Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  A fever of 105, aches and pains in her joints, a strange rash suddenly covering her body; hivelike on her arms, measlelike on her stomach, blotches on her swollen face. She only wanted to sleep.” Judy (and Sandy) had the housewife’s blight, all right. And who could blame her? While Gloria Steinem was publishing her explosive 1963 two-part series “A Bunny’s Tale,” about working as a cocktail waitress at the Playboy Club in New York City, Judy was making pot roast. While Friedan was promoting her book and gathering ground for women’s liberation, Judy was tidying up the living room, driving the kids around, folding stack after stack of warm laundry. Randy and Larry grew from babies to toddlers to elementary schoolers, and Judy had more time on her hands—but she didn’t know what to do with it. The truth was, she found tennis and golf boring. She couldn’t stand the country club husbands, and their wives were somehow worse: catty and small-minded. She needed a project. Something creative to pass the time. As a girl, Judy had wanted to be a famous actress like Esther Williams or Margaret O’Brien, a child star turned ingénue. Growing up in the diverse city of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Judy—or “Judie” as she spelled it back then—was a cheerful, if somewhat high-strung kid. Her brother, David, who was four years older, made fun of her for being jumpy and liked to toss a sheet over his head like a ghost and sneak up on her. It was easy to get her to scream—she was always anticipating danger. Her early childhood was defined by World War II. Born Jewish in February 1938, Judy couldn’t remember a time without Hitler. Hitler, shouting sharply in German, was on the radio while the family ate dinner together at the dining room table. Hitler, with his Brylcreemed hair and bristly patch of a mustache, stomped through the newsreels that played when they went to the movies. Judy’s father, a dentist named Rudolph Sussman, volunteered in town as an air-raid warden. Her mother, a housewife named Esther, or “Essie,” knitted khaki sweaters for the boys overseas. It was a frightening time, but Judy always had a place to stash her anxiety. Her dolls starred in elaborate dramas. She lived in a modest, two-story house on a residential street, and she spent hours bouncing a ball against the brick, making up stories. As she got older she took ballet lessons, acted in plays, sang in the school chorus, and joined the yearbook committee. She was always reading—her first favorite book was Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans, which she took out over and over again from the local library branch. Then she graduated to Nancy Drew and eventually J. D. Salinger. As an adult, Judy was missing a creative outlet. Washing dishes at night, she hummed along to the radio, thinking she might try her hand at songwriting. Quickly, the notion passed—John Lennon she was not.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  308The History of Christianity II õFor a long time, many white, native-born American Protestants more or less took all of this for granted. They cared about politics, but weren’t very organized because they didn’t see a pressing need. Then the 1960s happened, with occurrences like the civil rights movement, the growth of the welfare state in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, and women’s and gay liberation. These trends seemed to signal the crumbling of traditional Christian culture as they knew it. õThe new activists and organizations that arose in the 1970s, groups like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, did not invent organized conservative Christian activism. In many ways, the roots of this movement go back to the early days of the anti-communist movement. But these new groups displayed a new level of political savvy, national organization, and institution building. 309Lecture 31—Culture Wars and the Christian Right õFalwell was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher in Virginia with his own radio and TV programs, and he used his huge mailing list to organize his supporters. Falwell deserves a lot of credit for turning conservative white Protestants into a powerful voting bloc. õBut he also deserves much of the blame for the way that journalists in the mainstream media increasingly came to ignore the diversity of conservative Protestantism, equate all evangelicals with the Christian right, and assume Falwell was their anointed spokesman. õOther activists focused more closely on gender politics. Beverly LaHaye and her husband Tim published bestselling books telling women that what they called the radical feminist movement destroyed families. õIn the late 1970s, the campaign to end legal abortion started to become a signature cause for the Christian right. A few activists began making the case that abortion is murder, as well as a symbol for all that was wrong with the modern world. ACTIVISM ABROAD õEven though conservative American evangelicals and their main allies—Catholics and Mormons—were very focused on what was going on in their own country, all these groups were also missionary cultures tuned in to the spread of Christianity abroad. õBy the end of the 20 th century, conservative Christians were feeling pretty embattled in the U.S., but elsewhere in the world, especially the Global South, conservative churches were thriving. ACTIVISM AT BEIJING õThis lecture now moves to the late 1990s to discuss the United Nations. Many conservative Americans resented the United Nations because they viewed it as a meddling bunch of bureaucrats who thought they had the right to boss Americans around.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Musical You do not realize how much you sing until she tells you to stop singing. 26 It seems that you sing everywhere: in the shower, washing the dishes, getting dressed. You sing musicals and hymns and old songs from childhood (from church, from school, from Girl Scouts). You make up songs, too, with lyrics for whatever is happening at the time. She sings along to music in the car, but only when the music is playing. You ask her to sing to you, without music, but she refuses. During a rare moment of clarity, you tell her, sassily, that if she can’t accept your singing, she can’t accept you. It is supposed to be a joke, sort of, but it lands flat. “Maybe,” she says, her voice cold down to the pith. 26. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C481, Taboo: singing. Dream House as Cautionary Tale One weekday, when you drive back from the Dream House, you notice you’re low on gas as you blow past the Illinois-Iowa border. Your GPS tells you there is a gas station off a lonely, wind-strewn exit, and as soon as you get off you sense the mistake. It looks like a long country road; just cornfields punctuated with barns and houses. You keep driving; surely a gas station will creep up over the horizon? But every time you crest a hill, you just see more country roads. Should you turn back? Perhaps a station is just around the next turn? Twilight falls away, and suddenly the landscape flattens and is swallowed by darkness. You pull the car over and consult your phone, but there is no signal. You sit there, breathing deeply. What would your dad say? What would anyone have done in this situation before cell phones? Should you walk? Should you go to someone’s front door? You just want to be home. You have been screaming for a whole minute before you become fully aware of it. You are pounding the steering wheel—your poor car, she has never done anything except your bidding—and howling, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” You don’t know why you are crying. Everyone gets lost.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  I wanted to kiss him, I wanted him to hold me, I wanted to associate sex with something besides fear and guilt. I wanted my life to be shaken up, to go from being who I was to someone renewed. In those months, hazy from lack of sleep and raw with anxiety, I felt like a calculator with someone’s finger over the solar panel— fading in and out, threatening to shut off altogether. Joel, though, seemed to run on his own hunger. I wanted to be like that. I wept the last time I saw him. I was going to college, but I didn’t want to be so far apart. He assured me he was just a phone call away. “Plus,” he said, “DC isn’t that far. Maybe I can come visit.” At school, I had my first kiss, my first grope in the dark. I felt strange afterward: elated and sad and content and like an adult. When it was over, I went back to my dorm room. It was after midnight. I took my phone into the hallway so my roommate wouldn’t overhear, and I called Joel. He asked me what had happened. I told him, one detail after another. He didn’t refuse any of them; just listened until I was done. “What should I do?” I asked him, the question slipping out of my mouth before I could stop it. Until that moment I’d been, secretly, excited, bolstered with the newness of a man’s stubble across my face, hands that went where I wanted them to. But in Joel’s silence, which carried a whiff of disapproval, I recalled the sin of it. For the first time, he didn’t seem to know what to say. Where there had always been smooth advice that felt right and good and clear, now there was reticence. Hesitation. “Ask for forgiveness,” he said, finally. A few weeks later, Joel stopped responding to my calls. I went about my normal routine, but his silence hovered around me. Was he angry about my hookup? Was he—jealous? I panicked. Maybe he had lost interest in me. Maybe I’d crossed some invisible line, committed some unforgivable act. I sent him a few emails, spaced at what I hoped were ordinary intervals. He didn’t respond. A few weeks later, I was sitting in my dorm room on my brown corduroy comforter, trying to decide whether to go to the dining hall, when my phone rang. I told my roommate to go ahead; I’d follow in a second. My mother’s voice was restrained, slightly chilly. “Pastor Jones has been fired from the church,” she said. “What?” “The rumor is, he was having an affair with a parishioner,” she said. “A woman he was giving marriage counseling to.” I hung up; called Joel. His phone rang and rang. I couldn’t believe that he could do such a thing, and then hated myself for judging him.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  where people seem to have their own way of relating to one another, with a secret language of sorts. Or we walk through a neighborhood of a much different social class than what we’re used to—much wealthier or poorer. In these moments, we are aware that we don’t belong, that others are looking at us as outsiders, and from deep within we feel uneasy and unusually alert, although in fact we may have nothing really to fear. We can observe several interesting elements to the social force: First, it exists inside us and outside us at the same time . When we experience the bodily sensations mentioned above, we are almost certain that others on our side are feeling the same. We feel the force within, but we think of it as outside ourselves as well. This is an unusual sensation, perhaps equivalent to what we feel when we are in love and experience a shared energy that passes between ourselves and the love object. We can also say this force differs, depending on the size and chemistry of the particular group . In general, the larger the group, the more intense is the effect. When we are among a very large group of people who seem to share our ideas or values, we feel quite a rush of increased strength and vitality, as well as a communal warmth or heat that comes from feeling that we belong. There is something awesome and sublime about this force multiplied in a large crowd. This increase in energy and excitement can easily shift to anger and violence in the presence of an enemy. The particular mix of people shapes the effect as well. If the leader is charismatic and bursting with energy, it filters through the group or gathered masses. If a large number of individuals have a particular emotional tendency toward anger or joy, that will alter the collective mood. And finally, we are drawn to this force . We feel attracted to numbers—a stadium full of partisan supporters of a team, choirs of people singing, parades, carnivals, concerts, religious assemblies, and political conventions. In these situations, we are reliving what our ancestors invented and refined—the gathering of the clan, massed soldiers parading in columns before the city walls, early theatrical and gladiatorial spectacles. Subtracting the minority who feel frightened by such gatherings, we generally have a love of partisan crowds for their own sake. They make us feel alive and vital. This can become an addiction—we feel compelled to expose ourselves to this energy again and again. Music and dance epitomize this aspect of the social force. The group experiences the rhythm and melody as one, and music and dance are among the earliest forms we created to satisfy this urge, to externalize the force. We can observe one other aspect to the social force, in its reverse form: when we experience a prolonged period of isolation. We know from the accounts of prisoners in solitary confinement and

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The Avoidant Attitude. People with this attitude see the world through the lens of their insecurities, generally related to doubts about their competence and intelligence. Perhaps as children they were made to feel guilty and uncomfortable with any efforts to excel and stand out from siblings; or they were made to feel bad about any kind of mistake or possible misbehavior. What they came to dread most was the judgment of their parents. As these people get older, their main goal in life is to avoid any kind of responsibility or challenge in which their self-esteem might be at stake and for which they can be judged. If they do not try too hard in life, they cannot fail or be criticized. To enact this strategy they will constantly seek escape routes, consciously or unconsciously. They will find the perfect reason for leaving a job early and changing careers, or breaking off a relationship. In the middle of some high-stakes project they will suddenly develop an illness that will cause them to leave. They are prone to all kinds of psychosomatic maladies. Or they become alcoholics, addicts of some sort, always falling off the wagon at the right time but blaming this on the “disease” they have, and their bad upbringing that caused their addiction. If it weren’t for alcohol, they could’ve been a great writer or entrepreneur, so they say. Other strategies will include wasting time and starting too late on something, always with some built-in excuse for why that happened. They then cannot be blamed for the mediocre results. These types find it hard to commit to anything, for a good reason. If they remained at a job or in a relationship, their flaws might become too apparent to others. Better to slip away at the right moment and maintain the illusion—to themselves and to others—of their possible greatness, if only . . . Although they are generally motivated by the great fear of failing and the judgments that ensue, they are also secretly afraid of success—for with success come responsibilities and the need to live up to them. Success might also trigger their early fears about standing out and excelling. You can easily recognize such people by their checkered careers and their short-term personal relationships. They may try to disguise the source of their problems by seeming saintly—they look down on success and people who have to prove themselves. Often they will present themselves as noble idealists, propagating ideas that will never come to pass but that will add to the saintly aura they wish to project. Having to enact ideals might expose them to criticism or failure, so they choose those that are too lofty and unrealistic for the times they live in. Do not be fooled by the holier-than-thou front they present. Look at their actions, the lack of accomplishments, the great projects they never start on, always with a good excuse. If you notice traces of this attitude in yourself, a good strategy is

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Fangpu had broken this taboo. Had he gone too far? A few days after the appearance of Fangpu’s poster, some strangers arrived on campus from Beijing. They were part of “work teams” sent to schools around China to help supervise and maintain some discipline over the bourgeoning Cultural Revolution. The work team at YMS ordered Fangpu to publicly apologize to Secretary Ding. At the same time, however, they lifted the ban on posters that criticized teachers. As in schools around China, they also suspended all classes and exams at YMS. Students were to devote themselves to making revolution, under their watchful eye. Suddenly feeling free of the yoke of the past and all the habits of obedience drummed into them, the students at YMS began to brazenly attack those teachers who had demonstrated less than revolutionary zeal or had been unkind to students. Jianhua felt compelled to join the campaign, but this was difficult —he happened to like almost all of his teachers. He did not want to seem, however, like a revisionist. Besides, he respected the wisdom and authority of Mao. He decided to make a poster attacking Teacher Wen, who had criticized him once for not being sufficiently interested in politics, which had bothered him at the time. He made his criticism of her as gentle as possible. Others took this up and went further with their attacks on Teacher Wen, and Jianhua felt bad. To satisfy the students’ growing anger, some teachers began to confess to some minor revolutionary sins, but this made the students feel they were hiding even more. They had to apply more pressure to get them to reveal the truth, and a student nicknamed “Little Bawang” ( bawang meaning “overseer,” referring to his love of giving orders) had an idea on how to do this. He had read Mao’s description of how during the revolution in the 1940s peasants had captured the most notorious landlords and paraded them through their villages with enormous dunce caps on their heads and heavy wooden boards—with inscriptions describing their crimes—hung around their necks. To avoid such public humiliation, certainly the teachers would come clean and confess. The students agreed to try this, and their first target for such treatment was to be Teacher Li, Jianhua’s favorite. Teacher Li was accused of faking his switch to communism. Stories began to come out of his telling other teachers about his visits to brothels in Shanghai. Clearly he had a secret life, and Jianhua now felt disappointed in Li. China before the communist revolution had been a cruel place, and if Li was working to bring that back, he could only hate him. Unwilling to confess to any crimes, Li was the first to be paraded through school with the dunce cap and board around his neck. Along the way some students poured a bucket of poster paste over his head. Jianhua followed the parade from a distance, trying to repress his uneasiness at the humiliation of his teacher.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  When she starts to have questions about boys, she casually asks Helen to loan her her “sex book.” Deenie and her friends are old enough that their giddy schoolgirl crushes are being noticed and even reciprocated, with all the attendant exploration that entails. Over the course of the novel, she goes from sweatily holding hands with her classmate Buddy Brader at the movies to kissing him in the locker room during the seventh-grade mixer. While Janet and Barbara are out having fun on the dance floor, Deenie stiffens as Buddy starts touching her over her shirt. “I know he was trying to feel me,” she says. “I also knew that Buddy wasn’t feeling anything but my brace, which only made everything worse.” Even though she likes him, her nerves get the better of her at that point and she darts out of the locker room. But the next time she sees Buddy outside of school, at a party in Janet’s basement, things go smoother. After telling him that she can’t take off her brace, Deenie lets herself relax into the moment—mostly. “This time when he kissed me, I concentrated on kissing him back. I hoped I was doing it right,” she says. But when it comes to masturbation, Deenie is more or less in the dark. She leaves the question about it in her teacher’s dropbox because she wants to know if what she’s been doing is “normal.” After Mrs. Rappoport reads Deenie’s anonymous query out loud, it becomes clear that most of Deenie’s peers are underinformed about it, too. “I wasn’t the one who wrote the question but I’ve heard that boys who touch themselves too much can go blind or get very bad pimples or their bodies can even grow deformed,” one classmate offers. That last possibility sends waves of fear—and embarrassment—through Deenie. “Maybe that’s why my spine started growing crooked!” she thinks, while her face gets hot. “Please, God… don’t let it be true, I prayed.” Mrs. Rappoport is quick to correct this line of speculation. First, she tackles the suggestion that it’s only boys who explore their own bodies. “It’s very common for girls as well as boys, beginning with adolescence,” she says. “Nobody went crazy from masturbating, but a lot of young people make themselves sick from worrying about it.” Deenie—who, under different circumstances, might have spent the next four years choking down portions of shame and self-disgust—instantly feels relieved. She’s grateful to have had the class discussion and looks forward to the next one. Unfortunately, plenty of real American kids weren’t quite so lucky. Judy spoke directly to her readers in her books, and sometimes that meant writing an adult character who represented an ideal: a mouthpiece for how Blume believed things should be. Mrs. Rappoport is the model sex ed teacher, tackling Deenie’s question without awkwardness or judgment.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  So she focused on the fasten-seat-belt sign, willing herself not to give in to the waves of nausea rolling over her. Focus…focus…think about Steve, who’d be there when she landed. Should she give him a hug? Would that be too forward? “I actually hate it when I can’t see the ground,” she said. Secretary Patterson took her hand. He smiled at her. “It will be okay,” he said in a very reassuring voice. She nodded. It would be okay. SteveSteve and Phil cut American history, their last class of the day, to meet Kathy at the airport. After umpteen years of American history they still hadn’t made it to World War II, never mind Korea. Phil borrowed his mother’s car that morning, a blue Ford convertible, but given today’s foggy, rainy weather, they couldn’t put the top down the way they’d planned. Who in their right minds would put the top down in the middle of January, anyway? Assuming Steve and Phil were in their right minds, and some people might dispute that, starting with their American history teacher. He and Phil couldn’t wait until graduation. They already had summer jobs lined up at Shackamaxon Country Club as parking attendants. Both the Osners and the Steins were members. Maybe Phil’s cute cousin would spend time around the pool. Yeah, that’d be good. He wouldn’t mind getting a long look at Kathy in a bathing suit. Ever since they’d kissed on New Year’s Eve he’d been thinking about her. He and Phil were already trying to decide which fraternity to pledge when they got to Syracuse next fall. Kathy had given them the lowdown on each. Not that they’d know if they were accepted at the college until April, but with their grades, SAT scores and sports, they weren’t worried. Newark Airport was just three miles from Jefferson High School. They hit some traffic on Route 1 because of the rain but they still made it in plenty of time. They parked in the airport lot, then ran from the car to the terminal. No umbrellas for them. Only pansies carried umbrellas, they told themselves, shaking the water off their heads. They planned to meet Kathy at the gate. Instead they met her mother, Phil’s aunt, who decided to pick up Kathy after all. “In this weather I didn’t want you boys to have to drive all the way to Perth Amboy, then back to Elizabeth.” Steve tried to hide his disappointment. He’d had a different idea about how the afternoon would go, and it didn’t include Kathy’s mother. LauraLaura Barnes didn’t like this weather. She looked out the window of her first-floor apartment on South Street, holding the baby in her arms. Today’s flight was nothing, she reminded herself. Just a Convair 240 on a milk run. Something Tim had done hundreds of times. He could do it in his sleep.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “Some day, Lo, you will understand many emotions and situations, such as for example the harmony, the beauty of spiritual relationship.” “Bah!” said the cynical nymphet. Shallow lull in the dialogue, filled with some landscape. “Look, Lo, at all those cows on that hillside.” “I think I’ll vomit if I look at a cow again.” “You know, I missed you terribly, Lo.” “I did not. Fact I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you, but it does not matter one bit, because you’ve stopped caring for me, anyway. You drive much faster than my mummy, mister.” I slowed down from a blind seventy to a purblind fifty. “Why do you think I have ceased caring for you, Lo?” “Well, you haven’t kissed me yet, have you?” Inly dying, inly moaning, I glimpsed a reasonably wide shoulder of road ahead, and bumped and wobbled into the weeds. Remember she is only a child, remember she is only— Hardly had the car come to a standstill than Lolita positively flowed into my arms. Not daring, not daring let myself go—not even daring let myself realize that this (sweet wetness and trembling fire) was the beginning of the ineffable life which, ably assisted by fate, I had finally willed into being—not daring really kiss her, I touched her hot, opening lips with the utmost piety, tiny sips, nothing salacious; but she, with an impatient wriggle, pressed her mouth to mine so hard that I felt her big front teeth and shared in the peppermint taste of her saliva. I knew, of course, it was but an innocent game on her part, a bit of backfisch foolery in imitation of some simulacrum of fake romance, and since (as the psychotherapist, as well as the rapist, will tell you) the limits and rules of such girlish games are fluid, or at least too childishly subtle for the senior partner to grasp—I was dreadfully afraid I might go too far and cause her to start back in revulsion and terror. And, as above all I was agonizingly anxious to smuggle her into the hermetic seclusion of The Enchanted Hunters, and we had still eighty miles to go, blessed intuition broke our embrace—a split second before a highway patrol car drew up alongside. Florid and beetle-browed, its driver stared at me: “Happen to see a blue sedan, same make as yours, pass you before the junction?” “Why, no.” “We didn’t,” said Lo, eagerly leaning across me, her innocent hand on my legs, “but are you sure it was blue, because—” The cop (what shadow of us was he after?) gave the little colleen his best smile and went into a U-turn. We drove on. “The fruithead!” remarked Lo. “He should have nabbed you.” “Why me for heaven’s sake?” “Well, the speed in this bum state is fifty, and—No, don’t slow down, you, dull bulb. He’s gone now.” “We have still quite a stretch,” I said, “and I want to get there before dark. So be a good girl.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  We arranged a time to meet on Monday when I could hand over the money (I had it at home squirreled away in the secret compartment of a wood tray I’d made the previous year in shop). Then on Tuesday morning at 6 A.M. he’d meet me at the corner near but not in sight of my house. He’d have his brother’s car and we’d proceed quickly to the 6:45 bus bound East—a long haul to New Yawk, he said, oh, say twenty hours, no, make that twenty-one. “And in New York?” I asked timidly, not wanting to seem helpless and scare him off but worried about my future. Would I be able to find work? I was only sixteen, I said, adding two years to my age. Could a sixteen-year-old work legally in New York? If so, doing what? “Waiter,” he said. “A whole hog heaven of resty-runts in New Yawk City.” Sunday it rained a hot drizzle all day and in the west the sky lit up a bright yellow that seemed more the smell of sulfur than a color. I played the piano with the silencer on lest I awaken my father. I was bidding the instrument farewell. If only I’d practiced I might have supported myself as a cocktail pianist; I improvised my impression of sophisticated tinkling—with disappointing results. As I took an hour-long bath, periodically emptying an inch of cold water and replacing it with warm, I thought my way again through the routine: greeting the guests, taking their orders, serving pats of butter, beverages, calling out my requests to the chef … my long, flat feet under the water twitched sympathetically as I raced about the restaurant. If only I’d observed waiters all those times. Well, I’d coast on charm. As for love, that, too, I’d win through charm. Although I knew I hadn’t charmed anyone since I was six or seven, I consoled myself by deciding people out here were not susceptible to the petty larceny of a beguiling manner. They responded only to character, accomplishments, the slow accumulations of will rather than the sudden millinery devisings of fancy. In New York I’d be the darling boy again. In that Balzac novel a penniless young man had made his fortune on luck, looks, winning ways. New Yorkers, like Parisians, I hoped and feared, would know what to make of me. I carried the plots and atmosphere of fiction about with me and tried to cram random events into those ready molds. But no, truthfully, the relationship was more reciprocal, less rigorous—life sang art’s songs, but art also took the noise life gave and picked it out as a tune (the cocktail pianist obliging the humming drunk). Before it closed I walked down to a neighborhood pharmacy and bought a bottle of peroxide.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  My scheme was a marvel of primitive art: I would whizz over to Camp Q, tell Lolita her mother was about to undergo a major operation at an invented hospital, and then keep moving with my sleepy nymphet from inn to inn while her mother got better and better and finally died. But as I traveled campward my anxiety grew. I could not bear to think I might not find Lolita there—or find, instead, another, scared, Lolita clamoring for some family friend: not the Farlows, thank God—she hardly knew them—but might there not be other people I had not reckoned with? Finally, I decided to make the long-distance call I had simulated so well a few days before. It was raining hard when I pulled up in a muddy suburb of Parkington, just before the Fork, one prong of which bypassed the city and led to the highway which crossed the hills to Lake Climax and Camp Q. I flipped off the ignition and for quite a minute sat in the car bracing myself for that telephone call, and staring at the rain, at the inundated sidewalk, at a hydrant: a hideous thing, really, painted a thick silver and red, extending the red stumps of its arms to be varnished by the rain which like stylized blood dripped upon its argent chains. No wonder that stopping beside those nightmare cripples is taboo. I drove up to a gasoline station. A surprise awaited me when at last the coins had satisfactorily clanked down and a voice was allowed to answer mine. Holmes, the camp mistress, informed me that Dolly had gone Monday (this was Wednesday) on a hike in the hills with her group and was expected to return rather late today. Would I care to come tomorrow, and what was exactly—Without going into details, I said that her mother was hospitalized, that the situation was grave, that the child should not be told it was grave and that she should be ready to leave with me tomorrow afternoon. The two voices parted in an explosion of warmth and good will, and through some freak mechanical flaw all my coins came tumbling back to me with a hitting-the-jackpot clatter that almost made me laugh despite the disappointment at having to postpone bliss. One wonders if this sudden discharge, this spasmodic refund, was not correlated somehow, in the mind of McFate, with my having invented that little expedition before ever learning of it as I did now.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  It’s hard to overemphasize the impact that show had on my sense of my body and my sexuality in general. When I learned ten years later that Michael Landon had died, my first thought was of the boy in my eighth-grade gym class who jeered at my chest, pointing and laughing at how my breasts flopped around when I ran. Sylvia’s father had made her bind her breasts flat so they wouldn’t show, and I longed to do that somehow, sure in the logical way adolescent brains work that, now that I had breasts, a stranger in the bushes wasn’t far behind. I refused to walk anywhere alone. The world in which we lived reinforced the sense that I had no say in the matter of how men treated my body. Boys could laugh at our breasts in gym class and not get in trouble for it. Every day in high school our bras were snapped, our skirts flipped up, our butts lightly spanked as we walked to class. If our nipples showed through our shirts, some asshole would inevitably say, “Cuttin’ any diamonds lately?” On the rare occasion that any one of us girls complained to a school official about the catcalling and unwanted touching, it was met with, “it just means they like you,” and of course, “boys will be boys.” The clown-mask rape was the real worst-case scenario, though. That was “real” rape; anything less than that seemed like it was supposed to be tolerable. Anything “less” than that, well, at least you could say it wasn’t as bad as what happened to Sylvia. Date rape was a risk you took because you were a girl and you’d agreed to go on a date. The line between just being a girl on a date and being a “tease” never even existed. The prevailing message from the unchecked harassment we experienced at school was that if you did anything even remotely sexual—a kiss, or holding a hand—you were leading that boy on and you were responsible for anything, and everything, that happened. When I was fifteen, two years before I was “really” raped, I found myself alone in a car with a football player I’d had a crush on for a while. He kissed me; I was thrilled. He started unbuttoning my shirt; I wasn’t thrilled. He was strong and he held me down but he didn’t have time to force himself inside me because he was a teenage boy and had no sexual stamina: he sprayed my jeans, his arm across my throat, smashing my head against the car window as he humped my leg. I twisted away from him as far as I could get, my feet braced against the steering wheel, but he pinned my arms so I couldn’t open the door. “We’d be hot at the prom,” he said as he stuffed himself back into his underwear.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  so that I was in much distress betwixt the victim and the knife ! (as the old proverb hath it), and yet I was not seldom urged and pressed on by that same god. In the end, being oftentimes stirred forward and at last commanded, and not without great trouble of mind, I was constrained to sell my poor robe for a little money ; howbeit, I scraped up sufficient for all my affairs. Then thus it was par- ticularly spoken unto me, saying: * How is it that for a little pleasure thou wouldest not be afraid to sell thy vestments, but entering into so great ceremonies, dost fear to fall into poverty? But such poverty thou shalt never repent.’ I did therefore prepare myself, and for ten other days abstain from all animal meats, and did shave my head: then was initiate into the ceremonies of the great god, which were done in the night, and I did frequent his services and sacrifices the more confi- dently because I did already know well the like religion of this, This thing gave me great comfort in my peregrination abroad, and likewise ministered unto me more plentiful living, considering by the favour of good fortune I gained some money in haunting to the courts of law, by reason I did plead causes in the Latin tongue. Not very much after I was again called and ad- monished by the marvellous commands of gods, which I did very little expect, to receive a third order of religion. Then I was greatly astonied, and I pondered doubtfully in my mind, because I could 1 The old sacrificial knife was of stone, for iron was taboo (to use the current anthropological jargon) in religious, &nd iherefore conservative, rites. The proverb has no exact equivalent in modern English: perhaps the nearest phrase is “between the upper and the nether miltstone." ^91 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  At 10 Killer Street, a tenement house, I interviewed a number of dejected old people and two long-haired strawberry-blond incredibly grubby nymphets (rather abstractly, just for the heck of it, the ancient beast in me was casting about for some lightly clad child I might hold against me for a minute, after the killing was over and nothing mattered any more, and everything was allowed). Yes, Dick Skiller had lived there, but had moved when he married. Nobody knew his address. “They might know at the store,” said a bass voice from an open manhole near which I happened to be standing with the two thin-armed, barefoot little girls and their dim grandmothers. I entered the wrong store and a wary old Negro shook his head even before I could ask anything. I crossed over to a bleak grocery and there, summoned by a customer at my request, a woman’s voice from some wooden abyss in the floor, the manhole’s counterpart, cried out: Hunter Road, last house. Hunter Road was miles away, in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and gray drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance. I stopped at the last “house”—a clapboard shack, with two or three similar ones farther away from the road and a waste of withered weeds all around. Sounds of hammering came from behind the house, and for several minutes I sat quite still in my old car, old and frail, at the end of my journey, at my gray goal, finis, my friends, finis, my fiends. The time was around two. My pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next. The drizzle crepitated against the hood of the car. My gun had migrated to my right trouser pocket. A nondescript cur came out from behind the house, stopped in surprise, and started good-naturedly woof-woofing at me, his eyes slit, his shaggy belly all muddy, and then walked about a little and woofed once more. 29I got out of the car and slammed its door. How matter-of-fact, how square that slam sounded in the void of the sunless day! Woof, commented the dog perfunctorily. I pressed the bell button, it vibrated through my whole system. Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. From what depth this re-nonsense? Woof, said the dog. A rush and a shuffle, and woosh-woof went the door. Couple of inches taller. Pink-rimmed glasses. New, heaped-up hairdo, new ears. How simple! The moment, the death I had kept conjuring up for three years was as simple as a bit of dry wood. She was frankly and hugely pregnant. Her head looked smaller (only two seconds had passed really, but let me give them as much wooden duration as life can stand), and her palefreckled cheeks were hollowed, and her bare shins and arms had lost all their tan, so that the little hairs showed. She wore a brown, sleeveless cotton dress and sloppy felt slippers.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  If the structure of the American family required a woman to stay home, acting in a support role to her male, breadwinning partner, then “homemaker” should be considered her job—and thus, she was entitled to benefits. Friedan wanted these wives, after a divorce, to get severance pay, as well as Social Security payments reflecting the time they’d put in. She also thought husbands should be on the hook to cover their ex’s post-split educational needs, to give them a shot in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Finally, Friedan supported the idea of mandatory marriage and divorce insurance, which would guarantee child support and other monthly payments in case a union splintered. Unlike some more radical feminists—“Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution!” declared Village Voice writer Jill Johnston in a 1971 debate moderated by Norman Mailer, commemorated in the 1979 documentary Town Bloody Hall —Friedan, a divorcée herself, still believed in the institution of heterosexual marriage. She also bristled at the accusation that feminism was to blame for the cascade of nationwide breakups. To her, the rising divorce rate was a clear-cut reflection of gender inequality, and it would stabilize as soon as the problem of women’s systemic oppression was solved. After that, legal partnerships would look different, and better, for everyone. “Our movement to liberate women and men from these polarized, unequal sex roles might save marriage,” she wrote. “And marriage is probably worth saving. The intimacy, the commitment—the long-term commitment of marriage—is something we still need.” The feminists hoped that their work would one day make life better for their daughters and granddaughters. They wanted young girls to grow up expecting more than they did from their marriages, and from their lives. And in many ways, Blume’s books chanted from that same pulpit. From the very first line of It’s Not the End of the World , Karen tells us that she hasn’t bought into the fairy tale. “I don’t think I’ll ever get married,” she says. “Why should I? All it does is make you miserable.” Are we meant to believe her? Maybe. But what’s clear is that she’s rejecting doing things her parents’ way. Blume understood that divorce introduced kids to serious worries. Throughout the novel, Karen struggles with the idea of her mom and dad dating new people. She’s very anxious about money, even though she knows nothing of the family’s finances. “My mother has no money that I know of,” Karen thinks to herself after a friend suggests that Ellie must have “plenty” of it if she’s getting divorced. “It’s scary to think about my mother with no money to feed us or buy our clothes or anything.” Later on in the book, the kids complain about going to Howard Johnson’s for dinner with Ellie. Amy, the youngest, whines that “Daddy always takes us out for steak.” “Daddy can afford to,” Ellie tells her—a sharp and surprising reaction that Karen immediately clocks.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  That night Miri wrapped the copy of Seventeenth Summer and tied it with one of the ribbons from Irene’s collection. “She doesn’t know you’re coming,” Corinne said on the drive to Watchung. “She doesn’t want anyone to see her in this place but the doctors think it might be good for her to begin to reconnect to the outside world.” “Is she coming home soon?” “Maybe in time for graduation. Just act as if nothing’s changed. As if you’re still best friends.” Aren’t we still best friends? Miri thought, though she didn’t say it aloud. The Watchung Hills Children’s Home, a big white house, sat on a hill surrounded by tall trees. The azaleas were in bloom. The grass was very green. Inside, the halls were filled with music and children’s laughter. Corinne stopped outside Room 218. She knocked on the door before turning the knob. “Everyone decent?” She didn’t wait for a reply. Miri hung back, anxious, not sure what she’d find inside the room. “Nat…look who’s here!” Corinne called, stepping back to make room for Miri. “I’ll leave you two alone to catch up,” she said brightly, as if there were nothing unusual about Miri visiting Natalie in this place. Then she disappeared. From the look on Natalie’s face, first surprise, then anger followed by disgust or maybe embarrassment, Miri could see Natalie didn’t want her there any more than she wanted to be there. “Hi,” Miri said, trying to make her voice sound as bright as Corinne’s. “Hi.” “I’m glad you’re feeling better.” “I’m alive, if that’s what you mean.” Natalie’s voice had an edge to it. In the other bed someone was sleeping. She had the covers pulled up so high almost her whole head and face were covered. One arm lay outstretched, attached to tubes. Natalie was wearing regular clothes—dungarees, a shirt and a bulky cardigan sweater. She didn’t look any different to Miri than she had that day she went cuckoo in the basement. Well, maybe a little better than that, but not much. “You were there that day, right?” Natalie asked. “Which day?” “That day I went to the hospital.” “Oh, that day.” “You’ll never believe who my nurse was.” “Who?” “Phyllis Kirk’s mother.” “Phyllis Kirk, the actress?” “Yes, isn’t that something? And she told me Phyllis is up for a big part in a Vincent Price movie. And it’s going to be in 3-D.” “What does that mean?” Miri asked. “I’m not sure.” Now the figure in the other bed sat up. She was so thin Miri was sure she’d been in a concentration camp. Next to her Natalie seemed almost healthy. Natalie, at least, had some color in her cheeks. The skeleton said, “You have to wear special glasses and it looks like things are jumping out at you.” “How do you know?” Miri asked. The girl shrugged. “Lulu knows a lot,” Natalie said. So, the skeleton had a name. “How come they let you see a friend?” Lulu asked Natalie.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Instead, she tries to convince Miri to fly home with her and Jack today. The plane is waiting at Teterboro. But Miri says she’s staying another night. “Fine,” Christina says. “I’ll stay and fly back commercial with you tomorrow.” Miri looks at her. “No.” “No? What do you mean, no ?” “I mean that’s crazy. Fly back with Jack and I’ll see you day after tomorrow. I still need to talk to Natalie, away from her adoring fans, and I want to stop by the cemetery on the way to the airport tomorrow.” “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she tells Miri. “Never,” Miri tells her. “Is that a promise?” Miri hugs her. “Don’t worry.” But that’s a phrase that’s always worried her, even coming from Miri, her dearest friend. —CHRISTINA IS RETRIEVING her coat from the cloakroom when an attractive silver-haired man says, “Hello.” “Hello,” she answers. “I went to school with your sister…” He doesn’t have to finish. It’s the Sewing Machine Man’s son, Zak Galanos. He seems nice enough, still teaching, though not in Elizabeth. His wife is an elementary school principal. They have two children. This was the life her mother wanted for her. A decent Greek husband, a couple of kids, a house in Cranford or Westfield. She never dreamed her life would turn out so different. A life of such wealth it embarrasses her. It’s laughable how her family’s attitude toward her changed as her fortunes grew. She’s heard her nephews refer to her as their rich aunt Christina from Vegas—and sure, she helped put them through college, helped Athena open a new store at the Short Hills mall. She made sure her parents were comfortable at their retirement home, and when it was needed, she paid for round-the-clock care. She came for her mother’s funeral three years ago, and her father’s, a year later. Even her parents accepted having an Irish son-in-law. They couldn’t resist their four beautiful granddaughters, the oldest, Nia, named for her mother, born when Christina was just nineteen, the bundle of joy who kept Jack out of Korea. It wasn’t until five years later that they were ready for more children, three more girls in a row. She convinced Mama and Baba to come to Las Vegas for Nia’s eighteenth birthday. Sent the plane for them, with IRISH JACK painted on the side. They were impressed. She took them to see their favorite entertainers—Dean Martin, Liberace and the Greek chanteuse Nana Mouskouri—made sure they had ringside tables, everyone making a fuss over Irish Jack’s in-laws. And when her mother needed an emergency root canal, Dr. O was there to hold her hand as the young, gifted Dr. Kyros, a Greek dentist, Mama, performed the procedure. Dr. Kyros was married to a former chorus girl and together they made tall, beautiful children with perfect teeth. Okay, she’ll fly back with Jack today but that won’t stop her from worrying about Miri.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She found it complicated and messy. First you had to put in the jelly and rub it around, making sure you got enough over the rim, then you had to squeeze it together and insert it into your vagina, getting it up far enough. She’d been practicing in her room at night. When she pulled it out she had to wash it, pat it dry and store it in its case, something else she’d have to hide, or maybe Jack would keep it. Yes, that would make sense. She supposed she’d get used to it. She supposed it would get easier. They were going to be married for a long time and she didn’t want to be pregnant every year like Mrs. O’Malley’s daughter, who’d already had five babies. But she still wasn’t relaxed about going all the way. She supposed she had to give it some time. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00038.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00038.jpg] ROSENBERGS GET PASSOVER VISITAPRIL 9 (UPI) — Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, sentenced to die for transmitting A-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, received a pre-Passover visit at Sing Sing prison from their 5- and 9-year-old sons. Meanwhile, following today’s denial of their last plea to the Court of Appeals, the couple’s lawyer said that he would be filing an appeal with the United States Supreme Court. 29 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriTwice a week Miri sent a card to Natalie at the Watchung Hills Children’s Home. Heard you were under the weather. Well, come on out! Miri wasn’t sure Natalie would find any of the cards funny. Half the time she wasn’t sure they were funny. Sometimes she’d include a little note, trying to keep it light, something about school, or about a TV show. Uncle Miltie dressed as Carmen Miranda Tuesday night. He wore a hat loaded with bananas, pineapples and grapes. My mother laughed so hard she almost didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. She’d bought all the cards at once at the Ritz Book Shop, along with a copy of Seventeenth Summer. She and Natalie had read it together, at the beginning of eighth grade, and Miri hoped when and if she had the chance to give it to her, it would remind Natalie of their friendship, because Natalie didn’t answer any of Miri’s cards or notes. Irene suggested inviting Mason to their Seder on the first night of Passover, surprising Miri. Miri wore her new patent-leather slingbacks. Mason brought lilacs for Irene. They all missed Henry and Leah, who had gone to visit Leah’s parents. But Miss Rheingold was there and Blanche Kessler from the Red Cross with her family and Ben Sapphire. Corinne called a few days later, another surprise, saying if Miri would like to see Natalie she would pick her up at school the next afternoon, if that was convenient for her.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Judy vented her frustrations with being a wife and mother in the early 1970s by putting it all into the mouth of a proxy: Ellie Newman. In the beginning of It’s Not the End of the World , mother of three Ellie is raging after Bill gets home late from work and then starts complaining that dinner is cold. The fight escalates, and Karen notes that they’ve been arguing a lot recently, including one time the previous week when Ellie baked a cake for the family and ended up smashing it on the floor. She’d frosted it with mocha icing instead of the usual chocolate. When Bill snipped that he hated mocha icing but would scrape it off, Ellie got livid and hurled the whole dessert—plate and all—to the ground. In the subsequent weeks and months, after Ellie and Bill announce their plans to split, Ellie starts opening up to Karen about why the marriage isn’t working for her. At first, she offers simple reasons: “Daddy and I just don’t enjoy being together,” Ellie tells her impatient daughter. “We don’t love each other anymore.” Soon, however, Ellie shares her intention to go back to school to study English Literature. “I had you when I was just twenty,” she says to her oldest child, Jeff, over a family dinner with the three kids. “I think I might like to get my degree. I never really had a chance to find out what I might be able to do.” The children—Jeff especially—are annoyed by this development, and even more so when Ellie changes her tune yet again and reveals that she’s taking a part-time job as a receptionist at an insurance company. At that point their aunt Ruth, who is Ellie’s overbearing older sister, questions Ellie’s judgment. “The children need you at home, Ellie,” Ruth tells her. “They’re in school all day,” Ellie assures her. “They won’t even know I’m gone.” Woven throughout the pages is the sense that Ellie is aching for purpose, a vocation to transport her beyond the walls of her home. It’s a quest that Judy—along with the feminists propelling the movement in general—knew particularly well. Writing cured Judy of the housewife’s blight. The constant buzz of ideas—which she jotted down in notebooks, on file cards, on tissues, and in the margins of old shopping lists—was better than any doctor’s prescription. A deep wound had been treated and cauterized: “It was like the bacteria, the bad bacteria was coming out that was making me sick,” Blume said at an event in 2015. “I never got sick again in the same way, that way. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get going.” The transformation made her wonder what her life would have been like if she’d figured this all out sooner. Thinking about it, she simultaneously resented and got sad for her mom. Essie never had anything beyond a husband and kids to keep her busy.