Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 26 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  herself to “the daughters of Jerusalem.” She compares herself to a vineyard, which she “has not kept.” II. 1:7—2:7: a dialogue between man and woman, which starts by making inquiries about a rendezvous and culminates in mutual admiration. III. 2:8-17: a poem describing an encounter with the beloved. IV. 3:1-5: a description of the search for and discovery of the beloved. V. 3:6-11: a poem describing a wedding procession of King Solomon, which may be an implicit analogy, comparing the splendor of the beloved to the glory of Solomon. VI. 4:1—5:1: a poem describing the physical beauty of the woman. This kind of poem is called a wasf and is typical of Near Eastern love poetry. VII. 5:2—6:4: a dialogue between the woman and the daughters of Jerusalem, which includes a description of the man in the style of a wasf. VIII. 6:5-12: a poem spoken by the man in praise of the woman. Again, there are elements of a wasf here. IX. 7:1-9: another wasf in praise of the woman. X. 7:10—8:4: a poem by the woman expressing her desire. XI. 8:5-14: a series of very short poems that serve as an epilogue or conclusion. The woman refers to “my vineyard, my very own,” in 8:12, thereby echoing the introductory verses. The Song of Songs contains some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible. It is rich in similes and repeatedly evokes scenes from nature. The beloved is compared to a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley, a lily among brambles (2:1-2), or to a dove in the clefts of the rock (2:14). The beloved speaks at a time when winter is past, flowers appear on the earth, and the sound of the turtledove is heard in the land (2:10-12). Most striking is the appreciation of physical beauty in the wasf poems. (For comparable emphasis on physical beauty in the Jewish tradition, we must go to the postbiblical Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran, which praises the beauty of Sarah in similar detail.) Admittedly, some of the similes are startling to the ears of an urban, Western reader: “I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots” (1:9). “Your hair is like a flock of

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Therese’s House to the milk barn, burning rubber and raising clouds of dust. For years, Sister Catherine had warned us about the dangers of “particular friendships,” but in this new, unrestrained atmosphere, friendships formed instantly between the young singers and ourselves. Inexplicably, neither Sister Catherine nor any of the Angels appeared to notice, much less reprimand us. When Sister Catherine departed as usual for her home in Waltham, the already relaxed environment became even more comfortable. The rules went into a state of suspension. Several of the choir members were themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. They openly held hands and kissed, and I feared that the Angels might report such sightings to Sister Catherine. But nothing seemed to be out of bounds during the choir’s ten-day stay. I made one particular friend of my own, a beautiful dark-haired girl named Mercedes. She and I took long walks together through the fields, and I soaked up her every word (in her halting English) of her life in the university and the fiancé she planned to marry. I felt a twang of jealousy, imagining their future together in marital bliss, in contrast to the life I would lead. And then there was Pacco, a short but ruggedly good-looking young man, who caught my eye the moment he stepped off the bus. His jet-black eyes and his dimpled boyish smile made my heart beat faster and my knees wobble. Each evening after dinner when we gathered in the living room to sing songs and talk in our limited Spanish and English, I tried to position myself next to him. I breathed the scent of his cologne, hoping it would cling to my blouse. Life as a postulant was in abeyance and I wished it could be that way forever. The ten-day visit came to an end all too soon, and we exchanged addresses with our newfound friends, promising to write. Mercedes gave me a present of a miniature porcelain pitcher, which I still have more than fifty years later. Pacco gave me his address, and I noticed that he put a dash through his seven, a custom I instantly adopted. Then the forty young singers and their conductor boarded the Greyhound bus for the trip to New York and Lincoln Center. [image file=Image00029.jpg] Waving them off and promising to write, we sang a farewell song in Spanish, one they had taught us in four-part harmony. The music was punctuated with sobs. Even Sister Catherine seemed moved, waving her white handkerchief as the bus slowly headed down Route 110 on its way to New York City. As it disappeared into the distance, I was gripped with a sense of loss. The last ten days had seemed like a miracle, and now it was over. An ache as hard as a stone sat in my heart. Pacco was gone. So was Mercedes. Would I ever see them again?

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As we swatted away the endless reign of terror from deerflies, horseflies, and mosquitoes, one of the Angels would stand at the end of one of the long rows reading aloud to us stories from the lives of the saints. A midday swimming break in the spring-fed watering hole that Sister Catherine had constructed the year after we moved to Still River was a blessed relief. Each summer also brought with it a challenge—a project hatched by Sister Catherine. One year it might be clearing the brush from acres of land to increase the pastures for our growing herds. Another time we built hermitages, in the image of the early saints who chose to leave society and retire into the desert. This summer we undertook to build a fieldstone chicken coop under the supervision of the Big Sisters. At twenty by forty feet and ten feet high, its construction required an enormous effort. Gathering the building stones entailed dismantling the generations-old stone walls that ran through our property. Despite the backbreaking nature of the work, lugging boulders and rocks to the site, I reveled in the experience, envisioning myself as a frontier woman, a pioneer of sorts, as I learned how to mix cement and use a plumb bob to ensure that the walls would be straight. Recreation that summer included our first horseback riding lessons. As Little Sisters, we were required to ride sidesaddle, while the Little Brothers had both English and western saddles. I didn’t take naturally to horses, but my interest in riding was augmented by our riding instructor, Brother Dominic Maria. Before joining the Center, he had been Temple Morgan (related to the wealthy Astors and Morgans). He’d gone to Groton School and then Harvard College, where he was a member of the prestigious Porcellian Club. Raised on a stately horse farm in Maryland, he was an excellent rider. Until that summer, I’d barely noticed Brother Dominic Maria. But when he took my hands to show me how to hold the reins, I suddenly became aware of him in a different way. At six foot two, rugged and wiry, with jet-black hair and deep brown eyes, he was nothing like Brother Sebastian, my first crush of a year earlier, who was short and delicate looking, played the cello, and did indoor kinds of things like arranging flowers and writing poems. I didn’t understand my own feelings, but my heart skipped a beat each time I put my left foot into Brother Dominic Maria’s cupped hands and hoisted myself up into the sidesaddle. As I sat poised and ready to ride off with my horse, he spoke in a low tone. “Remember, you’re the boss, girl. Don’t let the horse get control of you. He can tell if you’re nervous.” “Girl”—I loved how he said that. No one said that at the Center. I could scarcely concentrate on the horse, as my insides got all fluttery. And “boss”—another word I never heard spoken.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  What I was unprepared for, upon entering my thirteenth year, was finding myself thrust into a world I had no idea how to maneuver—an attraction to boys. The first inkling came through books, as I devoured an array of new arrivals in our library—books on sports figures, mostly famous football players, like Joe Bellino who played for Navy, and Knute Rockne who’d been a star at Notre Dame. Sitting on my bed, I would turn the pages, gazing at the photographs of the handsome athletes in their team uniforms, with their husky builds and their good looks. This growing interest I shared with no one, least of all Sister Catherine. Her constant exhortation that we share with her, as she put it, “the deepest yearnings of your soul” added to my wariness. Much as I craved to be loved and accepted by her, I had come to the realization that, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I was blighted in her eyes. Concomitant with my new obsession with books about athletes and boys was my fading appetite for reading the lives of the saints. I read Tom Playfair so many times that I had memorized the first few pages. “Tommy!” No answer. “Tommy—do you hear me? Get up this moment, sir. Do you think this house is a hotel? Everyone’s at breakfast except yourself.” That’s what life was like out in the world, I figured. But my love affair with these new books was to be short-lived. One day, I was summoned to Sister Catherine’s office. “Anastasia,” Sister Catherine said in a tone that meant business. “You are no longer to read any books about football. Those books were meant for the Little Brothers. Do you hear me?” “Yes, Sister Catherine,” I said. It made no sense. If I wasn’t supposed to read books about football, why did Father take us to watch the high school football games in Clinton and Leominster on Saturday mornings? Sister Catherine went on. “And you’ve read Tom Playfair enough. From now on, all books on boys are out of bounds for you as well. You may leave.” I left her office disheartened and with a feeling of having been trapped. Who told her I was reading those books? Which Angel? I was left guessing. Sister Catherine may have outwitted herself because once she banished the books that were the source of my innocent musings about boys, my fascination turned to the real men around me. Brother Sebastian became my first crush, the Big Brother I had adored as a small child when he told me bedtime stories about the lives of the saints. For reasons I didn’t understand, I began to find him irresistible. I’d pass by the chapel where he worked as the sacristan in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him, sure that my preoccupation was my own secret. So I was more than shocked when, summoned once again to Sister Catherine’s office, she came to the point directly.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Brother Basil was married and had five children, a Little Brother and four Little Sisters, two of whom were among my favorite playmates. Long before dawn each morning, he headed to the barn to milk the cows. My cubicle on the south side of St. Ann’s House provided a clear view of the barn and milk house. As I rose and got dressed, I kept an eagle eye on the activities at the barn. The moment Brother Basil left the milk house and stepped into the pickup truck to head back up to the house, I timed my own departure from St. Ann’s House so that our paths would cross as he emerged from his vehicle at St. Therese’s House. He walked in silence and did nothing to acknowledge my presence, but that didn’t dilute my pleasure. My infatuation was guileless. While my insides would flutter every time I thought of Brother Basil, which was nearly every waking moment, I had not a clue as to the cause of my interest, much less any control over it. When our paths would cross, his unabashed, although silent, acknowledgment with a broad smile made my heart swell. I began to plot ways in which we could bump into each other at least once during the day. The innocence of my crush was so honest that I had not an inkling of how such emotions might develop into something more. Kissing never crossed my mind, nor did the idea of holding hands. I wanted only to see him and be near him. I was propelled by a bundle of hormones that I could do nothing to stop, and about which I had been taught nothing. One day, I received a message that Sister Catherine wanted to see me in her office. She came to the point in a hurry. “Anastasia,” she said, sitting upright and arching her back as her eyes narrowed, “you are to stay away from Brother Basil. Do you understand me?” I remained composed as I stood in silence, trying to fathom how she had figured out my interest. “From now on, when you need to order hay or grain for your cows, you are to ask Sister Teresa. You are not to approach Brother Basil. Have I made myself clear?” “Yes, Sister Catherine.” I was shattered. My cows had provided a legitimate excuse for contact with Brother Basil, and now Sister Catherine had snatched it away. But even her stern warning couldn’t prevent me from doing my best to monitor his movements. I remained mindful of where he was at all times—on the tractor mowing the hayfields or calling the cows to be milked, in the chapel after dinner, or at the movies on Sunday nights. One afternoon while I was working in the chicken coop, I saw Brother Basil walking slowly across the field with the slight lilt that he had in his step. The flutter in my heart propelled me into action.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Fabiola, the much-loved daughter of a wealthy pagan Roman. Her mother had died when she was an infant. Her confidante was Syra, her most valued slave and a Christian in hiding, who eventually converted Fabiola. While Sister Catherine was endeavoring to inspire us with the honor of martyrdom, what captivated me was the vivid depiction of daily life in a wealthy Roman household in the fourth century. I longed for Fabiola’s lifestyle, her many-roomed mansion with servants and silver, her elegant clothes and expensive jewelry—in particular, a radiant emerald ring. The vivid imagery provided endless new material for reverie, as I imagined myself as Fabiola. Pagan or Christian, she was my model. If, instead of engaging in a session of reading, Sister Catherine had business on her mind, it was evident from the force of her stride, from the glint in her eye, the set of her jaw, and the pursed lips, as she took the few steps to her post in the doorway between our two refectories. And she’d come to the point without any small talk. That’s what happened the evening she introduced the Big Punisher. “For those of you who break the rules, there will be a new form of punishment—the Big Punisher—and it will be unlike anything you have ever experienced before. It’s for the good of your souls.” She didn’t describe it or show it. She deliberately left it a secret, so we had to imagine what kind of device the Big Punisher might be. But the threat was enough to convince me that I would do everything I could to avoid being beaten with it. The Big Punisher was immediately put into use. At almost any time of the day or evening, one of the Angels could be seen exiting Sister Catherine’s spacious cubicle carrying the dreaded black leather bag that held the secret weapon. What was it? Only as its use increased did the rumor spread among the children as to what the secret was. Those who were beaten regularly would report back on sightings, when an Angel couldn’t thrust it behind her back fast enough to keep from divulging its identity. It was hose—a two- to three-foot section of garden hose, came the word. It was used at the whim of any Angel or Sister Catherine herself. Some Angels seemed to relish wielding it. Others, like Sister Maria Crucis (my Angel) and Sister Marietta (my brother’s Angel), had no use for it.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I try to keep all this feeling in a safe place, a neatly contained place, because that is where it will always have to stay. And then there is the intensity of want. Raw urges. Engulfing. Crushing. Tenderness and fierceness, both. Possession. The container is a lie. The container has been shattered. Someone has found the way to my warm. They have taken my atlas into their hands. They trace the wildly arcing lines from beginning to end. VI81I go to the doctor as rarely as possible because when I go, whether for an ingrown toenail or a cold, doctors can only see and diagnose my body. I have gone to an emergency care facility for a sore throat and watched as the doctor wrote, in the diagnosis section, first, “morbid obesity” and, second, “strep throat.” Doctors generally adhere to the Hippocratic oath, where they swear to abide by an ethical code, where they swear to act, always, in their patients’ best interests. Unless the patient is overweight. I hate going to the doctor because they seem wholly unwilling to follow the Hippocratic oath when it comes to treating obese patients. The words “first do no harm” do not apply to unruly bodies. There is the humiliation of simply being in the doctor’s office, which is, all too often, ill-equipped for the obese body, despite all the public hysteria about obesity and health. Many scales cannot weigh patients who weigh over 350 pounds. Blood pressure cuffs are always too small, as are the threadbare hospital gowns. It is difficult to climb onto the exam table. It is difficult to lie back, to make myself vulnerable, to be splayed wide open. There is the humiliation of the scale, of confronting that number or confronting a scale that cannot accommodate my size. And of course, there is the performance of trying to get to my “actual” weight by kicking off my shoes and wishing I could take off all my clothes, cut off my hair, have my vital organs and skeleton removed. Then, maybe, I would be willing to be weighed, measured, judged. When a nurse asks me to step on the scale, I often decline, tell her that I know how much I weigh. I tell her I am happy to share that number with her. Because when I do get on the scale, few nurses can hide their disdain or their disgust as my weight appears on the digital readout. Or they look at me with pity, which is almost worse because my body is simply my body, not something that demands pity. In the examination room, I hold my hands in tight fists. I am on guard, ready to fight, and really, I do have to fight, for my dignity, for the right to basic medical treatment.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Brother Basil was married and had five children, a Little Brother and four Little Sisters, two of whom were among my favorite playmates. Long before dawn each morning, he headed to the barn to milk the cows. My cubicle on the south side of St. Ann’s House provided a clear view of the barn and milk house. As I rose and got dressed, I kept an eagle eye on the activities at the barn. The moment Brother Basil left the milk house and stepped into the pickup truck to head back up to the house, I timed my own departure from St. Ann’s House so that our paths would cross as he emerged from his vehicle at St. Therese’s House. He walked in silence and did nothing to acknowledge my presence, but that didn’t dilute my pleasure. My infatuation was guileless. While my insides would flutter every time I thought of Brother Basil, which was nearly every waking moment, I had not a clue as to the cause of my interest, much less any control over it. When our paths would cross, his unabashed, although silent, acknowledgment with a broad smile made my heart swell. I began to plot ways in which we could bump into each other at least once during the day. The innocence of my crush was so honest that I had not an inkling of how such emotions might develop into something more. Kissing never crossed my mind, nor did the idea of holding hands. I wanted only to see him and be near him. I was propelled by a bundle of hormones that I could do nothing to stop, and about which I had been taught nothing. One day, I received a message that Sister Catherine wanted to see me in her office. She came to the point in a hurry. “Anastasia,” she said, sitting upright and arching her back as her eyes narrowed, “you are to stay away from Brother Basil. Do you understand me?” I remained composed as I stood in silence, trying to fathom how she had figured out my interest. “From now on, when you need to order hay or grain for your cows, you are to ask Sister Teresa. You are not to approach Brother Basil. Have I made myself clear?” “Yes, Sister Catherine.” I was shattered. My cows had provided a legitimate excuse for contact with Brother Basil, and now Sister Catherine had snatched it away. But even her stern warning couldn’t prevent me from doing my best to monitor his movements. I remained mindful of where he was at all times—on the tractor mowing the hayfields or calling the cows to be milked, in the chapel after dinner, or at the movies on Sunday nights. One afternoon while I was working in the chicken coop, I saw Brother Basil walking slowly across the field with the slight lilt that he had in his step. The flutter in my heart propelled me into action.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  26A couple weeks before my junior year was supposed to begin, I disappeared. I told no one where I was going, not my roommate, who was increasingly and justifiably fed up with my erratic behavior, or my acquaintances, or even my parents. I flew to San Francisco because I had met a man in his forties on an online bulletin board and we had mutual . . . interests. For the first time in my life, I felt wanted, and though I felt no real desire for this man, being wanted was enough. I put my body in danger even though I knew better, but I wanted nothing more than to leave my life as I knew it. I grabbed at my only way out. For all the trouble I’ve known, I have also been very lucky. This older man was strange but kind. He never hurt me. He never forced me to do anything I did not want to do. He looked out for me and introduced me to other strange but kind people who accepted me as I was—young, lost, and a complete fucking wreck—without taking advantage of me. We went to San Francisco to attend some parties, where I met many of the people I had been chatting with online for months. After a raucous time, he invited me to follow him to Scottsdale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where he lived. I didn’t want to return to my life. I couldn’t. So I didn’t. I had no money, only a few days’ worth of clothing. No one who loved me knew where I was. I was thrilled. I felt free because I didn’t have to pretend to be the good Ivy League girl anymore for my parents or anyone else. I spent nearly a year in Phoenix. I lost my mind and I didn’t even try to pull the pieces of myself back together. I just did whatever I wanted. I did the kinds of things that the good girl I had long pretended to be would never dream of doing. There was no more pretending I was a straight-A student or a girl who cared about grades or a good daughter or a good anything. Completely unmoored from my previous life, I could be a blank slate. I could reinvent myself. I could take the kinds of risks that would have, not long before, been unthinkable. I could complete the break that had long been growing between me and my family and everything I had ever known.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  To make matters worse, I was still attracted to men, often intensely. In bed with my girlfriends, I sometimes pretended I was with someone else, someone with a body harder in certain places, leaner in others. I told myself it was enough. I told myself everyone has fantasies. I hated myself for wanting men when men had hurt me so badly. I told myself I was gay. I told myself this was all I could have so I couldn’t get hurt. I told myself I was stone. For quite some time, I touched but wouldn’t allow myself to be touched. I was stone and untouchable. I seethed. I was swollen with desire, with a desperate need to be touched, to feel a woman’s skin against my skin, to find release through pleasure. I withheld even that from myself. I punished myself. I was stone. I could not bleed. Years later, I realized that I could bleed and I could make others bleed. At the end of Adriana’s visit, I returned home after taking her to the airport, leaving her with the promise we would see each other again soon. It was a promise I kept before I broke another promise and then broke her heart. Fiona had written me beautiful letters telling me everything I always wanted to hear from her. I sat on my couch, reading her words over and over, shaking because, finally, I had everything I wanted from her in the palm of my hand, and because, even then, I knew I was going to push her away. All I needed to do was pick up the phone and dial a number. All I needed to do was say, “Yes.” 69For far too long, I did not know desire. I simply gave myself, gave my body, to whoever offered me even the faintest of interest. This was all I deserved, I told myself. My body was nothing. My body was a thing to be used. My body was repulsive and therefore deserved to be treated as such. I did not deserve to be desired. I did not deserve to be loved. In relationships, I never allowed myself to make the first move because I knew I was repulsive. I did not allow myself to initiate sex. I did not dare want something so fine as affection or sexual pleasure. I knew I had to wait until it was offered, each and every time. I had to be grateful for what was offered. I entered relationships with people who mostly tolerated me and occasionally offered me a trifle of affection. There was the woman who cheated on me and the woman who stabbed my favorite teddy bear with a steak knife and the woman who always seemed to need money and the woman who was too ashamed of me to take me to work parties. There were men too, but they were mostly unmemorable and, frankly, I expected them to hurt me.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I try to keep all this feeling in a safe place, a neatly contained place, because that is where it will always have to stay. And then there is the intensity of want. Raw urges. Engulfing. Crushing. Tenderness and fierceness, both. Possession. The container is a lie. The container has been shattered. Someone has found the way to my warm. They have taken my atlas into their hands. They trace the wildly arcing lines from beginning to end. VI81I go to the doctor as rarely as possible because when I go, whether for an ingrown toenail or a cold, doctors can only see and diagnose my body. I have gone to an emergency care facility for a sore throat and watched as the doctor wrote, in the diagnosis section, first, “morbid obesity” and, second, “strep throat.” Doctors generally adhere to the Hippocratic oath, where they swear to abide by an ethical code, where they swear to act, always, in their patients’ best interests. Unless the patient is overweight. I hate going to the doctor because they seem wholly unwilling to follow the Hippocratic oath when it comes to treating obese patients. The words “first do no harm” do not apply to unruly bodies. There is the humiliation of simply being in the doctor’s office, which is, all too often, ill-equipped for the obese body, despite all the public hysteria about obesity and health. Many scales cannot weigh patients who weigh over 350 pounds. Blood pressure cuffs are always too small, as are the threadbare hospital gowns. It is difficult to climb onto the exam table. It is difficult to lie back, to make myself vulnerable, to be splayed wide open. There is the humiliation of the scale, of confronting that number or confronting a scale that cannot accommodate my size. And of course, there is the performance of trying to get to my “actual” weight by kicking off my shoes and wishing I could take off all my clothes, cut off my hair, have my vital organs and skeleton removed. Then, maybe, I would be willing to be weighed, measured, judged. When a nurse asks me to step on the scale, I often decline, tell her that I know how much I weigh. I tell her I am happy to share that number with her. Because when I do get on the scale, few nurses can hide their disdain or their disgust as my weight appears on the digital readout. Or they look at me with pity, which is almost worse because my body is simply my body, not something that demands pity. In the examination room, I hold my hands in tight fists. I am on guard, ready to fight, and really, I do have to fight, for my dignity, for the right to basic medical treatment.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  40Part of disciplining the body is denial. We want but we dare not have. We deny ourselves certain foods. We deny ourselves rest by working out. We deny ourselves peace of mind by remaining ever vigilant over our bodies. We withhold from ourselves until we achieve a goal and then we withhold from ourselves to maintain that goal. My body is wildly undisciplined, and yet I deny myself nearly everything I desire. I deny myself the right to space when I am in public, trying to fold in on myself, to make my body invisible even though it is, in fact, grandly visible. I deny myself the right to a shared armrest because how dare I impose? I deny myself entry into certain spaces I have deemed inappropriate for a body like mine—most spaces inhabited by other people, public transportation, anywhere I could be seen or where I might be in the way, really. I deny myself bright colors in my daily clothing choices, sticking to a uniform of denim and dark shirts even though I have a far more diverse wardrobe. I deny myself certain trappings of femininity as if I do not have the right to such expression when my body does not follow society’s dictates for what a woman’s body should look like. I deny myself gentler kinds of affection—to touch or be kindly touched—as if that is a pleasure a body like mine does not deserve. Punishment is, in fact, one of the few things I allow myself. I deny myself my attractions. I have them, oh I do, but dare not express them, because how dare I want. How dare I confess my want? How dare I try to act on that want? I deny myself so much, and still there is so much desire throbbing beneath my surfaces. Denial merely puts what we want just beyond reach, but we still know it’s there.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I am nowhere near as brave as people believe me to be. As a writer, armed with words, I can do anything, but when I have to take my body out into the world, courage fails me. I am fat. I am six foot three. I take up space in nearly every way. I stand out when my nature is to very much want to disappear. But I love fashion. I love the idea of wearing color, blouses with interesting cuts and silhouettes, something low-cut that shows off my décolletage. I have any number of fine dress slacks, and I enjoy staring at them in my closet, so sleek and professional, so unlike me. I dream of wearing a long skirt or a maxi dress with bold, bright stripes. My breath catches at the mere thought of wearing something sleeveless, baring my brown arms. Fierce vanity smolders in the cave of my chest. I want to look good. I want to feel good. I want to be beautiful in this body I am in. The story of my life is wanting, hungering, for what I cannot have or, perhaps, wanting what I dare not allow myself to have. Many mornings, most mornings, I stand in my closet, trying to figure out what I am going to wear for the day. Really, this is part of an elaborate, exhausting performance in which the end result is always the same. But I have my delusions and I entertain them with alarming frequency and vigor. I try on various outfits and marvel at all the cute clothes I own. If I am feeling particularly brave, I take a look at myself in the mirror. It’s always surprising to see myself out of my usual clothes, to see how my body looks shrouded in color or something other than denim and cotton. Sometimes, I decide on an outfit and leave my bedroom. It’s a mundane moment, but for me, it is not. I decide, Today, I am a professional and I will look the part. I make breakfast, or get my things together for work. I feel strange and awkward. In a matter of moments, it begins to feel like these unfamiliar clothes are strangling me. I see and feel every unflattering bulge and curve. My throat constricts. I can’t breathe. The clothes shrink. Sleeves become tourniquets. Slacks become shackles. I start to panic, and before I know it, I am tearing the bright, beautiful clothes off because I don’t deserve to wear them. When I slide back into my uniform, that cloak of safety returns. I can breathe again. And then I start to hate myself for my unruly body that I seem incapable of disciplining, for my cowardice in the face of what other people might think.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I don’t know what my parents noticed about me in the year before high school. Since we had moved, I no longer had to go to a school where everyone called me Slut. Instead, there were new torments, new bullies, and even more motivation for me to run, run, run as far away from myself as possible. I applied to several boarding schools and got into them all. One, Lawrenceville, accepted me as part of the first class of girls to attend the school when it went coed, but the thought of attending a school with so many boys was too much. I ended up going to Exeter because my cousin Claudine had just graduated from there and she seemed fine and the school seemed fine and because my parents liked the school’s reputation. At such a young age, I absolutely took for granted that I would be attending one of the most elite and expensive high schools in the country, if not the world. All that mattered was that I would be able to run away. Left to my own devices at boarding school, I lost any semblance of control over what I put into my body. Suddenly, there were all kinds of food available to me. The dining hall was an all-you-can-eat extravaganza. Certainly, the offerings were generally bad—damp and malodorous, as is the nature of industrially prepared food—but there were vast quantities available. And there was a salad bar. And there were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And breakfast cereal. And limitless soda machines. And dessert options. And The Grill, a campus greasy spoon where, for a few dollars, I could get a burger, French fries, and a frappé. And there was the convenience store downtown, where I could buy a huge submarine sandwich. And a Woolworth’s with an actual lunch counter. I could order pizza, and within thirty minutes, it would be delivered to my dorm and I could eat the entire thing by myself and there was no one to stop me from my naked, shameless indulgence. The freedom of being able to eat, so extravagantly and without limit, offered me the only true pleasure I knew in high school. I was presented with an orgy of food and I indulged in all of it. I reveled in eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I reveled in the steam of biting into a salty French fry and the slick hot ooze of melted cheese on a hot slice of pizza and the thick cold sweetness of a frappé. I craved that pleasure and indulged myself as often as I could.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The French philosopher Peter Abelard (1079–1142) developed a different account of the redemption, which again owed little to scripture but came closer to the spirit of the fathers. 18 Like some of the rabbis, he believed that God suffered with his creatures and argued that the crucifixion showed us one moment in the eternal pathos of God. When we contemplate the flayed figure of Jesus we are moved to pity, and it is the act of compassion that saves us – not Jesus’s sacrificial death. Abelard was the intellectual star of his generation; students flocked to his lectures from all over Europe. Like Anselm, he rarely quoted scripture and raised questions without appearing to offer solutions. In fact, Abelard was more interested in philosophy and his theology was rather conservative. But his iconoclastic, aggressive manner made it sound as though he was arrogantly pitting his human reason against the mystery of God and this brought him into headlong collision with one of the most powerful churchmen of the day. Bernard (1090–1153), abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux in Burgundy (1090–1153), dominated Pope Eugene II and King Louis VII of France and was as charismatic in his own way as Abelard. Scores of young men had followed him into the new Cistercian Order, a reformed branch of Benedictine monasticism. He accused Abelard of ‘attempting to bring the Christian faith to naught because he supposes that human reason can comprehend all that is God’. 19 Quoting Paul’s hymn to charity, he claimed that Abelard ‘sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but looks on everything face to face’. 20 In 1141, Bernard summoned Abelard, who by this time was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, to the Council of Sens, and attacked him so ferociously that he collapsed and died the following year. Even though Bernard could not be described as a charitable man, his exegesis and spirituality were based on the love of God. His most famous work was his exposition of the Song of Songs, eighty-six sermons delivered to the monks of Clairvaux between 1135 and 1153, which mark the apogee of lectio divina. 21 ‘It is desire that drives me,’ he insisted, ‘not reason.’ 22 In the incarnation of the Logos, God had descended to our level so that we could ascend to the divine. In the Song, God shows us that we make this ascent in three stages. When the bride cried: ‘The king has brought me into his chambers’, this referred allegorically to the senses of scripture. There were three ‘chambers’: the garden, the storeroom and the bedchamber. ‘Let the garden . . . represent the plain, unadorned sense of scripture,’ Bernard suggested, ‘the storeroom its moral sense, and the bedroom the mystery of divine contemplation.’ 23 We began by reading the Bible as a simple story of creation and redemption but we must then progress to the storerooms, the moral sense which teaches us to modify our behaviour.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  He had never known Jesus personally, and had initially been hostile to the sect, but had been converted by a revelation, which convinced him the christos had appointed him to be the apostle to the gentiles. 28 Paul travelled widely in the diaspora and founded congregations in Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, determined to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth before Jesus returned. He wrote letters to his converts, answering their questions, exhorting them and explaining the faith. Paul did not think for a moment that he was writing ‘scripture’; because he was convinced that Jesus would return in his own lifetime, he never imagined that future generations would pore over his epistles. He was regarded as a premier teacher, but was well aware that his explosive temperament meant that he was not universally popular. Nevertheless his letters to the churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Philippi and Thessalonica 29 were preserved, and after his death in the early 60s, Christian writers who revered Paul wrote in his name and developed his ideas in letters to the churches in Ephesus and Colossae, and wrote supposedly posthumous letters addressed to Paul’s associates, Timothy and Titus. Paul insisted that his gentile converts renounce all pagan cults and worship only the God of Israel. 30 But he did not believe that they should convert to Judaism, because Jesus had already made them ‘sons of God’, without circumcision and the Torah. They must live as if the kingdom had already arrived: taking care of the poor and behaving with charity, sobriety, chastity and modesty. The fact that gentile Christians prophesied, performed miracles and, in the grip of ecstasy, spoke in strange tongues – all hallmarks of the messianic age 31 – proved that the spirit of God was alive in them and that the kingdom would arrive in the very near future. 32 But Paul never suggested that Jews should cease to observe the Torah, because this would have put him outside the covenant. Israel had received the precious gift of the revelation of Sinai, the temple cult, and the privilege of being God’s ‘sons’, enjoying a special intimacy with him, and Paul valued all this. 33 When he inveighed bitterly against ‘Judaizers’, he was not condemning either Jews or Judaism per se but those Jewish Christians who wanted the gentiles to be circumcised and observe the entire Torah. Like other sectarians in the Late Second Temple period, Paul was convinced that he alone was in possession of the truth. 34 In the messianic age, his mixed congregations of Jews and gentiles were the true Israel. Paul also searched the scriptures, whose meaning, he believed, had changed since the coming of the christos.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Glen nodded, though the truth was he’d never had much of a taste for greens, and his well-educated mama had always told him that gravy was bad for the heart. So he was not ready for the moment when Mama pushed her short blond hair back and set that big hot plate of food down in front of his open hands. Glen took a bite of gristly meat and gravy, and it melted between his teeth. The greens were salt-sweet and fat-rich. His tongue sang to his throat; his neck went loose, and his hair fell across his face. It was like sex, that food, too good to waste on the middle of the day and a roomful of men too tired to taste. He chewed, swallowed, and began to come alive himself. He began to feel for the first time like one of the boys, a grown man accepted by the notorious and dangerous Black Earle Boatwright, staring across the counter at one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. His face went hot, and he took a big drink of ice tea to cool himself. “Her?” he stammered to Earle. “That your sister? That pretty little white-headed thing? She an’t no bigger than a girl.” Earle grinned. The look on Glen’s face was as clear as the sky after spring rain. “Oh, she’s a girl,” he agreed, and put his big hand on Glen’s shoulder. “She’s my own sweet mama’s baby girl. But you know our mama’s a rattlesnake and our daddy was a son of a gun.” He laughed loud, only stopping when he saw how Glen was watching Anney walk away, the bow of her apron riding high on her butt. For a moment he went hot-angry and then pulled himself back. The boy was a fool, but a boy. Probably no harm in him. Feeling generous and Christian, Earle gave a last hard squeeze to Glen’s shoulder and told him again, “You watch yourself, son. Just watch yourself.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  There was no predicting who the hand of God might touch, where the clarion would sound. Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl, one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I always knew who Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week. “Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.” Uh huh, yeah. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why hadn’t God given me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddam what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted, was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it. Shannon overheard and looked at me sympathetically. She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have. I’d underestimated her. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] That July we went over to the other side of Lake Greenwood, a part of the county I knew from visiting one of the cousins who worked at the air base. Off the highway we stopped at a service station to give Mrs. Pearl a little relief from the heat. “You ever think God maybe didn’t intend us to travel on Sunday afternoon? I swear He makes it hotter than Saturday or Friday.” Mrs. Pearl sat in the shade while Mr. Pearl went off to lecture the man who rented out the Rhythm Ranch. Shannon and I cut off across a field to check out the headstones near a stand of cottonwood. We loved to read the mottoes and take back the good ones for Mrs. Pearl to stitch up on samplers and sell in the store. My favorites were the weird ones, like “Now He Knows” or “Too Pure.” Shannon loved the ones they put up for babies, little curly-headed dolls with angel wings and heartbreaking lines like “Gone to Mama” or “Gone Home.” “Silly stuff.” I kicked at the pieces of clay pot that were lying everywhere. Shannon turned to me, and I saw tears on her cheeks. “No, no, it just tears me up. Think about it, losing your own little baby girl, your own little angel. Oh, I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.” She gave big satisfied sobs and wiped her hands on her blue gingham pockets.

• From Trash (1988)

  I hadn’t really spoken much to her since we’d climbed out of bed that next morning. Watching her talking, not letting anyone say more than a sentence or two before starting to talk again, I realized her manners were like her lovemaking— imperious, self-centered, and oblivious. I preferred the women I brought home from the pool hall, the ones who liked me biting them, liked biting me, liked whispering dirty words, wrestling, and shoving their calloused fingers between my labia until I bit them harder and harder, my mouth full of the taste of them, the texture of their skin, their smoky, powerful smell, soaking them up, swallowing and swallowing. Making love with them I rise right up out of myself. I’m happy then in a way I never seem to be otherwise, sure of myself and not afraid. I lose all my self-consciousness, my fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. Their strength becomes my strength, and I love them for it. I hate the men who hassle me on the sidewalk outside the pool hall, the scary threats and the all-too-serious screams in the parking lot, but I love the hall itself, the women in there, the way they make me feel when they stand in that yellow light and rub their fingers together, looking me up and down. In Consciousness Raising meetings, one after the other, everyone insisted they did not fantasize. I looked over at Lenore guiltily, afraid to risk saying anything. There are days I am not here at all. Two cups of coffee and I run away in my mind to eerie dreams of lovemaking, the dance, the swirling turn of bodies catching the slow glint of firelight. In the mountain clearing with the women’s army, I give up hatred in the arms of a demon who knows no rhetoric. If I turn my head I can see her, the Black Queen, the one with the knives, razor blade under her tongue, and a smile like the one on Cass’s face as she lifts her stick to clean out some redneck boy thinks he’s as fast as she is. The gloves on her hands are spiked. She teaches me to use them. She uses them on me, makes tattoos up my thighs for anyone to read. Under my clothes always, the feel of her hands on me, where no one can see. Men and women, women and men, the unguarded, the unsuspecting. Is she a man? Am I a woman? I do not have fantasies. Fantasy opens me up; I become fantasy. I am the dangerous daughter, thigh-stroking, soft-tongued lover, the pit, the well, and the well of horniness, laughter rolling up out of me like gravy boiling over the edge of a pan.

• From Fragments (7)

  First her hairs, which downward flow. Paint thou soft, dark-brown, unbraided; If thy wax so much can show, Let them be with perfume sated. Twixt her cheek and ebony hair Paint like ivory her forehead; Twixt her eyes paint not too rare Of her brows the hair nor florid. 125 Lyric Songs of the Greeks Let thy picture just as she Show her eye-brows well united ; Only let this hidden be, Near the eye-lids barely sighted. Paint her glance like fiery flame, Like Athena's brightly gleaming; Winsome be it all the same. Just like Cytherea's seeming. Paint her cheeks and paint her nose, Roses with white milk commingling; Lips so each like Pitho's shows E'er itself with kisses tingling. O'er her chin and marble neck Let all Graces seem to hover. For the rest, her body deck And with purplish garments cover. Yet a little let appear, Of her beauteous form a token. 'Tis enough: I herself see here. Soon, O wax, thou wilt have spoken. TO THE YOUNGER BATHYLLUS (i6) My friend Bathyllus, I beseech. Paint just as I thee now shall teach. Give to his hair a glossy sheen. And let it be all black within, 126 Anacreontea But at its edges sunny white. His noble locks do not bind tight: Though gathering each disordered curl, To flow at random them unfurl. Below his forehead soft as dew Be eye-brows dark like serpents blue. His eyes with black shall brightly glow, And yet complacent calmness show: A mixture of Ares, battle-lord, And Cytherea thus afford. The former shall inspire with fear. With kindly hope the latter cheer. His downy cheek paint thou like rose. So that it like red apples glows; A blush as though of modesty — I see thou canst — put on for me. As to his lips, I scarcely know What mould thou shouldst on them bestow. Well, let them soft and tender be, On them may we Persuasion see. Thus showing all these charms, the wax Doth speak aloud, yet voice it lacks. An ivory throat paint 'neath his face, More than Adonis full of grace. His hands, his breast, let them suggest The hands of Hermes and his chest. His abdomen like Dionys, Like Polydeuces paint his thighs; And then the parts that lie above Depict so that they challenge love. But how thy art is niggardly! I fain his back would also see: 127 Lyric Songs of the Greeks 'Twere better far to show that too, And not, begrudging, hide from view. Why of his feet shall aught I say? Whate'er thou wilt receive as pay. Apollo, whom thou seest, take down. And with Bathyllus win renown. If e'er in Samos thou appear, Paint Phoebus like Bathyllus here. A LOVE SONG (17-18) Give me to drink, to drink give me, Of Bromius, women, ceaselessly: Already now I am moaning, O'ercome with heat, and groaning. To deck my head bring flowery wreaths Of vine; my forehead bums and seethes.