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

  The main reason I resist censoring any form of speech or expression is a selfish one. I know that sooner or later something I write or something I want to read or see or talk about is going to be forbidden. Censorship can be done only by the established order. (Only the established order has an interest in censorship.) The establishment cannot know what offends me, though censorship is so often framed as being for my own good and the good of many nameless others. Obscenity is defined partly by community standards, but community is defined politically by a certain class of men and community standards largely reflect historically visible male experiences. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have taught me this: Women can’t make these choices for me, either, because they are able to be just as wrong about me, in different ways, as men. There is no such thing as a social consensus—not on obscenity, politics, art, religion, or the use of vouchers for private schools. Any consensus that attempted to combine all points of view would cease to be a consensus, and instead be a shouted-down compromise of “anything goes,” or “nothing goes.” A gay friend says of some of the straight people he knows, “It’s like they’re birds, and I’m a fish. They want me to fly, not swim.” Men can’t, literally can’t, share my erotic needs or appetites. No one can, but because political and legal power is still amost exclusively in men’s hands, I worry about men. In a world where the dominant ideal of female sexuality has been that women can’t, don’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t and will cause damage if they do—I can’t see how community standards can do anything but oppress me. The same goes for my ideals placed upon anyone but me. I’m always struck by the people who expect me to follow their absolute standards, but who have no desire to follow mine—self-determination and the goodness of the body. We are still arguing about whether or not free sexual behavior is morally negative. So-called sex-positive people (like me) are simply trying to get as far as a theory of sexual moral neutrality. Whether one sees sex as a benign biological force free of cultural meaning or a dangerous and powerful force full of meaning, I want people to see sex as good. Not just sexuality, but sexual acts. But if they don’t, I don’t want it to be my problem.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  The tension and anxiety became so strong at one point that I took a break from my scheduled errands, bought myself a bottle of water and sat on the grass in a park to try and calm down. “Relax,” I said to myself. “Nothing is wrong.” I drank the water and focused on my breath, but was able to do very little to calm my jangled nerves. Rather than taking the bus, I walked from where I was to Michael and Jessica’s apartment building, trying to burn off the nervous anxiety in my body with exercise. It didn’t work. I could feel the tension in the air the instant I walked through Michael and Jessica’s front door that afternoon. Jessica wore the forced smile of someone catering her own funeral. Michael was less obviously tense, but I could still tell that something was up with him. They invited me into the living room. We sat in a U shape: Michael on a loveseat to my left with his back to the windows that looked out onto False Creek and Jessica on a couch to my right. I was between them on a third couch at the bottom on the U, trying to stifle the anxiety-induced scream that was building in my chest. Michael was sitting very still, with his back straight and his hands clasped in his lap. I recognized the posture as that of someone trying to be centred. Jessica struck an identical pose, although hers was stiff with fear, and her eyes were red from crying. The vibe that came from her was of someone trying desperately to be brave, but I couldn’t imagine why she would need to feel that way. All I knew at that moment was that whatever was going on, it was big. In a million years I never could have guessed the reason for this strange and electrically charged meeting. Michael visibly gathered himself, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. And then he began his explanation of why I was there that day and, in doing so, changed my life forever. He began by saying that two or three months earlier he and Jessica had been out at a concert together. Toward the end of the evening, Jessica made what Michael felt were a couple of ill-timed, unkind remarks to him (the details of which aren’t important to our story) and he said that he felt something inside himself snap. He’d had it. Had it with being married to someone he loved but for whom he felt a more parental relationship than a partnership. And he’d had it with constantly feeling controlled by Jessica. This marriage, as I’ve noted in earlier chapters, had always been a challenge for him. He didn’t want to be married in the first place, and he found Jessica a supremely challenging person to live with and love.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Flush with joy in our house on the hill, we were startled by some deep shadows. Your mother, whom I’d met but once, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Your son’s custody remained unsettled, and the specter of a homophobic or transphobic judge deciding his fate, our family’s fate, turned our days tornado green. You knocked yourself out to make him feel happy and held, set up a slide for him in our concrete sliver of a backyard, a baby pool in the front, a Lego station by the wall heater, a swing hanging from the studs in his bedroom. We read books all together before bed, then I would leave to give you two some alone time, listen to your soft voice singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” night after night from behind the closed door. I read in one of my stepparenting guides that one should take stock of the developing bonds in a new family not every day or every month or every year, but every seven years. (Such a time frame struck me then as ludicrous; now, seven years later, as wise and luminous.) Your inability to live in your skin was reaching its peak, your neck and back pulsing with pain all day, all night, from your torso (and hence, your lungs) having been constricted for almost thirty years. You tried to stay wrapped even while sleeping, but by morning the floor was always littered with doctored sports bras, strips of dirty fabric—“smashers,” you called them. I just want you to feel free, I said in anger disguised as compassion, compassion disguised as anger. Don’t you get it yet? you yelled back. I will never feel as free as you do, I will never feel as at home in the world, I will never feel as at home in my own skin. That’s just the way it is, and always will be. Well then I feel really sorry for you, I said. Or maybe, Fine, but don’t take me down with you. We knew something, maybe everything, was about to give. We hoped it wouldn’t be us.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Unfortunately, so-called comprehensive sex ed is not necessarily much better, focused solely on averting disaster: avoiding pregnancy and preventing disease. Fewer than half of high schools and only a fifth of middle schools teach all of the sixteen topics the Centers for Disease Control considers to be essential, such as creating and sustaining respectful relationships; understanding the influence of media, peers, and family; and developing communication and sexual decision-making skills. Note that list does not include understanding consent; only ten states require that, if taught at all, sex education include any discussion of the issue. One of them is California, but in my local high school that has meant a single class period conducted in ninth grade by an outside educator; when I asked a group of my daughter’s friends about its content a year later, none could remember any specifics. We have arrived at this precarious state because the forces that want to ban positive, thorough sexuality education—among them parents who place ideology over their children’s health—are typically more vocal than its supporters. That may reflect, in part, an ambivalence even among progressives, a lingering belief that talking to teenagers about sex gives them license to engage (and, conversely, that if we avoid the topic, they will somehow not find out about it). That, it should be obvious by now, is a myth: decades of research have made clear that talking to children about sex does not reduce the age at which they start. Our teens are in urgent need of high-quality human development courses. Until those exist, relying on school sex education is a risky bet. And that means unless caring adults step up—parents, physicians, youth advocates, faith leaders, coaches—the default educator will be the media; it is impossible for me to believe that we would be so cavalier, so indifferent to any other aspect of children’s development that was so integral to their safety, futures, and well-being.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  In many ways, then (with the possible exception of vomiting after oral sex), Emmett’s hookups were like those of many guys his age who were into the party scene. But then our conversation started to turn. “You know the term ‘designated driver,’ right?” he asked. “My black friends basically have a ‘designated watch-out person.’ Like, I’ve seen white boys dragging a girl around a party—not dragging her by the hair or anything, but not allowing her to do anything or really talk to anyone. And that is misconduct. If we did that . . . Or when a white girl says, ‘Back off,’ and the guy doesn’t? I’ve seen that plenty of times with white boys. But if that same thing were to happen with one of my friends—I mean, most of us would just back off when she asked, but if someone was really under the influence and just didn’t know what was going on—we have someone there to watch out. To keep him from doing something he’s going to regret or maybe doing something illegal, or even getting with someone that he wouldn’t want to get with sober.” That might seem a good idea for anyone, really (and some college frats and sororities designate “sober monitors” precisely for that reason), but black guys in white worlds knew that for them the stakes for crossing a line would be higher and the bar for unacceptable behavior lower. The qualities projected onto them by white peers—greater physicality, sexuality, a latent potential for violence—could quickly turn from desirable to dangerous, from cool to predatory. As one boy of color I spoke with said, “That’s why my mom’s going to drill it into my head: you cannot trust white women.” Not the “Typical Asian Guy” During high school, back in Northern California, Spencer didn’t think much about race. The child of Korean immigrants, he went to a school in an affluent suburb with a sizable Asian American population, so he never felt unusual or different—his identity was grounded less in ethnicity than in being a baseball player, an artist, generally well liked. “My closest friends were mostly Asian,” he said, “but I had a lot of friends in high school, and other groups were much more mixed.” Things had changed since he started college in the Midwest. “I used to find it easier to talk to girls, hook up with girls, but in college it’s . . . Honestly, I don’t know. I just find it a lot more difficult.”

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  It’s no secret that today’s children are guinea pigs in a massive porn experiment. Whereas (mostly) boys of previous generations might have passed around a filched, soiled copy of Playboy or possibly Penthouse, today anyone with a broadband connection can instantly access anything you can imagine—and a whole lot of stuff you don’t want to imagine—right on their phones, more or less anonymously and regardless of how many obstacles parents try to put in place. “Porn” is, of course, a broad category, ranging from “lovemaking” purportedly posted by real-life couples, to fetish videos to eroticized violence and racism. It can be exploitative or ethically produced; it can be feminist. As the classic meme “Rule #34” states, “If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.” For the purposes of this discussion, though, “porn” refers to the sexually explicit video clips that heterosexual teenagers most readily and easily obtain (I’ll talk about gay porn later). Also, I am restricting myself to minors and college students; adults’ porn use is a separate issue.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I’m still trying to figure out what I believe,” I answered, taking the hot mug he held out to me. “I have something else for us, if you’d like, a little something I harvested up in the woods.” He pulled a gnarly root that looked like ginger from his pocket and showed it to me in his palm. “It’s chewable opium.” “Opium?” I asked. “Except it’s way more mellow. It just gives you a relaxed high. You want some?” “Sure,” I said reflexively, and watched as he sliced off a piece and handed it to me, sliced another piece off for himself and put it in his mouth. “You chew it?” I asked, and he nodded. I put it into my mouth and chewed. It was like eating wood. It took a moment for me to realize that maybe it would be best to steer entirely clear of opium, or any root that a strange man gave me, for that matter, regardless of how nice and non-threatening he seemed. I spit it into my hand. “You don’t like it?” he said, laughing and lifting a small trash can so I could toss it in. I sat talking to Clyde in his truck until eleven, when he walked me to the front door of the club. “Good luck up there in the woods,” he said, and we embraced. A moment later, Jonathan appeared and led me to his car, an old Buick Skylark he called Beatrice. “So how was work?” I asked. Sitting beside him at last, I didn’t feel nervous the way I had when I’d been in the bar and he’d been watching me. “Good,” he said. As we drove into the darkness beyond Ashland, he told me about living on the organic farm, which was owned by friends of his. He lived there free in exchange for some work, he explained, glancing over at me, his face softly lit by the glow of the dash. He turned down one road and another until I had absolutely no sense of where I was in relation to Ashland, which for me really meant where I was in relation to Monster. I regretted not having brought it. I hadn’t been so far from my pack since I began the PCT, and it felt strange. Jonathan turned in to a driveway, drove past an unlit house where a dog barked, and followed a rutted dirt road that took us back among rows of corn and flowers until finally the headlights swooped across a large boxy tent that was erected on a wooden platform and he parked.

• From Wild (2012)

  I knew snow. I had grown up in Minnesota, after all. I’d shoveled it, driven in it, and balled it up in my hands to throw. I’d watched it through windows for days as it fell into piles that stayed frozen for months on the ground. But this snow was different. It was snow that covered the Sierra Nevada so indomitably that the mountains had been named for it—in Spanish, Sierra Nevada means “the snowy range.” It seemed absurd to me that I’d been hiking in that snowy range all along—that the arid mountains I’d traversed since the moment I set foot on the PCT were technically part of the Sierra Nevada. But they weren’t the High Sierras—the formidable range of granite peaks and cliffs beyond Kennedy Meadows that mountaineer and writer John Muir had famously explored and adored more than a hundred years before. I hadn’t read Muir’s books about the Sierra Nevada before I hiked the PCT, but I knew he was the founder of the Sierra Club. Saving the Sierra Nevada from sheepherders, mining operations, tourist development, and other encroachments of the modern age had been his lifelong passion. It’s thanks to him and those who supported his cause that most of the Sierra Nevada is still wilderness today. Wilderness that was now apparently snowbound. I wasn’t entirely taken by surprise. The authors of my guidebook had warned me about the snow I might encounter in the High Sierras, and I’d come prepared. Or at least the version of prepared I’d believed was sufficient before I began hiking the PCT: I’d purchased an ice ax and mailed it to myself in the box I would collect at Kennedy Meadows. It had been my assumption when I purchased the ice ax that I’d need it only occasionally, for the highest stretches of trail. The guidebook assured me that in a regular year most of the snow would be melted by the time I hiked the High Sierras in late June and July. It hadn’t occurred to me to investigate whether this had been a regular year. I found a phone book in the bedside table and paged through it, then dialed the number for the local office of the Bureau of Land Management. “Oh, yes, there’s lots of snow up there,” said the woman who answered. She didn’t know the specifics, she told me, but she knew for certain it had been a record year for snowfall in the Sierras. When I told her I was hiking the PCT, she offered to give me a ride to the trail. I hung up the phone feeling more relieved that I didn’t have to hitchhike than worried about the snow. It simply seemed so far away, so impossible.

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

  The doctor dismissed these worries as excessive but agreed that I was not very well. He talked sagely about anxiety attacks, told me that these things happened, were fairly common, and could easily be dealt with. After all, I had been under a strain; I was probably working too hard. In my final year now, was I? Exams next summer? Yes, people often got het up about these things. But in view of my . . . er . . . history, it might be a good idea to go and see a specialist. He knew a very good chap at the Littlemore Hospital. Somebody would write to me in due course to set up an appointment. Good idea to talk things over, perhaps take some medication—only temporarily, of course—to get rid of these bouts of panic, and then I’d soon be on my feet. The Littlemore. One of Oxford’s two psychiatric hospitals. My heart sank. I had seen it coming, but now that the process had been set in motion, it felt like a real defeat. Psychiatry had certainly not been part of the convent ethos. The very idea of “talking things over” with anyone was anathema. But I could see no alternative. The way both the doctor and the college nurse had taken refuge immediately in cliché when confronted with my predicament indicated that they felt out of their depth. I needed expert help, but I still shrank from exposing the mess of my life to a stranger, who would examine it clinically and make his own appraisal, and I hated the prospect of being known to be mentally ill. It was partly to prevent this, I suppose, that I started to become more reclusive and reserved. I was afraid of experiencing one of these uncanny episodes when I was with other people. I had lost confidence. Where previously I had felt only shy and socially inhibited, I could now place no trust in either my body or my mind. I no longer took it for granted that I could get through a party or a quiet evening with friends without succumbing to this malady, and indeed, I had noticed that the flickering lighting to which people seemed so strangely addicted these days made me feel very odd indeed. And so, just as I had started to put out feelers to the world, I began to withdraw again.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  A few months after Florida: you always wanting to fuck, raging with new hormones and new comfort in your skin; me vaulting fast into the unfuckable, not wanting to dislodge the hard-won baby seed, falling through the bed with dizziness whenever I turned my head—falling forever—all touch starting to sicken, as if the cells of my skin were individually nauseated. … Our bodies grew stranger, to ourselves, to each other. You sprouted coarse hair in new places; new muscles fanned out across your hip bones. My breasts were sore for over a year, and while they don't hurt anymore, they still feel like they belong to someone else (and in a sense, since I'm still nursing, they do). … Via pregnancy, I have my first sustained encounter with the pendulous, the slow, the exhausted, the disabled. I had always presumed that giving birth would make me feel invincible and ample, like fisting. But even now—two years out—my insides feel more quivery than lush. … Can fragility feel as hot as bravado? I think so, but sometimes struggle to find the way.

• From Another Country (1962)

  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. His voice was too low; Ida strained forward to hear. He cleared his throat. “We all saw him,” Richard said, “he was fine.” “He was supposed to stay at my place,” said Vivaldo, “but we—I—got talking to somebody—and then, when I looked up, he was gone.” He seemed to feel that this was not the best way to put it. “There were lots of his friends around; I figured he had a drink with some of them and then maybe went off and decided to stay the night.” “Do you know these friends?” Ida asked. “Well, I know them when I see them. I don’t know—all their names .” The silence stretched. Vivaldo dropped his eyes. “Did he have any money? ” “Well”—he looked to Richard and Cass—“I don’t know .” “How did he look?” They stared at each other. “All right. Tired, maybe.” “I’ll bet.” She sipped her drink; her hand shook a little. “I don’t want to make a big fuss over nothing. I’m sure he’s all right, wherever he is. I’d just like to know .

• 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)

  “Yes, we did, actually,” I said. Geoffrey’s head snapped to attention, his eyes startled. “You’re not serious, are you?” I nodded. “Good God.” He gazed, lost for words for a moment, at the ceiling. “We always thought that was a silly fantasy—one of the absurd stories that people tell about nuns. I had no idea that they actually did it.” “You’ve had a sheltered life, Geoffrey.” I stood up and started putting on my coat. “If you’re not careful, I’ll tell you the whole story one day.” “I’m not sure that I could take it.” Geoffrey was smiling but I could sense his real distaste. “I suppose that’s women for you,” he said reflectively as we walked down the cloister. “We always said in the army that they were no good at community life. They seem to get bogged down in petty rules and regulations—can’t see the wood for the trees.” Perhaps, I thought as I headed back to college. But I also knew enough about the church to know that it was men who had made the rules in the first place. I had mixed feelings as the train thrust its way through the lush Sussex countryside. In one sense, I was going home, going back to the convent where I had spent the first three years of my religious life. I had received a letter from Sister Rebecca, asking me if I could come to see her. This in itself was surprising. Visitors were generally discouraged and I could scarcely be considered a suitable companion for Rebecca. Things had obviously changed during the fourteen months that I had been away. But I had some misgivings about my own reactions. I had no idea how it would feel to be in a convent atmosphere once more.

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

  Yet the location of my new flat showed that I had not really settled for this at all. Highbury, in North London, on the other side of the city, was miles from my new school. There were, I thought, sensible reasons for my choice. Because of my epilepsy, my doctors told me firmly, driving was out of the question. Southeast London is badly served by public transport: Dulwich is not connected to the underground railway, and without a car, life is very difficult there. Most of the new friends I had made during the last few months lived in North London, and, I argued, they were going to be very important to me now. If I could not have a satisfying career, at least I could have a good social life. But the real reason for choosing Highbury was that I did not want to live anywhere near the school. In the evening, as I headed north, my heart became lighter with every mile, and when the bus finally lurched into Rosebury Avenue, passed the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and began the approach to Islington, I felt a new woman. Conversely, as the bus crept through the morning traffic, passed the Houses of Parliament, and crossed the Thames at Westminster Bridge, I felt gloomier by the minute. In one sense, it was crazy to live so far away from my work. The journey was horrendous. Because the mortgage gobbled up much of my meager salary, I could not afford to travel either by tube or by the overground train, which would have cut the trip in half. Instead, I had to rely on a most unreliable bus that took me to Southeast London by an extraordinarily circuitous route. In the morning, I had to leave the house shortly after 6:30, looking most peculiar in a moth-eaten fur coat, which had once belonged to my grandmother (I could not afford a new winter coat), my face glistening with baby oil to protect my skin from the elements (I could not afford to waste makeup on the other passengers of bus 172). If all went well (and all too often the journey did not go well—the bus would fail to arrive, and once even broke down), I would arrive in Herne Hill at about 8:15, and then had to walk a mile to the school. In the evening, I sometimes had to wait for over an hour for the wretched bus. But I felt that all this was worthwhile. I wanted to put myself at some distance from my new job, because I knew that it was doing me no good at all.

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

  This, I must emphasize, was not because there was anything wrong with the school. Indeed, I was very impressed with it. Most of the girls seemed to like being there, the staff was excellent, and standards were high. It was also a humane place. I had passed my own school days alternately bored and frightened, but that was clearly not the case here. I even quite enjoyed the teaching, though not extravagantly so. People expected me to like my classes with the older girls best, but to my surprise, I much preferred the little ones. It was fun to watch them encountering Dickens and Shakespeare for the first time, and to catch them before they realized that a cool teenager was supposed to find these authors boring. Occasionally I would find myself completely wrapped up in a lesson. You cannot be a good teacher to every student, any more than you can be a good friend or a satisfactory lover to just anybody. But I could see that in the main I was doing a useful job, and I was grateful to have financial security for the first time since leaving the convent. The trouble lay not in the school but in myself. It was bad for me to be in another highly authoritarian institution, and I was keenly aware that I was slipping back into old craven habits of obedience and conformity. Instead of moving on and away from the constraints of the religious life, I felt that I was standing still. Indeed, sometimes I feared that I was actually losing ground, because in many ways school life seemed a parody of my convent years. The headmistress was a charismatic, unusual, and gifted woman, but listening to the tales of other teachers over the years, I have noted that this job has its dangers. A headmaster or headmistress has almost complete power in an enclosed world, and this often seems to go to their heads. Thus my headmistress at Dulwich tended to treat her staff like a temperamental parent. One day you were flavor of the month, the next, for no apparent reason, you were in the doghouse, your every request and suggestion refused, often discourteously, and your projects stymied. Then, a few weeks later, you were back in favor again. We were supposed to jump to attention if the head so much as sneezed. “The head is hopping mad!” the deputy would report, as though this were a catastrophe comparable to the outbreak of World War III. One of the head’s foibles was a near-pathological sensitivity to noise—an unfortunate affliction if you happen to be working in a building crowded with adolescents. At every hour of the working day, one of us had to do corridor duty, sitting outside the head’s office to prevent any child from walking past and disturbing her; students often had to make absurdly long detours to get to their classes. We all resented this ridiculous waste of our time.