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

  Fufi could do all sorts of tricks. She could jump super high. I mean, Fufi could jump. I could hold a piece of food out above my own head and she’d leap up and grab it like it was nothing. If YouTube had been around, Fufi would have been a star. Fufi was a little rascal as well. During the day we kept the dogs in the backyard, which was enclosed by a wall at least five feet high. After a while, every day we’d come home and Fufi would be sitting outside the gate, waiting for us. We were always confused. Was someone opening the gate? What was going on? It never occurred to us that she could actually scale a five-foot wall, but that was exactly what was happening. Every morning, Fufi would wait for us to leave, jump over the wall, and go roaming around the neighborhood. I caught her one day when I was home for the school holidays. My mom had left for work and I was in the living room. Fufi didn’t know I was there; she thought I was gone because the car was gone. I heard Panther barking in the backyard, looked out, and there was Fufi, scaling the wall. She’d jumped, scampered up the last couple of feet, and then she was gone. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I ran out front, grabbed my bicycle, and followed her to see where she was going. She went a long way, many streets over, to another part of the neighborhood. Then she went up to this other house and jumped over their wall and into their backyard. What the hell was she doing? I went up to the gate and rang the doorbell. This colored kid answered. “May I help you?” he said. “Yeah. My dog is in your yard.” “What?” “My dog. She’s in your yard.” Fufi walked up and stood between us. “Fufi, come!” I said. “Let’s go!” This kid looked at Fufi and called her by some other stupid name, Spotty or some bullshit like that. “Spotty, go back inside the house.” “Whoa, whoa,” I said. “Spotty? That’s Fufi!” “No, that’s my dog, Spotty.” “No, that’s Fufi, my friend.” “No, this is Spotty.” “How could this be Spotty? She doesn’t even have spots. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “This is Spotty!” “Fufi!” “Spotty!” “Fufi!” Of course, since Fufi was deaf she didn’t respond to “Spotty” or “Fufi.” She just stood there. I started cursing the kid out. “Give me back my dog!” “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you better get out of here.” Then he went into the house and got his mom and she came out. “What do you want?” she said. “That’s my dog!” “This is our dog. Go away.”

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

  “Well then, what was it that got you involved?” I asked in an upbeat voice. “At the time, my girlfriend Carol started going to satsang—you know, group meetings—and I went along. We listened to the people all talk so glowingly about their experience of Knowledge, and how high it made them feel.” I continued to probe. “Did you decide to get initiated first, or did Carol?” “She did. At first I thought the whole thing was a bit strange. But after she started meditating, I got curious and decided to do it, too.” “What year was this?” I asked. “1973.” “And at the time, what did you think of Guru Maharaj Ji?” “I thought he was this young dude from India who was going to usher in an age of world peace,” he said, with a touch of sarcasm. “Were you at that big meeting at the Houston Astrodome?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. “And what ever became of Carol?” “I don’t know,” Gary said, his face darkening again. “We sort of broke up a few months after we got involved with the group.” “When was the last time you spoke to her?” I asked. “About four years ago she wrote me that she had decided to go back to school and wasn’t going to practice Knowledge anymore.” “Why did she say that she wasn’t going to be part of the group anymore?” “I don’t remember,” he said, staring at the pavement. “So the person who got you involved left the group four years ago?” I repeated. “Uh huh.” “And you have never really sat down with her to find out why she left, after belonging to the group for three years?” “Why are you looking at me like that?” Gary said, looking up at me. I smiled, looked down, then looked him right in the eye. “Well, I don’t understand, Gary. If my ex-girlfriend left the group that she introduced me to, I would certainly want to sit down with her and find out everything I could from her. She must have had some really good reasons why she left after three years. And she obviously cared enough about you to contact you and let you know her decision.” I paused. Gary stood there, silent. I waited some more. Then I continued, “I suppose there’s no way for you to get in touch with her anymore.” “Actually, her parents probably live at the same address. I’m sure I could find it.” My bus pulled up to the stop. “Might be a good idea. Well, I wish you good luck, Gary. It was really good talking to you. Thanks.” He waved to me as my bus pulled away.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I was confused. “You can’t mean you want me to follow him around?” I was, at once, terrified and titillated by the idea. “Yes, I do,” she said, “but in plain sight. You need to befriend Rupert. That is why I asked you to stay for dinner and listen to his music group this evening.” “Is his family coming?” When she’d invited me, I’d fantasized meeting Frank Lloyd Wright’s descendants. “No, Rupert has formed a new chamber group with friends closer to his age. I know you’ll like them, and they’ll like you. Two of them are teachers at his school. They know me as Mrs. Pole, so that is how you should refer to me, either as Anaïs with no last name or as Mrs. Pole.” Her hands went to reach for something again. She saw my eyes follow. “I quit smoking,” she explained. “Rupert and I are both quitting. Do you have the habit?” I shrugged noncommittally. “The only time I miss it is after making love.” She sighed and returned to her agenda. “Tonight, after the musicians finish playing, you should go up to Rupert and tell him how much you enjoyed listening and that you hope to be invited again.” I was furiously scribbling notes; she barely paused for a breath. “Rupert will say you are welcome any time.” “You know he’ll say that?” “Yes. You can then come every Tuesday early enough to hear the gossip.” I looked up. “You just want me to listen for gossip?” “Yes, get the other musicians to trust you. Just be easy and charming.” “Be an actress,” I said. “You told me when we first met that you wanted to be an actress!” Her laugh jingled. “Tristine, do you think you could spare a few weekend afternoons in addition to the chamber group evenings?” “I guess so.” “Good. Then when you are saying goodnight next Tuesday, volunteer to help Rupert clear the land he bought in Silver Lake on which he plans to build me a house.” “Rupert is building a house?” “Yes, unfortunately. His half-brother Eric designed it.” “You don’t like the design?” “Oh, yes I do. Eric is very talented. He’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandson, after all. But I don’t want to be tethered to any house. It’s Rupert’s attempt to bury me in permanent soil.” I nodded; I wouldn’t want to be tied down to a house, either. She continued, “Don’t strain yourself when you join Rupert at the building site. He prefers to do the work himself but he enjoys company. Bring him some cold beer. It’ll get him to talk.” She dug a wallet from her purse, pulled out three twenties, and squeezed them into my hand. “For Rupert’s beer.” “That’s a lot of beer,” I said. “For your trouble, gas.” She waved the money away. “Okay, but I really don’t think Rupert is going to confide in me.”

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

  Even by kindergarten the nuances of our sex roles are deeply embedded. It’s odd not to be able to tell a child’s gender at an early age, even many years before puberty, even though at that age the bodies of boys and girls are very much alike and both might dress in T-shirts and sneakers and jeans. We might tell by hairstyle, but as much or more by posture, where the hands are kept, how the head is held, a smile, the angle at which the foot rests. (These are exactly the nuances that betray the careless adult cross-dresser, the nuances transsexuals must learn and unlearn in order to pass. Compared to posture and inflection, makeup and hair are easy.) This ambiguous child seemed gay to me because the nuances were blended. Longish, soft hair—and an upright, balanced bearing. Hands in the pockets, and a shy smile. The direct gaze—and the quiet voice. Here was a child who seemed to have within himself, within herself, the opposite of him or her, and very likely without the slightest conscious knowledge. That blending is the essence of gay and bisexual presentation, and that presentation is almost completely a texture of the individual rather than anything put on. What it is, is not-straight. All blending softens the rigid contours of the straight. And how much am I just projecting my own clichés? William is in his late twenties, is thin, slightly built, bookish. He is smaller than his wife, Rebecca, a striking blonde with bright red lipstick who tells me she is mistaken for a lesbian from time to time. “I’ve always felt myself to be really feminine,” William says. “I enjoy being around women a lot more than men. And I’ve always, as long as I can remember, had to deal with people talking to me about being feminine. ‘Are you gay? Are you not really one of the guys?’ My mother was convinced I was gay—absolutely convinced. My best friend is gay, and she was sure we were lovers, and we were going to be living together, and she was ready to have him as her son-in-law. I had to say, ‘Sorry, Mom, no. I’m straight.’ That’s why I love living in San Francisco. I grew up in Colorado with cowboys, real butch guys, and here I look so straight! When I first moved out here I went to lots of gay bars, and I’d never felt so masculine and so butch in my life.”

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

  What makes us men and women? A little chromosome, a spurt of chemical here and there, an idea, a hope, a holy terror. All of this begs the question, which I am reluctantly getting to, after all. You can look at bodies, at male bodies and female bodies, and see how different they are—and how much the same, how tiny and irrelevant are the things that separate us. Our bodies are combinations of extensions and folds and little more, and we can see sex as the mere slipping of one body part into and through and over another. Even a simple kiss can be devastatingly intimate viewed that way, and intercourse numbingly mundane. Why do the folds and extensions matter so? Why has so much of human history been a history of sex—of uterine envy and castration fear and homicidal jealousy, taboos and sacrifice and obsessive symphonies of passion? So much so that the poor infant in the cradle needs a set of nicely defined folds and extensions right from the start. The shape of its little hairless crotch means ever so much. And still I don’t know what a woman is, or a man. Gender isn’t genitals, hormones, or chromosomes; attraction and desire isn’t based simply on the shape of things. I find myself thinking again and again that I can’t even know what sex is, let alone what it means to me, until I know what I am, what a woman is, what that means. But I can’t know, and I think that’s just one of the little lies I tell myself about sex. In a vital way gender has nothing to do with sex and sex has nothing to do with gender. Sex is far, far more than the fitting of genitals and hormones together, and gender is what it is without sex at all. Identity isn’t a wholly fixed thing. If we can call into question all the forms and signs of gender, then perhaps there is no such thing as gender. Gender is all illusion. We create this gestalt that makes gender possible; we make each other men and women. I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, watching: There goes ponytail, crew cut, miniskirt, black-belted raincoat, linen suit, like names or stories; there goes gold chain, knit vest, T-shirt, all names, all stories. Presentation and its etheric body, presentation, is always with us. Everywhere I turn the world drips with message and meaning, hidden agendas and outspoken purpose, rules and hopes and massive uncertainty. There is such fun in it, and such fear. We are all dressed up with no place to go.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Those involuntary sightings tended to happen younger, at age nine or ten. Intentional searches started, for most, somewhere between sixth and eighth grade—usually before the boys had masturbated or were able to ejaculate. Initially, they’d type something rudimentary into Google like “boobies” or “naked women” (though what is returned by those searches is hardly innocuous); they often described their maiden glimpse of female genitalia as more alarming than arousing. “When I was in sixth grade, boobs were really cool,” said a high school senior in San Francisco. “But I couldn’t handle vaginas. They just look kinda weird, like an alien mouth.” What was originally disturbing soon became compelling. Over time—and here’s where this generation is unique—most of the boys learned masturbation entirely in tandem with porn, yoking it to their cycle of desire, arousal, and release. “I started masturbating in sixth grade, about a year after I was first shown porn,” said Mitchell, a sophomore at a Los Angeles college. “I don’t think I masturbated without it until at least tenth grade. It was just so easy to get, I didn’t consider not using it. You go on Pornhub and there’s all these categories you can go through. And being able to reach the normal stuff and the weird stuff equally easily was crazy.” Cole, the guy from the previous chapter who is now attending a military academy, recalled, “I have a friend who was a legend among the high school crew team. He claimed that he’d stopped using porn completely. He said, ‘I just close my eyes and use my imagination.’ We were like, ‘Whoa! How does he do that?’” With such infinite variety, boys didn’t limit themselves to just one or two videos at a time: “What I do is, I have three or four favorite sites,” explained a junior at an East Coast college. “I look at all the thumbnails on the first couple of pages to see what seems good. Then I open the tabs for those videos on the first site, then the second site, and so on. Then I go back and forth between them, skimming through until I find something that really gets me off.” Using porn was so effortless, so reflexive, that, sometimes, he found himself gravitating to it when he didn’t intend to. “My fingers will just start clicking and I’ll be like, ‘Wait, no! I meant to go on CNN! I didn’t want to go on Pornhub! But it doesn’t matter. I do it whenever I’m bored, depressed, stressed out—whenever I need something to do.”

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  The two did eventually split up, briefly; they reunited after a round of rough sex in an elementary school parking lot, during which he choked her, pulled her hair, and, at her request, slapped her across the breasts. That was the first time Daniel climaxed without using his hand. “It was the best sex we ever had,” he recalled. Certainly, people have predilections, but it’s troubling that both instances of aggressive sex Daniel recounted happened when his girlfriend believed their relationship was in jeopardy. Daniel himself considers his behavior to be contrary to the intimacy he claims to crave. He doesn’t know whether that disconnect is natural, part of his wiring as a sexual person, or shaped by his repeated consumption of prepackaged fantasies. As another boy, a high school senior in San Francisco, put it, “I think porn affects your ability to be innocent in a sexual relationship. The whole idea of exploring sex without any preconceived ideas of what it is, you know? That natural organic process has just been fucked by porn.” We tend to believe that genital response—becoming erect for men, lubricating for women—is synonymous with arousal, but that’s not always true. Those are automatic physiological reactions. Emily Nagoski, a professor of health behavior who studies the science of desire, likens it to being tickled by someone who infuriates you: your laughter is involuntary; it doesn’t signal enjoyment. For men, the overlap between blood flow to the genitals and “turned-on” feelings is only 50 percent—which sounds low, until you hear that for women it’s a mere 10 percent. The fancy, scientific term for this is “non-concordance” and it’s why a woman can, say, orgasm during a disliked sexual activity, including rape: despite what Fifty Shades of Grey (or some politicians) would have you believe, that does not make her “in denial” of her secret wishes. Similarly, a man may be sickened by an image that makes his penis rise; that isn’t the biological version of a poker tell. Bodies react to what is perceived as sexually relevant, Nagoski said, not necessarily to what’s sexually wanted, appealing, or enjoyable (you can also experience the inverse: finding something sexy without having a genital reaction). When a boy gets an erection in response to scatological porn or a report of rape in his campus newspaper, then, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s into it; his body may just be acknowledging something involving sex is afoot.

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

  The curse that colored people carry is having no clearly defined heritage to go back to. If they trace their lineage back far enough, at a certain point it splits into white and native and a tangled web of “other.” Since their native mothers are gone, their strongest affinity has always been with their white fathers, the Afrikaners. Most colored people don’t speak African languages. They speak Afrikaans. Their religion, their institutions, all of the things that shaped their culture came from Afrikaners. The history of colored people in South Africa is, in this respect, worse than the history of black people in South Africa. For all that black people have suffered, they know who they are. Colored people don’t. [image file=image_rsrc2U1.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2U2.jpg] THE MULBERRY TREEAt the end of our street in Eden Park, right in a bend at the top of the road, stood a giant mulberry tree growing out of someone’s front yard. Every year when it bore fruit the neighborhood kids would go and pick berries from it, eating as many as they could and filling up bags to take home. They would all play under the tree together. I had to play under the tree by myself. I didn’t have any friends in Eden Park. I was the anomaly wherever we lived. In Hillbrow, we lived in a white area, and nobody looked like me. In Soweto, we lived in a black area, and nobody looked like me. Eden Park was a colored area. In Eden Park, everyone looked like me, but we couldn’t have been more different. It was the biggest mindfuck I’ve ever experienced. The animosity I felt from the colored people I encountered growing up was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with. It taught me that it is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider. If a white guy chooses to immerse himself in hip-hop culture and only hang out with black people, black people will say, “Cool, white guy. Do what you need to do.” If a black guy chooses to button up his blackness to live among white people and play lots of golf, white people will say, “Fine. I like Brian. He’s safe.” But try being a black person who immerses himself in white culture while still living in the black community. Try being a white person who adopts the trappings of black culture while still living in the white community. You will face more hate and ridicule and ostracism than you can even begin to fathom. People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive. That is what happened to me in Eden Park. —

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  [image file=img/img0007.jpg] In addition to the larger, more publicized and recognizable cults, three types of smaller cults abound: (1) small groups, usually with no name, of less than a dozen members who follow a particular leader, an all-powerful "master"; (2) "family cults," in which the head of the family uses excessive persuasion and control techniques to keep the family functioning as he sees fit; and (3) probably the least acknowledged, "one-on-one cults," which are two-person abusive relationships that involve cultic characteristics. The "no-name" cults and family cults tend to overlap-in other words, sometimes a family cult brings in outsiders and is no longer composed solely of people related by birth or marriage. These small cults and cultic abusive relationships tend to be more intense in their effect on the individual member than the larger group cult, for the simple reason that all the attention-and abuse-is focused on one or several persons, often with more damaging consequences. Also, women are primarily the victims in these relationships. Many people may be involved in these types of abusive relationships without realizing it. Most people don't like to think of their group or family as a cult, and they will rationalize away inner suspicions or fend off criticisms or observations by friends or relatives. But as we have seen, only by educating ourselves about patterns of cultic influence and control can we free ourselves from them. One important factor to keep in mind is that abuse does not have to be physical; in many cases, it may be verbal or emotional.' This seemingly less severe abuse often leads the victim to doubt her reactions because she is not being physically attacked and may not be able to explain the abuse to herself or others. Our colleague Margaret Singer used to call this "the gaslight effect," after the classic film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.2 In the film, Boyer plays a slick scoundrel who subjects Bergman's character to daily mind manipulations that slowly and insidiously drive her to the brink of insanity. The film is a superb illustration of the so-called gaslighting many abusers engage in, which can render their subjects psychologically helpless by getting them to doubt their own sense of reality. Perhaps one of the least understood of these unique cultic abusive relationships is the one-on-one cult. One-on-One CultsThe abusive relationship identified as a one-on-one cult is a deliberately manipulative and exploitative intimate relationship between two persons, often involving deception and physical and/or sexual abuse of the subordinate partner. It is important to note that not all abusive relationships are cultic. There are specific markers that separate cultic abuse from situations wherein one partner may have anger-management issues, drug or alcohol abuse patterns, or mild psychological dysfunction. In one-on-one cults, which we also call cultic relationships, there is a significant power imbalance between the two participants. The stronger one, or the power holder, uses his influence to control, manipulate, abuse, and exploit the subordinate one.

• From Banned Books

  8. Holden Caulfield’s Subversive Voice It took the rest of the decade for the book’s audience to grow . There was a tension at the heart of its narrative that led to much of the controversy around it: Was this a novel written by an adult, in the voice of a teenager, for teenagers? Or was it a novel written by an adult, in the voice of a teenager, for adults? Stern’s Times review gets at the confusion . By writing in the slangy, agitated voice of Holden Caulfield, he, too, immerses himself in the mind of the 16-year-old protagonist . However, his review appeared in the prestigious pages of The New York Times, addressed to adult readers looking for insights into novels pitched to them . HISTORICAL CHALLENGES TO CATCHER It was the purported vulnerabilities of adolescents that spawned the earliest efforts to censor The Catcher in the Rye during the 1950s . The book found an audience of readers about Holden’s own age . School districts assigned it in an effort to support their self-understanding . However, organized religion, which has historically been a crucial institution for the socialization of the young, sought to limit the spread of this social contagion . The National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL) undertook a national project to prevent Catcher from being taught in high schools or made available in high school libraries . The NODL was founded in 1938 by the Catholic bishops of the United States . Its founding credo stated that its goal was “to organize and set in motion the moral forces of the entire country … against the lascivious type of literature which threatens moral, social and national life .” The organization contacted school board members in 10 districts around the country, beginning in Marin County, California, in 1954, regarding a list of 20 books it put together, including Catcher . Later, it expanded its outreach to Protestant organizations, and its work was mirrored by the Reverend Jerry Falwell in the 1980s . For one thing, Holden’s penchant for saying “goddam” outraged these organizations and the many subsequent protests that took up where the original NODL one left off . Interestingly, 1954 was the high-water mark of what became known as the second Red Scare, or McCarthyism, named after Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy . Just as McCarthy claimed to be defending American institutions from communist subversion, the NODL not only focused on Catcher’s sexual and “atheistic” content but also claimed (without substantiation) that it was “communistic .” 64

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Each of the last three books shows us Augustine the bishop, now reformed in the image and likeness of god and well on his way into the boring interim stage of his life, fending off alienation and temptation, with hope of the world to come, contemplating in turns both the divine nature (one mask at a time) and human nature (that is, his own nature in its triple reflection of the divine). And the two draw closer together. The last pages of the text reach the seventh day of Genesis, which is (in Augustine’s interpretation) a figure for the eternal rest of the blessed, the time when all alienation and temptation pass away, all separation is erased, and humankind is reunited with god. That’s the story. We’ve followed it as Augustine wrote it, with the main lines of its theological preoccupations, and it turns out to be what I said: not about Augustine, who keeps fading away like the Cheshire cat (leaving behind not his smile but his preacherly voice), but about god. The human story is gradually erased, with all its confusion and mystery and perplexities and contradictions; and the divine story, serene and bland and bright, emerges behind it. Every story, in this way of reading, turns out to be the same story. Most likely that’s how Augustine wanted his book to be read; and if that were how it had been read for all the centuries since, I dare say it would have few readers, mainly obsessive ones. How has the book survived and thrived, especially in modern times? Let’s go back to the garden scene in the eighth book. No book about Augustine’s life is complete without the author taking the liberty of telling that story again. When Augustine’s best biographer, for example, gets to that point in his narrative of Augustine’s life, he just steps aside and gives us a little over two solid pages of quotation, slightly abridged but otherwise uncommented on, giving the story exactly as Augustine told it.129 Let me try to describe it a little differently, in order to show how the scene works.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Readers have naturally been confused by this apparent mish-mash. Some have gone so far as to hold that the second book is the authentic work of a real “predestinationist” defending an extreme form of Augustinian doctrine. The truth seems to be subtler. The most recent serious study assigns the whole work to a figure otherwise known only slightly, “Arnobius the younger,” writing in Rome in the mid-fifth century. The core of the work is the second book, now revealed as parody and pastiche. The line of argument goes roughly like this: here are all the Christian heresies, and most readers would recognize many of them and be familiar with the idea. To be sure, the earlier Christian father Origen is more kindly handled (and indeed nearly rehabilitated) than was the case in Augustine’s own treatment and in most church discussion of the fifth century, and the view of Pelagius presented here gives him as a heretic, to be sure, but softens the Augustinian view (apparently under the influence of Julian of Eclanum) and leaves him better off than in any other anti-Pelagian treatment we know. So the author presents the second book as if it were a real book handed around in Augustine’s name, as a representation of his own ideas on issues of grace and free will. But then there are two twists: first, the author knows perfectly well that Augustine didn’t write it, because he wrote it himself, as a caricature of extreme doctrine; second, the allegation of false attribution has the effect of defending Augustine’s memory while warning extreme defenders of Augustine to go carefully. (In Africa this would mean the writer Quodvultdeus; in Gaul, Prosper of Aquitaine; in Italy, Marius Mercator.) The author pretends that predestinationism is an old heresy, long known to be an error and thus of little relevance to Augustine and to Africa. In writing parody, the author goes further than Augustine or any Augustinian would actually go in apparent defense of predestination, and in so doing would hope to have the effect of ruling out much that was current among Augustinian disciples. So we see a contest over Augustine’s inheritance, carried out with an unusual sense of humor and ingenuity. On the best interpretation, the work is meant to defend what the author regards as mainstream Christians in Gaul and Italy against accusations of Pelagian sympathies by seeking to seize the middle ground from what he sees as zealots. If hard Augustinian views could be excluded as un-Augustinian heresy, then it would be harder for Augustine’s moderate opponents in Gaul to be tarred with the Pelagian brush. We have no idea how persuasive the book turned out to be, but the performance is clever and witty. Most important, perhaps, is the realization that the name and fame of Augustine are secure in its pages, even if Augustinian disciples and ideas are under attack.

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

  I feel the ache of not having a partner anymore, the only person in my life who would care whether or not the washing machine was fixed or that I had received a phone call from Daisy that afternoon telling me she had made her first two friends at school. My head is spinning – from the passionate sex I just had with #4 to the romantic dinner date to the stinging rejection when we got back to his house to my sitting here with such ease in #3’s kitchen. I feel mercurial, like I’m fostering different personalities to see which one I will ultimately adopt. With #4, I’m the six-years-older MILF who can’t get enough, with #3, I’m the patient end-of-day sounding board, and underlying both of these personas is the memory of the devoted wife I was to my husband, who theoretically I could still go back to if I could find him. I hear a voice urging me to keep going, leap forward, don’t look back, pedal faster, have more sex, learn more, explore more, discover more – more, more, more – and then another voice yelling a command to stop and retreat, don’t abandon the life you know, decamp for safer pastures. If I could clarify whether I am losing or finding myself, I would find the key to the door I am meant to unlock. “I’m so tired,” I say suddenly. #3, wiping down the counter, pauses to glance at me and invites me to sleep over. I nod my head in assent. Upstairs in the narrow bathroom, he loans me toiletries and together we brush our teeth with his natural toothpaste that makes me wish I had a powerful dose of chemical mouthwash, moving around each other in an intimate dance that feels familiar even though it’s our first time doing it. In his bed, naked beneath a cotton sheet, a window fan gently blowing on us, we kiss. I know that I could tell him I’m bone-tired and he would graciously accept it, that the pressure to have sex with him is self-inflicted. I love the physicality of having sex, the way my body tingles and shivers, but I also love how it makes me feel grounded afterwards, how the sharing of intense energy connects me with whomever I happen to be having sex – even if the connection ends the minute we put our clothes back on. Tonight I will get to hold onto that feeling all night since I am sleeping here, so I rally and then drift off to sleep to the whirring of the fan and beyond it the rush of the river. The scene would be pretty close to perfect if not for the cats who jump on the bed throughout the night with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, climbing on top of me to let me know that my presence is not appreciated. In the morning, we rise at dawn, both exhausted after a fitful night.

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

  I am thoroughly perplexed; given that we have only texted a handful of times since I left and have never spoken on the phone before now, I can’t figure out how he and I have such opposing perspectives. I also want to laugh, as I was just rejected by one man for my inability to be serious with him and now I’m being rejected by another for being too serious. What am I not getting here? “Serious” in my experience has meant cohabitation, marriage, kids, a mortgage, and going to the same dentist. In the 27 years I’ve been off the market, has “serious” come to mean something else entirely that you can achieve in three dates or less? “I think you’re an amazing person going through an incredibly difficult time and I want to be here for you,” he says. “OK, ummmm, that’s nice, though I don’t completely understand what you’re saying. You want to slow things down?” I ask, even though I don’t know how much slower we can go. Even highways have a minimum speed you have to maintain. “I want to be a friend to you, I want you to know that I’m here for you, but I don’t think we should see each other this weekend,” he says. “Ah, OK, I see. Well, I appreciate your honesty and your empathy for my situation. And it’s been lovely getting to know you. Maybe our paths will cross again someday,” I say, trying to figure out how to gracefully end this awkward phone call. “I really want to stay in touch, you know, as friends,” he says. “OK, as friends, got it,” I say. “Well, you have my number, you know where to find me.” “Hey, remember you said you had some easy recipes you could give me? I need to get some variety in my cooking, everything I make is so plain,” he says. “Recipes?” I ask incredulously, seeing my reflection in the glass of the shower door, the line between my eyebrows now deeply creased. “Yes, remember when you told me you had cooking tips for me?” he asks. I start laughing to myself. This is just perfect , I think, you don’t want to have sex with me anymore, you don’t want to hold my hand across the table from me in a restaurant or write me texts about how you will wrap yourself around me when you see me – you want recipes . Now I am laughing harder, not just to myself, and every time I start to respond, I laugh just a bit louder. Georgia shouts for me from the other side of the bathroom door, wondering why I’m in the bathroom by myself, laughing like a hyena, and I call out to her to give me one more minute. “Sorry about that, something struck me as funny,” I say. “Yeah sure, I would be happy to send you some recipes.

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

  “You know,” he says, “I can tell my friend that something has come up so you and I could spend the day together tomorrow.” I shake my head, telling him that I already have plans and admit that my plans include a date with someone else. He persists, suggesting instead that we get together on Sunday when he’s back in the city. I shake my head again, saying that by then Georgia will be home. “That’s OK, we can all do something together. My daughters would love your daughter, they love playing big sister,” he says. I rear my head up to look at him. “Oh God, no way! Noooooo! I’m sorry to react so strongly. Separation of church and state. My kids don’t even know that I’m dating,” I say. We lie quietly for a moment and then I add, “You probably need to get going, it’s late and your train leaves in a few hours.” The dark and quiet of my apartment envelop me when I leave my bedroom. I am not used to being here without at least one of my kids home and I feel like I’m in a hotel. At the front door, I put my hands on Karl’s shoulders and we kiss goodbye. In my future dating app searches, I will set 5’8” as a minimum for height now that I’ve become aware of two important pieces of information: 1) at least two fudged inches are definitely being added to the profiles of men who are self-conscious of their stature, and 2) height, which I’ve never thought much about before, matters to me. * In the morning, I wake up to a flurry of texts. George is confirming coffee. Jeff is confirming an early afternoon drink. Scott wants to know what time I can make it to Long Island. And Karl, oh poor Karl, has written, “Good morning sunshine and roses! I can’t stop thinking about you and smiling today. Thanks for an incredible night.” It’s only Saturday morning. Maybe I was a tad overzealous in my eagerness once I got started on Tinder? I text Lauren, “Help! I want to go back to sleep and wake up to Georgia in my bed. How do I get out of this?” “You’re asking the wrong person. I can’t wait for details,” she responds. “Well at least what I do about sunshine and roses?” “My God, Laura! What did you do to that man?” she asks. “Nothing! I listened to his litany of historical facts and let him go down on me.” “You don’t owe these men anything. Write him back or don’t, you get to do whatever you want.” “But he’s really nice, I don’t want to hurt his feelings.” “OK, so tell him nicely that you can’t be his sunshine and roses. Now up and at ’em.

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

  She was always perfectly presented, with never a hair out of place or an outfit that did not scream regality, even when she was lounging at home. I learned that she had a grown son and also an ex-husband somewhere in her past. She was Austrian by birth but had immigrated to Canada at some point, exactly when I did not know. She never engaged in small talk and dissuaded those of us in her presence from doing so as well, because small talk was irrelevant to one’s spiritual development. So the snippets of information that I picked up about her life before she created the meditation circle were few and far between. I would like to be able to describe more about Limori’s character and personality, but the truth is that beyond the act she was putting on about being in God’s service 24/7 I didn’t learn much else about her. My experience of joining the group was like being thrust onto a stage midway through the first act of a play. There wasn’t time or an appropriate moment to ask for the action to stop, so that I could catch up and have the other characters’ motivations explained to me. It was all I could do to simply try to absorb the meaning and significance of everything Limori was saying and feel as though I belonged there myself, under the floodlights. There was an urgency to everything she said and did – the universe was already in deep trouble with threats from the forces of evil – so the underlying and sometimes overt message that I received was that we didn’t have time to mess around “getting to know one another” or learning at a pace that was comfortable for each person. The universe was in crisis now, now, now, and I needed to catch up to the plot as quickly as possible and set aside any questions I might have. Getting personally close to her was impossible. For one thing, she was constantly surrounded by a gaggle of hangers-on, each in their own way competing for her attention and favour; unless I booked a psychic reading with her, I was unable to get any one-on-one time with her. And, for another, she ensured that the dynamic in each of her relationships, including mine, was a guru–disciple paradigm, not a friendship. She had to be the person in authority at every moment; she could never appear to be confused or frightened by life, or bogged down by the gritty, petty details that we all encounter. She couldn’t have us experiencing her as just another sweaty human being travelling through life. She had to be different and set apart from the rest of us, while simultaneously giving the impression that we were all saving the world together. When I felt uncomfortable about our circle of chairs having a “top,” it was this dynamic that I was experiencing.

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

  It turns out that it was essential for Limori to set up the group dynamic this way. One story about Limori clearly shows how she had to be the authority at all times. It was known as the Pear Tree Story, and became an extremely valuable part of the group lexicon. On a spring or early summer day, Limori and several of her inner-circle disciples were sitting outside in the backyard at her house. For some reason, fruit trees were being discussed and pear trees were specifically mentioned. Limori got up to walk into the house and fired a comment over her shoulder: “Pear trees don’t grow in Vancouver.” Consternation ensued. Those who were present were thrown into a fit of confusion because several of them had seen the fruit tree in question growing in Vancouver lawns and gardens. Yet here was their guru, whom they believed only ever spoke The Truth, telling them something that directly contradicted their own experience. What to do? Whom to believe? (For the spiritual student, it was a deeply perplexing and disturbing problem: the one who channels God saying one thing and one’s personal experience saying another.) Limori returned to the patio a few minutes later to discover this perplexity and confusion on the faces of her followers. When they explained what was causing all the discomfort, Limori laughed and agreed with them. “Indeed,” she said, “pear trees do grow in Vancouver. Can’t you see the lesson I am trying to teach you?” Everyone relaxed; Limori had not made a mistake. They could rest easy that she did, indeed, know everything. A guru must be infallible. She does not make mistakes and say that pear trees do not grow in Vancouver. She does not have bad hair days or feel troubled by an outstanding debt. She does not bring herself down to our level by complaining about her ex-husband or discussing the weather. A guru is on a mission from none other than God Himself, and there is no room in that job description for errors, miscalculations or all-too-human vulnerabilities like emotion and ego. In The Guru Papers Kramer and Alstad explain that authoritarian rule, by its definition, assumes that a leader knows better for her followers than the followers know for themselves.1 They further explain the phenomenon of this type of relationship like this: It would be difficult to surrender to one whose motives were not thought to be pure, which has come to mean untainted by self-centeredness. How can one surrender to a person who might put his self-interest first? Also it is difficult to surrender to someone who can make mistakes, especially mistakes that could have significant impact on one’s life. Consequently, the guru can never be wrong, make mistakes, be self-centred, or lose emotional control. He doesn’t get angry, he “uses” anger to teach.2 In my experience, this assumption of a guru’s infallibility is the cornerstone of all the other manipulative strategies for control that the guru uses.

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

  She told us that we were all spiritual beings and in order to best serve God we needed to strengthen the spiritual skills that we had. We needed to learn how to be in tune with God via psychic communication – clairaudience, clairvoyance and the like. We were told that each of us had these natural spiritual abilities and developing them was a simply a matter of practice and diligence. Unlike sports or music or dance, possessing talent and/or natural ability were not important. We were all capable, she said, of communicating with our higher selves, our guides and, it was implied, God. For every issue (an argument with a co-worker, a recalcitrant child, a decision between a blue dress and a red one) we were invited to “tune in” to see what Spirit had to say. However, as with every authoritarian relationship, because Limori was the teacher, she had the ultimate say about whether the answers an individual received while tuning in were accurate or clear. Clarity was the ultimate goal for every one of us. Limori herself was the “clearest” of all, and we aspired to reach her level of clarity by defeating our ego positions and meditating as much as possible. But here I had my first experience of a double bind. For while Limori’s approach to teaching us seemed to empower us, it actually served to do the opposite. We were taught that our hearts, the centre of ourselves, always knew The Truth. This mantra was repeated over and over . . . and over again. “Trust your heart,” we were told. “It always knows The Truth.” However, another contradictory mantra was also drilled into us, from the earliest days. “If what your heart knows to be true contradicts what Limori says, then your heart is wrong.” So, always trust your heart; it is always right. But also be willing to dismiss it because it can be wrong. This was a means of control cleverly disguised as a spiritual principle and it was incredibly effective. We recited it to each other in Limori’s absence—”always trust your heart”—for it seemed so empowering. The phrase became an integral part of our loaded language. But inevitably decisions that we made, choices that felt right for someone when they “tuned into their hearts,” could be overthrown by a mere glance from the ultimate authority on The Truth, the clearest one of all: Limori. Under the guise of learning to trust ourselves and develop our relationship with God, we were actually learning the opposite: to trust no one except Limori. She gradually became the ultimate authority we all looked to for confirmation of our every feeling, thought or spiritual message. Double binds cause their own unique sensation in my body. I feel as though my brain has slipped a cog. All thought leaves my head and I feel slightly paralyzed, as though time has just stopped. Double binds contradict logic.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  No, having triggers doesn’t make you a fragile little snowflake. It makes you human. Everyone has them, or will have them eventually, because everyone will experience some form of trauma. That annoying blank stare your ex used to give you. The sound of the ventilator your grandmother was hooked up to in the weeks before she died. Having an emotional response to a trigger is perfectly healthy. Those triggers are only considered PTSD when an event is so traumatic that its triggers cause symptoms like panic attacks, nightmares, blackouts, and flashbacks—when the emotional response becomes debilitating. And here’s what makes complex PTSD uniquely miserable in the world of trauma diagnoses: It occurs when someone is exposed to a traumatic event over and over and over again—hundreds, even thousands of times—over the course of years. When you are traumatized that many times, the number of conscious and subconscious triggers bloats, becomes infinite and inexplicable. If you are beaten for hundreds of mistakes, then every mistake becomes dangerous. If dozens of people let you down, all people become untrustworthy. The world itself becomes a threat. — I put down the books and stared at the wall for hours after reading these sentences, trying to figure out what they meant for me specifically. I started counting some of my obvious triggers. Whenever I saw an angry man, I’d get intensely pissed at them—my boss, my boyfriend, Joey, a random guy in the street. Whenever Joey chewed the inside of his cheek or set his jaw a certain way, the exact way my father used to clench his, it enraged me. I’d snap, “What? What’s wrong? What’s your problem?” Often, he would look at me in surprise and confusion. “You’re mad,” I’d insist. “I’m not mad,” he said, mad. “Why do you think I’m mad?” “I’m intuitive! I’m good at reading people,” I said. Then I read a section in one of the books that featured a long line of photos of a woman making various expressions—transitioning slowly from a sad face to an angry one. A study at the University of Wisconsin showed these pictures to children who had not experienced abuse, then to children who had.[1] The abused kids thought that more of these photos presented an angry threat than the children from normal homes. They were hyperalert to even the smallest twinges in facial expressions. Was Joey actually mad? Or was I interpreting the tiny knots in his forehead as anger because I was a paranoid crazy person? What was real? If I could misinterpret a furrowed brow, what else could I misinterpret? I must possess a million subconscious triggers, so how much of the world, exactly, is my brain incorrectly afraid of?

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  An extreme form of dissociation is dissociative identity disorder (DID), brought into the mainstream by United States of Tara, a smart but short-lived Showtime series starring Toni Collette. Whenever she was triggered, the main character, Tara, would disappear into different alter egos—a perfectionistic housewife, a hard-drinking male Vietnam vet, a flirty teenager. Each time she transformed, she’d completely black out, and when Tara came back to her own body, she could not remember the damage her “alters” had wreaked. That wasn’t me. I didn’t black out. If anything, I was proud that I remembered so much about my trauma, that I could recall the viscera of the most violent moments of my childhood. After a few more questions, I interrupted Eleanor. “Look, I’m obviously messed up in a bunch of different ways, but I don’t think I’m really that dissociated.” She nodded patiently but finished her worksheet anyway. I answered “no” pointedly to every question. Then Eleanor said we should settle on just the right memory to focus on during EMDR. It should be an early moment of trauma that I felt was critical to process. Did I have any ideas? I flipped through my Rolodex. “Well,” I said, “there are kind of a lot. Like, there’s the one involving the golf club…” I described the incident in all of its gory detail. She listened patiently, and when I was done, she asked, “On a scale of one to ten, ten being most disturbing, how disturbing is that memory?” How do you give a numerical value to how you feel about your parents trying to kill you? I guessed that maybe near-death experiences should automatically qualify as nines, but when I sat with it—when I imagined that actual golf club whooshing toward my head—I felt nothing. “Um. Like, a two, maybe?” Eleanor cocked her head. “A two?” “Yeah, like, I’ve thought about that memory a lot, I guess. I think I’ve processed it. Because it’s not really that disturbing. I tell people about that one a lot. So, I dunno, I’m not upset right now thinking about it.” “Okay, well, let’s work on something really disturbing,” she said. “Something you feel strong emotions about.” “Umm…what’s one that comes up a lot? I guess maybe…there are the times my parents tried to kill me in their cars. They’d swerve near cliffs, threatening to kill us both.” “And what number would you give that?” “A three? Maybe.” “It’s interesting you say that you aren’t dissociated,” Eleanor said carefully. “When you describe some terrible things being done to you, you have a remarkably flat affect when talking about them.” “Maybe I’ve just processed these memories already! I’ve been in therapy for ten years. It’s not like these are buried secrets that I’ve never told anyone. I’ve told these stories to people a bunch of times in my life, ex-boyfriends, therapists. So maybe in the act of doing that, I’ve thought about how they affected me, and learned things, and then…moved on.”