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 Filthy Animals (2021)

  At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years. At Marta’s house, Lenny walked her to the door, though she told him it wasn’t necessary. She pulled out her key and put it in the lock, and she felt his stomach against her back, and he pushed against her. The world was dim under his shadow. His hand was on her arm, its coarse heat. She stiffened, like some stupid, frightened animal. She turned to him and looked up, and he was coming in for a kiss.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  She left the sofa again. It gave a whine of protest, the springs shifting. She knelt near them both, close enough that Lionel could feel her, would have brushed against her if he moved. He held still. “Are you cold, Lionel? Do you need a blanket?” Lionel tried to hold himself still, but a tremor spread from the tips of his fingers back up to his wrist, to his arm, to his shoulder. He could feel something vibrate in his lower lip, the side of his face a slow-motion spasm. He tried to be still. To be easy. To be good. But they had hemmed him in. He had nowhere to go. He looked from Charles to Sophie and back, and then to the bookcase, which seemed so comically small compared to all the things it had to hold. Charles kissed his neck again, and Lionel shivered. He hated the simple, easy mechanism of it. How obvious. “What about last night, huh? You didn’t mind me biting you then.” “I don’t mind,” Lionel said. “I don’t mind it.” Charles flicked his tongue against Lionel’s ear. “God,” he said under his breath. “Please.” “How polite,” Sophie said dryly. She was close again, but she was leaning against Charles’s back, her arms wrapped around him. “So well behaved.” Lionel saw Charles look back at her, the cut of his eyes. Then he pulled his arm from Lionel and reached back to grip both of Sophie’s ankles. “Okay, that’s enough,” Charles said. Sophie ruffled Charles’s hair, and then pulled her feet free of him. She hummed to herself as she went down the hall. When they were alone, just him and Charles, Lionel tried to catch his breath. “Why is she doing this?” Lionel asked. “Doing what?” “You know what. You’re as bad as she is.” Lionel heard his voice shake. “She doesn’t care, Lionel. She doesn’t care at all.” “I know. That’s what she said.” “Then what?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said. “I don’t know. I feel weird.” Charles gave him a look that was not lacking sympathy but was a little impatient. He leaned in and pressed their mouths together. He cupped Lionel’s jaw and kissed deeper, more thoroughly, and Lionel relaxed under the steady gentleness of it. He thought of Sophie. He closed his eyes. “It’s okay,” Charles said. “It’s all right.” “What about Sophie?” “Don’t overthink it. This can be whatever you want it to be.” “I don’t know what I want it to be,” Lionel said. Charles kissed him again and then pulled away. “Okay,” Charles said. He stood up. “Okay.” Sophie came back. She was wearing pajamas and her face was newly washed. Lionel and Charles were not speaking to each other. He had come up against the thing that felt most frustrating about this—the inability to articulate simply what he felt or what he wanted. She sat between them—lay down between them, really, her head on Charles’s lap and her feet across Lionel’s knees. She stretched.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Not that Miri had shared her secret about Mike Monsky, but there was a difference between having a secret no one suspected and having one you dropped hints about, wasn’t there? “Maybe you should tell your parents about Ruby,” Miri said. “Maybe they can help.” “Help? I don’t need help. I’ve never been happier.” She pressed the play button and the jukebox came to life. She snapped her fingers a few times and began to tap as Judy Garland’s voice sang, “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.” She tapped across the room and back, then paused, looked at Miri and smiled a smile Miri didn’t recognize, a hard smile—maybe it was Ruby’s, maybe not, but it sent shivers down Miri’s spine. She took a couple of slow turns around the floor, then began to turn faster and faster until she was spinning, spinning like some kind of whirling dervish right out of their social studies book. “Stop…” Miri called. “Stop!” But Natalie didn’t stop. Her eyes glazed over, as she twirled faster and faster, until her face turned almost purple. Miri ran upstairs, found Dr. O and Corinne in the kitchen eating bagels. “What is it?” Corinne asked, reading Miri’s face. “Natalie,” Miri said. They both jumped up and followed Miri downstairs, where Natalie was still spinning to Judy Garland. “Get ready for the Judgment Day…” Miri pressed the off button on the jukebox. The room fell silent, except for Natalie’s taps. Dr. O grabbed her. “Natalie…sweetheart…” He lifted her into his arms. “My god. She’s light as a feather,” he said to Corinne. Natalie’s feet kept moving. Somewhere she or Ruby was still tapping. “Call Harry Reiss,” Dr. O said to Corinne. Dr. Reiss was a doctor, but also their friend. He was at their New Year’s Eve party, in the conga line. “It’s Sunday,” Corinne said. “Call him at home,” Dr. O said. “No.” “Call him, Corinne, or I’m taking her straight to the hospital.” “You have no idea what’s going on in this house, Arthur. You’re too busy solving everyone else’s problems to see that your son is in despair and your daughter is losing her mind. You think giving her a dance studio at home is going to fix this?” She swept her arm around the room. “Don’t you see…” Corinne began to cry. “I’m utterly alone. I don’t even have Mrs. Barnes to help and she’s never coming back.” “You have friends.” “I wouldn’t tell my friends one word about what’s happening to us. Not one word.” Miri didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to witness the end of the perfect family. The end of her fantasies. Now Natalie was slumped against her father like a rag doll. Miri snuck up the stairs and out the back door while Corinne’s and Dr. O’s voices rose and fell and rose again. She rode her bike home and collapsed into Irene’s arms. “What’s wrong, sweetie pie?” Irene asked, holding her.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  You know the Osners, don’t you? He’s a dentist.” “Yes, I’ve met them at the Club.” “So while the Osner girl and her friend were trying on sneakers I told them they looked so cute together I just had to snap their picture with my new Polaroid camera.” She fished a photo out of her pocketbook and passed it to Frekki. Frekki was surprised, but tried not to show it. “What do you think?” Sherry asked. “Makes me wish I had a daughter,” Frekki told her. “About the resemblance, I mean.” “I don’t see any resemblance.” “Really? I’ve always thought your brother had the most unusual eyes, almond-shaped and hazel. And so does she. Of course I haven’t seen Mike in ages, not since he left town in a hurry.” “He didn’t leave in a hurry. He enlisted.” “Either way. We went to all the same parties that spring. He and Rusty Ammerman were crazy for each other. She was in my class at Battin.” “I don’t remember that name.” The redhead. She hoped her face wasn’t giving anything away. Mike had brought her to the house in Weequahic a couple of times. And Frekki had been to the Ammermans’ house, too. Had enjoyed Mrs. Ammerman’s delicious chocolate cake. “She’s still around,” Sherry said. “And this is her daughter, Miri.” “What are you getting at?” “Do I have to spell it out?” “What you’re suggesting isn’t possible.” “Are you sure? There was a story going around back then that Rusty had run off and married a boy that summer, a boy who was going overseas.” “She didn’t marry my brother.” “Well, she’s never married anyone else that I know of.” “I think you should forget about this, Sherry. There’s no truth to it and all you can do is make trouble for both families.” Frekki glanced at the photo again. “She looks like a nice girl.” “She is. The Osners love her like a daughter.” Frekki dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, applied fresh lipstick and pushed back her chair. “I have to get back to the boys. Thanks for the lunch. Next time it’s on me.” Before she put on her jacket she said, “Oh, do you mind if I keep the picture?” “Of course,” Sherry said. Was that a smirk on her face? Frekki called her brother that night, made sure he could talk privately, then told him the story. “I just want to know one thing. Is it possible, yes or no?” “No,” her brother said, convincingly. She probably would have let it go if it hadn’t been for the plane crash. She didn’t need any more tsoris in her life. But by then she knew where Rusty lived, and how close the plane had come to her house and that beautiful young girl with Mike’s eyes, that girl who very likely was her niece. She couldn’t sleep that night thinking about it, or the night after that.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She felt like she might cry or scream or both. Suzanne took the Bible from her and finished reading the psalm. “I’m sorry,” Suzanne said when the bell rang and they left for their first-period classes. “I didn’t know she’d make you read the morning psalm.” “It’s okay,” Miri told her. “Just, please, don’t tell anyone else.” “I won’t.” No other teacher mentioned the crash. Right after fifth-period algebra, Natalie took Miri aside in the girls’ room and said, “I have this buzzing inside my head.” “You want to go to the nurse?” “No, it’s not like that.” “Maybe it’s your period,” Miri said. “This is different,” Natalie told her. “And when the buzzing stops, Ruby starts talking to me.” “Ruby?” “The dancer who was on that plane. Didn’t you listen to Walter Winchell last night? He spent half his show talking about her.” As soon as she admitted Ruby was talking to her, before Miri even had the chance to take it in, Natalie grabbed her shoulders. “Swear you won’t tell anyone what I just said.” What could Miri do? Natalie was her best friend. She had no choice but to swear she would never tell. For the rest of the day, whenever the other kids were buzzing about the crash, Miri was thinking about the buzzing in Natalie’s head. OBITUARIES — Mrs. Estelle Sapphire of Bayonne was among the first identified at the makeshift morgue set up in the two garages behind Haines Funeral Home. She was identified by her wedding ring. Her husband, Benjamin Sapphire, collapsed at the scene and was taken by police car to the home of a friend. —THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT WAS just days away, and Miri had choir rehearsal after school. When she got home she found a strange man in Irene’s living room, sitting in the wing chair, wrapped in one of Irene’s crocheted afghans, his feet soaking in a pan of warm water, his trouser legs rolled up to reveal the hairiest legs Miri had ever seen. Even his toes were covered with dark hair. If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn they were animal legs. “Miri, darling, this is Ben Sapphire,” Irene said, handing him a steaming cup of tea, or maybe it was soup. “He was freezing cold,” Irene told her. “His hands and feet were blue. I thought for sure they’d have to take him to the hospital.” He was still shivering but he managed to say, “Irene was serving home-baked coffee cake.” “Which one?” Miri asked. “Sour cream with cinnamon and walnuts, or streusel?” He looked to Irene for an answer. “Sour cream,” she said, leading Miri into the kitchen where she whispered, “We knew each other in the old days, in Bayonne. He lost his wife in the crash.” Miri didn’t want to think about the crash. “I’ll be upstairs,” she told Irene. “Call me when it’s time to set the table for supper.” She and Rusty and Uncle Henry ate at Irene’s every night.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Richard knew that Damian had been in contact with Stan via the Internet and moved out to L.A. the day he turned eighteen. He’d had such a horrible relationship with his father and older brothers that he’d run away from home three times. Once he was eighteen, there was no way to drag him back. Damian had said he wouldn’t have minded staying in the country and working on the family dairy farm, but not with the intolerance that surrounded him. “Stan keeps wanting me to let guys bareback my ass for the website, but I won’t.” Richard frowned. “If Stan promised college and isn’t delivering, and if he is encouraging you to be unsafe, then yes, you should leave.” “Could I stay with you?” Richard hesitated. There had been so many untrustworthy hustlers and unstable addicts coming through his clinic that he kept a Taser on hand. Damian seemed angelic compared to most of them, but he wasn’t sure. “I…suppose, but maybe—” “It’s okay. I can tell you’re uncomfortable with the idea. I’ll figure something out.” That night Richard purchased a membership to DaddiesinDamian. com. The number of videos of Damian getting fucked numbered in the hundreds (the boy was only twenty!), and his dick stirred seeing how much Damian loved getting plowed by older men. On the other hand, it bothered him that many of the newest comments said things like, “If you want to keep me as a member, Damian needs to start getting barebacked.” Others said, “Not just barebacked, but gangbanged.” With a little research, he was able to discover that the full name of the owner of DaddiesInDamian was Stan Latham. Digging deeper revealed that Latham had once been arrested for dealing crystal meth but got off on a technicality. Richard had figured Damian’s “master” was up to no good, but this was worse than he expected. Maybe he would have to put past experience behind him and help Damian. Maybe he had to stop worrying about protecting his heart, at least for now. Damian’s depression briefly lifted when he saw the elation in Richard’s eyes. Damian had brought a bouquet of daisies to Richard’s house, and he wore his yard-work clothes, hoping to please Richard as much as possible. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise? Come in, young man.” Damian looked down. “I have to leave Los Angeles, Dr. Preston. I made the mistake of getting on Stan’s computer. I wanted to see how much money he was making from guys fucking my ass, and it’s…a lot. I also saw some other stuff, and Stan and Bob caught me. Now they won’t let me out of the house. I had to sneak out just to see you.” Damian saw the sadness in Richard’s eyes. “Damian, don’t go back. Call the police from here.”

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The glorious abundance of the sexhunt becomes the murderous anxiety to feel sexually tested every moment of the search—glorious when you “win,” suicidal when you “lose.” The obsession with youth and appearance which makes us beautiful can make us desperate. (Old homosexuals wasted—we cast away even the heroic fighters who “came out” when it was really courageous; we have no tradition of respect.) The anxiety about being busted at any moment augments our sense of instability in every area of our lives—the profession prepared for for years may be shut away in an instant. Our obsession with fantasy, often our escape in childhood, may render us invisible to each other's reality. The fulfilling freedom of orgies may, in the exclusive extreme, cancel out love, the dark side of cruising freezing all tenderness. And the most grotesque—heavily rationalized—reflection of the heterosexual world's hatred of the gay, is the proliferation of sadomasochism. Sadly, it is not true that we homosexuals no longer hate ourselves or each other. Many—and increasingly more and more—do not. Many still do. And most just less. 7:16 P.M. Hollywood Boulevard. Selma. H E ATE IN A restaurant. He sat moodily alone. Suddenly, he needs to hustle, or merely to be offered sexmoney, whether or not he actually goes. Perhaps he'll just walk those streets, storing admiration, to answer the hideous questioning that erupts in the still times, cold islands of no action; storing remarks and solicitations to be called forth when desolation freezes despite the stunning triumphs. He remembers one night when no connection worked—a desolate night which still wounds him and by which he measures the terror of others. The questioning horror burst when a beautiful youngman who had been cruising him broke the standstill between them by moving off with someone else. Jim was left alone on the street in terror. It was the very next day that, counting rigorously, he made it with 22 people in one afternoon in Griffith Park, not once coming, not once reciprocating, determined to cancel out—which he didn't and still cannot—that arid night. Hollywood Boulevard. The hot, still night is inviting tribes of hunters to the grimy street. Past warm, inviting glances, Jim turns off the boulevard, to Selma. He loves this ugly street. Each time he enters it, the awareness that he continues to thrive on it years after others would be through, washes him anew with sensational pleasure. Although when he first returned— … FLASHBACK: Selma. Ten Years Ago.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I think I should bounce, you guys,” he said. Charles did not look at him. Sophie frowned. “Didn’t I say to stay right where you are?” “It’s getting a little weird, Sophie, isn’t it?” he asked, trying to be funny, but sounding only desperate to himself. “No,” she said. Charles knocked back the entire boot of tonic. “You don’t have to prove anything to her, Lionel. If you want to go, you can go.” Charles pointed to the door over Lionel’s shoulder. Sophie turned her head then, and she put her arm around Charles’s neck in a gesture that was at once playful and threatening. She was smaller than he was, but her arms were taut and strong. She clenched and Charles reached down, lifted her up, and settled her on his lap with no more effort than moving a coat from a chair. “Behave,” Charles said. “You behave,” was Sophie’s reply, but Lionel did see her arm slacken. “Where did you go earlier?” Charles sighed. “Rehearsal. For the spring shows.” “Who’s choreographing?” “Farnland,” Charles groaned, closing his eyes. “I don’t know they let him choreograph still. After the incident.” She said the word with cartoonish exaggeration, turning to Lionel and giving him a very pointed look. “It wasn’t an incident,” Charles said. “Come on. Don’t spread rumors.” She looked at Lionel. “Farnland—allegedly—had an affair with one of the high school boys.” “Sophie, be serious.” The tension in the conversation cut against the casualness of their physical closeness. Sophie’s arm dangled around Charles’s shoulders. He had one arm wrapped around her waist, holding her steady, but with his free hand he swirled the espresso, breaking up the crema. Their limbs were loose and relaxed. But it was clear that this was a thing they disagreed about, and not for the first time, which made Lionel wonder why Sophie had brought it up in the first place. In front of him. “I’m just reporting the facts.” “You mean gossip,” Charles said. “Why’d you go with him, anyway? You could have danced in the stupid classical piece with the rest of us. You don’t even like contemporary.” “It’s neoclassical inspired, for one thing. Don’t be a bitch about it.” “Ah, yes, his Balanchine homage,” Sophie said. Charles closed his eyes again. “And for two, he asked me. Plus, he knows that guy in Seattle.” “PNB? You were serious about PNB?” “I need a job, Sophie.” “Or it’s back to the paper mill,” she said, slapping his chest. Then, looking back at Lionel, she said, “Charlie comes from paper folk.” “Why are you being such a bitch today?” Charles said. Sophie got off his lap. The table rocked from her motion. “I’m not,” she said. “You’re the one who intruded on my coffee date with Lionel.” “Oh, I’m intruding?” Charles made a big show of looking between Lionel and Sophie, and Lionel once again pulled his coat from the back of his chair. “He’s fine, actually,” Lionel said.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The college I went to was near Eton and I often visited the Scotts. One day I discovered Rachel laughing and sobbing. Finally overcome by curiosity, she’d broken open the casket where DeQuincey kept his pastoral letters from Father Burke. They were all love letters, hysterical avowals of pornographic desire, some of it clearly referring to actual nights of passion they’d spent together. “To think Burke kept urging me to stay with Quince,” she said. “I was their cover.” She kept sifting through the letters, and her horrible silent chuckle resumed. Tim, older now and in first grade, looked in, but when he saw his mother talking to herself he frowned and clattered up the stairs to his room. As I left the headmaster’s office that day I noticed the wind was now sharp with snow needles. Evening was coming on rapidly. It had been implicit in the dim day all along, just as the snow had been. In the gray light the snow could be felt but not seen; suddenly lamps along the walkway snapped on and their halos were grained by a million, million lights. The return to the music building wasn’t lustful or fearful but ceremonial. I felt as though I were a dancer not up to his role but inspired by the expectation everywhere in the darkness around me. Or I felt like someone in history, a queen on her way to the scaffold determined to suppress her usual quips, to give the spectators the high deeds they wanted to see. Mr. Beattie was stoned. His smile was unfocused and perpetual. He started telling me a long story I couldn’t follow, something about something someone had once said to him somewhere, but then he noticed we’d drifted into the listening booth. He didn’t turn on the light. The darkness was illumined by light reflected up through the windows off the snowdrifts outside. He put on a record. He sat in an armchair, lit another marijuana cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. When he offered me a drag I smiled with what I hoped passed for affection and shook my head. A moment later I was kneeling on the floor beside him. I opened his fly and pulled out his large and already erect penis. “Here,” he said, “let me make it better for you,” and he undid his belt and dropped his trousers to his knees. I’d been right; his thighs were very powerful. He took my right hand and guided it to his testicles in the loose, floppy bag. I gathered I was supposed to roll them around.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He was a small, wiry man with black eyebrows so full that if they weren’t pressed or combed into place they would stick out in disconcerting clumps like brittle, badly cared for paintbrushes or could droop down over an eye in a droll effect at odds with the commands he was barking. His skin was a tan mask clapped over a face that always appeared seriously exhausted; the dark circles and drained, bloodless cheeks could be seen through the false health of his tan. I ascribed his weariness to irritation. In fact he was much older than the other instructors. He may even have been close to retirement age. He might have been ill and in pain and perhaps his irritation was due to his ailment. After lights-out he became someone new. Although he was still in uniform his tie was loosened, his voice seemed to have dropped an octave and a decibel, he had Scotch mysteriously and pleasantly on his breath, and his regard had grown gentle beneath its thatch of drooping eyebrows. He stopped by each tent, sat on the edge of each cot and spoke to each boy in a tone so intimate that the roommate couldn’t eavesdrop. My roommate was a tall, extremely shy and well-bred redhead from a small town in Iowa: someone who seemed not at all eager to confide in me or to seek my friendship or even comments, as though he recognized that this life, at least, was worth enduring only if it remained unexamined. And yet his silences did not guarantee that he was altogether without thought or feeling. At unexpected moments he’d blush or stutter or in mid-sentence his mouth would go dry—and I could never figure out what had prompted these symptoms of anxiety. One night, after our captain had lingered longer than usual in his cloud of Scotch and then passed on to the next tent, I asked my rommate why the captain always stayed longer beside him than me. “I don’t know. He rubs me.” “What do you mean?” “Doesn’t he rub you?” the boy whispered. “Sometimes,” I lied. “All over?” “Like how?” I asked. “Like all”—his voice went dry—“down your front?” “That’s not right,” I said. “He shouldn’t do that. He shouldn’t. It’s abnormal. I’ve read about it.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  At last a driver would pause before a young man who’d hop down and lean into the open window, listen—and then the young man would either shake his head or spit or, if a deal had been struck, swagger around to the other side and get in. Look at them: the curving windshield whispers down the reflection of a blinking neon sign on two faces, a bald man behind the wheel whose glasses are crazed by streaks of green light from the dashboard below, whose ears are fleshy, whose small mouth is pinched smaller by anxiety or anticipation. Beside him the young man, head thrown back on the seat so that we can see only the strong white parabola of his jaw and the working Adam’s apple. He’s slumped far down and he’s already thinking his way into his job. Or maybe he’s embarrassed by so much downtown between fantasy and act. They drive off, only the high notes from the car radio reaching me. That night, however, I had no comfortable assumptions about who these men were and what they were willing to do. I crossed the street to the island, ascended the two steps onto the stone platform—and sat down on a bench. There were policemen nearby. I had a white shirt on, a tie at half-mast, seersucker pants from a suit, polished lace-up shoes, clean nails and short hair, money in my wallet. I was a polite, well-spoken teen, not a vagrant or a criminal—the law would favor me. My father was nearby, working in his office; I was hanging around, waiting for him. Years of traveling alone on trains across the country to see my father had made me fearless before strangers and had led me to assume the unknown is safe, at least reasonably safe if encountered in public places. I set great store by my tie and raised the knot to cover the still-unbuttoned collar opening. No one could tell me to leave this bench. It was hot and dark. The circling cars were unnerving—so many unseen viewers looking at me. Although this was the town where I’d been born and spent every summer, I’d never explored it on my own. The library, the bookstore, Symphony Hall, the office, the dry cleaner’s, the state liquor commission, the ball park, my school, the department stores, that glass ball of a restaurant perched high up there—these I’d been to hundreds of times with my father and stepmother, but I’d always been escorted by them, like a prisoner, through the shadowy, dangerous city.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  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. After it got dark we stopped for gas and a snack. Ralph, the special camper, said he was cold and wanted to sit up front with us just to keep warm. There was nothing affectionate or come-on-ish in his manner to me in the coffee shop; I could tell desire and affection had not clasped hands across his heart. He was alone with his erection, which I could see through the thin fabric of his summer pants. It was something he carried around with him wherever he went, like a scar. In the dark interior of the car, brushed here and there by a dim, firefly glow from the panel, Ralph’s leg pressed mine. I was forced to return the pressure lest I lean against the driver and cause comment. When I caught sight of Ralph’s face in the magnesium explosion of passing headlights, he looked exhausted, mouth half-open, a thirsty animal whose eyes had turned inward with craving. The camp, when we finally arrived at midnight, was a sad, cold, empty place. The owner had to unlock a thick rusted chain that stretched from tree to tree across the narrow dirt road. When we reached an open field our car waded slowly, slowly through grasses as tall as the roof and wet and heavy with dew. At the foot of the hill glimmered the lake through a mist—more a chill out of the ground than a lake, more an absence, as though this fitful, shifting dampness was what was left in the world after everything human had been subtracted from it.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And all this speculation, I noticed, was occurring beside the obstinately mute telephone—brilliant, glittering black proof of the inefficacy of yearning. No thought, no architecture of thoughts no matter how intricate, could make that phone ring. Only beauty, youth, charm, money—only those things worked. The rest (goodness, worthiness, the conjuring of desire) was a pitiable substitute for the brute fact of glamour. And then my mother would turn her hardworking, always shifting, tumbling scrutiny on me. She and I enjoyed a perfect communication, or so she said. I was a man far more mature than the riffraff she was dating. I was beautifully sensitive to the slightest shift in her moods. If I weren’t her son, I’d be her best friend—or she’d marry me. And yet (the wheels whirred faster and faster) without a man to emulate I was in danger of developing abnormally. I mustn’t be a mama’s boy, I mustn’t become effeminate. I mustn’t lean on her too much. That was the real reason she was so eager to remarry, to provide me with a suitable male role model. Children of broken homes were known to grow up wounded, their sexuality damaged. “Are you developing normally?” she asked when I was ten. I told her something that astounded her, though I thought it would please her: “I don’t want to go through puberty.” I cited my sister. “She’s already acting like a nut. I see myself standing on a hill above a lonesome valley I’ll never be able to cross. I’ll probably never be this calm again.” My sister, my mother and I—three unhappy people, and yet my mother’s ceaseless optimism didn’t even grant us the dignity of suffering. “Kids,” she said, driving us away from school on a weekday, “we’re going on vacation. Isn’t that wonderful! We’re off to Florida! Isn’t that exciting?” In every way we had more fun than other people and were superior to them. At Christmastime Mother would count up her cards as though they were a precise numerical rendering of her worth; if someone neglected to send her a card, she’d worry about it, question herself, seem wounded—and then she’d dismiss the offender from her thoughts, even her life (“He wasn’t much of a friend. I don’t know why I hang around such crummy people”). My sister and I have been left alone in the hotel room all day. Mother is off on a date after work. We’ve been instructed to take our meals in the dining room downstairs (“I’ll be home when I’m home—don’t worry about me”). I’m ten, my sister is fourteen. She’s interested in being a nurse. She has “sterilized” Mom’s scissors and tweezers under hot tap water. Out of her allowance she’s bought some gauze in a long roll. She convinces me to lie down and play sick. “You poor guy,” she says in a sweet, unfamiliar voice, “just look at this burn!” She is the consoling, sympathetic nurse.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  In that old, comfortable suburb even the biggest mansions hunkered democratically down on the curb and sat right next to other dwellings. No concealing hedges or isolating parks could be seen anywhere. Even quite massive houses of many rooms and wings engulfed their plots down to the sidewalk. This conspicuousness declared a pride and innocence: we have nothing to hide, and we want to show you what we’ve got. Tom’s house was a Mediterranean villa with six bedrooms and servants’ quarters over a double garage, but its gleaming leaded panes and the front door (thick oak gouged into griffins) loomed up just ten paces from the street. Once inside that door, however, I felt transported into another society that had ways I could never quite master. The Wellingtons were nice but not charming. The Wellingtons gave thought to everything they did. The staircase was lined with expensive, ugly paintings done from photographs of their four children. Their kids’ teeth were bound in costly wires, their whims for sailboats or skis or guitars were lavishly but silently honored, they were all paraded in a stupor past the monuments of Europe, their vacations down rapids and over glaciers or up mountains were well funded—but silence reigned. No one said a word. Dinner there was torture. A student from the university served. Mr. Wellington carved. Mrs. Wellington, a woman with a girlish spirit trapped inside a large, swollen body, made stabs at conversation, but she was so shy she could speak only in comical accents. She’d grunt in a bass voice like a bear or squeak like a mouse or imitate Donald Duck—anything rather than say a simple declarative sentence in her own fragile, mortified voice. The father terrified us all with his manners (the long white hands wielding the fork and knife and expertly slicing the joint). He radiated disapproval. His disapproval was not the martyr’s blackmail but a sort of murderous mildness: if he weren’t so fastidious he’d murder you. We watched him carve. We were wordless, hypnotized by the candle flames, the neat incisions and deep, bloody invasions, the sound of the metal knife scraping against the tines of the fork, the sickening softness of each red slice laid to the side and the trickle down silver channels ramifying back into a bole of blood. The odd thing is that the father’s spirit did not contaminate the house. His lair, the library, was even the sunniest, most relaxed room of all as the two little dogs, Welsh corgies, trotted from couch to front door at every disturbance, their small, shaggy feet clicking on the polished red tiles. The dogs, the children, his wife—all seemed to prosper in spite of his punitive reserve, his tight eyes, the way he sniffed with contempt at the end of every sentence someone else said. “Oh yes,” he said to me, examining his overly manicured hand, “I know of your mother … by reputation,” and my heart sank.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Dad’s most constant attribute was the cigar clenched between his small, stained teeth. Since he could usually be found in an air-conditioned house or office or car, the system under his control, he saw to it that the smoke and smell filtered evenly and thickly into every corner of his world, subduing those around him; perhaps, like a skunk parent, he was steeping us in his protective stink. Although it was chilly and I had on a sweater and jacket, I was wearing Bermuda shorts; the wind raised goose bumps on my legs as I installed the wooden flagpole at the stern, an accoutrement patriotism forbade at night but which we needed for the white light that glowed from its top. How the electricity could run through this pole as soon as it was plugged into its socket mystified me; I dared not ask Dad for an explanation lest he give me one. The leather seats were cold, but they warmed under flesh soon enough, skin to skin. Pulling away from the dock generated high anxiety (pulling in was worse). My father, who’d been a Texas cowboy as a young man, could laugh at twisters and rattlers, but everything about this alien medium—cold, bottomless, sliding—alarmed him. He was wearing his absurd “captain’s” hat (all his leisure clothes were absurd—jokes, really—as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed). He was half standing behind the wheel. The motors were churning, the spotlight on the bow was gyrating, the red tip of his cigar was pulsing. I’d ventured out on the deck, untied the ropes, tossed them in, jumped in the boat myself; now I was crouched just behind my father. I was wielding a long pole with a hook on one end, the sort used to open upper windows in stuffy grade schools. My job was to push us safely out of the berth before my father threw the toiling motors into gear. It was all an embarrassment. Other men moored their powerboats with a single line, backed away from docks in a simple, graceful arc, talking all the while, and other men’s sons scrambled like agile monkeys across lacquered decks, joking and smiling.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  “What is it, exactly?” I asked. “Isn’t it like heroin?” Chuck laughed. “No. Great stuff, Beattie tells me. Makes you happy. Good for sex. Good for listening to music. Come on down next Wednesday to the music room and we’ll blow some weed.” He snapped his fingers with a hard snap. But this was precisely the invitation to a lifelong addiction I’d always heard about, a fate so dire no one actually had ever had to warn me against it. Not that I’d met an addict, but I had seen movies in which a handsome musician—exactly!—sweated in a hotel room and vomited and pleaded with his girl friend to put him back on the needle or weed or whatever, but she refused him for his own sake, despite his hallucinations and writhings on the floor. Why had Mr. Beattie come to Eton? Perhaps he was so addicted to marijuana he could no longer afford to maintain his habit unless—that’s it—unless he also became a dealer to bored teens. In those days all drugs except alcohol, tobacco and diet pills and sedatives were unknown to conventional Americans. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I wanted to do the right thing. Chuck and the other guys in the Butt Club seemed hopeless to me. They would succumb to any temptation, I knew, but not if the temptation was removed. They valued nothing. One of them had lost an eye in a fight, but all he could say was, “So what? I’ve still got one left.” During my next session with Dr. O’Reilly I asked him for advice. He didn’t want to discuss my problems. He was telling me about his daughter’s latest escapade. While he had been addressing a parents’ group, she had gone into the best restaurant in town, been careful to identify herself as his daughter and then tried to set the place on fire. When I brought O’Reilly back to the subject, he snapped, “I can’t tell you what to do, you know that.” “Then give me some information. Is marijuana dangerous?” “Can be.” He was picking his nose in an elaborate way, examining his handkerchief for portents. “How?” “It can cause a psychotic break.” He had just received a shipment of Polynesian carvings, statues with real human hair and giant phalluses; three of these totems stood behind his chair, lending force to his opinions. “What’s a psychotic—” “Craziness.” “And does marijuana always lead to heroin?” “It can, if only because you start living in the drug world and you think you might as well try everything.” “What does it do, marijuana, to ordinary people?” “Makes them paranoid.” I thought I knew how my father must feel all the time: lonely and responsible. No one looked to my father for amusement. He was dull. He wasn’t fashionable. He was deliberate, but he didn’t shirk his responsibilities. He could always be counted on to do the right thing.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  “No, I don’t concede your point. Not at all,” he’d say, lowering his head so that the child’s hand poked farther out through the sheet and his voice, naturally high and nervous, took on a swallowed, subdued tone. “In fact,” he’d add, letting his features become beatifically composed, “I think you’re a fool.” I could hardly breathe. And yet, calling to me across the smoking valley sang a soprano telling me how exciting all this was, this verbal game that could at any moment take a nasty turn but that as of now remained a parody of spite. Until now I’d never known anyone my own age who was so willing to flout the bland convention that held that the normal unit of conversation should be the unfunny joke and the expected response a mirthless giggle. Howie didn’t want to be liked, or if he did, then only after I’d passed tests calculated to eliminate anyone with the least bit of pride. Despite my fears and my aching loneliness, I believed without a doubt in a better world, which was adulthood or New York or Paris or love. But Howie just as stubbornly knew things wouldn’t work out. He was convinced he’d die before he was twenty. He knew people weren’t equal, that they were wired for hatred, that they were glandularly incapable of decency and that any semblance of goodness had to be attributed to the last vestiges of hypocrisy that fools were tearing away, like gauze from a mummy—not, as we’d been assured, perfectly preserved but rather compounded of dust and rot. He had put on his large pale green officer’s hat with the mirror-shiny black visor and the pewter swastika and now he was striding about the dorm room slapping his boots with a crop. Everything in sight—the single cot, the piles of books on the desk, the mirror above the dresser, the rugless floor, the simple muslin cloth on big wood rungs that concealed the narrow opening to the walk-in closet—everything was spotless as it had to be for morning inspections, but everything smelled of a sulfurous acne cream. Howard was striding back and forth, his glasses slipping down his nose, his pale, pudgy knuckles dimpling and paling still whiter where he grasped the crop. He was laughing in short, metallic bursts.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  None of this is to deny the existence, nor the right of choice, of genuine bisexuals. And a daring word in support of the heterosexual man. At a time of often justified battering from straight women and gay men and women, and attacked as if he were not essential to the survival of the species, the heterosexual man must be granted his definitive place too. But his sexual specialness is being seriously assaulted. Her thinking fashioned increasingly by the new, slick women's magazines, a type of straight woman may even expect her heterosexual lover to look and “be” like the predominantly gay models (defined by bogus biographies, fantasies presented as real) pictured within those pages. She is in effect being “taught” to yearn for a gay man in a straight man. Here, too—as in the context of gays taught by straights—expectations and realities clash, disastrously, for all. To accept both the “male” and “female” aspects of one's being while finally asserting a sexual preference for one sex is liberating—and different from being homosexual and posing hypocritically as—or passing as—“bisexual” simply because it is not dangerous to do so. Where all sexual boundaries blur, it is at the expense of all sexual experiences. There are homosexuals, men and women. There are heterosexuals, women and men. There are, increasingly, transsexuals, men and women. And there are genuine bisexuals, women and men. All distinct experiences. Each different. Each unique. Each special. Each potentially “ideal.” 1:12 P.M. Griffith Park The Hill. J IM LIES ON the beachmat. It wasn't Danny, he tells himself, it wasn't him. But he knows the earlier one has disappeared today. Suddenly he feels an objectless panic. He touches his muscles. He's grateful for the presence of someone else now: A tall husky goodlooking man waiting in the same grotto. Jim sees him snort from an inhaler. The magic sex vapor. He holds it out toward Jim, inviting. Jim moves back into the hollow. The man holds the inhaler to Jim's nose. Jim is instantly enveloped in a wave of sensuality. Already, the man is going down on him. The chemical rush spreads—Jim imagines he is the other, and himself—that he is blowing himself, reaching the places on himself that he can't reach, seeing himself as if he were two: He feels his own hard cock in the other's throat as if it is his own throat which has opened to swallow his own cock. Again the amyl. Again the time-stopping, sexually isolating moments. The other has lowered his own pants, a round cock juts out. Jim snorts more deeply of the amyl and bending down sucks the other, imagining it's his own cock in his own throat. Now both men stand tightly pressed. Jim feels the other's cum smearing both their stomachs.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Dr. Ngost put a hand on Alek’s arm, and Alek turned his head toward him slowly, away from the scan that showed his insides, ghostly white on a black backdrop. “One step at a time,” he said warmly. “Biopsy. Then we know.” Alek almost repeated the doctor’s words again but stopped himself by biting the very tip of his tongue. He nodded firmly a couple of times, then climbed from the bench. He pulled up his jeans beneath the crinkling paper gown. The room was cool as a small cave. Dr. Ngost watched him dress, and when they shook hands, Dr. Ngost held on just a little longer: “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay,” he said. • • • On the bus, Alek considered calling his brothers. Grigori was a first-year surgical resident at Mass Gen, and Igor was starting at Columbia medical school. They would know how to explain it to their mother best, how to articulate the parameters of the thing in a way that wouldn’t scare her. It seemed foolish not to call them. The bus turned onto the more corporate corner of Capitol Square. All that chrome and glass against the slate-gray winter sky. Alek had a seat to himself, which felt like a minor miracle. Downtown was emptying before it began to fill again. Luminescent snowdrifts covered bike racks and lampposts. He had pulled up the text chain with Grigori—they hadn’t texted in months, since he’d first arrived in the Midwest, to say that he’d made it. He’d sent a couple pics of the apartment he’d found. It had come furnished and felt lived in. He’d sent both Grigori and Igor pictures of the tub and the room with its decent but kind of soft mattress. And they’d texted back cool and nice and faggot style :). When they were younger, Grigori’s favorite pastime was to pull hairs from Alek’s body. Igor held him while he twisted and tried to get loose. Then Grigori plucked out his eyelashes one at a time, fine white hairs invisible the moment they left his body. Alek remembered the little shooting stars of pain with each hair. He remembered Igor’s sweaty hands holding him down. He remembered the damp odor of their panting filling the closet.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Look at him, poor little fawn, shivering,” Sophie said. She left the sofa again. It gave a whine of protest, the springs shifting. She knelt near them both, close enough that Lionel could feel her, would have brushed against her if he moved. He held still. “Are you cold, Lionel? Do you need a blanket?” Lionel tried to hold himself still, but a tremor spread from the tips of his fingers back up to his wrist, to his arm, to his shoulder. He could feel something vibrate in his lower lip, the side of his face a slow-motion spasm. He tried to be still. To be easy. To be good. But they had hemmed him in. He had nowhere to go. He looked from Charles to Sophie and back, and then to the bookcase, which seemed so comically small compared to all the things it had to hold. Charles kissed his neck again, and Lionel shivered. He hated the simple, easy mechanism of it. How obvious. “What about last night, huh? You didn’t mind me biting you then.” “I don’t mind,” Lionel said. “I don’t mind it.” Charles flicked his tongue against Lionel’s ear. “God,” he said under his breath. “Please.” “How polite,” Sophie said dryly. She was close again, but she was leaning against Charles’s back, her arms wrapped around him. “So well behaved.” Lionel saw Charles look back at her, the cut of his eyes. Then he pulled his arm from Lionel and reached back to grip both of Sophie’s ankles. “Okay, that’s enough,” Charles said. Sophie ruffled Charles’s hair, and then pulled her feet free of him. She hummed to herself as she went down the hall. When they were alone, just him and Charles, Lionel tried to catch his breath. “Why is she doing this?” Lionel asked. “Doing what?” “You know what. You’re as bad as she is.” Lionel heard his voice shake. “She doesn’t care, Lionel. She doesn’t care at all.” “I know. That’s what she said.” “Then what?” “I don’t know,” Lionel said. “I don’t know. I feel weird.” Charles gave him a look that was not lacking sympathy but was a little impatient. He leaned in and pressed their mouths together. He cupped Lionel’s jaw and kissed deeper, more thoroughly, and Lionel relaxed under the steady gentleness of it. He thought of Sophie. He closed his eyes. “It’s okay,” Charles said. “It’s all right.” “What about Sophie?” “Don’t overthink it. This can be whatever you want it to be.” “I don’t know what I want it to be,” Lionel said. Charles kissed him again and then pulled away. “Okay,” Charles said. He stood up. “Okay.”