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.

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• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He backed off. “Oh, I forgot, you like that. I keep telling you it kills your brain cells, but if you want it—” He swiveled violently away. “Carla! Carla, get me some nitrous in here, will you?” Carla, a dark, small-nosed girl with mascara-crusted eyelashes, entered pushing the familiar gray machine, and a cool rubber, none-too-clean mask was placed over Connie’s nose. “There we go,” said Dr. Fangelli. “Crank her up, Carla. We’ll let you get nice and relaxed. Carla, get the cream two-six base.” Connie closed her eyes. A balloon of warm air slowly expanded in her head. She thought of the commercials for Wonder Bread that she’d seen as a kid, in which a lucky little boy was borne by friendly butterflies to Wonder Bread Land, a place full of flowers and clouds and loaves of bread. “So, Connie, are you married yet?” asked Dr. Fangelli. “No.” “No? I’m surprised. How old are you?” She lay in the chair like a starfish and imagined the sound of his voice, the clink of the instruments and the squeak of chairs penetrating her body with thin rays of light, piercing through her bones and traveling gaily up and down her skeleton. She imagined the very life force of the universe, in all its horrific complexity, penetrating her every pore, charging her body with millions of tiny beams. She sighed and inhaled deeply; she loved nitrous oxide. “Okay, we’ve really got you flying now. Feel pretty good, don-cha, Connie?” Connie tried to surmount the saliva in her mouth and managed to make an affirmative noise. She could tell from the little oil slick on Dr. Fangelli’s voice that he enjoyed seeing his patients helpless and openmouthed in his chair, that it made him feel powerful, and in fact, at this moment he was sort of powerful. Well, that was all right. The universe needed spaces for power to move into. It liked those spaces and valued them. “Just a little pinch…there we go.” He grabbed her lip and wriggled it. “You feel great, don’t you? I bet we could take all your teeth out today and that would be fine with you. But of course, we’re not going to do that.” He patted Connie’s shoulder. “It’s just a small job that won’t take a minute.”

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  Washington was a madhouse with buses and trucks and cars coming in from all directions. We got a parking space and I gave up my tie and sweater for no shirt and a big red bandana around my head. Skip pushed the wheelchair for what seemed a mile or so. We could feel the tremendous tension. People were handing out leaflets reminding everyone that this was a nonviolent demonstration, and that no purpose would be served in violent confrontation. I remember feeling a little scared, the way I did before a firefight. After reading the leaflet I felt content that no one was going to get hurt. Skip and I moved as close to the speakers’ platform as we could and Skip lifted me out of my chair and laid me on my cushion. People were streaming into the Ellipse from all around us—an army of everyday people. There was a guy with a stereo tape deck blasting out music, and dogs running after Frisbees on the lawn. The Hari Krishna people started to dance and the whole thing seemed like a weird carnival. But there was a warmth to it, a feeling that we were all together in a very important place. A young girl sat down next to me and handed me a canteen of cool water. “Here,” she said, “have a drink.” I drank it down and passed it to Skip who passed it to someone else. That was the feeling that day. We all seemed to be sharing everything. We listened as the speakers one after another denounced the invasion of Cambodia and the slaying of the students at Kent State. The sun was getting very hot and Skip and I decided to move around. We wanted to get to the White House where Nixon was holed up, probably watching television. We were in a great sea of people, thousands and thousands all around us. We finally made it to Lafayette Park. On the other side of the avenue the government had lined up thirty or forty buses, making a huge wall between the people and the White House. I remember wondering back then why they had to put all those buses in front of the president. Was the government so afraid of its own people that it needed such a gigantic barricade? I’ll always remember those buses lined up that day and not being able to see the White House from my wheelchair. We went back to the rally for a while, then went on down to the Reflecting Pool. Hundreds of people had taken off their clothes. They were jumping up and down to the beat of bongo drums and metal cans. A man in his fifties had stripped completely naked. Wearing only a crazy-looking hat and a pair of enormous black glasses, he was dancing on a platform in the middle of hundreds of naked people. The crowd was clapping wildly.

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

  In Soweto, religion filled the void left by absent men. I used to ask my mom if it was hard for her to raise me alone without a husband. She’d reply, “Just because I live without a man doesn’t mean I’ve never had a husband. God is my husband.” For my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, and all the other women on our street, life centered on faith. Prayer meetings would rotate houses up and down the block based on the day. These groups were women and children only. My mom would always ask my uncle Velile to join, and he’d say, “I would join if there were more men, but I can’t be the only one here.” Then the singing and praying would start, and that was his cue to leave. For these prayer meetings, we’d jam ourselves into the tiny living area of the host family’s house and form a circle. Then we would go around the circle offering prayers. The grannies would talk about what was happening in their lives. “I’m happy to be here. I had a good week at work. I got a raise and I wanted to say thank you and praise Jesus.” Sometimes they’d pull out their Bible and say, “This scripture spoke to me and maybe it will help you.” Then there would be a bit of song. There was a leather pad called “the beat” that you’d strap to your palm, like a percussion instrument. Someone would clap along on that, keeping time while everyone sang, “Masango vulekani singene eJerusalema. Masango vulekani singene eJerusalema.” That’s how it would go. Pray, sing, pray. Sing, pray, sing. Sing, sing, sing. Pray, pray, pray. Sometimes it would last for hours, always ending with an “amen,” and they could keep that “amen” going on for five minutes at least. “Ah-men. Ah-ah-ah-men. Ah-ah-ah-ah-men. Ahhhhhhhhahhhhhhhhhhhahhhhhahhhhhhahhhhhmen. Meni-meni-meni. Men-men-men. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.” Then everyone would say goodbye and go home. Next night, different house, same thing.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  If I saw an overcoat I liked I went in and bought it. I would buy it a little in advance of the season too, to show that I was a serious-minded chap. Shit, I was a married man and soon I would probably be a father—I was entitled to a winter overcoat at least, no? And when I had the overcoat I thought of stout shoes to go with it—a pair of thick cordovans such as I had wanted all my life but never could afford. And when it grew bitter cold and I was out looking for the job I used to get terribly hungry sometimes—it’s really healthy going out like that day after day prowling about the city in rain and snow and wind and hail—and so now and then I’d drop in to a cosy tavern and order myself a juicy porterhouse steak with onions and french fried potatoes. I took out life insurance and accident insurance too—it’s important, when you’re married, to do things like that, so they told me. Supposing I should drop dead one day—what then? I remember the guy telling me that, in order to clinch his argument. I had already told him I would sign up, but he must have forgotten it. I had said, yes, immediately, out of force of habit, but as I say, he had evidently overlooked it—or else it was against the code to sign a man up until you had delivered the full sales talk. Anyway, I was just getting ready to ask him how long it would take before you could make a loan on the policy when he popped the hypothetical question: Supposing you should drop dead one day —what then? I guess he thought I was a little off my nut the way I laughed at that. I laughed until the tears rolled down my face. Finally he said—“I don’t see that I said anything so funny.” “Well,” I said, getting serious for a moment, “take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I’m the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he’s dead?” He was quite taken aback by this, apparently, because the next thing he said was: “I don’t think that’s a very ethical attitude, Mr. Miller. I’m sure you wouldn’t want your wife to . . .” “Listen,” I said, “supposing I told you I don’t give a fuck what happens to my wife when I die—what then?” And since this seemed to injure his ethical susceptibilities still more I added for good measure—“As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to pay the insurance when I croak—I’m only doing this to make you feel good. I’m trying to help the world along, don’t you see? You’ve got to live, haven’t you? Well, I’m just putting a little food in your mouth, that’s all. If you have anything else to sell, trot it out. I buy anything that sounds good.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Part of Vitosha was a pedestrian zone, and the restaurants and cafés that lined it had seating that spilled out onto the street, some with tables laid out in elegant white, others with low couches for sprawling with cigarettes or water pipes. I was surprised that these were full, the protests hadn’t put a dent in the crowds out to enjoy the evening. There were the usual tourists for whom the parade was a spectacle, they pointed their cameras at us, but also Bulgarians, some of whom sat with their backs resolutely turned, determined to ignore the chants of ostavka and the more aggressive chants of cherveni boklutsi, red trash, which had increased with the darkness, as had the presence of men wearing Guy Fawkes masks. There weren’t many of them but they added a different note to things, a note of incivility, a discordant note, I thought, which was amplified by the fact that there weren’t as many children now; it was a long march, they must have gotten tired. There were more police at the Palace of Justice, wearing their riot gear now but still relaxed; they were chatting among themselves with their visors lifted, shields propped on the ground. A couple of them were sitting on the stairs leading up to the palace, a young man leaned back against one of the stone lions there. D. had once pointed out to me that on one of these lions the legs are in the wrong position, the fore and hind legs of the same side stretch away from each other; it’s supposed to suggest the cat in motion but no animal walks like that, D. said, if it walked like that it would fall over. It’s the perfect symbol, he said, laughing, the Bulgarian lion. You know it’s the word we use for our money, lev, as if our money has ever been a lion! A kitten, maybe, he said, the runt of the litter, and this made him laugh again.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  There was the Scotch Gambit! An amazing expression which had nothing to do with chess. It came to me always in the shape of a man on stilts, page 2,498 of Funk and Wagnall’s Unabridged Dictionary. A gambit was a sort of leap in the dark with mechanical legs. A leap for no purpose—hence gambit! Clear as a bell and perfectly simple, once you grasped it. Then there was Andromeda, and the Gorgon Medusa, and Castor and Pollux of heavenly origin, mythological twins, eternally fixed in the ephemeral stardust. There was lucubration, a word distinctly sexual and yet suggesting such cerebral connotations as to make me uneasy. Always “midnight lucubrations,” the midnight being ominously significant. And then arras. Somebody some time or other had been stabbed “behind the arras.” I saw an altar cloth made of asbestos and in it was a grievous rent such as Caesar himself might have made. It was very quiet thinking, as I say, the kind that the men of the Old Stone Age must have indulged in. Things were neither absurd nor explicable. It was a jigsaw puzzle which, when you grew tired, you could push away with two feet. Anything could be put aside with ease, even the Himalaya mountains. It was just the opposite kind of thinking from Mahomet’s. It led absolutely nowhere and was hence enjoyable. The grand edifice which you might construct throughout the course of a long fuck could be toppled over in the twinkling of an eye. It was the fuck that counted and not the construction work. It was like living in the Ark during the Flood, everything provided for down to a screwdriver. What need to commit murder, rape or incest when all that was demanded of you was to kill time? Rain, rain, rain, but inside the Ark everything dry and toasty, a pair of every kind and in the larder fine Westphalian hams, fresh eggs, olives, pickled onions, Worcestershire sauce and other delicacies. God had chosen me, Noah, to establish a new heaven and a new earth. He had given me a stout boat with all seams caulked and properly dried. He had given me also the knowledge to sail the stormy seas. Maybe when it stopped raining there would be other kinds of knowledge to acquire, but for the present a nautical knowledge sufficed. The rest was chess in the Café Royal, Second Avenue, except that I had to imagine a partner, a clever Jewish mind that would make the game last until the rains ceased. But, as I said before, I had no time to be bored; there were my old friends, Logos, Bucephalus, arras, lucubration and so on. Why play chess? Locked up like that for days and nights on end I began to realize that thinking, when it is not masturbative, is lenitive, healing, pleasurable.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The man who was responsible for this extraordinary change in the old man was in no way unusual himself; he was a Congregationalist minister attached to a modest little parish which adjoined our neighborhood. His one virtue was that he kept his religion in the background. The old man quickly fell into a sort of boyish idolatry; he talked of nothing but this minister whom he considered his friend. As he had never looked at the Bible in his life, nor any other book for that matter, it was rather startling, to say the least, to hear him say a little prayer before eating. He performed this little ceremony in a strange way, much the way one takes a tonic, for example. If he recommended me to read a certain chapter of the Bible he would add very seriously—“it will do you good.” It was a new medicine which he had discovered, a sort of quack remedy which was guaranteed to cure all ills and which one might take even if he had no ills, because in any case it could certainly do no harm. He attended all the services, all the functions which were held at the church, and between times, when out for a stroll, for example, he would stop off at the minister’s home and have a little chat with him. If the minister said that the president was a good soul and should be re-elected the old man would repeat to every one exactly what the minister had said and urge them to vote for the president’s re-election. Whatever the minister said was right and just and nobody could gainsay him. There’s no doubt that it was an education for the old man. If the minister had mentioned the pyramids in the course of his sermon the old man immediately began to inform himself about the pyramids. He would talk about the pyramids as though every one owed it to himself to become acquainted with the subject. The minister had said that the pyramids were one of the crowning glories of man, ergo not to know about the pyramids was to be disgracefully ignorant, almost sinful. Fortunately the minister didn’t dwell much on the subject of sin; he was of the modern type of preacher who prevailed on his flock more by arousing their curiosity than by appealing to their conscience. His sermons were more like a night-school extension course and for such as the old man, therefore, highly entertaining and stimulating. Every now and then the male members of the congregation were invited to a little blowout which was intended to demonstrate that the good pastor was just an ordinary man like themselves and could, on occasion, enjoy a hearty meal and even a glass of beer. Moreover it was observed that he even sang—not religious hymns, but jolly little songs of the popular variety.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  In that violet incandescent light without even the suggestion of a shadow, motion itself seemed to be absent. It was like a blaze of pure consciousness, thought become God. And God, for the first time in my knowledge, was clean-shaven. I was also clean-shaven, flawless, deadly accurate. I saw my image in the marble black lakes and it was diapered with stars. Stars, stars . . . like a clout between the eyes and all remembrance fast run out. I was Samson and I was Lackawanna and I was dying as one being in the ecstasy of full consciousness. And now here I am, sailing down the river in my little canoe. Anything you would like to have me do I will do for you—gratis. This is the Land of Fuck, in which there are no animals, no trees, no stars, no problems. Here the spermatazoon reigns supreme. Nothing is determined in advance, the future is absolutely uncertain, the past is non-existent. For every million born 999,999 are doomed to die and never again be born. But the one that makes a home run is assured of life eternal. Life is squeezed into a seed, which is a soul. Everything has soul, including minerals, plants, lakes, mountains, rocks. Everything is sentient, even at the lowest stage of consciousness. Once this fact is grasped there can be no more despair. At the very bottom of the ladder, chez the spermatozoa, there is the same condition of bliss as at the top, chez God. God is the summation of all the spermatozoa come to full consciousness. Between the bottom and the top there is no stop, no halfway station. The river starts somewhere in the mountains and flows on into the sea. On this river that leads to God the canoe is as serviceable as the dreadnought. From the very start the journey is homeward. Sailing down the river. . . . Slow as the hookworm, but tiny enough to make every bend. And slippery as an eel withal. What is your name? shouts someone. My name? Why just call me God —God the embryo . I go sailing on. Somebody would like to buy me a hat. What size do you wear, imbecile! he shouts. What size? Why size X! (And why do they always shout at me? Am I supposed to be deaf?) The hat is lost at the next cataract. Tant pis —for the hat. Does God need a hat? God needs only to become God, more and more God. All this voyaging, all these pitfalls, the time that passes, the scenery, and against the scenery man , trillions and trillions of things called man, like mustard seeds. Even in embryo God has no memory. The backdrop of consciousness is made up of infinitesimally minute ganglia, a coat of hair soft as wool. The mountain goat stands alone amidst the Himalayas; he doesn’t question how he got to the summit.

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

  Many scholars have treated the romances as a privileged source for the history of sexuality, so that we could simply invoke tradition in foreground-ing the novels. But a more substantive justifi cation is in order, particularly because it might seem outwardly contradictory that an interpretation that professes to respect the hard facts of social life also takes some of the most fantastic products of the imagination so seriously. Th e assumption underlying this strategy is not that ancient literature is realistic, nor even that it allows us to breach the impregnable unknowability of what people really did. Moreover, the fi ctional works that we will explore have no more claim to representativeness than the visual, legal, or philosophical sources with which they are juxtaposed throughout these pages. Indeed, built into the methodology of this book is a conviction that no one ideology had monopolistic control of Greco- Roman culture— not the Stoics, not the Platonists, not the erotic novelists, not even, in the later period, the church, though its totalizing ambitions were considerable. What makes literature valuable to the historian of sex is not its representativeness but its expressiveness. Fiction off ers a vital complement to moralizing texts because stories were a medium for conveying something more than bare commandments about how people ought to behave; narrative fi ction portrayed the place of moral commandments within the patterns of social life. Th e literature of the Roman Empire explored how sexual morality was generated, how it was experienced, where its tensions and its silences lay. Th e very artists who best understood the techniques of artifi ce— Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus— created playful complexity not for its own sake but because it allowed them to meditate on the power of literature and its relationship to life. We begin with stories that represent humanity, in its moral dimensions, within the organic world and its cycles of reproduction, and we arrive by the end at stories where the human being is a transcendent moral subject who stands apart from the world and all its demands, isolated before the divine judge. I N T R O D U C T I O N  If prose fi ction was the great literary legacy of later classical antiquity, then it should be no surprise that the stories that are considered in this book trace the deep transformation in the logic of sexual morality. Within the channels allowed by social dictates, eros fl ourished in the high empire. Th e history of sex in antiquity is not a linear story of gradual repression. Th e Roman moralists did not act as forerunners, preparing the way for the Christian revolution. Th e gloomy tribe of Stoic brethren have been allotted too much say. In a confi dent, prosperous, urban empire, old patterns of lassitude prevailed, and even intensifi ed within an economy that delivered pleasures with unusual effi ciency. Yes, the sexual culture of the

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Then, as though he felt that he had committed a blunder, he strode after me heavily and, putting his hand on my shoulder, he tried to modify the statement by hemming and hawing and saying I don’t mean that it is absolutely certain he will die, etc., which I cut short by opening the door and yelling at him, at the top of my lungs, so that his patients in the anteroom would hear it—“I think you’re a goddamned old fart and I hope you croak, good night!” When I got home I modified the doctor’s report somewhat by saying that my father’s condition was very serious but that if he took good care of himself he would pull through all right. This seemed to cheer the old man up considerably. Of his own accord he took to a diet of milk and zwieback which, whether it was the best thing or not, certainly did him no harm. He remained a sort of semi-invalid for about a year, becoming more and more calm inwardly as time went on and apparently determined to let nothing disturb his peace of mind, nothing, no matter if everything went to hell. As he grew stronger he took to making a daily promenade to the cemetery which was nearby. There he would sit on a bench in the sun and watch the old people potter around the graves. The proximity to the grave, instead of rendering him morbid, seemed to cheer him up. He seemed, if anything, to have become reconciled to the idea of eventual death, a fact which no doubt he had heretofore refused to look in the face. Often he came home with flowers which he had picked in the cemetery, his face beaming with a quiet, serene joy, and seating himself in the armchair he would recount the conversation which he had had that morning with one of the other valetudinarians who frequented the cemetery. It was obvious after a time that he was really enjoying his sequestration, or rather not just enjoying it, but profiting deeply from the experience in a way that was beyond my mother’s intelligence to fathom. He was getting lazy, was the way she expressed it. Sometimes she put it even more extremely, tapping her head with her forefinger as she spoke, but not saying anything overtly because of my sister who was without question a little wrong in the head. And then one day, through the courtesy of an old widow who used to visit her son’s grave every day and was, as my mother would say, “religious,” he made the acquaintance of a minister belonging to one of the neighboring churches. This was a momentous event in the old man’s life. Suddenly he blossomed forth and that little sponge of a soul which had almost atrophied through lack of nourishment took on such astounding proportions that he was almost unrecognizable.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I’ll always remember that last day at the hospital: Dick and Jimmy helping me put on my braces one last time, awkwardly dragging my body with my crutches out of the ADL room, Dick spotting me all the way across the hall and into the elevator where we rode down to the ground floor. “You can do it, Ronnie! You can do it. Careful, Ronnie. Careful now!” I had only a little farther to go before I reached the SCI parking lot where my brand-new hand-controlled Oldsmobile was parked. I struggled, dragging myself across the gravel lot, growing more and more determined—doing my best not to fall . . . trying not to lose my balance. “A little bit farther. A little bit farther! Keep going, Ronnie! Almost there, Ronnie!” shouted Dick. “Only a little more to go.” When we finally reached the car I leaned forward, still balancing myself on the crutches, and unlocked the door, and after opening it slowly I spun around, swinging myself into the seat. “I did it, Dick!” I shouted. “I told you I was going to walk out of this place.” I had triumphed. I had done it. After returning home to Massapequa, Long Island, I continued my rehabilitation, putting on braces every day, and just as I had dragged myself around the hospital, I now began to drag my body around the yard each day, seeing how far I could go, determined to continue my struggle to walk again. It was great to be home and as I progressed each day I would sometimes notice the neighbors staring over from their front lawns or out their windows at the neighborhood boy who had returned from the war with the terrible wound, desperately trying to walk again. I did my best to put them at ease, waving to them and smiling as I awkwardly struggled to keep my balance and not fall. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me. As difficult and frustrating as it was for me each day, I chose to see it as a great physical challenge rather than a burden. Even back then I was trying hard to see things in a more positive light. I was still the great athlete striving to win the championship, to be my very best and make the Olympics and win a gold medal.

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

  Sex inevitably became enmeshed in the high ideals of conjugal harmony. “Where does eros more rightly belong than in the lawful marriage of man and wife?” It was a short step for Roman moralists to lay down rules of pleasure. Aphrodite, within the household, was to be subjected to “reason, harmony, and philosophy.” Injunctions of mutual sexual fidelity easily arose from the high spirit of companionate marriage. For Plutarch, sexual fidelity was advised on pragmatic grounds. Plutarch reminded a bride not to lose her modesty with her clothes off; he counseled the groom to make the bedroom a “school of orderly behavior.” But nothing is more likely to render a stilted view of Roman marriage than exclusive focus on the stern counsels of the moralists. Viewed in isolation, the moralizing literature on marital sex is too easily construed as a step toward a more repressed future, as though the conjugalization of sex might already achieve by boredom and grim routine half of what the preachers and prudes would later seek to control by religious command. Nothing could be further detached from the original soil of Roman marriage. The advice complex sprang from a culture where companionate marriage and erotic investment were intertwined as never before.86

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

  Now it is manifest that a religious order established for the purpose of contemplating and of giving to others the fruits of one’s contemplation by teaching and preaching, requires greater care of spiritual things than one that is established for contemplation only. Wherefore it becomes a religious order of this kind to embrace a poverty that burdens one with the least amount of care. Again it is clear that to keep what one has acquired at a fitting time for one’s necessary use involves the least burden of care. Wherefore a threefold degree of poverty corresponds to the three aforesaid degrees of religious life. For it is fitting that a religious order which is directed to the bodily actions of the active life should have an abundance of riches in common; that the common possession of a religious order directed to contemplation should be more moderate, unless the said religious be bound, either themselves or through others, to give hospitality or to assist the poor; and that those who aim at giving the fruits of their contemplation to others should have their life most exempt from external cares; this being accomplished by their laying up the necessaries of life procured at a fitting time. This, our Lord, the Founder of poverty, taught by His example. For He had a purse which He entrusted to Judas, and in which were kept the things that were offered to Him, as related in Jn. 12:6. Nor should it be argued that Jerome (Super Matth. xvii, 26) says: “If anyone object that Judas carried money in the purse, we answer that He deemed it unlawful to spend the property of the poor on His own uses,” namely by paying the tax—because among those poor His disciples held a foremost place, and the money in Christ’s purse was spent chiefly on their needs. For it is stated (Jn. 4:8) that “His disciples were gone into the city to buy meats,” and (Jn. 13:29) that the disciples “thought, because Judas had the purse, that Jesus had said to him: But those things which we have need of for the festival day, or that he should give something to the poor.” From this it is evident that to keep money by, or any other common property for the support of religious of the same order, or of any other poor, is in accordance with the perfection which Christ taught by His example. Moreover, after the resurrection, the disciples from whom all religious orders took their origin kept the price of the lands, and distributed it according as each one had need (Acts 4:34,35).

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Ariel had been around the longest. He was six feet three inches tall and had round, demure shoulders, big hips and square fleshy breasts that embarrassed him. He had a small head, a long, bumpy nose and large brown eyes that were by turns sweetly candid or forlorn, but otherwise had a disturbing blank quality. He had enjoyed a brief notoriety in punk rock circles for his electric piano music. He talked about his past success in a meek, wistful voice, and showed people old pictures of himself dressed in black, wearing black wing-tipped sunglasses. He was terribly sensitive, and Tommy took advantage of his sensitivity to make fun of him. “Ariel is the spirit of the typing pool,” Tommy would chatter as he ran from clerk to clerk with stacks of papers. “Whenever any of you are craving inspiration, just gaze on Ariel.” “Please, Tom, I’m on the verge of tears,” Ariel would answer funereally. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Tommy would scream. — When Joey first noticed Daisy, he wondered why this pretty young woman had chosen to work in a filthy, broken-down store amid unhappy homosexuals. As time went on, it seemed less and less inappropriate. She was comfortable in the typing pool. She was happy to listen to the boys talk about their adventures in leather bars, where men got blow jobs in open wooden booths or pissed on other men. She told jokes about Helen Keller and sex. She talked about her boyfriends and her painting. She was always crouching at Evelyn’s desk, whispering and laughing about something, or looking at Evelyn’s back issues of True Detective magazine. She wore T-shirts with pictures of cartoon characters on them, and bright-colored pants. Her brown hair was bobbed in a soft curve that ended on either side of her high cheekbones. When she walked, her shoulders and long neck were erect in a busy, almost ducklike way, but her hips and waist were fluid and gently mobile. The heterosexual men were always coming to stand by her desk and talk to her about their poetry or political ideas while she looked at them and nodded. Even the gay men developed a certain bravado in her presence. Tommy kept on reassuring her that her prince was just around the corner. “I can feel it, Daisy,” he would say exultantly. “You’re on a collision course with Mr. Right!” “Do you really think so, Tom?” “It’s obvious! Aren’t you excited?” Then Ariel would get up from his desk and lumber over to her and, bending from the waist, would put his large fleshy arms around her shoulders. Joey could see her small white hand emerge on Ariel’s broad flank as she patiently patted him. And, as if it weren’t enough to be the heartthrob of the basement crowd, she was kind to helpless, repulsive people.

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

  Tuesday nights, the prayer meeting came to my grandmother’s house, and I was always excited, for two reasons. One, I got to clap along on the beat for the singing. And two, I loved to pray. My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who’s white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to South Africa in English so to us it’s in English. Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at white people. Clearly they’re getting through to the right person. Add to that Matthew 19:14. “Suffer little children to come unto me,” Jesus said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesus? That’s a powerful combination right there. Whenever I prayed, my grandmother would say, “That prayer is going to get answered. I can feel it.” Women in the township always had something to pray for—money problems, a son who’d been arrested, a daughter who was sick, a husband who drank. Whenever the prayer meetings were at our house, because my prayers were so good, my grandmother would want me to pray for everyone. She would turn to me and say, “Trevor, pray.” And I’d pray. I loved doing it. My grandmother had convinced me that my prayers got answered. I felt like I was helping people. — There is something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison designed by our oppressors, but it also gave us a sense of self-determination and control. Soweto was ours. It had an aspirational quality that you don’t find elsewhere. In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. For the million people who lived in Soweto, there were no stores, no bars, no restaurants. There were no paved roads, minimal electricity, inadequate sewerage. But when you put one million people together in one place, they find a way to make a life for themselves. A black-market economy rose up, with every type of business being run out of someone’s house: auto mechanics, day care, guys selling refurbished tires.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia loaded the dishwasher in the dimly lit kitchen, scraping the bones and greasy napkins into big black garbage bags. There was TV noise from the den, and the low rasping sound that Jarold made when he moved the newspaper. Charles came in, his face distant, his light jacket flapping. She circled his head with her arm, brought it to her shoulder and held it there to kiss before he broke from her and went away down the hall. She sometimes sat on the couch with a pile of vinyl photo albums. One album opened on her lap to show a glanceful of red snowsuits, Christmas trees, armloads of grinning dolls, and beautiful tall children who smiled, drew pictures and were happy. Holding Easter baskets full of grass and chocolate. Raking the leaves. Winning trophies. The weddings and the graduations. The long-ribboned corsages. She had to remind herself that Anne and Betty had families that were nice in other ways, that one of Betty’s daughters was a certified genius and went to a school for advanced children. — She wrote to Anne and told her, “We’re getting fat and sassy.” — It was winter when Camille called. She asked how Virginia was doing and waited while Virginia told her. She asked about Magdalen and the boys. Then she said, “Mother, I’m having an abortion.” Virginia stifled a choking noise. “Were you raped?” she managed to ask. Camille began to cry. “No,” she said. Virginia waited as Camille controlled her voice. “No,” said Camille. “Kevin doesn’t want to have children. I let myself get pregnant without telling him. I thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t. He’s really mad. He says if I don’t have an abortion, he’ll divorce me.” Virginia left the phone feeling very unlike herself. She made a cup of tea and went into the den with it. She sat on the couch with one gray-socked foot propped up on the coffee table. She wondered why Kevin didn’t want to have children. She did not tell Jarold about the abortion. — Camille came home to visit. She walked around the house in her old snakeskin jumpsuit, her little hips twitching briskly. She told stories about being a corporate lawyer and teased “Daddy.” Virginia admired her. But she noticed the stiff grinning lines around her mouth. Camille visited Magdalen too. She stayed with her for two days before flying back to New York. She wrote Virginia a letter shortly afterward and told her that she felt something strange was happening between John and Magdalen. Magdalen was brittle, she said. John ordered her around a lot, in a very nasty way. She said that late one night she woke up and heard the sound of someone being rhythmically and repeatedly slapped. It went on for about five minutes. Magdalen looked fine the next day, and Camille had been too embarrassed to say anything.

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

  When I first went into Alex, I was drawn by the electricity and the excitement of it, but more important, I was accepted there, more so than I’d been in high school or anywhere else. When I first showed up, a couple of people raised an eyebrow. “Who’s this colored kid?” But the hood doesn’t judge. If you want to be there, you can be there. Because I didn’t live in the hood I was technically an outsider in the hood, but for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like one. The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation. The hood has a wonderful sense of community to it as well. Everyone knows everyone, from the crackhead all the way through to the policeman. People take care of one another. The way it works in the hood is that if any mom asks you to do something, you have to say yes. “Can I send you?” is the phrase. It’s like everyone’s your mom, and you’re everyone’s kid. “Can I send you?” “Yeah, whaddya need?” “I need you to go buy milk and bread.” “Yeah, cool.” Then she gives you some money and you go buy milk and bread. As long as you aren’t busy and it doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t say no. The biggest thing in the hood is that you have to share. You can’t get rich on your own. You have money? Why aren’t you helping people? The old lady on the block needs help, everyone pitches in. You’re buying beer, you buy beer for everyone. You spread it around. Everyone must know that your success benefits the community in one way or another, or you become a target. The township polices itself as well. If someone’s caught stealing, the township deals with them. If someone’s caught breaking into a house, the township deals with them. If you’re caught raping a woman, pray to God the police find you before the township does. If a woman is being hit, people don’t get involved. There are too many questions with a beating. What’s the fight about? Who’s responsible? Who started it? But rape is rape. Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “You remind me of black stiletto heels,” Leisha had said. “I used to picture you all in black, in stretch pants and spike-heeled shoes.” “Oh, brother,” said Susan. But she was flattered. — The apartment Susan was staying in belonged to an old friend named Bobby, who was in Europe for the month and hadn’t bothered to arrange a sublet for so short a time. It was located in the Village only a few blocks from the apartment she had lived in for most of her time in Manhattan. It was much larger than her old apartment, and brighter. Her apartment in Chicago was even larger than Bobby’s. It had high ceilings and large windows; it was fashionably decorated with soft colors and spare-limbed furnishings. It was kept clean by a weekly maid. She had attractive kitchen accessories in matching colors. She remembered Leisha visiting her tiny Manhattan studio and laughing at her, incredulous that after four months Susan’s utensils were still limited to two forks, a knife and a spoon. She went into Bobby’s bedroom and looked at herself in the long mirror, a plump woman wandering calmly toward middle age, standing with one arm wrapped around her waist and a drink in her hand. She had never thought she would be plump or calm. Ten years ago, even six years ago, she never gained weight, no matter how much she ate. Her sudden plumpness was such a novelty that she enjoyed it rather than fighting it, as did most women her age. “You’ve finally come into your real…look,” her mother said approvingly. “You’re not a skinny kid anymore.” This late maternal acceptance had pleased her to such an extent that she found it somewhat sad; just a few years earlier she would’ve rejected it as the words of a woman glad to see the last of an unreasonable reminder of youth and insouciance in the form of her unusually slender daughter.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  AFTER NORMA GRADUATED from Concrete High she moved down to Seattle. She worked in an office where she met a man named Kenneth who took her for long drives in his Austin Healey sports car and tried to talk her into getting married. Norma called my mother all the time and asked for advice. What should she do? She still loved Bobby Crow, but Bobby wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t even have a job. Kenneth was ambitious. On the other hand, nobody liked him. He had very strong opinions about everything and was also a Seventh-day Adventist. But that wasn’t it, exactly. Kenneth just didn’t have a very good personality. Then Norma called up and said she’d decided to marry Kenneth. She refused to explain her decision, but insisted it was final. Naturally, she wanted to invite Kenneth to Chinook to meet the family, and it was finally settled that he should come up during Christmas, when Skipper would also be home. Dwight got the spirit that year. He made a wreath for the door and hung pine boughs all over the living room. A couple of weeks before Christmas he and I drove up into the mountains to get a tree. It was early afternoon, a cold light rain falling. Dwight drank from a pint bottle as we scouted the woods. We found a fine blue spruce growing all by itself in the middle of a clearing, and Dwight let me cut it down while he took nips off his bottle and squinted up at the misty peaks all around us. Once I got the tree down we started wrestling it through the dense growth, back toward the fire road where we’d left the car. We had walked a good distance and the going was rough. I could hear Dwight laboring for breath and muttering when he stumbled. I kept waiting for him to bark at me, but he never did. He was that pleased about Norma coming home. After dinner that night Dwight went into the living room with a can of spray paint and began to shake it. He was very thorough when it came to painting, and if he was using spray paint he always followed the directions to the letter and shook the can well. The agitator rattled loudly as he swung the can back and forth. Pearl and I were doing our homework at the dining-room table. We pretended not to watch. My mother was out somewhere or else she would’ve asked him what he thought he was doing, and possibly even stopped him. When he finished shaking the can, Dwight pulled the tree into the middle of the living room and walked around it two or three times. Then, starting at the top and working his way down, he proceeded to spray it with white paint. I thought he meant to put a few splashes here and there to suggest snow, but he sprayed the whole thing—trunk and all. The needles drank up the paint and turned faintly

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The next place was a tax information office in a slab of building with green trim. They gave me an intelligence test that was mostly spelling and “What’s wrong with this sentence?” The woman came out of her office holding my test and smiling. “You scored higher than anyone else I’ve interviewed,” she said. “You’re really overqualified for this job. There’s no challenge. You’d be bored to death.” “I want to be bored,” I said. She laughed. “Oh, I don’t think that’s true.” We had a nice talk about what people want out of their jobs and then I left. “Well, I hope you weren’t surprised that you had the highest score,” said my mother. We went to the French bakery on Eight-Mile Road and got cookies called elephant ears. We ate them out of a bag as we drove. I felt so comfortable, I could have driven around in the car all day. Then we went to a lawyer’s office on Telegraph Road. It was a receding building made of orange brick. There were no other houses or stores around it, just a parking lot and some taut fir trees that looked like they had been brushed. My mother waited for me in the car. She smiled, took out a crossword puzzle and focused her eyes on it, the smile still gripping her face. The lawyer was a short man with dark, shiny eyes and dense immobile shoulders. He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go. “Come into my office,” he said. We sat down and he fixed his eyes on me. “It’s not much of a job,” he said. “I have a paralegal who does research and leg-work, and the proofreading gets done at an agency. All I need is a presentable typist who can get to work on time and answer the phone.” “I can do that,” I said. “It’s very dull work,” he said. “I like dull work.” He stared at me, his eyes becoming hooded in thought. “There’s something about you,” he said. “You’re closed up, you’re tight. You’re like a wall.” “I know.” My answer surprised him and his eyes lost their hoods. He tilted his head back and looked at me, his shiny eyes bared again. “Do you ever loosen up?” The corners of my mouth jerked, smilelike. “I don’t know.” My palms sweated. — His secretary, who was leaving, called me the next day and said that he wanted to hire me. Her voice was serene, flat and utterly devoid of inflection. “That typing course really paid off,” said my father. “You made a good investment.” He wandered in and out of the dining room in pleased agitation, holding his glass of beer. “A law office could be a fascinating place.” He arched his chin and scratched his throat.