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 The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  COLOUR BAR The symbol of a Court of justice is pair of scales held evenly by an impartial and blind but sagacious woman. Fate has purposely made her blind, in order that she may not judge a person from his exterior but from his intrinsic worth. But the Law Society of natal set out to persuade the Supreme Court to act in contravention of this principle and to belie its symbol.I applied for admission as an advocate of the Supreme Court. I held a certificate of admission from the Bombay High Court. The English certificate I had to deposit with the Bombay High Court when I was enrolled there. It was necessary to attach two certificates of character to the application for admission, and thinking that these would carry more weight if given by Europeans, I secured them from two well-known European merchants whom I knew through Sheth Abdulla. The application had to be presented through a member of the bar, and as a rule the Attorney General presented such applications without fees. Mr. Escombe, who, as we have seen, was legal adviser to Messrs. Dada Abdulla & Co, was the Attorney General. I called on him, and he willingly consented to present my application. The Law Society now sprang a surprise on me by serving me with a notice opposing my application for admission. One of their objections was that the original English certificate was not attached to my application. But the main objection was that, when the regulations regarding admission of advocates were made, the possibility of a coloured man applying could not have been contemplated. Natal owed its growth to European enterprise, and therefore it was necessary that the European element should predominate in the bar. If coloured people were admitted, they might gradually outnumber the Europeans, and the bulwark of their protection would break down. The Law Society had engaged a distinguished lawyer to support their opposition.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Nevertheless Michaelis had his apartment in Mayfair, and walked down Bond Street the image of a gentleman, for you cannot get even the best tailors to cut their low-down customers, when the customers pay. Clifford was inviting the young man of thirty at an inauspicious moment in that young man's career. Yet Clifford did not hesitate. Michaelis had the ear of a few million people, probably; and, being a hopeless outsider, he would no doubt be grateful to be asked down to Wragby at this juncture, when the rest of the smart world was cutting him. Being grateful, he would no doubt do Clifford "good" over there in America. Kudos! A man gets a lot of kudos, whatever that may be, by being talked about in the right way, especially "over there." Clifford was a coming man; and it was remarkable what a sound publicity instinct he had. In the end Michaelis did him most nobly in a play, and Clifford was a sort of popular hero. Till the reaction, when he found he had been made ridiculous. Connie wondered a little over Clifford's blind, imperious instinct to become known: known, that is, to the vast amorphous world he did not himself know, and of which he was uneasily afraid; known as a writer, as a first-class modern writer. Connie was aware from successful, old, hearty, bluffing Sir Malcolm, that artists did advertise themselves, and exert themselves to put their goods over. But her father used channels ready-made, used by all the other R.A.'s who sold their pictures. Whereas Clifford discovered new channels of publicity, all kinds. He had all kinds of people at Wragby, without exactly lowering himself. But, determined to build himself a monument of reputation quickly, he used any handy rubble in the making. Michaelis arrived duly, in a very neat car, with a chauffeur and a manservant. He was absolutely Bond Street! But at sight of him something in Clifford's country soul recoiled. He wasn't exactly ... not exactly ... in fact, he wasn't at all, well, what his appearance intended to imply. To Clifford this was final and enough. Yet he was very polite to the man; to the amazing success in him. The bitch-goddess, as she is called, of Success, roamed, snarling and protective, round the half-humble, half-defiant Michaelis' heels, and intimidated Clifford completely: for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitch-goddess Success also, if only she would have him.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  of Deseret. And the cornerstone of this defense, says historian Will Bagley, “was to rally Utah’s Indians to the Mormon cause.” The inspiration for Brigham’s military strategy came directly from Mormon scripture: according to The Book of Mormon, the Indians of North America were descended from the Lamanites, and as such they were remnants of the same ancient tribe of Israel to which Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni had belonged. The Lamanites, of course, had rejected the teachings of Jesus, waged war on the Nephites, and eventually killed every last one of them—crimes that had resulted in God cursing the Lamanites with dark skin. Scripture nevertheless taught that the Lamanites/Indians would once again become “a white and delightsome people” when, during the Last Days before the return of Christ, the Latter-day Saints converted them to Mormonism. The Book of Mormon indeed prophesied that the Lamanites, once redeemed, would join forces with the Mormons to vanquish the Gentiles, and thereby usher in the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. This momentous alliance between Mormon and Lamanite, Brigham was certain, was about to become a reality, paving the way for the Second Coming. He had reached this conclusion as soon as the Saints had arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley, when he’d realized that the Mormons’ new homeland was in the midst of the Lamanites. God’s plan seemed to be unfolding just as it had been prophesied in The Book of Mormon. It hadn’t occurred to Brigham, though, that the Lamanites might balk at playing their divinely ordained role. The Indians were sometimes willing to act as mercenaries and attack “Mericats” on behalf of the “Mormonee” * in return for a share of the plunder, but they never considered the Saints to be their allies. The Indians regarded the Big Captain and the rest of the Mormonee as merely the lesser of two hideous evils—and sometimes not even that. Despite the Indians’ lack of enthusiasm for fulfilling their prophetic calling, Brigham used every means at his disposal to enlist them in his campaign against the Gentiles. And when the spoils were sufficiently enticing, the Indians obliged. Numerous Gentile emigrants passing through Utah reported that their horses and cattle were driven off by Indian raiders, only to show up later in Mormon corrals. If the Indians fell short of the Saints’ millennial expectations that they would function as “the battle axe of the Lord,” when the Lamanites could be induced to do the Mormons’ bidding they were, nevertheless, a potent weapon.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be "immunised." "Jolly good thing too!" she said. "Then a woman can live her own life." Strangeways wanted children, and she didn't. "How'd you like to be immunised?" Winterslow asked her, with an ugly smile. "I hope I am; naturally," she said. "Anyhow the future's going to have more sense, and a woman needn't be dragged down by her _functions_." "Perhaps she'll float off into space altogether," said Dukes. "I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities," said Clifford. "All the love-business for example, it might just as well go. I suppose it would if we could breed babies in bottles." "No!" cried Olive. "That might leave all the more room for fun." "I suppose," said Lady Bennerley, contemplatively, "if the love-business went, something else would take its place. Morphia perhaps. A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everybody." "The government releasing ether into the air on Saturdays, for a cheerful weekend!" said Jack. "Sounds all right, but where should we be by Wednesday?" "So long as you can forget your body you are happy," said Lady Bennerley. "And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it." "Help us to get rid of our bodies altogether," said Winterslow. "It's quite time man began to improve on his own nature, especially the physical side of it." "Imagine if we floated like tobacco smoke," said Connie. "It won't happen," said Dukes. "Our old show will come flop; our civilization is going to fall. It's going down the bottomless pit, down the chasm. And believe me, the only bridge across the chasm will be the phallus!" "Oh do! _do_ be impossible, General!" cried Olive. "I believe our civilization is going to collapse," said Aunt Eva. "And what will come after it?" asked Clifford. "I haven't the faintest idea, but something, I suppose," said the elderly lady. "Connie says people like wisps of smoke, and Olive says immunised women, and babies in bottles, and Dukes says the phallus is the bridge to what comes next. I wonder what it will really be?" said Clifford. "Oh, don't bother! let's get on with today," said Olive. "Only hurry up with the breeding bottle, and let us poor women off."

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Utah. Ron arrived back in the Provo area just after Bernard Brady had introduced Dan to Prophet Onias, the Canadian fundamentalist. Dan in turn introduced Onias to Ron and the other Lafferty brothers, and very soon thereafter, Ron, Dan, Mark, Watson, and Tim Lafferty were inducted into Onias’s School of the Prophets. Allen, the youngest sibling, was eager to participate as well, but Brenda put her foot down. “She refused to let Allen join,” LaRae Wright confirms. Although standing up to Allen meant standing up to the entire Lafferty clan, Brenda did not shy away from such confrontations. Not only was she quite willing to argue theology with the Lafferty brothers, she possessed an impressive command of LDS scripture that allowed her to more than hold her own when debating fundamentalist doctrine with Ron and Dan. They came to despise her for defying them and for her influence over Allen, whom they considered “pussy-whipped.” When Ron’s father was dying of diabetes, Ron had called a family meeting to discuss the funeral and other details. Allen brought Brenda to the meeting, which made Ron furious. He called her a bitch and worse, and berated her with such unrestrained spleen that Brenda finally left in tears. But she did not remain intimidated very long. “Brenda was the only one of the Lafferty wives who was educated,” Betty points out. “And her education was what they were afraid of. Because Brenda was confident in her beliefs, and her sense of right and wrong, and she wasn’t about to let anyone take that away from her. She felt it was her duty to defend the other women. She was their only hope.” Reflecting on the load her little sister had shouldered, Betty pauses before continuing: “At that point she was still just twenty-three years old. To be that young, and to be surrounded by all these older people who were supposed to be more mature than she was—yet she was the one who they turned to.” Betty pauses again. “My sister was an amazing woman.” Although Brenda managed to keep Allen from joining Onias’s School of the Prophets, she could not prevent him from associating with Dan and his other brothers. “But she tried to keep a watchful eye on him,” says Betty. “Around this time my little sister, Sharon, and I went to visit Brenda and Allen. While we were there, Brenda made sure that whenever Allen went anywhere, either Sharon or I went with him. Then when we’d get home she’d question us about where he went, and who he talked to. At the time I thought that was kind of weird. Now I see that she was just trying to keep tabs on how much he was talking to his brothers.”

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

  The secret or open hostility to the supernatural is the moving spring of infidel criticism. We may freely admit that certain difficulties about the time and place of composition and other minor details of the Gospels and Epistles are not, and perhaps never can be, satisfactorily solved; but it is, nevertheless, true that they are far better authenticated by internal and external evidence than any books of the great Greek and Roman classics, or of Philo and Josephus, which are accepted by scholars without a doubt. As early as the middle of the second century, that is, fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, when yet many of his personal pupils and friends must have been living, the four Canonical Gospels, no more and no less, were recognized and read in public worship as sacred books, in the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; and such universal acceptance and authority in the face of Jewish and heathen hostility and heretical perversion can only be explained on the ground that they were known and used long before. Some of them, Matthew and John, were quoted and used in the first quarter of the second century by Orthodox and Gnostic writers. Every new discovery, as the last book of the pseudo-"Clementine Homilies," the "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, the "Diatessaron" of Tatian, and every deeper investigation of the "Gospel Memoirs" of Justin Martyr, and the "Gospel" of Marcion in its relation to Luke, have strengthened the cause of historical and conservative criticism and inflicted bleeding wounds on destructive criticism. If quotations from the end of the first and the beginning of the second century are very rare, we must remember that we have only a handful of literary documents from that period, and that the second generation of Christians was not a race of scholars and scribes and critics, but of humble, illiterate confessors and martyrs, who still breathed the bracing air of the living teaching, and personal reminiscences of the apostles and evangelists.

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

  After a siege of five months the entire city was in the hands of the victors. The number of the Jews slain during the siege, including all those who had crowded into the city from the country, is stated by Josephus at the enormous and probably exaggerated figure of one million and one hundred thousand. Eleven thousand perished from starvation shortly after the close of the siege. Ninety-seven thousand were carried captive and sold into slavery, or sent to the mines, or sacrificed in the gladiatorial shows at Caesarea, Berytus, Antioch, and other cities. The strongest and handsomest men were selected for the triumphal procession in Rome, among them the chief defenders and leaders of the revolt, Simon Bar-Giora and John of Gischala.552 Vespasian and Titus celebrated the dearly bought victory together (71). No expense was spared for the pageant. Crowned with laurel, and clothed in purple garments, the two conquerors rode slowly in separate chariots, Domitian on a splendid charger, to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, amid the shouts of the people and the aristocracy. They were preceded by the soldiers in festive attire and seven hundred Jewish captives. The images of the gods, and the sacred furniture of the temple—the table of show-bread, the seven-armed candlestick, the trumpets which announced the year of jubilee, the vessel of incense, and the rolls of the Law—were borne along in the procession and deposited in the newly built Temple of Peace,553 except the Law and the purple veils of the holy place, which Vespasian reserved for his palace. Simon Bar-Giora was thrown down from the Tarpeian Rock; John of Gischala doomed to perpetual imprisonment. Coins were cast with the legend Judaea capta, Judaea devicta. But neither Vespasian nor Titus assumed the victorious epithet Judaeus; they despised a people which had lost its fatherland. Josephus saw the pompous spectacle of the humiliation and wholesale crucifixion of his nation, and described it without a tear.554 The thoughtful Christian, looking at the representation of the temple furniture borne by captive Jews on the triumphal arch of Titus, still standing between the Colosseum and the Forum, is filled with awe at the fulfilment of divine prophecy.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  ‘they are our khansamas, we are Lord Cruzon’s khansamas. If I were to absent myself from the levee, I should have to suffer the consequences. If I were to attend it in my usual dress, it would be an offence. And do you think I am going to get any opportunity there of talking to Lord Curzon? Not a bit of it!’ I was moved to pity for this plainspoken friend. This reminds me of another darbar. At the time when Lord Hardinge laid the foundation stone of the Hindu University, there was a darbar. There were Rajas and Maharajas of course, but Pandit Malaviyaji specially invited me also to attend it, and I did so. I was distressed to see the Maharajas bedecked like women – silk pyjamas and silk achkans, pearl necklaces round their necks, bracelets on their wrists, pearl and diamond tassels on their turbans and besides all this swords with golden hilts hanging from their waist- bands. I discovered that these were insignia not of their royalty, but of their slavery. I had thought that they must be wearing these badges of impotence of their own free will, but I was told that it was obligatory for these Rajas to wear all their costly jewels at such functions. I also gathered that some of them had a positive dislike for wearing these jewels, and that they never wore them except on occasions like the darbar. I do not know how far my information was correct. But whether they wear them on other occasions or not, it is distressing enough to have to attend viceregal darbars in jewels that only some women wear. How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from man! 1. Waiters ↵ 73.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  You know who you are. Some people don’t choose to take responsibility for the pain they inflict on others. Some people think it’s kinder to ignore a need they don’t understand, to starve someone in the name of decency or equality or love. I don’t believe in an omnipotent, omniscient God, because that would make the world a truly horrible place, beyond human redemption. But if you’d feel safer spending a night with one of them than you would with me or some other macho slut, I’ll remember you in my prayers. Macho Sluts Jessie I wandered around the huge loft, dodging elbows and carelessly held cigarettes. Small groups of women sprawled in chairs, doing more laughing than talking, unaware of how raucous they had become. “What was this, a benefit or something?” I heard someone ask behind me. No one answered her. The party had gone on until the floor was littered and the room was almost empty. It was past midnight. Women who had to work in the morning and the tight, fledgling couples and the militant nonsmokers had picked up their jackets and gone home. The rest of us would probably have to be asked to leave one at a time, and helped out with a hand on the elbow. In the meantime, it was still possible to convince yourself you had a chance to pick somebody up, and there were enough dancers to attract a ring of voyeurs, all of whom seemed to have their arms around each other. “Fanatics,” I muttered, and edged past an ample hip clothed in denim. Eventually, I successfully threaded my way to the aluminum garbage cans that held the empties and carefully balanced my contribution on top of a precarious mountain of cans. I stepped back and admired our collective alcoholic capacity. The sight gave me a foolish, vicarious pride. Leaning on a column, I added up my individual score—my rule being that any total is okay and calls for another drink as long as I can get it without counting on my fingers. By that lenient reckoning, I wasn’t really drunk, just loose in the joints. So I drew a bead on the refreshment table and swam toward it, navigating in slow, exaggerated circles around various female obstacles. “Don’t shake anything loose!” some irreverent dyke yelled at me. I laughed at her and stuck out my tongue. She was not attractive. “What’s your hurry?” she persisted. I kept going, pretending I hadn’t heard her. The women selling beer were harassed and impatient. “We’re going to close,” one of them told me over an ice chest full of beer and cold water.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Moreover, whereas the ancients[179] desired the salvation of mankind, those of our day covet women and riches and turn their every thought to terrifying the minds of the foolish with clamours and depicturements[180] and to making believe that sins may be purged with almsdeeds and masses, to the intent that unto themselves (who, of poltroonery, not of devoutness, and that they may not suffer fatigue,[181] have, as a last resort, turned friars) one may bring bread, another send wine and a third give them a dole of money for the souls of their departed friends. Certes, it is true that almsdeeds and prayers purge away sins; but, if those who give alms knew on what manner folks they bestow them, they would or keep them for themselves or cast them before as many hogs. And for that these[182] know that, the fewer the possessors of a great treasure, the more they live at ease, every one of them studieth with clamours and bugbears to detach others from that whereof he would fain abide sole possessor. They decry lust in men, in order that, they who are chidden desisting from women, the latter may be left to the chiders; they condemn usury and unjust gains, to the intent that, it being entrusted to them to make restitution thereof, they may, with that which they declare must bring to perdition him who hath it, make wide their gowns and purchase bishopricks and other great benefices. [Footnote 179: _i.e._ the founders of the monastic orders.] [Footnote 180: Lit. pictures, paintings (_dipinture_), but evidently here used in a tropical sense, Boccaccio's apparent meaning being that the hypocritical friars used to terrify their devotees by picturing to them, in vivid colours, the horrors of the punishment reserved for sinners.] [Footnote 181: _i.e._ may not have to labour for their living.] [Footnote 182: _i.e._ the false friars.]

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  the ‘Arab.’ The Parsi clerks would call themselves Persians. These three classes had some social relations with one another. But by far the largest class was that composed of Tamil, Telugu and North Indian indentured and freed labourers. The indentured labourers were those who went to natal on an agreement to serve for five years, and came to be known there as girmitiyas from girmit, which was the corrupt form of the English word ‘agreement’. The other three classes had none but business relations with this class. Englishmen called them’ coolies’ and as the majority of Indians belonged to the labouring class, all Indians were called ‘coolies,’ or ‘samis’. ‘sami’ is a Tamil suffix occurring after many Tamil names, and it is nothing else than the Samskrit Swami, meaning a master. Whenever, therefore, an Indian resented being addressed as a ‘sami’ and had enough wit in him, he would try to return the compliment in this wise: ‘You may call me sami, but you forget that sami means a master. I am not your master!’ Some Englishmen would wince at this, while others would get angry, swear at the Indian and, if there was a chance, would even belabour him; for sami to him was nothing better than a term of contempt. To interpret it to mean a master amounted to an insult! I was hence known as a ‘coolie barrister.’ The merchants were known as ‘coolie merchants.’ The original meaning of the word ‘coolie’ was thus forgotten, and it became a common appellation for all Indians. The Musalman merchant would resent this and say: ‘I am not a coolie, I am an Arab,’ or ‘I am a merchant,’ and the Englishman, if courteous, would apologize to him. The question of wearing the turban had a great importance in this state of things, Being obliged to take off one’s Indian turban would be pocketing an insult. So I thought I had better bid good-bye to the Indian turban and begin wearing an English hat, which would save me from the insult and the unpleasant controversy.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  No matter how poetic I am, some people will never be able to see anything beautiful about the authoritarian set of a woman’s broad shoulders inside a leather jacket that is well broken in, or the curve of a submissive’s back when she dares to kneel and arch her shoulders for the lash. The prospect of a human body being rendered helpless, put under slowly increasing stress, so that the maximum amount of sensation can be run through skin, nerves, and muscles, will always seem horrifying to some readers, not a fascinating attempt to bring out the body’s stamina and grace. Do these people hate me, do they want sadomasochists to cease to exist, because of a different notion about what constitutes the good and the beautiful? Sadomasochists are immensely useful as a metaphor for evil, for violence, for prejudice, for hate—and that metaphor is a big lie; it is nothing but projection. It is the notion of consent that the rest of the world finds so abhorrent. It is the notion of sexual choice. It is the notion of having an absolute right to set one’s own limits. The majority prefers compulsory sexual arrangements, wherein people can be labeled according to race, age, class, and gender, and plugged in and made use of, performing as suburban housewives or street hookers, young work-a-daddies and pimps, street kids and their clients, incest victims and their abusers, mistresses and their keepers, unwed mothers, closeted choice, lesbians and gay men, everybody a guard or a prisoner, with no safe word, no negotiation. This system generates relatively little selfish, individual, direct, genital pleasure. Instead, it generates abstract pleasure, vicarious pleasure, pleasure-of-social-position, the cud-chewing pleasure of belonging, of being fenced into a pasture with other cud-chewers, the resentful pleasures of martyrdom or the intrusive pleasures of overseeing and bullying others (and the attendant anxious pleasure of anticipating their revenge). Force is not a part of the province of sadism and masochism, not part of the territory of leather and latex, bondage and discipline. It is normal. Coercion is an accepted part of daily life for most people. And most people are unwilling to relinquish the threat of violence, of bodily harm, of stigma, of forced reproduction, of curfew and limited movement, of a vague danger that lies in wait to punish the person who is too sexually different, too adventurous, to enforce their morés.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I ripped them off when I left a residential drug-rehab program. It was stupid of me to have ever gone there. I am not an addict. I can stop getting high any time I want to. And if I was hooked on something, well, I wouldn’t do anything but that, would I? I try to be flexible. If you don’t stay flexible the street will eat you up, one big mouthful of crunch and juice. I also have some acupuncture needles, a hairbrush, some candles, clothespins, a riding crop, and a cat-o’-nine tails I braided myself. I’ve gussied up an old ping-pong paddle—drilled holes in it and painted it black—and I have a nice handful of willow switches cut from the vacant lot on the corner. Most of the scene is me, my imagination, and my intuition. Clients give me equipment sometimes, things they get hot for that they don’t dare keep, and I’m always looking around for new gimmicks, but this is not exactly a dungeon. There are some unrealistic M’s who can’t overlook a few flaws in their surroundings. They may see me once but they don’t come back. I don’t know where I’m supposed to find the elaborate costumes and torture devices that some of these janes think you need to do “real” S/M. Sometimes they even bring me pictures of what I’m supposed to look like—and scripts! I prefer the ones who need it to be a little rough and raunchy, who like it impoverished and spontaneous. There must be people doing this who make a lot more money than I do, maybe the people who advertise. I don’t dare run one of those ads. I don’t see how they can get away with it, why they don’t get busted. Somebody is walking toward me. She sees me coming and crosses the street, swinging a knotted-string bag full of artichokes and something wrapped in white paper. Fish, I’ll bet. She looks over her shoulder to make sure I’m not following her. If I told her what my name was, do you think I could clear up her misconceptions about my gender? The only thing I can do for her is just keep on walking. By the time she gets home, she’ll have forgotten about going out of her way to avoid me. I don’t eat fish very often. But the janes keep telling me I’m pricing myself out of business. A spanking is more expensive than a blow-job, but anything you negotiate off the curb isn’t as pricey as those snotty houses. If you work in a house, you have to pay for a slot there, and you wind up hooked on something so you stay in hock with the madam. She’s the one who says who you see and what you do with them and she brings you a clean towel. Thank you, I’ll just scuff the lube into the floor, and wipe my hands on your ass.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  death.” He then asked Ron whether he preferred to be executed “by firing squad or by a lethal intravenous injection.” “I don’t prefer either one,” Ron answered. “I prefer to live. That’s what I prefer.” “If you don’t indicate to me what you prefer,” Judge Hansen explained, “I’m going to impose lethal injection as the method of execution.” “I’ve already had the lethal injection of Mormonism,” Ron barked back. “And I kind of wanted to try something different this time. . . . I’ll take the firing squad. How’s that? Is that pretty clear?” “That’s clear,” said the judge, and then sentenced Ron to be shot to death for his crimes—underscoring the fact that Mormon Fundamentalists are by no means the only modern Americans who believe in blood atonement. Attorney Mike Esplin filed a series of appeals on Ron’s behalf, eventually taking the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In November 2001, the justices of the nation’s highest judicial body declined to hear Ron’s appeal, virtually assuring that he will be killed by the state of Utah. Ron Yengich, a shrewd and aggressive attorney, replaced Esplin as defense counsel in September 2002. The execution will wait until Yengich exhausts every possibility for reversal, but the sentence is expected to be carried out as early as 2004. Almost nobody, including Dan Lafferty, believes that Ron has any chance of escaping death at the hands of a firing squad. “I don’t think there is any realistic possibility that my brother will ever beat the death penalty,” Dan confirmed in November 2002. He considers Ron’s execution to be a key piece in God’s blueprint for humankind. In fact, Dan thinks it may well be an indicator that Armageddon is right around the corner— or, as he puts it, “a sign that the Big Party is getting close.” TWENTY-FOUR THE GREAT AND DREADFUL DAY CREIGHTON HORTON, UTAH ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: And, essentially, you say that Ron got a revelation indicating that there were people that the Lord wanted to be killed, and you helped him kill those people? DAN LAFFERTY: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that statement, saying yes. CREIGHTON HORTON: You also indicated to our investigators that you weren’t ashamed to be characterized as a religious fanatic? DAN LAFFERTY: No, I have no problem with that. *

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Why has it taken so long for any sex books (whether their jackets are leather or flannel) by and for lesbians to be written? How does this new genre of porn function? Most people (even the nicest sort of liberal who opposes censorship) assume that porn isn’t worth defending because it’s thrown-together, hurriedly produced garbage intended to make a quick buck. And people do spend a lot of money on mass-market pornography, despite the fact that most of it is flat and stale. The average porn novel is typed, not written. You have to work at breakneck speed to make a living when you get paid maybe $200 a book. It’s no wonder that the work attracts hacks. Even the porn writers who aren’t hacks feel contempt for their audience as well as themselves, and it permeates their material. Illegal businesses are even more tightly controlled than “legitimate” enterprises, and this overpriced, offensive swill is the only graphic sex that’s readily available. This won’t change unless obscenity is decriminalized, and competition makes it necessary for porn producers to cut into their profits with a little quality control. (In other words, don’t hold your breath.) The sad fact that the porn industry makes an obscene profit with its degraded product is just an index of how badly people want to learn about sex and get turned on. It doesn’t tell you anything about what people would like to buy if there was really any choice. But these marketplace conditions do not apply to by-and-for-lesbians porn. Because lesbians hardly constitute a mass market on the scale the Mafia (or the vice squad) is accustomed to, the term “lesbian pornography” used to refer to material that didn’t feature lesbians and wasn’t intended for a lesbian audience. Now, a few entrepreneurs, artists, filmmakers, writers, and poets are pouring their creative energy into making homegrown lesbian porn. These businesses are under-capitalized and labor-intensive. Most of them don’t show a profit. Their product is a welcome relief from the straight-produced stuff which usually misses the point entirely. It is immensely popular among lesbians. This new kind of pornography has been confiscated by agents of the state (especially in Canada) and banned from significant numbers of feminist bookstores. Many women’s publications routinely give sexually explicit work—even non-fiction lesbian sex manuals—savage reviews. Is the crime of obscenity synonymous with bad writing? Or with being a man out to make a quick buck? Apparently not.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 155: Boccaccio calls her _Teudelinga_; but I know of no authority for this form of the name of the famous Longobardian queen.] [Footnote 156: Referring apparently to the adventure related in the present story.] [Footnote 157: Lit. with high (_i.e._ worthy) cause (_con alta cagione_).] THE THIRD STORY [Day the Third] UNDER COLOUR OF CONFESSION AND OF EXCEEDING NICENESS OF CONSCIENCE, A LADY, BEING ENAMOURED OF A YOUNG MAN, BRINGETH A GRAVE FRIAR, WITHOUT HIS MISDOUBTING HIM THEREOF, TO AFFORD A MEANS OF GIVING ENTIRE EFFECT TO HER PLEASURE Pampinea being now silent and the daring and subtlety of the horsekeeper having been extolled by several of the company, as also the king's good sense, the queen, turning to Filomena, charged her follow on; whereupon she blithely began to speak thus, "I purpose to recount to you a cheat which was in very deed put by a fair lady upon a grave friar and which should be so much the more pleasing to every layman as these [--friars, to wit--], albeit for the most part very dull fools and men of strange manners and usances, hold themselves to be in everything both better worth and wiser than others, whereas they are of far less account than the rest of mankind, being men who, lacking, of the meanness of their spirit, the ability to provide themselves, take refuge, like swine, whereas they may have what to eat. And this story, charming ladies, I shall tell you, not only for the ensuing of the order imposed, but to give you to know withal that even the clergy, to whom we women, beyond measure credulous as we are, yield overmuch faith, can be and are whiles adroitly befooled, and that not by men only, but even by certain of our own sex.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  His wife gave her a wine-sop to eat and after, undressing her, put her to bed; and they contrived that night to have her and her maid carried to Florence. There, the lady, who had shifts and devices great plenty, framed a story of her fashion, altogether out of conformity with that which had passed, and gave her brothers and sisters and every one else to believe that this had befallen herself and her maid by dint of diabolical bewitchments. Physicians were quickly at hand, who, not without putting her to very great anguish and vexation, recovered the lady of a sore fever, after she had once and again left her skin sticking to the sheets, and on like wise healed the maid of her broken thigh. Wherefore, forgetting her lover, from that time forth she discreetly forbore both from making mock of others and from loving, whilst the scholar, hearing that the maid had broken her thigh, held himself fully avenged and passed on, content, without saying otherwhat thereof. Thus, then, did it befall the foolish young lady of her pranks, for that she thought to fool it with a scholar as she would have done with another, unknowing that scholars,--I will not say all, but the most part of them,--know where the devil keepeth his tail. Wherefore, ladies, beware of making mock of folk, and especially of scholars." THE EIGHTH STORY [Day the Eighth] TWO MEN CONSORTING TOGETHER, ONE LIETH WITH THE WIFE OF HIS COMRADE, WHO, BECOMING AWARE THEREOF, DOTH WITH HER ON SUCH WISE THAT THE OTHER IS SHUT UP IN A CHEST, UPON WHICH HE LIETH WITH HIS WIFE, HE BEING INSIDE THE WHILE Elena's troubles had been irksome and grievous to the ladies to hear; natheless, for that they deemed them in part justly befallen her, they passed them over with more moderate compassion, albeit they held the scholar to have been terribly stern and obdurate, nay, cruel. But, Pampinea being now come to the end of her story, the queen charged Fiammetta follow on, who, nothing loath to obey, said, "Charming ladies, for that meseemeth the severity of the offended scholar hath somedele distressed you, I deem it well to solace your ruffled spirits with somewhat more diverting; wherefore I purpose to tell you a little story of a young man who received an injury in a milder spirit and avenged it after a more moderate fashion, by which you may understand that, whenas a man goeth about to avenge an injury suffered, it should suffice him to give as good as he hath gotten, without seeking to do hurt overpassing the behoof of the feud.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She did not want to become entangled in them. This creed of Kerry’s took a form that dismayed many of the heavier masochists in the scene: she could rarely be persuaded to treat women like sides of beef. Only men were usually that stupid or lucky. In her lofty unconcern with women’s untidy minds and manipulative ways, Kerry had somehow omitted to learn who this impudent blonde (whom she had certainly seen many times before) was. Ignorance is bliss, but we are rarely allowed to remain in that happy state. There was another club, Roissy, just three blocks away, closer to the docks. That was where Kerry headed now, whips swinging at her hip, the knife scabbard bumping the small of her back, her boot heels making a satisfying tempo on the pavement, a rhythm that confirmed that she was in motion, making progress, getting away from those thin scarlet streams, the smell of life that made her mouth water and her jaws ache. She knew immediately that she was being followed. She also had no trouble detecting that the person behind her was wearing spike-heeled shoes, and so she knew who was following her. The why of it bothered her, and the notion that anybody in spikes could keep up with (let alone catch or combat) someone in boots amused her. She cut through an alley, thinking, ‘Let’s see if the bitch will come into the darkness and teeter around in the trash and rubble for the sake of a closer look at me.’ Besides, it was a shortcut to Roissy. Surprise! There at the mouth of the alley was her pursuer, somehow ahead of her and once again blocking her way. She was wearing a satin cloak with a red lining, and a sudden gust of wind (uncharacteristic for the season) lifted it and spread it out until it fluttered about her like wings. Her breasts gleamed like alabaster, even in the absence of street lights and moonlight. Kerry had reached for her boot and belt and unhitched her blades the second she realized she was being followed, despite her contempt for the mettle of her opponent. She did not consciously plan to use them on the other woman. She was sure she could take her with her bare hands, if a physical contest was necessary. But that seemed unlikely. No, the blades were for others, stronger and more dangerous, who might come upon them and interrupt their tête-à-tête. Silence poured into the space between them, filled it up, then spilled over into speech. “Why are you running away?” purred the woman in the black dress, red flames playing all around her. She was very sure of herself. Startled, Kerry blurted, “What the hell are you talking about?” then bit her lip and repented not keeping silent.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Iduna smiled. Her cane, with its red-and-black leather handle, was neatly racked above Teddy’s bottles, along with a handful of implements that belonged to other mistresses he had honored. Teddy would have been glad to provide a similar service for Kerry, but she never let any of her whips out of her hands. Then Iduna realized that the show Gil had promised Howard was about to happen. Kerry had ordered a bottle of beer and stood with her back to the rest of the room, one foot up on the bar rail. She drank with intense concentration, like a thirsty animal. It looked as if she were oblivious to everything except the beer gurgling down her throat. But when a largish, clumsy-looking man lumbered toward her, she turned around and snarled at him before he could touch her. The noise was uncanny. There were no words, but you would have to be crazy not to understand that it meant, “Keep away—or pay the price.” No wonder he jumped away from her. But Domina snickered at him, and Iduna thought, oh dear, now he’ll have to get angry and prove something. “The name’s Bill,” he said heartily, shoving his hand at Kerry. She looked at it as if it were leprous. There was a long silence. She regarded him from behind her mirrored shades. No telling what she thought. Iduna looked lovingly at that full mouth and the two tiny puckers in it over the prominent canine teeth. She was sure no one else could have spotted these minute irregularities, or known why there were two places where Kerry’s lips could not quite meet. Finally, the leatherwoman spoke. “Can I help you?” she said softly, speaking each word slowly and precisely. It was not a question. Ooh, Iduna squealed to herself, massacre alert, massacre alert! “Wall, Ah don’t know what a little bitty thang like yew could do fer me,” he drawled. An out-of-towner, Iduna thought. But that was no excuse. She was an out-of-towner herself, and she knew better. Kerry smiled. On her face, this expression signified the opposite of its usual meaning. The fool kept on talking. “Why Ah don’t reckon yew could even make a dent in my hide,” he chuckled. “Probably be a waste of time. Ah kin take quite a lot, yew know. Wouldn’t want ta embarrass a lil gal like yew—yew are a gal, ain’tcha?” Then the fatuous ass pronounced his own sentence: “Ah kin take anythin’ yew kin dish out, sister.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  His name was Giovanni, and he wanted to know at what time he should come, and then for whom should he say he was waiting. Hilda had no card. Connie gave him one of hers. He glanced at it swiftly, with his hot, southern blue eyes, then glanced again. "Ah!" he said, lighting up, "Milady! Milady, isn't it?" "Milady Costanza!" said Connie. He nodded, repeating: "Milady Costanza!" and putting the card carefully away in his blouse. The Villa Esmeralda was quite a long way out, on the edge of the lagoon looking towards Chioggia. It was not a very old house, and pleasant, with the terraces looking seawards, and below, quite a big garden with dark trees, walled in from the lagoon. Their host was a heavy, rather coarse Scotchman who had made a good fortune in Italy before the war, and had been knighted for his ultrapatriotism during the war. His wife was a thin, pale, sharp kind of person with no fortune of her own, and the misfortune of having to regulate her husband's rather sordid amorous exploits. He was terribly tiresome with the servants. But having had a slight stroke during the winter he was now more manageable. The house was pretty dull. Besides Sir Malcolm and his two daughters, there were seven more people, a Scotch couple, again with two daughters; a young Italian Contessa, a widow; a young Georgian prince, and a youngish English clergyman who had had pneumonia and was being chaplain to Sir Alexander for his health's sake. The prince was penniless, good-looking, would make an excellent chauffeur, with the necessary impudence, and basta! The contessa was a quiet little puss with a game on somewhere. The clergyman was a raw simple fellow from a Bucks vicarage: luckily he had left his wife and two children at home. And the Guthries, the family of four, were good solid Edinburgh middle class, enjoying everything in a solid fashion, and daring everything while risking nothing. Connie and Hilda ruled out the prince at once. The Guthries were more or less their own sort, substantial, but boring: and the girls wanted husbands. The chaplain was not a bad fellow, but too deferential. Sir Alexander, after his slight stroke, had a terrible heaviness in his joviality, but he was still thrilled at the presence of so many handsome young women. Lady Cooper was a quiet, catty person who had a thin time of it, poor thing, and who watched every other woman with a cold watchfulness that had become her second nature, and who said cold, nasty little things which showed what an utterly low opinion she had of all human nature. She was also quite venomously overbearing with the servants, Connie found: but in a quiet way. And she skilfully behaved so that Sir Alexander should think _he_ was lord and monarch of the whole caboosh, with his stout, would-be-genial paunch, and his utterly boring jokes, his humourosity, as Hilda called it.