Contempt

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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  His own home was a stable divinely suited to his genius, but the parlor of our home was like the waiting room of a mortician’s office and Grover was a lout who didn’t even know enough to wipe his feet. In the wintertime his nose ran like a sewer and, Grover being too engrossed in his music to bother wiping his nose, his cold snot was left to trickle down until it reached his lips where it was sucked in by a very long white tongue. To the flatulent music of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt and Co. it added a piquant sauce which made those empty devils palatable. Every other word from Grover’s lips was an oath, his favorite expression being—“I can’t get the fucking thing right!” Sometimes he grew so annoyed that he would take his fists and pound the piano like a madman. It was his genius coming out the wrong way. His mother, in fact, used to attach a great deal of importance to these fits of anger; they convinced her that he had something in him. Other people simply said that Grover was impossible. Much was forgiven, however, because of his clubfoot. Grover was sly enough to exploit this bad foot; whenever he wanted anything badly he developed pains in the foot. Only the piano seemed to have no respect for this maimed member. The piano therefore was an object to be cursed and kicked and pounded to bits. If he were in good form, on the other hand, Grover would remain at the piano for hours on end; in fact, you couldn’t drag him away. On such occasions his mother would go stand in the grass plot in front of the house and waylay the neighbors in order to squeeze a few words of praise out of them. She would be so carried away by her son’s “divine” playing that she would forget to cook the evening meal. The old man, who worked in the sewers, usually came home grumpy and famished. Sometimes he would march directly upstairs to the parlor and yank Grover off the piano stool. He had a rather foul vocabulary himself and when he let loose on his genius of a son there wasn’t much left for Grover to say. In the old man’s opinion Grover was just a lazy son of a bitch who could make a lot of noise. Now and then he threatened to chuck the fucking piano out of the window—and Grover with it. If the mother were rash enough to interfere during these scenes he would give her a clout and tell her to go piss up the end of a rope. He had his moments of weakness too, of course, and in such a mood he might ask Grover what the hell he was rattling away at, and if the latter said, for example, “why the Sonata Pathétique,” the old buzzard would say—“What the hell does that mean?

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  the one with the big teats? Wasn’t that a nice piece of ass to turn over to a friend? But I did it, didn’t I? I did it because you said you liked big teats. But I wouldn’t do it for Curley. He’s a little crook. Let him do his own digging.” As a matter of fact, Curley was digging away very industriously. He must have had five or six on the string at one time, from what I could gather. There was Valeska, for example—he had made himself pretty solid with her. She was so damned pleased to have some one fuck her without blushing that when it came to sharing him with her cousin and then with the midget she didn’t put up the least objection. What she liked best was to get in the tub and let him fuck her under water. It was fine until the midget got wise to it. Then there was a nice rumpus which was finally ironed out on the parlor floor. To listen to Curley talk he did everything but climb the chandeliers. And always plenty of pocket money to boot. Valeska was generous, but the cousin was a softy. If she came within a foot of a stiff prick she was like putty. An unbuttoned fly was enough to put her in a trance. It was almost shameful the things Curley made her do. He took pleasure in degrading her. I could scarcely blame him for it, she was such a prim, priggish bitch in her street clothes. You’d almost swear she didn’t own a cunt, the way she carried herself in the street. Naturally, when he got her alone he made her pay for her highfalutin’ ways. He went at it coldbloodedly. “Fish it out!” he’d say, opening his fly a little. “Fish it out with your tongue!” (He had it in for the whole bunch because, as he put it, they were sucking one another off behind his back.) Anyway, once she got the taste of it in her mouth you could do anything with her. Sometimes he’d stand her on her hands and push her around the room that way, like a wheelbarrow. Or else he’d do it dog fashion, and while she groaned and squirmed he’d nonchalantly light a cigarette and blow the smoke between her legs. Once he played her a dirty trick doing it that way. He had worked her up to such a state that she was beside herself. Anyway, after he had almost polished the ass off her with his back-scuttling he pulled out for a second, as though to cool his cock off, and then very slowly and gently he shoved a big long carrot up her twat. “That, Miss Abercrombie,” he said, “is a sort of Doppelgänger to my regular cock,” and with that he unhitches himself and yanks up his pants.

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

  To understand how Clement came to this judgment, we must discover precisely how the doc- trines embodied in the authoritative traditions of early Christianity inter- sected mainstream sexual expectations. Th e model of normative sexual be- havior that developed principally out of Paul’s reactions to the erotic culture surrounding him received fuller expression in the second and third centu- ries as a distinct alternative to the social order of the Roman Empire. Clem- ent, writing just before more radical experiments in asceticism would begin to capture the Christian imagination, presents a sort of asceticism within the order of marriage and within the order of the ancient city. Ultimately Clement’s principal achievement was exegetical; he was able to weave into a whole the disparate strands of authoritative tradition and give clear expres- sion to the meaning of Christian norms in the midst of a world alienated from God.  Clement, more than any other representative of the early church, pre- sented his views in the language of the culture around him. Early Christian sexual morality can sound deceptively familiar. But the familiar echoes belie a radically new sensibility. Th e few and mostly feeble injunctions against prostitution and same- sex love in Roman culture have been deliber- ately preserved by Christian authors in search of classical pedigrees, and the pre- Christian dissenters loom larger in retrospect than they did in their own day. Regardless, in no sense should early Christian sexual morality be construed as an off shoot of Roman conservatism. Th e ideas about sex ema- nating from the new religion marked a discrete and categorical rupture. For the community of the faithful, the pleasures of the fl esh became caught in a cosmic battle between good and evil. New rules, more interesting and less predictable than sometimes argued, formed. Porneia, fornication, went from being a cipher for sexual sin in general to a sign for all sex beyond the marriage bed, and it came to mark the great divide between Christians and the world. Same- sex love, regardless of age, status, or role, was forbidden without qualifi cation and without remorse. Unexpectedly, sexual behavior came to occupy the foreground in the landscape of human morality, in a way that it simply never had in classical culture. “Above all else take thought for chastity; for fornication has been marked out as an exceedingly terrible thing in God’s eyes.”   FROM SHAME TO SIN Th e code of sexual rules that came to prevail in the early Christian church was highly distinctive; its moral logic was more innovative still. For the Greeks and Romans, public sexual ideology was an organic expression of a social system. Sexual norms were in harmony with public law, the pro- tocols of marriage, and the patterns of inheritance.

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

  The great chasm separating Roman pederastic practice from earlier models was the omnipresence of slaves. Classical Greece had seen an unprecedented expansion of the slave trade, which laid the institutional and commercial foundations for the Roman slave system. Slaves, already in Greek culture, were subjected to untrammeled sexual abuse. But the Romans built one of history’s most enduring and extensive slave systems, and the ownership of slaves would gradually shape virtually every social institution in Roman life, including pederasty. The laws deflected lust away from the freeborn body, and slaves provided a ready outlet. In Roman pederasty, elaborate courtship before the act was replaced by the master’s authority, and intentional obscurity about the nature of the act gave way to a coarse simplicity about the physical mechanics of pleasure. The most striking physical artifact of Roman pederasty, the Warren Cup, simultaneously celebrates love between males and explores the dependence of the practice on the institution of slavery. A silver goblet of the early first century, the Warren Cup juxtaposes two panels. On one side a young master, wearing a wreath, penetrates an even younger slave. On the reverse, the two figures are many years older. The slave lowers himself onto the master, who is again wearing a wreath. But this time another slave, a small boy, peeks through the door, observing the scene. Though opinions differ, the most compelling interpretation of the cup suggests that the same couple is depicted on both sides; on the reverse, the master’s sexual partner has outgrown his role, and the younger slave watching the scene is catching a glimpse of his future life course. In the Roman context, the moral economy of pederasty was recentered around the bare fact of dominance.12

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And, of course, never let him out of my sight until the drinks were paid for. The first drink or two always plunged him into reminiscence. Reminiscences of cunt to be sure. His reminiscences were reminiscent of a story he had told me once and which made an indelible impression upon me. It was about a Scotchman on his deathbed. Just as he was about to pass away his wife, seeing him struggling to say something, bends over him tenderly and says—“What is it, Jock, what is it ye’re trying to say?” And Jock, with a last effort, raises himself wearily and says: “Just cunt . . . cunt . . . cunt.” That was always the opening theme, and the ending theme, with MacGregor. It was his way of saying—futility. The leitmotif was disease, because between fucks, as it were, he worried his head off, or rather he worried the head off his cock. It was the most natural thing in the world, at the end of an evening, for him to say—“come on upstairs a minute, I want to show you my cock.” From taking it out and looking at it and washing it and scrubbing it a dozen times a day naturally his cock was always swollen and inflamed. Every now and then he went to the doctor and he had it sounded. Or, just to relieve him, the doctor would give him a little box of salve and tell him not to drink so much. This would cause no end of debate, because as he would say to me, “if the salve is any good why do I have to stop drinking?” Or, “if I stopped drinking altogether do you think I would need to use the salve?” Of course, whatever I recommended went in one ear and out the other. He had to worry about something and the penis was certainly good food for worry. Sometimes he worried about his scalp. He had dandruff, as most everybody has, and when his cock was in good condition he forgot about that and he worried about his scalp. Or else his chest. The moment he thought about his chest he would start to cough. And such coughing! As though he were in the last stages of consumption. And when he was running after a woman he was as nervous and irritable as a cat. He couldn’t get her quickly enough. The moment he had her he was worrying about how to get rid of her. They all had something wrong with them, some trivial little thing, usually, which took the edge off his appetite.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  They’d all be a damned sight better off dead. They’re all just so much manure. When the war broke out and I saw them go off to the trenches I said to myself good , maybe they’ll come back with a little sense! A lot of them didn’t come back, of course. But the others!—listen, do you suppose they got more human , more considerate? Not at all! They’re all butchers at heart, and when they’re up against it they squeal. They make me sick, the whole fucking lot of ‘em. I see what they’re like, bailing them out every day. I see it from both sides of the fence. On the other side it stinks even worse. Why, if I told you some of the things I knew about the judges who condemn these poor bastards you’d want to slug them. All you have to do is look at their faces. Yes sir, Henry, I’d like to think there was once a time when things were different. We haven’t seen any real life—and we’re not going to see any. This thing is going to last another few thousand years, if I know anything about it. You think I’m mercenary. You think I’m cuckoo to want to earn a lot of money, don’t you? Well I’ll tell you, I want to earn a little pile so that I can get my feet out of this muck. I’d go off and live with a nigger wench if I could get away from this atmosphere. I’ve worked my balls off trying to get where I am, which isn’t very far. I don’t believe in work any more than you do—I was trained that way, that’s all. If I could put over a deal, if I could swindle a pile out of one of these dirty bastards I’m dealing with, I’d do it with a clear conscience. I know a little too much about the law, that’s the trouble. But I’ll fool them yet, you’ll see. And when I put it over 111 put it over big. . . .” Another shot of rye as the sea food’s coming along and he starts in again. “I meant that about taking you on a trip with me. I’m thinking about it seriously. I suppose you’ll tell me you’ve got a wife and a kid to’ look after. Listen when are you going to break off with that battle-ax of yours? Don’t you know that you’ve got to ditch her?” He begins to laugh softly. “Ho! Ho! To think that I was the one who picked her out for you! Did I ever think you’d be chump enough to get hitched up to her? I thought I was recommending you a nice piece of tail and you, you poor slob, you marry her. Ho ho! Listen to me, Henry, while you’ve got a little sense left: don’t let that sour-balled puss muck up your life for you, do you get me?

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  We don’t want to die, that’s the trouble with us. That’s why God and the whole shooting match upstairs in our crazy dustbins. General Ivolgin! That got a cackle out of him . . . and a few dry sobs. I might as well have said limburger cheese. But General Ivolgin means something to him . . . something crazy. Limburger cheese would be too sober, too banal. It’s all limburger cheese, however, including General Ivolgin, the poor drunken sap. General Ivolgin was evolved out of Dostoevski’s limburger cheese, his own private brand. That means a certain flavor, a certain label. So people recognize it when they smell it, taste it. But what made this General Ivolgin limburger cheese? Why, whatever made limburger cheese, which is x and therefore unknowable. And so therefore? Therefore nothing . . . nothing at all. Full stop—or else a leap in the dark and no coming back. As I was taking my pants off I suddenly remembered what the bastard had told me. I looked at my cock and it looked just as innocent as ever. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the syph,” I said, holding it in my hand and squeezing it a bit as though I might see a bit of pus squirting out. No, I didn’t think there was much chance of having the syph. I wasn’t born under that kind of star. The clap, yes, that was possible. Everybody had the clap sometime or other. But not syph! I knew he’d wish it on me if he could, just to make me realize what suffering was. But I couldn’t be bothered obliging him. I was born a dumb but lucky goy. I yawned. It was all so much goddamned limburger cheese that syph or no syph, I thought to myself, if she’s up to it I’ll tear off another piece and call it a day. But evidently she wasn’t up to it. She was for turning her ass on me. So I just lay there with a stiff prick up against her ass and I gave it to her by mental telepathy. And by Jesus, she must have gotten the message sound asleep though she was, because it wasn’t any trouble going in by the stable door and besides I didn’t have to look at her face which was one hell of a relief. I thought to myself, as I gave her the last hook and whistle—“me lad, it’s limburger cheese and now you can turn over and snore. . . .” It seemed as if it would go on forever, the sex and death chant. The very next afternoon at the office I received a telephone call from my wife saying that her friend Arline had just been taken to the insane asylum. They were friends from the convent school in Canada where they had both studied music and the art of masturbation.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  One should not say Yes, No, Yes, No, even seated in the highest place. One should not be drowned in the human tidal wave, even for the sake of becoming a Master. One must beat with his own rhythm—at any price. I accumulated thousands of years of experience in a few short years, but the experience was wasted because I had no need of it. I had already been crucified and marked by the cross; I had been born free of the need to suffer—and yet I knew no other way to struggle forward than to repeat the drama. All my intelligence was against it. Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but I went on suffering voluntarily . Suffering has never taught me a thing; for others it may still be necessary, but for me it is nothing more than an algebraic demonstration of spiritual inadaptability. The whole drama which the man of today is acting out through suffering does not exist for me: it never did, actually. All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions, pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real sinners who are in danger of being forgotten. Another thing . . . the mystery which enveloped my behavior grew deeper the nearer I came to the circle of uterine relatives. The mother from whose loins I sprang was a complete stranger to me. To begin with, after giving birth to me she gave birth to my sister, whom I usually refer to as my brother. My sister was a sort of harmless monster, an angel who had been given the body of an idiot. It gave me a strange feeling, as a boy, to be growing up and developing side by side with this being who was doomed to remain all her life a mental dwarf. It was impossible to be a brother to her because it was impossible to regard this atavistic hulk of a body as a “sister.” She would have functioned perfectly, I imagine, among the Australian primitives. She might even have been raised to power and eminence among them, for, as I said, she was the essence of goodness, she knew no evil. But so far as living the civilized life goes she was helpless; she not only had no desire to kill but she had no desire to thrive at the expense of others. She was incapacitated for work, because even if they had been able to train her to make caps for high explosives, for example, she might absent-mindedly throw her wages in the river on the way home or she might give them to a beggar in the street.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The guy she met and screwed in the rest room of some tiny East Village bar, the one who later involved her in an exhausting ménage à trois with his Italian girlfriend. Leisha had violently (and primly, Susan thought) disapproved of that one. Strangely enough, after fleeing what she contemptuously labeled “conventional” and “suburban” for anything “unconventional” she could safely lay her hands on, Leisha had performed an indignant and sudden about-face, calling the bohemia she’d adopted “pretentious” and “fake.” When Susan didn’t follow, Leisha had said things like “It’s just horribly painful to even be around you when you’re involved in this adolescent, self-destructive garbage.” It was too bad Leisha couldn’t see her now, with her steady job, her matching housewares, her kind and gentle boyfriend. It was also annoying to know that Leisha would come to some happy conclusion about her based on the current trappings of her life (“How wonderful it is that Susan has become so stable”) and then compare her favorably with the younger Susan. Susan examined her clearly lined face as she stood before the mirror. There had been changes in her during the last six years, and she thought most of them were good. But she was still, for better or worse, the same woman who had drunkenly screwed a stranger in the reeking can of a tacky bar and then run out into a cab, smiling as she pressed her phone number into his hand. She sighed and went into the “living area,” leaning against an exposed brick wall to look out a curtainless window. It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth. Susan now identified her early fascination with Leisha as a vicarious erotic connection with the ex-lover they had both slept with. She did not fantasize about Leisha and this man together, but she had been oddly gratified to experience secondhand the dynamic between him and this throaty-voiced little bad girl, and to reflect this dynamic back to Leisha, making it more of a drama by becoming another character in the story. Leisha had done the same, clearly enjoying her two-way link with their lover and the mysterious, contrary, perverse woman he had described to her, this tackily glamorous icon of a dirty-magazine woman who was also her reliable friend Susan. During the first year of their friendship they discussed and described him, pro and con, right down to the blond pinkness, the raised, strangely exposed quality of his genitals, and they were both greatly amused to discover that the sight of them talking and giggling together unnerved him. — She had dinner that night with her old friend Barbara. They went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street that served neat little dinners to predictably soothing music.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I relate these incidents briefly and hurriedly as they flash through my mind; my memory is packed with thousands of such details, with a myriad faces, gestures, tales, confessions all entwined and interlaced like the stupendous reeling façade of some Hindu temple made not of stone but of the experience of human flesh, a monstrous dream edifice built entirely of reality and yet not reality itself but merely the vessel in which the mystery of the human being is contained. My mind wanders to the clinic where in ignorance and good will I brought some of the younger ones to be cured. I can think of no more evocative image to convey the atmosphere of this place than the painting by Hieronymus Bosch in which the magician, after the manner of a dentist extracting a live nerve, is represented as the deliverer of insanity. All the trumpery and quackery of our scientific practitioners came to apotheosis in the person of the suave sadist who operated this clinic with the full concurrence and connivance of the law. He was a ringer for Caligari, except that he was minus the dunce cap. Pretending that he understood the secret regulations of the glands, invested with the power of a medieval monarch, oblivious of the pain he inflicted, ignorant of everything but his medical knowledge, he went to work on the human organism like a plumber sets to work on the underground drainpipes. In addition to the poisons he threw into the patient’s system he had recourse to his fists or his knees as the case might be. Anything justified a “reaction.” If the victim were lethargic he shouted at him, slapped him in the face, pinched his arm, cuffed him, kicked him. If on the contrary the victim were too energetic he employed the same methods, only with redoubled zest. The feelings of his subject were of no importance to him; whatever reaction he succeeded in obtaining was merely a demonstration or manifestation of the laws regulating the operation of the internal glands of secretion. The purpose of his treatment was to render the subject fit for society. But no matter how fast he worked, no matter whether he was successful or not successful, society was turning out more and more misfits. Some of them were so marvelously maladapted that when, in order to get the proverbial reaction, he slapped them vigorously on the cheek they responded with an uppercut or a kick in the balls. It’s true, most of his subjects were exactly what he described them to be—incipient criminals. The whole continent was on the slide—is still on the slide—and not only the glands need regulating but the ball bearings, the armature, the skeletal structure, the cerebrum, the cerebellum, the coccyx, the larynx, the pancreas, the liver, the upper intestine and the lower intestine, the heart, the kidneys, the testicles, the womb, the Fallopian tubes, the whole goddamned works. The whole country is lawless, violent, explosive, demoniacal.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  If he tried to be strict, she would tease and flatter him. The few times he lost his temper and punished her, she punished him with silence. When he dragged her up the stairs and spanked her, she ran away from home. She called a week later and spoke to Virginia, but she hung up when Jarold got on the phone. It was the first time that Virginia had seen Jarold cry. “Magdalen has real charm,” said Jarold to Lily. “She can charm the birds off the trees. You don’t have any of that. You don’t have any personality at all.” Virginia was surprised at the intensity of Jarold’s dislike for Lily. And, although Lily never expressed it openly, Virginia felt that Lily hated him too. Lily never argued with him; she barely acknowledged his presence. When she had to speak to him, her voice was clipped and subtly condescending, as though he were beneath defiance. One evening, Lily and Virginia were sitting together in lawn chairs in the back yard when Charles and Daniel approached them with a big piece of wood. The boys had shot four squirrels, skinned them and nailed the skins to it. They displayed the skins proudly, and Virginia praised them. Lily said nothing until they left. Then she said that she thought it was sick. “I know, it seems awful,” said Virginia. “But they’re little boys and it means something to them. They do it to impress their father.” Virginia was unnerved by the sudden look of contempt on Lily’s face. “I know,” she said. — Lily’s stay gradually became more and more unpleasant and eventually became a discomfiting memory that hung over the house for quite a while. But there were bright spots that stood out of the unpleasantness so vividly that they seemed to come from somewhere else altogether. Virginia would spend afternoons with Lily after school. They’d change into jeans and T-shirts and drive into the mountains where they’d gone the first day. Sometimes they’d stop at a Dairy Queen and buy pink-spotted cups of ice cream in melting puddles of syrup. They’d sit on the car hood, slowly swinging their legs and eating the ice cream with pink plastic spoons, talking about the bossy girl in Lily’s home ec class, or the boy she thought was “different.” Virginia spoke about her high school days, when she was beautiful and popular and all the girls tried to be friends with her. She’d give Lily social advice about how to choose her friends. When they’d get to the mountains, they’d leave the car and walk. They’d become quiet and concentrate on the walk. They’d find paths, then break branches from trees and use them to clear their way.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  They’d all be a damned sight better off dead. They’re all just so much manure. When the war broke out and I saw them go off to the trenches I said to myself good , maybe they’ll come back with a little sense! A lot of them didn’t come back, of course. But the others!—listen, do you suppose they got more human , more considerate? Not at all! They’re all butchers at heart, and when they’re up against it they squeal. They make me sick, the whole fucking lot of ‘em. I see what they’re like, bailing them out every day. I see it from both sides of the fence. On the other side it stinks even worse. Why, if I told you some of the things I knew about the judges who condemn these poor bastards you’d want to slug them. All you have to do is look at their faces. Yes sir, Henry, I’d like to think there was once a time when things were different. We haven’t seen any real life—and we’re not going to see any. This thing is going to last another few thousand years, if I know anything about it. You think I’m mercenary. You think I’m cuckoo to want to earn a lot of money, don’t you? Well I’ll tell you, I want to earn a little pile so that I can get my feet out of this muck. I’d go off and live with a nigger wench if I could get away from this atmosphere. I’ve worked my balls off trying to get where I am, which isn’t very far. I don’t believe in work any more than you do—I was trained that way, that’s all. If I could put over a deal, if I could swindle a pile out of one of these dirty bastards I’m dealing with, I’d do it with a clear conscience. I know a little too much about the law, that’s the trouble. But I’ll fool them yet, you’ll see. And when I put it over 111 put it over big. . . .” Another shot of rye as the sea food’s coming along and he starts in again. “I meant that about taking you on a trip with me. I’m thinking about it seriously. I suppose you’ll tell me you’ve got a wife and a kid to’ look after. Listen when are you going to break off with that battle-ax of yours? Don’t you know that you’ve got to ditch her?” He begins to laugh softly. “Ho! Ho! To think that I was the one who picked her out for you! Did I ever think you’d be chump enough to get hitched up to her? I thought I was recommending you a nice piece of tail and you, you poor slob, you marry her. Ho ho! Listen to me, Henry, while you’ve got a little sense left: don’t let that sour-balled puss muck up your life for you, do you get me?

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  There they were, friends and relatives all congregated about the bier and all of them bawling like sick monkeys. The mother especially gave me a pain in the ass. She was such a rare, spiritual creature, a Christian Scientist, I believe, and though she didn’t believe in disease and didn’t believe in death either, she raised such a stink that Christ himself would have risen from the grave. But not her beloved Jack! No, Jack lay there cold as ice and rigid and unbeckonable. He was dead and there were no two ways about it. I knew it and I was glad of it. I didn’t waste any tears over it. I couldn’t say that he was better off because after all the “he” had vanished. He was gone and with him the sufferings he had endured and the suffering he had unwittingly inflicted on others. Amen!, I said to myself, and with that, being slightly hysterical, I let a loud fart—right beside the coffin. This caring too much—I remember that it only developed with me about the time I first fell in love. And even then I didn’t care enough. If I had really cared I wouldn’t be here now writing about it: I’d have died of a broken heart, or I’d have swung for it. It was a bad experience because it taught me how to live a lie. It taught me to smile when I didn’t want to smile, to work when I didn’t believe in work, to live when I had no reason to go on living. Even when I had forgotten her I still retained the trick of doing what I didn’t believe in. It was all chaos from the beginning, as I have said. But sometimes I got so close to the center, to the very heart of the confusion, that it’s a wonder things didn’t explode around me. It is customary to blame everything on the war. I say the war had nothing to do with me, with my life. At a time when others were getting themselves comfortable berths I was taking one miserable job after another, and never enough in it to keep body and soul together. Almost as quickly as I was hired I was fired. I had plenty of intelligence but I inspired distrust. Wherever I went I fomented discord—not because I was idealistic but because I was like a searchlight exposing the stupidity and futility of everything. Besides, I wasn’t a good ass licker. That marked me, no doubt. People could tell at once when I asked for a job that I really didn’t give a damn whether I got it or not. And of course I generally didn’t get it. But after a time the mere looking for a job became an activity, a pastime, so to speak. I would go in and ask for most anything. It was a way of killing time—no worse, as far as I could see, than work itself.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Finally we got into such an argument over Luke that she got an hysterical attack and began to weep and sob—in bed, mind you. That made me hungry. The idea of weeping before breakfast seemed monstrous to me. I went downstairs and I fixed myself a wonderful breakfast, and as I put it away I was laughing to myself, about Luke, about the hundred and fifty bucks that his sudden death had wiped off the slate, about Lottie and the way she would look at me when the moment came . . . and finally, the most absurd of all, I thought of Maxie, Maxie Schnadig, the faithful friend of Luke, standing at the grave with a big wreath and perhaps throwing a handful of earth on the coffin just as they were lowering it. Somehow that seemed just too stupid for words. I don’t know why it should seem so ridiculous, but it did. Maxie was a simpleton. I tolerated him only because he was good for a touch now and then. And then too there was his sister Rita. I used to let him invite me to his home occasionally, pretending that I was interested in his brother who was deranged. It was always a good meal and the half-witted brother was real entertainment. He looked like a chimpanzee and he talked like one too. Maxie was too simple to suspect that I was merely enjoying myself; he thought I took a genuine interest in his brother. It was a beautiful Sunday and I had as usual about a quarter in my pocket. I walked along wondering where to go to make a touch. Not that it was difficult to scrape up a little dough, no, but the thing was to get the dough and beat it without being bored stiff. I could think of a dozen guys right in the neighborhood, guys who would fork it out without a murmur, but it would mean a long conversation afterwards—about art, religion, politics. Another thing I could do, which I had done over and over again in a pinch, was to visit the telegraph offices, pretending to pay a friendly visit of inspection and then, at the last minute, suggest that they rifle the till for a buck or so until the morrow. That would involve time and even worse conversation. Thinking it over coldly and calculatingly I decided that the best bet was my little friend Curley up in Harlem. If Curley didn’t have the money he would filch it from his mother’s purse. I knew I could rely on him. He would want to accompany me, of course, but I could always find a way of ditching him before the evening was over. He was only a kid and I didn’t have to be too delicate with him. What I liked about Curley was that, although only a kid of seventeen, he had absolutely no moral sense, no scruples, no shame.

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

  Thus, too, did the devil set about the temptation of the first man. For at first he enticed his mind to consent to the eating of the forbidden fruit, saying (Gn. 3:1): “Why hath God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?” Secondly [he tempted him] to vainglory by saying: “Your eyes shall be opened.” Thirdly, he led the temptation to the extreme height of pride, saying: “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This same order did he observe in tempting Christ. For at first he tempted Him to that which men desire, however spiritual they may be—namely, the support of the corporeal nature by food. Secondly, he advanced to that matter in which spiritual men are sometimes found wanting, inasmuch as they do certain things for show, which pertains to vainglory. Thirdly, he led the temptation on to that in which no spiritual men, but only carnal men, have a part—namely, to desire worldly riches and fame, to the extent of holding God in contempt. And so in the first two temptations he said: “If Thou be the Son of God”; but not in the third, which is inapplicable to spiritual men, who are sons of God by adoption, whereas it does apply to the two preceding temptations. And Christ resisted these temptations by quoting the authority of the Law, not by enforcing His power, “so as to give more honor to His human nature and a greater punishment to His adversary, since the foe of the human race was vanquished, not as by God, but as by man”; as Pope Leo says (Serm. 1, De Quadrag. 3). Reply to Objection 1: To make use of what is needful for self-support is not the sin of gluttony; but if a man do anything inordinate out of the desire for such support, it can pertain to the sin of gluttony. Now it is inordinate for a man who has human assistance at his command to seek to obtain food miraculously for mere bodily support. Hence the Lord miraculously provided the children of Israel with manna in the desert, where there was no means of obtaining food otherwise. And in like fashion Christ miraculously provided the crowds with food in the desert, when there was no other means of getting food. But in order to assuage His hunger, He could have done otherwise than work a miracle, as did John the Baptist, according to Matthew (3:4); or He could have hastened to the neighboring country. Consequently the devil esteemed that if Christ was a mere man, He would fall into sin by attempting to assuage His hunger by a miracle.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  That’s a hell of a way to raise a kid. . . . There’s not a red cent in the house. Curley’s idea of a way out is to go with me to the office where he works and while I engage the manager in conversation go through the wardrobe and clean out all the loose change. Or, if I’m not afraid of taking a chance, he will go through the cash drawer. They’ll never suspect us, he says. Had he ever done that before, I ask. Of course . . . a dozen or more times, right under the manager’s nose. And wasn’t there any stink about it? To be sure . . . they had fired a few clerks. Why don’t you borrow something from your Aunt Sophie, I suggest. That’s easy enough, only it means a quick diddle and he doesn’t want to diddle her any more. She stinks, Aunt Sophie. What do you mean, she stinks? Just that . . . she doesn’t wash herself regularly. Why, what’s the matter with her? Nothing, just religious. And getting fat and greasy at the same time. But she likes to be diddled just the same? Does she? She’s crazier than ever about it. It’s disgusting. It’s like going to bed with a sow. What does your mother think about her? Her? She’s sore as hell at her. She thinks Sophie’s trying to seduce the old man. Well, maybe she is! No, the old man’s got something else. I caught him red-handed one night, in the movies, mushing it up with a young girl. She’s a manicurist from the Astor Hotel. He’s probably trying to squeeze a little dough out of her. That’s the only reason he ever makes a woman. He’s a dirty, mean son of a bitch and I’d like to see him get the chair some day! You’ll get the chair yourself some day if you don’t watch out. Who, me? Not me! I’m too clever. You’re clever enough but you’ve got a loose tongue. I’d be a little more tight-lipped if I were you. You know, I added, to give him an extra jolt, O’Rourke is wise to you; if you ever fall out with O’Rourke it’s all up with you. . . . Well, why doesn’t he say something if he’s so wise? I don’t believe you. I explain to him at some length that O’Rourke is one of those people, and there are damned few in the world, who prefer not to make trouble for another person if they can help it. O’Rourke, I say, has the detective’s instinct only in that he likes to know what’s going on around him; people’s characters are plotted out in his head, and filed there permanently, just as the enemy’s terrain is fixed in the minds of army leaders.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Luke was an ingrown fairy and finally, when I got to know him intimately, a big pain in the ass. I told Maxie that over the telephone; I could tell from the way he answered me that he didn’t like it very much. He said Luke had always been a friend to me. It was true enough, but it wasn’t enough. The truth was that I was really glad Luke had kicked off at the opportune moment: it meant that I could forget about the hundred and fifty dollars which I owed him. In fact, as I hung up the receiver I really felt joyous. It was a tremendous relief not to have to pay that debt. As for Luke’s demise, that didn’t disturb me in the least. On the contrary, it would enable me to pay a visit to his sister, Lottie, whom I always wanted to lay but never could for one reason or another. Now I could see myself going up there in the middle of the day and offering her my condolences. Her husband would be at the office and there would be nothing to interfere. I saw myself putting my arms around her and comforting her; nothing like tackling a woman when she is in sorrow. I could see her opening her eyes wide—she had beautiful, large gray eyes—as I moved her toward the couch. She was the sort of woman who would give you a fuck while pretending to be talking music or some such thing. She didn’t like the naked reality, the bare facts, so to speak. At the same time she’d have enough presence of mind to slip a towel under her so as not to stain the couch. I knew her inside out. I knew that the best time to get her was now, now while she was running up a little fever of emotion over dear dead Luke—whom she didn’t think much of, by the way. Unfortunately it was Sunday and the husband would be sure to be home. I went back to bed and I lay there thinking first about Luke and all that he had done for me and then about her, Lottie. Lottie Somers was her name—it always seemed a beautiful name to me. It matched her perfectly. Luke was stiff as a poker, with a sort of skull and bones face, and impeccable and just beyond words. She was just the opposite—soft, round, spoke with a drawl, caressed her words, moved languidly, used her eyes effectively. One would never take them for brother and sister. I got so worked up thinking about her that I tried to tackle the wife. But that poor bastard, with her Puritanical complex, pretended to be horrified. She liked Luke. She wouldn’t say that he was a swell guy, because that wasn’t like her, but she insisted that he was genuine, loyal, a true friend, etc. I had so many loyal, genuine, true friends that that was all horseshit to me.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She resented other things too. She was annoyed by his wind-up toys. If he left them out on the floor, she’d kick them. She didn’t like the frozen pecan rolls he ate on Wednesday morning. She would complain about how revolting they looked, and then eat half of them. Daisy was living with somebody too, but she ran around the bookstore babbling about her unfaithfulness as if it were the only thing she had to talk about. He liked to watch her pattering from desk to desk in her white sneakers, her jeans rasping softly between her small thighs with each narrow stride. She had to know what Evelyn and Ariel and everyone else around her thought about so-and-so not calling when he said he would. Then she wanted to know what they thought of her calling him and swearing at him. Or something like that. Her supervisor, Tommy, tolerated her because he was the kind of gay man who liked to hear about girls’ romantic problems. He disapproved of her running around behind her boyfriend’s back, but he enjoyed having the chance to moralize each time some new man dragged her through the dirt, as she put it. Daisy would say, “Tommy, I’m trying to make him leave. He won’t go. I can’t do anything about it.” Joey had once heard Tommy admit to another supervisor that Daisy was a terrible worker. “But she’s a very special case,” said Tommy. “I’d never fire her. What else could she do?” Joey felt a pang of incredulous affection. Could she actually be less competent than the other bums in the typing pool? Everyone in it was a bad worker, except Evelyn. Evelyn was the only other girl there. She was an energetic, square-jawed woman who would type eighty words a minute. She wore tight jeans and cowboy shirts and thick black eyeliner that gathered in blobs in the corners of her eyes. Her streaked blond hair hung in her face and made her look masked and brutal. She had a collection of books about various mass murderers on her desk, and she could tell you all their personal histories. The other three typists were fat, morose homosexuals who sat at their desks and ate from bags of cookies and complained. They had worked in the bookstore for years and they all talked desperately of “getting out.” Ariel had been around the longest. He was six feet three inches tall and had round, demure shoulders, big hips and square fleshy breasts that embarrassed him. He had a small head, a long, bumpy nose and large brown eyes that were by turns sweetly candid or forlorn, but otherwise had a disturbing blank quality. He had enjoyed a brief notoriety in punk rock circles for his electric piano music. He talked about his past success in a meek, wistful voice, and showed people old pictures of himself dressed in black, wearing black wing-tipped sunglasses.

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

  When apartheid came, colored people defied easy categorization, so the system used them—quite brilliantly—to sow confusion, hatred, and mistrust. For the purposes of the state, colored people became the almost-whites. They were second-class citizens, denied the rights of white people but given special privileges that black people didn’t have, just to keep them holding out for more. Afrikaners used to call them amperbaas: “the almost-boss.” The almost-master. “You’re almost there. You’re so close. You’re this close to being white. Pity your grandfather couldn’t keep his hands off the chocolate, eh? But it’s not your fault you’re colored, so keep trying. Because if you work hard enough you can erase this taint from your bloodline. Keep on marrying lighter and whiter and don’t touch the chocolate and maybe, maybe, someday, if you’re lucky, you can become white.” Which seems ridiculous, but it would happen. Every year under apartheid, some colored people would get promoted to white. It wasn’t a myth; it was real. People could submit applications to the government. Your hair might become straight enough, your skin might become light enough, your accent might become polished enough—and you’d be reclassified as white. All you had to do was denounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinned friends and family behind. The legal definition of a white person under apartheid was “one who in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person.” It was completely arbitrary, in other words. That’s where the government came up with things like the pencil test. If you were applying to be white, the pencil went into your hair. If it fell out, you were white. If it stayed in, you were colored. You were what the government said you were. Sometimes that came down to a lone clerk eyeballing your face and making a snap decision. Depending on how high your cheekbones were or how broad your nose was, he could tick whatever box made sense to him, thereby deciding where you could live, whom you could marry, what jobs and rights and privileges you were allowed.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She was not aroused, exactly, but it was pleasant; it had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this. She murmured, “The way you touch reminds me of my mother.” “How so?” “Her touch is very seductive. I don’t even like her, but when she starts to touch me, I suddenly become totally vulnerable to her. It’s frightening.” He liked this a lot. “That’s beautiful,” he said. The intercom buzzed, announcing that they had ten more minutes. She “took care of him” quickly, and they stood to dress. She stuck her feet back in her high heels, and cheerfully tore the sheets off the bed. He zipped up his pants, handed her an extra twenty and told her it had been a relaxing hour. She said yes, actually, it had been for her too, and then trotted off to stuff the wadded-up sheets in a reeking wicker basket. She walked him downstairs, feeling ungainly and knees-out in her tight skirt. She was aware of him looming and lurking darkly behind her as she came under the speculative, moody gaze of three potential Romeos. “And here’s Perry,” said Christine brightly. “Hi,” she said, bobbing her head. She turned to Bernard and rolled her eyes as she walked him to the door, knowing that he would enjoy this open display of contempt. “See you soon,” he said. He held her against him for a second, and she experienced a disorienting sense of comfort and safety that made walking back into the invading stares of her prospective boyfriends almost voluptuously exposing. She stood before them, and the canned laughter sounded once more. — That night she went to a group show at a small gallery in Soho that included work by her friend Sandra. As usual, she was one of the few non-artists there. Sandra, nervous and carefully chic in a bright blue pillbox hat and a long black velvet skirt, introduced her as “my friend Stephanie, who writes for The Village Voice .” This impressed people, even when Stephanie said, “I just wrote one thing for the Voice and that was a year and a half ago.” “Yes, but you look like a writer for The Village Voice ,” said a painter. “That sounds like an insult to me.” “It’s not an insult, but it’s not a compliment either.” He barked out a laugh. Stephanie attached herself to another conversation about the embarrassing failure of an art gallery that she had never heard of, which, after a rapid shift of participants, became a discussion about somebody’s review in the Times versus somebody’s review in the Voice .