Boredom

Passages

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

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• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Our Host then turned to the Monk. ‘So, sir, no more, if you please. You are annoying the entire company. Your little homilies are not exactly entertaining. There is no fun in them. Wherefore good Monk - Peter is your name, isn’t it? - wherefore, Peter, I beg you to tell us something different. Something amusing. If it were not for the clinking of the bells on your bridle, I would have fallen asleep listening to you. I would have slipped from my horse and sunk in the mud. Who cares about Holofernes? Or Croesus? There is an old saying used by preachers and teachers. “If a man has no audience, he had better stop talking.” Of course I am always ready to listen to a well-told tale. Why not a story about hunters and hunting?’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ the Monk replied. ‘My heart would not be in it. Let somebody else tell the next story.’ So the Host spoke out boldly and rudely. ‘Come towards me, you, the Nun’s Priest over there! Tell us something that will lift our spirits. Be merry. Be daring. I see that you are riding on a poor nag of a horse, but that should not stop you. As long as it can carry you, it has my blessing. So. Make us laugh.’ ‘Willingly, good sir,’ the Nun’s Priest said. ‘I will be as cheerful as you could wish.’ So then this sweet Priest began his story to the company of pilgrims. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Nonnes Preestes Tale of the Cok and Hen, Chauntecleer and Pertelote Once upon a time a poor widow, somewhat stooped by age, was living in a tiny cottage; it was situated in a valley, and stood within the shadow of a grove of trees. This widow had led a simple existence ever since the death of her husband; she had few cattle, and fewer possessions. She had two daughters and, between them, they owned three large sows, three cows and a sheep called Molly. The walls of her little house were thick with soot, but this is where she ate her simple meals. She had no use for spices or dainty food. Since her modest repast came from the produce of her farm, she was never flatulent from overeating. A temperate diet, physical exercise and a modest life were her only medicines. She was never hopping with the gout, or swimming in the head from apoplexy. She never touched wine, white or red. In fact her board was made up of black and white - black bread and white milk, with the occasional rasher of bacon or new-laid egg. She was a dairywoman, after all.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  One day, at five minutes before 6:00 p.m., a high school kid wandered in. Need some running shoes, he said timidly. Woodell and I looked at each other, looked at the clock. We were beat, but we needed every sale. We talked to the kid about his instep, his stride, his life, and gave him several pairs to try on. He took his time lacing them up, walking around the room, and each pair he declared “not quite right.” At 7:00 p.m. he said he’d have to go home and “think about it.” He left, and Woodell and I sat amid the mounds of empty boxes and scattered shoes. I looked at him. He looked at me. This is how we’re going to build a shoe company? AS I GRADUALLY moved my inventory out of my apartment, into my new office, the thought crossed my mind that it might make more sense to give up the apartment altogether, just move into the office, since I’d basically be living there anyway. When I wasn’t at Price Waterhouse, making the rent, I’d be at Blue Ribbon, and vice versa. I could shower at the gym. But I told myself that living in your office is the act of a crazy person. And then I got a letter from Johnson saying he was living in his new office. He’d chosen to locate our East Coast office in Wellesley, a tony suburb of Boston. Of course he included a hand-drawn map, and a sketch, and more information than I’d ever need about the history and topography and weather patterns of Wellesley. Also, he told me how he’d come to choose it. At first he’d considered Long Island, New York. Upon his arrival there he’d rendezvoused with the high school kid who’d alerted him to the Marlboro Man’s secret machinations. The kid drove Johnson all over, and Johnson saw enough of Long Island to know that this place wasn’t his bag. He left the high school kid, headed north on I-95, and when he hit Wellesley, it just spoke to him. He saw people running along quaint country roads, many of them women, many of them Ali MacGraw look-alikes. Ali MacGraw was Johnson’s type. He remembered that Ali MacGraw had attended Wellesley College. Then he learned, or remembered, that the Boston Marathon route ran right through the town. Sold.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  When we weren’t touring factories, Gorman and I were being feted by factory owners. They stuffed us with local delicacies, some of which were actually cooked, and plied us with something called a Mao tai, which was a mai tai, but apparently with shoe cream instead of rum. Jet-lagged, Gorman and I both had lost our tolerance. After two Mao tais we were potted. We tried to slow down, but our hosts kept raising their glasses. To Nike! To America! At the final dinner of our Taichung visit Gorman repeatedly excused himself and ran to the men’s room, to splash cold water on his face. Every time he left the table I got rid of my Mao tai by pouring it into his water glass. Each time he returned from the men’s room there was another toast, and Gorman thought he was playing it safe by raising his water glass. To our American friends! To our Taiwanese friends! After another huge gulp of spiked water, Gorman looked at me, panic-stricken. “I think I’m going to pass out,” he said. “Have some more water,” I said. “Tastes funny.” “Nah.” Despite offloading my booze onto Gorman, I was woozy when I got back to my room. I had trouble getting ready for bed. I had trouble finding the bed. I fell asleep while brushing my teeth. Midbrush. I woke sometime later and tried to find my extra contact lenses. I found them. Then dropped them on the floor. There was a knock. Gorman. He walked in and asked me something about our next day’s itinerary. He found me on my hands and knees, searching for my contact lenses in a pool of my own sick. “Phil, you okay?” “Follow your mentor’s lead,” I mumbled. THAT MORNING WE flew to Taipei, the capital, and toured a couple more factories. In the evening we strolled Xinsheng South Road, with its dozens of shrines and temples, churches and mosques. The Road to Heaven, locals called it. Indeed, I told Gorman, Xinsheng means “New Life.” When we returned to our hotel I got a strange and unexpected phone call. Jerry Hsieh—pronounced Shay—was “paying his respects.” I’d met Hsieh before. In one of the shoe factories I’d visited the year before. He was working for Mitsubishi and the great Jonas Senter. He’d impressed me with his intensity and work ethic. And youth. Unlike all the other shoe dogs I’d met, he was young, twentysomething, and looked much younger. Like an overgrown toddler. He said he’d heard we were in the country. Then, like a CIA operative, he added: “I know why you are here…” He invited us to visit him in his office, an invitation that seemed to indicate he was now working for himself, not Mitsubishi. I wrote down Hsieh’s office address and grabbed Gorman. The concierge at our hotel drew us a map—which proved useless. Hsieh’s office was in an unmapped part of the city. The worst part.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Often, minutes later, we would meet again standing in the same place. Although he wasn’t much older than I—but because, as he told me, he’d been hustling the streets since he was 16—Pete liked to play the jaded, all-knowing street hustler, explaining to me how to make out. He had a series of rules: Walk up to people, dont wait to be asked; if you do, you may wait all day. Forget about the vice squad, and you’ll never get caught. A quick score in a toilet for a few bucks can be worth more than a big one that takes all day. Stand at the urinal long after youre through pissing. At the slightest indication of interest from someone in one of the cubicles, go up to him quickly before he gets any free ideas and say. “Ill make it with you for twenty.” But go for much less if you have to. As we sat in Bickford’s in the cold light, he told me without embarrassment that once he’d gone for 75¢. “It was a slow day”, he explained, “and I had only four bits, just enough to make the flix. I thought, Do I buy a Hotdog or make the flix and try to score? It was raining—no one on the streets. So I made the flix. No scores. Then someone wants to give me 75¢, and Im in the balcony anyway, so I let him. Hell, man,” he adds pragmatically, “I was a quarter ahead—I could still have that Hotdog.” And he goes on: “Youll learn; sometimes youll stand around all day and wait for a 15-buck score, a 10-buck score, even a deuce—all day—so, hell, take what comes, spote—so long as it dont louse up all your time—but always ask for the highest. Ask for Twenty. That way they think they got a Bargain.” Part of Pete’s technique as a hustler was to tell the men he’d been with that he knew other youngmen like himself, and if they wanted, he would fix them up. Like a social secretary, he kept mental dates when he’d meet certain people. If he still didnt have someone for the score, they would walk around Times Square until the man spotted someone he wanted. Pete would make the introductions—as he had that night with me and the black-dressed Al—and would get a few bucks for it... There was one problem, Pete explained: As the score got to know more and more people, he’d dispense with Pete’s services. Occasionally, we sat in the automat, talking for a long time, Bragging, exaggerating last night’s Big Score.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  1980 W e all gathered in the conference room and Chang gave us his bio. He was born in Shanghai, and raised in opulence. His grandfather was the third-largest soy sauce manufacturer in northern China, and his father had been the third-highest-ranking member of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Chang was a teenager, however, the revolution came. The Changs fled to the United States, to Los Angeles, where Chang attended Hollywood High. He often thought he’d go back, and his parents did also. They kept in close touch with friends and family in China, and his mother remained extremely close with Soong Ching-ling, the godmother of the revolution. In the meantime Chang attended Princeton, and studied architecture, and moved to New York. He landed a job at a good architectural firm, where he worked on the Levittown project. Then he set up his own firm. He was making decent money, doing good work, but bored stiff. He wasn’t having any fun, and he didn’t feel he was accomplishing anything real. One day a Princeton friend complained about being unable to get a visa for Shanghai. Chang helped his friend get the visa, and helped him set up appointments with business contacts, and found that he enjoyed it. Being an emissary, a go-between, was a better use of his time and talents. Even with his help, Chang cautioned, getting into China was extremely difficult. The process was laborious. “You can’t just apply for permission to visit China,” he said. “You have to formally request that the Chinese government invite you. Bureaucracy doesn’t begin to describe it.” I closed my eyes and pictured, somewhere on the other side of the world, a Chinese version of the bureau-kraken. I also thought of the ex-GIs who’d explained Japanese business practices to me when I was twenty-four. I’d followed their advice, to the letter, and never regretted it. So, under Chang’s direction, we put together a written presentation. It was long. It was almost as long as Werschkul on American Selling Price, Volume I . We, too, had it bound. Often we asked each other: Is anyone actually going to read this thing? Oh well, we said. This is how Chang says it’s done. We sent it off to Beijing without hope. AT THE FIRST Buttface of 1980 I announced that, though we’d gained the upper hand with the Feds, it might go on forever if we didn’t do something bold, something outrageous. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said, “and I think what we need to do is… American Selling Price ourselves .” The Buttfaces laughed. Then they stopped laughing and looked at each other. We spent the rest of the weekend kicking it around. Was it possible? Nah, it couldn’t be. Could we? Oh, no way. But… maybe? We decided to give it a try. We launched a new shoe, a running shoe with nylon uppers, and called it One Line.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  We sat kicking our heels impatiently; the strawberries were waiting to be rinsed, but we stuck to the house rule: “No running water when strangers are downstairs -- they might hear the drains.” Jan came up at one to tell us it had been the mail- man. Peter hurried downstairs again. Ding-dong .. . the doorbell, about-face. I listened to hear if anyone was coming, standing first at the bookcase, then at the top of the stairs. Finally Peter and I leaned over the banister, straining our ears like a couple of burglars to hear the sounds from downstairs. No unfamthar voices. Peter tiptoed halfway down the stairs and called out, “Bep!” Once more: “Bep!” His voice was drowned out by the racket in the kitchen. So he ran down to the kitchen while I nervously kept watch from above. “Go upstairs at once, Peter, the accountant’s here, you’ve got to leave!” It was Mr. Kugler’s voice. Sighing, Peter came upstairs and closed the bookcase. Mr. Kugler finally came up at one-thirty. “My gosh, the whole world’s turned to strawberries. I had strawber- ries for breakfast, Jan’s having diem for lunch, Kleiman’s eating them as a snack, Miep’s bothng them, Bep’s hulling them, and I can smell them everywhere I go. I come upstairs to get away from all that red and what do I see? People washing strawberries!” The rest of the strawberries were canned. That evening: two jars came unsealed. Father quickly turned them into jam. The next morning: two more lids popped up; and that afternoon: four lids. Mr. van Daan hadn’t gotten the jars hot enough when he was sterthzing them, so Father ended up making jam every evening. We ate hot cereal with strawberries, buttermilk with strawberries, bread with strawberries, strawberries for dessert, straw- berries with sugar, strawberries with sand. For two days there was nothing but strawberries, strawberries, strawberries, and then our supply was either exhausted or in jars, safely under lock and key. “Hey, Anne,” Margot called out one day, “Mrs. van Hoeven has let us have some peas, twenty pounds!” “That’s nice of her,” I replied. And it certainly was, but it’s so much work. . . ugh! “On Saturday, you’ve aJI got to shell peas,” Mother announced at the table. And sure enough, this morning after breakfast our biggest enamel pan appeared on the table, filled to the brim with peas. If you think shelling peas is boring work, you ought to try removing the inner linings. I don’t think many people realize that once you’ve pulled out the linings, the pods are soft, delicious and rich in vitamins. But an even greater advantage is that you get nearly three times as much as when you eat just the peas. Stripping pods is a precise and meticulous job that might be suited to pedantic dentists or finicky spice experts, but it’s a horror for an impatient teenager like me.

• From Educated (2018)

  Mother had given up homeschooling by then, but still had a computer, and there were books in the basement. I found the science book, with its colorful illustrations, and the math book I remembered from years before. I even located a faded green book of history. But when I sat down to study I nearly always fell asleep. The pages were glossy and soft, made softer by the hours I’d spent hauling scrap. When Dad saw me with one of those books, he’d try to get me away from them. Perhaps he was remembering Tyler. Perhaps he thought if he could just distract me for a few years, the danger would pass. So he made up jobs for me to do, whether they needed doing or not. One afternoon, after he’d caught me looking at the math book, he and I spent an hour hauling buckets of water across the field to his fruit trees, which wouldn’t have been at all unusual except it was during a rainstorm. But if Dad was trying to keep his children from being overly interested in school and books—from being seduced by the Illuminati, like Tyler had been—he would have done better to turn his attention to Richard. Richard was also supposed to spend his afternoons making tinctures for Mother, but he almost never did. Instead, he’d disappear. I don’t know if Mother knew where he went, but I did. In the afternoons, Richard could nearly always be found in the dark basement, wedged in the crawl space between the couch and the wall, an encyclopedia propped open in front of him. If Dad happened by he’d turn the light off, muttering about wasted electricity. Then I’d find some excuse to go downstairs so I could turn it back on. If Dad came through again, a snarl would sound through the house, and Mother would have to sit through a lecture on leaving lights on in empty rooms. She never scolded me, which makes me wonder if she did know where Richard was. If I couldn’t get back down to turn on the light, Richard would pull the book to his nose and read in the dark; he wanted to read that badly. He wanted to read the encyclopedia that badly. — TYLER WAS GONE. There was hardly a trace he’d ever lived in the house, except one: every night, after dinner, I would close the door to my room and pull Tyler’s old boom box from under my bed. I’d dragged his desk into my room, and while the choir sang I would settle into his chair and

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  For days at a time Father left the shop for Mother to run, and set up a cockle-and-whelk stall on the beach. Alice and I were free to visit the Canterbury Palace every night if we cared to; but just as no one that July wanted to eat fried fish and lobster soup in our stuffy Parlour, so the very thought of passing an hour or two in gloves and bonnet, beneath the flaring gasoliers of Tricky Reeves’s airless music hall, made us gasp and droop and prickle.There are more similarities between a fishmonger’s trade and a music-hall manager’s than you might think. When Father changed his stock to suit his patrons’ dulled and over-heated palates, so did Tricky. He paid half of his performers off, and brought in a host of new artistes from the music halls of Chatham, Margate and Dover; most cleverly of all, he secured a one-week contract with a real celebrity, from London: Gully Sutherland - one of the best comic singers in the business, and a guaranteed hall-filler even in the hottest of hot Kentish summers.Alice and I visited the Palace on the very first night of Gully Sutherland’s week. By this time we had an arrangement with the lady in the ticket-booth: we gave her a nod and a smile as we arrived, then sauntered past her window and chose any seat in the hall beyond that we fancied. Usually, this was somewhere in the gallery. I could never understand the attraction of the stalls ticket; it seemed unnatural to me to seat oneself below the stage, and have to peer up at the artistes from a level somewhere near their ankles, through the faint, shimmering haze of heat that rose above the footlights. The circle gave a better view, but the gallery, though further away, to my mind gave the best of all; and there were two seats in the front row, at the very centre of the gallery, that Alice and I particular favoured.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But the water chilled and stung me, and soon I preferred to sit and watch - then I closed my eyes and placed my head upon my arms, and listened to the hum of gossip from the restaurant, and the bubble of the pans ... In short, I fell asleep; and only woke when Father, hurrying by me, stumbled over my skirts and spilled a pot of liquor. Then it was suggested that I go upstairs - out of their way, they meant. And so I passed the afternoon alone, alternately nodding over the Illustrated Police News and pacing the parlour to keep myself awake - and wondering, frankly, why I had come home at all. The next day, if anything, was worse. Mother said straight out that I must not think of spoiling my dress and hurting my hands by trying to help them in the kitchen; that I was here to have a holiday, not to work. I had read the Police News from cover to cover: all there was now was Father’s Fish Trades Gazette, and I couldn’t bear the thought of a day upstairs with that. I put my travelling-dress back on and went out walking; I started out so early that by ten o’clock I had strolled as far as Seasalter and back. At last, desperate for some amusement, I took the train to Canterbury - and while my parents and sister laboured in the oyster-house, I passed the day as a tourist, wandering about the cloisters of a cathedral which, in all the years that I had lived so near to it, I’d never cared to visit. But on the way back to the station I passed before the Palace. It looked very different to me, now that I had an eye for halls; and when I stepped up to the posters to look at the bill, I saw that all the acts were rather second-rate. The doors, of course, were closed, and the foyer dark; but I couldn’t resist it, and wandered round to the stage door and asked for Tony Reeves. I had my hat and veil on: when he saw me, he didn’t recognise me. When he knew me at last, however, he smiled and kissed my hand. ‘Nancy! What a treat!’ He, at least, had not changed at all. He led me to his office and sat me down. I said I was here on a visit, and had been sent out to keep myself amused. I said, too, that I was sorry to hear about him and Alice. He shrugged. ‘I knew she’d never marry me or nothing like that.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “You don’t like it here, eh?” “It’s so boring, man, you would not believe it. No TV. No clubs. These people in the country, I think they are slow. If Billy hadn’t shown up, I would have gone crazy for sure.” “Billy’s here?” “Yah, he’s around somewhere ….” Abo waved his hand vaguely, then turned to me and smiled. “So, Barry. What have you brought me from America?” I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the portable cassette players that I had bought for him and Bernard. He turned it over in his hands with a thinly disguised look of disappointment. “This brand is not a Sony, is it?” he said. Then, looking up, he quickly recovered himself and slapped me on the back. “That’s okay, Barry. Thank you! Thank you.” I nodded at him, trying not to get angry. He was standing beside Bernard and their resemblance was striking: the same height, the same slender frame, the same smooth, even features. Just shave off Abo’s mustache, I thought to myself, and they could almost Pass as twins. Except for … what? The look in Abo’s eyes. That was it. Not just the telltale redness of some sort of high but something deeper, something that reminded me of young men back in Chicago. An element of guardedness, perhaps, and calculation. The look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged. We followed Salina inside the house, and she brought in a tray of sodas and biscuits. As she set down the tray, a strapping, mustached young man, as good-looking as Salina and as tall as Roy, walked through the door and let out a yell. “Roy! What are you doing here?” Roy stood up and they embraced. “You know me. Just looking for a meal. I should ask you the same thing.” “Me, I am only visiting my mother. If I don’t come so often, she begins to complain.” He kissed Salina on the cheek and took my hand in a crushing handshake. “So I see you’ve brought my American cousin! I’ve heard so much about you, Barry, I cannot believe you are now here.” He turned to Salina. “Have you given Barry food?” “Soon, Billy. Soon.” Salina took Kezia’s hand and turned to Roy. “You see what mothers must put up with? How is your granny, anyway?” “Same.” She nodded thoughtfully. “That is not so bad,” she said. Together with Kezia, she went out of the room, and Billy fell onto the couch beside Roy. “So, you still crazy, bwana? Look at you now! Well-fed, like a prize bull! You must be enjoying yourself in the States.” “It’s okay,” Roy said. “How’s Mombasa? I hear you’re working at the post office.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  And so I passed the afternoon alone, alternately nodding over the Illustrated Police News and pacing the parlour to keep myself awake - and wondering, frankly, why I had come home at all.The next day, if anything, was worse. Mother said straight out that I must not think of spoiling my dress and hurting my hands by trying to help them in the kitchen; that I was here to have a holiday, not to work. I had read the Police News from cover to cover: all there was now was Father’s Fish Trades Gazette, and I couldn’t bear the thought of a day upstairs with that. I put my travelling-dress back on and went out walking; I started out so early that by ten o’clock I had strolled as far as Seasalter and back. At last, desperate for some amusement, I took the train to Canterbury - and while my parents and sister laboured in the oyster-house, I passed the day as a tourist, wandering about the cloisters of a cathedral which, in all the years that I had lived so near to it, I’d never cared to visit.But on the way back to the station I passed before the Palace. It looked very different to me, now that I had an eye for halls; and when I stepped up to the posters to look at the bill, I saw that all the acts were rather second-rate. The doors, of course, were closed, and the foyer dark; but I couldn’t resist it, and wandered round to the stage door and asked for Tony Reeves.I had my hat and veil on: when he saw me, he didn’t recognise me. When he knew me at last, however, he smiled and kissed my hand.‘Nancy! What a treat!’ He, at least, had not changed at all. He led me to his office and sat me down. I said I was here on a visit, and had been sent out to keep myself amused. I said, too, that I was sorry to hear about him and Alice.He shrugged. ‘I knew she’d never marry me or nothing like that. But I do miss her; and she was a lovely looker - though not quite as lovely, if you don’t mind my saying so, as her sister has gone and turned out ...’I didn’t mind, for I knew that he was only flirting - indeed, it was rather pleasant to be flirted with by an old beau of Alice’s. Instead I asked him about the hall - about how it did, who he had had there, what they had sung. At the end of it he picked up a pen that lay on his desk, and began to fiddle with it.‘And when are we to have Miss Butler back again?’ he asked. ‘I gather you and she’ve teamed up properly now.’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The music grew louder, and my head began to ache; my seat seemed narrower than ever. I looked at my watch, but the lights were too low for me to read it; I had to tilt it so that its face caught the glow from the stage, and in doing so, my elbow caught Diana and made her sigh with pique, and glare at me. The watch showed five to nine — how glad I was that I had wound it, now! The opera was just at that ridiculous point where the countess and the maid have forced the principal boy into a frock and locked him in a closet, and the singing and the rushing about is at its worst. I turned to Diana. I said, ‘Diana, I can’t bear it. I shall have to wait for you in the lobby.’ She put a hand out to grip my arm, but I shook her away, and rose and — saying ‘Pardon me, oh! pardon-me!’ to every tutting lady and gent whose legs I stumbled over or feet I trampled — I made my halting way along the row, towards the usher and the door.Outside, the lobby was wonderfully quiet after all the shrieking on the stage. At the coat-desk the Italian man sat with a paper. When I went over to him, he sniffed: ‘He ain’t here,’ he said, when I asked after Bill. ‘He don’t stay once the show starts. Did you want your cloak?’I said I didn’t. I left the theatre, and headed for Drury Lane — very conscious of my suit, and the shine on my shoes, and the flower at my lapel. When I reached the Middlesex I found a group of boys outside it studying the programme and commenting on the acts. I went and peered over their shoulders, looking for the names I wanted, and a number.Walter Waters and Kitty, I saw at last: it gave me a shock to know that Kitty had lost her Butler, and was working under Walter’s old stage-name. They were, as Bill had said, placed near the start of the second half — fourteenth on the list, after a singer and a Chinese conjuror.In the booth inside sat a girl in a violet dress. I went to her window, then nodded to the hall. ‘Who’s on stage?’ I asked. ‘What number are they at?’ She looked up; and when she saw my suit, she tittered.‘You’ve lost your way, dearie,’ she said. ‘You want the Opera, round the corner.’ I bit my lip, and said nothing, and her smile faded. ‘All right, Lord Alfred,’ she said then. ‘It’s number twelve, Belle Baxter, Cockney Chanteuse.’I bought a sixpenny ticket — she pulled a face at that, of course: ‘Thought we should have the red carpet brung up, at the least.’ The truth was, I dared not venture too close to the stage.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Still, I actually believed that those horses would gallop toward us, the way National Velvet had toward young Liz Taylor. But the alert look in Big Enough’s round dark eyes was not, in fact, joy at my return. It was dread. He’d gone green as a colt. His expression was some equine way of saying not her again. Eventually, Gordon and Joey took off after both horses. They got sick of how patiently Lecia and I held out handfuls of stiff grass, waiting for them to trot over. But the men didn’t know horses. The bridles looked odd in their hands. Gordon squatted down to my eye level and drew his assault plan on his palm like a football captain. Lecia and I were supposed to herd the horses toward the two men. But I knew the animals wouldn’t fall for it. They were faster than us by double, and way more nimble, not to mention that neither Joey nor Gordon had ever stuck a bit in a horse’s mouth. Lecia and I gave up helping pretty quick. We watched the men chase those horses for the better part of the morning. Gordon was lumbering and slow on his feet. Joey was quicker, but more and more hung over as time wore on. His blood alcohol level must have plummeted sharply at some point, for once he abruptly sat down in what turned out to have been a manure pile, so there was a fresh green shit stain on the butt of his tan raincoat. The horses themselves seemed tickled by the whole game. They’d lope hard a while; then, when the men flagged, they’d slow up. The horses led the men the whole length of the field that morning—God knows how many acres. After a while, Lecia and I went back to the car to eat packets of soup crackers from the glove compartment. It was also warmer out of the wind. We played scissors-paper-stone with our hands the rest of the morning. The winner got to whip the inside of the loser’s arm—the tenderest, whitest part—with two fingers. You licked your fingers with spit to make the sting worse, then smacked them sharp against the skin. By noon, both our arms had welts all up and down them. The men stood behind the horses far out where the field gave up to rock. The animals started climbing, and the men turned back, Gordon limping slightly, Joey stopping to hack his convulsive cough every few steps.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The days creep along sluggishly in the little Carpathian health-resort. You see no one, and no one sees you. It is boring enough to write idyls. I would have leisure here to supply a whole gallery of paintings, furnish a theater with new pieces for an entire season, a dozen virtuosos with concertos, trios, and duos, but—what am I saying—the upshot of it all is that I don’t do much more than to stretch the canvas, smooth the bow, line the scores. For I am—no false modesty, Friend Severin; you can lie to others, but you don’t quite succeed any longer in lying to yourself—I am nothing but a dilettante, a dilettante in painting, in poetry, in music, and several other of the so-called unprofitable arts, which, however, at present secure for their masters the income of a cabinet minister, or even that of a minor potentate. Above all else I am a dilettante in life. Up to the present I have lived as I have painted and written poetry. I never got far beyond the preparation, the plan, the first act, the first stanza. There are people like that who begin everything, and never finish anything. I am such a one. But what am I saying? To the business in hand. I lie in my window, and the miserable little town, which fills me with despondency, really seems infinitely full of poetry. How wonderful the outlook upon the blue wall of high mountains interwoven with golden sunlight; mountain-torrents weave through them like ribbons of silver! How clear and blue the heavens into which snowcapped crags project; how green and fresh the forested slopes; the meadows on which small herds graze, down to the yellow billows of grain where reapers stand and bend over and rise up again. The house in which I live stands in a sort of park, or forest, or wilderness, whatever one wants to call it, and is very solitary. Its sole inhabitants are myself, a widow from Lemberg, and Madame Tartakovska, who runs the house, a little old woman, who grows older and smaller each day. There are also an old dog that limps on one leg, and a young cat that continually plays with a ball of yarn. This ball of yarn, I believe, belongs to the widow. She is said to be really beautiful, this widow, still very young, twenty-four at the most, and very rich. She dwells in the first story, and I on the ground floor. She always keeps the green blinds drawn, and has a balcony entirely overgrown with green climbing-plants. I for my part down below have a comfortable, intimate arbor of honeysuckle, in which I read and write and paint and sing like a bird among the twigs. I can look up on the balcony. Sometimes I actually do so, and then from time to time a white gown gleams between the dense green network.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  No one can ignore heroin withdrawal. The fact of addiction imposes contact. "But that's only one angle. Mescaline, LSD6, deteriorated adrenaline, harmaline can produce an approximate schizophrenia. The best stuff is extracted from the blood of schizos; so schizophrenia is likely a drug psychosis. They got a metabolic connection, a Man Within you might say. ( Interested readers are referred to Appendix.) "In the terminal stage of schizophrenia the back brain is permanently depressed, and the front brain is almost without content since the front brain is only active in response to back brain stimulation. "Morphine calls forth the antidote of back brain stimulation similar to schizo substance. (Note similarity between withdrawal syndrome and intoxication with Yage or LSD6.) Eventual result of junk use -- especially true of heroin addiction where large doses are available to the addict -- is permanent backbrain depression and a state much like terminal schizophrenia: complete lack of affect, autism, virtual absence of cerebral event. The addict can spend eight hours looking at a wall. He is conscious of his surroundings, hut they have no emotional connotation and in consequence no interest. Remembering a period of heavy addiction is like playing back a tape recording of events experienced by the front brain alone. Flat statements of external events. 'I went to the store and bought some brown sugar. I came home and ate half the box. I took a three grain shot etc.' Complete absence of nostalgia in these memories. However, as soon as junk intake falls below par, the withdrawal substance floods the body. "If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido. "Some of my learned colleagues (nameless assholes) have suggested that junk derives its euphoric effect from direct stimulation of the orgasm center. It seems more probable that junk suspends the whole cycle of tension, discharge and rest. The orgasm has no function in the junky. Boredom, which always indicates an undischarged tension, never troubles the addict. He can look at his shoe for eight hours. He is only roused to action when the hourglass of junk runs out." At the far end of the ward an attendant throws up an iron shutter and lets out a hog call. The junkies rush up grunting and squealing. "Wise guy," says Benway. "No respect for human dignity. Now I'll show you the mild deviant and criminal ward. Yes, a criminal is a mild deviant here. He doesn't deny the Freeland contract. He merely seeks to circumvent some of the clauses. Reprehensible but not too serious. Down this hall... We'll skip wards 23, 86, 57 and 97... and the laboratory." "Are homosexuals classed as deviants?' "No. Remember the Bismarck Archipelago. No overt homosexuality. A functioning police state needs no police. Homosexuality does not occur to anyone as conceivable behaviour.... Homosexuality is a political crime in a matriarchy. No society tolerates overt rejection of its basic tenets.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Those brilliant eyes, that severity and majestic expression while she was playing, and then that utter languor, that weak, pitiable, and happy smile after she had finished,—I saw them all and attached no importance to them, believing that she felt as I did, that to her, as to me, new sentiments had been revealed, as through a fog. During almost the whole evening I was not jealous. “Two days later I was to start for the assembly of the Zemstvo, and for that reason, on taking leave of me and carrying all his scores with him, Troukhatchevsky asked me when I should return. I inferred from that that he believed it impossible to come to my house during my absence, and that was agreeable to me. Now I was not to return before his departure from the city. So we bade each other a definite farewell. For the first time I shook his hand with pleasure, and thanked him for the satisfaction that he had given me. He likewise took leave of my wife, and their parting seemed to me very natural and proper. All went marvellously. My wife and I retired, well satisfied with the evening. We talked of our impressions in a general way, and we were nearer together and more friendly than we had been for a long time.” CHAPTER XI. “All marry in this way. And I did like the rest. If the young people who dream of the honeymoon only knew what a disillusion it is, and always a disillusion! I really do not know why all think it necessary to conceal it. “One day I was walking among the shows in Paris, when, attracted by a sign, I entered an establishment to see a bearded woman and a water-dog. The woman was a man in disguise, and the dog was an ordinary dog, covered with a sealskin, and swimming in a bath. It was not in the least interesting, but the Barnum accompanied me to the exit very courteously, and, in addressing the people who were coming in, made an appeal to my testimony. ‘Ask the gentleman if it is not worth seeing! Come in, come in! It only costs a franc!’ And in my confusion I did not dare to answer that there was nothing curious to be seen, and it was upon my false shame that the Barnum must have counted. “It must be the same with the persons who have passed through the abominations of the honeymoon. They do not dare to undeceive their neighbor. And I did the same. “The felicities of the honeymoon do not exist. On the contrary, it is a period of uneasiness, of shame, of pity, and, above all, of ennui ,—of ferocious ennui . It is something like the feeling of a youth when he is beginning to smoke. He desires to vomit; he drivels, and swallows his drivel, pretending to enjoy this little amusement.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  116 ytinaitsirhC lacidaR sa msicitsanom :61 erutceL By the time of his death, he had under his authority some o nine monasteries for men and two for women, with thousands of members. • The Pachomian Rule regulated for many monks living “the solitary life” in common, in a rhythm of isolation and community. Time alone was spent in prayer and meditation and in the o working of small crafts. Time together was devoted to meals, common prayer, and o instruction. • The Pachomian form of monasticism would be amplified and altered by others in the East (Basil of Caesarea) and in the West (Benedict of Nursia). But Pachomius established the dominant pattern of Christian monastic life. • An important source of knowledge about monastic ideals is John Cassian (360–430). His Institutes and Conferences are compendiums of monastic lore from Egypt. From Scythia (the territory around modern Russia and o Ukraine), Cassian learned from the early monks in Egypt (c. 385), spent time in Constantinople, and in 415, founded two monasteries in Marseilles, where he composed his two great works. The Institutes elaborates the cenobitic life in great detail, o including manner of dress, work, and prayer. The Conferences takes the form of sermons given by the desert o monks on topics extending from prayer and contemplation to fighting the “noon-day devil” (accidie, or boredom). • So popular was the wilderness life that a virtual “city in the wilderness” appeared in the Egyptian desert, with monasteries for both men and women scattered everywhere.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  As you’ve explored the profoundest subjective rewards of the erotic adventure you’ve probably come face to face with one of the most fundamental of all erotic paradoxes: even though passion and fulfillment have a close, reciprocal relationship, there is an unavoidable tension between them. While the idea of perpetual fulfillment holds an undeniable appeal, the truth is that never-ending fulfillment, if there ever were such a thing, would ultimately lead to boredom—the polar opposite of passion. Of course, passion seeks fulfillment as its greatest reward. In so many ways fulfillment enhances passion because it teaches us an enormous amount about the secrets of arousal. It is equally true, however, that fulfillment inevitably subdues passion because it quenches need, and thus desire. And without desire there is no reason for passion. You might think of the passion-fulfillment paradox as part of the larger human drama in which satisfactions of all kinds sow the seeds of discontent. But for those who accept the ways of the erotic mind, passion and fulfillment are accurately seen as two essential parts of a whole. When you know what you want and are lucky enough to find it, you feel not only uplifted and enlivened, but also satiated—not a bad feeling at all. Yet it’s just a matter of time until new desires begin to stir. You’re dancing to the age-old rhythms of eros. APPENDIXTHE SEXUAL EXCITEMENT SURVEY Dear Reader: I’ve included this modified version of the SES so you can see how I gathered information about peak sex for my research. More important, I hope you’ll actively use it as a tool for expanding your self-awareness. Part I is concerned with your most memorable real-life peak encounters, while Part II focuses on fantasy. Responding to all the questions can stimulate your thoughts. However, particularly crucial items appear in boxes. These open-ended questions ask you to write about your personal experiences in as much detail as you wish. If you’d like to help expand my research, consider sending me your responses (anonymously, of course). This choice is completely optional, a decision you can put off until later if you prefer. Only if you send in your answers is it necessary to respond to Part III (personal background information). If you decide to become a research participant, simply print or type the number of each question on sheets of paper. There’s no need to write out the questions. Remember not to put your name anywhere. For questions with lettered or numbered choices, select the appropriate letter or number of your answer. For questions in boxes, please type or print your stories, using as many pages as you wish. Mailing instructions are at the end of the survey. PART I: REAL-LIFE ENCOUNTERS Think back over all your sexual encounters with other people. Allow your mind to focus on two specific encounters that were among the most arousing of your entire life. Describe each of them in as much detail as you wish. 1. Describe exciting encounter.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It’s a terrible feeling, everything coming up from your stomach. Bulimics should get a medal. I use his toothbrush because I can’t find mine. The one thing I’m not is a germaphobe. When I walk out of the bathroom, he’s lying on the bed. Dressed, thank God. “How come you didn’t get sick?” He looks up at me. “I guess I’m an old pro.” I have a fleeting thought, one where I wonder if he’s the one who brought us here. I narrow my eyes and scan my mind for motive. Then I come to my senses. Isaac has no reason for wanting to be here. There is no reason for him to be here at all. “Do me a favor,” I say, against my better judgment. “If in your past life—the one where you tattooed emotion all over your body—you had a drinking problem, don’t drink.” “Why do you care, Senna?” “I don’t,” I say quickly. “But your wife and baby do.” He looks away. “We are going to get out of here eventually.” I sound way more sure than I actually am. “You can’t go back to them all messed up.” “Someone left us here to die,” he says, blandly. “Bullshit.” I shake my head and squeeze my eyes shut. I’m feeling queasy again. “All the food … the supplies. Someone wants us to survive.” “Limited food. Limited supplies.” “It doesn’t make sense,” I say. We both stopped messing with the keypad the day I spilled all that nonsense about Adam and Eve. “Maybe we should get back to breaking out of here,” I say. Then I run back to the bathroom and throw up. Later as I lie in my bed, still green-faced and queasy, I decide not to try to help anymore. It’s not my forte. I want to be left alone, I should therefore leave others alone. We pick up our code breaking again, for lack of anything else to do. To stave off boredom I try my hand at reading again. It doesn’t work; I have kidnapped ADD. I like the feel of paper beneath my fingertips. The sound a page makes when it turns over. So I don’t see the words, but I touch the pages and turn them until I’ve finished the book. Isaac sees me doing it one day, and laughs at me. “Why don’t you just read the book?” he asks. “I can’t focus. I want to, but I can’t.” He comes over and takes it from my hands. The sofa yields as he sits down next to me and opens it to the first page. He’s sitting so close our legs are touching. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. I close my eyes and listen to his voice.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  The reasons for her dilemma quickly became apparent as she described how much she had enjoyed sex with Hugh before they married. Both were active in the church youth group. But Alice was a bit wilder and enjoyed seducing Hugh, who, although horny, believed in abstaining from sex until marriage because he hoped to become a minister. When I explained the naughtiness factor, Alice understood it immediately and soon realized what had gone wrong with her sex life. “The moment we married,” Alice proclaimed, “I felt completely different about sex. Now it was proper, a duty, a bore!” Her challenge was to restore a little naughtiness to her relationship, not an easy task for a minister’s wife. As you zero in on the cornerstones that are most important to you erotically, think of each one as operating on a continuum, ranging from subtle to dramatic. Many of The Group’s stories have considerable drama. But keep in mind that less can be more. Sometimes just a hint of naughtiness, a tease of anticipation, or a whisper of domination is the right amount. Not only is there tremendous variation in the intensity with which each cornerstone comes into play, but timing is also important. Both longing and ambivalence usually create erotic tension preceding sex. The first passionate embrace may actually cause a reduction in longing or ambivalence—accompanied by an explosion of excitement. On the other hand, violating prohibitions and searching for power are often most exciting during an encounter. Sometimes a cornerstone fuels arousal throughout an entire encounter or fantasy. But the effect of any cornerstone may also come and go in an instant when, for example, a fleeting thought of someone watching boosts excitement with a short-lived burst of naughtiness. Keep in mind that you may not always be aware of the things that excite you. Sometimes a cornerstone works on the edge of consciousness—a subtle impulse you don’t have to, and may not want to, think about. Sometimes awareness actually gets in the way, especially if you are being excited in ways you wish you weren’t. Then consciousness turns to self-consciousness; the spell is broken. But in some cases awareness seems to be crucial for full enjoyment of the cornerstone. After all, if you’re not aware of feeling naughty, how can you possibly enjoy being naughty? What’s the point of unconsciously longing for someone? Why bother surrendering if no one notices? Observing the effects of the four cornerstones reminds us again that intense eroticism is paradoxical and unpredictable. Almost anything that arouses us may—under different circumstances, or with greater or lesser intensity—also turn us off. And virtually anything that inhibits us sexually can reappear later as a turn-on. Once we grasp the implications of this, we are able to appreciate more fully the richness and complexity of our erotic minds. With this deepened appreciation, we can enlarge our perspective further still by considering some of the most ancient and powerful of all aphrodisiacs.