Despair

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 11 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 He did evil in the sight of the LORD his God; he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke for the LORD . 13 He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar who had made him swear allegiance by God. He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD God of Israel. 14 Also, all the officials of the priests and the people were very unfaithful, following all the repulsive acts of the [pagan] nations; and they defiled the house of the LORD which He had sanctified in Jerusalem. 15 The LORD , the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. 16 But they kept mocking the messengers of God and despising His words and scoffing at His prophets until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy or healing. 17 Therefore He brought the king of the Chaldeans against them, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. 18 And as for all the articles of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD , and the treasures of the king and of his officials, he brought them all to Babylon. 19 Then they burned the house of God and tore down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire, and destroyed all its valuable articles. 20 He deported to Babylon those who had escaped from the sword; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the kingdom of Persia was established there, 21 to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had restored its Sabbaths; for as long as the land lay desolate it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete. [Lev 25:4 ; 26:43 ; Jer 25:11 ; 29:10 ] Cyrus Permits Return 22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia—in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah—the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, 23 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: ‘The LORD , the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up [to Jerusalem]!’ ” 2 Chronicles 1 a 1:15 This tree, ficus sycomorus, is native to Egypt and Asia Minor and produces an edible fruit similar but inferior to the common fig.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  18 “The offspring of your body and the produce of your land, the offspring of your herd and the young of your flock will be cursed. 19 “You will be cursed when you come in and you will be cursed when you go out. 20 “The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed, perishing quickly because of the evil of your deeds, because you have d turned away from Me. 21 “The LORD will make the pestilence and plague cling to you until He has consumed and eliminated you from the land which you are entering to possess. 22 “The LORD will strike you with consumption [causing you to waste away] and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew [on your crops]; and they will pursue you until you perish. 23 “The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze [giving no rain and blocking all prayers], and the earth which is under you, iron [hard to plow and yielding no produce]. 24 “The LORD will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it will come down on you until you are destroyed. 25 “The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you will go out against them one way, but flee before them seven ways, and you will be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth [when they see your destruction]. [2 Chr 29:8 ] 26 “Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 “The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and the itch that you cannot heal. 28 “The LORD will strike you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart and mind; 29 and you will be groping at noon [in broad daylight], just as the blind grope in the darkness, and nothing you do will prosper; but you will only be oppressed and exploited and robbed continually, with no one to save you. 30 “You will be pledged to marry a wife, but another man will be intimate with her [before you]; you will build a house, but you will not live in it; you will plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit. 31 “Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat any of it; your donkey will be torn away from you, and it will not be returned to you; your sheep will be given to your enemies, and you will have no one to save you. 32 “Your sons and daughters will be given to another people, while your eyes look on and long for them continually; but there will be nothing you can do.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Yet she, Puddle, was actually grateful to this man; so dire were their straits that she was grateful to Brockett. Then came the remembrance of that other man, of Martin Hallam—she had had such high hopes. He had been very simple and honest and good—Puddle felt that there was much to be said for goodness. But for such as Stephen men like Martin Hallam could seldom exist; as friends they would fail her, while she in her turn would fail them as lover. Then what remained? Jonathan Brockett? Like to like. No, no, an intolerable thought! Such a thought as that was an outrage on Stephen. Stephen was honourable and courageous; she was steadfast in friendship and selfless in loving; intolerable to think that her only companions must be men and women like Jonathan Brockett—and yet—after all what else? What remained? Loneliness, or worse still, far worse because it so deeply degraded the spirit, a life of perpetual subterfuge, of guarded opinions and guarded actions, of lies of omission if not of speech, of becoming an accomplice in the world’s injustice by maintaining at all times a judicious silence, making and keeping the friends one respected, on false pretences, because if they knew they would turn aside, even the friends one respected. Puddle abruptly controlled her thoughts; this was no way to be helpful to Stephen. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Getting up she went into her bedroom where she bathed her face and tidied her hair. ‘I look scarcely human,’ she thought ruefully, as she stared at her own reflection in the glass; and indeed at that moment she looked more than her age. 4 It was not until nearly the middle of July that Brockett took Stephen to Valérie Seymour’s. Valérie had been away for some time, and was even now only passing through Paris en route for her villa at St. Tropez. As they drove to her apartment on the Quai Voltaire, Brockett began to extol their hostess, praising her wit, her literary talent. She wrote delicate satires and charming sketches of Greek mœurs—the latter were very outspoken, but then Valérie’s life was very outspoken—she was, said Brockett, a kind of pioneer who would probably go down to history. Most of her sketches were written in French, for among other things Valérie was bilingual; she was also quite rich, an American uncle had had the foresight to leave her his fortune; she was also quite young, being just over thirty, and according to Brockett, good-looking. She lived her life in great calmness of spirit, for nothing worried and few things distressed her. She was firmly convinced that in this ugly age one should strive to the top of one’s bent after beauty. But Stephen might find her a bit of a free lance, she was libre penseuse when it came to the heart; her love affairs would fill quite three volumes, even after they had been expurgated.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  to face this terrible freedom. Like a vine that clings to a warm southern wall it had clung to her father — it still clung to Morton. In the spring had come gentle and nurturing rains, in the summer the strong and health-giving sunshine, in the winter a deep, soft covering of snow — cold yet protecting the delicate tendrils. All, all she had had. She had never gone empty of love in the days of her youthful ardour; had never known longing, shame, degra- dation, but rather great joy and great pride in her loving. Her love had been pure in the eyes of the world, for she had been able to indulge it with honour. Still with honour, she had borne a child to her mate — but a child who, unlike her, must go un- fulfilled all her days, or else live in abject dishonour. Oh, but a hard and pitiless woman this mother must be for all her soft beauty; shamelessly finding shame in her offspring. “I would rather see you dead at my feet. . . . ‘ Too late, too late, your love gave me life. Here am I the creature you made through your loving; by your passion you created the thing that I am. Who are you to deny me the right to love? But for you I need never have known existence.’ And now there crept into Stephen’s brain the worst torment of all, a doubt of her father. He had known and knowing he had not told her; he had pitied and pitying had not protected; he had feared and fearing had saved only himself. Had she had a coward for a father? She sprang up and began to pace the room. Not this — she could not face this new torment. She had stained her love, the love of the lover — she dared not stain this one thing that remained, the love of the child for the father. If this light went out the engulfing darkness would consume her, destroying her entirely. Man could not live by darkness alone, one point of light he must have for salvation — one point of light. The most perfect Being of all had cried out for light in His darkness — even He, the most perfect Being of all. And then as though in answer to prayer, to some prayer that her trembling lips had not uttered, came the memory of a patient, protective back, bowed as though bearing another’s burden. Came the memory of horrible, soul- sickening pain: “ No~ not that — something urgent-I want- THE WELL OF LONELINESS 209 to say. No drugs —I know I’m — dying — Evans.’ And again an heroic and tortured effort: ‘ Anna — it’s Stephen — listen.’ Stephen suddenly held out her arms to this man who, though dead, was still her father.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen would fling herself down on the bed, completely ex- hausted by the night’s bitter vigil. 3 THERE was some one who went every step of the way with Stephen during those miserable weeks, and this was the faithful and anxious Puddle, who could have given much wise advice had Stephen only confided in her. But Stephen hid her trouble in het heart for the sake of Angela Crossby. With an ever-increasing presage of disaster, Puddle now stuck to the girl lixe a leech, getting little enough in return for her trouble — Stephen deeply resented this close supervision: ‘ Can’t you leave me alone? No, of course I’m not ill!’ she would say, with a quick spurt of temper. But Puddle, divining her illness of spirit together with its cause, seldom left her alone. She was frightened by something in Stephen’s eyes; an incredulous, questioning, wounded expression, as though she were trying to understand why it was that she must be so grievously wounded. Again and again Puddle cursed her THE WELL OF LONELINESS 173 own folly for having shown such open resentment of Angela Crossby; the result was that now Stephen never discussed her, never mentioned her name unless Puddle clumsily dragged it in, and then Stephen would change the subject. And now more than ever Puddle loathed and despised the conspiracy of silence that forbade her to speak frankly. The conspiracy of silence that had sent the girl forth unprotected, right into the arms of this woman. A vain, shallow woman in search of excitement, and caring less than nothing for Stephen. There were times when Puddle felt almost desperate, and one evening she came to a great resolution. She would go to the girl and say: ‘I know. I know all about it, you can trust me, Stephen.’ And then she would counsel and try to give courage: ‘ You're neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you’re as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else; only you’re un- explained as yet—you’ve not got your niche in creation. But some day that will come, and meanwhile don’t shrink from your- self, but just face yourself calmly and bravely. Have courage; do the best you can with your burden. But above all be honourable. Cling to your honour for the sake of those others who share the same burden. For their sakes show the world that people like you and they can be quite as selfless and fine as the rest of mankind. Let your life go to prove this — it would be a really great life-work, Stephen.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  * But can’t you remember back for my sake? °? And now her voice sounded almost angry in her distress: ‘It’s unfair, it’s un- just. Why should I live in this great isolation of spirit and body - why should I, why? Why have I been afflicted with a body that must never be indulged, that must always be repressed until it grows stronger much than my spirit because of this unnatural repression? What have I done to be so cursed? And now it’s attacking my holy of holies, my work — I shall never be a great writer because of my maimed and insufferable body —’ She fell silent, suddenly shy and ashamed, too much ashamed to go on speaking. And there sat Puddle as pale as death and as speechless, hav- ing no comfort to offer — no comfort, that is, that she dared to > THE WELL OF LONELINESS 247 offer — while all her fine theories about making good for the sake of those others; being noble, courageous, patient, honourable, physically pure, enduring because it was right to endure, the terrible birthright of the invert — all Puddle’s fine theories lay strewn around her like the ruins of some false and flimsy temple, and she saw at that moment but one thing clearly — true genius in chains, in the chains of the flesh, a fine spirit subject to physical bondage. And as once before she had argued with God on behalf of this sorely afflicted creature, so now she inwardly cried yet again to the Maker whose will had created Stephen: ‘ Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet Thou dost destroy me.’ Then into her heart crept a bitterness very hard to endure: ‘ Yet Thou dost destroy me —’ Stephen looked up and saw her face: ‘ Never mind,’ she said sharply, ‘ it’s all right, Puddle — forget it! ’ But Puddle’s eyes filled with tears, and seeing this, Stephen went to her desk. Sitting down she groped for her manuscript: ‘I’m going to turn you out now, I must work. Don’t wait for me if I’m late for dinner.’ Very humbly Puddle crept out of the study. CHAPTER 2a I oon after the New Year, nine months later, Stephen’s second Sen was published. It failed to create the sensation that the first had created, there was something disappointing about it. One critic described this as: ‘ A lack of grip,’ and his criticism, on the whole, was a fair one. However, the Press was disposed to be kind, remembering the merits of The Furrow. But the heart of the Author knoweth its own sorrows and is seldom responsive to false consolation, so that when Puddle said: ‘ Never mind, Stephen, you can’t expect every book to be The Furrow —and this one is full of literary merit,’ Stephen replied as she turned away: ‘I was writing a novel, my dear, not an essay.’

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

  Nor are the negative critics agreed as to the time of composition. Under the increasing pressure of argument and evidence they have been forced to retreat, step by step, from the last quarter of the second century to the first, even within a few years of John’s death, and within the lifetime of hundreds of his hearers, when it was impossible for a pseudo-Johannean book to pass into general currency without the discovery of the fraud. Dr. Baur and Schwegler assigned the composition to A.D. 170 or 160; Volkmar to 155; Zeller to 150; Scholten to 140; Hilgenfeld to about 130; Renan to about 125; Schenkel to 120 or 115; until Keim (in 1867) went up as high as 110 or even 100, but having reached such an early date, he felt compelled (1875)1093 in self-defence to advance again to 130, and this notwithstanding the conceded testimonies of Justin Martyr and the early Gnostics. These vacillations of criticism reveal the impossibility of locating the Gospel in the second century. If we surrender the fourth Gospel, what shall we gain in its place? Fiction for fact, stone for bread, a Gnostic dream for the most glorious truth. Fortunately, the whole anti-Johannean hypothesis breaks down at every point. It suffers shipwreck on innumerable details which do not fit at all into the supposed dogmatic scheme, but rest on hard facts of historical recollections.1094

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  disaster? She was setting her weakness against the whole world, and slowly but surely the world would close in until in the end it had utterly crushed her. In her very normality lay her danger. Mary, all woman, was less of a match for life than if she had been as was Stephen. Oh, most pitiful bond so strong yet so helpless; so fruitful of passion yet so bitterly sterile; despairing, heart- breaking, yet courageous bond that was even now holding them ruthlessly together. But if he should break it by taking the girl away into peace and security, by winning for her the world’s approbation so that never again need her back feel the scourge and - her heart grow faint from the pain of that scourging — if he, Martin Hallam, should do this thing, what would happen, in that day of his victory, to Stephen? Would she still have the cour- age to continue the fight? Or would she, in her turn, be forced to surrender? God help him, he could not betray her like this, he could not bring about Stephen’s destruction — and yet if he spared her, he might destroy Mary. Night after night alone in his bedroom during the miserable weeks of that summer, Martin struggled to discover some ray of hope in what seemed a wellnigh hopeless situation. And night after night Stephen’s masterful arms would enfold the warm softness of Mary’s body, the while she would be shaken as though with great cold.. Lying there she would shiver with terror and love, and this torment of hers would envelop Mary so that some- times she wept for the pain of it all, yet neither would give a name to that torment. ‘ Stephen, why are you shivering? ’ “I don’t know, my darling.’ * Mary, why are you crying? ’ ‘I don’t know, Stephen.’ Thus the bitter nights slipped into the days, and the anxious days slipped back into the nights, bringing to that curious trinity neither helpful counsel nor consolation. THE WELL OF LONELINESS 491 2 Ir was after they had all returned to Paris that Martin found Stephen alone one morning. He said: ‘ I want to speak to you — I must.’ She put down her pen and looked into his eyes: ‘ Well, Martin, what is it? ° But she knew already. He answered her very simply: ‘It’s Mary.’ Then he said: “I’m going because I’m your friend and I love her . . . I must go because of our friendship, and because I think Mary’s grown to care for me.’ He thought Mary cared . . . Stephen got up slowly, and all of a sudden she was no more herself but the whole of her kind out to combat this man, out to vindicate their right to possess, out to prove that their courage was unshakable, that they neither ad- mitted of nor feared any rival.

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

  Alfred Tennyson makes him graphically describe his experience in a monologue to God: ’Although I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin, Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom, and to clamor, moan, and sob Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer: Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin. * * * * * * Oh take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe, Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heaped ten hundredfold to this, were still Less burthen, by ten hundredfold, to bear, Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crushed My spirit flat before Thee. O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first, For I was strong and hale of body then; And though my teeth, which now are dropt away, Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon, I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw An angel stand and watch me, as I sang. Now am I feeble grown: my end draws nigh— I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am, So that I scarce can hear the people hum About the column’s base; and almost blind, And scarce can recognize the fields I know. And both my thighs are rotted with the dew, Yet cease I not to clamor and to cry, While my stiff spine can hold my weary head, Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone: Have mercy, mercy; take away my sin." Yet Symeon was not only concerned about his own salvation. People streamed from afar to witness this standing wonder of the age. He spoke to all classes with the same friendliness, mildness, and love; only women he never suffered to come within the wall which surrounded his pillar. From this original pulpit, as a mediator between heaven and earth, he preached repentance twice a day to the astonished spectators, settled controversies, vindicated the orthodox faith, extorted laws even from an emperor, healed the sick wrought miracles, and converted thousands of heathen Ishmaelites, Iberians, Armenians, and Persians to Christianity, or at least to the Christian name. All this the celebrated Theodoret relates as an eyewitness during the lifetime of the saint. He terms him the great wonder of the world,330 and compares him to a candle on a candlestick, and to the sun itself, which sheds its rays on every side.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  “Don’t give me that sobsister shit: Kike analysts, nigger elevator men, spic supers.… You know we talk this liberal bullshit, but do we ever stop to wonder why these germs have been considered inferior for centuries? Anyway. I got out on the street, and the front wheel from my bike had been stolen.” “But this is like a—” “It’s not a nightmare, baby. It’s New York City. That’s what it is. So I hailed about forty cabs. They’d slow down but then see the bike and take off. If you rode a bike you’d recognize how interesting it is that we take the most criminal element of our society, license them as cabdrivers, and set them loose behind ten thousand wheels on our city streets. And not one of them can speak English.” He sighed. “Well, I walked, I walked all the way across town, and by this time I had to shit so bad I went down into the IND, finally located a dime, and what do I find in the john: there are two toilets and roosting on each of them is a big grinning fairy!” Lou paused after the lightning exclamation and waited for the thunder of his own revulsion to roll over him. “Ugh! I could strangle every fucking fairy. You know how we used to deplore efforts to clean up Times Square? Well, turns out the cops are right, fairies are subhuman, they are going to pervert our children. An adult man works hard for a living and tries to provide for his family in his little apartment—no wonder he wants to bash every lush-life pansy in the teeth, the grinning chortling gargoyles right off the roof of Notre Dame! Nobody would let me take a crap. I went back to the street, unlocked my wreck of a bike from the street lamp, and wheeled it home, like one of Beckett’s tramps. “I had given up all hope of getting back to the office—they may fire me—and I had almost made it to my building when I shit in my pants. I couldn’t use the elevator; I wasn’t fit to ride with normal people. I walked up the four flights and took off my three-hundred-dollar Meledandri suit and washed it out with soap and water, and then took a shower. You wanted to know how I was.” “Oh, Lou,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.” “Why did I get diarrhea?” “Couldn’t it have been just an accident?” “Come on, Bunny. You’ve been in therapy.” Just as I was beginning to speculate, Lou whispered into the phone, “Bunny, you’re the one. I don’t want to marry Ava. I see what a mistake I’ve made. Will you wait for me?” “What do you mean?” “You’re the real love of my life. Do you love that boy?” “Who?” “What’s-his-name.” “Sean? I think so.” “And you don’t love me anymore?” “Lou, you’re my best friend.” “Really?” “Yes.” “I never had a friend.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I’d played a game, pretending to fall in love, but now the game had tricked me; I was caught. I started hyperventilating, although it felt as though I was getting too little air, not too much. Pins and needles started in my hands and feet and spread upward. If the numbness reached my heart, I thought, I would die. I carried a brown paper bag and breathed into it on the subway as a way of cutting down on the amount of oxygen. My hands would jerk and fly around all on their own, and if I was in public I’d cover by pretending to pat my hair. When the weather became warm, I lay on a towel in the park in hopes of getting a tan. I basted myself in suffering. If Sean had stopped loving me, I was unlovable. My memory would wander back to his apartment, to the blue gas jets by which we’d showered, to the salad we’d eaten out of a saucepan, to our mortally young faces in the candlelit mirror—but then I’d slap myself awake as you must treat someone who’s swallowed too many sedatives. In the park on my towel I searched for something to like. If I could find one thing in the whole world to like, I could start again. I saw a cop on a horse riding toward me and I thought, looking up at this centaur, admiring the shiny flanks and gleaming leather boots, hearing now the creak of the tack, here’s something beautiful, something I can like. The cop rode up, looked down and said, “Get your shirt on, this isn’t a beach. You’re breaking the law.” Sean wrote me twice. Flat notes, and each sentence I saw as a safe compromise between several dangerous ways of saying things. The joke was that the great love of my life was a man who knew nothing about me and next to nothing about himself. Suffering does make us more sensitive until it crushes us completely. I started to write about Sean, and the writing, like a searchlight sweeping wildly, almost caught my fugitive feelings, A close call, but another failure, for I was so afraid of being sentimental or self-indulgent, of not distancing myself through the appropriate irony and understatement and objectivity, that I wrote about myself in the third person. I invented a stand-in for myself but with ten points less intelligence. Yet how could I like myself or ask the reader to take seriously a love between two men? A plea for tolerance was the best I might have come up with, but I was too proud to plead for anything. On early summer nights in the city I drifted down Christopher Street to a new dance place, the Stonewall, which had the hottest jukebox.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  He lubricated the tip of a tube with KY and inserted it into Lou’s rectum. Lou arched his back, tilting his ass still higher. The miserable room, the weirdness of this transaction, the gurgling and flushing water, the burning lateness of the hour—all chilled me. I’d fallen off the edge of the world. My hero was a pervert, eyelids drooping shut from heroin, inner arm blue with bruises, and now he was cooing like a baby and had curled on his side and was staring up at his savior, his tormentor. [image file=image_rsrc1C9.jpg] Gerald, the doorman, had of course figured it all out. Every free moment he was studying the floor indicator above the elevator. Since there were only four apartments on each floor and he knew who was at home, by a simple process he’d deduced that I was coming down from my mother’s to Lou’s all the time. When she returned from Munich, my mother told me she was worried because I had taken up with a friend ten years older, a notorious homosexual and drug addict whose family, though once nice, could by no means be considered nice now. “Honey,” she said, looking at me from brown eyes as sweet as mine but far more intense, “what’s going to happen to you? All your fine gifts of mind will be destroyed, your reputation and character.” I knew she was right, and I considered her small warm hand in mine to be an intolerable reproach. I jumped up from the couch and started pacing. “I know what I’m doing.” “Don’t bite my head off,” she said, clouding over. “Anyhow, honey, I don’t think you do know. You’ve compromised me, and I have to live in this building. Besides, you wasted the summer. You didn’t earn any money for school. You look pale and unhealthy; you didn’t even have good, wholesome fun with kids in your own age bracket.” She was so short that when she settled back in her seat, her feet didn’t quite touch the floor. Although she was trying to generate calm (her head was lifted back to a noble angle suitable for framing), her face seemed to be filling up, turning darker with emotion. She was being flooded by it. “You’re a special person, a quality person. I don’t know why you have to throw yourself away on cheap people. We’ve never been cheap in our family. I work so hard, and your father, well, he may have horrible faults but he’s always been honorable. He’s observed the divorce agreement to the letter, you can’t take that away from him. But maybe we overestimated you; after all, we never had you properly tested, we don’t even know for sure you’re so bright.”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Yes, I wanted fame, and when the heat of vision, fired by Drambuie, was on me in my white room, I felt I was already famous. But there was another reason to write: to redeem the sin of my life by turning it into the virtue of art. Until now, I’d showed my stories only to appreciative readers. Other young writers would ply me with compliments and in exchange I’d praise their work. The usual inspiration for my fiction was the “powerful” television drama with its cozy view of character, its melodramatic plot, and its message. To show that this was literature, however, one threw in a symbol or two, preferably something from the Passion of Christ, and a poetic haze of phrase condensed from our best Southern writers. An epiphany was clapped on to lots and lots of hard-hitting dialogue, which was easy to write, although one pretended otherwise. The characters were all suitably defeated and sensitive. Lou had too refined an ear and too great a horror of the obvious to like my inflated playlets. He was also too unhappy and anxious to take an interest in other people’s lives. He ended up with a small canon of books about himself—John Rechy’s City of Night , which was just appearing chapter by chapter in magazines, the few isolated scraps of William Burroughs he could find in print, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers . In these books he saw his own darkness reflected. He appreciated that in them there was no trace of American optimism. He also liked that these pages were devoted to “sexy fairies” and that every page could cost the reader some come. For Lou, who’d never known a conventional family, bourgeois life seemed remote—remotely risible when he was out gunning for squares, remotely appealing when he was fed up with the disorder of his own life. “Oh, Bunny,” he said to me late one night, hugging me and smelling of that strong odor of people who swallow too many vitamin pills in daily remorse for nightly bad habits, “I’m so sick of sick faggots and drunk old queens. I’m so sick of men! I don’t think I can bear the feel of one more man’s beard. Here I am, a thirty-year-old man, I should be founding my own sweet little family, but I’m still bouncing around the bars, being probed by fingers, mauled, stuffed with cock, and I wake up every morning hung over, hemorrhoids aflame, crotch hairs plastered down with someone else’s come.” Astounded pause, widening eyes, horrified shout: “And my face raw with beard-burn!” He shuddered, even stroked my face, from which I willed the noxious hairs to retract. Then he launched into rhapsodic praise of marriage in terms so banal, so painfully silly, that I kept looking for the ironic smile that might make some sense of his ranting. I’d liked Lou’s willingness to live a life of homosexual crime, but now he was talking himself into respectability.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I felt a blind hatred for (and shame before) anyone who interrupted my cruising—a strolling family or a boy and girl on a date who sat on a bench to neck, if that bench was my territory. The boredom I underwent was intense, painful, hard work, since all disciplined thoughts had been crowded out and soon in the toilets I’d even traded in my Chinese flashcards for unadulterated stupor. I learned that everyone else in the world was less interested in sex than I. The others reached a point where they’d had enough. They stood, buttoned up, and hurried off, irked they’d wasted so much time on nothing. But I had no shred of dignity left to button. The other fairies could be spooked by a slowly passing cop car, or they would withdraw when the prey became too scarce. Not me. I was still there, blue with the cold, beating my gloved hands for warmth. I’d had the same feeling when I was a child. I was the one who wanted to play late into the cold and the dark and to roughhouse (you be the rough, I’ll be the house). Just to feel that contact with other boys’ bodies, their knees burning into my biceps, their weight resting on my chest, or a strong forearm choking my neck from behind (I leaned closer into my tormentor)—to feel this contact, I was willing to defy the other boys, refuse to say uncle, or say it and recant. Now I spent so much time on this harsh exchange, where I was selling myself for free but still could never find enough takers, where the buyers I despised despised the merchandise I’d become, that all other human reciprocities (between friends, teacher and student, parent and child) appeared excessively kind, extraordinarily considerate. And yet I couldn’t help thinking that other people were nursing illusions of which I’d been disabused. Other people were somehow naive. My mother prayed every day of her life that my father would come back to her—or, failing him, some mystical Herb, Abe, or Will—and she listed her own attractions, her professional standing, her fine character, her accomplishments as hostess and conversationalist, her cultural background; but I knew she was fooling herself, that men were quantitative not qualitative, that they only knew how to count years, inches, wrinkles, dollars. Just as my chest was too narrow, my glasses too thick, my penis too small, she was too fat, old, poor. When Annie would tell me she was sure William Everett Hunton would come to love her because she had an inquisitive mind and a true heart capable of devotion, I thought, “Cut it, lady, just show me the figures.”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  A grim fatalism settled over me that was too anxious to be called resignation. Every morning I’d stand on the toilet to inspect my body in the only mirror in the apartment, the tiny one above the sink, but I could never tell if I was thinner or fatter. I refused to buy a scale and enter the realm of fact; I preferred to conjure my fictions, bloat in despair, dwindle in joy, stay constant to that mild anxiety Freud had termed “boredom.” And then there was something stubborn in me that didn’t want to lose weight to attract a man. If the right man came along, he’d be able to see my virtues magically. Once he kissed me, the frog would turn into a prince. I had become a trick question, a heavy disguise, but behind the disobliging exterior was the welcoming child I would always be. Of course, what I’d forgotten was that a lover was not Parsifal and I was not the Grail; the medievalism of my imagination was not sufficiently up-to-date to recognize that the lover was a shopper and I a product. On cold winter nights, lit like a pumpkin from within by the flame of liquor, I’d cruise the corner of Christopher and a back street called Gay (any chance of commemorating a plaque there now to my hungry ghost?). I’d memorize the shop windows and run around the corner to the neighborhood bar for another drink. It was the most venerable gay bar in town, its greasy ceiling caked with an inch of accumulated dust, its photos of sporting and theatrical celebrities strangely irrelevant to its clientele. The owners were nervous that their bar, too, would be closed by the police and they instituted curious rules: no more than three men could stand in a conversational group, women were given free drinks, and mixed couples were warmly welcomed whereas the doorman sent away one out of every two single men. On some evenings he’d insist that everyone turn his back to the bar and face the windows and street, as though we were in a display, merely pretending to drink and laugh while actually modeling the new line of hopsack pants or wheat jeans, saddle shoes or penny loafers, and surfer haircuts. I’d had my slightly curly hair relaxed by the same dangerous chemical blacks used to “conk” their hair at that time; once it was properly limp it hung over my eyes in a languid swag. My fatness abolished the space between my mother and me. She was a thousand miles away in Chicago, but the distance between us was fingernail thin. Like her, I juggled an inner melancholy and surface cheer. Like her, I was always on stage in a role calculated to please. The strangers I wanted to win over were all men—indifferent men whose fierce desires for each other crackled just above my head. I remembered when I was a boy, after my mother was divorced.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  “But he’s really sick,” she said. “He paces up and down and talks about feeling flames leaping along his arms—‘bizarre somatic delusions’ is what Dale calls them. He tries so hard to detect a heterosexual urge in himself he even pretends he’s getting excited over Dale, who could be his mother and has ankles thicker than his waist.” “I know it’s going to hurt,” I said, “but what does he say about me?” “He’s never even mentioned you.” She was polite enough to add, rather feebly, “That’s the sickest thing of all.” Under pressure from the group to date girls, Sean told me the sexual part of our relationship was over. He looked so pitiful, so flayed, that I didn’t object. I thought that a real person in my position would have said, “Fuck you. So long,” and walked out for good. But I felt sorry for Sean. The report of his behavior in group made me fear he was far more disturbed than I’d imagined. I also felt sorry for myself. I had stopped my compulsive toilet cruising since I’d met Sean. His sexual acceptance of me, paradoxically, had given me the courage to seduce other young men and take them home. In our mythology, a proper trick was more respectable than a tearoom quickie. A trick committed enough of his time to you to come home with you, mount your stairs, mount you, expose all his body, not just his penis, share a cigarette, and go through the usually empty but respectful ceremony of exchanging phone numbers. If Sean left me, I’d be consigned back to the toilets, to my grubby, sleepwalking, streetwalking life. Since he’d been the first break in my bad luck, I assumed he’d be the last. When we were together, I thought of nothing but strategy. I refused to give Sean reassurances, hoping he’d come back to me pleading for them. But what I hadn’t taken into account was how small a part I played in Sean’s life. If he thought of me at all, he must have seen me as a nice guy though sometimes a pain in the ass, always coming on. But he was contemplating the flames dancing on his flesh, flashing on his money worries and school, brooding about going straight. He grew thinner and thinner, and Dale had to feed him with a spoon during their sessions, which had become daily, or he wouldn’t eat at all. Then she put him in St. Vincent’s, in the psycho ward. He ran up and down the halls, knocking down nurses and patients, and had to be heavily medicated and put into restraints. He cried when he wasn’t sleeping. Dale turned his case over to a doctor on the ward, who promptly went on vacation.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  And then, after I closed and locked the door, I was alone. I had a record player and twelve records, which I played over and over again, especially the Bartók violin concerto, its harmonies edgy enough to make me feel modern but its sweep romantic enough to hurl me back on the bed in a flood of ardor. Until then I’d always wanted to write, but when I did, I wrote down nothing but the time and key signatures of my feelings or the chords. Most of the melody, as it were, remained in my head, and all the orchestration. Endless scenes of he said-she said poured forth from my pen, the automatic transcription of what I was currently living through, but my characters remained voices in the dark. I never described them or said what I was feeling. I took a creative writing course from a published novelist, who told me during a private conference, “You should arrange the nouns in each paragraph like the heads in a painting by Uccello.” “Utrillo?” I said brightly. He turned away in disgust. But now I read a collection of short stories by new writers, and I saw they did something I can only call “braiding,” the interlacing of phrases, details, snatches of dialogue. Until now I’d written mindless confession in a desperate effort to keep my head above the rising waters of despair and confusion, which could also be called the flood of circumstantiality. Nothing had ever seemed more important to me than who said what first, what she said back, and where it happened, but now I was toying with the idea, gleaned from my recent reading, that a design of sorts, not a stencil but a weave, could be teased out of all these balls of yarn. I’d drag men back to my room, one after another, guiding them up the fire escape into my window; they didn’t want to be seen by the other boarders any more than I wanted them seen. Afterward they’d smile awkwardly, dress, stand on tiptoe to comb their hair in my pointlessly high desk mirror, say, “Well, see you ’round,” and duck out the window and back down the rusting metal steps that boomed faintly with each step. Once the man was gone, I’d return to my story. I’d switch on my record of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut or Bartók’s violin concerto and pour myself a shot of Drambuie, a liqueur I didn’t realize was meant to be a sort of liquid dessert, not a steady drink. In a moment I’d weigh anchor, the white room would drift into a fast current, and I’d be alone with my characters. No mother to say, “Lights out,” no dormitory master patrolling the corridors, no fraternity brothers interrupting me, just four walls of my own, rent paid, and five months to go until summer vacation would spoil my sport. My lights burned their way into the dawn.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  6 Their webs will not serve as clothing, Nor will they cover themselves with what they make; Their works are works of wickedness [of sin, of injustice, of wrongdoing], And the act of violence is in their hands. 7 Their feet run to evil, And they rush to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness [of sin, of injustice, of wrongdoing]; Devastation and destruction are in their highways. 8 They do not know the way of peace, And there is no justice in their tracks. They have made them into crooked paths; Whoever walks on them does not know peace. [Rom 3:15–18 ] A Confession of Wickedness 9 Therefore justice is far from us, And righteousness does not overtake us. We [expectantly] hope for light, but only see darkness; We hope for gleam of light, but we walk in darkness and gloom. 10 We grope for a wall like the blind, We grope like those who have no eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; Among those who are healthy we are like dead men. 11 We all groan and growl like bears, And coo sadly like doves; We hope for justice, but there is none, For salvation, but it is far from us. 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before You [O LORD ], And our sins testify against us; For our transgressions are with us, And we know and recognize our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing]: 13 Rebelling against and denying the LORD , Turning away from [following] our God, Speaking oppression and revolt, Conceiving and muttering from the heart lying words. 14 Justice is pushed back, And righteous behavior stands far away; For truth has fallen in the city square, And b integrity cannot enter. 15 Yes, truth is missing; And he who turns away from evil makes himself a prey. N ow the LORD saw it, And it c displeased Him that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no man, And was amazed that there was no one to intercede [on behalf of truth and right]; Therefore His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His own righteousness sustained Him. [Is 53:11 ; Col 2:9 ; 1 John 2:1 , 2 ] 17 For He [the LORD ] put on righteousness like a coat of armor, And salvation like a helmet on His head; He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And covered Himself with zeal [and great love for His people] as a cloak. [Eph 6:14 , 17 ; 1 Thess 5:8 ] 18 As their deeds deserve, so He will repay: Wrath to His adversaries, retribution to His enemies; To the islands and coastlands He will repay. 19 So they will fear the name of the LORD from the west And His glory from the rising of the sun. For He will come in like a narrow, rushing stream Which the d breath of the LORD drives [overwhelming the enemy].

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  18 ‘Why then did You bring me out of the womb? Would that I had perished and no eye had seen me! 19 ‘I should have been as though I had not existed; [I should have been] carried from the womb to the grave.’ 20 “Would He not let my few days alone, Withdraw from me that I may have a little cheer 21 Before I go—and I shall not return— To the land of darkness and the deep shadow [of death], 22 The [sunless] land of utter gloom as darkness itself , [The land] of the shadow of death, without order, And [where] it shines as [thick] darkness.” Job 11 Zophar Rebukes Job 1 T HEN ZOPHAR the Naamathite answered and said, 2 “Shall a multitude of words not be answered? And should a talkative man [making such a long-winded defense] be acquitted? 3 “Should your boasts and babble silence men? And shall you scoff and no one put you to shame? 4 “For you have said, ‘My teaching (doctrine) [that God knowingly afflicts the righteous] is pure, And I am innocent in your eyes.’ [Job 10:7 ] 5 “But oh, that God would speak, And open His lips [to speak] against you, 6 And [that He would] show you the secrets of wisdom! For sound wisdom a has two sides. Know therefore that God forgets a part of your wickedness and guilt. 7 “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you [by searching] discover the limits of the Almighty [ascend to His heights, extend to His widths, and comprehend His infinite perfection]? 8 “His wisdom is as high as the heights of heaven. What can you do? It is deeper than Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead). What can you know? 9 “It is longer in measure [and scope] than the earth, And broader than the sea. 10 “If God passes by or arrests, Or calls an assembly [of judgment], who can restrain Him? [If He is against a man, who can call Him to account for it?] 11 “For He recognizes and knows false and worthless men, And He sees wickedness, will He not consider it? 12 “But a hollow (empty-headed) man will become intelligent and wise [Only] when the b colt of a wild donkey is born as a man. 13 “If you direct your heart [on the right path] And stretch out your hands to Him, 14 If sin is in your hand, put it far away [from you], And do not let wrongdoing dwell in your tents; 15 Then, indeed, you could lift up your face [to Him] without moral defect, And you would be firmly established and secure and not fear. 16 “For you would forget your trouble; You would remember it as waters that have passed by. 17 “And your c life would be brighter than the noonday; Darkness [then] would be like the morning.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  8 Morning after morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, That I may cut off from the city of the LORD all those who do evil. Psalm 102 Prayer of an Afflicted Man for Mercy on Himself and on Zion. A Prayer of the afflicted; when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint to God. 1 H EAR MY prayer, O LORD , And let my cry for help come to You! 2 Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress! Incline Your ear to me; In the day when I call, answer me quickly. 3 For my days have vanished in smoke, And my bones have been scorched like a hearth. 4 My heart has been struck like grass and withered, Indeed, [absorbed by my heartache] I forget to eat my food. 5 Because of the sound of my groaning [in suffering and trouble] My bones cling to my flesh. 6 I am like a [mournful] a vulture of the wilderness; I am like a [desolate] owl of the wasteland. 7 I am sleepless and lie awake [mourning], I have become like a lonely bird on a housetop. 8 My enemies taunt me all day long; Those who ridicule me use my name as a curse. 9 For I have eaten ashes like bread, And have mingled my drink with tears [Is 44:20 ] 10 Because of Your indignation and Your wrath, For You have lifted me up and thrown me away. 11 My days are like an evening shadow that lengthens and vanishes [with the sun]; And as for me, I wither away like grass. 12 But You, O LORD , are enthroned forever [ruling eternally as sovereign]; And [the fame and glory of] Your name [endures] to all generations. 13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion, For it is time to be gracious and show favor to her; Yes, the appointed time [the moment designated] has come. [Ps 12:5 ; 119:126 ] 14 For Your servants find [melancholy] pleasure in the stones [of her ruins] And feel pity for her dust. 15 So the nations will fear the name of the LORD , And all the kings of the earth [will recognize] Your glory. [Ps 96:9 ] 16 For the LORD has built up Zion; He has appeared in His glory and brilliance; 17 He has regarded the prayer of the destitute, And has not despised their prayer. 18 Let this be recorded for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created will praise the LORD .