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.

Page 326 of 501 · 20 per page

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles narrowed his eyes but smiled. Lionel felt a crackle of static between them. “Is that your heart’s desire? To proctor?” “Is your heart’s desire to interrogate strangers at a dinner party like a Chekhov character?” “I don’t know what that is,” Charles said dryly, and Lionel snorted. The solidity of the sound startled him. Charles went back to spinning his fork. Lionel resisted the urge to respond, grateful for the opportunity to drop down and out of the conversation. It was clear to him now, in a way that it hadn’t been before, that he and every other graduate student depended on the currency of their university affiliations to get by in conversations. As though academia were a satellite constantly pinging, letting him know who and where he was. It wasn’t until he had come out of that life that he realized he had no real way of relating to people without it. People looked at him differently when he didn’t mention that he’d once been a student or that he had a university affiliation. They looked through him, but the worst part of it was that he sometimes looked through himself in the same way. “You like it?” Charles asked. “It gives me time to think,” Lionel said. “It’s funny. I used to think so fast. Like, sometimes, I felt like I was having six different conversations in my head, all at once. But now it takes me a year just to get to the end of one thought.” “If I were that in my head, I’d kill myself,” Charles said. “Sounds awful. Jesus.” The acuity of the words stung Lionel right between the eyes. The air in the room was dense. His tongue felt heavy and numb. Something lodged at the base of his throat when he tried to respond. He coughed experimentally to see if he could clear it, but the hard knot of whatever it was remained stubbornly fixed. His neck bulged under his fingers. His skin was flushed and warm to the touch. He thought briefly that he was having an allergic reaction, that weird sense of driving panic and dry throat. His heart hammered along, and his eyes watered. Even the wool of his sweater itched and burned against his arms. He made another attempt at coughing loose whatever was in his throat. He beat on his chest to break up the tension, but there was no give. “People do kill themselves,” Lionel wheezed. “They do.” “Easy, buddy,” Charles said nervously. He slapped Lionel between the shoulders. The jolt of it made Lionel’s plate slide from his lap to the floor with a loud thunk. The wilted kale, coated in dressing, and the greasy avocado made a sad little pile. The conversation, that wall of party noise, dropped away, and it was just the curious silence of the voyeur and the watched.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  We had decided on a new Thai place none of us had been to yet in the gayborhood, within walking distance of all of our apartments. The night of our triple date I put on the outfit I had decided on a few days earlier—boots, nice jeans and a plain black T-shirt; respectable enough for Scott, casual enough for Daddy. I was so nervous that I left the house with half an hour to spare and got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early. A quick glance inside confirmed that there were several empty tables, so I leaned up against the doorjamb and waited. It was a perfect spring night, with a warm breeze and a few clouds scudding across the sky, the smell of rain from the storm a few hours earlier: all my senses were wide awake and my nerves were tingling. Scott got there first. I recognized his gait from a block away, and noticed with pride the many men that did a double take as he walked past. “Hi, baby,” he said, kissing me on the lips. “Hey there, good-lookin’.” I hugged him close. “Are you nervous?” “No, why would I be? I’m really excited to meet Howard. Are you nervous?” “No, no,” I lied. I recanted immediately. “Okay, yes, I’m nervous. I’m worried that—I’m just, I don’t know, just freaked out a bit, is all, the two of you meeting each other. But I’m sure it will be fine.” “I’m sure too,” he said. “You worry too much.” “Yes,” a voice boomed from behind him, “he does.” My heart jumped. Daddy was here! I straightened my posture and smiled widely. “Good evening, Sir!” I said. “This is Scott. Scott, this is my Daddy Howard.” I watched with trepidation as the two most important men in my life shook hands. “A pleasure,” said Scott. “Same here,” said Daddy. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Scott grinned. “So have I. I especially like that story where you—” I jumped in before they could make me blush. “Hey, hey, there will be plenty of time to embarrass me over dessert. I’m starving, can we go in already?” They agreed, laughing, and we ducked inside. The waitress sat us against the window, separated from the rest of the restaurant. Scott and Daddy faced each other, and I sat in between. The three of us ordered beers, and soon the two of them were chatting away like old friends. The conversation turned to kink over appetizers. “So,” said Daddy, “I’ve been told that you don’t have much experience, am I right?” Scott swallowed a bite of duck spring roll and nodded. “That’s right. I mean, I’ve always liked it rough”—he winked at me, and I blushed slightly,—“but I don’t know anything about, like, official S and M.” “Well, what would you like to know?” asked Daddy.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  (I liked that we .) “But she’s got us pegged all wrong.” He raced about the room turning off lights and saying over and over again. “Ooh-la-la,” as though sexual adventure must be French. In the past, whenever the Scotts had come close to a decisive action, they’d annihilated it through paralyzing discussion. That’s what kept them together, I imagine, their Sisyphean talk. He’d annoy her, she’d lapse into ponderous, savage silence, he’d cajole her out of it, she’d tongue-lash him, he’d whimper, then cringingly strike back, she’d retreat, he’d pursue—and all these feints and thrusts they simultaneously analyzed from so many angles and with such a strange blend of vanity, self-hatred, Christian moralizing and cross-cultural reference that finally nothing took place. Rachel didn’t walk out on DeQuincey. DeQuincey didn’t burn his poems, his “life work,” as he threatened to. She didn’t send Tim off to her monster father in Miami (“At least he’s a real man, and absolute evil is preferable, far preferable to your mauvais foi ”). He didn’t run away to become an Augustinian. She didn’t turn on the gas to asphyxiate them all. None of this happened. They outsat each other, the air turned blue with tobacco smoke, irony and exhaustion. Dawn made its killjoy appearance, like a parent returning home to halt the children’s party, by now a seedy, nearly comatose event. But tonight talk wasn’t sapping resolve. In fact tonight the Scotts seemed in collusion, as though they’d decided in advance to seduce me. Given my failure with the black prostitute, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get it up for any woman, much less a teacher’s wife. But I didn’t want to be the one to back down. When we all three finally got into bed, DeQuincey kept the wisecracks coming. He was the eternal kid who’s forgotten to change his underwear, who keeps his socks on and can hardly wait to dive in (“Oh boy, oh boy”). Rachel, however, lost her bravado. She wasn’t frightened or ashamed but she was shy, even a little romantic. She lay between us. DeQuincey took no interest in me; perhaps Christ really had driven out all his homosexual devils. As it ended up, he mounted her while I stroked her face. When we were all dressed again, the Scotts seemed exhilarated—too much so, to my mind, considering how little had happened. Only gradually did I come to understand that whereas the Scotts certainly did have a serious Anglican admiration of sin, they had an equally strong horror of seeming to themselves bourgeois. Their desire to be bohemian outweighed their resolve to be good. Our “orgy,” as they called it, reassured them that their morality must be of a higher sort, no mere suburban primness.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  He began to sweat. Heat covered his back and his stomach. Keep going, he said to himself. Keep going. Lionel slid a little down the inclining sidewalk. The ice was scratchy beneath the snow, but then his soles found traction and he righted himself. The voice was closer then, but Lionel could see his building nearby, right there on the corner. He had a first-floor apartment. The light from the center hall of the building projected out onto the snow, a dull, yellow pool. He patted his pockets for his keys. “Lionel!” he heard, the voice no longer indistinct but clear and ringing through the night: his name. Lionel looked up, and there was Charles, at the boundary between the light and the shadow. He breathed hard and bent over, clutching his side. His hair was damp, and beads of sweat had frozen to the ends of his curls, glinting. It was strange to see him here. Lionel found his keys in his pocket. “Why are you here? How are you here?” “You ran! Who runs?” Charles looked up at him, his panting coming to an end. “I guess I did,” Lionel said. “I wasn’t trying to. I mean, I didn’t know I was running from you.” “I texted you!” Charles said. He was upright then. His hands rested on his hips. But his weight distribution had him favoring one leg over the other. Lionel remembered his knee and felt bad. “Ah. That was you.” “Yes, idiot,” Charles said. “Where’s your car?” “Up the street.” “I guess that makes sense,” Lionel said. His thighs burned and his lower back hurt. He had been running. Jostling himself through the thick snowdrifts. He felt very tired. And he wanted to be warm. “Do you want to come inside, then?” “Sure,” Charles said. Lionel nodded but did not move right away to open the door for them. He looked down into his palm at his keys, which the hospital staff had returned to him a few days before, along with the rest of his possessions. They were light, cold against his palm. The apartment building loomed behind them. All he had to do was turn and put the key into the lock, but he couldn’t. His joints wouldn’t move. His muscles wouldn’t budge. It felt too much after too long a night. “Can you?” Lionel asked. “Would you?” “You’re such a little weirdo,” Charles said. But he took the keys from Lionel’s hand. He tried the first one, but when it wouldn’t undo the lock of the main door, he turned back to look at Lionel. He tried another, still no luck. “You want to help out here?” “It’s the one with the red tape,” Lionel said. A car passed on the street, kicking up gray slush into the air. Some of it landed near the rim of light at the edge of the yard.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  For a moment we stood, staring each other down. Then I said very quietly, “After all the money problems you’ve had, you know I had real reservations about giving you another chance, especially one that affected my credit history. But as part of my commitment to our home life, I agreed to cosign that loan for you. You agreed to make the payments on time and to take the consequences if you made a payment late. Are you going back on your word to me now?” Eric looked at me, shifting from foot to foot like he was trying to find some sort of magic answer to pull out of the air. We both knew there was a lot at stake between us. Finally he blew out a long breath and looked away, shaking his head. “No, sir. I’m not going back on my word. I screwed up. I’ll take the whipping.” He looked back at me and smiled weakly. “I’m just a little nervous, okay? I mean, I’ve never been whipped before, and that thing looks like it’ll really sting!” As he spoke, he unconsciously rubbed the spot on his thigh where Mr. Pulaski had swatted him. I have to admit, I was relieved. Eric really is a good kid, in spite of how mad he makes me sometimes. I settled down to business. “Eric,” I said as I took him firmly by the shoulder and steered him to the chair, “this switch isn’t just going to sting. It’s going to burn pure fire over every inch of your bare butt!” He looked up at me, startled. His eyes got even bigger as I stepped back and motioned for him to get ready. “By the time I’m done with you, you’re going to be yelling so loudly Mr. Pulaski will probably be able to hear you without his hearing aid, and you’ll be ready to beg that bank to take your payments early so that you never have to go through this again. Now strip! And I mean everything off but your socks, boy! Move it!” Eric’s hands were shaking and he was as pale as I’ve ever seen him, but he nodded and started unbuttoning his fly. As I watched, he shoved his jeans down over his hips, kicked off his shoes and worked his jeans over his feet. A minute later, his crisp white jockeys and his T-shirt were also folded in a neat pile on the kitchen table. He stood shivering as I finished peeling the excess leaves off the switch. “Bend over the back of the chair and grab the lower rung, the one beneath the seat,” I said firmly. He looked really nervous, but I have to give him credit. Scared as he was, Eric followed my directions, and a minute later, he was in position, his butt in the air and his privates pulled up out of the way so I had a clear shot at his ass.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Chuck decided we should visit a whorehouse. He picked up four day students from their houses and we lurched and wheezed in Chuck’s Chevy down through the black section of the city. It was midnight and though this was the weekend the streets were deserted; only here and there a few neon lights outlined the windows of a tavern. The bordello was a dingy wooden house behind a larger one. To get to it we had to squeeze down a narrow strip of sidewalk past a sturdy metal fence behind which a neighbor’s German shepherd kept barking and running back and forth. After we rang the bell for several minutes and Chuck pounded the door and sang a love song in warbling falsetto, which elevated the dog into new ecstasies of rage, the door at last was cracked open and a tall Negro man looked out. He had a tight black silk kerchief on his head and a few short white curly whiskers growing out of a shiny mole beside his mouth. Inside, two young black women and one woman who was white and middle-aged were sitting in slips in front of a television set. One of the black women had on pink-rimmed glasses and was knitting. The room beyond them, a waiting room lined with crude wooden folding chairs, was deserted and harshly lit. Three pictures leaned forward off the dirty walls, one a reproduction of a painting of Jesus praying in Gethsemane while his disciples dozed unmindful of the approaching Roman guards. The other pictures were of cloth behind glass, each embroidered with a motto: “Peace on Earth” and “Bless This House”—puns, I guess, but who could be certain. The house smelled of cooking fat and pork. “Now, you boys sit in here,” the white woman said, indicating the waiting room with a precise push of her hand, as though her hand were a croupier’s rake, “and choose your women.” We filed in under the harsh light. Chuck’s nose looked huge and cratered, his teeth as big as a dog’s. I felt my penis and scrotum contract, inchworm above a buckeye, but I was counting on the whore’s discretion—the guys need never know of my failure. “Girls, get your lazy black asses in here so these men can look you over.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  We were driving farther and father north. I sat in the front seat with the owner of the camp and looked out at the tall pines, so blue they were almost black against the gray spring sky. The road was the same color as the sky. When we came to the top of a gentle rise and looked down, the road below seemed forlorn and distant, enchanted into the shadows. But as we sped through the valley, the road came close and brightened and the crowns of the blue-black trees slid over the car’s polished metal hood. In the backseat behind me lolled a special camper my mother, upon the advice of the owner, had warned me to avoid (“Be polite, but don’t let him get you alone”). She seemed reluctant to explain what the danger was, but when I pressed her she finally said, “He’s oversexed. He’s tried to take advantage of the younger boys.” She then went on to assure me that I mustn’t despise the poor boy; he was, after all, brain-damaged in some way, under medication, unable to read. If God had gifted me with a fine mind He’d done so only that I might serve my fellow man. In this brief parting word of warning, my mother had managed to communicate to me her own fascination with the wild boy. The day had turned cool and the car windows were closed. The motor ran so smoothly that the ticking of the dashboard clock could be heard. When I cracked the vent open I heard volleys of birdsong but the birds themselves were hiding. In the valley below, empty of all signs of humanity except for the road, a mist was curling through the pines. I didn’t really know the owner of the camp, and so I felt awkward beside him, ready to discuss whatever he chose but afraid of tiring him with my chatter. I sat half-rigid with expectation, a smile up my sleeve. And I felt the sex-crazed boy behind me who was half stretched out on the backseat, the sunlight from between the passing pines rhythmically stroking his body.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  “Oho!” DeQuincey shouted. Then he said in a stage whisper to me, “She thinks we’ll be the first to chicken out.” (I liked that we.) “But she’s got us pegged all wrong.” He raced about the room turning off lights and saying over and over again. “Ooh-la-la,” as though sexual adventure must be French. In the past, whenever the Scotts had come close to a decisive action, they’d annihilated it through paralyzing discussion. That’s what kept them together, I imagine, their Sisyphean talk. He’d annoy her, she’d lapse into ponderous, savage silence, he’d cajole her out of it, she’d tongue-lash him, he’d whimper, then cringingly strike back, she’d retreat, he’d pursue—and all these feints and thrusts they simultaneously analyzed from so many angles and with such a strange blend of vanity, self-hatred, Christian moralizing and cross-cultural reference that finally nothing took place. Rachel didn’t walk out on DeQuincey. DeQuincey didn’t burn his poems, his “life work,” as he threatened to. She didn’t send Tim off to her monster father in Miami (“At least he’s a real man, and absolute evil is preferable, far preferable to your mauvais foi”). He didn’t run away to become an Augustinian. She didn’t turn on the gas to asphyxiate them all. None of this happened. They outsat each other, the air turned blue with tobacco smoke, irony and exhaustion. Dawn made its killjoy appearance, like a parent returning home to halt the children’s party, by now a seedy, nearly comatose event. But tonight talk wasn’t sapping resolve. In fact tonight the Scotts seemed in collusion, as though they’d decided in advance to seduce me. Given my failure with the black prostitute, I feared I wouldn’t be able to get it up for any woman, much less a teacher’s wife. But I didn’t want to be the one to back down. When we all three finally got into bed, DeQuincey kept the wisecracks coming. He was the eternal kid who’s forgotten to change his underwear, who keeps his socks on and can hardly wait to dive in (“Oh boy, oh boy”). Rachel, however, lost her bravado. She wasn’t frightened or ashamed but she was shy, even a little romantic. She lay between us. DeQuincey took no interest in me; perhaps Christ really had driven out all his homosexual devils. As it ended up, he mounted her while I stroked her face. When we were all dressed again, the Scotts seemed exhilarated—too much so, to my mind, considering how little had happened. Only gradually did I come to understand that whereas the Scotts certainly did have a serious Anglican admiration of sin, they had an equally strong horror of seeming to themselves bourgeois. Their desire to be bohemian outweighed their resolve to be good. Our “orgy,” as they called it, reassured them that their morality must be of a higher sort, no mere suburban primness.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At this point I have a curious confession to make. You will laugh—but really and truly I somehow never managed to find out quite exactly what the legal situation was. I do not know it yet. Oh, I have learned a few odds and ends. Alabama prohibits a guardian from changing the ward’s residence without an order of the court; Minnesota, to whom I take off my hat, provides that when a relative assumes permanent care and custody of any child under fourteen, the authority of a court does not come into play. Query: is the stepfather of a gaspingly adorable pubescent pet, a stepfather of only one month’s standing, a neurotic widower of mature years and small but independent means, with the parapets of Europe, a divorce and a few madhouses behind him, is he to be considered a relative, and thus a natural guardian? And if not, must I, and could I reasonably dare notify some Welfare Board and file a petition (how do you file a petition?), and have a court’s agent investigate meek, fishy me and dangerous Dolores Haze? The many books on marriage, rape, adoption and so on, that I guiltily consulted at the public libraries of big and small towns, told me nothing beyond darkly insinuating that the state is the super-guardian of minor children. Pilvin and Zapel, if I remember their names right, in an impressive volume on the legal side of marriage, completely ignored stepfathers with motherless girls on their hands and knees. My best friend, a social service monograph (Chicago, 1936), which was dug out for me at great pains from a dusty storage recess by an innocent old spinster, said “There is no principle that every minor must have a guardian; the court is passive and enters the fray only when the child’s situation becomes conspicuously perilous.” A guardian, I concluded, was appointed only when he expressed his solemn and formal desire; but months might elapse before he was given notice to appear at a hearing and grow his pair of gray wings, and in the meantime the fair daemon child was legally left to her own devices which, after all, was the case of Dolores Haze. Then came the hearing. A few questions from the bench, a few reassuring answers from the attorney, a smile, a nod, a light drizzle outside, and the appointment was made. And still I dared not. Keep away, be a mouse, curl up in your hole. Courts became extravagantly active only when there was some monetary question involved: two greedy guardians, a robbed orphan, a third, Kill greedier, party. But here all was in perfect order, an inventory had been made, and her mother’s small property was waiting untouched for Dolores Haze to grow up. The best policy seemed to be to refrain from any application. Or would some busybody, some Humane Society, butt in if I kept too quiet?

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Their attention felt like metal prods inserted into his joints. “I need,” Lionel rasped, but then he stood up on his gummy legs. He went around the back of the chaise, and the host reached for him. The others called out: Is he all right? If I had to sit next to Charlie— Charles, what did you do? First door on the right! • • • LAST FALL, Lionel tried to kill himself. His attempt had not been subtle, so his father had flown in from his suburb of Houston and his mother had driven from her suburb of Detroit. They converged on him in Madison, furious and terrified as they reprimanded him for yet again being so careless with himself. He was held in UW Hospital for a few days. Held, because he could not leave of his own volition. What Lionel remembered with great clarity was the pain in his lower back: a hot ache just over his sacrum that throbbed all night. The doctor frowned at his EKG. The nurses spent a lot of time monitoring his respiration rate and his blood pressure. They told him to calm down and to think positive thoughts. They asked him about what he did, what he studied, said that he was young, that he was healthy, that he was okay, safe. He didn’t have to be so afraid. But his pulse stayed high, and eventually they had to give him a sedative, and he dropped into a blank void of sleep. When his parents showed up, he was bloodshot and cold. His father guffawed and said, You look homeless. The doctor flinched at that, but Lionel knew he was only trying to make a joke. To be easy. His father was an engineer who worked in oil. He had worked on a new method to extract oil from shale. Before Houston his father had been in North Dakota, and before North Dakota he had been in Wyoming, and before Wyoming he had been married. Lionel’s mother cried when she saw him and asked why he had done it, but the doctor said, We don’t ask that here. That is private. His mother looked at the doctor and said, Nothing about my child is private from me, and Lionel had wanted to say that his mother had taken the locks off his door when he was little and never put them back. His parents left that first time, going back to his place to get his toiletries and a change of clothes. The doctor said Lionel didn’t have to go with them when they returned for him if he did not want to. He could stay. Lionel asked the doctor about the pain in his lower back, and the doctor offered to give him Valium, but said it was habit-forming. It’s not that bad, Lionel said then. The pain was all right.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Bones. Milton smirks to himself. There’s a thought. What he wants is not to maim himself but rather to pry open the world, bone it, remove the ugly hardness of it all, the way one might take the spine from a deer or a fish or some other animal snared. Milton lifts the knife from his hand and stabs it into the table. When he was younger, he killed senselessly because the thrill of the act was like dipping his face into a clear, rushing stream. He didn’t have to consider the lives he ended. It was as if they were merely parts of a game, tokens to trade with his friends. If there was any merciful part of his childhood, it was that, the cleanness of it, how the act didn’t taint them, how the violence seemed to leave no trace at all. But he’s older now, and the meat of the world is full of bones. Everybody’s walking around all the time full of bones, full of jagged shards, flecks of hardness that need taking out and would, upon swallowing, prompt a person to choke. There’s no mercy in the basement tonight. Nolan, Milton thinks, and he squats by the table and thumbs the numb place left by the knife. He digs his nail into the thin, translucent space left by the knife until he sees the blood pooling beneath the skin. The pain abates quickly and leaves behind a memory so friable, so delicate, that it’s like blowing an eyelash and making a wish. Idaho. Milton lies down on the floor. The oblong shapes of boxed-up boyhood toys throw curious shadows that shift along the walls and the raw, unfinished struts of the basement. They look like the muscles of some enormous animal, getting ready to leap, to strike, to snatch him down into its shadowy belly. MASS Aleksander Igorevich Shapovalov—Sasha to those who loved him most in the world and Alek to everyone else, including himself—stared at the radiographic scans presented to him by his doctor in the intimate corner examination room and tried to think of what he’d tell his mother. “There’s a good chance it’ s nothing,” Dr. Ngost said. “But you’ll have to get a biopsy.” “A biopsy,” Alek said. “Yes. We’ll take a small piece of the mass and examine it. Then we’ll know more.” “But I don’t feel sick,” Alek said. “I just came because of this cough. I don’t feel sick.” “There’s a chance that you aren’t. There’s a chance it’s just a mass that we can take out. It happens sometimes. The body is full of odd turns.” “Full of odd turns,” Alek repeated—a nonsense phrase, too casual. Full of odd turns, like a clock or some other machine, routes and paths inside him swerving this way and that, and then suddenly an aberration, a deviation, a mass swelling up from below.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Then, as her mother passed around little dessert cakes, Christina said, “Mama, Baba—you know I love you.” She’d been practicing in her room. She hoped it wasn’t a mistake to bring this up in front of the whole family but she wanted to get it over with all at once and she figured her parents would be less likely to go cuckoo in front of her grandparents and little Alex. She had their attention now. Mama and Baba looked from one to the other. “I’ve got an opportunity,” she continued, “a wonderful job opportunity with Dr. Osner in another place—” “What place?” her mother asked. “Las Vegas,” she said. “Las Vegas.” Her mother repeated this twice, then asked, “Where is Las Vegas?” Athena said, “You don’t mean Las Vegas, Nevada? You’re not telling Mama and Baba you’re moving to Las Vegas, Nevada?” She had hoped Athena would keep her mouth shut, for once. She should have known better. “How far is this place?” Mama asked. “Almost as far as California,” Athena said, holding her pregnant belly. She’d already gained close to forty pounds. Her maternity dress was snug across her middle. Mama clutched her chest. “Nico,” she said to Baba. “Do something!” “I’m not moving there.” Christina tried to reassure them. “Think of it as college. Two years of college but it won’t cost you anything. Instead I’ll be getting paid. And I’ll come home for the holidays.” Baba said, “That Irish boy, he’s going, too?” Now Mama screamed. “No!” She banged her fist on the table hard enough to make the glasses and the silverware jump. Alex climbed onto Thad’s lap and wrapped his fat little arms around his father’s neck. “You’re breaking their hearts, Christina,” Athena said. “You don’t understand,” Christina said to her parents. “Jack is 1-A—he could be called up at any time. You know what that means? He could be sent to Korea. Would you be happy then?” Thad got up from the table and carried Alex, who had begun to whimper, out of the room. Athena glared at Christina. “You have a way of ruining everything, even Sunday dinner. You do this and I’m the one who’s going to have to pick up the pieces around here. It will all fall on my shoulders. You are the most selfish person I’ve ever known.” The grandparents began jabbering to one another in Greek. Baba said, “Girls—you are sisters! Stop this fighting.” But Athena didn’t stop. Her face heated up. “As if I don’t already have too many fish to fry, between the store and Alex and the baby I’m about to have and a husb—” Before Athena could finish she cried out, “Oh!” Then “Oh!” again. “What is it?” Mama asked. “I think my water broke. I think I’m in labor. Somebody get Thad. Somebody get my bag!” Everyone jumped up from the table at once. Everyone except Christina and her grandmother. Yaya moved next to her and rested her hand on Christina’s.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Pull up your pants, boy,” Daddy commanded. Which I did. Like, fast. Daddy and Craig stood on each side of me; we all linked arms and ran into the waves. Well, they sorta carried me. But I didn’t give a damn who saw my ass. After all, it had been anointed a bubblebutt. I would’ve wiggled it at any nosy onlookers, had there been any; seagulls didn’t count. They dropped me in waist-deep water. I stood with my arms folded across my chest. “Com’on, boy, enjoy the water,” Daddy cajoled. “Uh, I’ll catch up. I’ll just take it one drop at a time.” Craig grabbed Daddy’s arm. They disappeared into a wave like two frolicking dolphins, black-clad butt and white-clad butt, yin and yang. They emerged on the other side of the crest, put their arms around each other, and sunk from view. What the hell is going on down there? Well, it couldn’t last too long. Craig popped up, his suit at midthigh, gulped some air and sank from view. Next Daddy rose, floating on his stomach, his suit also inappropriately placed. His tan torso, which played counterpoint with his bobbing white butt, glistened in the noonday sun, each droplet of water a small prism that captured the light and scattered it into minuscule rainbows. Two arms appeared around his waist, and he pumped his ass a few times before he jackknifed. The water churned as arms, legs and torsos swirled like intertwined pinwheels. A large wave plunged over them and they burst through the surface, sputtering, and stood in crotchdeep water. Their suits were still midthigh, and two hard dicks pointed at each other as they bobbed in and out of the receding wave. They threw back their heads and howled. Then they wrapped their arms about each other and kissed while reluctantly but diligently tugging each other’s suits to respectable, responsible positions, though two bulges remained more than evident. Can their inseams tolerate any more abuse? I turned and slogged back to the blanket. I sat and locked my arms around my bent knees. I like to watch Daddy grooving with a woman or two at a party, maybe even pumpin’ pussy, but that’s just play. This man-to-man stuff is scary. I didn’t know Daddy could be attracted to older men. He’s stepping out of his role—jeez—maybe it just is a role. Like, is he a real Daddy? Gosh, he has to follow his heart, but can it be away from me? The two men lunged through knee-deep water and marched across the shallows. They were holding hands and laughing as they ran up to me. I stared uncertainly at them. Daddy sat and draped his arm around my neck. I shrugged. Daddy glanced at Craig, who stood with his hands at his side. “Craig, move your towel over there,” he requested.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  The new and beautiful post office I had just emerged from stood between a dormant movie house and a conspiracy of poplars. The time was 9 A.M. mountain time. The street was Main Street. I paced its blue side peering at the opposite one: charming it into beauty, was one of those fragile young summer mornings with flashes of glass here and there and a general air of faltering and almost fainting at the prospect of an intolerably torrid noon. Crossing over, I loafed and leafed, as it were, through one long block: Drugs, Real Estate, Fashions, Auto Parts, Cafe, Sporting Goods, Real Estate, Furniture, Appliances, Western Union, Cleaners, Grocery. Officer, officer, my daughter has run away. In collusion with a detective; in love with a blackmailer. Took advantage of my utter helplessness. I peered into all the stores. I deliberated inly if I should talk to any of the sparse foot-passengers. I did not. I sat for a while in the parked car. I inspected the public garden on the east side. I went back to Fashions and Auto Parts. I told myself with a burst of furious sarcasm—un ricanement—that I was crazy to suspect her, that she would turn up in a minute. She did. I wheeled around and shook off the hand she had placed on my sleeve with a timid and imbecile smile. “Get into the car,” I said. She obeyed, and I went on pacing up and down, struggling with nameless thoughts, trying to plan some way of tackling her duplicity. Presently she left the car and was at my side again. My sense of hearing gradually got tuned in to station Lo again, and I became aware she was telling me that she had met a former girl friend. “Yes? Whom?” “A Beardsley girl.” “Good. I know every name in your group. Alice Adams?” “This girl was not in my group.” “Good. I have a complete student list with me. Her name please.” “She was not in my school. She is just a town girl in Beardsley.” “Good. I have the Beardsley directory with me too. We’ll look up all the Browns.” “I only know her first name.” “Mary or Jane?” “No—Dolly, like me.” “So that’s the dead end” (the mirror you break your nose against). “Good. Let us try another angle. You have been absent twenty-eight minutes. What did the two Dollys do?” “We went to a drugstore.” “And you had there—?” “Oh, just a couple of Cokes.” “Careful, Dolly. We can check that, you know.” “At least, she had. I had a glass of water.” “Good. Was it that place there?” “Sure.” “Good, come on, we’ll grill the soda jerk.” “Wait a sec. Come to think it might have been further down—just around the corner.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  He would return after a weekend with his dad and sit in his room silently holding his dog, refusing to see his friends. He became increasingly withdrawn at school and reluctant to leave the house. His mother called me to ask what, if anything, she could do. She explained that her attorney had told her that any complaint on her part would be interpreted by the courts as another example of her anger at her ex-husband, which would only have made matters worse; she’d be seen as angry and unstable. So her son was left without any advocate. She could not speak for the boy because the court would assume that she had an ulterior motive. The attorney also warned her that going to court would cost a ton of money. The mother was frantic. She had lost the power to protect her child. Under the present system, where parents are silenced, no one protects the child . During any given week in this country there are thousands of unaccompanied children flying to see their parents. 2 Their number is unknown because no one keeps a record. It’s hard to believe that the courts are protecting the interests of children when we have no idea how many are flying, how frequently, at what distances, and at what tender ages. Rather, the courts are acting blindly. Neither the judge nor the mediator have any knowledge of the child’s state of mind before, during, or after the flight. Once the order is made, there’s no follow-up plan to assess the impact on the child at the time and during the months that follow. Some children can travel with poise. Others panic. How can the court or the mediator or the parents be so sure that the child’s suffering is outweighed by the value of the visit? New and better solutions that protect children, or at least do not further traumatize them, are badly needed. The system is flawed. For starters, as children mature they want their concerns heard. They don’t want to be bullied. They don’t want to cry alone. They want a say in how their schedules are determined. In this, their complaints are absolutely in accord with their best interests and with their wish to grow toward greater independence and more self-regulation. Few people emerge full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. We grow up slowly and gradually, taking step after step toward independent judgment and adulthood.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  And then it hit me. We have not fully appreciated how divorce continues to shape the lives of young people after they reach full adulthood. For example, we know from surveys that grown children of divorce have a higher divorce rate, but that does not tell us anything about their intimate feelings, the major turning points in their lives, how they made the choices they did, and how they think about love and marriage and being parents themselves. The only way to get to the heart of what they think and worry about is to follow them over their entire life course, from early childhood to middle adulthood. Why was it so hard for Karen? Why did it take her so long to take a chance on love? Demographers now tell us that a quarter of adults under the age of forty-four are children of divorce. We are talking about millions of people who are struggling with the residue of an experience that their parents would rather forget. One thing was crystal clear. I had stopped too soon in my inquiry of children from divorced families. Karen’s visit had opened a set of questions and challenges that I found irresistible. Within a few weeks of her visit I decided to undertake a sequel to Second Chances with the hope of finding out how others were faring at the twenty-five-year mark. This is the longest close-up study of divorce ever conducted. The youngest “children” are in their late twenties and the oldest in their early forties. This book explores what has happened to them in adulthood. How are they getting along? How many of them are happily married? Do they have children? Have many divorced or rejected marriage? Do they still consider their parents’ divorce to be the main, defining event of their young lives? Are they angry at their parents? Do they now approve of the decision? Are they compassionate? Are they cynical? Are they worried, and if so, about what? What values do they espouse in love, sex, marriage, and divorce? How disappointed or contented are they with their lives? By getting into the heads and hearts of this generation, I hope to shed light on deep changes in American attitudes that are shaping the future in unexpected ways.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I asked. “No, the same sort of thing happened again, although this was the only time Mom really lost it in front of us. But after that incident I started to notice more and there were plenty of times when Dad would get home late or he’d talk about a customer, particularly a female customer, and I’d see Mom start to get tense. Later, I’d hear them in their room arguing and there were some mornings when Dad wasn’t there and Mom would be in her room with a headache. Once I asked her why she was crying and she told me it was because she had a headache and hadn’t had her morning tea. That’s when I started to bring her tea in bed on the weekends. I couldn’t understand why she was so mad and suspicious of Dad, but I couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy.” Children cannot stand to see their parents cry. When a marriage is in trouble, youngsters are eager to rescue an unhappy parent even though they cannot fathom the cause of adult troubles. Gary had no ability to connect his mother’s headaches with her emotional distress or depression. Her effort to explain her illness by relating it to “not having morning tea” confused her son, although it did give him something to do to help her. What’s interesting about Gary’s story is the detail of his memory. Whether he understood adult feelings is moot. But everything he saw was indelibly etched into his memory, and this became the template of his expectations of family life. “I see now what you mean by the indoor version of your family. Do you think there was any real basis for your mother’s suspicions?” He nodded, as if he had been waiting for me to ask. “One morning, after I knew Dad hadn’t been home the night before, I was feeling really low. I guess I was seriously worried that he wouldn’t come back. Mom had been all teary-eyed and silent during breakfast. I got on my bike to ride to school but I just couldn’t face going. So I rode down to Dad’s store. I thought I’d just peek in to see if he was there. He saw me looking and must’ve sensed something was wrong because he just left off helping a customer and came straight out to me. I remember he looked tired but he also looked kind of alarmed. He asked if anything was wrong at home and looked relieved when I told him there wasn’t. So we went back into his office and we talked. He said he didn’t know why Mom was so angry and suspicious but that sometimes he had to leave because it got to him and made him angry. He pointed to the old leather couch in the office and told me that when he did leave, this was where he slept. That was when I asked him if they might divorce. I’ll always remember this part.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  This must have taken several minutes, until some outcrop of objectivity rose again from the flood. Out on the street it was surprisingly cold, and I ran a little way in both directions. There was no sign of Arthur. I was loitering, dithering, craning around at the nothing that was going on. It was nearly two o’clock. A taxi came slowly past, its yellow light burning—and then just behind it a yellow Cortina, with tinted windows and the wheel-arches flared out over gigantic customised tyres. It came almost to a stop at the entrance to the Club and as I walked up quite fast a thick-set black man stepped out from the pink glow of the doorway, the car’s rear door was flung open for him as a voice inside said, ‘Come on, Harold.’ Then the door slammed, and the car surged away past me and down the street. I saw its bank of rear lights glare on as it braked at the crossroads, and then it swung to the right and was gone. Perhaps only the drink enabled me to sleep, tucked in behind Phil, my hand on his heart. I woke feeling cold, even so, pulled a sheet over us without waking him, and curled back again into the same body-warmed space. But I couldn’t sleep now, and as the incident with Arthur flared up over and over in my mind my heart would race and thump against Phil’s back in panicky counterpoint to the dreamless slowness of his own pulse. I got up about six and moped around in my dressing-gown, the very dressing-gown that Arthur had liked to wear, maroon, full-length, shabby, stained and cordless after its school career, and which had hung so poignantly, threadbare and exclusive with memory, on his young shoulders or tumbled open about his sprawling thighs. I had the feeling I was imitating him as I made tea: it was something he was always doing, the only domestic thing he could do. He had made tea as if it were instinctual to him, unasked, uncomplaining … I took a mug of it to the drawing-room and lay on the sofa with my eyes open, thinking. There was a section of Charles’s diary I had been reading, and I picked it off the floor and made myself concentrate on it again.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  By August, our courtship, pleasant and passionate as it is, ends . . . not due to our differing views on politics, but because of how committed we both are to our careers. It’s another intense undertaking that distracts me from my split from Todd: It’s now two and a half years since I first visited Julia in February 1998, and the more I see pictures of Paul and his brothers, the more convinced I am that he is my biological father. For years I’ve been emotionally prepared to learn the truth, but now I’m also in a financial position to pursue paternity litigation if he chooses not to amicably resolve my request for DNA. I SPEND EARLY August researching Paul’s address online to find that he now lives in the U.S. border town of Blaine in Washington State. In addition to determining where he lives, I also study Washington’s paternity statutes and map out what my next steps will be if he rejects my request for a paternity test. I advise Julia that I plan to contact Paul. “Given what I’ve done by forming a relationship with you,” Julia says, “please let me make the connection.” When a couple weeks go by, I estimate he’s ignoring me . . . or researching potential legal steps. In late August I receive a phone call. “You should know that you are causing my wife and me deep anxiety,” he says. “I’m experiencing heart problems, and your so-called curiosity could be making it worse.” This familiar response from him confirms to me: yes, he’s got a lawyer. The first argument the defense would make in a case like this is to advise the opposition at the outset that they’re inflicting emotional distress. “What is it you want?” I respond that my intentions are pure, that I only want to know if he’s my father. “I don’t want any support,” I assure him. Then he reveals what he’s really worried about. “If I admit that I’m your father, it will be a long and painful process for us all if the State of New York tries to sue me for back child support.” “Paul, you won’t have to pay New York State back the money it cost them to keep me in foster care,” I explain flatly. “Even if New York does that now, they certainly didn’t have such a law in place when I was in foster care as a child. Also, just to appease any concern you have about why I’m contacting you: I do fine on my own. I don’t need any money. I just want to know if you’re my father.” I also want him to know that I know that he’s my father—to face the fact that he left me to be brutalized as a child simply because I’d come from him.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  You want me to see that kind of movie with Mason?” “No, I do not!” Miri decided to change the subject. “And then we’ll probably stop for burgers.” “Not at the White Castle. They serve horse meat.” “That’s just something Nana said to scare you when you were young.” “No, it’s the truth. During the war they used horse meat.” “Well, the war is over.” What happened to happy-go-lucky Rusty from last weekend? “Korea isn’t over.” “That doesn’t mean they still serve horse meat.” An image of Natalie at summer camp, astride a sleek black horse, popped into her head. “No burgers at the White Castle,” Rusty said. “Do you understand?” “Okay. No burgers at the White Castle.” “How are you getting there?” “Jack has a truck. He’s a very safe driver.” “How do you know?” “Because he uses it to get to work. He’s an electrician. Christina says he’s the best.” “Ha—she’s no judge if she’s in love. You tell him you’re my only child.” “He knows.” “How does he know?” What was this, the Spanish Inquisition? “Okay, I’ll tell him.” “And I want you home by ten. It’s a school night, after all. And get all your homework done first.” “I’m almost done with my homework.” Something was making Rusty act crazy tonight. Maybe she was getting her period. Maybe she had a spirit living inside her, too, like Natalie. Maybe it was only a matter of time before the dead moved into all their bodies. Rusty came in for a hug. Surrounded by her familiar Mom scent, Miri thought, There’s so much I wish I could tell you, Mom, but I can’t. —THE MOVIE WASN’T as bad or as scary as she’d thought. After, at the White Castle, Miri ordered only fries and a Coke, while the others ate hamburgers. She didn’t warn them about eating horse meat. They’d laugh at her, she knew, so she explained that she wasn’t that hungry, probably because of the roast chicken Irene had served for Sunday dinner. Jack picked up the check for all of them. Jack was proud of his ’48 Dodge panel truck, keeping it clean and in good shape, his equipment stored in fitted wooden boxes. Miri and Mason sat on a little rug on the floor in the back and necked on the way home, sometimes falling over when the truck took a turn, making them laugh. Once, Christina slid open the little window between the front and back to look in on them. “What’s going on? Are you two okay?” “We’re fine,” they said at the same time. “You’re sitting up?” Christina asked. “Like soldiers in a row,” Mason said, tightening his fingers around Miri’s. —JACK AND CHRISTINA DROPPED Mason and Miri off at her house. It was too cold to sit outside on the steps so they crept down to the basement, something they’d done a couple of times before.