we’ve also come to realize that being close doesn’t mean never fighting. It’s funny, because the one thing that we were so proud of was actually kind of a problem.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I see the emergency team slip a collar onto my neck and then cautiously slide me onto a board. While they strap me down, I hear some garbled radio communication. The paramedics are requesting a full trauma team. Alarm jolts me. I ask to be taken to the nearest hospital only a mile away, but they tell me that my injuries may require the major trauma center in La Jolla, some thirty miles farther. My heart sinks. Surprisingly, though, the fear quickly subsides. As I am lifted into the ambulance, I close my eyes for the first time. A vague scent of the woman’s perfume and the look of her quiet, kind eyes linger. Again, I have that comforting feeling of being held by her presence. Opening my eyes in the ambulance, I feel a heightened alertness, as though I’m supercharged with adrenaline. Though intense, this feeling does not overwhelm me. Even though my eyes want to dart around, to survey the unfamiliar and foreboding environment, I consciously direct myself to go inward. I begin to take stock of my body sensations. This active focusing draws my attention to an intense, and uncomfortable, buzzing throughout my body. Against this unpleasant sensation, I notice a peculiar tension in my left arm. I let this sensation come into the foreground of my consciousness and track the arm’s tension as it builds and builds. Gradually, I recognize that the arm wants to flex and move up. As this inner impulse toward movement develops, the back of my hand also wants to rotate. Ever so slightly, I sense it moving toward the left side of my face—as though to protect it against a blow. Suddenly, there passes before my eyes a fleeting image of the window of the beige car, and once again—as in a flashbulb snapshot—vacant eyes stare from behind the spiderweb of the shattered window. I hear the momentary “chinging” thud of my left shoulder shattering the windshield. Then, unexpectedly, an enveloping sense of relief floods over me. I feel myself coming back into my body. The electric buzzing has retreated. The image of the blank eyes and shattered windshield recedes and seems to dissolve. In its place, I picture myself leaving my house, feeling the soft warm sun on my face, and being filled with gladness at the expectation of seeing Butch that evening. My eyes can relax as I focus outwardly. As I look around the ambulance, it somehow seems less alien and foreboding. I see more clearly and “softly.” I have the deeply reassuring sense that I am no longer frozen, that time has started to move forward, that I am awakening from the nightmare. I gaze at the paramedic sitting by my side.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Squire Winter, a soldier, had stood it out. But he no longer cared to walk in the park after dinner. He almost hid, indoors. Once he had walked, bare-headed, and in his patent-leather shoes and purple silk socks, with Connie down to the gate, talking to her in his well-bred rather haw-haw fashion. But when it came to passing the little gangs of colliers who stood and stared without either salute or anything else, Connie felt how the lean, well-bred old man winced, winced as an elegant antelope stag in a cage winces from the vulgar stare. The colliers were not _personally_ hostile: not at all. But their spirit was cold, and shoving him out. And deep down, there was a profound grudge. They "worked for him." And in their ugliness, they resented his elegant, well-groomed, well-bred existence. "Who's he!" It was the _difference_ they resented. And somewhere, in his secret English heart, being a good deal of a soldier, he believed they were right to resent the difference. He felt himself a little in the wrong, for having all the advantages. Nevertheless he represented a system, and he would not be shoved out. Except by death. Which came on him soon after Connie's call, suddenly. And he remembered Clifford handsomely in his will. The heirs at once gave out the order for the demolishing of Shipley. It cost too much to keep up. No one would live there. So it was broken up. The avenue of yews was cut down. The park was denuded of its timber, and divided into lots. It was near enough to Uthwaite. In the strange, bald desert of this still-one-more no-man's-land, new little streets of semi-detacheds were run up, very desirable! The Shipley Hall Estate! Within a year of Connie's last call, it had happened. There stood Shipley Hall Estate, an array of red-brick semi-detached "villas" in new streets. No one would have dreamed that the stucco hall had stood there twelve months before. But this is a later stage of King Edward's landscape gardening, the sort that has an ornamental coal mine on the lawn. One England blots out another. The England of the Squire Winters and the Wragby Halls was gone, dead. The blotting out was only not yet complete. What would come after? Connie could not imagine. She could only see the new brick streets spreading into the fields, the new erections rising at the collieries, the new girls in their silk stockings, the new collier lads lounging into the Pally or the Welfare. The younger generation were utterly unconscious of the old England. There was a gap in the continuity of consciousness, almost American: but industrial really. What next? Connie always felt there was no next. She wanted to hide her head in the sand: or at least, in the bosom of a living man.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The fear of being consumed by these “terrible” feelings leads us to convince ourselves that avoiding them will make us feel better and, ultimately, safer. There are many examples of this in our lives: we may avoid a café or certain songs that remind us of a former loved one or avoid the intersection where we were rear-ended a year ago. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. When we fight against and/or hide from unpleasant or painful sensations and feelings, we generally make things worse. The more we avoid them, the greater is the power they exert upon our behavior and sense of well-being. What is not felt remains the same or is intensified, generating a cascade of virulent and corrosive emotions. This forces us to fortify our methods of defense, avoidance and control. This is the vicious cycle created by trauma. Abandoned feelings, in the form of blocked physical sensations , create and propel the growing shadow of our existence. As we saw with Sharon, when we focus in a particular way on physical sensations , in a short period of time they shift and change; and so do we. Premature Cognition Sharon’s misdirected beliefs (though largely subconscious) are efforts to understand, to make sense of her experience and to help her justify why she feels so bad. These “explanations” will do nothing to help her move through her fright response and complete the inhibited actions that form the basis of her continued trauma response (the how). Mentation, at this stage, only interferes with resolution. For this reason I coach her to resist the seduction to understand and, instead, to fully engage with what she is now physically feeling in her body. The consequence of “premature cognition” is to take the person out of his or her sensate experience before it completes and has the opportunity to generate new perceptions and new meanings. The Experience of Anxiety Is Not Universal If you ask several anxious people what they are feeling, they may all say that they are feeling “anxiety.” However, you are likely to get several different responses if they are then queried with the epistemological question, “How do you know that you are feeling anxiety?” One may state, “I know because something bad will happen to me.” Another will say that he is feeling strangulated in his throat; another that her heart is leaping out of her chest; and yet another that he has butterflies or a knot in his gut. Still other people might report that their neck, shoulders, arms or legs are tight; yet others might feel ready for action; while still others might sense that their legs feel weak or that their chests are collapsed.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  And sadly, it is not just acutely traumatized individuals who are disembodied; most Westerners share a less dramatic, but still impairing disconnection from their inner sensate compasses. In contrast, various eastern spiritual traditions have acknowledged the “baser instincts” not as something to be eliminated, but rather as a force available for transformation. In one book describing Vipassana meditation, a quote reads that the goal is in “purifying the mind of its baser instincts so that one begins to manifest the truly human spiritual qualities of universal goodwill, kindness, humility, love, equanimity and so on.” 134 What I believe the author means is that rather than renouncing the body, spiritual transformation emerges from a “refining” of the instincts. The essence of embodiment is not in repudiation, but in living the instincts fully, while at the same time harnessing their primordial raw energies to promote increasingly subtle qualities of experience. In the book of Job it is said, “For in my flesh I shall see God.” The degree to which we cannot deeply feel our body’s interior is the degree to which we crave excessive external stimulation. We seek titillation, overexertion, drugs and sensory overload. It is difficult to find a movie these days that is without over-the-top special effects and multiple car crashes. As a culture, we have so negated the capacity to feel the subtlety of the life of the body that we have become habituated to a seemingly endless barrage of violence, horror and explosive, body-vibrating noise. On the wane are films of engaging dialogue and affective nuance. Instead, we are continually bombarded with jumbles of disconnected, incoherent and meaningless images or sentimental mush. There is the paucity of time we have for ourselves to quietly reflect. Rather, these precious free moments we have are spent online, in chat rooms substituting for real human contact, creating avatars in virtual space or watching TV on our cell phones. I’m not against having a good time or unappreciative of our technological strides. It is simply that while the media reflects our sorry state of insensitivity, it is also contributing, in a significant fashion, to our addiction to overstimulation. To the degree that we are not embodied, our basic instincts—survival and sexuality—become distorted. Distortion of self-survival leaves us fearful, angry and anxious. Disembodied sexuality and a lack of the capacity for self-regulation produce the starkly barren landscape of pornography, as well as such disorders as anorexia and bulimia. Notwithstanding the complex psychodynamic, social and media factors (with its airbrushed barrage of models with “ideal” bodies), disembodiment promotes and fosters many of the eating disorders.

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

  Arthur’s eye did not immediately turn black, but first went through a liverish spectrum of yellows and purples and greens. Arthur sometimes stared at me in a way that convinced me he knew I’d been telling lies about the fight. But he made no move to start it up again. We kept away from each other. Once school let out for the summer, we hardly ever met except in a crowd of other boys at baseball games and Scout meetings. But one afternoon I was doing my route and saw Arthur coming toward me down the main road. We would meet each other not far from where the fight had started. There was no one else around. I walked on and so did he, Pepper mincing along behind him. And as we approached each other it occurred to me, more as nervousness than thought, that Arthur might also have received some instruction in dry-gulching, and in biding his time. I had bided my own beyond Dwight’s patience, that was for sure. When we were close enough to touch, Arthur stopped and said, “Hi.” “Hi,” I said. We stood there, looking at each other. Then he looked down at Pepper. “Do you want to pet my dog?” he asked. “Sure.” I dropped to one knee and held out my hand. Pepper sniffed it. “She can talk,” Arthur said. “Sure,” I said. “I just about believe you.” “Hey Pepper,” he said, “what’s on a tree?” She yapped twice. “Bark!” Arthur said. “Way to go, Pepper. Okay, Pepper, how’s the world treating you?” She looked up at him. “How’s the world treating you, Pepper?” She yapped again. “Rough! Good girl!” It was a dumb joke, but I had to laugh. While I stroked Pepper’s wiry fur she grunted softly and looked up at me with keen, unremembering eyes. Skipper’s car was a 1949 Ford that Dwight had gotten a deal on from some rube in Marblemount. Dwight bought it so Skipper could take girls out and go hunting and fishing without borrowing his own car, but Skipper put it in a corrugated iron shed at the edge of camp and commenced taking it to pieces. It had been in pieces for over a year when I moved up to Chinook, and it was still in pieces six months later when Skipper graduated from Concrete High. Skipper didn’t leave Chinook when he graduated, but took a job with the power company and continued living at home so he could put all his money into the car. Sometimes at night I dropped by to look at it while I was out collecting from my subscribers. At home Skipper took little notice of me, but in the shed he became hospitable. He turned off whatever tool he happened to be plying at the time and raised his goggles to his forehead.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 4: Further, sometimes an indulgence is granted, so that for visiting a church a man obtains a seven years’ remission. If, then, an indulgence avails as much as is claimed for it a man who lives near that church, or the clergy attached thereto who go there every day, obtain as much indulgence as one who comes from a distance (which would appear unjust); moreover, seemingly, they would gain the indulgence several times a day, since they go there repeatedly. Objection 5: Further, to remit a man’s punishment beyond a just estimate seems to amount to the same as to remit it without reason; because in so far as he exceeds that estimate, he limits the compensation. Now he who grants an indulgence cannot without cause remit a man’s punishment either wholly or partly, even though the Pope were to say to anyone: “I remit to all the punishment you owe for your sins.” Therefore it seems that he cannot remit anything beyond the just estimate. Now indulgences are often published which exceed that just estimate. Therefore they do not avail as much as is claimed for them. On the contrary, It is written (Job 13:7): “Hath God any need of your lie, that you should speak deceitfully for Him?” Therefore the Church, in publishing indulgences, does not lie; and so they avail as much as is claimed for them. Further, the Apostle says (1 Cor. 15:14): “If . . . our preaching is vain, your faith is also vain.” Therefore whoever utters a falsehood in preaching, so far as he is concerned, makes faith void. and so sins mortally. If therefore indulgences are not as effective as they claim to be, all who publish indulgences would commit a mortal sin: which is absurd. I answer that, on this point there are many opinions. For some maintain that indulgences have not the efficacy claimed for them, but that they simply avail each individual in proportion to his faith and devotion. And consequently those who maintain this, say that the Church publishes her indulgences in such a way as, by a kind of pious fraud, to induce men to do well, just as a mother entices her child to walk by holding out an apple. But this seems a very dangerous assertion to make. For as Augustine states (Ep. ad Hieron. lxxviii), “if any error were discovered in Holy Writ, the authority of Holy Writ would perish.” In like manner, if any error were to be found in the Church’s preaching, her doctrine would have no authority in settling questions of faith.