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.

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• From The Case for God (2009)

  Living in medias res, they could not see the direction that their society was taking but experienced its slow transformation in isolated, incoherent ways. As the old mythology that had given structure and significance to their ancestors crumbled in this new situation, many seem to have experienced the sense of powerlessness that had afflicted Luther. Before their own conversions to fresh religious vision, Zwingli and Calvin had also experienced a paralyzing helplessness before the trials of human existence and were convinced that they could contribute nothing toward their own salvation. Consequently, all the reformers emphasized the unqualified divine sovereignty that would not only characterize the modern God but also help to shape the Scientific Revolution. 31 The emphasis on God’s absolute power meant that God alone could change the course of events, so human beings, who were essentially impotent, must rely on his unconditional might. When the young Zwingli had contracted the plague that wiped out 25 percent of the population of Zurich, he knew there was nothing he could do to save himself. “Do as you will for I lack nothing,” he prayed. “I am your vessel to be restored or destroyed.” 32 The young Calvin had felt so in thrall to the institutional Church that he was both unwilling and unable to break free, and it had taken what seemed a divine initiative to shift him: “At last God turned my course in a different direction by the hidden bridle of his providence ... by a sudden conversion to docility, he tamed a mind too stubborn for its years.” 33 When Luther spoke of the faith that could justify men and women he did not, of course, mean “belief” in our modern sense but an act of total trust in the absolute power of God. “Faith,” he explained in one of his sermons, “does not require information, knowledge and certainty, but a free surrender and joyful bet on his unfelt, untried and unknown goodness.” 34 Luther had no time for the “false theologian,” who “looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened.” 35 Far from giving a clear vision, faith brought “a sort of darkness that can see nothing.” 36 Alienated from the natural theology of Scotus and Ockham, he did not imagine for one moment that the investigation of the cosmos or natural reasoning could bring us true knowledge of God. It was not only pointless but could even be dangerous to try to prove God’s existence, because too much speculation about God’s inconceivable might in governing the universe could cause human beings to fall into a state of abject despair and terror.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Despite Hilbert, we seemed no closer to understanding the universe. Human beings, randomly produced minutiae whose existence was probably ephemeral, still appeared to be cast adrift in a vast, impersonal universe. There was no clear answer as to what had preceded the “big bang” that had given birth to the universe. Even physicists did not believe that the equations of quantum theory described what was actually there; these mathematical abstractions could not be put into words, and our knowledge was confined to symbols that were mere shadows of an indescribable reality. Unknowing seemed built into the human condition. The revolution of the 1920s had overturned traditional scientific orthodoxy, and if that had happened once, it could happen again. Some Christians believed that the new physics was friendly to faith, even though Einstein always insisted that relativity was a scientific theory and had no bearing on religion. They seized eagerly on his famous remark in a debate with Bohr in Brussels (1927) that although quantum mechanics was “certainly imposing,” an “inner voice tells me that it ... does not bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.” 2 But Einstein was not referring to the personal God; he had simply used the “Old One” (a medieval Kabbalistic image) to symbolize the impersonal, intelligible, and immanent order of what exists. The British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington, however, saw relativity as evidence for the existence of mind in nature; Canon Arthur F. Smethurst regarded it as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit; 3 others saw the new conception of time as validating the after-life; 4 big bang theory was thought to substantiate the Genesis account; 5 and some even managed to see the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics as support for God’s providential control of the world. 6 This type of speculation was ill-conceived. Inured to their need for scientific proof, these apologists were still interpreting the ancient biblical symbols in too literal a manner. Max Planck had a more sage view of the relations between science and religion. The two were quite compatible: science dealt with the objective, material world and religion with values and ethics. Conflict between them was based “on a confusion of the images and parables of religion with scientific statement.” 7 After Einstein, it became disturbingly clear that not only was science unable to provide us with definitive certainty but its findings were inherently limited and provisional too. In 1927, Heisenberg formulated the principle of indeterminacy in nuclear physics, showing that it was impossible for scientists to achieve an objective result because the act of observation itself affected their understanding of the object of their investigation. In 1931, the Austrian philosopher Kurt Gödel (1906–78) devised a theorem to show that any formal logical or mathematical system must contain propositions that are not verifiable within that system; there would always be propositions that could be proved or disproved only by input from outside.

• From City of Night (1963)

  At the table, everyone is talking, eyes constantly searching the bar. The beat of the music somehow matches the movements, the stares, the muted desperation all around; the smothered moans of the spade now blaring words from the balcony is like a composite moan, a wail emanating in unison from everyone crushed into this dirty bar.... Darling Dolly is breathlessly explaining the Severe Jolt she got when she got home and found her best drag clothes gone: “My lovely lace negligee—my studded shoes!” Buddy shakes his head and says to the table: “I needed the bread.” Darling Dolly stabs him with a look. Chuck says hes heard of a malehouse in Hollywood where he can make hundreds of dollars a day: “But I don know where it is so I cain apply.” Miss Destiny says, “Chuck, my dear, you are just too lazy to get ahead—remember the $15 score I got you and you fell asleep?”... Trudi is wondering wheres her daddy, and Miss Destiny explains to me that Trudi’s “daddy” is an old man whos been “keeping Trudi for ages—and keeps Skipper, too, sometimes—but indirectly”: Skipper living off and on with Trudi and hitting it big occasionally—“after being Really Big in Hollywood once”—and going away, coming back to Trudi’s.... Nearby, an emaciated man with devouring deep-buried eyes is pretending to read the titles on the jukebox, but it’s obvious that he is fascinatedly studying Tiger’s tattoos—and Tiger, noticing this, glances at him with huge undisguised contempt, which sends the emaciated man into an ecstasy of sick smiles. Now the queens at the table are wondering aloud who the score buying the juice is digging: the queens or otherwise, and which one. And which does it turn out hes digging? The queens. And which one? Darling Dolly Dane. And when this became known, by means of the “waitress,” Darling Dolly skips over to him, perches on the stool next to him at the bar, and says, “Another tall cool Coca-Cola please, honey, and make it straight.” Miss Destiny sighed, “Well, lordee, Tara is saved tonight.” Immediately Skipper had a plan to clip the score, and Trudi says philosophically, “Dont get nervous, youll shake the beads”—(the beads being life—fate—chance—anything)—“and besides, Darling Dolly saw him first.” Miss Destiny says theyre all Too Much. Suddenly shes becoming depressed—and the obvious reason is that the score who it turned out dug queens didnt dig her. “Oh, Im really depressed now!” Miss Destiny said. Someone had mentioned that Pauline had just walked in. I looked, and theres Pauline—a heavily painted queen who thinks she looks like Sophia Loren—with a collar like the wicked queen’s in Snow White. Miss Destiny said icily: “Pauline... is a lowlife... prostitute.” Trudi: “A cheap whore.” Lola, in her husky man’s voice and glowering nearsightedly: “A slut.” Trudi: “A common streetwalker.” Lola: “A chippy.” Miss Destiny—conclusively, viciously: “A cocksucker! ” Chuck gagged on his beer. “She ain got nothin on you, Destinee!”

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me detengo frente a Lindsay, escaneo el estacionamiento a mi alrededor por el Challenger de Cole. No lo veo, pero apenas puedo ver nada bajo la lluvia en este momento. Lo llamé y a Jordan sin parar durante las últimas veinticuatro horas, pero no puedo soportarlo más. Si él quiere tiempo, puedo hacer eso. Si necesita espacio, se lo daré. Pero necesito disculparme cara a cara. Necesito que sepa que lo amo, y no quise que esto sucediera. No es que él me escuche o probablemente incluso me escuche a través de su ira, pero no puedo sentarme sin hacer nada. Salgo de mi camioneta, corro hacia la puerta de Lindsay, bajo el porche cubierto, y golpeo con mi puño. Ha estado lloviendo todo el día y, aunque dejé que los chicos tuvieran el día libre, todavía fui al sitio y me encargué del negocio solo para matar el tiempo hasta que Cole saliera del trabajo hoy. Si es que ya comenzó su nuevo trabajo, claro. Lin abre la puerta, todavía con su falda recta de oficina, pero descalza y con la camisa por fuera. Me ve y cruza sus brazos sobre su pecho, inmovilizándome con una mirada presumida. —Quiero hablar con él —le digo. —Has hecho suficiente —se burla, sacando su cola de caballo apretada—. Jesús, pensé que yo era una mala madre. ¿Qué estabas pensando? ¿Tomando sus sobras como si no hubiera otra mujer en esta ciudad que pudieras follar? —No fue así. —Ahórrame los detalles. —Se acerca a una mesa cercana y toma un vaso que lo más probable es que sea vodka y jugo de naranja—. Ella no es diferente de lo que pensabas que era yo. Ella te usó, Pike. Te utilizó por un lugar para vivir y conveniencia, y oh, ¿qué más hiciste? ¿Arreglar su auto también? —Sacude la cabeza, sonriendo amargamente—. Ella tuvo suerte contigo, y todo lo que tuvo que hacer fue abrir sus piernas. Cristo, ustedes los hombres son realmente densos cuando se trata de una cara bonita. Mi mandíbula se tensa. Jordan no es así. Ella no se parece en nada a ti. No estoy aquí para hablar de ella de todos modos. —Tú no sabes nada —digo. —Aw, ¿están enamorados? Mi corazón late dos veces más fuerte, y mi rostro cae, una imagen parpadea en mi mente de ella de pie junto a la piscina hace tres noches, pidiéndome que le contara a Cole y luego que la llevara a la cama, a nuestra cama. Mi estómago se hunde. La extraño tanto. —Oh, Dios mío, la amas —dice Lindsay, mirándome a la cara y luciendo como si estuviera a punto de reír. Pero antes que pueda decirme algo más, me enderezo. —¿Dónde está? —Se fue —dice, apoyándose en la puerta y tomando un sorbo de su bebida—. Por las próximas ocho semanas. —¿Qué?

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Ahora lo hago. Mis ojos arden, las lágrimas se acumulan, pero es extraño. No estoy segura de estar triste. Lo que dice es casi un consuelo, porque conozco esta historia. Estoy acostumbrada a ella. Camino hacia la puerta. —No estoy listo para dejarte ir —me dice, parándose frente a mí—. Simplemente no todavía. No he terminado... —busca las palabras—, de hablar contigo y... de amarte. —Me toma de los hombros, moviéndonos detrás de la puerta de entrada, mi espalda contra el armario—. Vayamos a algún sitio, solo nosotros. Hoy hay un espectáculo de medianoche. Vamos. Salgamos de aquí y alejémonos por un par de horas y hablaremos. Lo miro fijamente. —En algún lugar oscuro, ¿cierto? ¿En un teatro donde no seremos vistos? Me mira como si eso fuera exactamente lo que estaba pensando y lo lamenta, pero así son las cosas. —Lo solucionaremos. —Planta sus manos a ambos lados de mi cabeza en la puerta detrás de mí y se inclina—. Simplemente todavía no. No te vayas todavía. El entumecimiento que he sentido desde anoche flaquea y lo escucho en mi cabeza. No voy a ninguna parte. No voy a ninguna parte... No tengo dudas de que eso sea verdad. Y siempre será verdad, Pike no se aleja de sus responsabilidades. Siempre cuidará de mí. Y no puedo pensar en nada más que preferiría ser para él más que una obligación. No puedo ser como Cole o su trabajo, su casa o sus facturas. No soy una obligación. Soy cualquier otra cosa. —¿Me amas? —pregunto—. ¿Estás enamorado de mí? Sostiene mis ojos e incluso en la oscuridad, puedo ver que sus ojos están rojos, cansados y dolidos. Pero cuando abre la boca, no salen las palabras. Sacudo mi cabeza. —No importa, supongo. —Me rindo—. No tienes el valor, así que no serás para siempre. —Me enderezo, apretando mi mano alrededor de las correas de mis bolsas—. Y al final, acabarás siendo nada más que una pérdida de mi tiempo. Su rostro cae y se ve tan completamente derrotado. No tiene la convicción de hacer nada. Todo lo que sabe es que no quiere que me vaya. —Oh, esto es demasiado bueno —dice alguien—. Así que ese es tu perversión, ¿eh, Jordan? Pike y yo giramos nuestras cabezas rápidamente para ver que Jay acaba de salir de la cocina y entrar en la sala de estar. Pike deja caer sus manos y se endereza, fijando a Jay con una mirada dura. —Vamos, nena —se burla Jay de mí y puedo oler la cerveza en su aliento desde aquí—. Seré tu papá y podrás abrir tus piernas para mí también por un poco de dinero de alquiler. Pike se lanza hacia él y jadeo. Toma a Jay por el cuello y lo lanza, enviándolo volando para atravesar la contrapuerta. Jay apenas se estremece, probablemente porque sabía lo que estaba haciendo. Mi corazón se detiene, viéndolo tambalearse hacia el porche y a Pike correr detrás de él.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Oh dear John,’ she said, ‘my true love. I wish that I could keep all these things secret, but alas -’ She brushed a tear from her cheek. ‘I cannot stand the sight of him. He is the worst husband in the world. Yet, since I am his wife, I am not supposed to reveal the secrets of our marriage. Or of our marriage bed. God forbid I should do so. I am bound to honour and obey him.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But I have to tell you this. He isn’t worth as much as a fly. And what upsets me more than anything is his stinginess. You know well enough that a woman wants six things. I am no different. She wants a husband to be healthy and wise, wealthy and generous; she wants him to be obedient to his wife, and good in bed. Just those six things. Is that too much to ask? Yet, by Christ who shed His precious blood for our salvation, I have to find one hundred francs by next Sunday. Why? To pay for my new gowns. And I only bought them to bring credit on him! I would rather die than be shamed in public for bad debts. If my husband finds out about it, he will kill me anyway. So please, John, can you lend me the money? Otherwise, I am ruined. If I can borrow the hundred francs from you, I will be forever thankful to you. I will pay you back, of course, on a stated day, but I will also do whatever else you require of me. Anything at all. If I am untrue to my word, take any vengeance you wish. Tear me apart with horses. Burn me alive.’ The monk was very courteous in his reply. ‘I have so much pity for you, gentle lady, that I here plight my word to you. I swear that, when your husband has gone to Bruges, I will solve your problem. I will bring you the hundred francs.’ Saying that he fondled her thighs and buttocks, embraced her, and kissed her a hundred times. ‘Go upon your way,’ he said, ‘quietly and discreetly. Let us dine soon. I see from this sundial that it is past nine o’clock in the morning. So go now. Be as faithful to me as I am true to you.’ ‘Of course. God forbid that I should behave in any other way.’ So she sets off as merry as a magpie, and instructs the cooks to prepare a good meal for the master and his guest. Then she went off to see her husband, and knocked boldly on the door of the counting house. ‘Who is it?’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The declaration of the Second Republic in France in 1848 led to widespread hopes that something similar could be achieved in Germany, and there were calls for constitutional rule. Hoping that this agitation would spread to the rest of Europe, Karl Marx (1818–83) published his Communist Manifesto, but a year later it was clear that the revolutionary movement had failed. Marx took it for granted that God did not exist, so he did not bother to justify his atheism philosophically; his sole aim was to alleviate human misery. Born into a middle-class Jewish family at Trier, Marx had studied with Hegel in Berlin, where he had met some of the most controversial theologians of the day. Failing to get an academic post in Germany, he worked as a journalist in Paris until he was expelled for his political activities and settled in London, where he began work on Das Kapital, his monumental analysis of capitalism. While Feuerbach’s analysis was quite sound, Marx conceded, it did not go far enough. The time for theory was past. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world,” he insisted emphatically; “the point, however, is to change it.”22 Instead of meditating on Hegel’s dialectic, a committed revolutionary must make it happen; he must bring the underlying contradictions of capitalist society into the open, thus accelerating the emergence of the forces that would negate them. Of course God was a projection of human needs—that went without saying—but these needs were created by material and social factors that conditioned the way people thought and lived. The injustice of capitalism had produced a God that was simply a consoling illusion: Religious distress is at the same time an expression of real distress and a protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.23 When men and women were no longer reduced by an oppressive system to a “debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence,” the idea of God would simply wither away.24 Atheism was not an abstract theory but a project. It was a program that was essential to the well-being of humanity: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.”25

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Artists deliberately flouted their viewers’ expectations, tacitly proclaiming the need for a new vision in a new world. Old certainties were evaporating. Some wanted to contemplate irreducible fundamentals, cut out the peripheral, and focus on the essential in order to construct a different reality: scientists searched for the atom or the particle; sociologists and anthropologists reverted to primeval societies and primitive artifacts. People wanted to break the past asunder, split the atom to make something new. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) either dismembered his subjects or viewed them simultaneously from different perspectives. The novels of Woolf and James Joyce (1882–1941) abandoned the traditional narratives of cause and effect, throwing their readers into the chaotic stream of their characters’ consciousness, so that they were uncertain about what actually was happening or how they should judge the action. But the First World War revealed the self-destructive nihilism that, despite its colossal attainments, lurked at the heart of modern Western civilization. It has been described as the collective suicide of Europe: by slaughtering a generation of young men, the war so damaged European society at its core that arguably it has never fully recovered. The utter futility of trench warfare, fought as it was for no adequate social, ideological, or humanitarian cause, defied the rationalism of the scientific age. The most advanced and civilized countries in Europe had crippled themselves and their opponents with their new military technology simply to serve the national ego. The war itself seemed a terrible parody of the mechanical ideal: once the intricate mechanism of conscription, troop transportation, and the manufacture of weapons had been switched on, it seemed to acquire its own momentum and proved almost impossible to stop. After the armistice, the economy of the West seemed in terminal decline, and the 1930s saw the Great Depression and the rise of fascism and communism. By the end of the decade, the unthinkable had happened and the world was embroiled in a second global war. It was now difficult to feel sanguine about the limitless progress of civilization. Modern secular ideologies were proving to be as lethal as any religious bigotry. They revealed the inherent destructiveness of all idolatry: once the finite reality of the nation had become an absolute value, it was compelled to overcome and destroy all rival claimants. Modern science had been founded on the belief that it was possible to achieve objective certainty. Hume and Kant had cast doubt on this ideal by suggesting that our understanding of the external world was merely a reflection of human psychology. But even Kant believed that the fundamental categories of Newtonian science—space, time, substance, and causality—were beyond question. Yet within a generation of Hilbert’s confident prediction that all physicists had to do was add the final touches to Newton’s great “Systeme,” it had been superseded.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Rulers had long initiated policies of ethnic cleansing when setting up their modern, centralized states. In order to use all the human resources at their disposal and to maintain productivity, governments had found it necessary to bring out-groups such as the Jews into the mainstream, but the events of the 1930s and 1940s showed that this tolerance was merely superficial and the old bigotry still lurked beneath. To carry out their program of genocide, the Nazis relied on the technology of the industrial age: the railways, the advanced chemical industry, and rationalized bureaucracy and management. The camp replicated the factory, the hallmark of industrial society, but what it mass-produced was death. Science itself was implicated in the eugenic experiments carried out there. The modern idolatry of nationalism had so idealized the German volk that there was no place for the Jews: born of the new “scientific” racism, the Holocaust was the ultimate in social engineering in what has been called the modern “garden culture,” which simply eliminated weeds—the supreme, perverted example of rational planning in which everything is subordinated to a single, clearly defined objective. 38 Perhaps the Holocaust was not so much an expression as a perversion of Judeo-Christian values. 39 As atheists had been eager to point out, the symbol of God had marked the limit of human potential. At the heart of the Nazi ideology was a romantic yearning for a pre- Christian German paganism that they had never properly understood, and a negation of the God who, as Nietzsche had suggested, put a brake on ambition and instinctual “pagan” freedom. The extermination of the people who had created the God of the Bible was a symbolic enactment of the death of God that Nietzsche had proclaimed. 40 Or perhaps the real cause of the Holocaust was the ambiguous afterlife of religious feeling in Western culture and the malignant energies released by the decay of the religious forms that had channeled them into more benign, productive outlets. 41 In Christian theology, hell had traditionally been defined as the absence of God, and the camps uncannily reproduced the traditional symbolism of the inferno: the flaying, racking, whipping, screaming, and mocking; the distorted bodies; the flames and stinking air all evoked the imagery of hell depicted by the artists, poets, and dramatists of Europe.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But they found conventional religious life bewildering. For decades the Iberian Jews had lived without communal religious life and had no experience of ritual observance. The Dutch rabbis had the difficult task of guiding them back into the fold, making allowances for their problems without compromising tradition, and it is a tribute to them that most of the Marranos were able to make the transition.86 But initially their reaction was similar to that of people today who find the “beliefs” of religion arbitrary and incredible because they have not fully participated in its transformative rites. The abstruse laws of diet and purification must have seemed barbaric and meaningless to the Marrano sophisticates, who found it difficult to accept the rabbis’ explanations because they were used to thinking things out rationally for themselves. According to Isaac Orobio de Castro, a philosophy professor who had lived in Iberia for years as a closet Jew, some of them had become “unspeakable atheists”:87 they were “full of vanity, pride and arrogance,” loved to display their learning “by contradicting what they do not understand,” and felt that their expertise in the modern sciences put them above “those who are indeed educated in the sacred laws.”88 A tiny minority of the Marranos found the transition to full cultic observance impossible. One of the most tragic cases was that of Uriel da Costa, who had experienced Portuguese Christianity as oppressive, cruel, and composed of rules and doctrines that bore no relation to the gospels.89 He had formed his own idea of Jewish religion by reading the Bible, but when he arrived in Amsterdam he was shocked to find that contemporary Judaism was just as far removed from scripture as Catholicism. Outraged, he published a treatise attacking the Torah and declaring that he believed only in human reason and the laws of nature. He caused such ferment that the rabbis were forced to excommunicate him. There was as yet no notion in Europe of a “secular Jew,” and as an excommunicate da Costa was shunned by Jews and Christians alike; children jeered at him in the street. In despair, he returned to the synagogue, but he still could not adapt to a faith that seemed incomprehensible. In 1640, he committed suicide.

• From City of Night (1963)

  At a turn in the road, the car almost swerved into the trees. Lance sat up: “Have—a—baaall!” he laughed. “Crash the fuckin car!—lets go up in flames!—aim for Heaven!—get there with a Wham!” Green scenery rushing toward us, retreating. Vast blue of the sky like shifting panels.... “Im drunk,” Lance said. “You too?... Here—if we drink more, we’ll be on the way back—cold sober again.... There....” Crack of wood! Green shrubbery trembles. The car has stopped. I leaned on the wheel, surrendering to the dizzy carousel of green. Dots of sun needled my eyes as the leaves shifted dazedly about us. Lance staggered out. “Great to be Drunk!” he says, making his way down the hill. “Great, great! Everyone should be drunk—all the time—right?... Whole fuckin world on one great big endless: Durrrunk!” I pushed against the door, against the bushes. Tall trees sheltered us from the sun. At the foot of the hill, some water, very blue and clear like the sky, winds serenely along the trees. I knelt, throwing water on my face, trying to stop the green merry-go-round whirling about me. And in one wild instant Lance was hugging me to him, sobbing urgently. “Dean—dont—go—away—” “Im not Dean,” I kept repeating. But he didnt hear me. “Dean—” he was sobbing, holding me tightly. The scenery stopped spinning now and collapsed, came crashing over us—the trees burst, shattered. Again, once, the sun pierced the leaves in a myriad of light—pinpoints bursting in the water shimmering. And Lance’s arms squeezed me tightly—and he whispered over and over: “Dean...” I felt my hand in the water, my one contact with reality. I let my fingers dangle in the spring.... And the scenery which had closed in on us green, blackened, and... the... pinpoints... of... the... shattered... sun... are... closing. I awoke and the sun slashed through the trees blindingly at my eyes. Beside me, Lance’s head almost touched the spring. I pulled him away, threw water on his face, and he opened his eyes abruptly, stared at me, surprised, trying to remember. And then he turned from me and began to sob. I walked back to the car and waited, and finally Lance returned. “Who are you?” he asks me. “I just met you—early this morning.” He was silent “You asked me to take your car.” “I remember—something like that.” His eyes stared ahead in the dreadful limbo of after-drunkenness and near-hangover. “Where are we?” he asked. “Near Arrowhead—I think.” He still avoided looking at me. “I remember now—I saw you in some bar. I mistook you for Dean. I dont know what I was doing looking for him in the bars—hes not even old enough to get in.” “I was drunk too,” I said, to ease his obvious embarrassment As I drove his car down the mountain, he became friendlier, his embarrassment relaxing. “I dont remember everything,” he said, “but whatever happened—if something was wrong—Im sorry. I cant drink,” he explained.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Strangely, illogically—like a shadowy movie cut indiscriminately without logical order, I remember living next to the Y in Los Angeles, where I sunbathed on the roof of that apartment building, and by signals from the residents of the Y, I would meet them later on the street.... I remember Griffith Park—the hill where you could make it hidden by trees.... I remember the police, the many roustings, finger-printings, interrogations: the cops, the rival gang—the enemy: the world.... Laguna Beach, the sand drifting into the bar. Lance... poised on a cliff.... And I remember a Texas sky .... I remember a party where three of us turned on with marijuana in the locked head, and I remember the indiscriminate partners, later, outside in the yard.... Remembering a man on the Boulevard who picked me up, who paid me to tell him what the others I had been with had done; and as he listened, he tried to conceal the fact that he was pulling off.... That sky recalled from a childhood in gray, gray shades.... I remember a steambath and the naked bodies pacing hungrily along the hallways, the sudden entrances and exits into the tiny cubicles; and, in the phosphorescent grayness, like nameless bodies in a morgue.... I think of St Louis Cemetery in this city, the stark graves above the Waiting ground.... And the wind had swept that sky, coming in a steelgray cloud.... I think of the beach in Chicago, deserted except for the maleshadows hugging the cold walls. And I remember the FASCINATION sign in New York.... In Dallas—remembering—the doors of rooms left open at the Y and the steamy intimacy in the showers.... I imagine Miss Destiny storming heaven, protesting to God, shaking her beads.... Remembering Sylvia, I think: And she slaughtered her son and he slaughtered her because they each had to.... And I remember: Out of that Window during that windstorm which is now howling again in my mind, I watched a tree bend with the wind .... Something searched, its fulfillment hinted by the fact that the heart craves it—but not to be found. Not found. And the heart weakens and resists even hope.... Twas the night before Ash Wednesday and All Through The City—... I remembered someone in San Francisco who had followed me and someone else to an apartment, and later I looked out the window and saw the man who had followed us still waiting, looking up forlornly to where we were, his hands in his pockets.... Finally, the wind had lashed furiously at the tree, tearing off the branches, which had hinted of spring.... And the dust rose, coming from the orange horizon, settling on my mind . Dregs of memories churn. Remembering.... This:

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 21 3/23/2011 really a camaraderie there. You know, of course, you know, we made mistakes. Uh, you know, when we first started the AZT trials, we were giving way too much. You know, that’s why people got so sick on it, and it got a bad rap. If you ever come to our office, we have this picture of this guy who uh, is almost like a skeleton, and he’s holding a sign, man can’t live on AZT alone. 1:50:20 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on protest sign) MAN CAN NOT LIVE ON AZT ALONE 1:50:22 EILEEN (VO/ON) (CONT’D) And every time I see that picture, it brings me back to those days of we need more treatments. We need more than AZT, and in-- And we need them to happen quickly. 1:50:37 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper clippings) Compound Q HPA-23 Pentamidine DNCB IL-2 1:50:40 PAUL (VO/ON) I remember one fellow particularly said to me, “You know, I’m at the end of my chemical rope.” Um, and I thought, boy, what a phrase from our, you know, from this time. 1:50:50 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on headline clips) Co-enzyme Q10 Ganciclovir AL721 Septra DDC Ribavarin 1:50:52 GUY (VO/ON) These doctors were coming up with every kind of pill that you should take. It seemed like every day they were coming up with a new cure, but my friends were Guinea pigs, and those cures didn’t work.

• From City of Night (1963)

  God damn it, I want to shout to her, dont smile, dont laugh! I want to say to her: Cry, Kathy! But the smile is permanent as she seems to loom over the crowd—a luminous apparition: amused perhaps by the cruel knowledge of herself—the knowledge that shes been twice doomed: by the limbo sex and death lurking prematurely in a threatening black-out which will end, in her very youth, even her defiance of the despising world that tampered with her sex and stamped her face with Impossible beauty. Struggling through the crowd toward her, I said: “Kathy.... Kathy.” “Yes, baby?” “Why are you smiling?” “Because,” she said easily, “Im going to die.” “Babe, I’d like to eat you,” said the man in the ballet tights at Les Deux Freres. “I dare you,” I challenged. “You do?” “I dare you,” I repeated. “Right here?” “I dare you—right here,” I said, laughing, feeling out of control. He slid on his knees. He opens my fly, begins to go down on me in the thronged bar. And they started daring each other, and a youngman dressed only in a striped bikini pushed his trunks to his knees and stood there waiting, and immediately there was someone pressing behind him and someone squatting in front. I leaned groggily against the bar looking down at the bobbing head between my legs.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “ I pissed on them!” His voice quavered, broke, halted. He turned his face away from me. His shoulders trembled as if in a sudden cold wind. “So you see: power and strength—” he began weakly without finishing. I sat next to him, where he had sunk onto the bed. But is there anything you can say now to Neil? It’s too late. It’s too late. Through the open door of the bathroom I see a water-soaked bag on the floor. CITY OF NIGHT CHICAGO! (San Francisco... the fog... the mourning wind... the discovered violence, hatred.... I fled California. San Francisco, which had lured me spuriously with its promise of renewed life, had withdraw that promise.) Now it will be Chicago—that savage city like a black fortress erected against the blue of the sky, the blue of the lake. And what have I come here to search for? Something not yet clearly defined which has to do with the antithesis of Neil’s world. And I’ll search again through the labyrinthine world I had found on Times Square, in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Market Street... I stayed in an apartment house on Dearborn next to the YMCA.... And nearby was the beach. And nearby is the hustling park. On the beach (which is not so much a beach as a loop of sanded concrete along the lake—to get to which you walk through a subway tunnel—lights slanted on one side of the wall flashing like interrogation lights in your eyes—and you emerge, somehow guiltily, and see, through cracks in the cement, weeds and patches of grass struggling to emerge for one last breath of the expiring-summer air), I will meet a series of new faces which will be added to the hundreds that have already paraded through my life. Near-autumn afternoons spent there waiting to be picked up. (Behind me, the outline of the wealthy Gold Coast: luxurious apartments glistening goldenly in the sun—resembling, for all their plush elegance, clean hospital wards: rows of giant apartment buildings like monsters ready to march snobbishly into the lake, their backs haughtily to the rest of the city as they huddle—healthy and muscular but still somehow afraid—close to each other as if for protection.) Sometimes, at night, I’ll return there. Ghostly waves will seek out life, dashing against the shore (while teenagers swim bravely in the cold water, men fish, couples make love, tramps sleep along the expanse of cement ground).... And I wandered along the beach, idly, until someone spoke to me. But, mostly—at night in that city—I will search the park between Dearborn and Clark: Chicago’s Pershing Square, without the almost-healthy indolence of Los Angeles. This park where in the afternoons the city’s old and young vagrants serve their novitiate before the derelict jungles of the city.... They gather drearily here in bunches, frantic in the awareness that soon the weather will turn cold. I watch and listen and join in.

• From City of Night (1963)

  When I had first seen him at the Splendide, the subdued light had chosen mercifully to bless him—and I had seen the youngman who had reigned securely. Now, in the glare of the summer sun, there was little mercy. I see the crushed Lance O’Hara of the now-fading legend: tall, yes—slender; but his face, bloated from drinking and sleepless nights, had the look of alarm which only the faces of the once very beautiful and anarchically disdainful, on the brink of relinquishing their claim to that anarchy, can have: The skin was yellowish in the bright light, lines converged under the eyes forming small sagging sacks; his dark hair was matted at the forehead with perspiration. But the haunted eyes looking at me, a clear blue that melted almost indistinguishably into the white, are what I notice most: They are the astonished eyes of someone who after years of wearing sunglasses is forced suddenly to remove them in the savage stare of the sun.... “Lets—drive—somewhere,” he said. “Anywhere—nowhere—sooooooooommmmmmmmmewhere—over the rainbow!” Laughing chokingly, he swerves sideways on the seat—“Ooops!”—retrieves a bottle of whiskey which had rolled under the seat and drank thirstily from it. I started the car, moving toward the Strip on Sunset. As if on its own, the car speeds past the California palmtrees, silent witnesses to speeding life, fleeting Youth. Lance opens his eyes suddenly wide, seeing me, I thought, really for the first time. “You dont even look like him,” he said. “Not at all, really. I followed you out When I saw you leave—leave the bar, I thought—I thought you were—Dean.... Hey! Lets make it: A Party—havent had—party in—oh, long, long—... I wanna get realleeee drunk!” He held the bottle to me and I drank from it. His panic was infectious. Im aware of Flight now, acutely—of Lance’s, mine. “Wowee,” he said, “youre drunk too—thats it—wowee!” We were on the Freeway now, cars racing before us, toward us, next to us. The world, everyone on the Freeway, is spinning in wide swirls... Away!... “Bumpity-bump,” said Lance, drinking again from the bottle, handing it to me. “More I drink, more you look like him. Dont care who you are—so—long—as—you—driiiive. Oops! Liquor hit—my head! Bumpity-bump. Hey! Lets ballt...” Then he was silent, eyes closed. “You dont know—Dean—do you?” he asked me abruptly. “Havent seen him—since—whee—...” holding the bottle for me again. “Dean,” he said furrily, and again he seemed to pass out. Now my vision became fantastically clear—which is that stage preparatory to my becoming drunk, when each object becomes sharply real. The traffic had thinned, and we were moving past many-colored fruitstands strung along the highway like a gypsy caravan. Now we’re in the mountains, here lushly green, there brown-patched, leprous—past, occasionally, areas of burned-down trees: Dead. The road winds treacherously in a series of tight S’s—the sky is blue and clear: a cool inverted inaccessible lake.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  If we didn’t chase the light, did people like us just end up here anyway? If Claire had never left her marriage, where would she be now? She said that she was depressed during her marriage and ended up here once before. And that was before she began her odyssey of love and sex. If you were just going to end up here, regardless of what you did, it seemed worth it to really push things like she did. The nothingness was going to eat you alive anyway. It was going to be mashed potatoes at the end no matter what. So why not just grab for whatever you could get? — “Well, I’ve really mucked it up this time,” said Claire. “I’m back in group therapy now, only here with a pack of sad arses who are completely catatonic—which is maybe actually better.” She laughed. It was good to see her sense of humor back. Her hair was still greasy, piled on top of her head, but the circles under her eyes had diminished and there was a glint in her eyes again. “You seem better,” I said. “Like you’re not just staring at the wall.” “Yes, with my last suicide attempt I woke up completely miffed that I was still alive. But this one was oddly refreshing. Maybe I just needed some sort of sorbet—a life palate cleanser.” My God, I loved her. “I get it,” I said. “I mean, not really, because mine wasn’t really a consciously active attempt.” “No, yours was more of a gesture.” “Exactly, a gesture. I’m not the suicide pro that you are. But I think I understand.” “Love, if I were a pro I wouldn’t be here.” “Right,” I said. “But I mean I’m not as, like, experienced with suicide or whatever. Like it’s not as much a part of my oeuvre. I’m more—I don’t know what I am actually. But I know what you mean by a palate cleanser. Sometimes everything is just so bleh that you need to fucking cut it with a knife.” I was trying to ask her in a roundabout way if it was worth it. We felt the same nothingness, of that I was sure. But I wanted to see if she knew if we were going to be okay or not. Or, at least, if I was. I was asking life advice, couched in the language of suicide, from a friend in a mental hospital. This was the direction my life had taken. “So are you glad about everything? Like, everything that led you up to this point where you feel okay, maybe even good about being alive? Are you glad for that trajectory of your life?” “Yeah,” she said. “I feel strangely good about everything.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And then one afternoon, High, sitting in the park, hearing the convulsed chanting, the spiritual singing—in the midst of the lonesome hunting, the sexual hunger in the eyes all around—the franticness to fill each space of time with something! —I imagined— Suddenly! as if in a nightmare—as the crowds emerged from the depths of the subterranean garage, swarmed from across the streets—that all the world was pouring into Pershing Square in a tidal wave of faces—that frantically each person would shout his Loss—into Eternity—to an uncaring Heaven! In panic, I returned to that rented room on Hope Street I shut the windows, drew the shades, bolted the door. Still, I could hear life shrieking at me.... Now again there came a time when I stayed away from the streets. I took a job.... Again the guilt. At night I found relief from the strange terror in the joints of marijuana which I smoked on the roof of that hotel. As the false clarity of the weed seized me, I would look onto the city showered by the black of the Night—and imagine, as if in a dumb show in which all emotion is muted, that I was separated from the world: as I had felt as a boy watching out the window, separated from life. The world was revealing its death to me by the process of slow discovery: the slowly gnawing loss of innocence; and I found myself longing for the God in Whom, unquestioningly, I had believed as a child. But this world of loneliness and desperation belied Him. The sky was now a black cave where once it had been limitless, stretching into that Heaven of childhood angels and peace. As the doleful sounds of the bells from the church across the street mourned into the night, I looked from the roof in the direction of Pershing Square: One day, in sorrow at His own creation, God plunged into Hell.... Now the world spun dizzily like a ferris wheel out of control . CHUCK: Rope Heaven by the Neck 1 “HEY, MAN!—HOW YOU MAKIN IT?... Cummon over—jine me.” Chuck sat familiarly on the railing at Pershing Square under the statue of a World War I soldier valiantly facing the street. Wearing a new pair of cowboy boots—resplendently Bright (orange, brown, traces of yellow)—which hes showing off by rolling his levis an extra turn—Chuck sits there as if on his own frontporch. “Where you been?” he asks me.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  In this situation I sat near half an hour, swallowed up in grief and despair, when my landlady came in, and observing a death-like dejection in my countenance, still in pursuance of her plan, put on a false pity, and bidding me be of good heart: “Things,” she said, “would be but my own friend”; and closed with telling me “she had brought a very honourable gentleman to drink tea with me, who would give me the best advice how to get rid of all my troubles.” Upon which, without waiting for a reply, she goes out, and returns with this very honourable gentleman, whose very honourable procuress she had been, on this, as well as other occasions. The gentleman, on his entering the room, made me a very civil bow, which I had scarce strength, or presence of mind enough to return a curtsey to; when the landlady, taking upon her to do all the honours of the first interview (for I had never, that I remember, seen the gentleman before), sets a chair for him, another for herself. All this while not a word on either side; a stupid stare was all the face I could put on this strange visit. The tea was made, and the landlady, unwilling, I suppose, to lose any time, observing my silence and shyness before this entire stranger: “Come, Miss Fanny,” says she, in a coarse familiar style, and tone of authority, “hold up your head, child, and do not let sorrow spoil that pretty face of yours. What! sorrows are only for a time; come, be free, here is a worthy gentleman who has heard of your misfortunes, and is willing to serve you; you must be better acquainted with him, do not you now stand upon your punctilios, and this and that, but make your market while you may.”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Yet what of poor Aurelius? He had lost everything. So he cursed the day he was born. ‘Oh God,’ he cried, ‘I owe a thousand pounds of gold to the magician! What am I going to do? I am ruined. I will need to sell everything I own, and roam the streets as a beggar. I cannot stay here and be a source of perpetual shame to my family. My only hope is that he will be merciful towards me. I will suggest to him that I pay the debt by instalments, year by year, on a certain day. If he is kind enough to agree, I will never let him down.’ So with aching heart he went to his strongbox, unlocked it, and took out about five hundred pounds of gold. He presented the money to the magician, and asked him if he could pay the rest at a later date. ‘I have never broken a promise in my life, sir,’ he said. ‘I will repay my debt to you. Even if I have to go begging in my bare tunic, you will get your money. I swear it. If you can give me two or three years, I would be very grateful. Otherwise I will have to sell my patrimony, house and all. There is nothing else I can tell you.’ The philosopher listened silently and solemnly. ‘Did I not make an agreement with you?’ ‘Yes, sir, you did. Most certainly.’ ‘Did you not enjoy the lady, as you wished?’ ‘No. Alas, I did not.’ ‘Why not? Tell me the whole story.’ So Aurelius went through the entire sequence of events. There is no need for me to repeat them, is there? ‘Arveragus,’ he said, ‘is such a worthy knight that he would rather die of shame and distress than allow his wife to break her oath.’ Then he told the magician all about the anguish experienced by Dorigen at the thought of being unfaithful to her husband. She would rather have lost her life. She had made her original promise quite innocently. She had no knowledge of magic and illusion. ‘So I felt sorry for her, sir. Arveragus sent her to me without conditions, and I freely returned her to him. That is the gist of it.’