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 Filthy Animals (2021)

  I stewed the tomatoes and added a bunch of spices and stuff. No meat.” “It smells so good,” he said. The sauce had a rich texture as she turned it over and over itself, stirring quickly so that a skin didn’t form. The pot itself was battered and gray, probably lifted from some thrift shop or Salvation Army. “You’re welcome to have some!” “I’d love to,” he said. Each of them had a bowl of the pasta and Sophie’s tomato sauce. Lionel didn’t remember seeing any at the potluck last night, but then there’d been so many options, and he hadn’t been especially hungry. He ate slowly, chewing through the whole-wheat noodles and sucking the sauce from them discreetly. He enjoyed the heat of the food, the way its flavor settled beneath the pain of his tongue burning. Chewing also made his cheek sting, and he found himself faintly aroused by the discomfort, thinking each time his jaws shifted of how Charles had bitten him. Charles sucked down the food so fast that Lionel doubted he even tasted it. Sophie also ate quickly, but neatly. She had a small piece of fish on the side, but she hadn’t offered him any. Lionel put his head down and tried to focus on the act of eating. Lifting his fork to his mouth and getting the food inside. Chewing it. Swallowing. Looking pleased and complacent. Content. “Do the dishes, Charlie,” Sophie said after they were done. She took both her bowl and Lionel’s, and she handed them to Charles, who didn’t even blink. He took the bowls to the kitchen and turned on the faucet. Sophie stretched and drummed her hands against her stomach. “I’m full.” “That was great,” he said. “Thanks.” “Where’s your roommate?” “Oh, who knows? She’s probably in a lab somewhere. She studies chemistry.” “Cool,” Lionel said. “Chemistry is intense.” “She’s intense,” Sophie said. “Way intense.” “Is that bad?” “No, she’s great. I like her a lot, but . . . well.” “I think I get that,” Lionel said. He wondered if this was how people saw him. Intense. Way intense. If they said things like I like him a lot, but . . . well. The pause hanging off like something heavy with meaning. Was it weird that he was here, that he’d accepted her invitation to come along? He was never really sure when people were being polite or when they were actually being nice. Since his time at the hospital, his life had become a series of outstretched hands, gently guiding, so it was hard, even now, to tell when someone wanted him to come along or when they didn’t.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  “You’d think Pupi were here himself,” Miri heard one of the guests say, reminding her that Uncle Henry was dancing with Leah to the real, live Pupi at the Riviera. Miri had to admit Tewky Purvis was a good dancer, the way he twirled Rusty but never lost control, the way Rusty was able to follow his every move. As far as Miri knew, the only place Rusty danced was in her bedroom, though sometimes she’d turn on the record player in the living room and try to get Miri to be her partner. As a little girl, Miri had loved to jitterbug with her mother, but not anymore. Miri preferred to watch Steve Osner dancing with Phil Stein’s cousin Kathy, who wore a dark-green strapless velvet dress. She laughed a lot, and when she did, her dark eyes sparkled and crinkled up. You could tell Steve was gaga over her. Maybe she was gaga over Steve, too, even though she was a year ahead of him, already a college girl. Miri could recognize love now, or maybe it was attraction she recognized—either way, she knew it when she saw it. She could feel it when it was in the air and it was in the air around Steve Osner and Kathy Stein. Natalie gave her a nudge. They were sitting on the steps leading up to the kitchen. “See those earrings my mother’s wearing?” Corinne was dancing with Dr. O. “Daddy gave them to her for Hanukkah. She let me try them on. She said someday I’ll find a husband who’ll give me diamond earrings. Then she reminded me for the millionth time, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich boy as a poor boy, which is interesting, considering Daddy was a poor boy who had to work his way all through school. She said even though some people say diamonds aren’t important, they are. I didn’t tell her I’m never getting married.” “Since when?” Miri asked, surprised. “Since I promised Ruby my career as a dancer would always come first.” “Do you think you should be making promises to someone who’s…” She stopped herself just in time. “I told you,” Natalie said, annoyed. “She’s not dead. She’s living inside me.” “But what does that mean?” Natalie shook her head. “You’re not even trying to understand.” Miri wanted to understand what Natalie was trying to tell her. For all she knew it was possible. Just because she’d never heard of having a dead person living inside you, didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. She’d read about spirits, about ghosts. Not that she believed they were real. No, she argued with herself, this thing with Natalie was crazy. It was impossible. Natalie was going nuts. Maybe she should tell someone. But Natalie trusted her with her secret. If she told, she’d be betraying her best friend, wouldn’t she? Or would she be helping her? Miri wasn’t sure. This was a secret she wished she’d never heard.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  11 And if thy idle thoughts had not been Elsan waters about thy mind, and their pleasantness a Pyramus to the mulberry, by so many circumstances alone thou wouldst recognize in the tree morally, God’s justice in the ban. But because I see thy mind turned to stone and, stonelike, such in hue that the light of my word dazes thee, 12 I also will that thou bear it away within thee, and if not written at least outlined, for the reason that the pilgrim’s staff is brought back wreathed with palm.” 13 And I: “Even as wax under the seal, that the imprinted figure changeth not, my brain is now stamped by you. But why doth your longed-for word soar so far beyond my sight, that the more it straineth the more it loses it?” “That thou mayst know,” she said, “that School which thou hast followed, and see how its teaching can keep pace with my word; and mayst see your way so far distant from the divine way, as the heaven which highest speeds is removed from earth.” Wherefore I answered her: “I remember not that I e’er estranged me from you, nor have I conscience thereof that gnaws me.” “And if thou canst not remember it,” smiling she answered, “now bethink thee how thou didst drink of Lethe this very day;

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The November night went on and on endlessly, exactly like that ghost train in my story, dim rolling stock gliding slowly over the clicking place where the tracks switched, the constant bass hum of that somnolent progress passing over that one tenor break, the riveted and rusting bulkheads emblazoned with the mud-spattered logos of distant places, everything stately as destiny. I could hear the night’s freight cars clicking past, and the sky shook out its hair, silver clouds backlit by the moon. In this measured silence Rachel told me about her own conversion from Judaism to the Church of England, an enlightenment she attributed to her chance reading of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters and the simultaneous revelation that Jesus had quite literally died for her sins. She spoke with peculiar emphasis about the nails in Christ’s wrists and hands and she even drew a little sketch on the telephone message pad of how she thought the nails had looked (she’d been doing some research into Aramaic pig iron). When I nodded respectfully but with a visible mote of scorn in my eye, she quite accurately read my thoughts. “Oh, I see, you think I’m some no ’count Baptist, huh, some raving redneck?” She spoke with an unaccustomed crudeness. “Well, I respect your religion,” I spluttered, “but I’m a bit of an agnostic personally and I—” “You’re full of shit,” she told me. She was looking right into my eyes. She was breathing emphatically, as though breath were psychic italic marks. She’d pushed her pageboy back from her face and shoved the sleeve of her madras blouse up to expose a pale biceps. She was halfway up out of her chair and leaning toward me. “Shit,” she said, her eyes darting for a second up to some invisible cue card before fixing me again. I felt she was torn between shyness and holy fury. “Jesus died for you,” she said, “and that’s something the greatest poets, Eliot and Dante and Donne, that’s something they knew—and they weren’t Florida crackers.” “Bravo,” DeQuincey whispered in awe. He turned to me with an isn’t-this-gal-great? grin—“She’s done it again, she’s really done it this time”—and he shook his head in admiring disbelief at the sheer wacky brilliance of his wife’s spiritual daredevilry. Exhausted by her performance, she shrank back into her chair, then rose and toddled off to the dark bedroom beyond. The moment DeQuincey and I were alone he stiffened, which I attributed to the embarrassment he must be feeling about his confession to me of his homosexual past. Not that he was attracted to me, nor I to him, but the possibility of attraction existed now and our sexual self-consciousness richocheted like sunlight in the Hall of Mirrors.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  And yet I’d known all along it was something mysterious and anguished beyond my experience, if not my comprehension. We had a maid, Blanche, who inserted bits of straw into her pierced ears to keep the holes from growing shut, sneezed her snuff in a fine spray of brown dots over the sheets when she was ironing and slouched around the kitchen in her worn-down, backless slippers, once purple but now the color and sheen of a bare oak branch in the rain. She was always uncorseted under her blue cotton uniform; I pictured her rolling, black and fragrant, under that fabric and wondered what her mammoth breasts looked like. Although she had a daughter five years older than I (illegitimate, or so my stepmother whispered significantly), Blanche sounded like a young girl as she hummed to a Negro station. When she moved from one room to the next, she unplugged the little Bakelite radio with the cream-colored grille over the brown speaker cloth and took it with her. That music excited me, but I thought I shouldn’t listen to it too closely. It was “Negro music” and therefore forbidden—part of another culture more violent and vibrant than mine but somehow inferior yet no less exclusive. Charles, the handyman, would emerge from the basement sweaty and pungent and, standing three steps below me, lecture me about the Bible, the Second Coming and Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes. Whenever I said something, he’d laugh in a steady, stylized way to shut me up and then start burrowing back into his obsessions. He seemed to know everything, chapter and verse—Egyptians, Abyssinians, the Lost Tribe, Russian plots, Fair Deal and New Deal—but when I’d repeat one of his remarks at dinner, my father would laugh (this, too, was a stylized laugh) and say, “You’ve been listening to Charles again. That nigger just talks nonsense. Now don’t you bother him, let him get on with his work.” I never doubted that my father was right, but I kept wondering how Dad could tell it was nonsense. What mysterious ignorance leaked out of Charles’s words to poison them and render them worthless, inedible? For Charles, like me, haunted the library; I watched his shelf of books in the basement rotate. And Charles was a high deacon of his church, the wizard of his tribe; when he died his splendid robes overflowed his casket. That his nonsense made perfect sense to me alarmed me—was I, like Charles, eating the tripe of knowledge while Dad sat down to the steak?

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  contradict. Many a time ere now, my brother, hath it come to pass that to flee peril things were done, against the grain, that were unmeet to do; so did Alcmæon, moved by his father’s prayer, slay his own mother, 15 and not to sacrifice his filial piety became an impious son. At this point, I would have thee think, violence receiveth mixture from the will, and they so work that the offences may not plead excuse. The absolute will consenteth not to the ill, but yet consenteth in so far as it doth fear, should it draw back, to fall into a worse annoy. Wherefore, when Piccarda expresseth this, she meaneth it of the absolute will, and I of the other; so that we both speak truth together.” 16 Such the rippling of the sacred stream which issued from the Spring whence all truth down-floweth; and being such, it set at peace one and the other longing. “O love of the primal Lover, O divine one,” said I then, “whose speech o’erfloweth me and warmeth, so that more and more it quickeneth me, my love hath no such depth as to suffice to render grace for grace; but may he who seeth it, and hath the power, answer thereto. Now do I see that never can our intellect be sated, unless that Truth shine on it, beyond which no truth hath range. Therein it resteth as a wild beast in his den so soon as it hath reached it; and reach it may; else were all longing futile. Wherefore there springeth, like a shoot, questioning 17 at the foot of truth; which is a thing that trusteth us towards the summit, on from ridge to ridge. This doth invite me and giveth me assurance, with reverence, lady, to make question to thee as to another truth which is dark to me. I would know if man can satisfy you so for broken vows, with other goods, as not to weigh too short upon your balance.” Beatrice looked on me with eves filled so divine with sparks of love, that my vanquished power turned away, and I became as lost with eyes downcast. 1. Daniel divined the dream Nebuchadnezzar had dreamed as well as the interpretation of it (Daniel ii). So Beatrice knew what problems were exercising Dante’s mind as well as what were the solutions. 2. In the Timæus which was accessible to Dante in the Latin paraphrase of Chalcidius. Dante’s direct knowledge of Plato was doubtless confined to this one dialogue. The doctrine ascribed to Plato, implicitly here and explicitly in Conv. ii. 14 and iv. 21 (compare Eclogue ii), goes somewhat beyond the warrant of the text either in the Greek or Latin. 3. Piato’s doctrine (as understood by Dante) is poisonous because it ascribes to the admitted influences of the heavenly bodies such a pre-potency as would be fatal to the free will, and therefore to mortality. Cf. Purg. xvi and xviii. Epist. viii. 4.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Navy blue was as close as it got. Still, who knew what they’d find inside? Miri had clipped an ad from the Daily Post : THIS SEASON GIVE HER NYLON TRICOT BY VANITY FAIR. She wasn’t sure about nylon tricot but the ad from Nia’s showed a half-slip for $3.99, something her mother might appreciate since she’d been complaining about the worn-out elastic waistbands of hers. A single chime announced the opening of the door as Miri and Suzanne entered the shop. Inside, it was busy with holiday shoppers but not overwhelming the way it would be at Levy’s or Goerke’s, the other downtown department store. The shoppers, all women, talked in hushed voices. A small white Christmas tree with silver ribbons threaded through its branches, topped by a silver angel, sat on the display table. Satin bedroom slippers and delicate bed jackets in pale colors were arranged around the tree. Who wore bed jackets? Rusty had a woolly robe and two flannel nightgowns for winter, and a seersucker robe and a few cotton nightgowns for summer. Maybe movie stars who were served breakfast in bed wore bed jackets. But there were no movie stars in Elizabeth, New Jersey. None that Miri knew of, anyway. Even Mrs. Osner didn’t have a bed jacket. If she did it wasn’t hanging in her closet, because Miri had been through that closet a hundred times, ever since she and Natalie had become best friends two years ago. Miri and Suzanne were still babysitting partners and ate lunch at the same cafeteria table every day—they just weren’t bests. “Can I help you?” a pretty young woman asked Miri. “Are you Nia?” Miri hadn’t planned to say that. It just slipped out. “I’m Athena, her daughter. What can I show you today?” Athena —Miri didn’t know anyone named Athena. Such an exotic name. Wasn’t Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom, arts and something else, maybe war? She’d loved her book of Greek mythology in fifth grade. Uncle Henry had given it to her. Every night they’d taken turns reading myths to each other. “Are you looking for something special?” Athena asked. When Miri didn’t answer, Suzanne nudged her. “It’s my mother’s birthday,” Miri said, coming back to the moment, “and I was thinking of a half-slip, maybe a nylon tricot half-slip.” Before Miri had the chance to dig the ad from her purse, Athena said, “I have just what you’re looking for. What size does your mother wear?” “She’s either a small or a medium, depending.” “Really, a small?” Athena said, as if a mother couldn’t possibly be a small. “She’s five-five, a hundred and fifteen pounds.” Miri knew everything about her mother, every detail of her life, except for one, and she wasn’t going to waste her time thinking of that today. Athena brought out a few half-slips. “Double slits,” she said, holding up one. By Vanity Fair, $3.99. “This is the nylon tricot. Feel how soft it is.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X I X As morning approaches Dante has a vision of the Siren, whose filthiness Virgil, at the exhortation of a lady from heaven, exposes. Dante is roused by Virgil’s repeated summons. The sun is fully up, and the pilgrim, deep in thought, advances to the next stair, where once again he feels the breath of the angel’s wing, and hears the blessing of them that mourn. Dante is still plunged in his reverie, from which Virgil rouses him by question, explanation, and admonition. They who have yielded to the Siren,—foul but seeming fair,—must expiate their offences in the three remaining circles. Let Dante tread the earth like a man and raise his eyes to the heavens above. And so they reach the fifth circle. There the souls of the avaricious and prodigal cleave to the pavement, no longer in sordid love, but in the anguished sense that they are unworthy to look upon aught more fair; and the limbs which had bound themselves on earth are now held in helpless captivity. Virgil inquires the way, and from the form in which the answer is given Dante gathers the law of Purgatory, hereafter to be more fully confirmed, which permits souls to pass without delay or scathe through any circles of the mount wherein sins are purged by which they themselves are unstained. He silently asks Virgil’s leave to stay and question the soul that has spoken. It is Pope Adrian V who for little over a month bore the weight of the papal mantle, scarce tolerable to him who would keep it from defilement; and in answer to Dante’s tender entreaty he expounds the nature of the penalties of this circle. He himself had been given over to avarice till he reached the summit of human greatness, saw its emptiness and turned in penitence to God. When Dante speaks again, Adrian perceives that he has knelt down, in reverence to Peter’s successor; whereon he bluntly bids him straighten his legs, and explains that no formal or official position or relation, however close or however august, has place in the spirit world, where personality is stripped of office. Then he urges Dante to pass on and leave his penitence undisturbed, making a reference to his niece who had married one of Dante’s future friends the Malaspini; which reference the pilgrim may, if he so choose, interpret as a request for prayers for the departed soul. IN THE HOUR when the day’s heat, overcome by Earth or at times by Saturn, can no more warm the cold of the moon; when the geomancers see their Fortuna Major, rising in the East, before the dawn, by a way which short time remains dark to it, 1 there came to me in a dream, 2 a stuttering woman, with eyes asquint, and crooked on her feet, with maimed hands, and of sallow hue.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Rachel had been brought up by her father, a Miami real estate investor of a cruelty that surpassed description, though incest, starvation and frequent beatings were hinted at. His evil nature I confused with his daughter’s poetic genius. Whereas DeQuincey sniggered, stuttered and shrugged his way through his gruesome account, never more than a wisecrack away from pain, Rachel refused to tell her story, but when she relented she proceeded with great gravity. Each of them, in fact, competed for my sympathy. One night I told the Scotts of my struggles against homosexuality and of my present effort to be cured through psychoanalysis. Although I maintained a flippant tone about sex, the Scotts both stood as I spoke, then came over to my kitchen chair, drew me to my feet and embraced me, tears in their eyes. “You poor boy,” Mr. Scott said again and again, searching my face for the stigmata of mental illness. “You poor, poor boy. But surely you haven’t acted on these impulses, have you?” It took a moment for me to realize they hoped I had only thought about sex with men but never actually engaged in it. I assured them I was very experienced, though I wasn’t. I exaggerated the depth of my depravity. Although I was content to accept their sympathy, I didn’t want them to pity me for crimes I had merely contemplated. My admission put them off a bit, as though the fact of sex were a coarse redundancy and the idea of it quite sinful enough. My confession spurred them on to more daring feats of self-disclosure. I learned that DeQuincey had also been homosexual briefly, a period just before his marriage and conversion, a period adumbrated as a time of faltering, of humiliation, exhaustion and confusion, of bouts of madness alternating with briefer and briefer zones of lucidity, as an accelerating train leaving the station might roll faster and faster under dim lamps before plunging into the blackout of night. Now he was no longer homosexual, not in any way, nor did he ever experience even the slightest twitch of forbidden desire. This complete change he attributed to Christ and Rachel. The November night went on and on endlessly, exactly like that ghost train in my story, dim rolling stock gliding slowly over the clicking place where the tracks switched, the constant bass hum of that somnolent progress passing over that one tenor break, the riveted and rusting bulkheads emblazoned with the mud-spattered logos of distant places, everything stately as destiny. I could hear the night’s freight cars clicking past, and the sky shook out its hair, silver clouds backlit by the moon. In this measured silence Rachel told me about her own conversion from Judaism to the Church of England, an enlightenment she attributed to her chance reading of C.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O I V Piccarda has left Dante entangled in two perplexities. Why are the nuns shorn of what had else been the full measure of their glory because they were torn against their will from the cloister? And if the inconstant moon is the abode of such as have left their vows unfulfilled, was Plato right after all in saying that men’s souls come down from the planets connatural with them, and return thereto? This latter speculation might lead to dangerous heresy, and Beatrice hastens to explain that the souls who come to meet Dante in the several spheres all have their permanent abiding place with God and the Angels in the Empyrean. Their meeting places with Dante are but symbolical of their spiritual state. But Plato may have had in mind the divine influences that, through the agency of the planets, act upon men’s dispositions and produce good or ill effects which should be credited to them rather than to the human will. And indeed it was a confused perception of these divine influences that led men into idolatry. The other difficulty is removed by a distinction between what we wish to do and what, under pressure, we consent to do; for if we consent we cannot plead violence in excuse, although we have done what we did not wish to do. More questions are started in Dante’s mind, for only in the all-embracing truth of God can the human mind find that restful possession which its nature promises it. Short of that each newly acquired truth leads on to further questions. Beatrice, who had sighed at Dante’s previous bewildered questions, smiles approval now, for he asks her a question as to vows which has some spiritual import. BETWEEN TWO foods, distant and appetizing in like measure, death by starvation would ensue ere a free man put either to his teeth. So would a lamb stand still between two cravings of fierce wolves, in equipoise of dread; so would a dog stand still between two hinds. Wherefore, if I held my peace I blame me not, (thrust in like measure either way by my perplexities) since ’twas necessity, nor yet commend me. I held my peace, but my desire was painted on my face, and my questioning with it, in warmer colours far than if set out by speech. And Beatrice took the part that Daniel took when he lifted Nebuchadnezzar out of the wrath that had made him unjustly cruel, 1 and she said: “Yea, but I see how this desire and that so draweth thee, that thy eagerness entangleth its own self, and therefore breathes not forth. Thou arguest: If the right will endureth, by what justice can another’s violence sheer me the measure of desert? And further matter of perplexity is given thee by the semblance of the souls returning to the stars, as Plato’s doctrine hath it.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Murder Mystery Lightning flashes, the power dies, and when the electricity comes back on again a dinner guest is folded over the dessert course with a dagger in her back. The handle of the blade is inlaid with precious gems, but her tiara is missing. When the undercover detective reveals herself—the plucky reporter, of course!—the mystery deepens: the cost of the gems in the handle of the knife far outweighs the value of the stolen tiara, whose diamonds were merely glass. Who among them would give up a tool of such immeasurable value to take something so worthless? And so boldly, in front of so many people? The plucky reporter paces on the Persian carpet in front of the suspects. Was it Heathcliff, the brawny dockworker turned mob boss? Ethan, the foppish social climber with eyes like the distant radiance of Mars? Samson, the experimental artist with a murky and enigmatic past? The reporter crosses dozens of times in front of a slight, blonde woman sitting in the corner, but never includes her on the list. The blonde woman is leaning back with flinty cool, following the action. She nods and listens, and every so often tilts her chin in the direction of the plucky reporter and lets loose a dazzling smile. The plucky reporter turns to Samson with a trembling, gloved finger. Samson stands to defend himself. Ethan begins shouting, Heathcliff glowers. And no one pays attention to the blonde woman, who stands and walks toward the corpse of the dinner guest. She grips the blade with both hands and pulls it out like King Arthur deflowering the stone. The body of the dinner guest, whose eyes are wide and wet with betrayal, lifts with the movement and then slams back down on the place setting, lemon cake squashed against her bosom. The blonde woman wipes the blood off the blade onto the dinner guest’s dress and replaces it in her purse. Everyone continues to argue as she walks out the front door and into the night. IV The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember. —Sarah Manguso Dream House as Stopgap Measure She gets into your MFA program and will leave the Dream House to come to Iowa City. She talks about moving in with you. You coo with excitement over the phone, but when you hang up you feel like you did when you were a kid and your brother launched a baseball into your nose: warm blood down the back of your throat; milk, and metal.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as House in Iowa In late October, she visits you in Iowa City and decides to be a Dalek for Halloween. You are confused by this, profoundly, because she scorns the most earnest bits of nerd culture for reasons that are never precisely clear. She’s never seen a single episode of Doctor Who. When you tell her you’re going to be a Weeping Angel (you found the perfect nightgown in a Mennonite thrift store; a heavenly, draping Grecian shift in a barely there baby blue), you have to explain the villain to her. But she wants to be a Dalek, and she wants to make the costume herself; when she gets to town she begins to buy and assemble the pieces. She cuts up cardboard boxes, slices craft-store foam balls in half for the Dalek’s signature texture. She buys gold spray paint. Your basement fills with fumes. The night of Halloween, your girlfriend insists on making an elaborate dinner—tuna steaks lightly seared on each side. Butternut squash risotto. Her costume is not done—the spray paint has only just dried, the foam pieces need to be glued to the torso. When you try to gently move her along, she snaps at you, so you begin to get dressed in your own costume: the nightgown, a pair of painted wings, and white and blue makeup on your face and chest and arms. This last part takes much longer than you anticipate—is it that you underestimated the surface area of human beings in general, or your body in particular? You stand in front of the mirror swirling color onto your face as she slams things and stalks around the house, angry that her costume is not finished. Every so often, you snarl soundlessly into the mirror. She yells questions at you every time she passes the bathroom door. Why did you insist on tuna for dinner? (You didn’t.) Why did you let her be a stupid Dalek? (You don’t answer.) What the fuck are you supposed to be again? (An ancient alien life force that disguises itself as the statue of a weeping angel. They send their victims back in time and feed on the potential energy of the life no longer lived in the present. A terrible undeath.) “A what?” “A statue,” you say. “Just a statue.” 20 On your way to the party, it is an almost perfect night: a little nippy, the air smoky and sharp, the drag and slide of autumn leaves across your path. You show up so late that it’s moved past fashionable and full swing, and the party has entered a scarier, darker place. You walk past a friend who has combined alcohol with something else, and when you say hi to her she looks at you with the blankest, most dead-eyed stare you’ve ever seen. People keep asking who you are. You grin and place your hands in front of your eyes, the Weeping Angel’s signature pose. No one gets it.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Sodom Like Lot’s wife, you looked back, and like Lot’s wife, you were turned into a pillar of salt, 44 but unlike Lot’s wife, God gave you a second chance and turned you human again, but then you looked back again and became salt and then God took pity and gave you a third, and over and again you lurched through your many reprieves and mistakes; one moment motionless and the next gangly, your soft limbs wheeling and your body staggering into the dirt, and then stiff as a tree trunk again with an aura of dust, then windmilling down the road as fire rains down behind you; and there has never been a woman as cartoonish as you—animal to mineral and back again. 44 . Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature , Type C961.1, Transformation to pillar of salt for breaking taboo.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  When Psyches was left alone (saving that she seemed not to be alone, being stirred by so many furies) she was in a tossing minde like the waves of the sea, and although her wil was obstinate, and resisted to put in execution the counsell of her Sisters, yet she was in doubtfull and divers opinions touching her calamity. Sometime she would, sometime she would not, sometime she is bold, sometime she feareth, sometime shee mistrusteth, somtime she is mooved, somtime she hateth the beast, somtime she loveth her husband: but at length night came, when as she prepared for her wicked intent. Soon after her husband came, and when he had kissed and embraced her he fell asleep. Then Psyches (somwhat feeble in body and mind, yet mooved by cruelty of fate) received boldnes and brought forth the lampe, and tooke the razor, so by her audacity she changed her mind: but when she took the lamp and came to the bed side, she saw the most meeke and sweetest beast of all beasts, even faire Cupid couched fairly, at whose sight the very lampe encreased his light for joy, and the razor turned his edge.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I was in the center of a revolving disk which was whirling so fast that nothing could stay put. What was needed was a mechanic, but according to the logic of the higher-ups there was nothing wrong with the mechanism, everything was fine and dandy except that things were temporarily out of order. And things being temporarily out of order brought on epilepsy, theft, vandalism, perversion, niggers, Jews, whores and whatnot—sometimes strikes and lockouts. Whereupon, according to this logic, you took a big broom and you swept the stable clean, or you took clubs and guns and you beat sense into the poor idiots who were suffering from the illusion that things were fundamentally wrong. It was good now and then to talk of God, or to have a little community sing—maybe even a bonus was justifiable now and then, that is when things were getting too terribly bad for words. But on the whole, the important thing was to keep hiring and firing; as long as there were men and ammunition we were to advance, to keep mopping up the trenches. Meanwhile Hymie kept taking cathartic pills—enough to blow out his rear end if he had had a rear end, but he hadn’t one any more, he only imagined he was taking a crap, he only imagined he was shitting on his can. Actually the poor bugger was in a trance. There were a hundred and one offices to look after and each one had a staff of messengers which was mythical, if not hypothetical, and whether the messengers were real or unreal, tangible or intangible, Hymie had to shuffle them about from morning to night while I plugged up the holes, which was also imaginary because who could say when a recruit had been dispatched to an office whether he would arrive there today or tomorrow or never. Some of them got lost in the subway or in the labyrinths under the skyscrapers; some rode around on the elevated line all day because with a uniform it was a free ride and perhaps they had never enjoyed riding around all day on the elevated lines. Some of them started for Staten Island and ended up in Canarsie, or else were brought back in a coma by a cop. Some forgot where they lived and disappeared completely. Some whom we hired for New York turned up in Philadelphia a month later, as though it were normal and according to Hoyle. Some would start for their destination and on the way decide that it was easier to sell newspapers and they would sell them, in the uniform we had given them, until they were picked up. Some went straight to the observation ward, moved by some strange preservative instinct.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I’m a brave man and I want to be brave even with this wound. I want to understand how I can live with it and with everything else that happened over there, the dead corporal from Georgia and all the other crazy things. I find a place on the side of the hospital where the old men sit. The grass is very green and they feed the birds from their wheelchairs. They are the old men from the First World War, I am sure of that, and I sit next to them and feed the birds too. I just want to slow down, the whole thing has been moving much too fast, like some wild spinning top, and now I am trying to catch my breath, I am trying to figure out what this whole terrible thing is about. I read the paper every morning and it always says the war is going on and the president is sending more troops, and I still tell people, whoever asks me, that I believe in the war. Didn’t I prove it by going back a second time? I look them all right in the eye and tell them that we are winning and the boys’ morale is high. But more and more what I tell them and what I am feeling are becoming two different things. I feel them tearing, tearing at my whole being, and I don’t want to talk about the war anymore. I feed the birds and the squirrels. I want things to be simple again, things are just too confusing. The hospital is like the whole war all over again. The aides, the big tall black guys who spit and sit on the toilet bowls all night, they’re doing it again, they’re picking up the paralyzed drunks from the hallways, they’re wheeling them along the halls to the rooms. Now I see them strapping the men into big lifts, hoisting the drunken bodies back into their beds. And the aides are laughing, they’re always laughing the way people laugh at a sideshow, it’s all pretty funny to them. We are like a show of puppets dancing on strings for them, dancing to maddening music. They’re wheeling all the guys in from the halls because it’s late and it’s time for all of the bodies to be put back into the beds, for all the tubes to be hooked up, and the drip of the piss bags to start all over again. There’s a train in the Bronx, somewhere out over the Harlem River, and it sounds so good, it sounds warm and wonderful like the heater back home, like the Long Island train that I used to hear as a kid. Pat, the new guy, is crying for help. He’s puking into the cup again and he’s cursing out everybody, he’s cursing the place and the nurses, the doctors.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Look, Simone sets herself up for disaster. She always has. Then she tries to drag anyone within range into it.” They gnawed their food righteously. Jane still had her elbow up and her hand blocking her face. “How’s the job search going?” she asked. “It looks good so far. Like I said, I think I did all right at Ardis films. And I know somebody who used to work there. The only thing about that place is that the people are so pretentious. Everybody there is a ‘close personal friend’ of Herzog or Beth B. or somebody. Everybody has this certain pompous accent, especially when they say ‘film.’ ” “That’s professional New York,” said Jane. “People who work in the arts are always that way.” “Maybe I’ll just come work in the museum with you.” “If we’re not on strike. And it looks like we’re going to be.” “Could you survive on free-lance work if that happened?” “Maybe.” She dropped the hand at her chin, exposing her face to him. “I don’t know.” He got up from the table, looking straight ahead, and slowly gathered his coat around his shoulders. He could sense no movement of her head turning to look at him as he left the restaurant. He wouldn’t realize that he’d left the bag containing the bunny sweater-guard and Sylvia’s watch under the table until he arrived home in Westchester. An Affair, EditedWhen he saw her on the way to work in the morning, he ignored her, even though he hadn’t seen her for four years. They had met at the University of Michigan. It had been such a brief, disturbing affair that he didn’t even think of her as an old girlfriend. His memory of her was like a filmy scrap of dream discovered on the floor during the drowsy journey from bed to toilet, or a girl in an advertisement that catches in the cluttered net of memory and persists, waiting to commit sex acts with you later that night. Her slight body and pale movements intensified his impression. He had his Walkman on when they passed each other, and his blotted hearing made it easier for him to ignore her. She approached, her face tilted toward him, quizzical and apprehensive. She passed him and vanished, replaced by a girl in a suit and two staring, striding men with briefcases. She did not seem to notice that he ignored her; in fact she might have ignored him too. Their affair had ended badly. He descended into the dank grayness of the subway, relishing slightly her surprise appearance. He had never gone to work this way before. It was probably the route she always took.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Information is usually compartmentalized, to keep members from knowing the big picture. In larger groups, people are told only as much as they “need to know” in order to perform their jobs. A member in one city therefore does not necessarily know about an important legal decision, media story, or internal dispute that is creating turmoil in the group somewhere else. Cult members naturally feel they know more about what’s going on in their group than outsiders, but in counseling ex-members, I have found that they often know far less than almost anyone else. Moonies are often ignorant of their cult’s involvement in arms manufacture, and Scientologists of the imprisonment of eleven leaders for the largest infiltration of government agencies ever undertaken. Destructive organizations also control information by having many levels of “truth.” Cult ideologies often have “outsider” doctrines and “insider” doctrines. The outsider material is relatively bland stuff for the general public or new converts. The inner doctrines are gradually unveiled, as the person is more deeply involved and only when the person is deemed “ready” by superiors. For example, Moonies always said publicly that they were pro-American, pro-democracy and pro-family. The Moonies were pro-American, in that they wanted what they thought was best for America, which was to become a theocracy under Moon’s rule. They believed democracy was instituted by God to allow the Unification Church the space to organize a theocratic dictatorship. They were pro-family in believing that every human being’s true family was Moon, his wife and his spiritual children. Yet the inner doctrine was—and still is—that America is inferior to Korea and must become subservient to it; that democracy is a foolish system that “God is phasing out”;85 and that people must be cut off from their “physical” (as opposed to “spiritual”) families if they are at all critical of the cult. A member can sincerely believe that the outer doctrines are not lies, but just a different level of truth. By creating an environment where truth is multileveled, cult directors make it nearly impossible for a member to make definitive, objective assessments. If they have problems, they are told that they are not mature or advanced enough to know the whole truth yet. But they are assured that all will become clear shortly. If they work hard, they’ll earn the right to understand the higher levels of truth. But often there are many inner levels or layers of belief. Often an advanced member who thinks they know a cult’s complete doctrine is still several layers away from what the higher ups know. Questioners who insist on knowing too much too fast, of course, are redirected toward an external goal until they forget their objections or they object too loudly and are kicked out and vilified. Thought Control

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

  The cashier looked at me skeptically. “Wait your turn, boy. I’m still helping this lady.” “No,” I said. “She’s buying it for me.” My mother turned to me. “Who’s buying it for you?” “You’re buying it for me.” “No, no. Why doesn’t your mother buy it for you?” “What? My mother? You are my mother.” “I’m your mother? No, I’m not your mother. Where’s your mother?” I was so confused. “You’re my mother.” The cashier looked at her, looked back at me, looked at her again. She shrugged, like, I have no idea what that kid’s talking about. Then she looked at me like she’d never seen me before in her life. “Are you lost, little boy? Where’s your mother?” “Yeah,” the cashier said. “Where’s your mother?” I pointed at my mother. “She’s my mother.” “What? She can’t be your mother, boy. She’s black. Can’t you see?” My mom shook her head. “Poor little colored boy lost his mother. What a shame.” I panicked. Was I crazy? Is she not my mother? I started bawling. “You’re my mother. You’re my mother. She’s my mother. She’s my mother.” She shrugged again. “So sad. I hope he finds his mother.” The cashier nodded. She paid him, took our groceries, and walked out of the shop. I dropped the toffee apple, ran out behind her in tears, and caught up to her at the car. She turned around, laughing hysterically, like she’d really got me good. “Why are you crying?” she asked. “Because you said you weren’t my mother. Why did you say you weren’t my mother?” “Because you wouldn’t shut up about the toffee apple. Now get in the car. Let’s go.” By the time I was seven or eight, I was too smart to be tricked, so she changed tactics. Our life turned into a courtroom drama with two lawyers constantly debating over loopholes and technicalities. My mom was smart and had a sharp tongue, but I was quicker in an argument. She’d get flustered because she couldn’t keep up. So she started writing me letters. That way she could make her points and there could be no verbal sparring back and forth. If I had chores to do, I’d come home to find an envelope slipped under the door, like from the landlord. Dear Trevor, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” —Colossians 3:20 There are certain things I expect from you as my child and as a young man. You need to clean your room. You need to keep the house clean. You need to look after your school uniform. Please, my child, I ask you. Respect my rules so that I may also respect you. I ask you now, please go and do the dishes and do the weeds in the garden. Yours sincerely, Mom

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The more sophisticated specimens of ancient romance, especially the works of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, are in such total command of the tradition that it is illuminating to consider how they exploit the tensions inherent in the standard repertoire of the genre. Leucippe and Clitophon is an arch melodrama, a wry, winking, sensational elaboration of the erotic romance. Its most notable idiosyncrasies form carefully wrought statements on the conventions of romantic literature. For example, the first two books of the novel are conducted according to the rules of classical pederasty, as Clitophon is tutored in seduction by his expert cousin Clinias. Achilles Tatius exploits the rich possibilities offered by this conceit. It allows him to burlesque Plato, and it serves as a kind of valediction to same-sex eros before the heterosexual romance is able to proceed. But the first two books of Leucippe and Clitophon are also a deliberate manipulation of the rules of the romantic genre, especially the delicate protocols of feminine respectability. The scenes of Clitophon’s tutelage in the arts of seduction call into question the distinction between volition and coercion, a distinction that is a foundational prop of the romantic genre. The classical model of pederasty, which institutionalized a certain amount of bluff and ambiguity around the question of the boy’s consent, provided a ready contrast to the strident unwillingness of the romantic heroine to consent to anything but marriage. Clinias tells Clitophon that “when you have a tacit understanding that the next step is the big deed, even those who are ready to surrender prefer the appearance of compulsion, to let the façade of force deflect the shame of consent.” If the girl’s resistance is “hearty,” Clinias warns not to use “force, because she is not yet persuaded.” But “as soon as her will begins to weaken, act your role in this play, lest your drama fail to reach its conclusion.” The theatrical metaphor is clever, for the astute reader will realize that Clinias does not know exactly what sort of drama he has been cast in. His assumptions about the will—as a murky and pliable thing—contradict the social grammar of female respectability and of the romance in general.18