Anxiety

Passages

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

Page 358 of 501 · 20 per page

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

  Besides, it’s not so much the penis that’s the worry. It’s the erection. The erect penis, however desirable, useful, and loved, is unreliable, a fleeting thing. “Nothing is more short-lived than the erection; like the crocus of spring, it is there for a moment, and then it is gone,” wrote William Irwin Thompson. If menstruation is the symbol of cyclic time, he added, “the penis is the perfectly obvious and natural symbol of instantaneous time.” This fear of what penises really mean may be the reason for the amazing reluctance in Hollywood film-making to show the naked male body. In a world rife with celebration of the penis, the male body is invisible. The penis is loved, the body disguised—and the erection implied, as though it were always, rather than only briefly, there. Porn films use repetitive loops of the perishable erection penetrating a vagina to support the myth such looping creates: the big prick, ever erect, its capacity never-ending. If penises represent, more than anything, the moment, our myth of the penis is one of longing for the eternal—the permanent. Priapus may have been the god of fertility, but his virtue was stamina. Howie Gordon, for ten years a porn star, told me about his first day of shooting a sex movie. He arrived on the set in the morning clammy with fear—fear of not being able to get it up. The director began without preliminaries. “She starts sucking, I get hard immediately. I’m looking around: ‘Welcome to my blowjob, they’re going to pay me two hundred dollars for this. Great!’ About forty-five minutes later they’re moving lights around and changing position and I’m getting this vibe from her. The director says, ‘Okay, now come.’ And my dick just shrivels. Panic! When it’s not there, nothing’s there! Fear, panic, fear. They decided to break for lunch, give me a break. I locked myself in the bathroom, trying to get my dick to work, and my dick will not work. I went back on the set and tried, from one o’clock until five o’clock. The girl had fallen asleep. Finally, at five o’clock I came. In my head, I heard the cheering of thousands. I took a Valium and slept for a day and a half.” When men are questioned about their penises, they turn the question away from themselves, and sometimes onto women, onto women’s demands. Men worry their individual penis isn’t enough, worry that perhaps no penis could ever be enough. Men think women won’t be satisfied, not just because a man wants to satisfy a woman out of his altruistic heart (although this is often true), but because the measure of his adequacy is her observed satisfaction. The penis functions so beautifully on its own—the penis is sometimes uncomfortably independent—yet its worth depends on the judgment of others at all times. The penis is never, can’t be, quite enough by itself. Its identity is given, not inherent.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  It was John Ranelagh, the commissioning editor for religion at Channel 4. He had seen my pilot film, The Body of Christ, and loved it. He was going to commission Opinions and looked forward to working with me in the future. Would I, for example, like to write and present a six-part documentary series on Saint Paul? It would take about a year; there wouldn’t be much money in it; and it would mean working with an Israeli film company in Jerusalem. Of course I said yes. I had, after all, nothing else to do. So that was how I came to be sitting on a British Airways flight to Tel Aviv at the end of January 1983. The months that had elapsed since John’s phone call had been strange. To my surprise, June, my agent, was dismayed by the project. This was not what she wanted for me at all. She had seen me as a popular novelist, writing block-busters with a vaguely religious theme, along the lines of The Thorn Birds. Religion was a dead end, she argued. I would never make a living by writing about theology, and she didn’t trust the people at Channel 4. She also scolded me severely for responding to John’s invitation with such obvious delight. “Now they know you want to do it,” she snapped, “and we can’t possibly get you a good deal.” June was not alone. Nick, the producer of Opinions, told me that if I had any doubts about this project, I should walk away from it. Right now. “It sounds a rum setup to me,” he said. Nobody knew anything about these Israelis, and Channel 4 was giving them a quite unrealistically tiny budget. The proposed schedule looked impossibly tight. I would be filming in the Middle East, Italy, and Greece for about three weeks; there was no way anybody could complete a six-part series in that time! “I know how frustrating it is to work on a program that never gets screened,” Nick said. “So if you’re not happy—don’t do it! John will find you something else.” Then there were the Israelis themselves, who had arrived in London shortly before Christmas and gazed at me in frank dismay. Joel, the director, a large bear of a man, slumped morosely in a corner of John’s office, chain-smoking and glaring in my direction. He wanted a big name to be his presenter. Conor Cruise O’Brien had been his first choice, but John had made it clear that either they settled for me or the deal was off. In any case, in view of the miserable fee, nobody with a name would have touched this project with a barge pole.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I was pleased and relieved to be summoned to a viva. In the English Faculty, only those who were borderline cases between classes, or who were being considered for a first-class degree, had to undergo an oral examination. No viva, therefore no first. For the umpteenth time I mentally reviewed my papers. A viva, I knew, could last for hours. But when I looked again at the examiners, I felt my hopes plummet. I cannot do this, I thought bleakly. All my written answers had been carefully contrived. During the long weeks of revision, I had prepared essays that could be adapted to meet almost any contingency. They were my usual Gothic cathedral creations, intricate edifices of other people’s thoughts. But now I knew that there was no chance that I would be able to think on my feet in the way that would be expected of me. I still sat tongue-tied in class, marveling at the way the others could play confidently with ideas, get fresh insights in the course of a discussion, and produce arguments to support their case at a moment’s notice. I was especially impressed by the ease with which other people could say, “I think.” I had no notion what “I” thought. When I scoured my brain, I still encountered the old blank. There was no way that I could talk freely and impressively to the board. Miserably I listened for my name as the chairman of the examiners read out the list of our names, telling each of us (all of whose names began with the letter A) what time we should present ourselves. He didn’t mention me, and for a moment, compounded of both disappointment and wild relief, I thought it had all been a mistake. I had got a safe second and wouldn’t have to face the examiners after all. Then the chairman nodded at me with the same courteous little smile that he had given to the others. “And Miss Armstrong, would you stay here now, please?” I stood up slowly, adjusting my gown, while the others filed out of the room. “Come over here.” The chairman gestured toward the chair and I began the interminable journey across the carpet. It took a while before I recognized the sudden explosion of sound that stopped me in my tracks. It was clapping. I looked up to find that the examiners had risen to their feet and were applauding. The men had doffed their mortarboards. All were smiling broadly. And I remembered the old tradition. “Miss Armstrong,” the chairman said when the decorous clapping had petered out, “we wish to congratulate you on your papers, which were all quite excellent.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Now, the extent of the business,” Ellis said, looking from Ida to Vivaldo, “is very simple. I’ve helped other people and I think I can help Miss Scott.” He looked at Ida. “You aren’t ready yet. You’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and a hell of a lot to learn. And I’d like you to drop by my office one afternoon this week so we can go into all this in detail. You’ve got to study and work and you’ve got to keep alive while you’re doing all that and maybe I can help you work that out.” Then he looked at Vivaldo. “And you can come, too, if you think I’m trying to exploit Miss Scott unfairly. Is it your intention to act as her agent?” “No.” “You don’t have any reason to distrust me; you just don’t like me, is that it?” “Yes,” said Vivaldo after a moment, “I guess that’s right.” “Oh, Vivaldo,” Ida moaned. “That’s all right. It’s always good to know where you stand. But you certainly aren’t going to allow this—prejudice—to stand in Miss Scott’s way?” “I wouldn’t dream of it. Anyway, Ida does what she wants.” Ellis considered him. He looked briefly at Ida. “Well. That’s reassuring.” He signaled for the waiter and turned to Ida. “What day shall we make it? Tuesday, Wednesday?” “Wednesday might be better,” she said, hesitantly. “Around three o’clock?” “Yes. That’s fine.” “It’s settled, then.” He made a note in his engagement book, then took out his billfold, picked up the check and gave a ten-dollar bill to the waiter. “Give these people anything they want,” he said, “it’s on me.” “Oh, are you going now?” asked Ida. “Yes. My wife will kill me if I don’t get home in time to see the kids before I go to the studio. See you Wednesday.” He held out his hand to Eric. “Glad to have met you, Red; all the best. Maybe you’ll do a show for me, one day.” He looked down at Vivaldo. “So long, genius. I’m sorry you don’t like me. Maybe one of these days you ought to ask yourself why. It’s no good blaming me, you know, if you don’t know how to get or how to hold on to what you want.” Then he turned and left. Vivaldo watched the short legs going up the stairs into the street. He wiped his forehead with his wet handkerchief and the three of them sat in silence for a moment. Then, “I’m going to call Cass,” Vivaldo said, and rose and walked toward the phone booth in the back. “I understand,” said Ida, carefully, “that you were a very good friend of my brother’s.” “Yes,” he said, “I was. Or at least I tried to be.” “Did you find it so very hard—to be his friend?”

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  When Iggy first came home from the hospital, in that ecstatic, disarranged week of almost no sleep, my intense happiness was sometimes punctured in the dead of night by the image of him with a half scissor sticking out of his precious newborn head. Perhaps I had put it there, or perhaps he had slipped and fallen into it. For whatever reason, this image seemed the very worst thing I could imagine. It came to me when I was trying to fall asleep, after many hours—sometimes many nights—of not sleeping. We were up so often that we put a red lightbulb in the living room lamp and kept it on all the time, so that there were periods of sun followed by periods of red, no real night. Once, while wandering in the red soup, I told Harry I was worried I was having a postpartum crash, as I was having bad thoughts about the baby. I couldn’t tell him about the half scissor. I can’t remember now the connection between the little boy’s building of ships in the bottles (Argo’s?) and his commitment to paranoid anxiety, but I’m sure there was one. Nor can I find the original story. I wish that I could find it, as I’m pretty sure its moral wasn’t that all good comes from repeatedly imagining the worst things that could ever happen. Likely a wise old crinkly grandpa drifts into the tale and disabuses his grandson of his rotten notion by taking him to see some wild birds flying over a hillside. But now I think I’m mixing and matching. That wise old crinkly grandparent has not yet waltzed into my life. Instead I have my mother, who lives and breathes the gospel of prophylactic anxiety. When I tell her that it would be easier for me if she could keep her anxieties about my newborn to herself, rather than have her e-mail me to tell me that she’s having trouble sleeping for fear of bad things happening to him (and to everyone else she loves), she snaps: “They’re not all irrational anxieties, you know.” My mother thinks that people don’t really know what they’re in for in this life—what the risks are. How could there be such a thing as an irrational peril, if anything unexpected or horrific that has ever happened could happen again? Last February a sinkhole opened up under a man’s bedroom near Tampa, Florida, while he was sleeping; his body will never be found. When Iggy was six months old, he was stricken by a potentially fatal nerve toxin that afflicts about 150 babies of the 4 million+ born in the United States each year.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  The video plays with how white guys see (and are conditioned to see) black masculinity: as simultaneously aspirational and threatening, what sociologist Michael Kimmel has called a defiant mix of “athletic prowess, aggression, and sexual predation.” But adopting those trappings—through what they listen to or watch, in the posters on their bedroom walls, in how they talk, dress, walk, dance, in whom they idolize—is as likely to reinforce as to challenge stereotypes. Guys like Xavier and Aidan, who grew up in some of the poorest neighborhoods of their city, are both advantaged and constrained by the image projected onto them. “You have to be careful,” Xavier said. “People will treat you like you’re the coolest guy in the room and everything, but they’ll also think you’re the dumbest person in the room. So down the line, it won’t really help you unless you show a different side of yourself. You basically always have to prove yourself.” Xavier hadn’t been to a party since his sophomore year. “The idea of drinking in a situation where there’s fifty drunk white people . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t feel comfortable at all.” He met his current girlfriend at a local diversity conference. They were friends for a year before things turned romantic. “I appreciate that as a woman of color, she can understand me in ways that are multidimensional without my having to explain anything,” he said. “I just find more peace in it.”

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Many women describe the feeling of having a baby come out of their vagina as taking the biggest shit of their lives. This isn't really a metaphor. The anal cavity and vaginal canal lean on each other; they, too, are the sex which is not one. Constipation is one of pregnancy's principal features: the growing baby literally deforms and squeezes the lower intestines, changing the shape, flow, and plausibility of one's feces. In late pregnancy, I was amazed to find that my shit, when it would finally emerge, had been deformed into Christmas tree ornament—type balls. Then, all through my labor, I could not shit at all, as it was keenly clear to me that letting go of the shit would mean the total disintegration of my perineum, anus, and vagina, all at once. I also knew that if, or when, I could let go of the shit, the baby would probably come out. But to do so would mean falling forever, going to pieces.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  “Or not do it—if you follow Hillel,” I quipped, and we were laughing as we left the café and headed home. I hadn’t wanted to pursue the discussion any further. It was too big an idea and still made little sense to me. How could you live your faith unless you were convinced that God existed? How could you live a Christian life if you could not accept the official doctrines about Jesus? And yet I had to accept Hyam’s description of the role of belief in the religious life of Jews. I needed to think about all this by myself, later. Right now I had scripts to write. Joel and his assistant, Danny, were waiting for me outside the immigration hall at Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv. Joel greeted me with the air of hopeless skepticism that I remembered so well from our London meetings, and lumbered ahead of me to the car, pushing my luggage cart. I had to run to keep up with him, and found that I was shivering. I had not expected it to be so cold in the Holy Land and wondered if I had brought enough warm clothes. “It will be colder in Jerusalem,” Joel assured me as he settled heavily in the backseat of the car and lit a cigarette. That was the only remark he addressed to me for the next forty minutes; my nervous attempts to make conversation were ignored and Joel remained silent, apart from barking out an occasional instruction to Danny in Hebrew. Danny was marginally more voluble, asking me about the flight, the weather in London, and if I had bought any duty-free items. After we had exhausted these scintillating topics, we all fell silent. I sat uneasily, wondering how on earth I was going to work with a man who would not even speak to me, but I stared, trying to look nonchalant, out of the window, watching the desolate plain give way to the hills, which seemed menacing in the darkness. Eventually, Joel broke his long silence and called out, “Here it is!” and I could detect the pride that he tried to conceal beneath his gruff delivery. I looked. There beneath us were the lights of a city. So this was Jerusalem, the place that had been the central region of my interior geography ever since I was a small child. I waited to feel something, but the apartment blocks, the supermarkets, and the small news agencies could have belonged to almost any modern city in southern Europe. Joel rapped out another order to Danny, who advanced what seemed to be an objection but was silenced by an explosive imprecation from Joel.

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

  13Most ethical systems have holes in them, spots where one conundrum or another can slip through. This is all to the good, annoying though it may be in the middle of an argument. A solid ethical system is a dangerous system. Nothing gets sifted without holes. Augustinian Christianity is like this—as a blueprint for living it has no flexibility, no give. Even though this isn’t my blueprint, it concerns me because I live in a society largely, erratically, based on its principles—confused between authoritarianism, Puritanism, and rebellion. Augustinian Christianity, generally known as the Christian Right these days, also concerns me because its believers are concerned with me; part of their interpretation of Christianity is that nothing and no one is outside the purview of Christendom. It is literally prescriptive. If you base the value of other humans on your own absolutes of behavior, then those who behave outside those absolutes sacrifice their humanity. They are (and we’ve heard this word before) beasts. One point of philosophy inherited from both Augustine and Descartes, so often forgotten, is the belief that civilization is a triumph of mind over body—in Jamake Highwater’s words, a place where sexuality is “a moral concept rather than a physical experience.” As a moral concept, sexuality is quantified—its attributes can be counted, defined, boxed, and sold. Everything falls inside or outside the equation. Freud, who was no Augustinian, nevertheless believed that civilization arises in proportion to how much the all-encompassing sexual drive is directed into thought—into work. Both individuals and the culture must sublimate to exist. With sublimation people naturally and necessarily narrow the focus of their sexuality as they leave infancy, repressing the child’s omnivorous and indiscriminate appetite. The pleasure principle gives way to the reality principle, desire is delayed or subverted, gratification transformed, and with that energy redirected, lasting, complex achievements are possible. Sex still exists, but romantic love becomes essential. Sex without love was dangerous in Freud’s view because he thought it naturally selfish. Love creates a protective urge and it creates jealousy, which encourages monogamous, tightly bound relationships. There’s only one small step from here to the belief that real love transcends or eliminates “baser” sexual feelings altogether. Sometimes I wonder how the spiraling traditional theories of sublimation ever come to a stop—if less is better, then none must be best. What if the pleasure principle is allowed to ripen? What if the only absolute is to protect one’s health without harming the health of others? To do so, I think, requires a particular belief that in fact goes against much of the morality we’ve inherited—this requires us to believe in human goodness, and most of us don’t. “All beings are words in the language of God,” wrote William Irwin Thompson. And all of their being is included in that word.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Don’t leave her waiting in the hall.” As he spoke, the bell rang again. “Oh my God,” said Vivaldo, and he stood up, looking very tall and helpless. She put down her drink and went to the door. The girl who faced her was fairly tall, sturdy, very carefully dressed, and somewhat darker than Rufus. She wore a raincoat, with a hood, and carried an umbrella; and beneath the hood, in the shadows of the hall, the dark eyes in the dark face considered Cass intently. There was a hint of Rufus in the eyes—large, intelligent, wary—and in her smile. “Cass Silenski?” Cass put out her hand. “Come in. I do remember you.” She closed the door behind them. “I thought you were one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.” The girl looked at her and Cass realized, for the first time, that a Negro girl could blush. “Oh, come on, now, Mrs. Silenski—” “Give me your things. And please call me Cass.” “Then you call me Ida.” She put the things away. “Shall I make you a drink?” “Yes, I think I need one,” Ida said. “I been scouring this city, I don’t know how long, looking for that no-good brother of mine——” “Vivaldo’s inside,” Cass said, quickly, wishing to say something to prepare the girl but not knowing what to say. “Will you have bourbon or Scotch or rye? and I think we’ve got a little vodka—” “I’ll have bourbon.” She sounded a little breathless; she followed Cass into the kitchen and stood watching her while she made the drink. Cass handed her the glass and looked into Ida’s eyes. “Vivaldo hasn’t seen him since last night,” she said. Ida’s eyes widened, and she thrust out her lower lip, which trembled slightly. Cass touched her elbow. “Come on in. Try not to worry.” They walked into the living room. Vivaldo was standing exactly as she had left him, as though he had not moved at all. Richard rose from the hassock; he had been clipping his nails. “This is my husband, Richard,” Cass said, “and you know Vivaldo.” They shook hands and murmured salutations in a silence that began to stiffen like the beaten white of an egg. They sat down. “Well!” Ida said, shakily, “it’s been a long time.” “Over two years,” Richard said. “Rufus let us see you a couple of times and then he hustled you out of sight somewhere. Very wise of him, too.” Vivaldo said nothing. His eyes, his eyebrows, and his hair looked like so many streaks of charcoal on a dead white surface. “But none of you,” said Ida, “know where my brother is now?” And she looked around the room. “He was with me last night,” Vivaldo said.

• From Another Country (1962)

  So you never thought of me—” “Sexually,” he said. Then he grinned. “Don’t be so sure.” She flushed, at once annoyed and pleased. “I’m not talking about your fantasies.” “I’ve always admired you,” he said soberly, “and envied Richard.” “Well,” she said, “you’d better get over that.” He said nothing. She rattled the ice around in his empty glass. “Well,” he said, “what am I going to do with it? I’m not a monk, I’m tired of running uptown and paying for it——” “For it’s uptown that you run,” she said, with a smile. “What a good American you are.” This angered him. “I haven’t said they were any better than white chicks.” Then he laughed. “Maybe I better cut the damn thing off.” “Don’t be such a baby. Really. You should hear yourself.” “You’re telling me someone’s going to come along who needs it? Needs me?” “I’m not telling you anything,” she said, shortly, “that you don’t already know.” They heard Richard’s study door open. “I’ll fix you another drink; you might as well get good and drunk.” She bumped into Richard in the hall. He was carrying the manuscript. “Do you want a drink now?” “Love one,” he said, and walked into the living room. From the kitchen she heard their voices, a little too loud, a little too friendly. When she came back into the living room, Vivaldo was leafing through the manuscript. Richard stood by the window. “Just read it,” he was saying, “don’t go thinking about Dostoievski and all that. It’s just a book—a pretty good book.” She handed Richard his drink. “It’s a very good book,” she said. She put Vivaldo’s drink on the table beside him. She was surprised and yet not surprised to realize that she was worried about the effect on Richard of Vivaldo’s opinion. “The next book, though, will be better,” Richard said. “And very different.” Vivaldo put the manuscript down and sipped his drink. “Well,” he said, with a grin, “I’ll read it just as soon as I sober up. Whenever,” he added, grimly, “that may be.” “And tell me the truth, you hear? You bastard.” Vivaldo looked at him. “I’ll tell you the truth.” Years ago, Vivaldo had brought his manuscripts to Richard with almost exactly the same words. She moved away from them both and lit a cigarette. Then she heard the elevator door open and close and she looked at the clock. It was four. She looked at Vivaldo. The bell rang. “There she is,” said Cass. She and Vivaldo stared at each other. “Take it easy,” Richard said. “What’re you looking so tragic about?” “Richard,” she said, “that must be Rufus’s sister.” “Well, go let her in.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  So I went back to Dr. Piet, telling myself that I couldn’t expect a miracle overnight. What did I know about psychiatry and the mystery of the human mind? If I persevered I might well find that everything suddenly fell into place. But then I would be overtaken by a queasy sense of déjà vu. This was exactly the sort of reasoning that I had used in the convent, and look where it had got me. It was a hot, sticky day in July 1970. The room in the Examination Schools that had been set aside for the viva voce examination seemed to echo to our footsteps as the four of us trooped in and sat in a miserable little huddle against the wall. I looked hopelessly at the members of the board of examiners, who were sitting around three sides of a large table in the big bay window—sixteen dons in full academic dress, gazing at us expressionlessly. Opposite them was a lonely chair for the candidate, and the ten question papers of the final examinations that we had sat some six weeks earlier. I was pleased and relieved to be summoned to a viva. In the English Faculty, only those who were borderline cases between classes, or who were being considered for a first-class degree, had to undergo an oral examination. No viva, therefore no first. For the umpteenth time I mentally reviewed my papers. A viva, I knew, could last for hours. But when I looked again at the examiners, I felt my hopes plummet. I cannot do this, I thought bleakly. All my written answers had been carefully contrived. During the long weeks of revision, I had prepared essays that could be adapted to meet almost any contingency. They were my usual Gothic cathedral creations, intricate edifices of other people’s thoughts. But now I knew that there was no chance that I would be able to think on my feet in the way that would be expected of me. I still sat tongue-tied in class, marveling at the way the others could play confidently with ideas, get fresh insights in the course of a discussion, and produce arguments to support their case at a moment’s notice. I was especially impressed by the ease with which other people could say, “I think.” I had no notion what “I” thought. When I scoured my brain, I still encountered the old blank. There was no way that I could talk freely and impressively to the board. Miserably I listened for my name as the chairman of the examiners read out the list of our names, telling each of us (all of whose names began with the letter A) what time we should present ourselves. He didn’t mention me, and for a moment, compounded of both disappointment and wild relief, I thought it had all been a mistake.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then: “Do you know where he went? Where’s he staying?” The sounds from the bedroom suggested that Paul and Michael were having a fight. “I don’t know.” I should have asked him, she thought. “Vivaldo would know, they were together, I left them together—look—” Michael screamed and then began to cry, they were going to awaken Richard—“Vivaldo is coming by here this afternoon; why don’t you come, too?” “What time?” “Oh. Three-thirty, four. Do you know where we live?” “Yes. Yes, I’ll be there. Thank you.” “Please don’t be so upset. I’m sure everything will be all right.” “Yes. I’m glad I called you.” “Till later, then.” “Yes. Good-bye.” “Good-bye.” Cass ran into the children’s bedroom and found Paul and Michael rolling furiously about on the floor. Michael was on top. She dragged him to his feet. Paul rose slowly, looking defiant and ashamed. He was eleven, after all, and Michael was only eight. “What’s all this noise about?” “He was trying to take my chess set,” Michael said. The box, the board, and broken chessmen were scattered on both beds and all over the room. “I was not,” Paul said, and looked at his mother. “I was only trying to teach him how to play.” “You don’t know how to play,” said Michael; now that his mother was in the room, he sniffed loudly once or twice and began collecting his property. Paul did know how to play—or knew, anyway, that chess was a game with rules that had to be learned. He played with his father from time to time. But he also loved to torment his brother, who preferred to make up stories about his various chessmen as he moved them about. For this, of course, he did not need a partner. Watching Michael manipulate Richard’s old, broken chess set always made Paul very indignant. “Never mind that,” Cass said, “you know that’s Michael’s chess set and he can do whatever he wants with it. Now, come on, wash up, and get your clothes on.” She went into the bathroom to supervise their washing and get them dressed. “Is Daddy up yet?” Paul wanted to know. “No. He’s sleeping. He’s tired.” “Can’t I go in and wake him?” “No. Not this morning. Stand still.” “What about his breakfast?” Michael asked. “He’ll have his breakfast when he gets up,” she said. “We never have breakfast together any more,” said Paul. “Why can’t I go and wake him?” “Because I told you not to,” she said. They walked into the kitchen. “We can have breakfast together now, but your father needs his sleep.” “He’s always sleeping,” said Paul. “You were out real late last night,” said Michael, shyly. She was a fairly impartial mother, or tried to be; but sometimes Michael’s shy, grave charm moved her as Paul’s more direct, more calculating presence seldom could. “What do you care?” she said, and ruffled his reddish blond hair. “And, anyway, how do you know?”

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  [image file=image_rsrc1FT.jpg] SIXTEEN [image file=image_rsrc1FU.jpg] Emergent Sex and Non-emergent TechnologyNot all virtual environments take the approach of Second Life, which is to rely on emergent sex as an engine of change and creativity. Some virtual sex comes from games’ creators rather than the users. Given how ubiquitous sex is in general-interest games, pornographic games intuitively strike one as a natural business opportunity. In reality, though, adult video games are the domain of a very few companies and individuals who are able to invest in an area where the track record is one of limited success (and some spectacular failures). Video games earned a reputation as entertainment for kids and teenagers. Some people suggest that this association explains why an adult video game industry hasn’t sprung up on the same scale as pornographic movies. This can’t be the whole story, though. After all, other so-called kids’ mediums had X-rated counterparts. Superhero comic books, for example, existed alongside “Tijuana Bibles”—illicitly sold pornographic comics, often featuring unauthorized depictions of celebrities. Two other factors limit the number of video games made expressly for pornography. First, making a video game is not like making a movie. One guy with a camera can shoot a scene for a porn flick, but a video game demands time and expertise that is not nearly so cheap or common. Producing even a simple game—even one as simple-minded as Custer’s Revenge— requires a major investment. No one can churn out thirteen thousand video games every year the way “the other Hollywood” does with porn movies. The second limitation brings us right back to the power of the word “you.” The effect of being immersed in a video game is qualitatively different from any medium in which the consumer is just a spectator. You don’t feel as though you’re pushing a button on a controller—you feel like you’re blowing up a tank. Translate that into sexuality, particularly acting out sexual fantasies, and you are playing with a power that few companies have been willing or able to harness. Although the explicitly erotic video game sector remains relatively small, it is still a driving force in the field. One of the few success stories in the adult video game genre is Virtually Jenna. Developed by Thrixxx Technologies (slogan “Simulates what stimulates”), whose Vancouver-based operation is run by Brad Abrams, this game has the advantage of trading on one of the most famous names in pornography, Jenna Jameson. As the eponymous title suggests, the game involves a computer-generated version of Jameson, along with those of many of her “friends.” Essentially, the game allows the user to be a porn-film director, setting up virtual scenarios and then playing them out. There are many options for different positions, toys, numbers of partners and so on. “The challenge,” Abrams said, “is that people’s imaginations are so extensive that in our role-playing games, even when you do all the animations, create all the scenarios, create content, outfits, you can’t match everybody’s fantasy.”

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

  The merging of two into one in orgasm, this blending of identity, combines bliss and anxiety in a strange stew. This may be the best explanation for why the orgasms of masturbation can be more powerful and feel more physically whole than those shared. They are simply safer. Murray Davis uses the phrase “fear of ontological contamination” to describe how we can hold our inner self in check even when our body is fully engaged. But one of the great utilities of sex is to overcome this—to create a place of ontological surrender. The release is separate from the simply physical gratification and yet it is felt physically and has physical effects. It is possible during sex—and not just in orgasm—to get out of one’s head in a quite literal way. You lose you for a while, and watch yourself go, and this as much as anything creates the almost total state of repose that follows. To lose oneself awhile can be such a relief. The odd thing about the human ego is how it both resists and longs for its own extinction; the ego is what gets us into bed in the first place, as much as our body; the ego is the selfish part of us that demands the pleasure of orgasm, that focuses self-centeredly on the body of another as a source of private pleasure, and it’s the ego that, ultimately, is killed by the result. Orgasm is a version of the ego’s death wish; it is the little death, a miniature reminder of the bigger one. Orgasm is an incandescent and inarticulate memory of the universe before birth. In The Tibetan Book of the Dead rebirth is felt initially as the sexual urge for one’s mother’s womb. Fear of sexual intimacy is distinctly related to the fear of death; the journey in and out of the body is like a journey into another world. (The joke goes like this: When does the atheist pray to God?) The cries of orgasm are curses as well as prayers—we call on God and Jesus and for all I know, Allah and Mohammed and Moses as well, and we say Yes, and we say No. Another joke: Don’t, stop, don’t, stop, don’t stop.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Perhaps due to my own issues with reproductive futurism, I’ve always been a little spooked by texts addressed to or dedicated to babies, be they unborn or infant. Such gestures are undoubtedly born from love, I know. But the illiteracy of the addressee—not to mention the temporal gap between the moment of the address and that at which the child will have grown into enough of an adult to receive it (presuming one ever becomes an adult, in relation to one’s parents)—underscores the discomfiting fact that relation can never be achieved in a simple fashion through writing, if it can be achieved at all. It frightens me to involve a tiny human being in this difficulty, this misfiring, from the start. And yet certain instances have undeniably moved me, such as André Breton’s letter to his infant daughter in Mad Love. Breton’s hetero romanticism is, as always, hard to take. But I like the sweet assurance he offers his daughter, that she was “thought of as possible, as certain, in the very moment when, in a love deeply sure of itself, a man and a woman wanted you to be.” Insemination after insemination, wanting our baby to be. Climbing up on the cold exam table, abiding the sting of the catheter threaded through the opal slit of my cervix, feeling the familiar cramp of rinsed, thawed seminal fluid pooling directly into my uterus. You holding my hand month after month, in devotion, in perseverance. They’re probably shooting egg whites, I said, tears sprouting. Shhh, you whispered. Shhh. The first few times we did the procedure, I brought a satchel of good luck charms. Sometimes, after the nurse dimmed the lights and left the room, you would hold me as I made myself come. The point wasn’t romance as much as it was to suck the specimen upward (even though we knew it was already about as far up as it could go). As the months went by, however, I started leaving the charms at home. Eventually I felt lucky if I made it to the class I was teaching with the right book in my hand, so scrambled had I become by all the early-morning temperature taking, impossible-to-read ovulation predictor kits, the tortuous examination of every “spin-like” excretion that exited my body, the sharp despair wrought by the first smudge of menstrual blood. Frustrated with our costly, ineffective approach, we off-roaded for a few months with a noble friend who generously agreed to be our donor, trading the cold metal table for the comfort of our bed, and pricey vials for our friend’s free specimen, which he would leave in our bathroom in a squat glass jar that used to hold Paul Newman salsa.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  Plenty of Christians, alas, have imagined that a “divine Jesus” had come to earth simply to reveal his divinity and save people away from earth for a distant “heaven.” (Some have even imagined, absurdly, that the point of “proving that Jesus really did all those things” is to show that the Bible is true—as though Jesus came to witness to the Bible rather than the other way around.) It has been all too possible to use the doctrine of the incarnation or even the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture as a way of protecting oneself and one’s worldview and political agenda against having to face the far greater challenge of God taking charge, of God becoming king, on earth as in heaven. But that is what the stories in the Bible are all about. That’s what the story of Jesus was, and is, all about. That is the real challenge, and skeptics aren’t the only ones who find clever ways to avoid it. Once we begin to see beyond these three distracting angles of vision, then, and grasp the story in its own terms, we find ourselves compelled forward into the narrative again. If the time is fulfilled, what will happen to bring even this fulfilled-time moment to its proper conclusion? If Jesus is behaving as though he were the Temple in person, what will this mean both for the existing Temple and for his followers? And if, through his work, new creation is breaking into the world, how is it going to make any headway against the apparently still all-powerful forces of corruption, evil, and death itself? 8 From V. Sander, St. Seraphim of Sarov, trans. Sr. Gabriel Anne (London: SPCK, 1975), pp. 15–16, as quoted in Roger Pooley and Philip Seddon, The Lord of the Journey (London: Collins, 1986), p. 51.Chapter 12 At the Heart of the Storm WITH ALL OF THIS now on the table, we return to the perfect storm: to the buildup of pressure from the Roman Empire in one direction, the thousand-year hope of Israel from another direction, and the cyclone itself, the strange and powerful purposes of God, sweeping in from yet a third angle. The gale of imperial pressure was bearing down on the Middle East. Some Jews, long before, had seen the Romans as potential allies against more immediate and localized enemies, but most now recognized Rome as the latest and perhaps the nastiest in a long sequence of pagan overlords stretching back half a millennium to Babylon and, a millennium before that again, to Egypt. But that recognition simply increased the high-pressure system of Jewish hopes, since the great Exodus story, celebrated time and time again, reminded Israel that when the tyrants did their worst, God would win the victory, liberate his people, and come to live among them once more.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  But he will do this through his “anointed,” through the one he calls “my son.” I have deliberately set out these passages at some length to show just how strong, just how deep-rooted in scripture, is the idea of YHWH himself coming to rule and reign as Israel’s king. Several of the themes one can observe in the sorry sequence of would-be kings from the Maccabees to bar-Kochba (see Chapter 9) emerge in a clear light: victory over the nations, the rescue of Israel from oppression, Jerusalem and the Temple as the proper dwelling place for God’s glory, and so on. But it is YHWH himself who will bring this about—or, in that final twist in Ezekiel 34, echoed in Psalm 2, YHWH himself acting in and through the Davidic king. The idea of YHWH alone as king, as expressed by the extreme revolutionaries in the first century, thus raises a big question. What will this mean in practice, in reality? What will it look like? How does all this line up, if it does, with the national expectation and hope? Will it underwrite it, will it overthrow it, or will it perhaps do both of those at the same time? Paying attention to the prophets would indicate that something like this third possibility was likely; but what would it actually mean? In particular, the question was raised: would YHWH actually appear, visibly and in person, to take charge? If so, what could people expect to see? How would it happen? Or, if not, would he act through chosen representatives—perhaps specially inspired prophets? (There was no shortage of people in the first century claiming prophetic inspiration, speaking urgent words from YHWH to his suffering and anxious people, sometimes promising them immediate and spectacular supernatural deliverance.) And if YHWH did choose to act in that way—acting in one sense all by himself, but in another through particular representatives—how would those people be equipped for the task? This, again, is where the ancient idea of “anointing” comes into play. An individual is solemnly smeared with holy oil as a sign, and perhaps a means, of a special “equipping,” or “enabling,” from YHWH himself to perform the necessary tasks. Such persons are no longer acting on their own authority or initiative, but on God’s. A dangerous claim, and one can imagine people being instantly cynical: “Claiming to speak for YHWH? What, another one? We’ve heard that before. You’re probably just a fraud like all the others.” There was, after all, no obvious model for what it might look like, how it might happen, that YHWH would do what all those psalms and prophets said and come in person to take charge, ruling the world, rescuing Israel, establishing his presence in the Temple, judging the nations, and causing the trees and the animals to shout for joy. The ancient scriptures are quite unhelpful on the matter.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  “You’ll have to find your own way,” she explained. “Find your own special thing to do with him. He tends to put us all into watertight compartments, and won’t let anyone ever encroach on somebody else’s territory. I believe this kind of ritual behavior is quite common with autistic children. Nanny is the only one who is allowed to read to him; he and I play backgammon—or try to.” She gave a short bark of a laugh. “He usually loses his temper. And he’ll help me in the garden or we’ll go for a walk. Just now, he’s out with my husband, who takes him for long drives. Though that’s not ideal really,” she added. “Herbert is not the world’s best driver. Anyway”—she brightened—“I’m sure you’ll find something. It’s really not difficult—not as hard as it sounds. He’s basically very open and loving. He generally adores grown-ups. He’ll be very eager to be your friend.” I hoped so. “What about other children?” I asked. “Does he have friends at school, for instance?” Jenifer shook her head. “No. Children worry him. Jacob is very tall for his age, you see, and he gets alarmed when little people scurry about. They’re too noisy. And I suppose they’re a bit frightened of him, and he senses that.” She stretched out her thin, brown legs and contemplated her feet, clad in clumsy men’s sandals. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve never sent him away. To a home or hospital.” She frowned, and her tone darkened. “Lots of people said that we should do that, but it’s ludicrous!” She seemed to be rehearsing an argument that she had had many times before. “We manage very well. With Nanny—and now that you’re coming it will be even better. We can’t just send him away. That seems terribly irresponsible. And in his own way, he’s happy here—as happy as he can be. He adores Nanny and he has lots of special adult friends. We’ve got a house in Cornwall, where we spend the Easter and summer vacs, and that’s marvelous for him. It’s a huge house, right on a cliff, and he feels free there. You must come down. We have interesting people to stay.” A key rattled in the front door and I looked up apprehensively. “He’ll be very shy at first,” Jenifer warned me. “He might even throw a tantrum. Just take no notice.” I swallowed hard and assumed what I hoped was a nonchalant expression. “Mummy!” There was a peremptory cry from the hall, a jumble of footsteps, and then Jacob exploded into the room. I was quite unprepared for him, and the artificial smile I had carefully put on turned involuntarily to one of genuine pleasure. Jacob was beautiful. Tall and slim, his skin delicately tanned, an elegantly structured face, and tousled blond curls. But also formidable: he slammed the door and looked warily around him. “Who is that?” He spoke quietly, separating each word with care.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Seductive as the religious life had undoubtedly been, he would tell me sternly, I had been running away from my true problems and responsibilities. Indeed, he clung to this idyllic vision so persistently when I tried to interject a little reality into the discussion that I sometimes wondered what psychological significance this fiction held for him. True, we had been shielded from some of the uncomfortable realities of the outside world, but anybody who entered a convent simply to escape unpleasantness would not have lasted a month, let alone seven years. Furthermore, it was not really accurate to say that I had been running away. The core of most of our problems is our own self, and in the religious life I had been forced to confront this self for twenty-four hours a day 365 days a year. You have far more opportunities to escape from self-knowledge in secular life. It is very easy to change the subject, pick up the telephone, turn on the television, or pour a stiff drink. None of these options was available in the convent, and as a result we very quickly came to a most uncomfortable perception of our own limitations. But Dr. Piet was my only chance. Without him I could be condemned to a lifetime of these uncanny eruptions of horror, each one of which made the darkness encroach a little more. I felt as though I were standing on a beach with my back to a cliff, watching the tide creep up the shore a little closer . . . and then a little closer still. So I went back to Dr. Piet, telling myself that I couldn’t expect a miracle overnight. What did I know about psychiatry and the mystery of the human mind? If I persevered I might well find that everything suddenly fell into place. But then I would be overtaken by a queasy sense of déjà vu. This was exactly the sort of reasoning that I had used in the convent, and look where it had got me. It was a hot, sticky day in July 1970. The room in the Examination Schools that had been set aside for the viva voce examination seemed to echo to our footsteps as the four of us trooped in and sat in a miserable little huddle against the wall. I looked hopelessly at the members of the board of examiners, who were sitting around three sides of a large table in the big bay window—sixteen dons in full academic dress, gazing at us expressionlessly. Opposite them was a lonely chair for the candidate, and the ten question papers of the final examinations that we had sat some six weeks earlier. I was pleased and relieved to be summoned to a viva. In the English Faculty, only those who were borderline cases between classes, or who were being considered for a first-class degree, had to undergo an oral examination.