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 193 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Pisces (2018)

  What else would I do? I could not go back to Phoenix, languish in my apartment. There was nothing there for me. And every day I would have to face consciousness, cursing myself for not dissolving in the most beautiful of ways when I could have. Suddenly, though, this dissolve no longer seemed beautiful. It seemed all wrong. If I were to die for him, if I were to be dead—and I knew within myself that I was to be dead—I could not just be a dead girl among many. The dead girl among many is not worshipped. I wanted to be the lone dead girl or nothing at all. “I fucking hate you,” I said coolly. I was shocked that these words came out of me. Immediately I thought to correct them, but I didn’t. “Lucy.” I looked at him carefully. Did he really love me, or had it been just a game? In a way it was both. It was a game he was playing with himself, a very serious game, in which I had occupied a crucial role. Theo had hoped that I could fill his emptiness, at least for a little while. Then, once he had me under the water—once my want for him was proven—he would have no need for me anymore. I would begin to dissolve in that emptiness and he would need someone else to fill it. This was a game I knew well. Like Claire, I too wanted a thousand cocks. Didn’t we all just want a thousand hard cocks attached to the bodies of boys who have died for us, still warm, to plug our infinite holes? It was a whole way of life, really, the pursuit of that satiety. And it felt like life or death for him too. I wondered if I was looking at myself. Was I that beautiful and cold? What had always felt to me like an overabundance of want, too much desire, had not been the problem. It was my fear of having to feel it that hurt me. Theo was afraid too. That innate desire was something warm, lovely even, but his fear had turned it into something cold. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to need, even if you risked rejection. Annika needed me now. When she put it out there on the line it moved me. In her it didn’t seem weak or disgusting, but like a beautiful quality. Her need brought something out in me that I didn’t know that I could be. It was transformational. I could go back to the beach house. I could go back to the house and I could stay, she told me so. In fact, she not only wanted me to do that—she needed me to do it. Maybe I could even finish the book on my own terms. Fuck the university.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I said, “Gods, please help me to be happy. Let me do the will of the universe and be willing to do the will of the universe, whatever that even is. Clearly I know very little. Clearly what I think I know leads me only to a place of suicidal longing. I never asked to be born on the planet. I never asked to exist. But I am here now so could you maybe at least try and help me enjoy my life?” I felt silly asking to enjoy my life. I wondered if this was more than any human being should ask. Did anyone ever say that life was to be enjoyed and not suffered? What if the suffering was the point? But I didn’t want to suffer anymore. I couldn’t take it. That was clear. So I was going to try to be happy, even if it brought me more suffering. The candle burning, amethyst in hand, sitting on the deck of the beach house, I felt closer to myself than I had since before Jamie. I began to cry. Dominic made a noise, then got up into my lap and licked the tears off my face. He was licking them because they tasted good. He did the same thing when I was sweaty too. But I pretended that they were licks of love, and that’s what it felt like. Maybe this group therapy shit was working. Maybe this was self-love. I didn’t know and I didn’t really care. Where there had been a vile, depressive ooze was now quiet. The quiet itself was a thing: a sweet-filled quiet, as though the depression had been alchemized into something delicious. I looked out at the ocean. It was as though I hadn’t noticed it before, or hadn’t wanted to see it. I was scared of its wild ambivalence, so powerful and amorphous, like the depression itself. It didn’t give a fuck about me. It could eat me without even knowing. But now I saw each of the waves individually, one after the other, and felt them to be in rhythm with my heartbeat. They glimmered and splashed in the moonlight. Maybe the ocean was cheering for me after all? Maybe we were on the same side, comprised of the same things, water mostly, also mystery. The ocean swallowed things up—boats, people—but it didn’t look outside itself for fulfillment. It could take whatever skimmed its surface or it could leave it. In its depths already lived a whole world of who-knows-what. It was self-sustaining. I should be like that. It made me wonder what was inside of me. 10. But in the morning the beach was filled with tourists and the amethyst was just a rock. The quiet was gone again and replaced with nothingness.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  When it manifested as a feeling of emptiness, you could inject something into it: a 3 Musketeers, a walk, something to kind of give it a new form. You could penetrate it and give it more of a shape you felt better about. Or at least you could make a shape inside it or around it. But this was something new, like a thicker, gooey sludge. It had its own shape. It could not be contained. It was a terror. Of what I was terrified I couldn’t exactly say, but it was sitting on me. Every other shape was being absorbed into it. I no longer slept. Was this all because of Jamie? How could someone who got on my nerves so much have this much power over me? I asked my doctor for Ambien. The Ambien helped me sleep. But in the mornings the goo was right there, waiting for me. I was already in it. It was becoming more dense. One night I took nine Ambien. I was not trying to kill myself so much as vanish. I just wanted to go to sleep and be transported into the ether, another world. I guess that vanishing would have meant death, so perhaps it was an attempt at suicide? But I felt afraid of death, or at least, afraid of dying. Was there something that wasn’t death but wasn’t here either? I woke up fourteen hours later, ravenous. Doughnuts! I had to have doughnuts. Stoned from the Ambien, I got in my car and the rest was a blur. I must have blacked out. I only remember waking up on the road, parked, wearing my nightie, with doughnuts strewn around the car seats: powdered, cream-filled, a jelly. I didn’t even like jelly. Cars were honking behind me but I couldn’t figure out what to do. So I just stayed parked like that in the middle of the road and went back to sleep on the steering wheel. Then I woke up again. Now a police officer was leaning into my car on the passenger’s side. He asked if I could get out of the car. I climbed out hazily. I remember thinking a dumb joke about cops and doughnuts. Then I realized: it was the same cop who had come to my house about Jamie’s nose. “Hi,” I said. He gave me a Breathalyzer to test my blood alcohol levels. Those were normal. Then he searched the car for drugs but couldn’t find any. “I’m really feeling sick,” I said. “First the breakup, now some kind of flu. I was going to get the doughnuts for the sugar. I must have fainted. Anyway, if you just let me go home I’ll be okay.” “Ma’am, I can’t let you drive in this condition. Is there anyone I can call to come get you?” I thought of Jamie. He was usually my emergency contact. But I didn’t want him to know I needed anything from him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Morton—so quietly perfect a thing, yet the thing of all others that she must fly from, that she must forget; but she could not forget it in these surroundings; they reminded by contrast. Curious what Brockett had said that evening about putting the sea between herself and England. . . . In view of her own half-formed plan to do so, his words had come as a kind of echo of her thoughts; it was almost as though he had peeped through a secret keyhole into her mind, had been spying upon her trouble. By what right did this curious man spy upon her—this man with the soft, white hands of a woman, with the movements befitting those soft, white hands, yet so ill-befitting the rest of his body? By no right; and how much had the creature found out when his eye had been pressed to that secret keyhole? Clever—Brockett was fiendishly clever—all his whims and his foibles could not disguise it. His face gave him away, a hard, clever face with sharp eyes that were glued to other people’s keyholes. That was why Brockett wrote such fine plays, such cruel plays; he fed his genius on live flesh and blood. Carnivorous genius. Moloch, fed upon live flesh and blood! But she, Stephen, had tried to feed her inspiration upon herbage, the kind, green herbage of Morton. For a little while such food had sufficed, but now her talent had sickened, was dying perhaps—or had she too fed it on blood, her heart’s blood when she had written The Furrow? If so, her heart would not bleed any more—perhaps it could not—perhaps it was dry. A dry, withered thing; for she did not feel love these days when she thought of Angela Crossby—that must mean that her heart had died within her. A gruesome companion to have, a dead heart. Angela Crossby—and yet there were times when she longed intensely to see this woman, to hear her speak, to stretch out her arms and clasp them around the woman’s body—not gently, not patiently as in the past, but roughly, brutally even. Beastly—it was beastly! She felt degraded. She had no love to offer Angela Crossby, not now, only something that lay like a stain on the beauty of what had once been love. Even this memory was marred and defiled, by herself even more than by Angela Crossby.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Something had to be done. Go into the bedroom, Stephen Gordon’s bedroom that faced on the courtyard . . . just a few short steps and then the window. A girl, hatless, with the sun falling full on her hair . . . she was almost running . . . she stumbled a little. But now there were two people down in the courtyard—a man had his hands on the girl’s bowed shoulders. He questioned her, yes, that was it, he questioned; and the girl was telling him why she was there, why she had fled from that thick, awful darkness. He was looking at the house, incredulous, amazed; hesitating as though he were coming in; but the girl went on and the man turned to follow . . . They were side by side, he was gripping her arm . . . They were gone; they had passed out under the archway. Then all in a moment the stillness was shattered: ‘Mary, come back! Come back to me, Mary!’ David crouched and trembled. He had crawled to the bed, and he lay there watching with his eyes of amber; trembling because such an anguish as this struck across him like the lash of a whip, and what could he do, the poor beast, in his dumbness? She turned and saw him, but only for a moment, for now the room seemed to be thronging with people. Who were they, these strangers with the miserable eyes? And yet, were they all strangers? Surely that was Wanda? And some one with a neat little hole in her side—Jamie clasping Barbara by the hand; Barbara with the white flowers of death on her bosom. Oh, but they were many, these unbidden guests, and they called very softly at first and then louder. They were calling her by name, saying: ‘Stephen, Stephen!’ The quick, the dead, and the yet unborn—all calling her, softly at first and then louder. Aye, and those lost and terrible brothers from Alec’s, they were here, and they also were calling: ‘Stephen, Stephen, speak with your God and ask Him why He has left us forsaken!’ She could see their marred and reproachful faces with the haunted, melancholy eyes of the invert—eyes that had looked too long on a world that lacked all pity and all understanding: ‘Stephen, Stephen, speak with your God and ask Him why He has left us forsaken!’ And these terrible ones started pointing at her with their shaking, white-skinned, effeminate fingers: ‘You and your kind have stolen our birthright; you have taken our strength and have given us your weakness!’ They were pointing at her with white, shaking fingers.

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

  The end of Jacques de Molay, the 22d and last grand-master of the order of Templars, was worthy of its proudest days. At the first trial he confessed to the charges of denying Christ and spitting upon the cross, and was condemned, but afterwards recalled his confession. His case was reopened in 1314. With Geoffrey de Charney, grand-preceptor of Normandy, and others, he was led in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Molay then stood forth and declared that the charges against the order were false, and that he had confessed to them under the strain of torture and instructions from the king. Charney said the same. The commission promised to reconsider the case the next day. But the king’s vengeance knew no bounds, and that night, March 11, 1314, the prisoners were burned. The story ran that while the flames were doing their grewsome (sic) work, Molay summoned pope and king to meet him at the judgment bar within a year. The former died, in a little more than a month, of a loathsome disease, though penitent, as it was reported, for his treatment of the order, and the king, by accident, while engaged in the chase, six months later. The king was only 46 years old at the time of his death, and 14 years after, the last of his direct descendants was in his grave and the throne passed to the house of Valois. As for the possessions of the order, papal decrees turned them over to the Knights of St. John, but Philip again intervened and laid claim to 260,000 pounds as a reimbursement for alleged losses to the Temple and the expense of guarding the prisoners.105 In Spain, they passed to the orders of San Iago di Compostella and Calatrava. In Aragon, they were in part applied to a new order, Santa Maria de Montesia, and in Portugal to the Military Order of Jesus Christ, ordo militiae Jesu Christi. Repeated demands made by the pope secured the transmission of a large part of their possessions to the Knights of St. John. In England, in 1323, parliament granted their lands to the Hospitallers, but the king appropriated a considerable share to himself. The Temple in London fell to the Earl of Pembroke, 1313.106

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Paul had originally imagined the unity of Jews and Christians (to use those terms) within the one community of Christian Judaism. God was calling that community “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24), so that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him” (10:12). But by the time he wrote this letter he already knew that something had, from his point of view, gone terribly wrong. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people” (9:2–3; read 9:1–5) By the mid-50s, then, as that anguished confession proclaims, Paul had already decided that the unified community of (many? most? all?) Christian Jews and (many? most? all?) Christian pagans had not happened and was not going to do so within the normal parameters of Christian missionary activity. So, in Romans 9–11, he ponders this “mystery” from the double viewpoint of both divine and human causality. He considers divine causality in 9:1–29 and 11:1–36, thereby framing human causality in 9:30–10:21. A mystery, by the way, is something hidden in the heart of God and not just a puzzle, difficulty, or problem to be solved by human ingenuity. Divine Causality As always, in biblical tradition, whatever humans do, whether for good or evil, is understood within the control, plan, and intention of God. And to apply that principle to the present situation, Paul laces his argument with citations from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. ROMANS 9:1–29. First, Abraham had children of flesh, but the children of promise were chosen (9:6–9). Rebecca had Esau the elder and Jacob the younger, but Jacob was chosen (9:10–13). Even the disobedience of a Pharaoh is within divine permission (9:17–18). It is all simply part, says Paul, of the inscrutable mercy of God who, as the divine Potter, can “make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use” (9:19–21). That is certainly quite clear, but not exactly consoling. Furthermore, biblical prophets are cited announcing that God would choose a “people” from among the pagans (9:24–26), but only a “remnant” from among the Jews (9:27–29).

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He had spent his days going from doctor to doctor: ‘What am I?’ They had told him, pocketing their fees; not a few had unctuously set out to cure him. Cure him, good God! There was no cure for Blanc, he was, of all men, the most normal abnormal. He had known revolt, renouncing his God; he had known despair, the despair of the godless; he had known wild moments of dissipation; he had known long months of acute self-abasement. And then he had suddenly found his soul, and that finding had brought with it resignation, so that now he could stand in a niche by himself, a pitiful spectator of what, to him, often seemed a bewildering scheme of creation. For a living he designed many beautiful things—furniture, costumes and scenery for ballets, even women’s gowns if the mood was upon him, but this he did for a physical living. To keep life in his desolate, long-suffering soul, he had stored his mind with much profound learning. So now many poor devils went to him for advice, which he never refused though he gave it sadly. It was always the same: ‘Do the best you can, no man can do more—but never stop fighting. For us there is no sin so great as despair, and perhaps no virtue so vital as courage.’ Yes, indeed, to this gentle and learned Jew went many a poor baptized Christian devil. And such people frequented Valérie Seymour’s, men and women who must carry God’s mark on their foreheads. For Valérie, placid and self- assured, created an atmosphere of courage; every one felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour’s. There she was, this charming and cultured woman, a kind of lighthouse in a storm-swept ocean. The waves had lashed round her feet in vain; winds had howled; clouds had spued forth their hail and their lightning; torrents had deluged but had not destroyed her. The storms, gathering force, broke and drifted away, leaving behind them the shipwrecked, the drowning. But when they looked up, the poor spluttering victims, why what should they see but Valérie Seymour! Then a few would strike boldly out for the shore, at the sight of this indestructible creature. She did nothing, and at all times said very little, feeling no urge towards philanthropy. But this much she gave to her brethren, the freedom of her salon, the protection of her friendship; if it eased them to come to her monthly gatherings they were always welcome provided they were sober. Drink and drugs she abhorred because they were ugly—one drank tea, iced coffee, sirops and orangeade in that celebrated flat on the Quai Voltaire. Oh, yes, a very strange company indeed if one analysed it for this or that stigma. Why, the grades were so numerous and so fine that they often defied the most careful observation.

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

  Suso’s constitution, which was never strong, was undermined by the rigorous penitential discipline to which he subjected himself for twenty-two years. An account of it is given in his Autobiography. Its severity, so utterly contrary to the spirit of our time, was so excessive that Suso’s statements seem at points to be almost incredible. The only justification for repeating some of the details is to show the lengths to which the penitential system of the Mediaeval Church was carried by devotees. Desiring to carry the marks of the Lord Jesus, Suso pricked into his bare chest, with a sharp instrument, the monogram of Christ, IHS. The three letters remained engraven there till his dying day and, "Whenever my heart moved," as he said, "the name moved also." At one time he saw in a dream rays of glory illuminating the scar. He wore a hair shirt and an iron chain. The loss of blood forced him to put the chain aside, but for the hair shirt he substituted an undergarment, studded with 150 sharp tacks. This he wore day and night, its points turned inwards towards his body. Often, he said, it made the impression on him as if he were lying in a nest of wasps. When he saw his body covered with vermin, and yet he did not die, he exclaimed that the murderer puts to death at one stroke, "but alas, O tender God, — zarter Gott,—what a dying is this of mine!" Yet this was not enough. Suso adopted the plan of tying around his neck a part of his girdle. To this he attached two leather pockets, into which he thrust his hands. These he made fast with lock and key till the next morning. This kind of torture he continued to practise for sixteen years, when he abandoned it in obedience to a heavenly vision. How little had the piety of the Middle Ages succeeded in correcting the perverted views of the old hermits of the Nitrian desert, whose stories this Swiss monk was in the habit of reading, and whose austerities he emulated!

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  There was Margaret Roland, the poetess, a woman whose work was alive with talent. The staunchest of allies, the most fickle of lovers, she seemed likely enough to end up in the work-house, with her generous financial apologies which at moments made pretty large holes in her savings. It was almost impossible not to like her, since her only fault lay in being too earnest; every fresh love affair was the last while it lasted, though of course this was apt to be rather misleading. A costly business in money and tears; she genuinely suffered in heart as in pocket. There was nothing arresting in Margaret’s appearance, sometimes she dressed well, sometimes she dressed badly, according to the influence of the moment. But she always wore ultra feminine shoes, and frequently bought model gowns when in Paris. One might have said quite a womanly woman, unless the trained ear had been rendered suspicious by her voice which had something peculiar about it. It was like a boy’s voice on the verge of breaking. And then there was Brockett with his soft, white hands; and several others there were, very like him. There was also Adolphe Blanc, the designer—a master of colour whose primitive tints had practically revolutionized taste, bringing back to the eye the joy of the simple. Blanc stood in a little niche by himself, which at times must surely have been very lonely. A quiet, tawny man with the eyes of the Hebrew, in his youth he had been very deeply afflicted. He had spent his days going from doctor to doctor: ‘What am I?’ They had told him, pocketing their fees; not a few had unctuously set out to cure him. Cure him, good God! There was no cure for Blanc, he was, of all men, the most normal abnormal. He had known revolt, renouncing his God; he had known despair, the despair of the godless; he had known wild moments of dissipation; he had known long months of acute self-abasement. And then he had suddenly found his soul, and that finding had brought with it resignation, so that now he could stand in a niche by himself, a pitiful spectator of what, to him, often seemed a bewildering scheme of creation. For a living he designed many beautiful things—furniture, costumes and scenery for ballets, even women’s gowns if the mood was upon him, but this he did for a physical living. To keep life in his desolate, long-suffering soul, he had stored his mind with much profound learning. So now many poor devils went to him for advice, which he never refused though he gave it sadly. It was always the same: ‘Do the best you can, no man can do more—but never stop fighting. For us there is no sin so great as despair, and perhaps no virtue so vital as courage.’ Yes, indeed, to this gentle and learned Jew went many a poor baptized Christian devil.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I wordlessly scooted over to the edge of the bed, pushing aside Georgia’s collection of stuffed animals to make room for him. “Can I hold you?” he asked. “No. Don’t touch me. And don’t stay unless you’re ready to tell me the truth.” “This isn’t helpful, Laura. You don’t need details,” he said. “You don’t get to decide anymore what I need. How long has this been going on? The truth Michael, please, I’m begging you. The truth.” I wondered if this was what insanity felt like, the evidence of his affair on spectacular display in front of me and yet he was saying there was nothing there. “This is not productive. If I tell you I had sex with her, that’s all you’ll focus on,” he said. “The sex is the least of it at this point. You fell in love with her! I need to understand how this happened. I feel like I’m going insane second-guessing my memories of our life together. And I know what I read, so your denials are making me feel like I’m losing grip with reality. Please, please, how long?” “I don’t know. A few months,” he said unsurely. “A few months? OK, it’s February. Around Christmas? Thanksgiving?” “Around Thanksgiving,” he said. “So when my mom fell and was in a wheelchair and I was upset and in overdrive trying to help her, you started having an affair?” I asked incredulously. “I guess so, yes,” he admitted reluctantly. “So when your mother was dying I took care of her, and when my mother needed help, you were busy falling in love with another woman? I need you to get out of here right now. I can’t take anymore,” I said, nausea rising inside of me. “It’s over, Laura. It’s over. We ended our relationship last week. I was trying to figure out how to tell you, that’s why I was seeing the therapist whose text you found,” he said. “Your relationship?” I choked out. “Do you hear yourself?” “But it’s over now,” he said. “And I want to be with you. I love you. I know that now.” “You texted her last night saying you wished you were sleeping next to her. If that’s how you talk now that it’s over, I’m terrified to know what you said when you were together,” I said, weeping. “It’s over, Laura. I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me if I no longer believe your version of the truth. Get out, please. I’m begging you. I need to be alone,” I said, tears dampening Georgia’s blanket. Quietly and slowly, he rolled out of the bed and closed the door behind him. The size and scope of this information was too great for me to process. When I closed my eyes, I pictured myself falling through space, away from the soft cushion of the life I had known and toward – well, toward what exactly?

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I frantically entered passwords until an error message popped up saying I had tried too many times and was now locked out. This password was all that was standing between my bewilderment and the clues I needed to make sense of the state of my marriage. Was it portentous or a gift that I was locked out? I could go to sleep right now and in the morning ask Michael about it, or press a little harder about why he was so mad at me if I couldn’t bring myself to confess I had searched his phone. I could stop the ground from opening beneath me by setting the phone down now and calling it a night. I clicked on the OK button to close the app when it unexpectedly opened and I was in. I had been sitting with the phone for two hours. I noted the time, 11:30, and the last text Michael had sent was at 9pm to a female friend, saying he was going to sleep – and here are the words I read as my life as I had known it ceased to exist – he wished it was with her. I felt sheer panic as my finger scrolled back through their conversation. Words leapt off the screen at me in fragments I couldn’t piece together: “I can’t live my life in secret anymore”. “My mother is onto us”. “I stand to lose everything”. “Tell my wife”. “Soulmate”. “Love”. “Divorce”. I knew that once I closed WhatsApp, I would never be able to access it again, but I couldn’t get out fast enough. I felt like I had been sucker-punched. Words in the texts were flying at me and gutting me; like passing a car accident and simultaneously wanting to look and avert one’s eyes, I could not stop the image of those words even after I squeezed my eyes shut. In a stupor, I stumbled breathlessly back into the bedroom I had walked out of with the phone what now felt like a lifetime ago. “Michael,” I said sharply, shaking his shoulder and putting my mouth close to his ear, not wanting to awaken Georgia, sleeping so angelically on my side of the bed, hands folded across her chest. “Wake up.” “What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes flying open with fear. Shaking, I held his phone aloft. “What?” he asked again. “I know everything,” I said, my hand clutching the phone and waving it in front of him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Michael, this would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrific. You always say I’m the best detective. You should have known that eventually I would figure it out.” “Figure what out?” “Your affair. I know it all. I know you’re in love with her and want to leave me. I know, I know,” I said, as my voice began to reach a tone of hysteria.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Came the thought of that unforgettable scene with her mother. ‘I would rather see you dead at my feet.’ Oh, yes—very easy to talk about death, but not so easy to manage the dying. ‘We two cannot live together at Morton. . . . One of us must go, which of us shall it be?’ The subtlety, the craftiness of that question which in common decency could have but one answer! Oh, well, she had gone and would go even farther. Raftery was dead, there was nothing to hold her, she was free—what a terrible thing could be freedom. Trees were free when they were uprooted by the wind; ships were free when they were torn from their moorings; men were free when they were cast out of their homes—free to starve, free to perish of cold and hunger. At Morton there lived an ageing woman with sorrowful eyes now a little dim from gazing for so long into the distance. Only once, since her gaze had been fixed on the dead, had this woman turned it full on her daughter; and then her eyes had been changed into something accusing, ruthless, abominably cruel. Through looking upon what had seemed abominable to them, they themselves had become an abomination. Horrible! And yet how dared they accuse? What right had a mother to abominate the child that had sprung from her own secret moments of passion? She the honoured, the fulfilled, the fruitful, the loving and loved, had despised the fruit of her love. Its fruit? No, rather its victim. She thought of her mother’s protected life that had never had 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, degradation, 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 unfulfilled 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.’

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Lauren’s goading and the bottle of wine we are now drinking on her terrace lend me bravado and I send some of the failed selfies from the beach as well as insist that he see me when I return on Friday night. He’s evasive, cagily says maybe. When I scan the texts the next morning, I wish I could erase them all: they start out playful and flirty, but as they go on become bolder and obnoxiously persistent. The photos of my toes in the sand move fairly quickly to photos of my legs and then my bikini bottom and then my cleavage. I’m pretty sure I’ll never hear from him again. I reek of desperation. * As I drive the four hours from the Jersey Shore back to my home in Upstate New York, I can feel the ease and freedom of the past two weeks recede with each passing mile. After a refreshing hiatus from being a round-the-clock caregiver, now I must return to my real life as a responsible mother, which first and foremost means dealing with the fallout of my crumbling marriage. I want so badly to believe that I have it in me to be happy and whole, even without Michael and without being 100 percent focused on my kids all the time. I’m doubtful that I can get there even though I am starting to see a glimpse of who I am when I don’t define myself first as a mother and second as a wife and I actually like it. This is a somewhat shocking revelation to me. Ever since I became a mother over 18 years ago, I’ve thrown myself into the role with single-minded gusto. There’s not a PTA I haven’t joined, a school auction I haven’t run, a bake sale I haven’t contributed to, a craft project I haven’t attempted. No holiday has passed without my marking the occasion with special celebratory meals and decorations for our front door. My kids have never been late to school, I’ve never missed a slot at a camp or afterschool registration, and they get their check-ups and shots right on time. In other words, I take parenting as seriously as the United Nations takes world peace. If I haven’t made my mark in the world outside my home, I’ve at least made sure my home itself has been a veritable bastion of maternal warmth and order. Most of my close friends are women I’ve met at the kids’ schools, who are now also stay-home moms: former lawyers, teachers, social workers, literary agents, marketing executives, stylists and artists. We’ve formed tight circles of friendship, but our conversations and plans are usually centered around our families. In my case, just as my kids were getting older and becoming more self-sufficient, I had another baby – so I’m awestruck by a peek at life outside this realm. My own needs and desires? I have not acknowledged them in decades.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  If you want me to consider giving our marriage a chance, you have to give me space. In the meantime, I have to clean the house and pack up to go home. Apparently, life just keeps going,” I said, “even when your heart feels like it might give out any second.” With that, I shuffled away in my slippers, pulling my bathrobe tightly around my body, which already, in just the past 36 hours, felt diminished. I paused before I passed out of his sight and turned back to look at him, saying, “One question I have to ask.” He looked at me so expectantly, even hopefully, that I almost felt bad for him. “Those flowers you sent me on Valentine’s Day … Did you send the same ones to her too?” I asked. His face fell and I sucked in my breath, despondent, understanding the meaning of his silence. * We returned, as scheduled, to the city that evening. I huddled next to Georgia in the backseat, unable to bear any physical proximity to Michael. He lied and told the kids he had meetings upstate over the week so would be dropping us off and then driving right back up. The kids were confused, asking what kind of business meetings he could possibly have upstate. He offered a feeble explanation and when we got home packed a small suitcase to take with him. It was a bitterly cold February night, but warm and cozy in our beautiful new home, and the kids and I were talking in front of the fireplace when he came in to say goodbye. Watching my partner of 27 years wheel his suitcase out of our home and our family made me feel equal parts contempt and pity for him, but absolute agony for myself. I was witnessing one of the saddest moments of my life, representing our failures as individuals and a couple, and the end of my dream of having a loving, stable nuclear family. How was it possible that all the essentials he needed to exist could be zipped up in that one black carry-on size piece of luggage? We had a four-bedroom house filled with family photos and books and artwork procured over the years at school auctions and vintage shops, small sculptures of buddhas we bought 25 years ago in Thailand, stuffed llamas from our trip to Peru, his grandmother’s china and my grandparents’ silver, but all he needed to go forward was folded into a 22-inch bag? My grandmother had suffered the loss of her mother as a young child, my mother had been abandoned by her father at only a few years old, and my father had died when I was not yet in kindergarten, but I had always felt certain that I would break my family’s curse. I was not just grieving now for my own loss but for the family history I would not successfully redirect after all.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  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—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. But even in this blessèd moment of easement, her heart hardened again at the thought of her mother. A fresh wave of bitterness flooded her soul so that the light seemed all but extinguished; very faintly it gleamed like the little lantern on a buoy that is tossed by tempest. Sitting down at her desk she found pen and paper.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It’s like if Sara the foot-toucher were on acid all the time. It makes me grateful for my own problems. I would love to bring the two groups together into one big circle of healing. This way, when Brianne is complaining about Millionaire Match, she can be reminded that at least she doesn’t have auditory hallucinations. Maybe I’m destined to lead a group-therapy exchange program.” “Wow, sounds like they really got you, didn’t they?” I laughed. “I don’t know if they did or didn’t. But do you want to know what’s the weirdest? The strangest thing of all? I don’t want men anymore. I feel finished.” “Wow.” “They say that you don’t hit rock bottom until you hit rock bottom. Lucy, what if this is it?” “What if it is?” “All I can tell you is that I feel so bloody free right now!” she said, adjusting her hospital bracelet. “I’m so glad for you, Claire,” I said. Then I began to cry. “Oh no, what’s wrong?” “Please. You have to help me. I am in so much pain. Theo is gone forever and I don’t know what to do,” I said. “The swimmer?” she asked. “What happened?” “He left,” I said. “He just left and I don’t think he’s ever coming back.” “Oh love,” she said. “What do I do?” I asked. “Ignore him,” she said. “Ignore, ignore, ignore. Do not pursue. In your mind, you have to literally give him up.” “If I give him up do you think he will come back?” “They always come back if you give them up—especially, as we know, if you find other cock. But what if you don’t do that? What if you don’t replace him with anyone? You don’t have to give him up just so that he will come back to you. You could give him up just to give him up.” “Why?” “Well, for one thing, it might behoove you to sit with yourself for a while.” Who was this talking? “So that’s it? Just give him up and sit?” “None of these wankers are worth the pain,” she said. “You have to dump them on the roadside and let them rot there.” “You don’t understand,” I said. “He didn’t fuck me over. It was me who hurt him. It was me who lied to him, not the other way around. This isn’t like the other ones. This time I’m in control. Sort of.” “You asked my advice and I’m giving it to you.” “I can’t do that,” I said. “I need love. Or if it’s not love, then the power of that feeling. I love it. I love love. It’s the only thing I have.” “Oh, Lucy,” she said. “You have a lot. It’s like your tits.” “What?” “Your tits. You always say that you have no tits. But really, your breasts are ample.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  No longer did Adam have to be real Adam. Now he was fantasy Adam again, and I had him and the fantasy in my pocket. Sure, the experience itself had been disappointing and gross, but at least it was different from the disappointment I’d grown used to in my years with Jamie. When he and I were together and the sex was less than riveting, I felt filled with doom after: ennui in my head and suffocating in my chest. It was the same doom that I felt in the car just before we broke up. There was an is that all there is –ness. I would go sit on the toilet immediately after he came. This was partially to avoid getting a urinary tract infection, but also so he wouldn’t see me frowning. When he found me sitting there sadly, I told him it was because the sex made me feel such powerful things. But really what I felt was despair: that this was all there would be, forever and ever and ever, until of course it wasn’t. But if Adam wanted me, there were others who would want me, maybe many others, even some who didn’t read Bukowski. I imagined a bouquet of dicks, a stack of abdominal muscles like a deck of cards, painted across the sky. The hunger in me suddenly felt bottomless. It scared me a little. 17. I got to the Ace at five and had time to kill. I decided I would go up to the roof and maybe try to think about my book a little bit. Once again, I’d somehow shoved Sappho under a man: multiple men this time. I’d come to Venice to purge the influence of dick on my life and had wound up becoming Helen of Troy. What would Sappho think? The advisory committe said the thesis draft was due by fall semester. Did that mean the beginning of the semester? Day one? I knew that it did. But I pretended I had some wiggle room: that I could just pop in there on Halloween, draft in hand, like, Sorry for the delay! and my funding would go on. I’d always been scared not to finish the thesis but maybe even more scared to finish it. What would happen then? Would I apply for teaching jobs in other cities? I had thought that maybe I would, in the hopes that it would make Jamie ask me to stay—that the catalyst of my moving somewhere else would make him finally step up. But somewhere in my mind, I always knew he wouldn’t. I hadn’t wanted to face that. On the Ace roof there was flamenco music playing, or bossa nova or something. It all seemed so contemporary and pleasant. The sun was setting and I ordered a white wine. Was this how everything was now? Just nice?

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The Jewish political and military messiah meant nothing to Greeks and Romans. And to Paul Jesus had never been a messiah in this sense. That was not at all what Christianity was about. As a diaspora Jew, he had no quarrel with the Romans. On the contrary, he seems to have admired the Roman system and took advantage of it. His public claim to Roman citizenship was more than a physical escape from the justice of the law, now odious to him: it was a symbolic renunciation of Judaic status. Paul did not wish to see the Christian movement damaged and perhaps ruined by involvement with the (to him) irrelevant and hopeless quest for a Jewish state. Christ’s kingdom was not of this world! In this respect Paul saw eye to eye with Josephus: would that the two might have met, for Paul could have found a convert. But Paul was defeated and the Jewish-Christian Church of Jerusalem moved closer to Judaism, and – being a radical movement – to Zealotry and nationalism. A Slavonic translation of an early, uncensored, version of Josephus’s history suggests that the missing passages on Christianity emphasize the political aims of the Jewish-Christian resurrectionists in Judea. During the sixties the Jerusalem Church lost its Christian significance and the remains of its universalism as it became identified with the growing revolt against Rome. Zealots roamed the country districts. Religious terrorism increased in the towns. The crowded processions of the great feasts became the occasions for sudden murders which provoked riots and brutal retaliation. Law and order broke down and Rome was blamed for the economic distress which ensued. In Jerusalem a despairing proletariat turned against Rome, against a collaborationist sacerdotal aristocracy, and towards wonder-workers, patriotic brigands, and the sectaries. The final revolt and its repression lasted four years. It placed a great strain on the military and economic resources of the empire and Rome was correspondingly vengeful. The total of Jewish losses provided by Josephus add up to nearly one and a half million. The figure is unrealistic but it accurately mirrors the horrors of those years. There was a new, desperate diaspora. The Temple was destroyed and henceforth Judaism became the religion of the Talmud. The Jewish nation never recovered from the blow, though the final dispersion took place in the next century, when Jerusalem was razed and rebuilt as a Roman colonial city. The Jewish-Christian community was dispersed; most of its leaders were no doubt killed. Survivors fled to Asia Minor, the east, Egypt, especially to Alexandria. Thus the centre of Christian gravity shifted to Rome; and the theological vacuum left by the extinction of the Jerusalem Church was filled by the Pauline system. A number of readjustments followed. Paul’s Christ had not been anchored to the historical Jesus of the Jerusalem Church. This was remedied by Mark, who wrote the first biography of Jesus, presenting him as a deity.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Wow, sounds like they really got you, didn’t they?” I laughed. “I don’t know if they did or didn’t. But do you want to know what’s the weirdest? The strangest thing of all? I don’t want men anymore. I feel finished.” “Wow.” “They say that you don’t hit rock bottom until you hit rock bottom. Lucy, what if this is it?” “What if it is?” “All I can tell you is that I feel so bloody free right now!” she said, adjusting her hospital bracelet. “I’m so glad for you, Claire,” I said. Then I began to cry. “Oh no, what’s wrong?” “Please. You have to help me. I am in so much pain. Theo is gone forever and I don’t know what to do,” I said. “The swimmer?” she asked. “What happened?” “He left,” I said. “He just left and I don’t think he’s ever coming back.” “Oh love,” she said. “What do I do?” I asked. “Ignore him,” she said. “Ignore, ignore, ignore. Do not pursue. In your mind, you have to literally give him up.” “If I give him up do you think he will come back?” “They always come back if you give them up—especially, as we know, if you find other cock. But what if you don’t do that? What if you don’t replace him with anyone? You don’t have to give him up just so that he will come back to you. You could give him up just to give him up.” “Why?” “Well, for one thing, it might behoove you to sit with yourself for a while.” Who was this talking? “So that’s it? Just give him up and sit?” “None of these wankers are worth the pain,” she said. “You have to dump them on the roadside and let them rot there.” “You don’t understand,” I said. “He didn’t fuck me over. It was me who hurt him. It was me who lied to him, not the other way around. This isn’t like the other ones. This time I’m in control. Sort of.” “You asked my advice and I’m giving it to you.” “I can’t do that,” I said. “I need love. Or if it’s not love, then the power of that feeling. I love it. I love love. It’s the only thing I have.” “Oh, Lucy,” she said. “You have a lot. It’s like your tits.” “What?” “Your tits. You always say that you have no tits. But really, your breasts are ample. They’re more than enough.” “I want a D cup. Metaphorically.” “And I want a thousand giant cocks. Or I think I do. But it’s a lie. Because even a thousand cocks would never be enough. And it’s crazy to think that they would. The fantasy is a lie.” “But I am crazy. And I don’t want to live without the fantasy,” I said. “You can do it. We can do it together.” “I don’t want to.” “Suit yourself,” she said. “Can I just tell you one more thing?”