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 338 of 344 · 20 per page

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  54, 68-69). Because there was to be such a dramatic rever- sal when the Son of Man brought the kingdom, a person should be willing to sacrifice everything in order to enter into it. A person's passion to obtain CHAIVTER. 1� Jr:6-us, THE APOCALYPTIC PROPHET 227 the kingdom should be like that of a merchant in search of pearls; when he finds one that is perfect, he sells everything that he has to buy it (Matt 13:45-46, Gosp. Thom., 76). People should not, for this reason, be tied to this world or the alluring treasures that it has to offer; instead, they should focus on the kingdom that is coming (Matt 6:19, 33; Gosp. Thom., 63). At the same time, we should not think that Jesus was maintaining that everyone who hap- pened to be poor or hungry or mistreated would enter into God's kingdom. He expected that people first had to repent and adhere to his teachings. This is what his own disciples had done; they left every- thing to follow him. As a result, they were promised special places of prominence in the com- ing kingdom. Similarly, Jesus' association with tax collectors and sinners should not be taken to mean that he approved of any kind of lifestyle. To be sure, he did not insist that his followers keep the detailed traditions of the Pharisees, in part because he appears to have felt that the Torah itself was only a provisional measure: what need would there be of"Law" in a kingdom in which there was no sin or evil? Moreover, he appears to have believed that at the heart of the Torah was the command for peo- ple to love God with their entire being and to love their neighbors as themselves (Mark 12:28-31, where he quotes Deut 6:4 and Lev 19:18; see Gosp. Thom. 25). Occasionally, in his view, the overly scrupulous attention to the details of the Torah could, perhaps ironically, lead to a violation of these basic principles (Mark 7:1-13). The Sabbath, for example, was created for the sake of humans, not humans for the Sabbath. Human need, there- fore, had priority over the punctilious observation of rules for keeping the Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28). For Jesus, then, keeping the Torah was indeed important; this happened, however, not when Jews followed the carefully formulated rulings of the Pharisees but when they repented of their bad behavior and turned to God with their entire being and manifested their love for him in their just and loving treatment of their neighbors.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  A thought: If this were fiction, a good editor would scratch this scene out. She continued. I’ve had a crush on you since the trial, she said. I’d love to date you. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] We went out the next Saturday, the last day of April. I parked on the street outside the city park where we’d agreed to meet. Nora waited for me on a bench by the reflecting pool. She had a fresh haircut. It was tidy around her ears, trimmed close along the back of her head. I thought about dragging my fingers up, nape to crown, against the prickle of her hair. I could do that now, if I wanted to. She wanted me to touch her, didn’t she? She was here. She sat at one end of the bench, and I sat down at the other. We were too far apart, weirdly far apart. Nausea swam around my gut like a strange fish. I brought something for you, she said. It’s my favorite book about writing. Do you have it? She handed me a package wrapped in twine. It was a paperback copy of On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. I didn’t have it. On the title page, she’d written the date and an inscription. Her handwriting was even and relaxed, the M of my name a cheerful zigzag, the o flowing into looping ls, a neat up-and-down y. She had written my name! I goggled at it, like a preteen running into her school crush in the toothpaste aisle at Target: Whoa, he brushes his teeth, just like me. Nora had written my name. This is what it looks like when her hand forms my name! I couldn’t look directly at her, or the web of muscle at the corner of my eye would seize. For a while we talked about the weather, which was unseasonably warm. Nora had rolled her jeans once at the hem, where they rested on the creased cowboy boots she’d worn in court. I stared at a hedge in front of me, noticed that its leaves were the size and shape of almonds. We set off for a bar. Walking beside her, I saw that she wasn’t as tall as I’d thought. I realized I’d never done this before: I’d never walked beside her. It felt different from walking beside anyone else. I was walking beside Nora. I was walking beside a woman who was gay, and who looked gay, and I was not walking beside this woman because she was my friend. I was walking beside her because we wanted to put our tongues in each other’s mouths.

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

  He was, according to tradition, a pupil of the Apostle John, and by his piety so commended himself to the Christians in Antioch that he was chosen bishop, the second after Peter, Euodius being, the first. But although he was a man of apostolic character and governed the church with great care, he was personally not satisfied, until he should be counted worthy of sealing his testimony with his blood, and thereby attaining to the highest seat of honor. The coveted crown came to him at last and his eager and morbid desire for martyrdom was gratified. The emperor Trajan, in 107, came to Antioch, and there threatened with persecution all who refused to sacrifice to the gods. Ignatius was tried for this offence, and proudly confessed himself a "Theophorus" ("bearer of God") because, as he said, he had Christ within his breast. Trajan condemned him to be thrown to the lions at Rome. The sentence was executed with all haste. Ignatius was immediately bound in chains, and taken over land and sea, accompanied by ten soldiers, whom he denominated his "leopards," from Antioch to Seleucia, to Smyrna, where he met Polycarp, and whence be wrote to the churches, particularly to that in Rome; to Troas, to Neapolis, through Macedonia to Epirus, and so over the Adriatic to Rome. He was received by the Christians there with every manifestation of respect, but would not allow them to avert or even to delay his martyrdom. It was on the 20th day of December, 107, that he was thrown into the amphitheater: immediately the wild beasts fell upon him, and soon naught remained of his body but a few bones, which were carefully conveyed to Antioch as an inestimable treasure. The faithful friends who had accompanied him from home dreamed that night that they saw him; some that he was standing by Christ, dropping with sweat as if he had just come from his great labor. Comforted by these dreams they returned with the relics to Antioch. Note on the Date of the Martyrdom of Ignatius. The date A.D.107 has in its favor the common reading of the best of the martyrologies of Ignatius (Colbertium) ejnnavtw/ e[tei, in the ninth year, i.e. from Trajan’s accession, A.D. 98. From this there is no good reason to depart in favor of another reading tevtarton e[to", the nineteenth year, i.e. A.D. 116. Jerome makes the date A.D. 109. The fact that the names of the Roman consuls are correctly given in the Martyrium Colbertinum, is proof of the correctness of the date, which is accepted by such critics as Ussher, Tillemont, Möhler, Hefele, and Wieseler. The latter, in his work Die Christenverfolgungen der Caesaren, 1878, pp. 125 sqq., finds confirmation of this date in Eusebius’s statement that the martyrdom took place before Trajan came to Antioch, which was in his 10th year; in the short interval between the martyrdom of Ignatius and Symeon, son of Klopas (Hist. Ecc. III.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Please tell Irene I said hello.” “I will.” Rusty was willing to bet the pleasant maid or the good hairdresser would prefer cash, but a gift was better than nothing. “Rusty, darling,” Irene said, handing her four compacts and two Ronsons. “Could you gift-wrap these for Mrs. Delaney? Red ribbon.” Red ribbon was a code for Christmas, not Hanukkah, which would be blue ribbon. Rusty knew Mrs. Delaney’s son, a good-looking guy who worked at the branch bank on Elmora Avenue. He always flirted with her. Sometimes she flirted back, just to keep up her skills, though she knew he was married with four children. Not to mention Catholic. SteveA few blocks down East Jersey Street from the Martin Building, where Steve Osner’s father had his dental office and you could get a great-tasting burger at Three Brothers Luncheonette, Steve was shooting baskets at the YMHA with his best buddy, Phil Stein, both of them seniors at Thomas Jefferson High. They’d been born two weeks apart at Elizabeth General Hospital and bar mitzvahed a week apart at Temple B’nai Israel, across the street from the Y. A couple of regulars were playing with them in a pickup game, and one of them must have brought Mason McKittrick. He seemed like a nice enough kid, not that Steve knew him well, since he was just a junior, but he had good moves and a great hook. “You should go out for the team next year,” Steve told him. “Bet you could make varsity.” “I work after school,” Mason said, “at Edison Lanes—not much time for practice.” “You set up pins?” “Yeah, that and other stuff when it gets busy.” “I’ll look for you next time we go bowling.” “You in a league?” “No, just bowl for fun.” Mason nodded. In the locker room, Steve asked Phil, “You want to grab a burger at Three Brothers? I’m starving.” “Nah. My mother’s probably got dinner in the oven.” “Okay, but come over later.” “You have a plan?” “Don’t tell me you forgot already?” “Remind me.” “My sister’s party.” “We’re going to your sister’s party?” Steve swatted him with his damp towel. “I have to chaperone. My mother thinks if I’m around there won’t be any trouble. What a joke! Remember ninth grade? That’s the first time I copped a feel.” “You were always ahead of the rest of us,” Phil said. If only that were still true, Steve thought. A lot of the guys talked about how much they were getting. Their girlfriends let them touch and look. Steve had touched but no one had ever let him look. He didn’t have a regular girlfriend. He liked playing the field. Maybe he just hadn’t met the right girl yet. He knew girls who’d invite you into their houses to neck on the sofa in the living room, but it never went any further than that. Maybe he was doing something wrong. It might be different if they went to a coed high school.

• From The Vagina Monologues (1998)

  Emeralds. An evening gown. Sequins. Armani only. A tutu. See-through black underwear. A taffeta ball gown. Something machine washable. Costume eye mask. Purple velvet pajamas. Angora. A red bow. Ermine and pearls. A large hat full of flowers. A leopard hat. A silk kimono. Glasses. Sweatpants. A tattoo. An electrical shock device to keep unwanted strangers away. High heels. Lace and combat boots. Purple feathers and twigs and shells. Cotton. A pinafore. A bikini. A slicker. [image file=image_rsrc2KV.jpg] “If your vagina could talk, what would it say, in two words?” Slow down. Is that you? Feed me. I want. Yum, yum. Oh, yeah. Start again. No, over there. Lick me. Stay home. Brave choice. Think again. More, please. Embrace me. Let’s play. Don’t stop. More, more. Remember me? Come inside. Not yet. Whoah, Mama. Yes yes. Rock me. Enter at your own risk. Oh, God. Thank God. I’m here. Let’s go. Let’s go. Find me. Thank you. Bonjour. Too hard. Don’t give up. Where’s Brian? That’s better. Yes, there. There. THE FLOOD[Jewish, Queens accent]Down there? I haven’t been down there since 1953. No, it had nothing to do with Eisenhower. No, no, it’s a cellar down there. It’s very damp, clammy. You don’t want to go down there. Trust me. You’d get sick. Suffocating. Very nauseating. The smell of the clamminess and the mildew and everything. Whew! Smells unbearable. Gets in your clothes. No, there was no accident down there. It didn’t blow up or catch on fire or anything. It wasn’t so dramatic. I mean…well, never mind. No. Never mind. I can’t talk to you about this. What’s a smart girl like you going around talking to old ladies about their down-theres for? We didn’t do this kind of a thing when I was a girl. What? Jesus, okay. There was this boy, Andy Leftkov. He was cute—well, I thought so. And tall, like me, and I really liked him. He asked me out for a date in his car…. I can’t tell you this. I can’t do this, talk about down there. You just know it’s there. Like the cellar. There’s rumbles down there sometimes. You can hear the pipes, and things get caught there, little animals and things, and it gets wet, and sometimes people have to come and plug up the leaks. Otherwise, the door stays closed. You forget about it. I mean, it’s part of the house, but you don’t see it or think about it. It has to be there, though, ’cause every house needs a cellar. Otherwise the bedroom would be in the basement.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Put simply, there was nothing to stop me constantly renewing the experience of tasting a different saliva every time, and blindly feeling with my hand for a form that would always be unexpected, a surprise. Claude had a beautiful dick, it was straight and well-proportioned, and the memory I have of those very first couplings is a feeling of fullness, heaviness as though all of me had been stiffened and filled. When André unzipped in front of my face, I was amazed to find something smaller, and more malleable, because, unlike Claude, he was not circumcised. A dick which is constantly exposed demands to be looked at, it provokes sexual excitement with its smooth monolithic contours, whereas the foreskin that you can play back and forth, uncovering the glans like a great bubble forming on the surface of soapy water, elicits a more subtle sensuality, its suppleness bending in waves to the partner’s orifice. Ringo’s dick was more like Claude’s, the shy boy’s more like André’s, the student’s belonged to a category that I would recognise later, those which, although not necessarily larger, are covered in a thicker outer layer, making them feel immediately more substantial in the hand. I discovered that every kind of dick required different movement, different behaviour from me. And just as every time I had to adapt to another kind of skin, another complexion, different degrees of hairiness, different amounts of muscle tone (it goes without saying, for example, that not only do you hold on to the torso above you in a different way if it is smooth as a stone or filled out with the beginnings of a bosom or obscuring your view with a thatch of hair, but also that these images do not have the same resonance in your imagination. As a result, with retrospect, I seem to have been more submissive with the clean cut or slightly rugged bodies that I perceived as truly male, whereas I took more initiative with heavier bodies that I feminised, however big they may have been), by the same token, the constitution of each body seemed to induce its own stances.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (1976)

  By creating the imaginary element that is “sex,” the deployment of sexuality established one of its most essential internal operating principles: the desire for sex—the desire to have it, to have access to it, to discover it, to liberate it, to articulate it in discourse, to formulate it in truth. It constituted “sex” itself as something desirable. And it is this desirability of sex that attaches each one of us to the injunction to know it, to reveal its law and its power; it is this desirability that makes us think we are affirming the rights of our sex against all power, when in fact we are fastened to the deployment of sexuality that has lifted up from deep within us a sort of mirage in which we think we see ourselves reflected—the dark shimmer of sex. “It is sex,” said Kate in The Plumed Serpent. “How wonderful sex can be, when men keep it powerful and sacred, and it fills the world! like sunshine through and through one!” So we must not refer a history of sexuality to the agency of sex; but rather show how “sex” is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex, as a speculative element necessary to its operation. We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power; on the contrary, one tracks along the course laid out by the general deployment of sexuality. It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim—through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality—to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures. “There has been so much action in the past,” said D. H. Lawrence, “especially sexual action, a wearying repetition over and over, without a corresponding thought, a corresponding realization. Now our business is to realize sex. Today the full conscious realization of sex is even more important than the act itself.”

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (1976)

  But there may be another reason that makes it so gratifying for us to define the relationship between sex and power in terms of repression: something that one might call the speaker’s benefit. If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the coming freedom. This explains the solemnity with which one speaks of sex nowadays. When they had to allude to it, the first demographers and psychiatrists of the nineteenth century thought it advisable to excuse themselves for asking their readers to dwell on matters so trivial and base. But for decades now, we have found it difficult to speak on the subject without striking a different pose: we are conscious of defying established power, our tone of voice shows that we know we are being subversive, and we ardently conjure away the present and appeal to the future, whose day will be hastened by the contribution we believe we are making. Something that smacks of revolt, of promised freedom, of the coming age of a different law, slips easily into this discourse on sexual oppression. Some of the ancient functions of prophecy are reactivated therein. Tomorrow sex will be good again. Because this repression is affirmed, one can discreetly bring into coexistence concepts which the fear of ridicule or the bitterness of history prevents most of us from putting side by side: revolution and happiness; or revolution and a different body, one that is newer and more beautiful; or indeed, revolution and pleasure. What sustains our eagerness to speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opportunity to speak out against the powers that be, to utter truths and promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation, and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that combines the fervor of knowledge, the determination to change the laws, and the longing for the garden of earthly delights. This is perhaps what also explains the market value attributed not only to what is said about sexual repression, but also to the mere fact of lending an ear to those who would eliminate the effects of repression. Ours is, after all, the only civilization in which officials are paid to listen to all and sundry impart the secrets of their sex: as if the urge to talk about it, and the interest one hopes to arouse by doing so, have far surpassed the possibilities of being heard, so that some individuals have even offered their ears for hire.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  My brother and I were rarely taken to play in the square, but there was a little one that we would cross on our way to school. Down one side of the square there was a long wall with three pretty lean-to shelters. They were made of brick and wood, painted green and surrounded by shrubs. One was used for gardening tools, the others housed the public toilets. There must have been groups of boys hanging about in the square. In any event, the very first narrative that accompanied my masturbating – and one that I used again and again for very many years – put me in a situation where I was dragged into one of these shelters by a boy. I saw him kissing me on the mouth and touching me all over as his friends came to join us. They all started fondling me. We always remained standing, and I spun round in the middle of the tightly-knit group.

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

  When he comes back to life, “the heavens rain down oil, the wadis run with honey.” In the words of the prophet Hosea, the dispute in Israel concerned which god provided “the grain, the wine, and the oil,” YHWH or Baal (cf. Hos 2:8). This is also the issue in the Elijah stories. In 1 Kings 17 Elijah performs two miracles that show that it is YHWH rather than Baal who gives life. One concerns the multiplication of oil and meal. The second involves the raising of a dead child. In each case, Elijah emphasizes that he acts by the power of YHWH. The roots of the conflict are further clarified in chapter 18. Here we are told that Jezebel had been killing off the prophets of YHWH. Many people in ancient Israel probably saw no conflict between the worship of YHWH and Baal. Elijah appears as a zealot, who refuses to tolerate the worship of any god except YHWH. The story suggests, however, that Jezebel may also have been intolerant in her promotion of Baal. Such conflicts between rival cults were relatively rare in antiquity. The best-known example before the time of Elijah was the attempt of Pharaoh Akhenaten to promote the worship of the sun-god Aten to the exclusion of all others. The conflict had clear political implications. We are told that four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of Asherah ate at Jezebel’s table (that is, were supported by Jezebel; 18:19). The picture of a huge retinue of prophets at the royal court conforms to what we have seen in the story of Micaiah ben Imlah. If the worship of Baal and Asherah required such a retinue, there was a practical reason for excluding the equally numerous prophets of YHWH. From the king’s perspective, Elijah is a “troubler of Israel” because he is interfering with royal policy. From the prophet’s perspective, it is Ahab who troubles Israel by religious policies that lead to drought and disaster. The contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal is dramatic. The challenge posed by Elijah is that “the god who answers with fire is indeed God.” The prophets of Baal use various techniques to whip themselves into ecstasy. (The practice of gashing oneself was evidently practiced by some prophets in Israel also. One of the latest passages in the prophetic corpus, Zech 13:5-6, envisions a time when people will be ashamed to admit that they are prophets and will deny it. “And if anyone asks them, ‘What are these wounds on your chest?’ the answer will be, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’ ” Such wounds were evidently a trademark of prophecy.) Elijah mocks the prophets of Baal and suggests that their god is asleep. No one’s prayers are answered all the time. Devotees of Baal presumably felt that their prayers were answered some of the time, or they would not have persisted in worshiping him.

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

  I needed that rifle, for itself and for the way it completed me when I held it. My mother said I couldn’t have it. Absolutely not. Roy took the rifle back but promised me he’d bring her around. He could not imagine anyone refusing him anything and treated the refusals he did encounter as perverse and insincere. Normally mute, he became at these times a relentless whiner. He would follow my mother from room to room, emitting one ceaseless note of complaint that was pitched perfectly to jelly her nerves and bring her to a state where she would agree to anything to make it stop. After a few days of this my mother caved in. She said I could have the rifle if, and only if, I promised never to take it out or even touch it except when she and Roy were with me. Okay, I said. Sure. Naturally. But even then she wasn’t satisfied. She plain didn’t like the fact of me owning a rifle. Roy said he had owned several rifles by the time he was my age, but this did not reassure her. She didn’t think I could be trusted with it. Roy said now was the time to find out. For a week or so I kept my promises. But now that the weather had turned warm Roy was usually off somewhere, and eventually, in the dead hours after school when I found myself alone in the apartment, I decided that there couldn’t be any harm in taking the rifle out to clean it. Only to clean it, nothing more. I was sure it would be enough just to break it down, oil it, rub linseed into the stock, polish the octagonal barrel and then hold it up to the light to confirm the perfection of the bore. But it wasn’t enough. From cleaning the rifle I went to marching around the apartment with it, and then to striking brave poses in front of the mirror. Roy had saved one of his army uniforms and I sometimes dressed up in this, together with martial-looking articles of hunting gear: fur trooper’s hat, camouflage coat, boots that reached nearly to my knees. The camouflage coat made me feel like a sniper, and before long I began to act like one. I set up a nest on the couch by the front window. I drew the shades to darken the apartment, and took up my position. Nudging the shade aside with the rifle barrel, I followed people in my sights as they walked or drove along the street. At first I made shooting sounds—kyoo! kyoo! Then I started cocking the hammer and letting it snap down. Roy stored his ammunition in a metal box he kept hidden in the closet. As with everything else hidden in the apartment, I knew exactly where to find it.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Brandon and I called them my crushes. He had a crush too, felt a fun little twinge when he saw a particular mom from the classroom across the hall. We joked about it, teased each other. I was euphoric, caffeine-jittery, when I ran into the lesbians at pickup or drop-off. I wanted them to take me in like a stray. My mother once commented that the black-haired one looked a bit like a boy. I nodded my agreement. I thought, That’s what I like about her, though I didn’t say it out loud. Not looking for Nora was not working. I noticed girls with short hair and delicate, angular faces, girls whose bodies could pin me down. I noticed butch women, women with graying buzz cuts, women who looked like mechanics, who might sling me over a shoulder. I saw every lesbian and queer couple everywhere. I envied what I imagined they had, their dynamic, their sex. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Was I a lesbian, then? Was that it? Had I been this way all along, and I didn’t know it? Writer Minnie Bruce Pratt was married to a man and had two small sons when she first fell in love with a woman. “Everyone was shocked at the turn I was taking in my life, including me,” she writes. “Everyone . . . wanted to know: Had I ever had these feelings before? . . . When had I started to ‘change’? . . . I didn’t feel ‘different,’ but was I? (From whom?) Had I changed? (From what?)”7 The way I looked at Nora, I’d also looked at Brandon. I remembered it. Was I bisexual? Was that the word for me? Queer? My birthday came in mid-September, and I turned thirty-seven. Had this always been in me, like the eggs in my ovaries? There’s a scene in Fun Home where Alison Bechdel, then a four- or five-year-old girl, sees a butch dyke walk into a diner wearing dungarees, boots, and a set of keys on her belt loop. It’s a powerful moment, young Bechdel seeing a glimpse of who she is and who she wants to be: “Like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home—someone they’ve never spoken to, but know by sight—I recognized her with a surge of joy.”8 I had to have had a moment like this, surely: a flicker of the person I was now becoming. If the evidence was there, I would find it. 4Early in our dating, Brandon and I sat looking at old photo albums, and a shot of me in college made him laugh out loud. You looked like a lesbian, he said.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Everyone at the office is like, Oh my God, bring back Yale . Was he always this nuts? And you were just, like, absorbing it all for us?” Yale said, “He’s going through a lot.” “I mean, he’s a disaster . Did you used to force-feed him? We started leaving snacks on his desk just so he’ll eat.” All the heads in the room turned at once toward the door, and when Yale turned he fully expected to see Charlie standing there. A nightmare, a relief, an avenging angel. But it was Gloria from Out Loud , carrying a stack of pizza boxes, telling everyone to calm down and stay put till she’d put out the paper plates, the napkins. Yale let the sounds around him blend to a dull buzz. He watched Asher talk, gesture, whap his hand against the TV antenna. He watched Katsu and Teddy lean on each other. Rafael said, “Nobody’s even listening. Everyone’s so tired of listening.” —There were flowers on his desk in the morning, a bunch of yellow dahlias from Cecily. A note that said, I can never repay you. But before he’d even sat down, Bill was there. He’d brought Yale a coffee, even though Yale already had one. He said, “It seems our friend is on a power trip.” He paused, waiting for Yale to ask what he meant, but Yale didn’t feel like playing along, and eventually Bill cleared his throat and continued. “He’s been to the president, which—I don’t know how everything’s going to play out. I don’t. He’s calling around the board. Not our board, the board . And meanwhile, Frank, Nora’s son, is taking some kind of legal action. I don’t know if he’s fully suing or what, but you have a message from Snow.” “That’s a major waste of his time,” Yale said. “Yes. Yes.” Bill looked past Yale and out the window. “But it’s not great for the gallery. You were so noble, giving him your card and everything, and I wish you hadn’t been. You know I was willing to take the blame.” “I’m the one who messed up,” Yale said. Actually, he’d lain awake last night wondering why the hell he’d done it. For Cecily, of course. But also maybe it was some kind of self-flagellation, a way to punish himself, for—what? Well, everything. Messing around with Roman. Taking the art from Debra and maybe even Fiona. Walking away from Charlie. Evading this disease. It wouldn’t take a genius shrink. How easily he’d brushed off Dr. Cheng’s offer of counseling, his warnings to be careful out there, and here he was. A different kind of reckless behavior. Bill said, “I think if there’s anything you want to finish up with Nora—I mean, personally, since you were the one—I think maybe the next few weeks might be the time to do it.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  All love demands the duality of a subject and an object. Woman is led to narcissism by two convergent paths. As subject, she is frustrated; as a little girl, she was deprived of this alter ego that the penis is for the boy; later, her aggressive sexuality remained unsatisfied. Of far greater importance is that she is forbidden virile activities. She is busy, but she does not do anything; in her functions as wife, mother, and housewife, she is not recognized in her singularity. Man’s truth is in the houses he builds, the forests he clears, the patients he cures: not being able to accomplish herself in projects and aims, woman attempts to grasp herself in the immanence of her person. Parodying Sieyès’s words, Marie Bashkirtseff wrote: “Who am I? Nothing. What would I like to be? All.” It is because they are nothing that many women fiercely limit their interests to their self alone, that their self becomes hypertrophied so as to be confounded with All. “I am my own heroine,” continues Marie Bashkirtseff. A man who acts necessarily confronts himself. Inefficient and separated, woman can neither situate nor assess herself; she gives herself sovereign importance because no important object is accessible to her. If she can put herself forward in her own desires, it is because since childhood she has seen herself as an object. Her education has encouraged her to alienate herself wholly in her body, puberty having revealed this body as passive and desirable; it is a thing she can touch, that satin or velvet arouses, and that she can contemplate with a lover’s gaze. In solitary pleasure, it may happen that the woman splits into a male subject and a female object; Dalbiez studied the case of Irène, who said to herself, “I’m going to love myself,” or more passionately, “I’m going to possess myself,” or in a paroxysm, “I’m going to fecundate myself.”2 Marie Bashkirtseff is also both subject and object when she writes, “It’s really a pity that no one sees my arms and torso, all this freshness and youth.” In truth, it is not possible to be for self positively Other and grasp oneself as object in the light of consciousness. Doubling is only dreamed. For the child, it is the doll that materializes this dream; she recognizes herself in it more concretely than in her own body because there is separation between the two. Mme de Noailles expresses this need to be two so as to establish a tender dialogue between self and self in, among other works, Le livre de ma vie (The Book of My Life):

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Yale’s tailbone pressed into the wood, and down here you could see every dust clot, of which there were many. Asher promised them the pizza was on its way, stood in front of the TV to talk about a community housing fund, slush money for people who couldn’t make rent because they were sick. Someone asked if Asher could guarantee the money would stay in the gay community, and Asher said, “Hell no, are you kidding? We don’t own this disease,” and then there was loud debate. Whenever Asher was exasperated, the parallel creases between his eyes would grow so deep they looked etched. Yale was free now to lust after Asher, free to fantasize not just a dream scenario but an actual possibility. He could stay late, help clean up, put his hand on Asher’s shoulder . . . But Yale had never been one to make a first move. Not in his life, not even drunk. And he doubted Asher would ever notice he was interested unless he grabbed him by the actual cock. Besides which, his life didn’t need more drama right now. He needed a nice boring stretch, a few months when someone could ask what was new and he’d be able to say, “Not much, just plugging along.” He couldn’t sacrifice his job and risk rejection on the same night. But no, everything would be fine at the gallery in the morning. The transfer of property was airtight, Herbert Snow had reassured him. It had to be okay. Rafael, Charlie’s Editor in Chief, kept scooting closer to Yale on the floor until he was right beside him. He whispered, “Bummer of a party.” Yale had nervously checked the crowd when he’d come in, even though Asher had guaranteed, when he invited Yale, that Charlie wouldn’t be there. It wasn’t going to be easy to avoid the most ubiquitous gay man in Chicago, but he could manage it till things had cooled, crusted over. Teddy leaned on the windowsill next to his friend Katsu. Yale hadn’t talked to Teddy tonight, probably wouldn’t. Teddy and Katsu were exactly the same size, and Yale squinted till they were identical silhouettes. Katsu raised his hand, and when Asher shouted over the din to call on him, Katsu said, “For those of us living with it—” and Yale only barely heard the question, something about tenant rights. He could have guessed, but he hadn’t known. Someone asked a question about anonymity, and Rafael whispered, “I heard you’re living large! When you gonna have us plebes down for a party?” Rafael wore a Palestinian scarf around his neck, and he hid his chin in it like a turtle. “I’m just crashing there,” Yale said, although it felt more and more like that was where he lived, in a little capsule above the city, while down here everyone else’s suffering and drama continued. A minute later, Rafael whispered again: “Charlie’s totally unhinged.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Stay, I said. I want to kiss you. She smiled. Aren’t you worried someone will see? Come on, she said, rising from the stool. She was standing by my hip. I turned and clasped her elbow. She dropped to me and met my mouth square-on, so firm I felt the bones behind her skin. I searched her with my tongue. You should reach out to Nora, she said, righting herself. No, no—it was all in my head, I said. There wasn’t anything there. Well, you should find out for sure. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The next morning, Brandon, June, and I had plans with my mother to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island—a day-trip, just for fun, with Sunday lunch in a French restaurant and ice cream after. We drove my car. June had taken a spill the evening before, my mom reported. She fell face-first onto the asphalt outside the house, and her lip had gushed blood. I cried for a long time, Mama, June said. What I heard was: while I was out kissing a woman, my three-year-old fell on her face in the street. On the ferry we climbed the stairs and found a bench by the window, and I pulled June onto my lap. There was a gash in the tender flesh of her lip, though not too bad. But something was wrong with her left front tooth: a fine gray line ran down it, gum to tip. During lunch I paced outside the restaurant, on hold with the dentist. She had X-rays taken the next morning: the tooth was cracked through to the root, would have to be pulled. June would be missing a front tooth for three or four years, until the adult tooth came in. The day after the extraction, I took a picture of what we, with flinching cheer, called her “new smile.” She’s wearing a T-shirt with a lemon painted on the front, squint-grinning at the camera, her nose scrunched up like a cartoon mouse. She’s fine. But what do I do with this? There was no direct line of causation between my child getting hurt and me. My absence did not gash her lip or crack her tooth. But I’d had a choice, hadn’t I, and I’d been away from her. Brandon had been absent too, but he was just doing his job. June fell, and I was out kissing a woman in a bar.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Sandy wouldn’t look at her after the bathroom incident, and there was no one else suitable within a mile or so with whom to lock arms and make flimsy vows. She missed Sandy, but she was always missing something, and that little naked spot wasn’t going to be filled by him or by anyone else on Valley Road. It was through the chewing gum, ultimately, that Mike had lured her, alone, into the basement with him. She had walked among those boxes as carefully as if this were some vast arms shipment. The sheer amount of gum dumbfounded her! What kid in their age and class would not kill for a twenty-four-count box of Bazooka rolls? Who cared about the endless fillings, about the horror of dentistry? Today a kid is here, tomorrow she is grown! Gum! Give us gum! We are hungry for gum! And Mike was prepared to honor her wishes. He popped a piece in his mouth right then. She could smell it. She could taste the taste—amusement park and industrial cleaning agent. Together—shoulders brushed up against one another like they were already pledged to troth—they read the comic, laughing at how Sandy was like the guy, Mort, who always wore a turtleneck up over his mouth. —Seriously, Mike said. Do you want gum? —Of course, you jerk, she said. Why else would I be here? —Nasty mouth, he said. Well, there’s gonna be a little, you know, opportunity cost here. It’s a cost-of-doing-business-type thing. —Huh? —You know, Charles. Pussy. The word fell from his mouth like the name for a particularly dull frozen vegetable. Twat, pussy, cunt, muff, slit, pudenda. There were no good words for the anatomy of girls. Why were the words for beautiful things—orchids, gables, auroras—so beautiful? Would her pussy, if it were named after one of these, still sound so homely? —You want to get into my pants, Mikey? And this turned out to be the right way to approach the issue. At the invitation, he got all panicky. She could see him freezing up. She had been wearing shorts with little floral suspenders that day. Suspenders were in since Godspell . Some frilly, lacy shirt. A trainer bra. Mike had never bargained on cooperation. Boys thought of girls the way they thought of particularly good careers, things to work toward. Or as fine objects: they wanted to haggle and get a good price. Wendy thought she was the first fourteen-year-old in America to fully understand this point. —What’s my payment, Mikey? If you want what you want, you gotta put your cards out on the table. The opportunity to fool with the boxes of gum afforded him the time he needed to think. The Williamses never understood people , really. That’s what Wendy thought. They fooled around with enterprises. Her mother had told Wendy this. It was one of her mother’s very firm points of view.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  wW51°; with the way of a man /י‎ 377; WSN בל‎ yan ץ‎ 115° 135° Pr 21); pan אשר‎ Is55" Jon .םס | .יד‎ pleased to do a thing c. inf. Ju 13” 152% 1539. 6. with impf. subj. (Ges*?°) mn ינדיל‎ YO ” Yahweh was pleased to magnify teaching Is 427.—On Jb 40” vy. YEN. Tyan adj. verb. delighting in, having pleasure in;—’n ץ‎ 5°+4t.; pl. חִפְצִים‎ Mal 3' Ne 1”; estr. ‘YBN py 357+ 2 t.; sf. OMEN yr’; f. הפצה‎ 1 Ch 28°;— 1. of man, c. ace. ש‎ 34° 357 Mal 3); 6. inf. Nex"; abs. YOON whosoever would 1 K 13%; אתה‎ YSN אם‎ tf thou pleasest 1 K 21°; A¥YBM WDI willing soul ד‎ Ch 28°; pl. estr. before nouns abs. ~ 35” 40°= 70°; לְכֶלחֶפְצִיהֶם‎ DAN studied of all who take pleasure in them itt. 2. of God, “by לא‎ NAS רְשַע‎ YAN thou art not a God taking plea- sure in wickedness W 5”. Tyan n.m.""*” delight, pleasure;—'n Is 54°+ 20t.; sf. J¥50 15 58% ete. + 13+ pl. D'¥S Pr 8%; sf. PDN Pr 3%; FHM Is 58%-- 1. delight ‘nh אבני‎ Is 54” delightful stones; חי‎ YUS Mal 3” delightsome land; ח?‎ 1327 Ec 12”; so perhaps also בַּנָדִי ח'‎ Ez 27” garments of delight, i.e. of beauty and luxury (Gr; MT Wan q.v.); ¢. 2 of persons y 16° Ec 5* Mal 1”; of things 18 15” 18” 1? Jb 21" Ec12!; D2 חפץ בף‎ pS vessel wherein is no pleasure Je 22° ge” Ho 8°; 2 “Ww החפץ‎ Jb 22° 78 it a plea- sure to Shadday that? 2. desire, longing דלים‎ ‘nD מכע‎ Jb 31" withhold the poor from (their) desire; DYED WN the city of their desire y 107"; yan b> all (one’s) desire 28 23° 1 K 54 1, ro8—=2 Chg”; כל חפצים‎ 7 things to be desired Pr3*°8". 8. the good pleasure, will, purpose, of Yahweh Is 44% 46 48%. 4. that in which one takes delight, his business (late), or matter (very late, cf. in Mish.= thing) nox? בְּיְדל‎ ” YBN the good pleasure (cause, business) of Yahweh will prosper in his hands Ts 53"; מצא ח'‎ Is 58°; F¥DN עשות‎ doing thy affairs Is 58" (see De in loco); 183 PDN in the business of her hands Pr 31; לְכָלחְפֶץ‎ ny time for every matter, affair Ec 3)" 8°; אל"‎ yenn-oy MOO marvel not at the matter Ec 57. WVote.—yan is not used in any of its forms in E D* H P of the Hexateuch. Tagan n.pr.f. (my delight is in her ; ef. Ph. byaypn)—1. mother of king Manasseh 2K 233, 2. fig. name of Zion Is 62‘, here 343 חפרים for Yahweh delighteth‏ כִּי חפץ יהוח expl. by J2‏ in thee.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  Did that really happen? Because he was not the guy to whom real-life Penthouse stories occurred, or at least he never had been before. His dick was already anticipating next time, and he ended up turning the air conditioning to its coldest setting despite having just experienced a phenomenal release. The cold didn’t do much to quell his desire to see and hopefully violate Beth again, but it was a welcome change from the humid evening. A particular chill on his thigh drew his attention, and when he identified the source of the moisture on his jeans, he nearly had a wreck. Reluctantly, Ed directed an air conditioning vent toward his leg. By the time he parked at the pie house, the mark had all but faded, though he could still feel it there. Taunting him. Because surely that had been a one-off, a product of the heightened sexiness of the sexy sex club. Pheromones they blew through the vents in there, or something in the water, to keep things lively. Surely Beth would never consider dallying with a man like him if she were in her right, non-pheromone-crazed mind. He would have to keep these pants in their sullied state forever, to remember her by. He wasn’t as sure he wanted to remember the experience in the club. He’d expected the pain to kill the arousal he’d experienced from snuggling Beth’s exceptional leg. Instead, from the moment of the first blow, he’d liked it. Loved it. His dick had responded accordingly. Maybe because he’d gone into it with a challenge to himself, to take whatever he’d seen Cami endure. Maybe because he’d been keyed up to begin with, or because he was in a room full of half-naked people. And some completely naked people, if you didn’t count the cock harnesses. But it was unsettling, how turned on he’d gotten from something he had never fantasized about, never even considered for himself. And how much harder he’d gotten, thinking about doing the same things to Beth. Half-naked Beth. Or even completely naked Beth, sporting stripes on her back that he’d left there himself for everyone to see. He was hard from thinking about hitting a girl with a whip, from fantasizing about marking her, and that just couldn’t be right...could it? The trip to the pie house went by much faster than he’d expected. Inside the familiar eatery, the chilly air and intoxicating aroma of baking pastry swamped Ed’s senses enough to distract him from his distressing train of thought. The group was at their usual booth, and he edged in on one end next to Ben, taking the only space left. Beth sat opposite, looking cool and elegant. She hadn’t changed, like some of the others, but she’d done something to make her dress cover more in the front. She was the only unfamiliar element here, a fresh jewel in an old setting, making it new all over again.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  When Elio, the narrator of André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name, finds himself fantasizing about a man, a visiting grad student named Oliver, Elio longs for a night with him—a single night, even just an hour—to figure out if the attraction is real. “What I didn’t realize,” Elio explains, “was that wanting to test desire is nothing more than a ruse to get what we want without admitting that we want it.”18 [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] An old friend emailed in early April and wanted to catch up. Could I do a Saturday night? My friend was a lesbian, though we’d never talked much about it before. Now we had something new in common: I could tell her about jury duty, about the past several months, about our open marriage. Maybe she could fix me up. We decided to meet at Dino’s, which had been open for a month—admittedly an odd choice given the situation, but this friend knew Brandon, and she wanted to see it. Brandon would be working there that night too. So I would meet up with my lesbian friend at my husband’s restaurant, with my husband across the room, and she and I would hash out my desire to sleep with women. I asked my mother to babysit, and she offered to have June sleep over. I put on jeans and a white sweat shirt, the neckline of which I’d trimmed Flashdance-style, so it tipped off one shoulder. I wore a bra with hot pink straps. At Dino’s our friend hugged Brandon, and he gave her a tour. The bar was crowded, everything glowing neon red. I was sweating, that panicked sweat with its own peculiar smell. I had to get outside. I squeezed Brandon’s shoulder, pulled him in for a hug, told him I’d be back in a couple of hours, and steered my friend out onto the sidewalk. We ordered Negronis at a bar down the block. She told me about her recent breakup. I told her about Nora. I sat next to her and wondered if we looked like we were on a date. I hadn’t imagined it that way, but could it be? Did she feel it too? Could it be this easy? I swiveled a little to face her, let my elbow bump into hers. Was there anyone I knew in this bar? Anyone who knew me, who knew Brandon, who knew me as June’s mother? What would happen to us, all of us, if I kissed my friend? I leaned toward her, and she laughed. Then her face was right there in front of me, and I went in, catching her top lip between my two. She was so soft, my head went blank, as though a curtain dropped. Even when Brandon was freshly shaved, he wasn’t soft like this. She opened her mouth and took my bottom lip, sucked it between her teeth. I should go, she said against my cheek. I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow.