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 129 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  her belief that she could turn Allen around, she was convinced that Ron was too far gone, and that he would never abandon his fanatical ideas. Both Ron and Dan had been excommunicated from the LDS Church. Ron no longer had a job. He was increasingly abusive to Dianna, and talked with ever greater fervor about taking plural wives. Brenda urged Dianna to divorce Ron, for her children’s sake and her own. Leaving Ron was all but unthinkable for Dianna. As she later explained to the Utah County prosecutor, she had six children, hadn’t graduated from college, had never held a job, and possessed no marketable skills. “I can’t even type,” she confessed in despair. But at her core she knew Brenda was right: leaving Ron was imperative. Relying on Brenda, close friends, and members of the Highland LDS ward, Dianna summoned enough courage to initiate divorce proceedings. The divorce was finalized in the autumn of 1983. Around Thanksgiving Dianna packed up the kids and moved to Florida, putting as much space as she could between her and the Lafferty boys. Even though he’d had every opportunity to see it coming, the departure of his wife and children came as a stunning blow to Ron. Despondent at the prospect of Christmas without them, he planned to spend the holidays far from Utah, where he was reminded of his missing family everywhere he turned. Ron decided to visit a colony of polygamists near Woodburn, Oregon, headed by a charismatic figure named John W. Bryant. Before landing in Woodburn (a farm town just north of Salem, the Oregon state capital), Bryant had established polygamist settlements in Utah, California, and Nevada. Like so many other renegade prophets, he had on occasion asserted that he was the “one mighty and strong” but he differed from his fundamentalist brethren in some unusual aspects. Bryant was a libertine by temperament, and his teachings emphasized experimentation with drugs and group sex— homosexual as well as heterosexual—proclivities seldom acknowledged by other Mormon Fundamentalists. Such scandalous behavior was completely new to Ron, who was both enthralled and taken aback by what he saw during his extended visit to Bryant’s commune. When one of the prophet’s wives let Ron know she found him attractive, Ron was extremely tempted to hop into bed with her, but he worried that doing so might make Bryant jealous and angry, so he left and returned to

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  death by their husbands; husbands are murdered by their wives; new born babes are cruelly murdered to hide the false shame created by the false, and wicked, and tyrannical law against polygamy. . . . While on the other hand polygamy regulated by the law of God as illustrated in this book could not possibly produce one crime; neither could it injure any human being. The stupidity of modern Christian nations upon this subject is horribly astonishing. . . . The question is not now to be debated whether these things are so: neither is it a question of much importance who wrote this book! But the question, the momentous question is: will you now restore the law of God on this important subject, and keep it? Remember that the law of God is given by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Speak not a word against it at your peril. Because Joseph Smith was listed on the title page as the printer of The Peace Maker, because the treatise precisely reflected many of his teachings—and because it concluded with the cryptic declaration that it was not “a question of much importance who wrote this book!”—scholars and others have long speculated that Joseph was the author. Determining who wrote The Peace Maker was important to Dan Lafferty. “I really wanted to know if this was Joseph Smith’s writing,” he says. “So I studied, and prayed, and after a period of time the Lord gave me enough knowledge to become quite satisfied that Joseph Smith wrote it. . . . I don’t know for sure that it’s Joseph Smith, but I’ll be surprised if it wasn’t.” The fact that The Peace Maker was apparently the work of the prophet made Dan especially receptive to the ideas expounded in its pages. With all the zeal one would expect from a “hundred-and-ten-percenter,” he wasted no time in applying the book’s fundamentalist strictures to his household, which had by then grown to include Matilda, her two daughters from a previous marriage, and four children she and Dan had conceived together. Under the new rules, Matilda was no longer allowed to drive, handle money, or talk to anyone outside the family when Dan wasn’t present, and she had to wear a dress at all times. The children were pulled out of school and forbidden to play with their friends. Dan decreed that the family was to receive no outside medical care; he began treating them himself by means of prayer, fasting, and herbal remedies. In July 1983, when their fifth child was born, a son, Dan delivered the baby at home and circumcised the boy himself. They began raising much of their own food, scavenging the rest from

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  The day Kim was laid to rest, when a Russian missile removed New Orleans from the map and the South African Aryan Republic retaliated (as they had always promised they would if nuclear weapons were used) by simultaneously melting down Moscow and Washington, D.C., I would have joined my sister-workers on the rooftops to mow down the government troops who had finally been shipped home from Europe to straighten out the womenfolk. I can easily imagine myself lobbing bottles full of burning gasoline and detergent into their jeeps. All things considered, I would have been one of the happiest celebrants in the month-long carnival that followed the signing of peace with Mother Russia. So why am I here, one of the bad guys, working up a sweat, my tension building, slowly poisoning my muscles? I unlock my knees, rock back and forth a few times, shift my weight onto the other foot, and try to settle my stomach. Am I bored enough to eroticize this situation? I try to pretend that the liquid dripping from my armpits and spilling over my back is blood. It’s been too long. I can’t really remember what it feels like to be whipped that severely. After all, it’s been two years. Reconstruct, I order myself. You hang from your wrists, the tips of your toes scrabble for tenuous contact with the ground, cold air hits your bare skin as your shirt is ripped open. You hear the swish of the whip and scream before you feel the pain. The fear makes you scream, but the pain leaves you dumb. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t alter its character, you have no choice but to learn how to accept it and take it and ride it out. How did I do that? I cannot remember what it is like to abandon my will to the other’s careful, deadly hand and the impartial whip that will obtain the same truth from me it obtains from anyone who comes under it: to be human is to be a prisoner of your suffering flesh, but your physical senses allow you to catch a glimpse of some other possibility, something free and mysterious. I can only remember concrete details and conversation. Jackie’s whip, homemade out of unraveled hemp rope, had little nails in the end of it that she had sharpened by hand. She cut me down. She said, “I don’t love you.” I was crying, broken, liberated, and I said, “I don’t care. You’ve never lied to me. I’d rather have honesty than love.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now there were days when Stephen herself would long for some palliative, some distraction; when her erstwhile success seemed like Dead Sea fruit, her will to succeed a grotesque pre- sumption. Who was she to stand out against the whole world, against those ruthless, pursuing millions bent upon the destruc- tion of her and her kind? And she but one poor, inadequate creature. She would start to pace up and down her study; up and down, up and down, a most desolate pacing; even as years ago her father had paced his quiet study at Morton. Then those treacher- ous nerves of hers would betray her, so that when Mary came in with David — he a little depressed, sensing something amiss — she would often turn on the girl and speak sharply. ‘Where on earth have you been? ’ “Only out for a walk. I walked round to Jamie’s, Barbara’s not well; I sent her in a few tins of Brand’s jelly.’ ‘ You’ve no right to go off without letting me know where you're going —I’ve told you before I won’t have it!’ Her voice would be harsh, and Mary would flush, unaware of those nerves that were strained to breaking. As though grasping at something that remained secure, they would go to see the kind Mademoiselle Duphot, but less often than they had done in the past, for a feeling of guilt would come > THE WELL OF LONELINESS 439 upon Stephen. Looking at the gentle and foal-like face with its innocent eyes behind the strong glasses, she would think: ‘ We’re here under false pretences. If she knew what we were, she’d have none of us, either. Brockett was right, we should stick to our kind.’ So they went less and less to see Mademoiselle Duphot. Mademoiselle said with her mild resignation: ‘ It is natural, for now our Stévenne is famous. Why should she waste her time upon us? I am more than content to have been her teacher.’ But the sightless Julie shook her head sadly: ‘It is not like that; you mistake, my sister. I can feel a great desolation in Stévenne — and some of the youngness has gone from Mary. What can it be? My fingers grow blind when I ask them the cause of that desolation.’ ‘I will pray for them both to the Sacred Heart which com. prehends all things,’ said Mademoiselle Duphot. And indeed her own heart would have tried to understand — but Stephen had grown very bitterly mistrustful. And so now, in good earnest they turned to their kind, for as Puddle had truly divined in the past, it is ‘ like to like ’ for such people as Stephen. Thus when Pat walked in unexpectedly one day to invite them to join a party that night at the Ideal Bar, Stephen did not oppose Mary’s prompt and all too eager acceptance.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Iduna had never had someone pay so much attention to her with such a look of utter indifference on their face. She had not anticipated this much resistance. This was even more difficult than locating her quarry in the first place. Clearly, the offer of her wrist was not enough. Perhaps scars annoyed them. She thought they had a heat-seeking sense, like rattlesnakes. She imagined that scars would be like cold streaks in the hot aura that radiated through the skin, making the marked person less appealing than someone with a smooth body. Perhaps this one was just fastidious about unzipping an old scar, thought of it as drinking from a glass someone else had already used. She probed again, looking for the weak spot, the turning point, the breaking point. “Do you prefer men, is that it? Is it because women are weaker, smaller, and too quickly drained? But then, I’ve never heard of you leaving anyone bloodless and dead. So why should it matter? I know most of you don’t need as much blood as the stories say you do. Too many of those legends are about stupid and greedy ones, the ones so unrelentingly selfish they got caught. Or the ones who unfortunately can’t live on anything other than human blood. Why are you denying yourself this much pleasure?” She dared to allow compassion to creep into her voice. “You must have had to develop an enormous amount of self-control and get awfully good at living in a constant state of deprivation. Is that why you stopped going after James, to prove that you could do without it if you had to? But it’s not necessary now. I want you to have me.” The stony face of the other said, “Don’t try to cozen me. In a thousand years, you could never understand what I am, where I have been, what living has done to me.” Iduna despaired. Her head drooped, and Kerry almost felt sorry for her. Then inspiration struck. “Or could it be that you would rather drink your life from a woman, hold her in your arms, slit her throat with your teeth, then eagerly gulp down what wells up around your mouth—yet you refuse to let yourself have me because you would enjoy it too much and then want it and need it again? Are you afraid you would lose control if you got what you really want?” There was no change in the other’s fighting stance and icy expression. The air between them simply became busier, hummed like a high-voltage wire, stank of ozone, seemed to turn an even darker shade of midnight blue.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  You usually respond, “God, yes!” But sometimes you tell me, “No, you can stop now,” and I’m crushed, even if I know you are just trying to be kind, reluctant to wear me out when there’s no hope that it’s going to work. And I can understand that, because there are times when I’m not going to come, no matter what somebody does for me or to me. But I know I have failed you, failed to give you bliss and relief, and I will never be good for anything. I hate this feeling. Remembering it makes me renew my efforts around and around your clitoris (which is bigger and harder now, as big as the whole world to me), and dip my tongue down into your vagina to see how much you are lubricating. I have continually let saliva run out of my mouth to keep your clit wet, because you can’t come if it’s dry. This parches my mouth, so I start rationing swallows of spit—half a mouthful for your clit, half for me to keep my tongue from getting rough and my throat from tickling until I have to cough. Sometimes I slip lower and lick up and swallow a mouthful of my old spit and your sex juice, but this means leaving your clit, so I try not to do it too often. My neck really hurts. I’m having trouble holding my head up. Sweat is running down my forehead and I can’t wipe it off, so it runs into my eyes and stings. My hands are completely numb, and so are my forearms, all the way up to the elbow. I can’t tell if I am still gripping your labia or not. I can only tell by the shape of the clit in my mouth just how far back I’m still managing to keep them. I am angry with you because you are taking so long, angry because you leave me alone down here, with no idea what is going on with you, if you are enjoying it or not, no indication of how close you are, how much longer it’s going to take. I want to shout, “Are you ever going to come?” I desperately need some help, and I begin to whisper, “please, please,” sometimes loud enough for you to hear me. Any kind of groan or sigh you make is of life-or-death importance to me now and keeps me going for a few more minutes. But I feel as if I am hanging from a cliff face by my skinned and bleeding palms, and I know I cannot hold on to the bare rock for much longer.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "All the lot. Their spunk is gone dead. Motorcars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck the last bit out of them. I tell you, every generation breeds a more rabbity generation, with india rubber tubing for guts and tin legs and tin faces. Tin people! It's all a steady sort of bolshevism just killing off the human thing, and worshipping the mechanical thing. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, making mincemeat of the old Adam and the old Eve. They're all alike. The world is all alike: kill off the human reality, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. What is cunt but machine-fucking!--It's all alike. Pay 'em money to cut off the world's cock. Pay money, money, money to them that will take spunk out of mankind, and leave 'em all little twiddling machines." He sat there in the hut, his face pulled to mocking irony. Yet even then, he had one ear set backwards, listening to the storm over the wood. It made him feel so alone. "But won't it ever come to an end?" she said. "Ay, it will. It'll achieve its own salvation. When the last real man is killed, and they're _all_ tame: white, black, yellow, all colours of tame ones: then they'll _all_ be insane. Because the root of sanity is in the balls. Then they'll all be _insane_, and they'll make their grand _auto da fé_. You know _auto da fé_ means _act of faith_? Ay well, they'll make their own grand little act of faith. They'll offer one another up." "You mean kill one another?" "I do, duckie! If we go on at our present rate then in a hundred years' time there won't be ten thousand people in this island: there may not be ten. They'll have lovingly wiped each other out." The thunder was rolling further away. "How nice!" she said. "Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species and the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it calms you more than anything else. And if we go on in this way, with everybody, intellectuals, artists, government, industrialists and workers all frantically killing off the last human feeling, the last bit of their intuition, the last healthy instinct; if it goes on in algebraical progression, as it is going on: then ta-tah! to the human species! Good-bye! darling! the serpent swallows itself and leaves a void, considerably messed up, but not hopeless. Very nice! When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby, and savage wild pit-ponies stamp on Tevershall pit-bank! _te deum laudamus!_" Connie laughed, but not very happily. "Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshevists," she said. "You ought to be pleased that they hurry on towards the end." "So I am. I don't stop 'em. Because I couldn't if I would." "Then why are you so bitter?"

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So saying, she dragged herself painfully to the midward of the platform, despairing to escape alive from so fierce a heat; and not once, but a thousand times, over and above her other torments, she thought to swoon for thirst, still weeping and bemoaning her illhap. However, it being now vespers and it seeming to the scholar he had done enough, he caused his servant take up the unhappy lady's clothes and wrap them in his cloak; then, betaking himself to her house, he found her maid seated before the door, sad and disconsolate and unknowing what to do, and said to her, 'Good woman, what is come of thy mistress?' 'Sir,' replied she, 'I know not. I thought to find her this morning in the bed whither meseemed I saw her betake herself yesternight; but I can find her neither there nor otherwhere and know not what is come of her; wherefore I suffer the utmost concern. But you, sir, can you not tell me aught of her?' Quoth he, 'Would I had had thee together with her whereas I have had her, so I might have punished thee of thy default, like as I have punished her for hers! But assuredly thou shalt not escape from my hands, ere I have so paid thee for thy dealings that thou shalt never more make mock of any man, without remembering thee of me.' Then to his servant, 'Give her the clothes,' quoth he, 'and bid her go to her mistress, an she will.' The man did his bidding and gave the clothes to the maid, who, knowing them and hearing what Rinieri said, was sore afraid lest they should have slain her mistress and scarce refrained from crying out; then, the scholar being done, she set out with the clothes for the tower, weeping the while.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She gazed at me with fearful eyes, and pulled the blankets higher, as if to hide her nakedness from me. From me!It was Walter who spoke.‘Nan,’ he said hesitantly - I had never heard his voice so dry and bare - ‘Nan, you have surprised us. We didn’t look for you until tonight.’ He took up a towel and rubbed at his face with it. Then he stepped very quickly to the chair, seized his jacket and pulled it on. His hands, I saw, were shaking.I had never seen him shake before.I said, ‘I caught an earlier train ...’ My mouth, like his, had dried; my voice, in consequence, sounded slow and thick. ‘Indeed, I thought it was still very early. How long, Walter, have you been here?’He shook his head, as if the question pained him, and took a step towards me. Then he said rather urgently: ‘Nan, forgive me. This is not for your eyes. Will you come downstairs with me and let us talk ... ?’His tone was strange; and hearing it, I knew for certain.‘No!’ I folded my hands over my belly: there was a hot, sour churning in there, as if they had fed me poison. At my cry Kitty shivered and grew white. I turned to her. ‘It isn’t true!’ I said. ‘Oh tell me, tell me - say it ain’t true!’ She wouldn’t look at me, only placed her hands before her eyes and began to weep.Walter came closer and put his hand upon my arm.‘Get away!’ I cried, and stepped free of him towards the bed. ‘Kitty? Kitty?’ I knelt beside her, took her hand from her face, and held it to my own lips. I kissed her fingers, her nails, her palm, her wrist; her knuckles, that were damp from her own weeping, were soon drenched with tears and slobber. Walter looked on, appalled, still trembling.At last, she met my gaze. ‘It’s true,’ she whispered.I gave a start, and a moan - then heard her shriek, felt Walter’s fingers grip my shoulders, and realised that I had bitten her, like a dog. She pulled her hand away and gazed at me in horror. Again I shook Walter off, then turned to scream at him. ‘Get away, get out! Get out, and leave us!’

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I like farming all right. It's not inspiring, but then I don't ask to be inspired. I'm used to horses, and cows, though they are very female, have a soothing effect on me. When I sit with my head in her side, milking, I feel very solaced. They have six rather fine Herefords. Oat harvest is just over and I enjoyed it, in spite of sore hands and a lot of rain. I don't take much notice of people, but get on with them all right. Most things one just ignores. "The pits are working badly; this is a colliery district like Tevershall, only prettier. I sometimes sit in the Wellington and talk to the men. They grumble a lot, but they're not going to alter anything. As everybody says, the Notts-Derby miners have got their hearts in the right place. But the rest of their anatomy must be in the wrong place, in a world that has no use for them. I like them, but they don't cheer me much: not enough of the old fighting-cock in them. They talk a lot about nationalisation, nationalisation of royalties, nationalisation of the whole industry. But you can't nationalise coal and leave all the other industries as they are. They talk about putting coal to new uses, like Sir Clifford is trying to do. It may work here and there, but not as a general thing, I doubt. Whatever you make you've got to sell it. The men are very apathetic. They feel the whole damned thing is doomed, and I believe it is. And they are doomed along with it. Some of the young ones spout about a Soviet but there's not much conviction in them. There's no sort of conviction about anything, except that it's all a muddle and a hole. Even under a Soviet you've still got to sell coal: and that's the difficulty. "We've got this great industrial population, and they've got to be fed, so the damn show has to be kept going somehow. The women talk a lot more than the men, nowadays, and they are a sight more cock-sure. The men are limp, they feel a doom somewhere, and they go about as if there was nothing to be done. Anyhow, nobody knows what should be done, in spite of all the talk. The young ones get mad because they've no money to spend. Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they've got none to spend. That's our civilisation and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out. The pits are working two days, two-and-a-half days a week, and there's no sign of betterment even for the winter. It means a man bringing up a family on twenty-five and thirty shillings. The women are the maddest of all. But then they're the maddest for spending, nowadays.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  He was surprised when the master buckled his discarded chaps around his waist, leaving his ass naked, and zipped up the legs. Curt had not seen the interaction behind his back, when the master had held up a weightlifter’s kidney belt, and the spoiler had indicated he needed his body to be protected more completely by taking the boy’s borrowed leather from the pile of clothing folded in the corner. “I’m still getting the hang of this,” the spoiler murmured apologetically. The master inclined his head. He rarely met a top who cared to go to school, and the admission of apprenticeship charmed him. Anybody can pick up a whip and then try to chop wood with it. It’s not a very effective way to keep warm in winter, and it rarely heats anybody else up, either. The spoiler did not start by cracking the whip. He trailed it over the tense back, stepped away, grasped it by the middle, and whirled the end of it lightly across the surface, warming it. Gradually he let his hand slip closer to the handle, increasing the force of his strokes. Not until the boy’s back was well reddened did he move far enough away to use the entire length of the quirt. It looked like throwing a baseball—he seemed to be hurling something at the boy, but the whip stayed in his hand, and only a fireball of pain flew free and hit like a grenade. When a whip is cracked, the tip of it is going faster than the speed of sound. So Curt may be excused for feeling that each scream was being torn from his throat and praying that his next breath would be his last. He could have taken even this if he had not had to take it alone. But the stranger who had been so helpful did not speak to him, and he could not see his face. The pain had no purpose, it was madness, he was being taught things he did not want to know—why men broke under torture, how much you can suffer and still live, the sublime indifference of the sky from blue to black and to blue again; finally, that he was alone with this knowledge—alone, alone, alone with pain. The spoiler did not intend to send the young man spinning through the existential void. True, he felt little or nothing for this piece of bait, but that was not his fault. This novice did not have any of the qualities that aroused him—for example, a good-humored willingness to make others suffer if they would not obey. The category of beginner, virgin, or chicken was erotically neutral and empty for the spoiler.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Pride (which clenches muscles and makes blows bruise instead of merely sting, which stiffens the neck and thickens the tongue until one cannot plead for mercy, which forbids the use of any clever, demeaning slave ploy to cajole the master and stay his anger) is the first thing to be thrown overboard. After all, what justification is there for pride when you are locked in a cage, you breasts are suffering, your hands are locked behind your back, your ass has been filled by a foreign object, and someone is beating you black and blue? Your bestial need to survive the ordeal in one piece makes pride superfluous. And the seeping fluid of sexual arousal that makes your thighs slip together as he punishes you makes pride seem hypocritical, not to mention pretentious. No, it is better to scream freely, without restraint, to plead for mercy, to cry, to struggle beautifully, to sweat and strain, to be marked and marked again, to ask him what he wants, to agree to everything he says, to ask for more if that is what he wants, to confess, to grunt like a pig or howl like a dog, to promise anything—anything—if only it will stop. Once the emotions have been simplified and the illusion of free will destroyed, the body also needs to purge itself. Dancing under agony, scant attention is left to control any sphincter or restrain excretion until it can be performed in a seemly, civilized manner. Now he was using a very thin riding crop. The pain escalated sharply. From the feel of it, it had a whalebone core. It was horrifying. Beyond expressing with a mere scream. She was convinced that the sweat rolling down her legs must be blood, knowing that it most certainly was not. It was too much—too much—too much for decency— So she pissed. Uncontrollably. From fear and anguish. All over herself, the floor of the cage, and anything else close enough to get splashed. Then he was enraged, as yellow drops of her urine beaded up on the toes of his mirror-shiny boots, and the strokes he laid on her with that evil, skinny crop made her shimmy as though she were possessed and yell until she lost her voice. When it stopped, she felt as if she were in the eye of a hurricane. There was respite from pain, but not from drama or tension.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  . . . hands splashed with blood, he said. We’re all here this Saturday morning, and I know I don’t need to tell you the truth that an unborn child has a heartbeat before it’s a month old. I don’t have to tell you that, within the first three months of fetal life, a human infant’s strong enough to grip a hand. But I’m not sure if it’s done much good, all this truth. What point it’s had, if you and I aren’t saving lives. Wind gusted, flapping nylon jackets. Instead of trying to talk across the noise, he held up his palm, indicating he’d wait. More people turned in his direction. The Lord is calling us, he said. But we’ve failed, you and I, in following Him. We’re living in a time of great evil. Rivers of blood, replenished with children’s bodies, are flooding this nation, and we’ve let the blood spill. If we are lukewarm, the Lord has said, He will spit us out of His mouth. I’ll ask you what I’ve asked myself, late at night, as I wait upon His Spirit: if the likes of you and I won’t be radical for God, who will? While he talked, his voice had risen. He finished with a shout, then he fell silent. The crowd around us was hushed, listening. Raising his head, he asked if he could get an amen. Several people replied; he asked again. This time, the amens belled toward him. I felt my ears ring. Yes, Lord, he said. Oh, Lord, I beg, be here with us. He called out the opening line of a hymn, one I recognized, and the crowd sang it back to him. Phoebe joined in, hands folded. She rocked back and forth, eyes closed, and I thought of the night we’d met, how she’d danced until she gasped for breath, holding the thick hair in a ponytail. It was damp at the tips. Sweat trickled down her slim throat. Phoebe’s rolling hips parodied that night; so, too, the rapt, upheld face. She’d told me, as she apologized, that he’d asked how I was doing with Jejah. He’d spoken with love, she said, and she’d responded in kind, without thinking. I’m not upset with you, I said. I wasn’t: she didn’t have to apologize. I felt a long confusion lifting. If anything, I should be grateful. For some time, I’d also failed to think. The crowd kept singing. I watched, alone. It was a horde, and they all had what I lacked. In what He’s credited to have said, the Lord is explicit. He insists on full, absolute devotion, nothing less. John Leal had that part right. But from the start, I’d obeyed His call. I’d pledged my life to Him, if to no avail, which left me believing God had to be nothing, a fiction; that, or He didn’t want me.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I’d last heard from Fitz a week ago, before I decided to go to L.A. In the news, I’d been identified as Phoebe Lin’s old boyfriend; since then, I had reporters calling, along with patriots who wished me dead, in jail. Shot. Praised. So, when a restricted number flashed on my phone, I put it down. It rang again. It wasn’t until the fourth call that I answered. It’s Agent Fitz, she said. I’m hanging up. You don’t want to do that. I have news for you. I was in Norton Hall, going to class. Swerving left, I went into a single-person bathroom. I locked myself in. You had that footage when you talked to me, didn’t you? I said. With Phoebe. The tape. You lied to get me to tell— Don’t be a child. You knew what I was doing. If you didn’t, you’re a fool. I’m calling because I said I’d help find Phoebe, and I hold up my end of a promise. It’ll be out before long, but I wanted to tell you ahead of time. Fitz said that a man, a Noxhurst local, had been jogging down the Hudson. It was as he approached Hoyt Bridge that he glimpsed the long hair he’d seen in photos, a blue dress, falling from the rail. But Phoebe didn’t own blue clothing. She thought it washed out her skin. He didn’t see a face, so it might have been anyone. It could have been nothing at all: a flock of black-pinioned birds, flicking mid-flight, like a ponytail. The feathers shredding trapezoids of blue into the trick lines of a girl’s dress. Less than a mile from the clinic, he’d have had the attacks in mind. I let Fitz persist, talking, until she admitted they’d failed to find the alleged suicide’s body. Based on evidence I can’t disclose, she said, the bureau has concluded the man did, in fact, see Phoebe fall from a bridge. She sent you a note we had to intercept: I can’t give it to you, but I’ll make sure its contents are passed along. I have to go, I said. I switched off my phone; I laughed until I couldn’t breathe. That evening, I received an email from Fitz, the note digitized, then attached. I watched from the roof while God’s hand flattened the killing mill. I thought I’d see the face of God and live. Will, I’ve since learned that it’s possible to love life without loving mine. –

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  By now, you are usually holding still, not making any noise at all, barely breathing, and my neck is starting to hurt and my hands are tingling. Perversely, just as I abandon my ego, I get very turned on to the idea of servicing you, of having you use my mouth for hours, and I start humping the bed and coming, about once every five to eight minutes. I come even if I hold my legs apart and try desperately not to, because it disrupts my rhythm and embarrasses me. Sometimes you catch fire from the noises I make and the groveling motions I’m making with my hips, and you make a little sex music with me, saying, “Oh, yeah, baby, go ahead, come, come now!” or simply moan and thrust yourself against my mouth. But I get progressively more depressed and full of despair anyway, because nothing seems to be happening or changing or getting better with your body and its physical response, and I want to make you come, I don’t want this to be for my benefit, you allowing me to suck you off—even though you don’t get off on it—simply because I get off on it. I start making questioning noises, asking you with whispers and moans or outright words if you want me to continue. You usually respond, “God, yes!” But sometimes you tell me, “No, you can stop now,” and I’m crushed, even if I know you are just trying to be kind, reluctant to wear me out when there’s no hope that it’s going to work. And I can understand that, because there are times when I’m not going to come, no matter what somebody does for me or to me. But I know I have failed you, failed to give you bliss and relief, and I will never be good for anything. I hate this feeling. Remembering it makes me renew my efforts around and around your clitoris (which is bigger and harder now, as big as the whole world to me), and dip my tongue down into your vagina to see how much you are lubricating. I have continually let saliva run out of my mouth to keep your clit wet, because you can’t come if it’s dry. This parches my mouth, so I start rationing swallows of spit—half a mouthful for your clit, half for me to keep my tongue from getting rough and my throat from tickling until I have to cough. Sometimes I slip lower and lick up and swallow a mouthful of my old spit and your sex juice, but this means leaving your clit, so I try not to do it too often. My neck really hurts.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I begin to wonder if you are in a good enough space to be able to hold your cunt open for me for a few minutes, maybe take a break long enough for me to get a drink of water and work the blood back into my hands. I am never sure. Sometimes a request like this is enough to make you feel so guilty for “taking too long” that you break things off. I don’t want you to stop me now. I badly need to continue, to keep going, to keep you open to me, keep you believing in me and trusting and needing me. The safety of my whole world seems to depend on being granted the privilege of continuing to go down on you. Patiently, persistently, carefully, in agony and self-doubt, I keep caressing you, trying to duplicate again and again the same exact pattern of motion and pressure, the same degree of wetness and friction, and if you move or make a noise, I stop for a fraction of an instant, record what I was doing when you responded, and then try to make a copy of it between my lips and your sex. There is an erotic pressure between my own legs, a need to be fucked, to come, but I won’t let myself build up and cry out, thrashing against the mattress, one more time. I need you now, your orgasm, your climax, to put out the fire that’s raging inside of me. My own climax would bleed energy off from you, energy that you need to come. I don’t want to pay any attention to my own body, it’s whining pain and thirst, its nagging need to piss or come. It distracts me. I ignore it. But it clamors louder and louder, and sometimes I am humiliated by yet another orgasm of my own, which takes place in a state of despair and frustration that infuriates and devastates me. Still I work on and on, mechanically, softly, like the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon one eon at a time, like a bird flying across the ocean that can’t stop no matter how tired she is because there is no place to land. Save me, give it to me, help me, seize my head between your thighs and drown me! Come, come! Sometimes, not all the time, at a time I am never able to predict and for reasons I still do not understand, you promise me a miracle. You begin to talk to me. After your long silence, it feels very odd, being talked to. I pay close attention to what you have to say. It must be important if you can’t keep quiet any more. “Oh, lover,” you say, “I’m going to come. Can you feel it? Lover!”

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Off.” Iduna had never had someone pay so much attention to her with such a look of utter indifference on their face. She had not anticipated this much resistance. This was even more difficult than locating her quarry in the first place. Clearly, the offer of her wrist was not enough. Perhaps scars annoyed them. She thought they had a heat-seeking sense, like rattlesnakes. She imagined that scars would be like cold streaks in the hot aura that radiated through the skin, making the marked person less appealing than someone with a smooth body. Perhaps this one was just fastidious about unzipping an old scar, thought of it as drinking from a glass someone else had already used. She probed again, looking for the weak spot, the turning point, the breaking point. “Do you prefer men, is that it? Is it because women are weaker, smaller, and too quickly drained? But then, I’ve never heard of you leaving anyone bloodless and dead. So why should it matter? I know most of you don’t need as much blood as the stories say you do. Too many of those legends are about stupid and greedy ones, the ones so unrelentingly selfish they got caught. Or the ones who unfortunately can’t live on anything other than human blood. Why are you denying yourself this much pleasure?” She dared to allow compassion to creep into her voice. “You must have had to develop an enormous amount of self-control and get awfully good at living in a constant state of deprivation. Is that why you stopped going after James, to prove that you could do without it if you had to? But it’s not necessary now. I want you to have me.” The stony face of the other said, “Don’t try to cozen me. In a thousand years, you could never understand what I am, where I have been, what living has done to me.” Iduna despaired. Her head drooped, and Kerry almost felt sorry for her. Then inspiration struck. “Or could it be that you would rather drink your life from a woman, hold her in your arms, slit her throat with your teeth, then eagerly gulp down what wells up around your mouth—yet you refuse to let yourself have me because you would enjoy it too much and then want it and need it again? Are you afraid you would lose control if you got what you really want?” There was no change in the other’s fighting stance and icy expression. The air between them simply became busier, hummed like a high-voltage wire, stank of ozone, seemed to turn an even darker shade of midnight blue. Now or never. It was the moment that would decide the outcome of the hunt. Iduna stared into Kerry’s eyes, covered with the reflecting aviators, and used the tiny portrait in them to guide her hand while she made two slashes at the place where her breasts came together, a little ‘v’ that fit into her cleavage.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She described her mother who had died when Angela was twelve—a pathetic, inadequate creature; the descendant of women who had owned many slaves to minister to their most trivial requirements: ‘She could hardly put on her own stockings and shoes,’ smiled Angela, as she pictured that mother. She described her father, George Benjamin Maxwell—a charming, but quite incorrigible spendthrift. She said: ‘He lived in past glories, Stephen. Because he was a Maxwell—a Maxwell of Virginia—he wouldn’t admit that the Civil War had deprived us all of the right to spend money. God knows, there was little enough of it left—the War practically ruined the old Southern gentry! My grandma could remember those days quite well; she scraped lint from her sheets for our wounded soldiers. If Grandma had lived, my life might have been different—but she died a couple of months after Mother.’ She described the eventual cataclysm, when the home had been sold up with everything in it, and she and her father had set out for New York—she just seventeen and he broken and ailing—to rebuild his dissipated fortune. And because she was now painting a picture of real life, untinged by imagination, her words lived, and her voice grew intensely bitter. ‘Hell—it was hell! We went under so quickly. There were days when I hadn’t enough to eat. Oh, Stephen, the filth, the unspeakable squalor—the heat and the cold and the hunger and the squalor. God, how I hate that great hideous city! It’s a monster, it crushes you down, it devours—even now I couldn’t go back to New York without feeling a kind of unreasoning terror. Stephen, that damnable city broke my nerve. Father got calmly out of it all by dying one day—and that was so like him! He’d had about enough, so he just lay down and died; but I couldn’t do that because I was young—and I didn’t want to die, either. I hadn’t the least idea what I could do, but I knew that I was supposed to be pretty and that good-looking girls had a chance on the stage, so I started out to look for a job. My God! Shall I ever forget it!’ And now she described the long, angular streets, miles and miles of streets; miles and miles of faces all strange and unfriendly—faces like masks. Then the intimate faces of would-be employers, too intimate when they peered into her own—faces that had suddenly thrown off their masks. ‘Stephen, are you listening? I put up a fight, I swear it! I swear I put up a fight—I was only nineteen when I got my first job—nineteen’s not so awfully old, is it, Stephen?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, Gisippus abode in Athens, held in little esteem of well nigh all, and no great while after, through certain intestine troubles, was, with all those of his house, expelled from Athens, in poverty and misery, and condemned to perpetual exile. Finding himself in this case and being grown not only poor, but beggarly, he betook himself, as least ill he might, to Rome, to essay if Titus should remember him. There, learning that the latter was alive and high in favour with all the Romans and enquiring for his dwelling-place, he stationed himself before the door and there abode till such time as Titus came, to whom, by reason of the wretched plight wherein he was, he dared not say a word, but studied to cause himself be seen of him, so he might recognize him and let call him to himself; wherefore Titus passed on, [without noting him,] and Gisippus, conceiving that he had seen and shunned him and remembering him of that which himself had done for him aforetime, departed, despiteful and despairing. It being by this night and he fasting and penniless, he wandered on, unknowing whither and more desirous of death than of otherwhat, and presently happened upon a very desert part of the city, where seeing a great cavern, he addressed himself to abide the night there and presently, forspent with long weeping, he fell asleep on the naked earth and ill in case. To this cavern two, who had gone a-thieving together that night, came towards morning, with the booty they had gotten, and falling out over the division, one, who was the stronger, slew the other and went away. Gisippus had seen and heard this and himseemed he had found a way to the death so sore desired of him, without slaying himself; wherefore he abode without stirring, till such time as the Serjeants of the watch, who had by this gotten wind of the deed, came thither and laying furious hands of him, carried him off prisoner. Gisippus, being examined, confessed that he had murdered the man nor had since availed to depart the cavern; whereupon the prætor, who was called Marcus Varro, commanded that he should be put to death upon the cross, as the usance then was.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So saying, she fell anew to weeping wonder-sore; whereupon quoth Antigonus to her, 'Madam, despair not ere it behove you; but, an it please you, relate to me your adventures and what manner of life yours hath been; it may be the matter hath gone on such wise that, with God's aid, we may avail to find an effectual remedy.' 'Antigonus,' answered the fair lady, 'when I beheld thee, meseemed I saw my father, and moved by that love and tenderness, which I am bounden to bear him, I discovered myself to thee, having it in my power to conceal myself from thee, and few persons could it have befallen me to look upon in whom I could have been so well-pleased as I am to have seen and known thee before any other; wherefore that which in my ill fortune I have still kept hidden, to thee, as to a father, I will discover. If, after thou hast heard it, thou see any means of restoring me to my pristine estate, prithee use it; but, if thou see none, I beseech thee never tell any that thou hast seen me or heard aught of me.' This said, she recounted to him, still weeping, that which had befallen her from the time of her shipwreck on Majorca up to that moment; whereupon he fell a-weeping for pity and after considering awhile, 'Madam,' said he, 'since in your misfortunes it hath been hidden who you are, I will, without fail, restore you, dearer than ever, to your father and after to the King of Algarve to wife.' Being questioned of her of the means, he showed her orderly that which was to do, and lest any hindrance should betide through delay, he presently returned to Famagosta and going in to the king, said to him, 'My lord, an it like you, you have it in your power at once to do yourself exceeding honour and me, who am poor through you, a great service, at no great cost of yours.' The king asked how and Antigonus replied, 'There is come to Baffa the Soldan's fair young daughter, who hath so long been reputed drowned and who, to save her honour, hath long suffered very great unease and is presently in poor case and would fain return to her father. An it pleased you send her to him under my guard, it would be much to your honour and to my weal, nor do I believe that such a service would ever be forgotten of the Soldan.'