Contentment

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.

Page 124 of 189 · 20 per page

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “God, I hate for it to be over,” Chris said. “I’ve never been part of anything like this. I don’t think it can be repeated, but it will certainly inspire, my, uh, future exploits.” “Really,” Joy said reverently. “Tyre, I hope you’ll keep me on tap for any carnivals you want to throw in the future.” “Of course. All of you are on the A-list. No question.” Alex slowly ground out her cigarette. “Is everybody coming to your place with us?” There was a chorus of “I am.” Kay and EZ looked at each other. “I don’t know about you,” Alex said, “but I’m in no shape to drive the bike home. I got mine locked up good, and security will keep an eye on it for me. Think that’ll be okay, Tyre?” “Sure, there’s a night watch. If it’s chained it’ll be fine.” She was relieved at Alex’s tact. She didn’t want Kay and EZ to pull away. Things were going to be weird enough for the two of them without a self-imposed exile back to the boys’-club world of Folsom Street. “Okay,” said Michael, “I’m parked right outside. Only one condition—Roxanne has to go out the same way she came in.” “In the mummy bag?” Roxanne said. “No, on our shoulders.” Tyre and Alex put their arms around each other and watched everyone else get a handful of Roxanne and hoist her off the floor. “Good thing she’s just a little girl,” Tyre said. Alex snorted. The rest of the crew was singing, “She’s Got a Jolly Good Asshole” to the tune of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” “You know,” Tyre said slowly, as she and Alex followed everybody else out, “we put your lady through some very heavy shit.” She turned out the lights and closed the door. “You could say that, all right.” “Where can you go from here? Even this has got to run out of steam eventually.” Alex thought about it for a long time. “Sell her?” she said. It was only half a joke. Tyre nodded, absorbed it. Would it be a permanent transfer of rights, or would there be a time limit? Would all privileges be sold, or simply a portion of them? Who would be able to afford such an exotic delight? It was a bewildering and exhilarating notion. “The Calyx of Isis wants the movie rights,” she said, and slid her tired, rich, albino ass through the limousine’s back door. All the way home, she stared at Roxanne, sleeping on Alex’s shoulder, and tried to calculate the fair-market value of that much love. The Hustler

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

  SIMPLE LIFE I had started on a life of ease and comfort, but the experiment was short-lived. Although I had furnished the house with care, yet it failed to have any hold on me. So no sooner had I launched forth on that life, than I began to cut down expenses. The washerman’s bill was heavy, and as he was besides by no means noted for his punctuality, even two or three dozen shirts and collars proved insufficient for me. Collars had to be changed daily and shirts, if not daily, at least every alternate day. This meant a double expense, which appeared to me unnecessary. So I equipped myself with a washing outfit to save it. I bought a book on washing, studied the art and taught it also to my wife. This no doubt added to my work, but its novelty made it a pleasure. I shall never forget the first collar that I washed myself. I had used more starch than necessary, the iron had not been made hot enough, and for fear of burning the collar I had not pressed it sufficiently. The result was that, though the collar was fairly stiff, the superfluous starch continually dropped off it. I went to court with the collar on, thus inviting the ridicule of brother barristers, but even in those days I could be impervious to ridicule. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘this is my first experiment at washing my own collars and hence the loose starch. But it does not trouble me, and then there is the advantage of providing you with so much fun.’ ‘But surely there is no lack of laundries here?’ asked a friend. ‘The laundry bill is very heavy,’ said I. ‘The charge for washing a collar is almost as much as its price, and even then there is the eternal dependence on the washerman. I prefer by far to wash my things myself.’

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The management can’t decide who should pay for hauling the piles of junk away. But it was spontaneous, nothing you could count on. Oh, once a bunch of queens over on 4E got together and moved a guy out onto the street. He was stealing stuff, primarily other people’s dope. But another time on the floor just under that, somebody brought the wrong person home and got stabbed to death. Nobody went to check on him until the screaming stopped. When they doubled the rents, everybody paid. There’s no other place to go, really. Things are the same all over. I can cook in my room on a gas jet (uncapped illegally). It also provides all the heat since the furnace went ka-blooie. A tap was put into the water main through a hole in the wall by a former tenant who must have been a plumber. I found a Styrofoam box once that must be fifty years old, and I carved a lid for it out of plywood. When I can buy ice, that’s my refrigerator. I have hooks on one wall for my wok (one of my few treasures), a sharp knife, a spatula, a large spoon, and a cup. I keep my bowls and chopsticks on top of the cooler. I’m a pretty good scavenger, but I don’t bring stuff home if I don’t need it. There’s no room. The clinic is located in a middle-class residential neighborhood, the better to serve those suffering from patriarchal effluvia. Looks like tomorrow is garbage-collection day. Better keep an eye out for a tea kettle. I really want one. I think that whistle in the morning would cheer me up more than a hot cup of cha. And paper for the potty is always welcome. I try not to bring books home for that because I don’t have enough room to keep them, and I hate to tear them up. I had so many books in my room at school that I couldn’t hardly move. I don’t want to live like that again. Anyway, I know I never will, which is the same thing, isn’t it? In the projects, there’s a large bathroom with showers on every floor. That, along with the communal kitchen, is why they call these “luxury individual living quarters” when they put an add in the paper. My floor is pretty good, there’s me, a flock of he-shes, a couple of realmen, a painter, a band that practices infrequently (but for hours at a time), and two would-be junkies who spend most of their time looking for this exotic and scarce drug they’re supposedly hooked on or getting sick on substitutes. So when I go to the bathroom, the shower head usually hasn’t been ripped off and the drain usually hasn’t been clogged up with shit, and I don’t find broken glass on the floor or somebody else’s works in the sink too often.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Daniele was beautiful, tall and well-shapen, with a light round head of little, close-pale-blond curls, and a good-looking man's face, a little like a lion, and long-distance blue eyes. He was not effusive, loquacious, and bibulous like Giovanni. He was silent and he rowed with a strength and ease as if he were alone in the water. The ladies were ladies, remote from him. He did not even look at them. He looked ahead. He was a real man, a little angry when Giovanni drank too much wine and rowed awkwardly, with effusive shoves of the great oar. He was a man as Mellors was a man, unprostituted. Connie pitied the wife of the easily-overflowing Giovanni. But Daniele's wife would be one of those sweet Venetian women of the people whom one still sees, modest and flower-like in the back of that labyrinth of a town. Ah, how sad that man first prostitutes woman, then woman prostitutes man. Giovanni was pining to prostitute himself, dribbling like a dog, wanting to give himself to a woman. And for money! Connie looked at Venice far off, low and rose-coloured upon the water. Built of money, blossomed of money, and dead with money. The money-deadness! Money, money, money, prostitution and deadness. Yet Daniele was still a man capable of a man's free allegiance. He did not wear the gondolier's blouse: only the knitted blue jersey. He was a little wild, uncouth and proud. So he was hireling to the rather doggy Giovanni, who was hireling again of two women. So it is! When Jesus refused the devil's money, he left the devil like a Jewish banker, master of the whole situation. Connie would come home from the blazing light of the lagoon in a kind of stupor, to find letters from home. Clifford wrote regularly. He wrote very good letters: they might all have been printed in a book. And for this reason Connie found them not very interesting. She lived in the stupor of the light of the lagoon, the lapping saltiness of the water, the space, the emptiness, the nothingness: but health, health, complete stupor of health. It was gratifying, and she was lulled away in it, not caring for anything. Besides, she was pregnant. She knew now. So the stupor of sunlight and lagoon salt and sea-bathing and lying on shingle and finding shells and drifting away, away in a gondola was completed by the pregnancy inside her, another fulness of health, satisfying and stupefying. She had been at Venice a fortnight, and she was to stay another ten days or a fortnight. The sunshine blazed over any count of time, and the fulness of physical health made forgetfulness complete. She was in a sort of stupor of well-being. From which a letter of Clifford roused her.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  The eyes of the two women met: Mrs. Bolton's grey and bright and searching; Connie's blue and veiled and strangely beautiful. Mrs. Bolton was almost sure she had a lover, yet how could it be, and who could it be? Where was there a man? "Oh, it's so good for you, if you go out and see a bit of company sometimes," said Mrs. Bolton. "I was saying to Sir Clifford, it would do her ladyship a world of good if she'd go out among people more." "Yes, I'm glad I went, and such a quaint dear cheeky baby, Clifford," said Connie. "It's got hair just like spider webs, and bright orange, and the oddest, cheekiest, pale-blue china eyes. Of course it's a girl, or it wouldn't be so bold, bolder than any little Sir Francis Drake." "You're right, my Lady--a regular little Flint. They were always a forward sandy-headed family," said Mrs. Bolton. "Wouldn't you like to see it, Clifford? I've asked them to tea for you to see it." "Who?" he asked, looking at Connie in great uneasiness. "Mrs. Flint and the baby, next Monday." "You can have them to tea up in your room," he said. "Why, don't you want to see the baby?" she cried. "Oh, I'll see it, but I don't want to sit through a teatime with them." "Oh," said Connie, looking at him with wide veiled eyes. She did not really see him, he was somebody else. "You can have a nice cosy tea up in your room, my Lady, and Mrs. Flint will be more comfortable than if Sir Clifford was there," said Mrs. Bolton. She was sure Connie had a lover, and something in her soul exulted. But who was he? Who was he? Perhaps Mrs. Flint would provide a clue. Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh touching her, his very stickiness upon her, was dear to her, and in a sense holy. Clifford was very uneasy. He would not let her go after dinner, and she had wanted so much to be alone. She looked at him, but was curiously submissive. "Shall we play a game, or shall I read to you, or what shall it be?" he asked uneasily. "You read to me," said Connie. "What shall I read--verse or prose? Or drama?" "Read Racine," she said. It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self-conscious; he really preferred the loud-speaker. But Connie was sewing, sewing a little silk frock of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs. Flint's baby. Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the soft quiescent rapture of herself, sewing, while the noise of the reading went on. Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the after-humming of deep bells.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Tyre walked through the other rooms on the main floor—the disco (which also contained a stage for the strippers and the other sex shows), the refreshment bar, the game room (which held two pool tables, a dozen pinball machines, and twice as many video games)—and back to the elevator that would take her up to her office on the second floor. She didn’t bother to check each of the cubicles (plywood-enclosed beds that could be rented by the hour as private rooms) and the maze; that would have to wait until just before the Calyx opened. She also didn’t bother to go downstairs and tour the dungeons. They hadn’t gotten a lot of use this weekend, and Simba, the Dungeonmaster, was an excellent supervisor, or so Georgia seemed to think. Tyre smirked at herself in the mirrored panels of the elevator walls. Her office was off to one side of the second floor. The rest of it was taken up with the Jacuzzi and sauna, the showers, a locker room, the masseuses’ studio, and a big room lined with mattresses, with a mirrored ceiling, that a patron entered only if she was ready to take on all comers. The Calyx had another floor as well, but very few of the customers knew about it. This floor was kept available for staging fantasies a little more complex than the scenarios that could be enacted with someone you stumbled on under the black lights that dotted the maze. These fantasies also cost more than mere admission to the club. Tyre handled all these requests personally. It was one of her perks for shouldering the exhausting burden of managing the Calyx. “Bread and circuses is a lonely business,” she often told Georgia. Owning the Calyx made it easy for her to get access to beautiful women. But women who are starstruck, envious, or determined not to be impressed make poor friends and impossible lovers. Many of her employees had the same problem, and slept mostly with each other. The network of women who worked for the Calyx was alarmingly incestuous. It was one of the reasons she had subtly encouraged Michael to take Sara. Having another groupie to pass around would ease the sexual pressure her help put on one another. It would also keep Sara from entertaining any pretentious thoughts about her future. The indirect lighting and soft carpets of her office were soothing. So was the music—Phillip Glass. Tyre took off her sunglasses and slid them into her coat pocket. As she hung up her mink, the Siamese cat, Nineveh, brought her kittens, Sodom and Gomorrah, over for review. Tyre crouched and held out a finger. Each of the kittens gravely batted at and chewed on it. Then Nineveh took them away to be held down on one the couches in the reception area and scrubbed.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Better than with its eyes!" he said. "Will you drink?" "Will you?" She took an enamel mug from a twig on a tree, and stooped to fill it for him. He drank in sips. Then she stooped again, and drank a little herself. "So icy!" she said gasping. "Good, isn't it! Did you wish?" "Did you?" "Yes, I wished. But I won't tell." She was aware of the rapping of a woodpecker, then of the wind, soft and eerie through the larches. She looked up. White clouds were crossing the blue. "Clouds!" she said. "White lambs only," he replied. A shadow crossed the little clearing. The mole had swum out onto the soft yellow earth. "Unpleasant little beast, we ought to kill him," said Clifford. "Look! he's like a parson in a pulpit," said she. She gathered some sprigs of woodruff and brought them to him. "New-mown hay!" he said. "Doesn't it smell like the romantic ladies of the last century, who had their heads screwed on the right way after all!" She was looking at the white clouds. "I wonder if it will rain," she said. "Rain! Why! Do you want it to?" They started on the return journey, Clifford jolting cautiously downhill. They came to the dark bottom of the hollow, turned to the right, and after a hundred yards swerved up the foot of the long slope, where bluebells stood in the light. "Now old girl!" said Clifford, putting the chair to it. It was a steep and jolty climb. The chair plugged slowly, in a struggling unwilling fashion. Still, she nosed her way up unevenly, till she came to where the hyacinths were all around her, then she balked, struggled, jerked a little way out of the flowers, then stopped. "We'd better sound the horn and see if the keeper will come," said Connie. "He could push her a bit. For that matter, I will push. It helps." "We'll let her breathe," said Clifford. "Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?" Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises. "Let me push!" said Connie, coming up behind. "No! Don't push!" he said angrily. "What's the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!" There was another pause, then another start; but more ineffectual than before. "You _must_ let me push," she said. "Or sound the horn for the keeper." "Wait!" She waited; and he had another try, doing more harm than good. "Sound the horn then, if you won't let me push," she said. "Hell! Be quiet a moment!" She was quiet a moment: he made shattering efforts with the little motor. "You'll only break the thing down altogether, Clifford," she remonstrated; "besides wasting your nervous energy."

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Connie went to the wood directly after lunch. It was really a lovely day, the first dandelions making suns, the first daisies so white. The hazel thicket was a lacework of half-open leaves, and the last dusty perpendicular of the catkins. Yellow celandines now were in crowds, flat open, pressed back in urgency, and the yellow glitter of themselves. It was the yellow, the powerful yellow of early summer. And primroses were broad, and full of pale abandon, thick-clustered primroses no longer shy. The lush, dark green of hyacinths was a sea, with buds rising like pale corn, while in the riding the forget-me-nots were fluffing up, and columbines were unfolding their ink-purple riches, and there were bits of bluebird's eggshell under a bush. Everywhere the bud-knots and the leap of life! The keeper was not at the hut. Everything was serene, brown chickens running lustily. Connie walked on towards the cottage, because she wanted to find him. The cottage stood in the sun, off the wood's edge. In the little garden the double daffodils rose in tufts, near the wide-open door, and red double daisies made a border to the path. There was the bark of a dog, and Flossie came running. The wide-open door! so he was at home. And the sunlight falling on the red-brick floor! As she went up the path, she saw him through the window, sitting at the table in his shirtsleeves, eating. The dog wuffed softly, slowly wagging her tail. He rose, and came to the door, wiping his mouth with a red handkerchief, still chewing. "May I come in?" she said. "Come in!" The sun shone into the bare room, which still smelled of a mutton chop, done in a dutch oven before the fire, because the dutch oven still stood on the fender, with the black potato-saucepan on a piece of paper beside it on the white hearth. The fire was red, rather low, the bar dropped, the kettle singing. On the table was his plate, with potatoes and the remains of the chop; also bread in a basket, salt, and a blue mug with beer. The tablecloth was white oil-cloth. He stood in the shade. "You are very late," she said. "Do go on eating!" She sat down on a wooden chair, in the sunlight by the door. "I had to go to Uthwaite," he said, sitting down at table but not eating. "Do eat," she said. But he did not touch the food. "Shall y'ave something?" he asked her. "Shall y'ave a cup of tea? t' kettle's on t' boil." He half rose again from his chair. "If you'll let me make it myself," she said rising. He seemed sad, and she felt she was bothering him. "Well, teapot's in there,"--he pointed to a little, drab corner cupboard; "an' cups. An' tea's on t' mantel ower yer 'ead."

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

  Thus whilst on the one hand I began to feel somewhat at ease about my profession, on the other hand Gokhale, whose eyes were always on me, had been busy making his own plans on my behalf. He peeped in at my chambers twice or thrice every week, often in company with friends whom he wanted me to know, and he kept me acquainted with his mode of work. But it may be said that God has never allowed any of my own plans to stand. He has disposed them in His own way. Just when I seemed to be settling down as I had intended I received an unexpected cable from South Africa: ‘Chamberlain expected here. Please return immediately.’ I remembered my promise and cabled to say that I should be ready to start the moment they put me in funds. They promptly responded, I gave up the chambers and started for South Africa. I had an idea that the work there would keep me engaged for at least a year, so I kept the bungalow and left my wife and children there. I believed then that enterprising youths who could not find an opening in the country should emigrate to other lands. I therefore took with me four or five such youths, one of whom was Maganlal Gandhi. The Gandhis were and are a big family. I wanted to find out all those who wished to leave the trodden path and venture abroad. My father used to accommodate a number of them in some state service. I wanted them to be free from this spell. I neither could nor would secure other service for them; I wanted them to be self-reliant. But as my ideals advanced, I tried to persuade these youths also to conform their ideals to mine, and I had the greatest success in guiding Maganlal Gandhi. But about this later. The separation from wife and children, the breaking up of a settled establishment, and the going from the certain to the uncertain- all this was for a moment painful, but I had inured myself to an uncertain life. I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain transient. But there is a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainty, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one’s waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life. I reached Durban not a day too soon. There was work waiting for me. The date for the deputation to wait on Mr. Chamberlain had been fixed. I had to draft the memorial to be submitted to him and accompany the deputation. PART V PART IV 80.

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

  PREPARATION FOR THE CASE The year’s stay in Pretoria was a most valuable experience in my life. Here it was that I had opportunities of learning public work and acquired some measure of my capacity for it. Here it was that the religious spirit within me became a living force, and here too I acquired a true knowledge of legal practice. Here I learnt the things that a junior barrister learns in a senior barrister’s chamber, and here I also gained confidence that I should not after all fail as a lawyer. It was likewise here that I learnt the secret of success as a lawyer.Dada Abdulla’s was no small case. The suit was for £ 40,000. Arising out of business transactions, it was full of intricacies of accounts. Part of the claim was based on promissory notes, and part on the specific performance of promise to delivery promissory notes. The defence was that the promissory notes were fraudulently taken and lacked sufficient consideration. There were numerous points of fact and law in this intricate case. Both parties had engaged the best arrorneys and counsel. I thus had a fine opportunity of studying their work. The preparation of the plaintiff’s case for the attorney and the sifting of facts in support of his case had been entrusted to me. It was an education to see how much the attorney accepted, and how much he rejected from my preparation, as also to see how much use the counsel made of the brief prepared by the attorney. I saw that this preparation for the case would give me a fair measure of my powers of comprehension and my capacity for marshalling evidence. I took the keenest interest in the case. Indeed I threw myself into it. I read all the papers pertaining to the transactions. My client was a man of great ability and reposed absolute confidence in me, and this rendered my work easy. I made a

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

  But I had always given the first place to the culture of the heart or the building of character, and as I felt confident that moral training could be given to all alike, no matter how different their ages and their upbringing, I decided to live amongst them all the twenty-four hours of the day as their father. I regarded character building as the proper foundation for their education and, if the foundation was firmly laid, I was sure that the children could learn all the other things themselves or with the assistance of friends. But as I fully appreciated the necessity of a literary training in addition, I started some classes with the help of Mr. Kallenbach and Sjt. Pragji Desai. Nor did I underrate the building up of the body. This they got in the course of their daily routine. For there were no servants on the Farm, and all the work, from cooking down to scavenging, was done by the immates. There were many fruit trees to be looked after, and enough gardening to be done as well. Mr. Kallenbach was fond of gardening and had gained some experience of this work in one of the Governmental model gardens. It was obligatory on all, young and old, who were not engaged in the kitchen, to give some time to gardening. The children had the lion’s share of this work, which included digging pits, felling timber and lifting loads. This gave them ample exercise. They took delight in the work, and so they did not generally need any other exercise or games. Of course some of them, and sometimes all them, malingered and shirked. Sometimes I connived at their pranks, but often I was strict with them, I dare say they did not like the strictness, but I do not recollect their having resisted it. Whenever I was strict, I would, by argument, convince them that it was not right to play with one’s work. The conviction would, however, be short-lived, the next moment they would again leave their work and go to play. All the same we got along, and at any rate they built up fine physiques. There was scarcely any illness on the Farm, though it must be said that good air and water and regular hours of food were not a little responsible for this.

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

  four to five pounds each month. I also came across books on simple living. I gave up the suite of rooms and rented one instead, invested in a stove, and began cooking my breakfast at home. The process scarcely took me more than twenty minutes for there was only oatmeal porridge to cook and water to boil for cocoa. I had lunch out and for dinner bread and cocoa at home. Thus I managed to live on a shilling and three pence a day. This was also a period of intensive study. Plain living saved me plenty of time and I passed my examination. Let not the reader think that this living made my life by any means a dreary affair. On the contrary the change harmonized my inward and outward life. It was also more in keeping with the means of my family. My life was certainly more truthful and my soul knew no bounds of joy. 19. EXPERIMENTS IN DIETETICS As I searched myself deeper, the necessity for changes both internal and external began to grow on me. As soon as, or even before, I made alterations in my expenses and my way of living, I began to make changes in my diet. I saw that the writers on vegetarianism had examined the question very minutely, attacking it in its religious, scientific, practical and medical aspects. Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live. And some of them accordingly suggested and effected in their lives abstention not only from flesh-meat but from eggs and milk. Scientifically some had concluded that man’s physical structure showed that he was not meant to be a cooking but a frugivorous animal, that he could take only his mother’s milk and, as soon as he teeth, should begin to take solid foods. Medically they had suggested the rejection of all spices and condiments. According to the practical and economic argument they had demonstrated that a vegetarian diet was the least expensive. All these considerations had their effect on me, and I came across vegetarians of all these types in vegetarian restaurants. There was a vegetarian Society in England with a weekly journal of its own. I subscribed to the weekly, joined the society and very shortly found myself on the Executive Committee. Here I came in contact with those who were regarded as pillars of vegetarianism, and began my own experiments in dietetics. I stopped taking the sweets and condiments I had got from home. The mind having taken a different turn, the fondness for condiments wore away, and I now relished the boiled spinach which in Richmond tasted insipid, cooked without

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

  them were four or five Musalmans. I always helped and encouraged them in keeping all their religious observances. I took care to see that they offered their daily namaz. There were Christians and Parsi youngsters too, whom I considered it my duty to encourage to follow their respective religious observances. During this month, therefore, I persuaded the Musalman youngsters to observe the ramzan fast. I had of course decided to observe pradosha myself, but I now asked the Hindu, Parsi and Christian youngsters to join me. I explained to them that it was always a good thing to join with others in any matter of self-denial. Many of the Farm inmates welcomed my proposal. The Hindu and the Parsi youngsters did not copy the Musalman ones in every details; it was not necessary. The Musalman youngsters had to wait for their breakfast until sunset, whereas the others did not do so, and were thus able to prepare delicacies for the Musalman friends and serve them. Nor had the Hindu and other youngsters to keep the Musalmans company when they had their last meal before sunrise next morning, and of course all except the Musalmans allowed themselves water. The result of these experiments was that all were convinced of the value of fasting, and a splendid esprit de corps grew up among them. We were all vegetarians on Tolstoy Farm, thanks, I must gratefully confess, to the readiness of all to respect my feelings. The Musalman youngsters must have missed their meat during ramzan, but none of them ever let me know that they did so. They delighted in and relished the vegetarian diet, and the Hindu youngsters often prepared vegetarian delicacies for them, in keeping with the simplicity of the Farm. I have purposely digressed in the midst of this chapter on fasting, as I could not have given these pleasant reminiscences anywhere else, and I have indirectly described a characteristic of mine, namely that I have always loved to have my

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Here is how I take the measure of my progress in life: I imagine myself as I was, back there in West Baltimore, dodging North and Pulaski, ducking Murphy Homes, fearful of the schools and the streets, and I imagine showing that lost boy a portrait of my present life and asking him what he would make of it. Only once—in the two years after your birth, in the first two rounds of the fight of my life—have I believed he would have been disappointed. I write you at the precipice of my fortieth year, having come to a point in my life—not of great prominence—but far beyond anything that boy could have even imagined. I did not master the streets, because I could not read the body language quick enough. I did not master the schools, because I could not see where any of it could possibly lead. But I did not fall. I have my family. I have my work. I no longer feel it necessary to hang my head at parties and tell people that I am “trying to be a writer.” And godless though I am, the fact of being human, the fact of possessing the gift of study, and thus being remarkable among all the matter floating through the cosmos, still awes me. I have spent much of my studies searching for the right question by which I might fully understand the breach between the world and me. I have not spent my time studying the problem of “race”—“race” itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem. You see this from time to time when some dullard—usually believing himself white—proposes that the way forward is a grand orgy of black and white, ending only when we are all beige and thus the same “race.” But a great number of “black” people already are beige. And the history of civilization is littered with dead “races” (Frankish, Italian, German, Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purpose—the organization of people beneath, and beyond, the umbrella of rights. If my life ended today, I would tell you it was a happy life—that I drew great joy from the study, from the struggle toward which I now urge you. You have seen in this conversation that the struggle has ruptured and remade me several times over—in Baltimore, at The Mecca, in fatherhood, in New York. The changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the Dream. But even more, the changes have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers.

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

  potential Satyagraha, and the Government knew as much. I therefore readily accepted the suggestion made by these friends. But how could the general public be trained in Satyagraha through the medium of English? My principal field of work lay in Gujarat. Sjt. Indulal Yajnik was at that time associated with the group of Messrs. Sobani and Banker. He was conducting the Gujarati monthly Navajivan which had the financial backing of these friends. They placed the monthly at my disposal, and further Sjt. Indulal offered to work on it. This monthly was converted into a weekly. In the meantime The Chronicle was resuscitated. Young India was therefore restored to its original weekly form. To have published the two weeklies from two different places would have been very inconvenient to me and involved more expenditure. As Navajivan was already being published from Ahmedabad Young India was also removed there at my suggestion. There were other reasons besides for this change. I had already learnt from my experience of Indian Opinion that such journals needed a press of their own. Moreover the press laws in force in India at that time were such that, if I wanted to express my views untrammelled, the existing printing presses, which were naturally run for business, would have hesitated to publish them. The need for setting up a press of our own, therefore, became all the more imperative, and since this could be conveniently done only at Ahmedabad, Young India too had to be taken there. Through these journals I now commenced to the best of my ability the work of educating the reading public in Satyagraha. Both of them had reached a very wide circulation, which at one time rose to the neighbourhood of forty thousand each. But while the circulation of Navajivan went up at a bound, that of Young India increased only by slow degrees. After my incarceration the circulation of both these journals fell to a low ebb, and today stands below eight thousand. From the very start I set my face against taking advertisements in these journals. I do not think that they have lost anything thereby. On the contrary, it is my belief that it was in no small measure helped them to maintain their independence. Incidentally these journals helped me also to some extent to remain at peace with myself for, whilst immediate resort to civil disobedience was out of the question, they enabled me freely to ventilate my views and to put heart into the people. Thus I feel that both the journals rendered good service to the people in this hour of trial, and did their humble bit towards lightening the tyranny of the martial law. 161.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Kay ran her free hand along the wet, naked thighs and pressed it into Roxanne’s mouth. “Lick it off,” she said. “Lick up your own piss.” Roxanne fought her rising sense of injustice and complied. Her reward was another hit of amyl, and one of EZ’s cruelest kisses. She cried aloud into the savage mouth while Kay opened and closed her hand, rotated her fist, and made her piss again. The kiss left her mouth bleeding a little, and the taste of iron made her queasy. She suddenly wanted to quit. What was happening? Why was she doing this? It was crazy. She was bleeding. Maybe her ass was bleeding. Where was Alex? She felt utterly lonely. “I’m going to throw up,” she thought, and must have said it. Strong hands in leather gloves materialized all over her body. They were covering and caressing her face, her ribs, her belly, her arms and legs, her hands and feet. A soft tongue began to lick gently at her tears. It was Tyre, comforting her. Then another face descended—Alex, coming toward her abraded lips. Afraid, she turned her face away, then saw the tender look in Alex’s eye. “Daddy,” she whispered. “Look what she’s doing to me. I made such a mess. But I like it, I can’t help it. Please don’t spank me, Daddy.” Their lips touched, merged, and Alex’s tongue opened her mouth. Cool water trickled down her throat. She sucked, and Alex fed her a little more water. She swallowed and took more, and clung to her master’s lips as Alex swallowed the last of the sweet fluid. “Still thirsty?” she said. Roxanne nodded. The leather-clad hands continued to soothe and massage her. Alex gestured. One by one, the women came forward and gave her sips of water from their own lips. She murmured with contentment. Everyone withdrew, leaving her alone with Alex. Kay continued to move her hand within the hot, slick tunnel of Roxanne’s ass, but slowly, gently, creating sensations that bloomed by imperceptible degrees, like flowers. “There’s just a little more of this,” Alex told Roxanne softly. She stroked her cheeks, smiled encouragingly. Their faces were only inches apart. Roxanne felt hot waves of heat flow out of her crotch and into her trunk and limbs as she stared into Alex’s face. Everything was fine now. There were well-oiled steel ball bearings in the sockets of her hips. She could just spread herself and let them roll, preen under Alex’s gaze, make a porno movie of herself for Alex’s jealousy and pleasure. “Anything you want, Daddy, ooh,” she said, a hole rocking to meet Kay’s fist. “She just won’t stop that, will she, not until you tell her. Don’t make her stop yet, Daddy, please.”

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

  was not allowed to interrupt the observance. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her. Living on one meal a dayduring Chaturmas was a habit with her. Not content with that she fasted every alternate day during one Chaturmas . During another Chaturmas she vowed not to have food without seeing the sun. We children on those days would stand, staring at the sky, waiting to announce the appearance of the sun to our mother. Everyone knows that at the height of the rainy season the sun often does not condescend to show his face. And I remember days when, at his sudden appearance, we would rush and announce it to her, She would run out to se with her own eyes, but by that time the fugitive sun would be gone, thus depriving her of her meal. “That does not matter,” she would say cheerfully, “God did not want me to eat today.” And then she would return to her round of duties. My mother had strong commonsense. She was well informed about all matters of state, and ladies of the court thought highly of her intelligence. Often I would accompany her, exercising the privilege of childhood, and I still remember many lively discussions she had with the widowed mother of the Thakore Saheb. Of these parents I was born at Porbandar, otherwise known as Sudamapuri, on the 2nd October, 1869, I passed my childhood in Porbandar. I recollect having been put to school. It was with some difficulty that I got through the multiplication tables. The fact that I recollect nothing more of those days than having learnt, in company with other boys, to call our teacher all kinds of names, would strongly suggest that my intellect must have been sluggish, and my memory raw. 1. Literally a period of four months. A vow of fasting and semi-fasting during the four months of the rains. The period is a sort of long Lent. ↵ 2. A sort of fast in which the daily quantity of food is increased or diminished according as the moon waxes or wanes. ↵

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The young wife seemed to have, together with her clothes, changed her mind and her manners. She was, as we have already said, goodly of person and countenance, and even as she was fair, on like wise she became so engaging, so pleasant and so well-mannered that she seemed rather to have been the child of some noble gentleman than the daughter of Giannucolo and a tender of sheep; whereof she made every one marvel who had known her aforetime. Moreover, she was so obedient to her husband and so diligent in his service that he accounted himself the happiest and best contented man in the world; and on like wise she bore herself with such graciousness and such loving kindness towards her husband's subjects that there was none of them but loved and honoured her with his whole heart, praying all for her welfare and prosperity and advancement; and whereas they were used to say that Gualtieri had done as one of little wit to take her to wife, they now with one accord declared that he was the sagest and best-advised man alive, for that none other than he might ever have availed to know her high worth, hidden as it was under poor clothes and a rustic habit. Brief, it was no great while ere she knew so to do that, not only in her husband's marquisate, but everywhere else, she made folk talk of her virtues and her well-doing and turned to the contrary whatsoever had been said against her husband on her account, whenas he married her.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Georgia was putting a Dresden mug full of hot cappuccino on her desk. “Chocolate croissant or plain?” she asked. She was wearing a wheat-colored linen suit with a gold silk blouse. Her red hair was carefully styled. She walked a little more slowly than other women, as if she had to remind herself that you made your hips sway by putting one foot directly in front of the other. “Plain, I think,” Tyre said. “Stomach’s a little wonky this a.m. But this looks heavenly. How am I going to manage without you when you go to Denver for your last operation?” The large and capable hands put a tray with two hot croissants, a pot of marmalade, and a saucer stacked with pats of butter in front of her. “Don’t be silly, boss,” said the well-modulated, smoke-and-whisky voice. “Half the time it’s all I can do to just keep out of your way. Aspirin?” “Please.” A paper cup full of cold water and a foil packet of Bayer materialized next to the marmalade. “Eat something,” Georgia urged her. “If you can make it through the morning, the caterer delivered chicken fajitas for lunch, and I’ll mix you up a special batch of margaritas to go with it.” Tyre was already gutting the croissant and stuffing her face. After she pushed the tray away, it took her ten minutes to rip through an inch of paperwork on her desk. Georgia took notes. She could barely keep up. There was a grant from a lesbian mothers’ collective that wanted to establish a childcare center. “Only if they’re open at night and give our patrons a discount,” Tyre said. “But they’d better keep our name out of it or the fundamentalists will have a field day.” Georgia took it down in Mach 2 shorthand. There was a request from an anthropology professor who wanted to send a team of students in to do participant observation. “Only if they’ll take their clothes off and stay in the maze,” Tyre said. The Annie Kenney Coven that consecrated the Calyx at each equinox and solstice was having trouble finding hypo-allergenic incense and didn’t want to oppress women disabled by their sensitivity to fragrance. “I don’t know where the hell I’m going to find sneeze-proof incense,” Tyre said, “but tell them we’ll do some research on it. We haven’t had a lawsuit since they started cleaning up our aura on a quarterly basis, and I want them to keep on doing it. It’s good P.R., it’s a weird party, and it works. What more could you want?”

• From Wild (2012)

  The two white men were firefighters. The Latino man was a painter by passion but a carpenter by trade. His name was Francisco, though everyone called him Paco. He was the cousin of one of the white guys, visiting from Mexico City, though the three of them had grown up together on the same block in Sacramento, where the firefighters still lived. Paco had gone to visit his great-grandmother in Mexico ten years before, fallen in love with a Mexican woman while there, and stayed. The firefighters’ sons flitted past us, playing war while we sat around a fire ring filled with logs the men had yet to light, making intermittent shouts, gasps, and explosive sounds as they shot each other with plastic guns from behind the boulders. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve got to be kidding me!” the firefighters took turns exclaiming when I explained to them what I was doing and showed them my battered feet with their eight remaining toenails. They asked me question after question while marveling and shaking their heads and plying me with another Hawaiian screwdriver and tortilla chips. “Women are the ones with the cojones,” said Paco as he made a bowl of guacamole. “We guys like to think we’re the ones, but we’re wrong.” His hair was like a snake down his back, a long thick ponytail bound in sections all the way down with plain rubber bands. After the fire was lit and after we had eaten the trout that one of them had caught in the lake and the stew made with venison from a deer one of them had shot last winter, it was only me and Paco sitting by the fire as the other men read to their sons in the tent. “You want to smoke a joint with me?” he asked as he took one from his shirt pocket. He lit it up, took a hit, and handed it to me. “So this is the Sierras, eh?” he said, looking out over the dark lake. “All that time growing up I never made it up here before.” “It’s the Range of Light,” I said, passing the joint back to him. “That’s what John Muir called it. I can see why. I’ve never seen light like I have out here. All the sunsets and sunrises against the mountains.” “You’re on a spirit walk, aren’t you?” Paco said, staring into the fire. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you could call it that.”