Confusion

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 Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘You see,’ she would tell him,’ it’s very important to develop the brain as well as the muscles; I’m now doing both—stand still, will you, Raftery! Never mind that old corn-bin, stop rolling your eye round—it’s very important to develop the brain because that gives you an advantage over people, it makes you more able to do as you like in this world, to conquer conditions, Raftery.’ And Raftery, who was not really thinking of the corn-bin, but rolling his eye in an effort to answer, would want to say something too big for his language, which at best must consist of small sounds and small movements; would want to say something about a strong feeling he had that Stephen was missing the truth. But how could he hope to make her understand the age-old wisdom of all the dumb creatures? The wisdom of plains and primeval forests, the wisdom come down from the youth of the world. CHAPTER 81A t seventeen Stephen was taller than Anna, who had used to be considered quite tall for a woman, but Stephen was nearly as tall as her father—not a beauty this, in the eyes of the neighbours. Colonel Antrim would shake his head and remark: ‘I like ’em plump and compact, it’s more taking.’ Then his wife, who was certainly plump and compact, so compact in her stays that she felt rather breathless, would say: But then Stephen is very unusual, almost—well, almost a wee bit unnatural—such a pity, poor child, it’s a terrible drawback; young men do hate that sort of thing, don’t they?’ But in spite of all this Stephen’s figure was handsome in a flat, broad-shouldered and slim flanked fashion; and her movements were purposeful, having fine poise, she moved with the easy assurance of the athlete. Her hands, although large for a woman, were slender and meticulously tended; she was proud of her hands. In face she had changed very little since childhood, still having Sir Philip’s wide, tolerant expression. What change there was only tended to strengthen the extraordinary likeness between father and daughter, for now that the bones of her face showed more clearly, as the childish fullness had gradually diminished, the formation of the resolute jaw was Sir Philip’s. His too the strong chin with its shade of a cleft; the well modelled, sensitive lips were his also. A fine face, very pleasing, yet with something about it that went ill with the hats on which Anna insisted—large hats trimmed with ribbons or roses or daisies, and supposed to be softening to the features. Staring at her own reflection in the glass, Stephen would feel just a little uneasy: ‘Am I queer looking or not?’ she would wonder, ‘Suppose I wore my hair more like Mother’s?’ and then she would undo her splendid, thick hair, and would part it in the middle and draw it back loosely.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He found himself fighting loose morals, rather than ignorance, and teaching discipline instead of grammar. The rule he drew up for his new establishments was very severe, and corporal punishment harsh and frequent. This was all very well: Columbanus’s success indicates the appeal of his mission. But his activities, for the first time, brought the nature of Celtic monasticism firmly to the attention of the Church authorities – to western bishops in general, and to the Bishop of Rome in particular. The Irish monks were not heretical. But they were plainly unorthodox. They did not look right, to begin with. They had the wrong tonsure. Rome, as was natural, had ‘the tonsure of St Peter’, that is, a shaven crown. Easterners had the tonsure of St Paul, totally shaven; and if they wished to take up an appointment in the West they had to wait until their rim grew before being invested. But the Celts looked like nothing on earth: they had their hair long at the back and, on the shaven front part, a half-circle of hair from one ear to the other, leaving a band across the forehead. More serious was their refusal to celebrate Easter according to the calculations made by Rome. There were a number of divergent calendar systems in the Mediterranean area; the one used by the Celts corresponded with none of them. The issue was more important than it may seem to us. Getting the right date for Easter was the most obvious instance of the problem of calculating time – man’s effort to orient himself in relation to events. There had been liturgical rows about Easter going back to the second century, perhaps even to the distant conflicts between gentile and Jewish Christians. In western Europe, the newly Christianized barbarian societies had adjusted their sense of the annual routine, from the court downwards, to fit the Christian year. Divergence over the most important and awesome event in the yearly round was not merely indecorous but sinister. And how could the Church claim unity if it could not even agree on the date of the resurrection, the core of its belief? Behind these discrepancies, which reflected not so much deliberate defiance on the part of the Celts as a drifting apart on details during a period when contact with Rome and Gaul had been lost, there was a much more fundamental difference about the nature of the Church. In a sense, the parallel was with the Donatists. Was the Church to embrace and reflect society, in the process of transforming it, as Augustine had taught, and as Rome and the Gaulish episcopate still assumed? Or was it an alternative to society? Celtic monasticism, so well adjusted to its native economic and social framework, seemed to pose impossible standards in areas of settled culture.

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

  I was just asking you to join us for dinner, not play a role in my family. But OK, you’ve made your feelings clear and now I understand that,” I say. “It’s not about you, Laura, or your kids. I’m at a difficult place with my own kids right now, so it’s impossible for me to imagine having relationships with someone else’s kids. You’re so in love with your children, you can’t possibly understand,” he says, still staring at the ceiling. “I suspect this will be the last time I look up at that crack on the ceiling.” He points to a spidery crack over the bed with a sad smile. “Quite possibly,” I say with an equally sad smile. Yet, we manage to forge ahead, spending our weekends together when I don’t have the kids, and talking on the phone every day when he calls me from work and again before he goes to sleep. There is a rhythm and an easiness to being with him, and we have sex that is thrilling and nourishing and continues to keep me intrigued. At the same time, I question myself: what does this mean, what are we to each other, shouldn’t I still be having sex with lots of different men? Isn’t it too soon for me to feel I’m settling down with only one man, especially when that man doesn’t really want to be part of my life beyond my private relationship with him? CHAPTER 38 Laura’s Liberation Tour I’ve maintained traditional views of monogamy and relationships throughout my life, firmly believing one relationship at a time takes tremendous effort and concentration and that part of loving someone is loving only that someone. All of my relationships had been goal-oriented though, existing to culminate in a potential future together. I understand the motivation I had at the time – I had been young and looking for a husband, craving a family. If I’m no longer seeking a settled life with a man, don’t want a husband and already have a family, what’s the point of continuing to be steadfast about my views on monogamy? When I casually dated #3 and #4 simultaneously over the summer, it had felt different, less substantial. Now that my relationship with #6 is something, ill-defined and shapeshifting but something weighty nonetheless, I need to rethink how I feel about being with one man at a time. One evening at #6’s apartment after he’s cooked me a dinner of roasted sea bass he has professionally deboned and filleted himself, complete with cloth napkins and wine, I tell him I have a confession to make, that I have a coffee date later in the week with a man I met on Hinge. “Ahhhh, she’s back on her apps,” he says with a wry smile and a sigh. “I just wanted you to know.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Looking at him, I really didn’t think he was cute. But I didn’t know what else to say so I shut my eyes and took the back of his head in my palm and pulled him toward me. Then he introduced his tongue, much deeper into my mouth, circling it in a clockwise motion. What the fuck was he doing? He was ruining it. I started to put my tongue out as a guard, to try to stop his rotating tongue, but I guess he just took this as a sign that I was turned on—that I was into it—because he continued with the circling, only deeper in my mouth, almost to my throat, gagging me. I put my finger up between our mouths, pretending to trace his lips, but really trying to create some distance. Then I closed my lips a lot, guiding him into softer and gentler kisses. I kept my eyes sealed shut. I could have just cut it off there. I’d gotten what I said I wanted. I’m not sure why I didn’t. He rubbed my tits over my black cotton dress. I could feel his bulge against me. Then he started kissing my ear and neck, which I think is a turn-on for some women, because men do it a lot—especially when they are younger. I remembered these moves now from when I was in my early twenties: the weird breathing in my ear, the sticky trail on my neck, moves he probably read on Esquire.com. All I could think about was how my neck and ear now smelled like his breath, which had taken on a sour quality: the whiskey, tequila, and smoke forming a noxious stew. “Let’s go back to my house,” he whispered into my ear. “Uhhh, I don’t think so,” I said. “What if you’re a murderer?” “I’m not a murderer.” He laughed. “If you were a murderer you obviously wouldn’t tell me.” “I’m so not a murderer,” he said. “Well, I will just walk a little further and then I’ll decide. Maybe I can pick up some more clues in the meantime.” “Yeah, let’s just walk in the direction of my house. Or we could go to your house instead?” I imagined bringing this kid to Annika’s house. I didn’t want him knowing where I lived. Or in there to begin with. “No, that’s okay. What’s your address?” I asked. Then I texted Claire: I’m going here with a strange boy from the internet it’s your fault if i don’t text you after then this is where to find the body

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  celebration of the eucharist Gr. (thVn eujcaristivan), and they separated from each other in peace, all the church being at peace, both those that observed and those that did not observe [the fourteenth of Nisan], maintaining peace." This letter proves that the Christians of the days of Polycarp knew how to keep the unity of the Spirit without uniformity of rites and ceremonies. "The very difference in our fasting," says Irenaeus in the same letter, "establishes the unanimity in our faith." 2. A few years afterwards, about A.D. 170, the controversy broke out in Laodicea, but was confined to Asia, where a difference had arisen either among the Quartadecimanians themselves, or rather among these and the adherents of the Western observance. The accounts on this interimistic sectional dispute are incomplete and obscure. Eusebius merely mentions that at that time Melito of Sardis wrote two works on the Passover.340 But these are lost, as also that of Clement of Alexandria on the same topic.341 Our chief source of information is Claudius Apolinarius (Apollinaris),342 bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, in two fragments of his writings upon the subject, which have been preserved in the Chronicon Paschale.343 These are as follows: "There are some now who, from ignorance, love to raise strife about these things, being guilty in this of a pardonable offence; for ignorance does not so much deserve blame as need instruction. And they say that on the fourteenth [of Nisan] the Lord ate the paschal lamb (to; provbaton e[fage) with his disciples, but that He himself suffered on the great day of unleavened bread344 [i.e. the fifteenth of Nisan]; and they interpret Matthew as favoring their view from which it appears that their view does not agree with the law,345 and that the Gospels seem, according to them, to be at variance.346 The Fourteenth is the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice, the. Son of God347 in the place of the lamb ... who was lifted up upon the horns of the unicorn ... and who was buried on the day of the Passover, the stone having been placed upon his tomb." Here Apolinarius evidently protests against the Quartadecimanian practice, yet simply as one arising from ignorance, and not as a blameworthy heresy. He opposes it as a chronological and exegetical mistake, and seems to hold that the fourteenth, and not the fifteenth, is the great day of the death of Christ as the true Lamb of God, on the false assumption that this truth depends upon the chronological coincidence of the crucifixion and the Jewish passover.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  This situation was in time brought about by the victory of Pauline theology. The divinity of Christ gave Christianity its tremendous initial impact and assisted its universality. But it left Christian theologians with a dilemma: how to explain the divinity of Christ while maintaining the singularity of God. Were there not two Gods? Or, if the concept of the Spirit were introduced as a separate manifestation of divinity, three? The point became an irritant at a very early stage of Christian history. One possible solution was to regard Christ as a manifestation of a monolithic God and therefore not a man at all. This was the line followed, in general, by the gnostics. Thus Valentinus wrote: ‘Jesus ate and drank in a peculiar manner, not evacuating his food. So much power of continence was in him that in him his food was not corrupted, since he himself had no corruptibility.’ This weird theory invalidated most of the gospels, devalued the resurrection and made nonsense of the eucharist. The Docetists, who also belonged to this school, faced the issue squarely: as Christ’s human body was phantasm, his sufferings and death were mere appearance: ‘If he suffered, he was not God. If he was God, he did not suffer.’ Christianity thus presented lost much of its attraction. There were attempts to meet this objection by more sophisticated definitions. The Monarchianists, while emphasizing the unity of God, suggested that the Father himself descended into the Virgin Mary and became Jesus Christ, a formulation also known as Patripassionism. The Sabellianists put it a slightly different way: Father, Son and Holy Ghost were one and the same being, that is the body, the soul and the spirit of one substance – one God in three temporary manifestations. These were intellectually digestible concepts but they were still incompatible with the historical Jesus who was now an integral part of the canonical scriptures. A second line of solution was to stress the manhood of Christ. This, of course, had been preferred all along by the Judaizing elements in Christianity and was the essence of the heresy maintained by the Ebionites, the displaced rump of the Jerusalem Church. The objection, of course, was that it was then difficult to differentiate Christianity from Judaism and impossible to retain Pauline theology or (among other canonical texts) the gospel of St John. The halfway stage along this line was to deny Christ’s pre-existence as God and this is more or less what Arius, the most important of the Christological Trinitarian heresiarchs, tried to do. As he put it himself: ‘We are persecuted because we say that the Son had a beginning, but God is without beginning. . . and this we say because he is neither part of God nor derived from any substance.’ According to the historian Socrates, writing c.

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

  If you want to date other men, we can work it out. Give me a chance. Please. I had a special day planned for you.” I am confused by him, his alternating belligerence and warmth. I think back to some of the conversations he’s had with me about his ex-wife, how roughly and unkindly he spoke about her, but how loving he is when I hear him on the phone with his daughter. I wonder if when Michael talks about me he does so with respect for the fact that I’m the mother of his children, or if his frustrations with me are so great that the anger comes first, and then the acknowledgement of the love we once shared. I decline #5’s invitation once again, but he persists. “Please. I like you so much, Laura. You’re the first woman I’ve opened up to in a long time. Just come spend the day, we’ll work this out,” he writes. I cave. I don’t know if it’s compassion or my ego, but this line of reasoning works on me, makes me feel I’m special to him and I dare not disappoint. When I arrive at his apartment, he looks at me forlornly and opens his arms to embrace me. I allow him to wrap me in a hug and he murmurs apologies in my ear, then guides me to the couch when I say that I am exhausted. He lies next to me and wraps himself around me. I am out of sorts, knowing I shouldn’t be here and feeling upset with myself that I let myself be so easily convinced, once again. After a few minutes, he rises and gently tucks a blanket around me. I hear him moving around in his small kitchen, making himself breakfast, and I drift off to sleep. When I wake up and look at my watch, I see that I have been asleep for two hours. He is working on his laptop at the table and smiles at me when he sees me rise, saying we should go to the health club soon before it gets too late. “OK,” I say, groggily. “Let me eat an apple or a banana or something first.” I check my phone while he rummages in his kitchen for a piece of fruit. There is a long text from Alan, “Good morning Laura, as we both know from literature and movies, NYC taxis either never show up fast enough or come too soon. Last night I felt the latter, a quick goodbye rather than a longer hello.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  440, his actual formulation was as follows: ‘If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence; hence it is clear that there was a time when the Son was not. It follows then of necessity that he had his existence from the non-existent.’ The intrinsic difficulty of the problem lay in the lack of room for manoeuvre for a middle course. A right-thinking theologian, anxious to remain orthodox, tended to smash his ship on Charybdis while trying to avoid Scylla. Thus Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea (d. 392), in his efforts to demonstrate his anti-Arianism, emphasized the divinity of the Lord at the expense of his manhood and ended by creating a heresy of his own which denied that Christ had a human mind. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople 428–31, reacting from Apollinarianism, reasserted the manhood of Christ to the extent of questioning the divinity of the infant Jesus and thus denying Mary her title of theotokos or ‘God-bearer’. He, too, found himself a reluctant heresiarch. In turn, Eutyches, a learned monk from Constantinople, in his anti-Nestorian fervour, swung too far in the direction of Apollinarianism and came to grief over Constantine’s compulsory word ‘consubstantial’. Summoned to recant before a council in 448, he gave up in despair: ‘Hitherto I have always avoided the phrase “consubstantial after the flesh” [as tending to confusion]. But I will use it now, since your holiness demands it.’ What room for manoeuvre there was consisted in verbal manipulations behind which lay nebulous concepts. ‘Consubstantial after the flesh’ was, indeed, such a device. But a clever formula might, in solving an old problem, raise an entirely new one and a compromise meaningful and satisfactory to one generation of fathers was often interpreted in rival ways by the next. The Church’s collective memory was an imperfect instrument. By the third century, for instance, it had forgotten the origins of the old Jewish-Christian Ebionites and assumed they were the followers of a heresiarch called Ebion; not only was he denounced by orthodox writers but sentences from his works were produced for refutation. All kinds of subsequent constructions were placed upon the Nicene formula, and the motives of those who approved it. Then there were language difficulties. Greek lent itself to complexity of religious discussion. This was one important reason why the great Christological rows were all of eastern origins and were mere imports in Latin-speaking areas. Our word ‘essence’ can be used in a general or a particular sense. The Greeks had two, hypostasis and ousia, each of which could be used in either sense. Some of the leading fourth-century Greek theologians began to employ ousia in the general sense and hypostasis in the particularist – ‘person’ or ‘character’. But the Latin for both words is substantia – which in fact is the exact equivalent of hypostasis. The Latin essentia, the equivalent of ousia, never gained currency. The Latins did, however, have the word persona, which they employed for the particularist sense.

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

  He’s gentle and kind, has a twinkle in his eye and is clearly a history buff, as he keeps peppering our conversation with stories about ancient noblemen and bits of Russian history. I concentrate on following what he’s saying – it’s noisy and I’m on my second drink and the stories seem to randomly appear without context. I don’t think he’s showing off for me, but maybe citing historical facts is a kind of nervous tic. When I stand to use the restroom, I totter for a moment in my high heels and hold onto the edge of the table to get my bearings. In the awkward lulls of our conversation, I consumed two drinks at lightning speed. When I return to the table, he has already paid the bill and is ready to go. I wonder if he’s anxious to get this date to its end, but he walks with me toward home and on the way suggests that we should stop for dessert. I doubt we will be able to get a table at the crowded restaurant he points to, but he says he knows the host and we will get in, no problem. Walking next to him, I note that we are eye-level, though in all fairness I’m wearing heels. Still, it feels weird to me and I realize that I’ve always been diminutive compared to men I’ve been with. If I’m being honest – even though I admit this with regret that I care – I like being the smaller one and feeling protected by a larger man at my side. I think of a friend who always dates men who are her height, with whom she can even share jeans – I shudder at the thought. I’ve often teased her that she likes men to be petite so she can tuck them in her pockets when she’s out and about and keep them close by. I have always conformed to gender stereotypes of physicality, feeling that masculinity is defined in part by physical prowess, but I also fully embrace the concept of metrosexuality. Michael had been more interested in fashion and shopping than I had ever been, and arguments we had about spending too much money on clothes, accessories or fancy toiletries were due to his bills, not mine. I didn’t like how much money he spent, but I liked that he cared about what he wore and how he looked.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  primarily to the gentile or diaspora mission. Luke, in the Acts, does not tell us what rights or duties or privileges were enjoyed by ‘the twelve’ or by ‘the apostles’. Indeed, when he gets to Paul’s work he forgets all about them, and thenceforth refers to him as ‘the apostle’. Only with Peter can we trace any activity; with John it is barely possible, though we can assume it since he was martyred. And it is quite impossible with the rest. James, Jesus’s brother, is an identifiable personality, indeed an important one. But he is not an ‘apostle’, nor one of ‘the twelve’. It is thus misleading to speak of an ‘apostolic age’, and equally misleading to speak of a primitive pentecostal Church and faith. The last point is important, because it implies Jesus left a norm, in terms of doctrine, message, and organization, from which the Church subsequently departed. There was never a norm. Jesus held his following together because he was, in effect, its only spokesman. After Pentecost, there were many; a Babel of voices. If the famous Petrine text in Matthew is genuine and means what it is alleged to mean, Peter was a very unsteady rock on which to found a Church. He did not exercise powers of leadership and seems to have allowed himself to be dispossessed by James and other members of Jesus’s family, who had played no part in the original mission. Finally, Peter went on foreign mission and left the Jerusalem circle altogether. The impression we get is that the Jerusalem Church was unstable, and had a tendency to drift back into Judaism completely. Indeed, it was not really a separate Church at all, but part of the Jewish cult. It had no sacrifices of its own, no holy places and times, no priests. It met for meals, like the Essene groups, and had readings, preaching, prayers and hymns; its ecclesiastical personality was expressed solely in verbal terms. Thus, we are told, it attracted a good many people. Many of them must have regarded it as little more than a pious and humble Jewish sect, keen on charity, sharing goods, revering an unjustly treated leader, and with an apocalyptic message. This view was also shared by some in authority. A number of priests became members. So did some of the Pharisees. How did this participation square with the execution of Jesus? That, it was now admitted in some quarters, had been a mistake; just as, later, the execution of James in 62 would be denounced subsequently as a blunder by one man acting ultra vires. Of course, there were Jewish establishment elements who were opposed to the Jesus movement all along, and attacked it whenever opportunity offered, as they attacked other religious ‘troublemakers’. But with the penetration of the Jerusalem circle by priests and scribes, there were always

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

  I am hurt, but I am also confused, as maybe I don’t want him further enmeshed in my life either. I don’t want a boyfriend, I don’t want to be married again, I don’t want to live with a man, so do I just want a man who wants to meet my kids and be a bigger part of my life without actually meeting my kids or being a bigger part of my life? Why am I so terrified to want more than that? * I go back on Tinder and Hinge. I’ve let the dating apps sit dormant on my phone these past months while I’ve been spending time with #6, but now I’m hankering again to see what kind of single men are out there, and I want to get back to the simple, fun part of dating that involved a lot of sex without a lot of complicated feelings. A couple of weeks after the unfortunate slime conversation, as #6 and I are lounging in my bed early on a Sunday morning, I know that I have to address my recent wounds, unburden myself and clear the air. I would rather scare him away than keep him around while I harbor resentment and insecurity. I tell him how stung I was by his response to me. “Oh boy,” he says, sighing and staring up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, it’s just the last thing I want to do after an exhausting week of work is hang out with a couple of eight-year-old girls.” “You’re not making it better,” I say quietly. “You’ve basically repeated the exact thing that offended me to begin with, just taking out the bit about making slime.” “You’re right, I’m sorry. You caught me off guard when you asked me and I had a million things distracting me at work. That’s a classic example of a moment when I should have hit the pause button and asked you if I could think about it and get back to you,” he says. “Fair enough, but the part that’s bothering me is not that you didn’t think about it but that you seemed so genuinely horrified by the suggestion of it. It was hard for me to work up the courage to ask you and being shot down like that really hurt and frankly confused me.” “Laura, at this point in my life I don’t want to play daddy to other people’s kids. I don’t see myself standing on the sidelines of Georgia’s soccer games, cheering her on.” “She doesn’t play soccer and I didn’t suggest that you play daddy. Georgia already has a father.

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

  Johnny comes to my rescue, pushing the dog’s paws from where they landed on my stomach, and we head up a short flight of stairs to the kitchen. His house is tidy and comfortable with a few attempts at decor thrown in – a vase with a sprig of fake flowers, a scented candle, a ‘Bless This House’ print framed on the wall – though I am surprised to see a dozen bath mats scattered all over the kitchen. I am tempted to mention that inexpensive rag rugs can easily be purchased online, but I remind myself that I’m here for a few hours, I’m not moving in, and instead gladly accept the glass of wine he offers me. He takes me on a quick tour of the living area and I feel confused; I don’t want to be rude so I express enthusiasm over the small details he proudly points out, but I’m not quite sure what we’re doing here. I was expecting the “You run to the bathroom and I’ll take all my clothes off and you’ll throw me on the bed” routine, but instead I’m admiring the wood floor he just laid in his enclosed porch. I nestle into the couch with my glass of wine and curl my feet underneath me, trying to exude availability. He perches next to me for a second before he pops back up again saying something about needing to check on the state of affairs upstairs. It finally dawns on me: he’s nervous! I’ve been so focused on how new I am to this that it hasn’t occurred to me how strange it must be for this man, who knew me as a client and has seen me in my element with my husband and kids, to have me invite myself over and present myself on his sofa, scantily clad and there for the taking. He has been upstairs a few minutes when I accept that nothing is going to happen unless I make it happen. I climb the stairs and find him down a carpeted hallway in his bedroom, taking clothes off the bed and smoothing down the blankets. “Hey,” I say, poking my head in. “Just seeing what’s going on up here.” “Sorry,” he says. “I wanted to straighten up a bit.” “No need to do it for my sake,” I say and take a quick inventory: queen-sized bed, shiny mahogany dresser set, Floyd standing at the end of the bed. I place my glass of wine on a coaster on the dresser and sit on the edge of the bed.

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

  I thank him and wait for him to sit next to me before eating, but he is standing in front of the TV, flipping through channels until he settles on The Graduate , which has just started. “I love this movie,” I say just to say something, but I’m taken aback that he seems to be watching it attentively as if I’m not here. I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk or if I will be interrupting the movie if I attempt conversation, so I concentrate on nibbling the unwieldy crab cake. I am poking the food around my plate and anxiously contemplating how to deal with this television-versus-talking situation when suddenly he is pressed against me from behind, kissing my neck. I glance over and note his empty plate. “Oh, OK, I guess lunch is over?” I say with an awkward laugh, attempting to be cheeky but mostly sounding child-like and confused. It is now clear that he invited me here to have sex and that the crab cakes were a polite ruse. How I have gotten all the way to #8 without instinctively understanding the dynamics of these situations astounds me, and I realize assigns a certain naïveté to me that I am no longer entitled to. I have inexplicably managed to retain an innocence, even a demurity, that should have been tossed aside many numbers ago. “Yes, Laura, lunch is over,” he says, reaching his arm around me so that his hand can inch its way along my neckline and then down to the edge of my bra. I can feel his hardness against the small of my back as he leans into me. I feel enveloped by him, his kisses against the back of my neck becoming breathier, his hands working their way deeper down before finding my nipple. He is not physically threatening but he is moving quickly and persistently, and for a fleeting moment I wonder, if I wanted to stop now, would he let me? There is something about the urgency of his movements, coupled with my tepid response, that unnerves me. The power here is most decidedly not in my court. As for the paucity of my physical feedback, I am more than a little distracted – by Dustin Hoffman’s bumbling machinations across the room, by the sun beaming through the windows which affords no darkness in which to hide, by the crab cake congealing on my plate in front of me. My mind is wandering so much that I start to panic – am I losing my interest in sex, have I used up my post-divorce allotment? I am attracted to him, so why do I feel like I can take this or leave it right now? He pushes back from me, swings his legs around to the floor, and takes my hand to lead me to the back of the apartment.

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

  I recall curling into a booth at a Japanese restaurant with my sister while my mother and Larry got acquainted, her soulful blue eyes flickering back and forth from her date to her children. She brought us coloring books and invisible ink pads, and if we were well-behaved, saucer-sized black and white cookies from Zaro’s Bakery, leading me to believe that her dating life was a fortunate turn of events for me personally. The first man she conceded to go alone on a date with was reluctantly invited inside our apartment to await the arrival of our always-late grandmother, who was to babysit. She had warned him that we might ignore him, that we weren’t used to having men in the apartment with us, but within minutes, we had marched out our ample collection of stuffed animals to put on a play for him and sobbed when our grandmother showed up and they left for their adult-only date. We had given our immediate approval, which was the incentive my mother needed to take us downtown a few weeks later to jump on his waterbed while they packed up his studio apartment so that he could move in with us. Even as she moved on in her romantic life with her soon-to-be husband, I understood implicitly that we would always come first: it was the ultimate act of maternal devotion, attending to her needs only after ours were managed. In books and movies I run through in my memory, it seems women who move on from their spouse’s death or from divorce are often able to seamlessly fold their new husbands into the mix – after a bumpy start, the dust settles and the kids accept it as a given that their mother has moved on. Sometimes the dust endlessly floats through space and the kids hate their stepfathers forever, but this rarely stops the mother. Why does this challenge have me flummoxed when other women seem to manage it without such intense turmoil and inner strife? My kids aren’t rebelling against anyone at this point and they’re not the ones throwing up roadblocks – I am. I cannot wrap my head around how logistically this is supposed to work. If I am to continue to be a good mother in the way I perceive good mothers to be, it means abrogating myself outside of my maternal duties.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And he knew that she had discovered the truth, while she in her turn perceived that he knew this, yet neither of them spoke—in a deathly silence she watched, and in silence he endured her watching. It was rather a terrible summer for them all, the more so as they were surrounded by beauty, and great peace when the evening came down on the snows, turning the white, unfurrowed peaks to sapphire and then to a purple darkness; hanging out large, incredible stars above the wide slope of the Roseg Glacier. For their hearts were full of unspoken dread, of clamorous passions, of bewilderment that went very ill with the quiet fulfilments, with the placid and smiling contentment of nature—and not the least bewildered was Mary. Her respite, it seemed, had been pitifully fleeting; now she was torn by conflicting emotions; terrified and amazed at her realization that Martin meant more to her than a friend, yet less, oh, surely much less than Stephen. Like a barrier of fire her passion for the woman flared up to forbid her love of the man; for as great as the mystery of virginity itself, is sometimes the power of the one who has destroyed it, and that power still remained in these days, with Stephen. Alone in his bare little hotel bedroom, Martin would wrestle with his soul-sickening problem, convinced in his heart that but for Stephen, Mary Llewellyn would grow to love him, nay more, that she had grown to love him already. Yet Stephen was his friend—he had sought her out, had all but forced his friendship upon her; had forced his way into her life, her home, her confidence; she had trusted his honour. And now he must either utterly betray her or through loyalty to their friendship, betray Mary. And he felt that he knew, and knew only too well, what life would do to Mary Llewellyn, what it had done to her already; for had he not seen the bitterness in her, the resentment that could only lead to despair, the defiance that could only lead to disaster? She was setting her weakness against the whole world, and slowly but surely the world would close in until in the end it had utterly crushed her. In her very normality lay her danger. Mary, all woman, was less of a match for life than if she had been as was Stephen.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  The fuss concerned the surprising finding that a woman with bilateral amygdala damage could still experience “feelings of fear.” 62 But the only reason this would be considered surprising was if one believed that the amygdala is the primary wellspring of fearful feelings and that amygdala-controlled responses are reliable markers of these feelings. As I’ve said, and will explain in detail later, amygdala-controlled responses are not unequivocal signatures of fearful feelings. When we scientists use the term “fear” to refer to the neural mechanisms underlying both conscious feelings and nonconsciously elicited responses, we are inviting confusion. The problem is not limited to fear. Jeffrey Gray’s behavioral inhibition theory is a prominent animal model of human anxiety. 63 According to Gray and Neil McNaughton, the behavioral inhibition system of the brain is activated when goals are in conflict—for example, the need for food versus the risk of being exposed to predators. This conflict causes one’s brain to attribute more risk, more harm potential, to stimuli and situations than we otherwise would, thus leading to a central state of behavioral inhibition that promotes risk avoidance rather than food seeking. Gray and McNaughton equated this brain state with anxiety because rats took more risk in conflict situations when treated with drugs, such as benzodiazepines, that relieve anxiety in people. But were they referring to a conscious feeling of anxiety that involves dread, foreboding, and worry? Or were they scientifically defining anxiety to mean a nonconscious brain state of behavioral inhibition that leads to motivational conflict and behavioral arrest? Gray and McNaughton sometimes claimed the latter (the central state version) but also often wrote in ways that could be interpreted the other way (in terms of conscious feelings). Certainly many followers of this approach, and there are legions, believe that the anxious feelings are direct products of the behavioral inhibition system. A recent study showed that benzodiazepines relieved a so-called behavioral inhibition response in crayfish 64 (as a Cajun, I am always momentarily surprised when this is not spelled as “crawfish”). After receiving electric shock in a certain location, the crayfish remained immobile for an extended period (a behavior that was viewed as risk assessment) and then avoided the shock area, whereas the drugged crayfish were less inhibited (more exploratory). The authors claim that their results may lead to a new view of the emotional status of invertebrates.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But what was she? Her thoughts slipping back to her childhood, would find many things in her past that perplexed her. She had never been quite like the other small children, she had always been lonely and discontented, she had always been trying to be some one else—that was why she had dressed herself up as young Nelson. Remembering those days she would think of her father, and would wonder if now, as then, he could help her. Supposing she should ask him to explain about Martin? Her father was wise, and had infinite patience—yet somehow she instinctively dreaded to ask him. Alone—it was terrible to feel so much alone—to feel oneself different from other people. At one time she had rather enjoyed this distinction—she had rather enjoyed dressing up as young Nelson. Yet had she enjoyed it? Or had it been done as some sort of inadequate, childish protest? But if so against what had she been protesting when she strutted about the house, masquerading? In those days she had wanted to be a boy—had that been the meaning of the pitiful young Nelson? And what about now? She had wanted Martin to treat her as a man, had expected it of him. . . . The questions to which she could find no answers, would pile themselves up and up in the darkness; oppressing, stifling by sheer weight of numbers, until she would feel them getting her under; ‘I don’t know—oh, God, I don’t know!’ she would mutter, tossing as though to fling off those questions.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Ruggieri slept for a very long time, but eventually he digested the potion, its effects wore off, and just before matins he woke up. But although he had emerged from sleep and recovered the use of his senses, his mind was still blurred, and in fact it was some days before he shook off his state of bewilderment. On opening his eyes and finding that he could not see anything, he groped about with his hands and discovered that he was inside this trunk, whereupon he began to ponder and mutter to himself, saying: ‘What’s all this? Where am I? Am I asleep, or awake? I have a clear recollection of entering my lady’s bedchamber this evening, and now I appear to be inside some sort of chest. What does it mean? Can it be that the doctor returned home, or that something equally unexpected happened, causing my mistress to conceal me here whilst I was asleep? Why of course, that’s the explanation, that’s it exactly.’ And so he kept quiet and listened to see whether he could hear anything. But after remaining stock-still for some considerable time, feeling rather uncomfortable inside the trunk, which was none too big, and getting a pain in the side on which he was lying, he decided to turn over. This operation he performed with such a degree of skill that in pressing his back against one of the sides of the trunk, which had not been placed on an even keel, he caused it to topple over and fall with a resounding crash, waking up the women who were asleep in the adjoining room and giving them such a fright that they hardly dared to breathe, let alone open their mouths. Ruggieri received quite a shock when the trunk toppled over, but on finding that it had burst open in falling, he preferred to clamber out rather than stay where he was, just in case anything worse was about to happen to him. Being at his wits’ end, and not knowing where he was, he began to fumble his way round the premises in order to see whether he could find a door or a staircase that would offer him a means of escape. The women heard these fumbling sounds as they lay there awake, and they began calling out: ‘Who’s there?’ Being unable to recognize their voices, Ruggieri offered no reply, and so the women started calling to the two young men, who, because they had gone to bed so late, were soundly asleep and had heard nothing of all the racket. Feeling more frightened than ever, the women got out of bed and ran to the windows, shouting: ‘Burglars! Burglars!’ And so several of their neighbours rushed into the house from various directions, some by way of the roof, some by the front-door, and others by the entrance at the rear. And the noise reached such a pitch that even the young men woke up and scrambled out of bed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Could Stephen have met men on equal terms, she would always have chosen them as her companions; she preferred them because of their blunt, open outlook, and with men she had much in common—sport for instance. But men found her too clever if she ventured to expand, and too dull if she suddenly subsided into shyness. In addition to this there was something about her that antagonized slightly, an unconscious presumption. Shy though she might be, they sensed this presumption; it annoyed them, it made them feel on the defensive. She was handsome but much too large and unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women. They were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy. It might cling rather close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting something of the acorn about her. 3Stephen’s worst ordeals at this time were the dinners given in turn by a hospitable county. They were long, these dinners, overloaded with courses; they were heavy, being weighted with polite conversation; they were stately, by reason of the family silver; above all they were firmly conservative in spirit, as conservative as the marriage service itself, and almost as insistent upon sex distinction. ‘Captain Ramsay, will you take Miss Gordon in to dinner?’ A politely crooked arm: ‘Delighted, Miss Gordon.’ Then the solemn and very ridiculous procession, animals marching into Noah’s Ark two by two, very sure of divine protection—male and female created He them! Stephen’s skirt would be long and her foot might get entangled, and she with but one free hand at her disposal—the procession would stop and she would have stopped it! Intolerable thought, she had stopped the procession! ‘I’m so sorry, Captain Ramsay!’ ‘I say, can I help you?’ ‘No—it’s really—all right, I think I can manage—’ But oh, the utter confusion of spirit, the humiliating feeling that some one must be laughing, the resentment at having to cling to his arm for support, while Captain Ramsay looked patient. ‘Not much damage, I think you’ve just torn the frill, but I often wonder how you women manage. Imagine a man in a dress like that, too awful to think of—imagine me in it!’ Then a laugh, not unkindly but a trifle self-conscious, and rather more than a trifle complacent. Safely steered to her seat at the long dinner-table, Stephen would struggle to smile and talk brightly, while her partner would think: ‘Lord, she’s heavy in hand; I wish I had the mother; now there’s a lovely woman!’ And Stephen would think: ‘I’m a bore, why is it?’ Then, ‘But if I were he I wouldn’t be a bore, I could just be myself, I’d feel perfectly natural.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I can’t think why you should have played me so scurvy a trick, but by all that’s holy, I shall pay you back for it.’ Now, Pinuccio was not the wisest of young men, and on perceiving his error, instead of doing all he could to remedy matters, he said: ‘Pay me back? How? What could you do to me?’ Whereupon the host’s wife, thinking she was with her husband, said to Adriano: ‘Heavens! Just listen to the way those guests of ours are arguing with one another!’ Adriano laughed, and said: ‘Let them get on with it, and to hell with them. They had far too much to drink last night.’ The woman had already thought she could detect the angry tones of her husband, and on hearing Adriano’s voice, she realized at once whose bed she was sharing. So being a person of some intelligence, she promptly got up without a word, seized her baby’s cradle, and having picked her way across the room, which was in total darkness, she set the cradle down beside the bed in which her daughter was sleeping and scrambled in beside her. Then, pretending to have been aroused by the noise her husband was making, she called out to him and demanded to know what he was quarrelling with Pinuccio about. Whereupon her husband replied: ‘Don’t you hear what he says he has done to Niccolosa this night?’ ‘He’s telling a pack of lies,’ said the woman. ‘He hasn’t been anywhere near Niccolosa, for I’ve been lying beside her myself the whole time and I haven’t managed to sleep a wink. You’re a fool to take any notice of him. You men drink so much in the evening that you spend the night dreaming and wandering all over the place in your sleep, and imagine you’ve performed all sorts of miracles: it’s a thousand pities you don’t trip over and break your necks! What’s Pinuccio doing there anyway? Why isn’t he in his own bed?’ At which point, seeing how adroitly the woman was concealing both her own and her daughter’s dishonour, Adriano came to her support by saying: ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Pinuccio, not to wander about in the middle of the night? You’ll land yourself in serious trouble one of these days, with this habit of walking in your sleep, and claiming to have actually done the fantastic things you dream about. Come back to bed, curse you!’ When he heard Adriano confirm what his wife had been saying, the host began to think that Pinuccio really had been dreaming after all; and seizing him by the shoulder, he shook him and yelled at him, saying: ‘Wake up, Pinuccio! Go back to your own bed!’ Having taken all of this in, Pinuccio now began to thresh about as though he were dreaming again, causing his host to split his sides with laughter.