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 Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  felt used by them, or they’ve been insensitive or ignored your pleas to stop behavior that is unpleasant. Even before you express your annoyance, they seem to have picked up your mood, and you can detect some sulking on their part. And when you do confront them, they grow silent, wearing a hurt or disappointed look. It is not the silence of someone with remorse. They may respond with a “Fine. Whatever. If that’s how you feel.” Any apologies on their part are said in a way (through tone of voice or facial expressions) that subtly conveys some disbelief that they have done anything wrong. If they are really clever, in response they might conjure up something you’ve said or done in the past, which you’ve forgotten but which still rankles them, as if you are not so innocent. It doesn’t sound like something you’ve said or done, but you can’t be sure. Perhaps they will say something in their defense that pushes your buttons, and as you get angry, they can now accuse you of being hostile, aggressive, and unfair. Whatever their type of response, you are left with the feeling that perhaps you were wrong all along. Maybe you overreacted or were paranoid. You might even slightly doubt your sanity—you know you felt upset, but maybe you can’t trust your own feelings. Now you are the one to feel guilty, as if you were to blame for the tension. Better to reassess yourself and not repeat this unpleasant experience, you tell yourself. As an adjunct to this strategy, passive aggressors are often quite nice and polite to other people, only playing their games on you, since you are the one they want to control. If you try to confide in people your confusion and anger, you get no sympathy, and the blame shifting has double the effect. This strategy is a way of covering up all kinds of unpleasant behavior, of deflecting any kind of criticism, and of making people skittish about ever calling them on what they are doing. In this way they can gain power over your emotions and manipulate them as they see fit, doing whatever they want with impunity. They are exploiting the fact that many of us, since early childhood, are prone to feeling guilty at the slightest impetus. This strategy is used most obviously in personal relationships, but you will find it in more diffused form in the work world. People will use their hypersensitivity to any criticism, and the ensuing drama they stir up, to dissuade people from ever trying to confront them. To counter this strategy, you need to be able to see through the blame shifting and remain unaffected by it. Your goal is not to make them angry, so don’t get caught in the trap of exchanging recriminations. They are better at this drama game than you are, and they thrive by their power to rankle you. Be calm and even fair,

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa rolled over and touched my face. I wiped away my tears. “Jess, did you say something?” Theresa’s voice was hoarse with sleep. “No, honey,” I stroked her hair and kissed her cheek. “Go back to sleep.” Theresa watched me from the kitchen doorway as I repotted the spider plant. ““There’s a bigger pot under the sink,’ she reminded me. I shook my head. “This one does better when it’s rootbound. The mote pressure on its roots, the more it thrives.” Stone Butch Blues 161 Theresa came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Is that like us, honey?” I didn’t answer. Theresa turned me around to face her. I couldn’t look her in the eyes. “What is it, baby?” she pressed. I shrugged. “I don’t think I have feelings like other people do. Sometimes you want me to talk to you about how I feel and I can’t figure out if I’m like other people inside. Maybe I don’t have real feelings.” Theresa didn’t answer at first. She lay her head on my shoulder and pulled me close. “Sit down, baby,” she sighed. She pulled a kitchen chair close to mine. “Oh, you have feelings, honey. I think you can feel love, maybe more than other people.” She took my hands in hers. ““There’s so much going on in your heart it scares me sometimes because I’m afraid you'll explode if you don’t have some sort of safety valve. I think anger is real hard for you. Maybe your own rage scares you. And I think humiliation is a rough feeling for anyone to deal with, and I think you feel that way a lot.” I almost couldn’t stand to listen to her words. My temperature rose and I felt dizzy. Theresa pulled me closer and brushed my cheek with her lips. “Take it easy, honey,” she whispered. I pulled back. “But maybe I don’t have feelings like other people. Maybe the way I grew up changed 162 = Leslie Feinberg me inside. Maybe I’m like the plant: my feelings got so choked up that I grew in a different way.” Theresa smiled as she weighed the thought. “Yeah, maybe it’s what makes you so sensitive to other people’s feelings. Sometimes you see so much about people that it used to make me feel naked around you.” I sighed. “Why do feelings have to be such a big deal?” Theresa smiled. “You mean your feelings, honey. You always treat other people’s feelings like they’re a big deal. It’s a hard place for you, sweetheart. But don’t leave me out here alone.” I frowned. “What do you mean?”

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  Don helped her buy her first motorcycle, hints that he doesn’t fully buy the story that it had been suicide— She was a lot stronger than that . Travis tells the story of the blueberry pie, remorseful that she’d used his gun, which may or may not be true, as she had her own gun. Father figurines. Then there’s my real father. Lunchtime when I first stop by, I catch him on his way out. Each Monday, I discover, he eats the free lunch in the basement of a church on Arlington Street. He’s nicknamed it “the Dwarf’s Diner.” Some who eat at the diner are homeless; some, like my father, simply don’t have enough money to make it through the month. The first tape I have is of him walking to the diner down Commonwealth Avenue. Next on the tape he’s eating, sitting at a folding table with six other men. I ask him some questions, he looks uncomfortable. I keep the camera trained on his face, don’t let it wander to the others. My father introduces me as his son to a guy named Howard. Howard warms up— Why didn’t you say so? I thought you was just some student, making another documentary on “The Homeless.” It’s more like a home movie, I say. The Dwarf (she is diminutive, but not a dwarf) comes by. I can’t believe a handsome kid like him belongs to you. You sure it wasn’t the milkman? After lunch we walk to the Old Burial Grounds. Late April, tourists pose before winged skulls on tombstones. I try again to ask about my mother, but first he wants to tell me his three-step process for robbing banks. Flawless , he promises. Animated for the camera, clearly this is a story he has told many times before. Step One— You need checks. Dippy-do Doyle knew someone who worked at John Hancock Insurance. They spirit out a check which has the official three-color sig on it. Dippy-do brings the check to Suitcase Fiddler, who forges the sig on a copy of the check—Suitcase is an artist, a master. The next day Dippy-do spirits the original back to John Hancock. In the days to follow, when I meet with the other men, at moments I will feel the tables turn—now I am the older man, the father figure, and these men, telling about their younger selves, are lost, needing direction. Some take half an hour to tell their story, some three. My father takes days, weeks, years. He’s still telling it, whenever I stop off to see him. It seems like two simple questions, but I soon find there are no simple questions, not with my father. He never seems to want to know much about me, how my life has gone, what kind of man I’ve become. In front of a camera there is a lot he wants to say. Step Two— Open an account. Open an account. Where? Fall River and New Bedford.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  They often appear charming and refreshingly confident, brimming with ideas and enthusiasm, and we fall under their spell. Only when it is too late do we discover that their confidence is irrational and their ideas ill-conceived. Among colleagues, they can be those who sabotage our work or careers out of secret envy, excited to bring us down. Or they could be colleagues or hires who reveal, to our dismay, that they are completely out for themselves, using us as stepping-stones. What inevitably happens in these situations is that we are caught off guard, not expecting such behavior. Often these types will hit us with elaborate cover stories to justify their actions, or blame handy scapegoats. They know how to confuse us and draw us into a drama they control. We might protest or become angry, but in the end we feel rather helpless—the damage is done. Then another such type enters our life, and the same story repeats itself. We often notice a similar sensation of confusion and helplessness when it comes to ourselves and our own behavior. For instance, we suddenly say something that offends our boss or colleague or friend —we are not quite sure where it came from, but we are frustrated to find that some anger and tension from within has leaked out in a way that we regret. Or perhaps we enthusiastically throw our weight into some project or scheme, only to realize it was quite foolish and a terrible waste of time. Or perhaps we fall in love with a person who is precisely the wrong type for us and we know it, but we cannot help ourselves. What has come over us, we wonder? In these situations, we catch ourselves falling into self-destructive patterns of behavior that we cannot seem to control. It is as if we harbor a stranger within us, a little demon who operates independently of our willpower and pushes us into doing the wrong things. And this stranger within us is rather weird, or at least weirder than how we imagine ourselves. What we can say about these two things—people’s ugly actions and our own occasionally surprising behavior—is that we usually have no clue as to what causes them. We might latch onto some simple explanations: “That person is evil, a sociopath” or “Something came over me; I wasn’t myself.” But such pat descriptions do not lead to any understanding or prevent the same patterns from recurring. The truth is that we humans live on the surface, reacting emotionally to what people say and do. We form opinions of others and ourselves that are rather simplified. We settle for the easiest and most convenient story to tell ourselves. What if, however, we could dive below the surface and see deep within, getting closer to the actual roots of what causes human behavior?

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  of the people for Queen Elizabeth, every minute detail about the country’s finances and shoreline defenses. Based on years of such study, in 1588 he decided to launch his armada against England, feeling certain that, having made the armada large enough, Spain would prevail. But he failed to pay enough attention to weather reports, the most critical factor of all—for storms at sea would spell the destruction of the armada. He also failed to realize that by the time he had compiled and assimilated enough information on the Turks or on England, the situation had actually changed. So while he seemed extremely detail oriented, he was never quite on top of anything. Over the years Philip strained his mind with so much reading that he had frequent headaches and dizzy spells. His thinking was definitely impaired, and he made decisions that ended up leading directly to the irreversible decline of the Spanish empire. In some ways you are probably more like King Philip II than you would like to imagine. In your life you are more than likely paying attention to some details that seem immediately important to you, while ignoring the weather reports that will doom your project. Like Philip, you tend to take in information without considering your priorities, what really matters in the end. But the brain has its limits. Assimilating too much information leads to mental fatigue, confusion, and feelings of helplessness. Everything begins to seem equally important—the placement of toilets and a possible war with the Turks. What you need is a mental filtering system based on a scale of priorities and your long-term goals. Knowing what you want to accomplish in the end will help you weed out the essential from the nonessential. You do not have to know all the details. Sometimes you need to delegate—let your subordinates handle the information gathering. Remember that greater control over events will come from realistic assessments of the situation, precisely what is made most difficult by a brain submerged in trivia. The Farsighted Human Most of us live within a relatively narrow time frame. We generally associate the passage of time with something negative—aging and moving closer to death. Instinctively we recoil from thinking too deeply about the future and the past, for this reminds us of the passage of time. In relation to the future we may try to think about our plans a year or two from now, but our thinking is more like a daydream, a wish, than deep analysis. In relation to the past we may have a few fond or painful memories from childhood and later years, but in general the past baffles us. We change so much with each passing year that who we were five, ten, twenty years ago might seem like a stranger to us. We don’t really have a cohesive sense of who we are, a feeling of connection between the five-year-old and thirty-five-year-old versions of ourselves.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  that man’s father is my father’s son A man came in this afternoon looking for you, Captain says. We’re sitting in the office, a closet off the Yellow Lobby. Yeah? I say. Said he was your father. Captain’s voice is singsong, it rises at the end of each phrase. I’d never noticed before. He had ID, Captain sings. He wanted a bed. A bed? I say. Sort of demanded a bed. Said his son worked here, that his son’d get him a bed. What do I say to that? He was sitting right where you are, Captain sings. Involuntarily I stand up, wipe my hands on my pants. He said it was only for a few days. He just lost his room. He lost his room three months ago, I say, gesturing toward the empty chair. You knew? Captain asks lightly. I can’t blame him for asking, but again I can’t think of what to say. You don’t have to stay, Captain sings, low. Take the night. I saw him by the river a month ago, I start to explain, but it sounds so spacey. On a bench, I say. Asleep. It’s like a frikkin opera. If you want to stay you can, Captain offers. A little girl pointed, I say, but what does that even mean? He’ll be here at six, Captain says softly. After his job. I’m not really looking at him. I’ll try to look at him. Day labor, Captain sings. I gave him a work bed— The phone rings. Captain looks at it. I look at it. Captain picks it up on fourth ring. Don’t call an ambulance, Captain says into the phone, he’s been like that since noon. Uh-huh. Then call an ambulance. He hangs up the phone. Fuckin Billy, Captain chuckles. Fuckin Billy. Does he have proof? I ask. Did you see it? He said he’d bring it. You don’t think he’s working? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t even know him. Pause. You don’t have to stay tonight. Go home. “Go home” has become the refrain, the chorus welling up. Who else knows? It came up at change of shift. The log? The log. You wrote in the log that my father showed up looking for a bed? “New guest.” Pause. Long pause. Captain leaves me alone in the office. The needle comes off the record. Take your time, he said, but there was no time. Only so many minutes a counselor can sit outside the fray. I look around the office—Are the walls closing in? Are planets colliding in my brain? Did Captain just sing me a song? I sat for ten minutes alone in the office, then I went to work. A few hours later my father showed up, made his way to the Cage, presented the bed ticket Captain had given him earlier, disappeared upstairs. No ominous music, no deep chords. He wasn’t backlit as the doors blew open, the wind didn’t pick up, the earth kept spinning. Just another “new guest”—new ones appeared every day. He raised his arms at the door to be searched, just like everyone else. Bottles or weapons I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son . It all took a few minutes. Nothing was said.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I had crushes on black girls. Nobody asked me what I was. I was Trevor. It was a wonderful experience to have, but the downside was that it sheltered me from reality. Maryvale was an oasis that kept me from the truth, a comfortable place where I could avoid making a tough decision. But the real world doesn’t go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt, and just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And at some point, you have to choose. Black or white. Pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, “Oh, I don’t pick sides,” but at some point life will force you to pick a side. At the end of grade six I left Maryvale to go to H. A. Jack Primary, a government school. I had to take an aptitude test before I started, and, based on the results of the test, the school counselor told me, “You’re going to be in the smart classes, the A classes.” I showed up for the first day of school and went to my classroom. Of the thirty or so kids in my class, almost all of them were white. There was one Indian kid, maybe one or two black kids, and me. Then recess came. We went out on the playground, and black kids were everywhere. It was an ocean of black, like someone had opened a tap and all the black had come pouring out. I was like, Where were they all hiding? The white kids I’d met that morning, they went in one direction, the black kids went in another direction, and I was left standing in the middle, totally confused. Were we going to meet up later on? I did not understand what was happening. I was eleven years old, and it was like I was seeing my country for the first time. In the townships you don’t see segregation, because everyone is black. In the white world, any time my mother took me to a white church, we were the only black people there, and my mom didn’t separate herself from anyone. She didn’t care. She’d go right up and sit with the white people. And at Maryvale, the kids were mixed up and hanging out together. Before that day, I had never seen people being together and yet not together, occupying the same space yet choosing not to associate with each other in any way. In an instant I could see, I could feel, how the boundaries were drawn. Groups moved in color patterns across the yard, up the stairs, down the hall. It was insane. I looked over at the white kids I’d met that morning. Ten minutes earlier I’d thought I was at a school where they were a majority. Now I realized how few of them there actually were compared to everyone else.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “All us old-timers are UAW,” he said. “T’ll be a union man on the day they lower my casket into the ground. You gotta have a union, young fella. If you don’t have a union, you better fight to get one.” I laughed. “Not too likely we'll get one here any time soon.” Scotty shrugged. “Well, you never can tell. There’s been talk. We need a union here. I’m too old to do it. You young ones, you’re gonna have to do it.” I sighed. “I wish we had a union, too. But I just want to keep my job, Scotty. By the way, what do you think about Bolt? He seems like a good guy.” Scotty wagged his finger near my nose. “Watch out for Bolt. He’s not really one of us anymore. He’s part gang foreman, part set-up man. Mark my words: When push comes to shove he won’t know which side he’s on. Don’t trust him.” 218 = Leslie Feinberg His warning disappointed me because I liked Bolt. But lucky for me, I didn’t really trust anyone. I felt a hand on my shoulder as I punched out Monday afternoon. “Hey,” Frankie spun me around. “Hey, Frankie. Listen, we got to talk.” She put her index finger to her lips. “It’s OK, I know.” I followed her out to the parking lot. “Pm really glad to see you and everything, Frankie. It’s just ?m scared. I’ve got a good thing going here. And the newspapers are talking about another recession.” Frankie stopped walking, “I understand, Jess. Don’t you think I get it?” “How did you survive this long?” I asked her. She shrugged. “Pm living out here in Tonawanda with my parents till I can save up for my own place. It’s not too bad. I stay at my girlfriend’s on the weekend.” I whistled. “You got a girlfriend? Lucky you.” Frankie pursed her lips. A car horn blared. “You know my girlfriend, Jess. Me and Johnny been together a year,” she smiled. “Just like the song.” I stopped dead in my tracks. “Who’s Johnny?” Frankie sighed. “You know Johnny. We worked together before the strike. We all played softball together.” I shook my head. “The only Johnny I remember was butch and I know you don’t mean her,” I laughed. Frankie widened her stance. “Yeah, that’s exactly who I mean. She’s waiting for me in our car over there.” “Hey, Jess!” I heard Johnny yell from the cat. “Cimere” “You must be kidding,” I whispered to Frankie. She put her hands on her hips. “She’s my lover, Jess. Do I look like I’m kidding?” My mouth hung open. I shook my head from side to side. “Honest, Frankie, I just don’t get it. I don’t understand.” Frankie smoldered. “You don’t have to understand it, Jess. But you gotta accept it. If you cart, then just keep walking.” That’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t deal with it. so I just walked away.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 20. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C961.2, Transformation to stone for breaking taboo.21. One Halloween, when you were in middle school, you went as a stick of gum, a costume you built yourself from cardboard and tin foil and pink paint, with holes for your arms and your face. Your cheeks felt hermetically sealed in the face hole, which was a bit too small and resembled those child-sized photo boards at tourist attractions. The words ORIGINAL FLAVOR were painted vertically down your torso. It was a brilliant costume, huge and funny, but when you got on the school bus you realized you couldn’t sit down in it, and were forced to kneel on the ground. All day you knelt through every class, your teachers mercifully not saying anything. At lunch, kids kept striking the back of the costume, but when you turned—laboriously—you could never tell who was doing it. During the last period, as you went to the bathroom, a teacher you’d never met stopped you in the hall. “Congratulations,” she said. “You won the costume contest!” She gave you a tiny booklet of movie passes. You felt pleased, even though you hadn’t realized there was a contest. It made everything worth it.22. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C462, Taboo: laughing at sight of ghosts.Dream House as Lost in TranslationHow to read her coldness: She is preoccupied. She is unhappy. She is unhappy with you. You did something and now she’s unhappy, and you need to find out what it is so she will stop being unhappy. You talk to her. You are clear. You think you are clear. You say what you are thinking and you say it after thinking a lot, and yet when she repeats what you’ve said back to you nothing makes sense. Did you say that? Really? You can’t remember saying that or even thinking it, and yet she is letting you know that it was said, and you definitely meant it that way. Dream House as the River LetheLater that fall, she asks you to join her at the Harvard-Yale football game. It is a favorite tradition of hers, and she has flown there for the occasion, but she needs to be back in Indiana earlier than expected. “If you drive there, you can bring me back,” she says. You drive from Iowa to Connecticut to meet her. And so after a day of autumn temperatures and flask sips and people in furs and expensive bottles of champagne rolling around on the muddy ground like Budweiser cans, you sleep hard in an uncomfortable hotel bed. The next afternoon—after delays, and brunch with her friends, and more delays—you prepare to leave. She is a reckless driver—nothing has changed since that trip to Savannah—so you get behind the wheel of your car without asking.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  He nods, resigned, his pale forehead and white hair tinted with evening light. “Of course. Of course,” he says as the roach drops into the glass with a sizzle, leaving a thread of smoke that twirls, like a ghostly vein, up his arms. I stare at the brown mash in the bowl before me, now soggy. — There is so much I want to tell you, Ma. I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it. I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don’t know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me? When I first started writing, I hated myself for being so uncertain, about images, clauses, ideas, even the pen or journal I used. Everything I wrote began with maybe and perhaps and ended with I think or I believe. But my doubt is everywhere, Ma. Even when I know something to be true as bone I fear the knowledge will dissolve, will not, despite my writing it, stay real. I’m breaking us apart again so that I might carry us somewhere else—where, exactly, I’m not sure. Just as I don’t know what to call you—White, Asian, orphan, American, mother? Sometimes we are given only two choices. While doing research, I read an article from an 1884 El Paso Daily Times, which reported that a white railroad worker was on trial for the murder of an unnamed Chinese man. The case was ultimately dismissed. The judge, Roy Bean, cited that Texas law, while prohibiting the murder of human beings, defined a human only as White, African American, or Mexican. The nameless yellow body was not considered human because it did not fit in a slot on a piece of paper. Sometimes you are erased before you are given the choice of stating who you are. To be or not to be. That is the question. When you were a girl in Vietnam, the neighborhood kids would take a spoon to your arms, shouting, “Get the white off her, get the white off her!” Eventually you learned to swim. Wading deep into the muddy river, where no one could reach you, no one could scrape you away. You made yourself an island for hours at a time. Coming home, your jaw would clatter from cold, your arms pruned and blistered—but still white. When asked how he identifies his roots, Tiger Woods called himself “Cablinasian,” a portmanteau he invented to contain his ethnic makeup of Chinese, Thai, Black, Dutch, and Native American.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  flawless (how to rob a bank) (1995) My father points to a name on a tombstone. Isaac Goose? What a name. We’re in Boston’s Old Burial Grounds, he stands before me, talking into my video camera. I’m here to ask him about my mother, anything he can tell me, but he doesn’t seem to be getting to the point. If I was still in the checking business I’d use that name. Who are you? Isaac Goose . I’m making a video documentary of my mother’s ex-boyfriends, thirteen years after she died—the rotating cast of father figures who’d been her husbands, lovers, friends. I couldn’t tell you what I’m hoping to find—as one of her ex-boyfriends says into my camera, I don’t know what it is you’re looking for, and neither do you . By using the phonebook and directory assistance, by asking my brother what he remembers and the last time he saw each one, I’m able to locate nearly all of them. Ten men. Two I already know where to find. We’d kept in touch with Liam, her next-to-last, who’d been in federal prison when she died. The other was my father. It’s been nearly ten years since he’d walked into the shelter. I haven’t spoken to him since he got off the streets five years ago. Let me show you something , he says, taking out his wallet. He flashes a Bank of Boston ATM card. See that card? I robbed that bank of sixty thousand dollars. I’m proud of that card . He wasn’t hard to find—the return address on his envelopes, an apartment building in Boston, his name on the bell. I videotaped the bell, taped my finger pressing it. He buzzed me in without a word, without asking who I was. I planned to ask him the same two questions I will ask each man— How did you meet my mother? How did you find out she had died? With most these questions will be enough to get them to unreel the story of their relationship. Most seem grateful I’d asked, as if this were a story they longed to tell but never found the right ear. In the sixties Sam worked for the Concrete Pipe Corporation, the only industry in town. He tells me how she would come into this breakfast joint for coffee every morning, and that one day he ran out after her as she was pulling away and jumped into the front seat beside her. I just have to know your name , he blurted out. They stayed together for a year. Tim says they were more friends than in any sort of relationship, Just two lonely people who spent some time together for a while . I remember stopping by Tim’s apartment on my way home from elementary school, letting myself in. A pool table. 4711 cologne. The unknown world of men. I don’t know if he knew I was there, I might not have had permission.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  7 Michael Pickering, Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 9. 8 Stephen Worchel and Hank Rothgerber, “Changing the Stereotype of the Stereotype,” in The Social Psychology of Stereotyping and Group Life (ed. Russell Spears et al.; Oxford: Blackwel , 1997), 73. 9 Pickering, Stereotyping, 11–12. 10 Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 133. 11 David A. Wilder, “Perceiving Persons as a Group: Categorization and Intergroup Relations,” in Cognitive Processes in Stereotyping and Intergroup Behavior (ed. David L. Hamilton; Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981), 213. 12 Ibid., 213. 13 Victor Ottati and Yueh-Ting Lee, “Accuracy: A Neglected Component of Stereotype Research,” in Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences (ed. Yueh-Ting Lee et al.; Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1995), 40. 14 Shelley E. Taylor, “A Categorization Approach to Stereotyping,” in Hamilton, Cognitive Processes, 83. People also regularly stereotype themselves as members of groups. See S. Alexander Haslam, “Stereotyping and Social Influence: Foundations of Stereotype Consensus,” in Spears et al., Social Psychology, 130–4. 16 116 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles Matthew created cognitive order for himself and his community by forming social categories. These stereotypes are generalizations and simplifications about complex intricate realities, and they assisted him in creating a map of his social world. Like all maps, this one defined boundaries. Stereotypes provided a means to make sense of what was otherwise a very confusing world. How different were the Pharisees of history to the Pharisees of Matthew’s gospel? In other words, how accurate might Matthew’s stereotype of the Pharisees be? Stereotyping involves naïve essentialist assumptions regarding the nature of groups, which is to say, that social collectives have deep, defining essences. The Pharisees were a social creation and not an ontological entity, and even if some Pharisees demonstrated hypocritical tendencies, is it appropriate to understand these tendencies as an essential part of their nature? The essentialist foundation of stereotypes explains their rigidity. It has also caused some to reject a connection between categorization and stereotyping. Categorization, “a necessary way of organizing the world in our minds, creating mental maps for working out how we view the world,” is something that “can be used flexibly and their designations can be disputed,” whereas stereotyping, also a means of “imposing order on the social world,” does so through denying “any flexible thinking.” 15 This charge can be responded to by simply affirming that while stereotyping is a form of categorization, it is nevertheless a flawed one. Bracketing out the question of essentialism, it is helpful to consider what types of error are typical y involved in stereotyping. There are three basic types of inaccuracies: (1) stereotype inaccuracy where traits are exaggerated; (2) valence inaccuracy where a group is “viewed more or less positive than it actual y is”; (3) and dispersion inaccuracy where the homogeneity of a group, or its “variability,” is viewed as more or less distinct than it actual y is.16

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  When you arrive at the house party, your friends all stare at you and ask if you’re okay. “I need a drink,” you say. “And then I need to tell you a story.” Dream House as Schrödinger’s CatWas it the arc of the universe? The natural result of centuries, millennia of wrongheaded politics? Was she trained to find you, or were you trained to be found? Was it the fact that you’d already been tenderized like a pork chop by: never having been properly in love, being told you should be grateful for anything you get as a fat woman, getting weird messages that relationships are about fighting and being at odds with each other? The fact that your heart had been broken that one time and you desperately wanted to feel it unbreak? That you felt complete with someone loving you? That you just straight-up loved being desired, desiring someone, coming all the time? That you got addicted to her smell, her voice, her body? That you figured this was what you deserved? The superpredictable result of a religion that pathologized sex but never talked about relationships? Terrible sex ed? Bad timing? You feel as if there is a box you can open to find the answer, but with the lid closed the answer is all of these things, all at once. Dream House at Newton’s AppleEarly in the summer, this guy drops you a line. When you first got to Iowa, he had flown into town and the two of you spent a weekend in bed together and it was a nice culmination of a few years of light internet flirtation. It turns out he’s in town for a conference for work, and he asks if you want to get dinner. You agree, even though you don’t really want to see him. You even agree to pick him up from his hotel—his request—although you don’t want to do that, either. Even as you’re driving to his hotel, you’re thinking about how you’re just doing what he’s asking you, the same way you’d respond to the woman in the Dream House, even though he’s just this random guy. You think about that as you pull up under the awning, as you drive him to the restaurant. He is talking to you. Even as you’re responding to him, even as you’re ordering and making small talk, you’re marveling at the fact that his maleness—the generic fact of it—has as much pull as a carefully curated, long-term abusive relationship. It’s as if one scientist spent decades developing a downward-facing propulsion system to get an apple to descend to the ground and another one just used gravity. Same result, entirely different levels of effort. You refuse to get a drink, pick at your meal. He insists on paying. You drive him back to the hotel. You pull in front of the entrance, and he smiles at you. “Why don’t you park so we can say good-bye?” he asks.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  The next day, you get into a fight about almost nothing at all while sitting on her childhood bed. You decide to walk away, go sit in the kitchen. “I’ll be reading,” you say, and you do, for almost an hour. Her mother is standing at the counter, chopping something fragrant and chatting at you in a bright voice. Your girlfriend comes into the kitchen, and asks, “What are you reading?” as her hand starts to circle your arm. “I’m—” you start to reply, and her fingers tighten. Her mother, still chopping, says, “Are you girls still going to the beach later?” Her knife raps against the cutting board with unnerving precision. Her grip goes hard, begins to hurt. You don’t understand; you don’t understand so profoundly your brain skitters, skips, backs up. You make a tiny gasp, the tiniest gasp you can. It is the first time she is touching you in a way that is not filled with love, and you don’t know what to do. This is not normal, this is not normal, this is not normal. Your brain is scrambling for an explanation, and it hurts more and more, and everything is static. Your thoughts are accompanied by a cramp of alarm, and you are so focused on it that you miss her response. An hour later, you are at the beach, just the two of you. “Let’s go in the water,” she says. You follow her in because you don’t know what else to do. The Florida ocean is like nothing you’ve ever experienced—warm as a bath but, paradoxically, full of threat. The ice-cold oceans of your girlhood seemed more hostile to life; anything could be lurking in this beautiful, tepid water. When you get out up to your necks, she says, “Let me hold you!” You stare at her. “Why are you so pissy?” she asks. “You’ve been like this from the moment we left the house.” “I need to talk to you,” you say. “Earlier, when you grabbed my arm—that was so scary. You touched me and it wasn’t with concern or love. You touched me with anger.” You feel like a fucking hippie, but you don’t know what other language to put to it, the panicked tattoo of your heart. “You squeezed and squeezed and—” You lift your arm out of the water, where you have begun to bruise ever so slightly. “Why did you do that?” Her expression is flat for a half second before her chin begins to tremble. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean it. You know I love you, right?”

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Back in the barn that first night we touched, the Patriots game at halftime through the radio, I heard him. The air was thick or thin or not there. Maybe we even drifted off for a bit. The commercials were on, crackling and buzzing through the receiver, but I heard him. We were just staring at the rafters, and then he said, casually, as if naming a country on a map, “Why was I born?” His features troubled in the waning light. I pretended not to hear. But he said it again. “Why was I even born, Little Dog?” The radio hissed beneath his voice. And I spoke to the air. I said, “I hate KFC,” responding to the commercial, on purpose. “Me too,” he said without skipping a beat. And we cracked up. We cracked open. We fell apart like that, laughing. — Trevor and his daddy lived alone in an Easter-yellow mobile home behind the interstate. That afternoon his old man was out laying redbrick walkways for a commercial park out in Chesterfield. The white door frames in the mobile home were stained pink with fingerprints: a house colored with work, which meant a house colored with exhaustion, disrepair. The rug uprooted “so no one gotta clean,” but the hardwood never waxed and polished, and you could feel the hammered-down nails through your socks. The cabinet doors were torn off “to make it easy.” There was a cinder block under the sink to hold the pipes. In the living room, above the couch, was a duct-taped poster of Neil Young, guitar in hand, grimacing into a song I’ve never heard. In his room, Trevor turned on a Sony car stereo hooked to two speakers set on a dresser, and bobbed his head as a hip-hop beat intensified through the amp. The beats were interspersed with recordings of gunshots, men shouting, a car peeling off. “Have you heard this yet? It’s this new dude 50 Cent.” Trevor smiled. “Pretty dope, huh?” A bird flew past the window, making the room seem to blink. “I’ve never heard of him,” I lied—why I’m not quite sure. Maybe I wanted to give him the power of this small knowledge over me. But I’d heard it before, many times, as it was played that year through endless passing cars and opened apartment windows back in Hartford. The entire album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, was burned bootleg on hundreds of blank CDs bought in forty packs for cheap from Walmart or Target—so that the whole northside echoed with a kind of anthem of Curtis Jackson’s voice fading in and out of intelligibility as you rode your bike through the streets. “I walk the block with the bundles,” he recited, his hands gestured in front of him, fingers splayed. “I’ve been knocked on the humble, swing the ox when I rumble, show your ass what my gun do.”

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 10. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C420.2, Taboo: not to speak about a certain happening.Dream House as NoirShe is not your first female crush, or your first female kiss, or even your first female lover. But she is the first woman who wants you in that way—desire tinged with obsession. She is the first woman who yokes herself to you with the label girlfriend. Who seems proud of that fact. And so when she walks into your office and tells you that this is what it’s like to date a woman, you believe her. And why wouldn’t you? You trust her, and you have no context for anything else. You have spent your whole life listening to your father talk about women’s emotions, their sensitivity. He never said it in a bad way, exactly—though the implication is always there. Suddenly you find yourself wondering if you’re in the middle of evidence that he’s right. All these years of telling him he’s full of bullshit, that he needs to decolonize his mind and lose the gender essentialism, and here you are learning that lesbian relationships are, somehow, different—more intense and beautiful but also more painful and volatile, because women are all of these things too. Maybe you really do believe that women are different. Maybe you owe your father an apology. Dames, right? Dream House as Queer VillainyI think a lot about queer villains, the problem and pleasure and audacity of them. I know I should have a very specific political response to them. I know, for example, I should be offended by Disney’s lineup of vain, effete ne’er-do-wells (Scar, Jafar), sinister drag queens (Ursula, Cruella de Vil), and constipated, man-hating power dykes (Lady Tremaine, Maleficent). I should be furious at Downton Abbey’s scheming gay butler and Girlfriend’s controlling, lunatic lesbian, and I should be indignant about Rebecca and Strangers on a Train and Laura and The Terror and All About Eve, and every other classic and contemporary foppish, conniving, sissy, cruel, humorless, depraved, evil, insane homosexual on the large and small screen. And yet, while I recognize the problem intellectually—the system of coding, the way villainy and queerness became a kind of shorthand for each other—I cannot help but love these fictional queer villains. I love them for all of their aesthetic lushness and theatrical glee, their fabulousness, their ruthlessness, their power. They’re always by far the most interesting characters on the screen. After all, they live in a world that hates them. They’ve adapted; they’ve learned to conceal themselves. They’ve survived.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  fuckin gonuts setting: A donut shop, evening . Marie: I saw your father the other day. Son: I didn’t know you knew my father. Marie: He didn’t look so good. Son: Maybe it wasn’t him. Marie: Who else would it’ve been? Son: I mean maybe you got him confused. Marie: Confused? Son: With someone else. Marie: Who? Son: Another man. Marie: Which man? Son: Someone else. Someone not my father. Marie: Why would I do that? Son: I don’t know. I didn’t know you knew him. Do you know him? Marie: He’s a hard guy not to know. Son: Maybe it’s not him. Marie: Who else would it be? Son: A lot of guys. Marie: He sleeps in the parking garage, right? Son: Sometimes. Which garage? Marie: Barlow and Ron were giving him a hard time the other day. Son: Barlow’s garage? Marie: And that kid who got himself burned— Son: Kevin? Marie: He was good-looking, before they set him on fire. You can tell. ( beat ) Barlow did it. I don’t know, maybe Barlow. Crazy enough, when he’s drunk— ( hisses to manager ) SNAKE! ( beat ) Buy me a coffee, would you? The manager’s putting his eye on me. ( beat ) Son: ( standing ) Marie: Would you hang out with someone who even maybe set you on fire? Son: You want a donut or something? ( beat ) I’m going to get a donut. You want one? ( beat ) I’ll get two. ( beat ) You know anyone named Eno? Marie: How can you hang out with someone who set you on fire? Son: Eno the Beano? Marie: You talk to your old man much? He’s not making much sense these days. Like he’s been out too long. ( beat ) What’s a beano? Some kind of pill? Son: You never heard of him? Marie: I know an Eno. He sells drugs. Wears that nasty hat. ( beat ) Keeps the drugs in the hat, like he’s clever. ( beat ) Your father into drugs—? Son: This Eno told my father I was into drugs. Marie: ( beat ) Everyone says that. Son: I mean, who is this guy? ( beat ) Everyone says what? Marie: Well, you are, aren’t you? Son: I don’t even know him. Marie: ( beat ) It snowed last night. Isn’t it early for snow? ( beat ) I ended up in the garage. The top landing’s okay. ( beat ) Barlow’s voice coming up the stairwell. I kept real quiet. ( offhandedly ) Your old man doesn’t look good. Someone should get him inside. Son: You should get inside. Marie: You getting more coffee or what? Son: ( sits down ) I don’t even know him. Marie: He’s got those crazy eyes, like one’s unscrewed or something. ( squints into Son’s face ) You’re lucky you don’t look like that. ( beat ) The manager here’s been hassling people lately. Sticking his nose up my ass.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Pavlov, observing his dogs suffering with their debilitating and intractable symptoms, concluded that they had lost their capacity to make adaptive approach/avoidance responses; they had essentially “lost their purpose.” In summarizing the plight of these poor creatures, he remarked that they had lost the “reflex” or instinct of purpose; they had lost their way. A similar example of breakdown comes from nature. A Galapagos Island guide told the following story to one of my students: “When a volcano erupts, the animals frequently lose their survival instincts, get confused, and some walk straight into the oncoming lava. This includes sea lions and marine iguanas capable of swimming to another island.” It appears that under this form of extreme duress, even animals in the wild may lose their bearings in the chaos. With a rare prescience Pavlov also inferred the natural, instinctive mechanisms by which traumatized organisms could regain their purpose and will to live. In particular he realized that approach and avoidance were aligned with what he called the defensive and orienting response. In his further study of the orientation responses (approach) and defensive responses (avoidance), Pavlov provided us with the key to establishing a healthy encounter between an organism and its environment: an optimal balance between curiosity and the need to defend and protect oneself. Pavlov discovered that when animals are exposed to something novel in their environment, they first arrest their movement. Next they direct their eyes, head and neck in the direction of a momentary sound, fleeting shadow or novel scent (or follow the lead of other members of the group as they go into an arrest and alert response.). During arrest there is a brief deceleration of the heart rate, which apparently “tunes” and opens sensory perception.122 Pavlov discovered that these orienting responses served the function of both locating a source of novelty as well as accessing its meaning (i.e., is it a source of threat, mating, food or shelter?). It was likely that Pavlov was aware of this dual function. He called the innate characteristic of the orienting response the chto eta takoe reflex (instead of the simpler chto eta). Attempts at a literal translation have resulted in its being called the “What is it?” reflex. A more exact translation, however, suggests something closer to “What is that?” or “What is going on here?” or “Hey man, what’s happening?!?”b This labelling emphasizes the amazement and curiosity inherent in the response. This dual response (reacting plus inquiring) is the dominant feature of orienting behaviors. For humans, as well as other animals, this includes expectancy, surprise, alertness and curiosity.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 3: Further, it sometimes happens that a fly or a spider, or some other poisonous creature falls into the chalice after the consecration. Or even that the priest comes to know that poison has been put in by some evilly disposed person in order to kill him. Now in this instance, if he takes it, he appears to sin by killing himself, or by tempting God: also in like manner if he does not take it, he sins by acting against the Church’s statute. Consequently, he seems to be perplexed, and under necessity of sinning, which is not becoming. Objection 4: Further, it sometimes happens from the server’s want of heed that water is not added to the chalice, or even the wine overlooked, and that the priest discovers this. Therefore he seems to be perplexed likewise in this case, whether he receives the body without the blood, thus making the sacrifice to be incomplete, or whether he receives neither the body nor the blood. Objection 5: Further, it sometimes happens that the priest cannot remember having said the words of consecration, or other words which are uttered in the celebration of this sacrament. In this case he seems to sin, whether he repeats the words over the same matter, which words possibly he has said before, or whether he uses bread and wine which are not consecrated, as if they were consecrated. Objection 6: Further, it sometimes comes to pass owing to the cold that the host will slip from the priest’s hands into the chalice, either before or after the breaking. In this case then the priest will not be able to comply with the Church’s rite, either as to the breaking, or else as to this, that only a third part is put into the chalice. Objection 7: Further, sometimes, too, it happens, owing to the priest’s want of care, that Christ’s blood is spilled, or that he vomits the sacrament received, or that the consecrated hosts are kept so long that they become corrupt, or that they are nibbled by mice, or lost in any manner whatsoever; in which cases it does not seem possible for due reverence to be shown towards this sacrament, as the Church’s ordinances require. It does not seem then that such defects or dangers can be met by keeping to the Church’s statutes. On the contrary, Just as God does not command an impossibility, so neither does the Church. I answer that, Dangers or defects happening to this sacrament can be met in two ways: first, by preventing any such mishaps from occurring: secondly, by dealing with them in such a way, that what may have happened amiss is put right, either by employing a remedy, or at least by repentance on his part who has acted negligently regarding this sacrament.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as AmbiguityIn an essay in Naming the Violence—the first anthology of writing by queer women addressing domestic abuse in their community—activist Linda Geraci recalls a fellow lesbian’s paraphrasing Pat Parker to her straight acquaintance, “If you want to be my friend, you must do two things. First, forget I am a lesbian. And second, never forget I am a lesbian.”33 This is the curse of the queer woman—eternal liminality. You are two things, maybe even more; and you are neither. Heterosexuals have never known what to do with queer people, if they think of their existence at all. This has especially been the case for women—on the one hand, they seem like sinners in theory, but with no penis how do they, you know, do it? This confusion has taken many forms, including the flat-out denial that sex between women is even possible. In 1811, when faced with two Scottish schoolmistresses who were accused of being lovers, a judge named Lord Meadowbank insisted their genitals “were not so formed as to penetrate each other, and without penetration the venereal orgasm could not possibly follow.” And in 1921 the British Parliament voted against a bill that would have made illegal “acts of gross indecency between females.” Why would an early twentieth-century government be so progressive? “The interpretation of this outcome offered by modern history,” writes academic Janice L. Ristock, “is that lesbianism was not only unspeakable but ‘legally unimaginable.’” But this inability to conceive of lesbians has darker iterations too. In 1892, when Alice Mitchell slit her girl-lover Freda Ward’s throat in a carriage on a dusty Memphis street—she was enraged that Freda had, with the encouragement of her family, dissolved their relationship—the papers hardly knew what to do with themselves. In her book Sapphic Slashers, Lisa Duggan writes, “Reporters found it difficult to sketch out a clear plot or strike a consistent moral pose: was Alice a poor, helpless victim of mental disease, or was she truly a monstrous female driven by masculine erotic and aggressive motives? … A love murder involving two girls presented an astonishing and confusing twist that confounded the gendered roles of villain and victim.”34 The story was simultaneously salacious and utterly baffling. They were … engaged? Alice had given Freda a ring, along with promises of love and devotion and material support. Should they execute her for murder, or put her in a hospital for her unnatural passions? Was she a scorned lover or a madwoman? But to be a scorned lover, she’d have to be—they’d have to be—?