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 Mud Vein (2014)

  He shakes his head. “I thought it was just of two very depressed people on the beach.” I smile. “We are like the first two people,” I say. “Adam and Eve?” He’s already so full of disbelief I don’t even want to tell him the rest. I shrug. “Sure.” “Go on,” he says. “God put them in the garden and told them not to eat the forbidden fruit, remember?” Now it’s Isaac’s turn to shrug. “Yeah, I guess. Sunday school one-o- one.” “Once they were tempted and ate the fruit they were on their own, exiled from God’s provision and his protection in the place he created for them.” When Isaac doesn’t say anything, I go on. “They leave perfection and have to fend for themselves—hunt, garden, experience cold and death and childbirth.” I flush after the last word leaves my mouth. It was dumb of me to mention childbirth considering Daphne and their unborn baby. But Isaac doesn’t skip a beat. “So you’re saying,” he says, crinkling his eyebrows together, “that so long as we stay here—in the place our kidnapper provided for us—we will be safe and he will keep the heat and food coming?” “It’s just a wild guess, Isaac. I don’t really know.” “So what’s the forbidden fruit?” I tap my finger on the tabletop. “The keypad, maybe…” “This is sick,” he says. “And if one painting means that much, what else is hidden in here?” I don’t want to think about it. “I’ll make dinner tonight,” I say. I look out the window as I peel potatoes over the sink. And then I look down at the peelings, all piled up and gross looking. We should eat those. We will probably be starving soon, wishing we had a sliver of potato skin. I scoop up shreds and hold them in my palm, not sure what to do with them. I counted the potatoes before I chose four of the smallest ones out of the fifty-pound bag. Seventy potatoes. How long could we stretch that? And the flour, and rice and oatmeal? It seemed like a lot, but we had no idea how long we’d be imprisoned here. Imprisoned. Here. I eat the skins. At least they won’t go to waste that way. God. I am grimacing and gagging on my potato skin when I drop the potato I’m holding into the sink and press the heel of my hand to my forehead. I have to focus. Stay positive. I can’t let myself sink into that dark place. My therapist tried to teach me techniques to cope with emotional overload. Why hadn’t I listened? I remember something about a garden … walking through it and touching flowers. Was that what she’d said?

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  Your best defense against gagging whenever you take your lover’s penis into your mouth is to be in control. One of the best ways to assert your control is to use what I call The Seal and The Ring: first, with your thumb and forefinger forming an adjustable “okay” sign, place your fingers around your mouth; this way you not only add length to your mouth (the average penis is five to six inches, and our average mouths are only two to three inches). This is known as The Seal. Then, with your thumb and forefinger, tighten and release the pressure, determining exactly how deeply his penis enters your mouth; this is known as The Ring. If, during an oral encounter, you find that in spite of your best efforts he is too far into your mouth, making you feel as if you’re going to choke, try these suggestions for relaxing the gag reflex: • Stop your mouth motion until the sensation passes, keeping your hand in motion so that he does not lose the sensation and his erection. • Go on to another move, such as licking or “The Big W”. • Slow down and breathe deeply. While he may attribute your deep breathing to sexual excitement, you’ll be giving your upper palate a chance to relax. • Shift the angle at which his penis is entering your mouth. A simple position change can make a big difference. If his penis comes into your mouth straight on, it will go directly to the back of your throat. This would make any woman gag. The trick is to be between his legs and have your mouth come down onto his penis from above. Remember, the object is for you do be doing this to him, not the other way around. If you come down onto his penis, you will have the control necessary to stop it from going any farther than is comfortable for you. No need to worry that he will be making an “L” turn down your throat. The area at the back of the soft palate is very flexible and can easily accommodate the average penis. By using The Seal and The Ring, you can effectively create a deep throat sensation without having the entire penis in your mouth. One man, a producer of infomercials from the Midwest, described his experience: “My wife is able to take me into the back of her mouth when I am fully erect and I can feel the back of her throat. It is really soft and moist. Then she does the swallowing motion when I am back there. It feels terrific, but not as terrific as when I am soft; when I’m soft, the feeling is ten times more intense.” Secret from Lou’s Archives

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  [image file=image14.jpg] He came every night. Sometimes as early as three o’ clock in the afternoon, sometimes as late as nine. It was alarming how quickly a person could acquiesce to something—something like a stranger in your house, sleeping and scooping grounds into your Mr. Coffee. When he started buying groceries and cooking meals it felt permanent. Like I suddenly had a roommate or a family member I never signed up for. But on the nights he came late I found myself anxious, pacing the hallways in three pairs of socks, unable to stay in one room for more than a few seconds before I moved to the next. The worst part was, when he arrived, I immediately retreated to my bedroom to hide. None of the relief I felt at seeing the lights of his car reflected through my windows was allowed to show. It was cold, but it was survival. I wanted to ask him why he was late. Was it surgery? Did they make it? But I didn’t dare. Every morning I woke up to find another of his business cards on the counter. I stopped throwing them away after a few days and let them pile up near the fruit bowl. The fruit bowl that was always filled with fruit, because he bought it and put it there: red and green apples, yellow pears, the occasional fuzzy kiwi. We didn’t speak much. It was a silent relationship, which I was fine with. He fed me and I said thank you, then he went to sleep on my couch. I started to wonder how well I’d be sleeping if he wasn’t guarding the door. If I’d sleep at all. The couch was short—too short for his six-foot frame; it was the smaller of the two that I owned. One day while he was at the hospital I took a break from staring at the fire to push the longer couch in front of the door. I left him a better pillow and a warmer blanket. There was one particular night that he didn’t arrive until almost eleven. I’d given up on him coming altogether, thinking our strange relationship had finally run its course. I was on my way up the stairs when I heard a quiet knock on the door. Just a rap rap rap. It could have been a gust of wind it was so light. But in my hope I heard it. He didn’t look at me when I opened the door. Or wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. He seemed to be finding my pavers particularly interesting, and then the spot just above my left shoulder. He had dark crescents under his eyes, two hollow moons cradling his lashes. It would have been a hard call to decide who looked worse—me in my layers of clothing or Isaac with his droopy shoulders. We both looked beat up.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I sink beneath the weight of it all. Isaac stirs behind me, and then he is leaning over me, his elbows on either side of my head. “The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free. Two days later Isaac gets sick. It’s the kind of sick that scares me. At first when I question him, he tells me that nothing is wrong. But then the tiny beads of sweat start to collect on his brow and upper lip like condensation. I narrow my eyes at him as we eat. He’s clearly forcing down his food. His skin looks like wax—shiny and colorless. “Okay, doctor,” I say, setting down my fork. “Diagnose yourself, and then tell me what to do.” My voice is light, but something in my gut is telling that this is bad. We don’t have any more antibiotics. We don’t really have any more anything. I checked our supplies earlier: a couple tubes of burn cream and a surplus of bandages and alcohol wipes. We’ve been trying to save the power and use the logs from the well, but we are running low on those, too. I realize I’ve been waiting too long for Isaac’s answer. He’s staring at his plate, not really seeing anything. “Isaac…” I touch his hand and my eyes grow wide. “I’d say you have a fever.” My lips feel dry. I flick my tongue over the top of them while considering Isaac’s fever. “Let’s get you upstairs, okay?” He nods. An hour later he is trembling uncontrollably. I’ve shaken like this—I can remember each time. But my trembling was emotion. The body deals with attacks the same way—emotional or not. Isaac was always the one to make it go away. I can’t do the same for him. What he needs is beyond what my body can do for him. I can’t get him to wake up. He never told me what to do. His body says he’s hot—too hot—but this cabin is a freezer. Do I keep him warm, or cool him down? I sit next to him and try to pray. If I lean close to his face I can feel the heat rising off his skin. No one taught me how to pray. I don’t know who I’m praying to: an obese god who is always grinning? A god with a woman’s head that sits on a man’s body? A god with holes in his hands and feet? I pray to whichever it is. My mouth moves with words—begging, pleading words. I’ve never spoken to God before. I partly blame him for the bad that’s happened to me.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  There are sixty-three books scattered throughout the house. I’ve picked up each one, flipped through the pages, touched the numbers at the top right corners. I started reading two of them—both classics that I’ve already read—but I can’t get my mind to focus. I have twenty-three light, colorful sweaters, six pairs of jeans, six pairs of sweatpants, twelve pairs of socks, eighteen shirts, twelve pairs of yoga pants. One pair of rain boots—in Isaac’s size. There are six additional pieces of artwork on the walls, other than the F. Cayley; each of the others is by the Ukranian illusionist, Oleg Shuplyak. In the living room is “Sparrows” one of his milder pieces. But scattered across the rest of the house are the blurred faces of famous historical figures, blended almost indecipherably with landscapes. The one in the attic room disturbs me the most. I’ve tried to pry it from the wall with a butter knife, but it’s cemented so firmly I can’t get it to budge. It depicts a hooded man, his outstretched arms wielding two scythes. His mouth gapes and his eyes are two dark, empty holes. At first all you see is the eerie emptiness—the impending violence. Then your eyes adjust and the skull comes into view: the dark sockets of eyes between the scythes, the teeth, which seconds ago were simply a pattern on a garment. My kidnapper hung death in my bedroom. The sentiment makes me sick. The rest of the prints scattered throughout the house include: Hitler and the dragon, Freud and the lake, Darwin under the bridge with the mysterious cloaked figure. My least favorite is “Winter” in which a man is riding a yak over a snow-covered village while two eyes peer coldly at me. That one feels like a message. When I have counted everything in my closet and Isaac’s, I start counting things in the kitchen. I note the colors of the furniture and the walls. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I need to do something with my brain. When I run out of things to count, I talk to Isaac. He makes us coffee like he used to, and we sit at the table. “Why did you want to fly away on your red bike?” He raises his eyebrows. He’s not used to questions from me. “I don’t know anything about you,” I say. “You never seemed to want to.” That stings. It’s not entirely untrue. I have that whole stay the hell away from me thing going on. “I didn’t.” I count the kitchen cabinets. I forgot to do that. “Why not?” He spins his coffee cup in a circle, and lifts it to his mouth. Before he can take a sip he sets it down again. I have to take a moment to think about that one. “It’s just who I am.” “Because you choose to be?” “This conversation was supposed to be about you.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I started shaking my head before the words were out of his mouth. “I’ve seen a psychiatrist before. I’m not into it.” “I’m not talking about medicating yourself,” he said. “You need to talk about what happened. A therapist—it’s very different.” “I don’t need to see a shrink,” I said. “I’m fine. I’m dealing.” The idea of counseling petrified me; all of your inner thoughts put in a glass box, to be seen by someone who spent years studying how to properly judge thoughts. How was that okay? There was something perverse about the process and the people who chose to do it for a living. Like a man being a gynecologist. What’s in this for you, you freak? Isaac leaned forward until he was uncomfortably close to my face and I could see his irises, pure grey without any flecks or color variations. “You have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. You were just diagnosed with breast cancer. You. Are. Not. Okay.” He pushed away from the table and stood up. I opened my mouth to deny it, but I sighed instead, watching his white coat disappear through the cafeteria doors. He was wrong. My eyes found the scar from the night I cut myself. It was pink, the skin around it tight and shiny. He hadn’t said anything when he found me bleeding, hadn’t asked me how or why. He had simply fixed it. I stood up and walked in his wake. If someone was going to be digging around in my chest with a scalpel, I wanted it to be the guy who showed up and fixed things. He was standing at the main entrance to the hospital when I found him, hands tucked into his pockets. He waited until I reached him and we walked in silence to his car. We were far enough apart that we couldn’t touch, close enough together that it was clear we were together. I slid quietly into the front seat, folding my hands in my lap and staring out the window until he pulled into my driveway. I was about to get out—halfway suspended between car and driveway—when he put his hand on my arm. My eyebrows were drawn together. I could almost feel them touching. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to promise I’d see a counselor. “Fine.” I yanked myself out of his reach and stalked toward my house. I had the key in the lock, but my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t turn it. Isaac came up behind me and put his hand over mine.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I want to purge it with a gallon of snow. His eyes flicker. He’s remembering. “The dedication in his book.” Our eyes are connected, so I don’t need to nod. “Would he…?” “I don’t know anything anymore.” “What does it mean?” he asks. I lower my eyes away from his, and to the blood letters. For MV “What’s inside?” I ask. “I’ll open it when you tell me why the zookeeper addressed that box to Mud Vein.” The box is just out of my reach. To get to it I’ll have to use something to pull myself up. Since the couch no longer has a back, there is nothing I can use for leverage. Isaac, I realize, is being very strategic. I take a breath; it is broken in half by a sob that never reaches my lips. My chest convulses as I open my mouth to speak. I don’t want to tell him anything, but I must. “It’s the black vein that curves around the back of a shrimp. Nick called it the mud vein. You have to remove it to make the shrimp clean…” My voice is monotone. “Why did he call you that?” When Isaac and I ask each other questions it reminds me of a tennis match. Once you’ve sent one over the net, you know it’s going to come back, you just don’t know the direction. “Isn’t it obvious?” He blinks at me. One second, two seconds, three seconds… “No.” “I don’t get you,” I say. “You don’t get you,” he shoots back. We have resumed our eye transmissions. I’m glaring, but his stare is more candid. After a minute he steps over to the box and opens it. I try not to lean forward. I try not to hold my breath, but there is a white box with the words For MV stenciled on the lid in blood. I am aching to know what’s inside. Isaac reaches down. I hear the gentle whisper of paper. When his hand comes up he’s holding a loose page that looks as if it’s been torn from a book. The corners have soaked up some blood. For MV Blood soaked pages, for MV… Who knew that Nick called me that, besides Nick himself? Isaac starts to read. “The punishment for her peace was upon him, and he gave her rest.” I hold out my hand. I want to see the page, know who wrote it. It wasn’t Nick; I know his style. It wasn’t me. I take the blood-stained page, careful to keep my fingers away from the red parts. I read silently what Isaac read out loud. The page is numbered 212. There is no title or author name.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  ANXIOUS APHRODISIACSAs an organism determined to survive, you are equipped to assess risks and avoid danger. Fear makes your heart and breathing rates increase. Yet each breath becomes shallower as your chest muscles and diaphragm tense up in a protective armor. Your arms and legs prepare to defend, hit, kick, or escape. Your vision, hearing, and sense of smell become ultra-sensitized. Yet your sense of touch tends to numb so that you won’t be distracted by pain. You’re pumping out adrenaline to optimize your physical strength and alertness. Whereas fear is usually a response to fairly specific and imminent dangers—including all kinds of physical and emotional attacks—anxiety is concerned with potential dangers, whether conscious or unconscious. Research at the Menninger Foundation has shown that the unconscious mind does not distinguish between real and imagined threats.6 Even when the focus of anxiety is “all in your head,” your body responds as if the danger is real. The subjective experiences of fear and anxiety have so much in common that I use the two words interchangeably throughout our discussion. The relationship between anxiety and eroticism is intricate and paradoxical. If you are highly anxious in a sexual situation, your physical capacities for arousal or orgasm or both will usually be short-circuited. Modern sex therapy can effectively teach sexually anxious people how to reduce fear and create opportunities for pleasure. However, to view anxiety solely as antithetical to arousal is to blind ourselves to a richer and more challenging reality: just as surely as anxiety can disrupt arousal, it can also create, focus, and intensify it. Depending on the situation and the individuals involved, anxiety is either an antiaphrodisiac or an aphrodisiac—occasionally both. Anxiety intensifies arousal by contributing to a generalized state of physical excitation. All forms of excitement, sexual and nonsexual alike, increase muscular tension, blood flow, and heart and breathing rates. Consequently, your body responds similarly to anxiety-provoking and sexually arousing situations. For instance, some men and women spontaneously experience sexual arousal in a wide range of frightening situations, including everything from fights to roller-coaster rides to sexual assaults.7 ANXIETY AND THE FOUR CORNERSTONESIn addition to the physiological links between fear and sexual excitement, anxiety is a natural response to many of the risks and dangers inherent in the four cornerstones. During the experience of longing and anticipation, the urge to be with the one you desire is paramount. But within your yearning may lurk uncertainty and fear. Is the attraction mutual? Will you ever see her again? Will he still feel the same way about you? Does she miss you as much as you miss her? Will the two of you be as sexually compatible as you hope, or as you have been before? Are you setting yourself up for hurt or disappointment?

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The writer who produces “too much of it too fast and too glibly” runs the risk of believing in his own creations. “It appears to me inevitable that anyone writing several million words of fantasy and science-fiction should ultimately begin to internalize the assumptions underlying the verbiage.” Dianetics, Hayakawa noted, was neither science nor fiction, but something else: “fictional science.” Not all scientists rejected Hubbard’s approach. One of his early supporters was Campbell’s brother-in-law Dr. Joseph Winter, a physician who had also written for Astounding Science-Fiction. Searching for a more holistic approach to medicine, Winter traveled to New Jersey to experience Hubbard’s method firsthand. “While listening to Hubbard ‘running’ one of his patients, or while being ‘run’ myself, I would find myself developing unaccountable pains in various portions of my anatomy, or becoming extremely fatigued and somnolent,” he reported. “I had nightmares of being choked, of having my genitalia cut off, and I was convinced that dianetics as a method could produce effects.” Hubbard’s method involved placing the patient in a state of “reverie,” achieved by giving the command “When I count from one to seven your eyes will close.” A tremble of the lashes as the eyelids flutter shut signals that the subject has fallen into a receptive condition. “This is not hypnotism,” Hubbard insists. Although a person in a Dianetic reverie may appear to be in a trance, the opposite is the case, he says: “The purpose of therapy is to awaken a person in every period of his life when he has been forced into ‘unconsciousness.’ Dianetics wakes people up.” Sara watched the effect that Ron was having on his patients. “He would hold hands with them and try to talk them into these phony memories,” she recalled. “He would concentrate on them and they loved it. They were so excited about someone who would just pay this much attention to them.” Dr. Winter tried out Hubbard’s techniques on his six-year-old son, who was afraid of the dark because he was terrified of being choked by ghosts. Winter asked him to remember the first time he saw a ghost. “He has on a long white apron, a little white cap on his head and a piece of white cloth on his mouth,” the boy said. He even had a name for the ghost—it happened to be the same as that of the obstetrician who delivered him.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “There is a pantry, there—” he nods toward a narrow door to the left of the table. “It’s stocked with enough food to last for months. There is a fifty-pound bag of flour. But the wood closet only has enough wood to last a few weeks. Four at most if we ration it.” I don’t want to think about the gargantuan bag of flour, so I pretend I didn’t hear him. The wood, however, bothers me. I’d rather not freeze to death. There are plenty of trees outside. If we could get outside, that is. We’d have wood. “The carousel room,” he says. “Do you find it strange?” His voice is clear, precise. It’s the one he uses with his patients. I’m not one of his patients and I don’t appreciate being spoken to like one. “Yes,” I say simply. “The book?” His voice moves to gruff. “There was nothing in there about the carousel, was there?” “No,” I say. “There wasn’t” There didn’t need to be. “Do you think this could be one of your fans? Someone obsessed?” I don’t want to think about that, but it has already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for this. “It’s possible,” I say cautiously. “But that doesn’t explain you.” “Have you been getting any threats, strange letters?” “No, Isaac.” He looks up when I say his name. “Senna, you need to think carefully. This could make a difference.” “I have!” I snap. “There have been no letters out of the norm, no e-mails. Nothing!” He nods, walks to the fridge. “What are you doing?” I ask, spinning in my seat to watch him. “Making us something to eat.” “I’m not hungry,” I say quickly. “We don’t know how long we’ve been out. You need to eat and drink something or you’ll dehydrate.” He starts taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter. He finds a glass, fills it with water from the faucet, and brings it to me. It’s a funny color. I take it. How can I eat or drink at a time like this? I force the water down because he’s standing in front of me, waiting. I stare blindly at the snow outside as he stands at the stove. The stove is gas; brand new from the looks of it. When he comes back to the table he’s carrying two plates, each piled with scrambled eggs. The smell makes me sick. He sets it down in front of me and I pick up the fork. Weapons, we have so many: forks, knives … you’d think if someone were coming back, they wouldn’t provide us with these things to attack them with. I voice my thoughts, and Isaac nods. “I know.” Of course he had already thought of this. Always two steps ahead… “Your hair is different,” he says. “It took me a minute to recognize you … upstairs.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.” “Is it?” My mouth is dry. My tongue is sticking to the inside of my mouth. I try to shift it around—to the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, but it sticks, sticks, sticks. “You had a psychotic break. You tried to kill yourself.” “I would never,” I say. I love death. I think about it all the time, but to actually act out a suicide is unlike me. “You called me from yourrr home at three o’clock in the morrrning. You were delusional. You werrre starving yourself. Keeping yourrrself awake with pills. When they took you in you hadn’t slept in nine days. You were experiencing hallucinations, paranoia and memory lapses.” That’s not suicide, I think. But then I’m not so sure. I lift my hands off the top of the table where they are resting and hide them between my thighs. “You were saying one thing overrr and overrr when they brought you in. Do you rememberrr?” I make a noise in the back of my throat. If I ask her what I was saying I’m acknowledging that I believe her. And I don’t believe her. Except that I can hear screaming in my head. “Pink hippo,” she says. My throat constricts. The screaming gets louder. I want to reach up and put my hands over my ears to quell the sound. “No,” I say. “Yes, Senna. You were.” “No!” I slam my fist on the table. Saphira’s eyes grow large. “I was saying Zippo .” There is silence. All consuming, chilling, silence. I realize I was baited. The corners of her mouth curl up. “Ah, yes,” she says. “Z, for Zippo. My mistake.” It’s like I’ve just woken up from a dream—not a good one—just a dream that concealed a reality I’d somehow forgotten. I’m not freaking out, I’m not panicking. It feels as if I’m waking up from a long sleep. I’m compelled to stand and stretch my muscles. I hear the screaming again, but now it’s connected to a memory. I’m in a locked room. I’m not trying to get out. I don’t care about getting out. I’m just curled up on a metal cot, screaming. They can’t get me to stop. I’ve been like that for hours. I only stop when they sedate me, but as soon as the drugs wear off, I’m screaming again. “What made me stop screaming?” I ask her. My voice is so calm. I can’t remember everything. It’s all in pieces; smells and sounds and overwhelming emotions that were there at once, making me feel like I was about to implode. “Isaac.” I jar at the sound of his name. “What are you talking about?” “I called Isaac,” she says. “He came.” “Ohgodohgodohgod.” I bend over at the waist, hugging myself. I remember. I’ve been falling, and now I’ve finally hit the ground. Flashes of him coming into the room and climbing into the cot behind me.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I’m not one of his patients and I don’t appreciate being spoken to like one. “Yes,” I say simply. “The book?” His voice moves to gruff. “There was nothing in there about the carousel, was there?” “No,” I say. “There wasn’t” There didn’t need to be. “Do you think this could be one of your fans? Someone obsessed?” I don’t want to think about that, but it has already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for this. “It’s possible,” I say cautiously. “But that doesn’t explain you.” “Have you been getting any threats, strange letters?” “No, Isaac.” He looks up when I say his name. “Senna, you need to think carefully. This could make a difference.” “I have!” I snap. “There have been no letters out of the norm, no e-mails. Nothing!” He nods, walks to the fridge. “What are you doing?” I ask, spinning in my seat to watch him. “Making us something to eat.” “I’m not hungry,” I say quickly. “We don’t know how long we’ve been out. You need to eat and drink something or you’ll dehydrate.” He starts taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter. He finds a glass, fills it with water from the faucet, and brings it to me. It’s a funny color. I take it. How can I eat or drink at a time like this? I force the water down because he’s standing in front of me, waiting. I stare blindly at the snow outside as he stands at the stove. The stove is gas; brand new from the looks of it. When he comes back to the table he’s carrying two plates, each piled with scrambled eggs. The smell makes me sick. He sets it down in front of me and I pick up the fork. Weapons, we have so many: forks, knives … you’d think if someone were coming back, they wouldn’t provide us with these things to attack them with. I voice my thoughts, and Isaac nods. “I know.” Of course he had already thought of this. Always two steps ahead… “Your hair is different,” he says. “It took me a minute to recognize you … upstairs.” I blink at him. Are we really talking about my hair? I feel self-conscious about my white streak. I make sure it’s tucked away, behind my ear. “I grew it out.” Put food in mouth, chew, swallow, put food in mouth, chew, swallow. We don’t speak about my hair anymore. When I am finished eating, I announce that I need to use the restroom. I ask him to come with me. The only bathroom in the house is the one in the bedroom where I found Isaac. He waits outside the door, knife in hand. Before we leave the kitchen he upgrades to a larger one. It is almost funny, but not. Big knife, big wound.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Maybe I had a chronological way of dealing with things; a writer’s route to solving problems. Her insouciance over the matter was what finally won me over. It was as if the entire time I saw her I was counting down the days until I would have to tell her about the rape, dreading the pity I’d see appear her eyes. But there was none. “Life happens,” she said. “Bad things happen because we live in a world with evil.” And then she’d asked me the strangest thing. “Do you blame God?” It had never occurred to me to blame God since I didn’t believe in him. “If I believed in God, I would blame him. I suppose it’s easier not to believe, then I have nothing to be angry at.” She smiled. A cat’s curl smile. And then it was over, and I’d left a free woman, my purgatory served. Isaac would operate on me now. I would be free of cancer, free to move forward without fear. Without some of the fear. That night I started having the dreams again, hands pushing and pulling at me. Sharp pain and humiliation. The feeling of helplessness and panic. I woke up screaming, but there was no Isaac. I got in the shower to wash away the dream, shivering under the scalding water. I couldn’t fall back to sleep with those images so fresh in my mind, so I sat in my office and pretended to write the book my agent was waiting for. The book I had no words for. At noon, five days before my surgery, I dressed to go to the hospital for my pre-op appointment. It was March and the sun had been fighting the clouds for a week. Today the sky was uninterrupted blue. I felt resentful of the sun. That thought made me think of the things Nick used to say about me. You’re all grey. Everything you love, the way you see the world. I walked out to my car, stepping around puddles of rainwater from the day before. They were colored like an oyster shell, iridescent from the oil collected from my car or Isaac’s. When I got to the driver’s side door, I saw a cardboard square underneath my wiper blade. I darted a look over my shoulder before plucking it out. He had been here. Last night? This morning? Why hadn’t he rung the bell? I climbed into the car a little bit excited and slipped the CD from the sleeve. This time he’d written the name of the song on the disk in red permanent marker. Kill Your Heroes , Awolnation. My hands were shaking as I hit play. I listened with my eyes closed, wondering if all people listened to music with words this way.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Even though emotional transformations find their most dramatic expression in fantasy, peak encounters are also common settings for amazing emotional switch-overs. Once you recognize the changeability and fluidity of feelings, you will begin to notice that emotional transformations permeate erotic life. Here are the most common ways in which emotions redirect themselves during fulfilling sex: Emotional Transformations Anxiety [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Security Weakness [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Strength Guilt [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Freedom Anger [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Appreciation Emotional transformations play an important role in most of The Group’s stories. Remember how Glynis overcame her persistent fear about having sex with another woman and found a sense of celebration? Or how Denise transformed the guilt she felt about having sex with her boss into defiant liberation? Emotional aphrodisiacs follow their own rules, the first of which is that they refuse to be restricted by rationality. Whether for good or ill, feelings exist to be felt. To resist or deny our emotions is to strengthen them. True, the unpredictability of the emotional aphrodisiacs makes them potentially dangerous and bewildering. Trust your erotic mind, however, and even your least loving feelings may pull you circuitously toward pleasure and connection. 5YOUR CORE EROTIC THEMEAn internal blueprint for arousal transforms old wounds and conflicts into excitation. When you contemplate the assortment of images and encounters that have aroused you, what do you see? There are those who perceive merely a random collection of events, each the result of a unique set of circumstances, separate and unrelated. Considering the effort you’ve invested in exploring your peak turn-ons, I suspect you’ve glimpsed recurring patterns among varied erotic experiences. But like most people, you’re probably confused about what these patterns mean—or even what to call them. Borrowing a term from the dramatic arts that everybody understands, sociologists William Simon and John Gagnon have proposed that we name these patterns “sexual scripts.” Furthermore, they insist that our sexual fantasies and activities are influenced by these scripts to a far greater degree than most of us realize. They divide them into three basic types: (1) cultural scripts, (2) interpersonal scripts, and (3) intrapsychic (within the mind) scripts.1 All of us absorb an array of customs and traditions from our cultures, many having to do with sexuality. Invariably included are strong expectations for each gender along with deep-seated ideas about when, where, with whom, how, and how much sex is appropriate. Because cultural scripts are pervasive and begin impinging upon us from our first breaths, they become as much a part of who we are as our native language. Accordingly, they function automatically and are rarely questioned. Even sexual rebels are products of their cultures. They may violate society’s norms and ideals, but they can only stake out their positions in relation to the very standards they’re rejecting.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Because fashion and novelty are outlawed, one feels comfortably encased in a timeless, unchanging vacuum. The enforced conformity dims the noise of diversity and the anxiety of uncertainty; one feels closer to eternity. One is also aware of the electrified fence of orthodoxy that surrounds and protects this Edenic paradise, and the expulsion that awaits those who doubt or question. Still, there is a kind of quiet majesty in the Amish culture—not because of their rejection of modernity, but because of their principled non-violence and their adherence to a way of living that tempers their fanaticism. The Amish suffer none of the social opprobrium that Scientologists must endure; indeed, they are generally treated like beloved endangered animals, coddled by their neighbors and smiled upon by society. And yet they are highly schismatic, willing to break off all relations with their dearest relatives on what would seem to an outsider to be an inane point of doctrine or even the question of whether one can allow eaves on a house or pictures on a wall. As adorable as the Amish appear to strangers, such isolated and intellectually deprived religious communities can become self- destructive, especially when they revolve around the whims of a single tyrannical leader. David Koresh created such a community in the Branch Davidian compound that he established near Waco and aptly called Ranch Apocalypse. In 1993, I was asked to write about the siege that was then under way. I decided not to, because there were more reporters on the scene than Branch Davidians; however, I had been unsettled by the sight of the twenty-one children that Koresh sent out of the compound shortly before the fatal inferno. Those children left behind their parents and the only life they had known. They were ripped out of the community of faith, placed in government vans, and ushered through a curtain of federal agents and reporters onto the stage of an alien world and who knows what future. I thought there must be other children who had experienced similar traumas; what had become of them? There is a strangely contorted mound in a cemetery in Oakland, California, close by the naval hospital where Hubbard spent his last months in uniform. Under an undistinguished headstone rest four hundred bodies out of the more than nine hundred followers of Jim Jones who perished in Jonestown in 1978. The caskets had been stacked on top of one another on the side of a bulldozed hillside, then the earth was filled in, grass was planted, and the tragedy of Jonestown was buried in the national memory as one more inexplicable religious calamity.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Audre: Because ... I don’t write stories. I write poetry. So I had to put it under another name. Adrienne: Because it was a different piece of you? Audre: That’s right. I only write poetry and here is this story. But I used the name Rey Domini, which is Audre Lorde in Latin. Adrienne: Did you really not write prose from the time of that story until a couple of years ago, when you wrote “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”? Audre: I couldn’t. For some reason, the more poetry I wrote, the less I felt I could write prose. Someone would ask for a book review, or, when I worked at the library, for a precis about books — it wasn’t that I didn’t have the skills. I knew about sentences by that time. I knew how to construct a paragraph. But communicating deep feeling in linear, solid blocks of print felt arcane, a method beyond me. Adrienne: But you’d been writing letters like wildfire, hadn’t you? Audre: Well, I didn’t write letters as such. I wrote stream of consciousness, and for people who were close enough to me this would serve. My friends gave me back the letters I wrote them from Mexico — strange, those are the most formed. I remember feeling I could not focus on a thought long enough to have it from start to finish, but I could ponder a poem for days, camp out in its world. Adrienne: Do you think that was because you still had this idea that thinking was a mysterious process that other people did and that you had to sort of practice? That it wasn’t something you just did? Audre: It was a very mysterious process for me. And it was one I had come to suspect because I had seen so many errors committed in its name, and I had come not to respect it. On the other hand, I was also afraid of it because there were inescapable conclusions or convictions I had come to about my own life, my own feelings, that defied thought. And I wasn’t going to let them go. I wasn’t going to give them up. They were too precious to me. They were life to me. But I couldn’t analyze or understand them because they didn’t make the kind of sense I had been taught to expect through understanding. There were things I knew and couldn’t say. And I couldn’t understand them. Adrienne: In the sense of being able to take them out, analyze them, defend them? Audre: ... write prose about them. Right. I wrote a lot of those poems you first knew me by, those poems in The First Cities, * way back in high school.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Johnny lets out a quick breath of air, a cross between a sigh and a chuckle. He’s thinking about it. I bite my lip and wait for a response. I know I’m probably bright red so I’m thankful we are standing in the dark. Is a kiss sometimes just a kiss? Am I scandalizing him with my forwardness? “OK, let’s go back to my house. I can’t leave the dog alone much longer. Do you want to follow me?” he asks. Much as what I really want is a ride in that shiny red pickup with its fresh upholstery, I agree to follow him. His house is at least twenty minutes north of here and I don’t want to do a walk of shame back to my car later with the busybody on the balcony watching. I’m already judging myself more harshly than she possibly can and when Johnny gets into his car, I’m tempted to yell up to her, “Don’t judge me! My husband of 27 years shattered my heart and I’m trying to put it back together! I’m just starting to figure it out on the most infinitesimal level, so be kind!” But honestly, do I really care? I want to be desired and I’m about to have sex with another man. I pull out, spin around in a quick U-turn and Johnny and I are on our way to his house. Ten minutes on dark rural roads, and then ten more minutes on the Interstate. A few miles off the highway, we pull into a suburban enclave, ranch houses with long driveways and mailboxes in front. I’m surprised by the mundanity. I had imagined him and his big dog out in a starry field somewhere, in a cabin he’d built himself over time. I laugh at my romanticism as Johnny pulls into a driveway next to a split-level and points me off to the side. He drives his pickup into the detached garage and then minutes tick by as he moves other cars around, pulling his work van out of the garage and then a second work van back into the garage. I can’t help but feel this is a delay tactic and he regrets having invited me here. After an uncomfortably long wait in which I try to lean sultrily against my car but finally give up and do a crossword puzzle on my phone instead, he’s ready to go inside. As we enter, I see a set of weights to one side and a washer/dryer with dirty laundry piled on top on the other side. I’m suddenly aware that going to an anonymous hotel room with a man in which the most personal item on display was a motorcycle helmet is very different from being inside a man’s home and seeing how he lives, what he lifts and what his laundry habits are.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Matt Dillon and Tony Danza came aboard. Heath Ledger and John Cusack agreed to work for scale, as everyone did. Still, the project dragged on. Finally, Haggis was told the movie was a go. He then sent the script to John Travolta and Kelly Preston, who he thought would be perfect as the district attorney and his wife. “That’s great, because now we really need them,” one of the producers, Cathy Schulman, told him the next day. Heath Ledger had dropped out and Cusack was not far behind. Once again, the movie would need more big-name stars to get the financing. Haggis immediately sent a note to Preston, telling her he was withdrawing his offer. As a matter of pride, he felt it was wrong to use his friends in such a way—especially other Scientologists. Preston was miffed, since he had failed to explain his decision. But without two more signature names the movie was back in limbo. Haggis was about to lose Cheadle as well, because he was scheduled to make Hotel Rwanda. Yari finally told Haggis to shut the production down. Priscilla Presley, John Travolta, and Kelly Preston at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre’s thirty-seventh-anniversary gala, Hollywood, August 2006 The following Monday, when Schulman came into the production office, she found Haggis there, alone. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m prepping the movie.” Yari agreed to keep the office open for one more week, and then another, as each Monday Schulman would find Haggis at work preparing for a movie that now had no budget at all. Gradually, other people began working with him, for no pay. “If you get Sandy Bullock, you got a green light,” Schulman told him. Haggis got Sandra Bullock for the role of the district attorney’s wife, a brittle, racist socialite, a role far from the plucky gamines she had played in the past. In the movie, she’s the one who gets carjacked at gunpoint. But the producers wanted one more name: Brendan Fraser. Haggis thought he was much too young for the part, as did Fraser, but he agreed to do it. The movie was finally green-lit, just four weeks before the shooting started. Only now, the ten million dollars had shrunk to six and a half. For Haggis, everything was riding on this film. He mortgaged his house three times; he also used it as a set, in order to save on his location budget. He canceled many of the exterior scenes and borrowed the set of the television show Monk to film interiors. He was eating carelessly and smoking constantly. He lost weight. He desperately needed more time. When he finished shooting a scene in Chinatown, Cathy Schulman caught up with him to ask about the next day’s shoot. “You look like you’re clutching your chest,” she observed. Haggis admitted that he was having some pains. “Sharp pains?” Schulman urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t want to hear that.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  What does self-affirmation have to do with erotic transitions? Just about everything! With few exceptions, blockages and distortions of your deepest inclinations lie at the root of self-defeating turn-ons. The alternative is to listen carefully for the guidance that comes only from within. STEP 3:NAVIGATE THE GRAY ZONEOnce a significant transition is under way, it’s only a matter of time until you enter a period of awkward uncertainty when you’re no longer where you’ve been, but you haven’t arrived at where you’re going. Welcome to the gray zone, which, of course, is not a location but a state of mind distinguished by a distressing absence of clear pathways and landmarks. For a time you feel as though you’re wandering aimlessly, disoriented, lost without a clue about how to regain your bearings. The more important and challenging the changes you seek, the more prolonged will be your stay in the gray zone. For some, being in the gray zone feels like standing at the edge of an abyss. But if you can tolerate its ambiguities, the gray zone holds unparalleled opportunities for self-discovery. Gradually, you will notice that the gray zone is not at all the featureless desert it first appears to be. It’s more like a blank canvas on which you can experiment with new shapes and colors. STUMBLING INTO THE GRAY ZONESometimes the first hint that you are entering the gray zone is a realization that partners, situations, or fantasies that have reliably turned you on in the past are losing their allure. If you aren’t prepared for the surprises that await you in the gray zone you might misinterpret your waning interest as a sign of trouble rather than a harbinger of positive change. Men find it especially difficult to handle this temporary reduction in desire because it is usually reflected in less reliable, softer, or nonexistent erections. When old turn-ons begin to lose their effectiveness, some people embark on a search for more intense forms of stimulation to prove to themselves that everything still works. Unfortunately, their first impulse is often to repeat—with even more single-minded determination—the very patterns that are losing their grip. One man could no longer ignore the fact that he wasn’t responding to his porn collection featuring leather-clad dominatrixes. So he went on a frantic search for new porn with even more exaggerated images of dominance and submission. Only later did he realize that these purchases were completely useless because his eroticism was evolving away from the imagery of power and toward—well, he didn’t know yet. But once he accepted the fact that his old arousal patterns were crumbling to make room for something new, yet undefined, he was better able to accept the flux and uncertainty of the gray zone. Maggie Revisited: Turning away from longing

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  A few days later I am driven to the police station in the back of a police car. It stinks of mold and sweat. I am wearing clothes that the hospital gave me: jeans, an ugly brown sweater and green chucks. The nurses tried to comb through my hair, but eventually they gave up. I asked for scissors and hacked through the rope of it. Now it barely touches my neck. I look stupid, but who cares? I’ve been locked in a house for over a year eating coffee grounds and trying not to die of hypothermia. When we reach the police station, they put me in a room with a cup of coffee and a bagel. Two detectives come in and try to take my statement. “Not until I can speak to Saphira,” I say. I don’t know why it’s so important for me to speak to her first. Maybe I think that they won’t hold true to the bargain, and they’ll keep me away from her. Finally, one of the detectives, a tall man who smells like cigarette smoke and says his s’s too softly leads me by the arm to the room where they are holding her. He tells me his name is Detective Garrison. He’s in charge of this case. I wonder if he’s ever seen action like this before. “Ten minutes,” he says. I nod. I wait until he closes the door before I look at her. She’s ruffled. Her lips are bare of their usual deep red, and her hair is pulling out of a low ponytail. She’s leaning her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. It’s her typical shrink pose. “What’s wrong, Saphira? You look like an experiment gone wrong.” She doesn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, she looks downright peaceful. She knew she’d get caught. She wanted to. Planned it, probably. The realization throws me off. I momentarily forget what I came here to do. I make my way over to the chair opposite her. It screeches against the floor as I pull it out. My heart is racing. This isn’t how I imagined this going. Her face blurs in and out of my vision. I hear screaming. No. It’s my imagination. We are in a quiet room, painted white, sitting at a metal table. The only sound is silence as we sit contemplating one another, so why do I want to reach up and cover my ears? “Saphira,” I breathe. She smiles at me. A dragon’s smile. “Why did you do this?” “Senna Richards. The great fiction writerrr,” she purrs, leaning forward on her elbows. “You don’t rememberrr Westwick.” Westwick. “What are you talking about?” “You were institutionalized, my dear. Three years ago. At Westwick Psychiatric Facility.” My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.” “Is it?”