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 Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  And no one thought a thing when the people of the world, movie stars and entertainers, bought fancy things.She gave Brother Terrell an entirely different perspective, reminding him that people sacrificed, some giving everything they owned, so the gospel could be preached, not so we could pile up riches on earth. Her refrain became: “How many cars can you drive? How many houses can you live in? How many suits can you wear?” He darted away without answering and said he had to go to town to make a few business calls. He couldn’t make calls from our house phone, he said. Someone might trace them. The persecution complex was turning into paranoia, nursed along by tussles with law enforcement, the Klan, and no doubt by his secret relationship with my mother. Mama rationalized it as a natural response to all the horrible things the Lord had shown him in visions. The Old Testament prophets were not happy-go-lucky guys, she said. Probably not, but I hoped Brother Terrell would not pull a Jeremiah and take to the streets of our new hometown, crying judgment and eating dung. Anything was possible. The people in Groesbeck were the friendliest I had encountered outside the tent—a congeniality purchased, at least in part, with our newfound affluence. Bankers, lawyers, and shopkeepers went out of their way to say hello on the street. Kids at school assumed I was worth knowing. A seventh-grade cheerleader wanted to be my best friend. Girls invited me to slumber parties. I threw parties, and kids actually came. I nagged my mother into letting me see a movie endorsed by Billy Graham that was playing at the local theater. Afterward, I was able to see every movie that came to town, no matter the rating. Football games, bowling, and skating outings followed. Groesbeck gave me a chance to fit in, to be normal, but I couldn’t quite pull it off. After hours of making and hanging posters encouraging the juniorhigh football team to “Fight, Goats, Fight!” I was jonesing for excitement. Normal was not in my repertoire, nor was it in Mama’s. She didn’t have a clue that I was the only girl in seventh grade who dated high-school seniors. By eighth grade I was dating college guys, with Mama’s blessing, and smoking pot (no blessing involved). The only caveat: My boyfriends and I had to attend the Bible study she led on Friday nights before we headed down one of the country roads to make out or get stoned. She never questioned why I showed up late for curfew (ran out of gas, again) with glassy red eyes (oh, those dusty roads). She didn’t want to be suspicious like her daddy, she said. She didn’t want to make me feel guilty every time I looked at a boy.In reality (whatever that was), my mother didn’t have much time to wonder about my activities.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  In the noncelebrity area, Reese passes a photo booth in front of a sad little square of red carpet, so that civilians could activate a machine in order to make it look like a photographer had taken a red-carpet photo of them. Reese considers pressing the button for herself and posting the results to her social media, but rules it out: To stage an elaborate selfie on a fake red carpet would be demeaning. “Katrina says she’s by the shampoo table,” Ames reads to Reese from a text, then glances up from his phone, perplexed. “Shampoo table? What’s a shampoo table?” “There!” Reese points. A celebrity designer whose features have been pleasingly redrawn with fillers stands before a booth decorated with images of his own face. Two assistants are giving away shampoo to an eager crowd of the noncelebrities. Reese is suddenly covetous, because the bottles look full-sized, not sample-sized. Wait, maybe even family-sized! “Katrina, this is Reese. Reese, this is Katrina,” Ames says to a woman who has peeled away from the crowd. “Hi,” says Katrina, and by way of greeting lifts her chin to indicate the celebrity designer’s booth. “Did you get the free shampoo?” “No! Not yet!” Reese says, and despite herself, she is disarmed. Katrina hands her a sagging tote bag, heavy with the shampoo, and an additional selection of what looks to be an assortment of lip balms and skin moisturizers. “I grabbed an extra one for you.” Reese peers into the tote bag, then holds it at her side, pleased. “It’s confirmed,” Reese says to Ames. “You have good taste in women.” Katrina leads them through the crowd. A brief thrill passes over Reese as she makes meaningful eye contact with a hot middle-aged butch in a white suit who looks like Robin Wright but is not Robin Wright, because this woman can lean against a wall more louchely than Robin Wright could ever dream of doing. But no, Reese! Do not be distracted! Reese breaks off eye contact regretfully and moves on, dutifully following Katrina and Ames who, Reese now notices, hold hands. Reese decides to postpone any feelings about this state of hand affairs for the moment. In the back of one of the conference rooms, beside a coffee bar, Katrina finds an empty couch. As the three settle in, Reese finds herself reluctant to be the first to talk. “Do you want one of those fancy martinis?” Ames asks Reese, and Reese nods. Off to one side of the room stands a Ketel One bar, where bartenders fill glasses with premixed craft cocktails. Ames stands and lets go of Katrina’s hand. “What about you? Can I get you something besides a martini?” Indirect as it is, this is the first acknowledgment of Katrina’s pregnancy, and Reese’s attention narrows.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I announced. “Just because they were interesting people doesn’t mean I care to hear their musings on nighttime.” “It’s about depression, dumb-ass.” “Oooooh, really? Well, jeez, then it’s brilliant,” I answered. She sighed. “All right. The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I’ve got sarcastic company. Sit down, will ya?” I sat down next to her with my legs crossed and our knees touching. She pulled a clear plastic crate filled with dozens of candles out from underneath her bed. She looked at it for a moment, then handed me a white one and a lighter. We spent all morning burning candles—well, and occasionally lighting cigarettes off the burning candles after we stuffed a towel into the crack at the bottom of her door. Over the course of two hours, we added a full foot to the summit of her polychrome candle volcano. “Mount St. Helens on acid,” she said At 12:30, after two hours of me begging for a ride to McDonald’s, Alaska decided it was time for lunch. As we began to walk to the student parking lot, I saw a strange car. A small green car. A hatchback. I’ve seen that car, I thought. Where have I seen the car? And then the Colonel jumped out and ran to meet us. Rather than, like, I don’t know, “hello” or something, the Colonel began, “I have been instructed to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner at Chez Martín.” Alaska whispered into my ear, and then I laughed and said, “I have been instructed to accept your invitation.” So we walked over to the Eagle’s house, told him we were going to eat turkey trailer-park style, and sped away in the hatchback. — The Colonel explained it to us on the two-hour car ride south. I was crammed into the backseat because Alaska had called shotgun. She usually drove, but when she didn’t, she was shotgun-calling queen of the world. The Colonel’s mother heard that we were on campus and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving us familyless for Thanksgiving. The Colonel didn’t seem too keen on the whole idea—“I’m going to have to sleep in a tent,” he said, and I laughed. — Except it turns out he did have to sleep in a tent, a nice four-person green outfit shaped like half an egg, but still a tent. The Colonel’s mom lived in a trailer, as in the kind of thing you might see attached to a large pickup truck, except this particular one was old and falling apart on its cinder blocks, and probably couldn’t have been hooked up to a truck without disintegrating. It wasn’t even a particularly big trailer. I could just barely stand up to my full height without scraping the ceiling. Now I understood why the Colonel was short—he couldn’t afford to be any taller.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  what it would be like to live on a warmer planet when we did not even know what it is like to live in California. Soon after that exchange, my colleague David Schkade and I were granted research funds to study two questions: Are people who live in California happier than others? and What are the popular beliefs about the relative happiness of Californians? We recruited large samples of students at major state universities in California, Ohio, and Michigan. From some of them we obtained a detailed report of their satisfaction with various aspects of their lives. From others we obtained a prediction of how someone “with your interests and values” who lived elsewhere would complete the same questionnaire. As we analyzed the data, it became obvious that I had won the family argument. As expected, the students in the two regions differed greatly in their attitude to their climate: the Californians enjoyed their climate and the Midwesterners despised theirs. But climate was not an important determinant of well-being. Indeed, there was no difference whatsoever between the life satisfaction of students in California and in the Midwest. We also found that my wife was not alone in her belief that Californians enjoy greater well-being than others. The students in both regions shared the same mistaken view, and we were able to trace their error to an exaggerated belief in the importance of climate. We described the error as a focusing illusion. The essence of the focusing illusion is WYSIATI, giving too much weight to the climate, too little to all the other determinants of well-being. To appreciate how strong this illusion is, take a few seconds to consider the question: How much pleasure do you get from your car? An answer came to your mind immediately; you know how much you like and enjoy your car. Now examine a different question: “When do you get pleasure from your car?” The answer to this question may surprise you, but it is straightforward: you get pleasure (or displeasure) from your car when you think about your car, which is probably not very often. Under normal circumstances, you do not spend much time thinking about your car when you are driving it. You think of other things as you drive, and your mood is determined by whatever you think about. Here again, when you tried to rate how much you enjoyed your car, you actually answered a much narrower question: “How much pleasure do you get from your car when you think about it?” The substitution caused you to ignore the fact that you rarely think about your car, a form of duration neglect. The upshot is a focusing illusion. If you like your car, you are

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  He rolls his eyes. “Talk to her if you must.” He sounds exasperated. “Make sure she doesn’t mention anything to Elliot.” I bristle at his insinuation. Kate isn’t like that. “She wouldn’t do that, and I wouldn’t tell you anything she tells me about Elliot—if she were to tell me anything,” I add quickly. “Well, the difference is that I don’t want to know about his sex life,” Christian mutters dryly. “Elliot’s a nosy bastard. But only about what we’ve done so far… She’d probably have my balls if she knew what I wanted to do to you,” he adds so softly I’m not sure I’m supposed to hear it. “Okay,” I agree readily, smiling up at him, relieved. The thought of Kate with Christian’s balls is not something I want to dwell on. His lip quirks up at me, and he shakes his head. “The sooner I have your submission the better, and we can stop all this.” “Stop all what?” “You, defying me.” He reaches down, cups my chin, and plants a swift, sweet kiss on my lips as the doors to the elevator open. He grabs my hand and leads me into the underground garage. Me, defying him…how? Beside the elevator, I can see the black 4x4 Audi, but it’s the sleek black sporty number that blips open and lights up when he points the key fob at it. It’s one of those cars that should have a very leggy blond, wearing nothing but a sash, sprawled across the hood. “Nice car,” I murmur dryly. He glances up and grins. “I know.” And for a split second, sweet, young, carefree Christian is back. It warms my heart. He’s so excited. Boys and their toys. I roll my eyes but can’t stifle my smile. He opens the door for me and I climb in. Whoa…it’s low. He moves around the car with easy grace and folds his long frame elegantly in beside me. How does he do that? “So what sort of car is this?” “It’s an Audi R8 Spyder. It’s a lovely day; we can take the top down. There’s a baseball cap in there. In fact there should be two.” He points to the glove box. “And sunglasses if you want them.” He starts the ignition, and the engine roars behind us. He places his bag in the space behind our seats, presses a button, and the roof slowly retracts. With the flick of a switch, Bruce Springsteen surrounds us. “Gotta love Bruce.” He grins and eases the car out of the parking space and up the steep ramp, where we pause for the gate to lift. Then we’re out into the bright Seattle May morning. I reach into the glove box and retrieve the baseball caps. The Mariners. He likes baseball? I pass him a cap, and he puts it on. I pull my hair through the back of mine and pull the peak down low.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Christian nuzzles my hair again, inhaling deeply. “Well done, baby,” he whispers, quiet joy in his voice. His words curl around me like a soft, fluffy towel from The Heathman Hotel, and I’m so pleased that he’s happy. He picks at the strap on my camisole. “Is this what you sleep in?” he asks gently. “Yes,” I breathe sleepily. “You should be in silks and satins, you beautiful girl. I’ll take you shopping.” “I like my sweats,” I murmur, trying and failing to sound irritated. He kisses my head again. “We’ll see,” he says. We lie for a few more minutes, hours, who knows, and I think I doze. “I have to go,” he says, and leaning down, he kisses my forehead gently. “Are you okay?” His voice is soft. I think about his question. My backside is sore. Well, glowing now, and amazingly I feel, apart from exhausted, radiant. The realization is humbling, unexpected. I don’t understand. “I’m okay,” I whisper. I don’t want to say more than that. He rises. “Where’s your bathroom?” “Down the hall to the left.” He scoops up the other condom and heads out of the bedroom. I rise stiffly and put my sweatpants back on. They chafe a little against my still-smarting behind. I’m so confused by my reaction. I remember him saying—I can’t remember when—that I would feel so much better after a good hiding. How can that be so? I really don’t get it. But strangely, I do. I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience. In fact, I would still go a long way to avoid it, but now…I have this safe, weird, bathed-in-afterglow, sated feeling. I put my head in my hands. I just don’t understand. Christian reenters the room. I can’t look him in the eye. I stare down at my hands. “I found some baby oil. Let me rub it on your behind.” What? “No. I’ll be fine.” “Anastasia,” he warns. I want to roll my eyes but quickly stop myself. I stand facing the bed. Sitting beside me, he gently pulls my sweatpants down again. Up and down like whores’ drawers, my subconscious remarks bitterly. In my head, I tell her where to go. Christian squirts baby oil into his hand and then rubs my behind with careful tenderness—from makeup remover to soothing balm for a spanked ass, who would have thought it was such a versatile liquid. “I like my hands on you,” he murmurs, and I have to agree. Me, too. “There,” he says when he’s finished, and he pulls my pants up again. I glance over at my clock. It’s 10:30. “I’m leaving now.” “I’ll see you out.” I still can’t look at him. Taking my hand, he leads me to the front door. Fortunately, Kate is still not home. She must still be having dinner with her folks and Ethan. I’m really glad she’s not been around to hear my chastisement. “Don’t you have to call Taylor?” I ask, avoiding eye contact.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  She had stuffed a towel into the bottom of our door and insisted it was safe, but I worried—about the cigarette and the “girlfriend.” “All I have to do now,” she said, “is convince you to like her and convince her to like you.” “Monumental tasks,” the Colonel pointed out. He lay on the top bunk, reading for his English class. Moby-Dick. “How can you read and talk at the same time?” I asked. “Well, I usually can’t, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.” “I like that book,” Alaska said. “Yes.” The Colonel smiled and leaned over to look at her from his top bunk. “You would. Big white whale is a metaphor for everything. You live for pretentious metaphors.” Alaska was unfazed. “So, Pudge, what’s your feeling on the former Soviet bloc?” “Um. I’m in favor of it?” She flicked the ashes of her cigarette into my pencil holder. I almost protested, but why bother. “You know that girl in our precalc class,” Alaska said, “soft voice, says thees, not this. Know that girl?” “Yeah. Lara. She sat on my lap on the way to McDonald’s.” “Right. I know. And she liked you. You thought she was quietly discussing precalc, when she was clearly talking about having hot sex with you. Which is why you need me.” “She has great breasts,” the Colonel said without looking up from the whale. “DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN’S BODIES!” Alaska shouted. Now he looked up. “Sorry. Perky breasts.” “That’s not any better!” “Sure it is,” he said. “Great is a judgment on a woman’s body. Perky is merely an observation. They are perky. I mean, Christ.” “You’re hopeless,” she said. “So she thinks you’re cute, Pudge.” “Nice.” “Doesn’t mean anything. Problem with you is that if you talk to her you’ll ‘uh um uh’ your way to disaster.” “Don’t be so hard on him,” the Colonel interrupted, as if he was my mom. “God, I understand whale anatomy. Can we move on now, Herman?” “So Jake is going to be in Birmingham this weekend, and we’re going on a triple date. Well, triple and a half, since Takumi will be there, too. Very low pressure. You won’t be able to screw up, because I’ll be there the whole time.” “Okay.” “Who’s my date?” the Colonel asked. “Your girlfriend is your date.” “All right,” he said, and then deadpanned, “but we don’t get along very well.” “So Friday? Do you have plans for Friday?” And then I laughed, because the Colonel and I didn’t have plans for this Friday, or for any other Friday for the rest of our lives. “I didn’t think so.” She smiled. “Now, we gotta go do dishes in the cafeteria, Chipper.

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

  Th e peculiar vigilance toward the body that we encounter in Roman medicine is the product of an affl uent society. Medicine was a branch of learning that fl ourished with the support of public and private patrons in a wealthy empire. Abundance cre- ated the anxieties of imbalance that fueled an interest in medical knowl- edge. Th e medical literature addressed the concerns of a well- fed elite whose physical labors were few and artifi cial. Th e doctors spoke to the greying crowd, who could take comfort in hearing that wine was healthful and  FROM SHAME TO SIN sexual deceleration was natural. Roman medicine was neither morbid nor ascetic; it was bourgeois, and a little geriatric.  Th e eternal moderation expected of Roman men was, ultimately, a fl ex- ible demand. For most of the population, who lived along the edges of subsistence, moderation was imposed, without pity, by the unrelenting pressures of their material condition; destitution was the better part of vir- tue. Sex outside the house was limited to occasional moments of release, a day at the spectacles, a religious festival, or a visit to a tavern. It was the more privileged classes who had to navigate the choppy waters of sexual restraint by the strength of the will alone. Th e city and the school off ered perpetual temptation. Rich youngbloods were characteristically plea sure seekers. Th e house hold itself was a haunt of allurements: private baths, spa- cious groves, shaded promenades, all attended by an army of servants. Th e dinner party remained the central venue of social intercourse in the Roman Empire, and unsurprisingly it is here that endless tales of erotic intrigue turn up. Th ough Roman men increasingly dined in the company of their wives, the all- male symposium— with trains of female as well as male ser- vants and entertainers— was always a staple of sociability. “What happens to the boys when they’re in their cups, and what the men dare when Pan has hold of them, would take a long time to tell,” said the satirist. But to a phi los o pher, nowhere was the battle between desire and moderation so starkly fought. At the symposia, the quality of a man’s character was re- vealed.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And there is no desire to be of help to others even, because why rob them of a privilege which must be earned? Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line. You don’t become ecstatic and you are not plunged into violent grief; you don’t pray for rain, neither do you dance a jig. You live like a happy rock in the midst of the ocean: you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent motion. You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rock will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid as the ocean from which it was born. This is the musical life which I was approaching by first skating like a maniac through all the vestibules and corridors which lead from the outer to the inner. My struggles never brought me near it, nor did my furious activity, nor my rubbing elbows with humanity. All that was simply a movement from vector to vector in a circle which, however the perimeter expanded, remained withal parallel to the realm I speak of. The wheel of destiny can be transcended at any moment because at every point of its surface it touches the real world and only a spark of illumination is necessary to bring about the miraculous, to transform the skater to a swimmer and the swimmer to a rock. The rock is merely an image of the act which stops the futile rotation of the wheel and plunges the being into full consciousness. And full consciousness is indeed like an inexhaustible ocean which gives itself to sun and moon and also includes the sun and moon. Everything which is is born out of the limitless ocean of light—even the night. Sometimes, in the ceasless revolutions of the wheel, I caught a glimpse of the nature of the jump which it was necessary to make. To jump clear of the clockwork—that was the liberating thought. To be something more, something different , than the most brilliant maniac of the earth! The story of man on earth bored me. Conquest, even the conquest of evil, bored me. To radiate goodness is marvelous, because it is tonic, invigorating, vitalizing. But just to be is still more marvelous, because it is endless and requires no demonstration.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Holy hell, if my mind could just keep up with my body. He leans forward and kisses me quickly. He grabs his stuff from my side table and his shoes—which he doesn’t put on. “Taylor will come and sort your Beetle. I was serious. Don’t drive it. I’ll see you at my place on Sunday. I’ll email you a time.” And like a whirlwind, he’s gone. Christian Grey spent the night with me, and I feel rested. And there was no sex, only cuddling. He told me he never slept with anyone—but he’s slept three times with me. I grin and slowly climb out of my bed. I feel more optimistic than I have for the last day or so. I head for the kitchen, needing a cup of tea. After breakfast, I shower and dress quickly for my last day at Clayton’s. It is the end of an era—goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, WSU, Vancouver, the apartment, my Beetle. I glance at the mean machine—it’s only 7:52. I have time. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Assault and Battery: The After-Effects Date: May 27 2011 08:05 To: Christian Grey Dear Mr. Grey, You wanted to know why I felt confused after you…which euphemism should we apply—spanked, punished, beat, assaulted me. Well, during the whole alarming process, I felt demeaned, debased, and abused. And much to my mortification, you’re right, I was aroused, and that was unexpected. As you are well aware, all things sexual are new to me—I only wish I were more experienced and therefore more prepared. I was shocked to feel aroused. What really worried me was how I felt afterward. And that’s more difficult to articulate. I was happy that you were happy. I felt relieved that it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. And when I was lying in your arms, I felt…sated. But I feel very uncomfortable, guilty even, feeling that way. It doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m confused as a result. Does that answer your question? I hope the world of Mergers and Acquisitions is as stimulating as ever…and that you weren’t too late. Thank you for staying with me. Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Free Your Mind Date: May 27 2011 08:24 To: Anastasia Steele Interesting…if slightly overstated title heading, Miss Steele. To answer your points: I’ll go with spanking—as that’s what it was. So you felt demeaned, debased, abused, and assaulted—how very Tess Durbeyfield of you. I believe it was you who decided on the debasement, if I remember correctly. Do you really feel like this or do you think you ought to feel like this? Two very different things. If that is how you feel, do you think you could just try to embrace these feelings, deal with them, for me? That’s what a submissive would do. I am grateful for your inexperience. I value it, and I’m only beginning to understand what it means. Simply put…it means that you are mine in every way.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  And in this quiet moment as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I’m in the eye of the storm. And despite all he’s said, and what he hasn’t said, I don’t think I have ever been so happy. Chapter Twenty-FourChristian stands in a steel-barred cage. Wearing his soft, ripped jeans, his chest and feet are mouthwateringly naked, and he’s staring at me. His private-joke smile is etched on his beautiful face and his eyes are a molten gray. In his hands he holds a bowl of strawberries. He ambles with athletic grace to the front of the cage, gazing intently at me. Holding up a plump, ripe strawberry, he extends his hand through the bars. “Eat,” he says, his tongue caressing the front of his palate as he enunciates the t. I try to move toward him, but I’m tethered, held back by some unseen force around my wrist, holding me. Let me go. “Come, eat,” he says, smiling his delicious crooked smile. I pull and pull… Let me go! I want to scream and shout, but no sound emerges. I am mute. He stretches a little farther, and the strawberry is at my lips. “Eat, Anastasia.” His mouth forms my name, lingering sensually on each syllable. I open my mouth and bite, the cage disappears, and my hands are free. I reach up to touch him, graze my fingers through his chest hair. “Anastasia.” No. I moan. “Come on, baby.” No. I want to touch you. “Wake up.” No. Please. My eyes flicker unwillingly open for a split second. I’m in bed and someone is nuzzling my ear. “Wake up, baby,” he whispers, and the effect of his sweet voice spreads like warm melted caramel through my veins. It’s Christian. It’s still dark, and the images of him from my dream persist, disconcerting and tantalizing in my head. “Oh no,” I groan. I want back at his chest, back to my dream. Why is he waking me? It’s the middle of the night, or so it feels. Holy shit. Does he want sex—now? “Time to get up, baby. I’m going to switch on the side light.” His voice is quiet. “No,” I groan. “I want to chase the dawn with you,” he says, kissing my face, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, my mouth, and I open my eyes. The side light is on. “Good morning, beautiful.” I groan, and he smiles. “You are not a morning person.” Through the haze of light, I squint and see Christian leaning over me, smiling. Amused. Amused at me. Dressed! In black. “I thought you wanted sex,” I grumble. “Anastasia, I always want sex with you. It’s heartwarming to know that you feel the same,” he says dryly. I gaze at him as my eyes adjust to the light, but he still looks amused…thank heavens. “Of course I do, just not when it’s so late.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  He pulls out of me swiftly and sets me down against the cross, his body supporting mine. Unbuckling the cuffs, he frees my hands, and we both sink to the floor. He pulls me into his lap, cradling me, and I lean my head against his chest. If I had the strength, I’d touch him, but I don’t. Belatedly, I realize he’s still wearing his jeans. “Well done, baby,” he murmurs. “Did that hurt?” “No,” I breathe. I can barely keep my eyes open. Why am I so tired? “Did you expect it to?” he whispers as he holds me close, his fingers pushing some escaped tendrils of hair off my face. “Yes.” “You see, most of your fear is in your head, Anastasia.” He pauses. “Would you do it again?” I think for a moment as fatigue clouds my brain… Again? “Yes.” My voice is so soft. He hugs me tightly. “Good. So would I.” He leans down and softly kisses the top of my head. “And I haven’t finished with you yet.” Not finished with me yet. Holy Moses. There’s no way I can do any more. I am utterly spent and fighting an overwhelming desire to sleep. I’m leaning against his chest, my eyes are closed, and he’s wrapped around me—arms and legs—and I feel…safe, and oh so comfortable. Will he let me sleep, perchance to dream? My mouth quirks up at the silly thought, and turning my face into Christian’s chest, I inhale his unique scent and nuzzle him, but immediately he tenses… Oh crap. I open my eyes and glance up at him. He’s staring at me. “Don’t,” he says in warning. I flush and look back at his chest in longing. I want to run my tongue through the hair, kiss him, and for the first time, I notice he has a few random and faint small, round scars dotted around his chest. Chicken pox? Measles? I think absently. “Kneel by the door,” he orders as he sits back, putting his hands on his knees, effectively releasing me. No longer warm, the temperature of his voice has dropped several degrees. I stumble clumsily up into a standing position and scoot over to the door and kneel as instructed. I’m shaky and very, very tired, monumentally confused. Who would have thought I could have found such gratification in this room? Who could have thought it would be so exhausting? My limbs are deliciously heavy, sated. My inner goddess has a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside of her room. Christian is moving about in the periphery of my vision. My eyes start to droop. “Boring you, am I, Miss Steele?” I jump awake, and Christian is standing in front of me, his arms crossed, glaring down at me. Oh shit, caught napping—this is not going to be good. His eyes soften as I gaze up at him. “Stand up,” he orders.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  My thoughts stray briefly to José as I press send, and through the fog of my fatigue, I remember that his show is next week. Should I invite Christian, knowing how he feels about José? Will Christian still want to see me after that email? I shudder at the thought, then put it out of my mind. I’ll deal with that later. Right now, I am going to enjoy my mom’s company. “Honey, you must be tired. Would you like to sleep when we get home?” “No, Mom. I’d like to go to the beach.” I am in my blue halter-neck tankini, sipping a Diet Coke, on a sun bed facing the Atlantic Ocean, and to think that only yesterday I was staring out at the Sound toward the Pacific. My mother lounges beside me in a ridiculously large floppy sun hat and Jackie O shades, sipping a Coke of her own. We are on Tybee Island Beach, just three blocks from home. She holds my hand. My fatigue has waned, and as I soak up the sun, I feel comfortable, safe, and warm. For the first time in forever, I start to relax. “So, Ana…tell me about this man who has you in such a spin.” Spin! How can she tell? What to say? I can’t talk about Christian in any great detail because of the NDA, but even then, would I choose to talk to my mother about it? I blanch at the thought. “Well?” she prompts and squeezes my hand. “His name’s Christian. He’s beyond handsome. He’s wealthy…too wealthy. He’s very complicated and mercurial.” Yes—I feel inordinately pleased with my concise, accurate summary. I turn on my side to face her, just as she makes the same move. She gazes at me with her crystal-clear blue eyes. “Complicated and mercurial are the two pieces of information I want to concentrate on, Ana.” Oh no… “Oh, Mom, his mood swings make me dizzy. He’s had a grim upbringing, so he’s very closed, difficult to gauge.” “Do you like him?” “I more than like him.” “Really?” She gapes at me. “Yes, Mom.” “Men aren’t really complicated, Ana, honey. They are simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what they’ve said, when really it’s obvious. If I were you, I’d take him literally. That might help.” This sounds like good advice. Take Christian literally. Immediately some of the things he’s said spring into my mind. I don’t want to lose you… You’ve bewitched me… You’ve completely beguiled me… I’ll miss you, too…more than you know… I gaze at my mom. She is on her fourth marriage. Maybe she does know something about men after all.

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  Kneeling behind, I kept the man’s head immobile between my thighs. “And now,” said Sir Edmund to Simone, “mount this little padre.” Simone removed her dress and squatted on the belly of this singular martyr, her cunt next to his flabby cock. “Now,” continued Sir Edmund, “squeeze his throat, the pipe just behind the Adam’s apple: a strong, gradual pressure.” Simone squeezed, a dreadful shudder ran through that mute, fully immobilized body, and the cock stood on end. I took it into my hands and had no trouble fitting it into Simone’s vulva, while she continued to squeeze the throat. The utterly intoxicated girl kept wrenching the big cock in and out with her buttocks, atop the body whose muscles were cracking in our formidable strangleholds. At last, she squeezed so resolutely that an even more violent thrill shot through her victim, and she felt the come shooting inside her cunt. Now she let go, collapsing backwards in a tempest of joy. Simone lay on the floor, her belly up, her thigh still smeared by the dead man’s sperm which had trickled from her vulva. I stretched out at her side to rape and fuck her in turn, but all I could do was squeeze her in my arms and kiss her mouth, because of a strange inward paralysis ultimately caused by my love for the girl and the death of the unspeakable creature. I have never been so content. I didn’t even stop Simone from pushing me aside and going to view her work. She straddled the naked cadaver again, scrutinizing the purplish face with the keenest interest, she even sponged the sweat off the forehead and obstinately waved away a fly buzzing in a sunbeam and endlessly flitting back to alight on the face. All at once, Simone uttered a soft cry. Something bizarre and quite baffling had happened: this time, the insect had perched on the corpse’s eye and was agitating its long nightmarish legs on the strange orb. The girl took her head in her hands and shook it, trembling, then she seemed to plunge into an abyss of reflections. Curiously, we weren’t the least bit worried about what might happen.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Escape—whether it takes the form of marriage or the Foreign Legion—is an illusion. We all know that we take ourselves along wherever we go. My second marriage to a young psychiatrist (after a schizophrenic, a psychiatrist seemed safe ) may have seemed like a way of escape but it wound up plunging me back into myself. Though we hardly knew it publicly in 1966, the Vietnam War was already under way. My second husband was drafted in the first doctors’ draft since the Korean War. He chose to give the Army three years so he could go to Europe rather than ‘Nam—and I followed. Finding myself in Heidelberg, Germany, far from parents, graduate school, my New York friends, I began to write as if my life—literally—depended on it. Writing was my meditation, my sanity, my escape, my homecoming. I wrote poetry, short stories, fragments of novels. I was usually afraid to finish my fictions because finishing implies being judged. And I was not ready to be judged. (Is one ever ready?) Still, it was in Heidelberg that I discovered in myself a writer’s tenacity. I discovered the ability to sit still, to live for years without feedback, to luxuriate in the cave of the secret self where a writer mostly lives. I read and read the writers I loved, letting them become my teachers. I found an English-speaking analyst who helped me untangle the self-destructive patterns that otherwise might have sabotaged my life. Graham Greene, who brilliantly called the writer’s existence “a sort of life,” entitled the second installment of his autobiography Ways of Escape. Escape is the way writers work. We attempt to escape ourselves to find ourselves. This is what I was doing in Heidelberg behind the mask of an Army doctor’s wife. A sort of life indeed. The life at the writing desk is so much more vivid than the life away from it. My three years in Heidelberg found me doing plenty of other things—teaching, writing for a tourist magazine, surrendering to psychoanalysis—yet when I think of those years, I always remember myself at my desk in the darkish second bedroom of the dismal Army housing project where we lived. I read ravenously and wrote constantly. The housewifery and the teaching and the magazine writing with which I leavened my writing all fade to a blur compared to my memory of myself hunched toward the self-imposed discipline of that desk. 1966 to 1969 were vivid years in Heidelberg—and in the world. They found Heidelberg University students marching down the Hauptstrasse chanting, “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh,” and hurling cobblestones at the polizei like their Paris confreres. Hallucinogenic drugs were ubiquitous. Social and sexual revolution were in the smoky air.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  Gregg’s breathing and the creaking bench—and Pastor Knarffssen’s yanking. Gregg and the Pastor together glanced at the dark brown nipples on Pali’s broad chest softening in the heat. Pali looked curiously at Gregg. He was as tall as Pali and as broad shouldered. While the Pastor was narrow, Gregg had thick thighs and a jutting, dimpled ass, perfectly round. While the Pastor was covered in invisible white hairs that tickled anyone he sat by, Gregg was a smooth slab of corn-fed farm boy. “They’re not related at all,” Pali decided. “Oh, flex that ass,” muttered the Pastor, watching his assis tant. “This reminds me of Fiji,” said Pali. “Why Fiji?” asked the Pastor. “I used to go swimming with the Catholic seminarians there—this was before I decided to study the teachings of Martin Luther,” said Pali. “Where’d you swim?” asked the Pastor. “At a waterfall near Suva. Once a Tongan woman from New Zealand joined us, she said she was a writer; we could see her breasts under her wet lavalava, and she said all sorts of suggestive things!” “Like what?” asked the Pastor. “I made hors d’oeuvres!” said Gregg, jumping up and run ning out of the sauna. “My son is nervous today,” said the Pastor. “You’d think it was the first time we’ve had a guest from overseas.” © The snow was ripping through the air outside. Pali stood in the master bedroom wearing a lavalava that the Pastor had

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  It mattered little to me that the accord obtained was external, imposed from without and perhaps temporary; I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. Since hatred, stupidity, and delirium have lasting effects, I saw no reason why good will, clarity of mind and just practice would not have their effects, too. Order on the frontiers was nothing if I could not persuade a Jewish peddler and a Greek grocer to live peaceably side by side. Peace was my aim, but not at all my idol; even to call it my ideal would displease me as too remote from reality. I had considered going so far in my refusal of conquests as to abandon Dacia, and would have done so had it been prudent to break openly with the policy of my predecessor; but it was better to utilize as wisely as possible those gains acquired before my accession and already recorded by history. The admirable Julius Bassus, first governor of that newly organized province, had died in his labors there, as I myself had almost succumbed in my year on the Sarmatian frontiers, exhausted by the thankless task of endless pacification in a country which had supposedly been subdued. I ordered a funeral triumph for him in Rome, an honor reserved ordinarily only for emperors; this homage to a good servitor sacrificed in obscurity was my last, and indirect, protest against the policy of conquest; nor had I need to denounce it publicly from the time that I was empowered to cut it short. On the other hand, military measures had to be taken in Mauretania, where agents of Lusius Quietus were fomenting revolt; nothing, however, required my immediate presence there. It was the same in Britain, where the Caledonians had taken advantage of withdrawal of troops for the war in Asia to decimate the reduced garrisons left on the frontiers. Julius Severus saw to what was most urgent there while awaiting the time when restoration of order in Roman affairs would permit me to undertake that long voyage. But I greatly desired to take charge myself in the Sarmatian war, which had been left inconclusive, and this time to throw in the number of troops requisite to make an end of barbarian depredations. For I refused, here as everywhere, to subject myself to a system.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  As soon as I was alone I set out my dictionaries, English, French and Dutch, and my notebooks and inks; I checked the crockery—two of everything, which seemed another good sign—and switched on the creaking electric plate. I'd persuaded myself it didn't matter there was no heating—only a little blower that roared and ate electricity. I bounced on the bed and set its loose finials jingling. At the front of my main room a leaded dormer looked down into the courtyard and across to the shuttered upper floor of the doctor's house; but at the back there was a big sash-window. It looked westward, across to the mouldering apse of the church of St Narcissus; on the map the drawing of its singular brick tower and pointed lantern obliterated my house and the garden that lay between us. I heaved open the heavy frame and stared into the silence of the leafy space below. On the left was the ivy-covered height of the cinema's blank back wall and on the right a canal in which the rotting water-door and tall barred windows of some ancient institutional building were reflected. The garden itself was not a churchyard, although the church presided over it and someone had chopped back the alder at its base and poisoned the creeper that still blackly covered its sunken outhouse or boiler-room. It was hard to imagine who—there seemed to be no door into the garden, and where the canal lay by the far wall of the church I could just make out fanned black spikes. The grass between the fruit trees had been scythed and left. Craning round I saw the blue ribbon of a toilet-roll thrown from a height and caught in the branches. And there was something I couldn't quite see, a little stone figure of some kind, herm or saint, satyr or cupid, sheltered by leaves and ankle-deep in hay. I wanted to get down there, and then a moment later felt I would rather leave it unvisited for ever. The beauty of it lay not so much in itself as in its solitude, like any high-walled place in the middle of a town—deaf old widow's garden or padlocked grave-ground of the Jews or Trinitarians.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As a result, they come to their own adult relationships with an understanding of how a couple maintains a balanced relationship, of how that balance fluctuates over time, of how partners protect each other. Moreover, they enter their own marriages with the sense that change is going to happen and that they have power to influence the direction of those changes. When I asked Gary about his parents’ current relationship, he said, “I think that they’re happier. They went through a serious crisis a few years ago when my mom got breast cancer, and we all worried that she’d die. But she’s in remission and their whole life has changed. He’s more attentive, and when they’re together he sticks by her instead of going off and making the social rounds. They’ve worked on finding activities that they both enjoy doing together. Mom is more relaxed than she’s ever been.” As I thought about what Gary said, I realized that we have not appreciated the importance of an intact marriage in guiding the expectations and behavior of the younger generation. Adults whose parents have stayed together through thick and thin say that they deliberately use their parents’ example in the early years of their own marriages. One woman said, “Whenever my husband and I quarrel, we look at our parents, who have been together for so many years, and we say if they could do it, so can we. It makes it better and easier for us.” It is deeply reassuring for young adults to have an external model of stability at this juncture in their lives. We’ve tended to think that people complete their growing up by the time they enter adulthood, but most of us are still in need of parental examples and symbolic support. The vision of a stable marriage in which two people have weathered small squalls and major storms is of critical importance to young people as they start out on their journey, especially in today’s unstable world. The sheer power of this symbol is revealed when much older parents decide to divorce. One might think that the grown children of such couples might feel sad but not devastated. After all, they’re adults. They’re not losing the protection of an intact family, familiar surroundings, and other supports. But when we talk to them, they’re profoundly distressed. In addition to their concern over the suffering of one or both parents and their resentment at having to take care of a grieving or angry parent, the divorce sends shock waves through their world. Suddenly they are propelled into examining their own relationships and into wondering and worrying what and who they can rely on and for how long. This is another way that the high incidence of divorce affects us all. In the absence of a long remarriage, children of divorce don’t get to see married people struggle over the life course.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I left my betters the task of analyzing glacial drifts, drumlins, and gremlins, and kremlins, and for a time tried to jot down what I fondly thought were “reactions” (I noticed, for instance, that dreams under the midnight sun tended to be highly colored, and this my friend the photographer confirmed). I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters, such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food-fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio programs, changes in outlook and so forth. Everybody got so fed up with this that I soon dropped the project completely, and only toward the end of my twenty months of cold labor (as one of the botanists jocosely put it) concocted a perfectly spurious and very racy report that the reader will find published in the Annals of Adult Psychophysics for 1945 or 1946, as well as in the issue of Arctic Explorations devoted to that particular expedition; which, in conclusion, was not really concerned with Victoria Island copper or anything like that, as I learned later from my genial doctor; for the nature of its real purpose was what is termed “hush-hush,” and so let me add merely that whatever it was, that purpose was admirably achieved. The reader will regret to learn that soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity (if to melancholia and a sense of insufferable oppression that cruel term must be applied). I owe my complete restoration to a discovery I made while being treated at that particular very expensive sanatorium. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake “primal scenes”; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament. By bribing a nurse I won access to some files and discovered, with glee, cards calling me “potentially homosexual” and “totally impotent.” The sport was so excellent, its results—in my case—so ruddy that I stayed on for a whole month after I was quite well (sleeping admirably and eating like a schoolgirl).