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 Art of Memoir

  3 | Why Not to Write a Memoir: Plus a Pop Quiz to Protect the Bleeding & Box Out the Rigid If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. Zora Neale Hurston Asking me how to write a memoir is a little like saying, “I really want to have sex, where do I start?” What one person fantasizes about would ruin the romance for another. It depends on how you’re constructed inside and out, hormone levels, psychology. Or it’s like saying, “I want a makeover, how should I look?” A Goth girl’s not inclined to lime-green Fair Isle sweaters, and a preppy scorns black lipstick. I’ve said it’s hard. Here’s how hard: everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little. Between chapters of Stop-Time, Frank Conroy stayed drunk for weeks. Two hours after Carolyn See finished her first draft of Dreaming, she collapsed with viral meningitis, which gave her double vision: “It was my brain’s way of saying, ‘You’ve been looking where you shouldn’t be looking.’” Martin Amis reported a suffocating enervation while working on Experience. Writing fiction, however taxing, usually left him some buoyancy at day’s end; his memoir about his father drained him. Jerry Stahl relapsed while writing about his heroin addiction in Permanent Midnight. I used to crumble to the floor of my study afternoons, like a long- distance trucker. I’d have to claw my way out of sleep. When I once

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Boudreaux had spent an hour going over Daddy’s condition with her and Lecia. He’d dismantled a plastic model of the brain for her. The report to me was way more concise: “His head’s all fucked up,” Mother said. There was something called an “immediate-recovery period” of a few weeks after a stroke, while brain swelling went down. In that time, Daddy could just snap out of it, start talking and walking like before. Or maybe he’d turn into one of those chicken-chested old men you see in rest-home hallways, tied to their chairs and listing for decades. The Leechfield I drove home through that night had eroded into a ghost town. I’d somehow not noticed this before. Streetlights had been shot out in strings. Our car kept moving into black intervals of road, then bursting into light again. Lawns grew wild. For-sale signs stuttered by too fast to count. All the necessary stores were boarded up—pharmacy, cleaners, hardware. Gone was the jewelry store with its Ferris wheel of lockets and birthstone rings; gone the coffee shop. The fancy clothes store—where all the cheerleaders worked after high school—went bankrupt when the proprietor was arrested in a motel room with two such cheerleaders and a Ziploc baggie of cocaine. I set down in my journal the businesses we passed that night: nail-sculpting salon, knickknack shop, trophy store, aerobic-dance studio, K-9 dog-training school. There was a diet center that sported a plywood cutout of a pink pig wearing a brick-red polka-dot dress. The bubble coming from the pig’s mouth held this phrase: A New Way To Lose Weight Without Starving To Death. Where the filling station used to stand was a parking lot lined with industrial ice machines. So driving by, I read ICE ICE ICE ICE ICE . You could also get chemotherapy in a modern cinderblock building, which didn’t surprise me since the town formed one of the blackest squares on the world cancer map. (It’s still right up there with Bhopal and Chernobyl.) Once we hit the hurricane fence that ran alongside the rubber factory, Mother started talking. Money was a problem, she said, being as they didn’t have any. She thought he’d bought some supplementary insurance. That reminded her to fish Daddy’s wallet from his jeans jacket in the backseat. She unfolded the wings of it and started picking past onionskin gas receipts and ticket stubs. There was a cocktail napkin with the point spread from a baseball game on which the lights had long since gone dim. Strangest of all, she found two documents of mine—the one college report card where I pulled down straight A’s, and a Xerox of my first published poem. The poem was about Daddy’s sister. It had been unfolded so many times and smoothed across so many damp bar tops the parchment warped and buckled. The middle creases were cloudy with blurred ink. The notion of his toting that around nearly broke me in half crying, so Mother started bawling too.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  As a kid, I’d thought they were dinosaur eggs and worried about what might hatch out of them. They cast humped shadows across the refinery yards. We drove past them. The fence running alongside us went from the industrial hurricane’s diamonds to barbed wire that sloped in parallel lines from post to post, behind which were broad rice fields, rich green stalks leaning every which way, almost heavy enough to harvest. Then the fence vanished, and the dissected fields gave way to a foggy riverbank spilling morning glories. Dark was closing in. We hit a long stretch of roadside bluebonnets that broadened to a meadow. Here and there in the flowers you could make out small gatherings of fireflies. How odd, I thought, that those bugs lived through the refinery poisons. Beyond Mother’s tired profile, the fireflies blinked in batches under spreading mist like little birthday cakes lighting up and getting blown out. I didn’t think this particularly beautiful or noteworthy at the time, but only do so now. The sunset we drove into that day was luminous, glowing; we weren’t. Though we should have glowed, for what Mother told absolved us both, in a way. All the black crimes we believed ourselves guilty of were myths, stories we’d cobbled together out of fear. We expected no good news interspersed with the bad. Only the dark aspect of any story sank in. I never knew despair could lie. So at the time, I only felt the car hurtling like some cold steel capsule I’d launched into onrushing dark. It’s only looking back that I believe the clear light of truth should have filled us, like the legendary grace that carries a broken body past all manner of monsters. I’m thinking of the cool tunnel of white light the spirit might fly into at death, or so some have reported after coming back from various car wrecks and heart failures and drownings, courtesy of defib paddles and electricity, or after some kneeling samaritan’s breath was blown into stalled lungs so they could gasp again. Maybe such reports are just death’s neurological fireworks, the brain’s last light show. If so, that’s a lie I can live with. Still, the image pleases me enough: to slip from the body’s tight container and into some luminous womb, gliding there without effort till the distant shapes grow brighter and more familiar, till all your beloveds hover before you, their lit arms held out in welcome.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  This was all so novel that in order to justify these innovations, the Deuteronomists literally had to rewrite history. They began a massive editorial revision of the texts in the royal archives that would one day become the Hebrew Bible, changing the wording and import of earlier law codes and introducing new legislation that endorsed their proposals. They recast the history of Israel, adding fresh material to the older narratives of the Pentateuch and giving Moses a prominence that he may not have had in some of the earlier traditions. The climax of the Exodus story was no longer a theophany but the gift of the Ten Commandments and the sefer torah. Drawing on earlier sagas, now lost to us, the reformers put together a history of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah that became the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, which “proved” that the idolatrous iniquity of the northern kingdom had been the cause of its destruction. When they described Joshua’s conquests, they depicted him slaughtering the local population of the Promised Land and devastating their cities like an Assyrian general. They transformed the ancient myth of the ban so that it became an expression of God’s justice and a literal rather than a fictional story of attempted genocide. Their history culminated in the reign of Josiah, the new Moses who would liberate Israel from Pharaoh once again, a king who was even greater than David.112 This strident theology left an indelible trace on the Hebrew Bible; many of the writings so frequently quoted to prove the ineradicable aggression and intolerance of “monotheism” were either composed or recast by these reformers. Yet the Deuteronomist reform was never implemented. Josiah’s bid for independence ended in 609 BCE, when he was killed in a skirmish with Pharaoh Neco. The new Babylonian empire replaced Assyria and competed with Egypt for control of the Middle East. For a few years Judah dodged between these great powers, but eventually, after an uprising in Judah in 597, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, deported eight thousand Judean aristocrats, soldiers, and skilled artisans.113 Ten years later he destroyed the temple, razed Jerusalem to the ground, and deported five thousand more Judeans, leaving only the lower classes in the devastated land. In Babylonia the Judean exiles were reasonably well treated. Some lived in the capital; others were housed in undeveloped areas near the new canals and could, to an extent, manage their own affairs.114 But exile is a spiritual as well as a physical dislocation. In Judah the deportees had been the elite class; now they had no political rights, and some even had to work in the corvée.115 But then it seemed that Yahweh was about to liberate his people again. This time the exodus would not be led by a prophet but would be instigated by a new imperial power.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Thank Desroches," he said harshly, "for it is as a favor to her I intend to show you an instant's kindness; you must surely be aware how little you deserve it after your performance yesterday. Undress yourself and if you once again manifest the least resistance to my desires, two men, waiting for you in the next room, will conduct you to a place whence you will never emerge alive." "Oh Monsieur," say I, weeping, clutching the wicked man's knees, "unbend, I beseech you; be so generous as to relieve me without requiring what would be so costly I should rather offer you my life than submit to it.... Yes, I prefer to die a thousand times over than violate the principles I received in my childhood.... Monsieur, Monsieur, constrain me not, I entreat you; can you conceive of gleaning happiness in the depths of tears and disgust? Dare you suspect pleasure where you see naught but loathing? No sooner shall you have consummated your crime than my despair will overwhelm you with remorse...." But the infamies to which Dubourg abandoned himself prevented me from continuing; that I was able to have believed myself capable of touching a man who was already finding, in the very spectacle of my suffering, one further vehicle for his horrible passions! Would you believe it, Madame? becoming inflamed by the shrill accents of my pleadings, savoring them inhumanly, the wretch disposed himself for his criminal attempts! He gets up, and exhibiting himself to me in a state over which reason is seldom triumphant, and wherein the opposition of the object which causes reason's downfall is but an additional ailment to delirium, he seizes me brutally, impetuously snatches away the veils which still conceal what he burns to enjoy; he caresses me.... Oh! what a picture, Great God I What unheard-of mingling of harshness... and lewdness! It seemed that the Supreme Being wished, in that first of my encounters, to imprint forever in me all the horror I was to have for a kind of crime whence there was to be born the torrent of evils that have beset me since. But must I complain of them?

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Indi scrubbed at the wound and Beth held her breath and fought down the lump of bubbling misery at the back of her throat. A fierce stinging pain lit up her cheek as Indi cleaned the cut. It felt as though a swarm of wasps were stinging her along some fault line in her body, some appetizing orifice raw and tender enough to be preyed upon. She let out a muffled groan. “Hold still.” Indi bent down close to Beth, her round face and double chin shining with perspiration, the fine black hairs on her upper lip just visible against her skin. She drew a yellowed Q-tip glistening with some kind of solvent quick along Beth’s wound, then mopped at it with a folded rag. A moment later came the muted sting of the suture needle tugging at her cheek. In and out. Hot, bright flashes of discomfort. The ceiling swam. She felt as though she were being pressed flat against the table by some massive hand, the air squeezed out of her lungs, her whole awareness slowing to a nauseous, muddy churn. For a while Beth drifted in that gray-brown haze of pain, a headache building where the bridge of her nose crossed her eyeline. Indi removed her staples one by one and cleaned the gashes in her leg. Fran came in and made Beth drink something horribly bitter while Indi talked. Beth heard herself crying, flat and miserable, like a baby wailing from the bottom of a well. They lifted up her legs, taking one each, and Indi put a swab inside her. Everything hurt. The room tilted. It came apart. The men were waiting. And then it was dark outside and Indi was beside her again, hips spilling from the edges of her rolling stool, glasses pushed up onto her hair and her nose buried in a book. Kerosene lamps burned in the gloom, casting flickering shadows on the walls and curtains. Indi looked up from her paperback as Beth swallowed. Her mouth was dry and cottony and tasted sour. Her head ached as though it might split down her nose and through her philtrum at any moment. “Indi, will you fuck me?” The other woman sighed, passing a hand over her face. She had little hands, plump and perfect like a baby doll’s. “You need to rest, honey. You’re dehydrated, you have at least two broken ribs, you came within a quarter inch of losing your left hamstring—” Beth slid a hand onto Indi’s knee. Her arm felt as though it were weighted down with bars of lead. The other woman’s skin was cool against her burning fingertips through the thin fabric of her skirt. “Please.” “Bethany, no.” The expression on the other woman’s face told her this fell outside the needling push and pull of their occasional liaisons, the power games of her abjection and Indi’s disdainful refusal. Beth letting her bruised dignity drop like a nightie to the floor.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Courses at the Celebrity Centre focused on communication and self-presentation skills, which were especially prized in the entertainment industry. The drills and training routines would have felt somewhat familiar to anyone who had done scene work in an acting class. Many actors, at once insecure but competitive by nature, were looking for an advantage, which Scientology promised to give them. The fact that anyone was interested in them at all must have come as a welcome surprise. Others who passed through Scientology at the same time as Paul Haggis were actors Tom Berenger, Christopher Reeve, and Anne Francis; and musicians Lou Rawls, Leonard Cohen, Sonny Bono, and Gordon Lightfoot. None stayed long. Jerry Seinfeld took a communication course, which he still credits with helping him as a comedian. Elvis Presley bought some books as well as some services he never actually availed himself of. Rock Hudson visited the Celebrity Centre but stormed out when his auditor had the nerve to tell him he couldn’t leave until he finished with his session, although the matinee idol had run out of time on his parking meter. The exemplary figure that Hubbard sought eluded capture. VERY EARLY ONE MORNING in July 1977, the FBI, having been tipped off about Operation Snow White, carried out raids on Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, carting off nearly fifty thousand documents. One of the files was titled “ Operation Freakout.” It concerned the treatment of Paulette Cooper, the journalist who had published an exposé of Scientology, The Scandal of Scientology , six years earlier. After having been indicted for perjury and making bomb threats against Scientology, Cooper had gone into a deep depression. She stopped eating. At one point, she weighed just eighty-three pounds. She considered suicide. Finally, she persuaded a doctor to give her sodium pentothal, or “truth serum,” and question her under the anesthesia. The government was sufficiently impressed that the prosecutor dropped the case against her, but her reputation was ruined, she was broke, and her health was uncertain. The day after the FBI raid on the Scientology headquarters, Cooper was flying back from Africa, on assignment for a travel magazine, when she read a story in the International Herald Tribune about the raid. One of the files the federal agents discovered was titled “Operation Freakout.” The goal of the operation was to get Cooper “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail.” One of the doors the federal agents opened during the raid in Los Angeles led to the darkened basement of the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on Fountain Avenue, newly christened as Scientology’s Advanced Org building. There were no lights, so the heavily armed agents made their way down the stairs with flashlights. They found a warren of small cubicles, each occupied by half a dozen people dressed in black boiler suits and wearing filthy rags around their arms to indicate their degraded status.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The two peasants, completely nude, are flogged with exceeding violence; while he plies his whip upon the one the other pays him back in kind, and during the intervals when he pauses for rest, he smothers with the most uninhibited, the most disgusting caresses, the same altar in Rosalie who, elevated upon an armchair, slightly bent over, presents it to him; at last, there comes this poor creature's turn: Rodin ties her to the stake as he tied his scholars, and while one after another and sometimes both at once his domestics flay him, he beats his daughter, lashes her from her ribs to her knees, utterly transported by pleasure. His agitation is extreme: he shouts, he blasphemes, he flagellates: his thongs bite deep everywhere, and wherever they fall, there immediately he presses his lips. Both the interior of the altar and his victim's mouth... everything, the before-end excepted, everything is devoured by his suckings; without changing the disposition of the others, contenting himself with rendering it more propitious, Rodin by and by penetrates into pleasure's narrow asylum; meanwhile, the same throne is offered by the governess to his kisses, the other girl beats him with all her remaining strength, Rodin is in seventh heaven, he thrusts, he splits, he tears, a thousand kisses, one more passionate than the other, express his ardor, he kisses whatever is presented to his lust: the bomb bursts and the libertine besotted dares taste the sweetest of delights in the sink of incest and infamy...

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  There is nothing I can do to defend myself, the project is executed, Julien triumphs, and it is not without atrocious agonies I sustain this newest attack: the assailant's exorbitant bulk, the lacerated condition of those parts, the fire with which that accursed ball had devoured my intestines, everything combined to make me suffer tortures which La Rose renewed immediately his companion was finished. Before arriving I was thus yet another time victim of those wretched valets' criminal libertinage; we reached our destination at last. The jailer greeted us, he was alone, it was still night, no one saw me enter. "Go to sleep, Therese," said he, restoring me to my cell, "and if ever you wish to tell, it makes no difference whom, that on this night you left prison, remember that I will contradict you, and that this useless accusation will get you nowhere...." And, said I to myself when I was left alone, I should regret departing this world! I should dread to leave a universe freighted with such monsters! Ah! were the hand of God to snatch me from their clutches at whatever instant and in whatever manner He sees fit! why! I'd complain no more; the unique consolation which may remain to the luckless one bred up in this den of savage beasts, his one comfort is the hope of leaving it soon. The next day I heard nothing and resolved to abandon myself to Providence, I languished and would touch no food. The day after that, Cardoville came to question me; I could not repress a shudder upon beholding the nonchalance wherewith that scoundrel walked in to execute his judiciary duties Ä he, Cardoville, the most villainous of mortals, he who, contrary to every article of the justice in which he was cloaked, had just so cruelly abused my innocence and exploited my misery; it was in vain I pled my cause, the dishonest man's artfulness devised more crimes than I could invent defenses; when all the charges had been well established in the view of this iniquitous judge, and when the case was made, he had the impudence to ask me whether I knew in Lyon one Monsieur de Saint-Florent, a wealthy and estimable citizen; I answered that I knew him, yes. "Excellent," said Cardoville, "no more is needed. This Monsieur de Saint-Florent, whom you declare you know, also has a perfect knowledge of you; he has deposed that he saw you in a band of thieves, that you were the first to steal his money and his pocket- book. He further deposes that your comrades wished to spare his life, that you recommended they take it from him; nevertheless, he managed to escape.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Several people used these identical tortures, or passions, to initiate their warriors; this was known as huscanaver (viz., the religious ceremonies of every race on earth). These pleasantries, whose maximum inconvenience may be at the very most the death of a slut, are capital crimes at the moment. Three cheers for the progress of civilization! How it conspires to the happiness of man, and how much more fortunate than our forebears we are!) ...that was the name he gave that deadly legerdemain of which I gave you a description when I mentioned Roland's cavern for the first time. I mount the three-legged stool, the evil fellow fits the halter about my neck, he takes his place opposite me; although in a frightful state, Suzanne excites him manually; an instant passes, then he snaps the stool from beneath me, but equipped with the sickle, I sever the cord immediately and fall uninjured to the ground. "Nicely done, very neat!" says Roland, "your turn, Suzanne, there it is, and I'll spare you, if you manage as cleverly." Suzanne takes my place. Oh, Madame, allow me to pass over that dreadful scene's details.... The poor thing did not recover from it. "And now off we go, Therese," says Roland, "you'll not return to this place until your time has come." "Whenever you like, Monsieur, whenever you like," I reply; "I prefer death to the frightful life you have me lead. Are there wretches such as we for whom life can be valuable?..." Chapter 35And Roland locked me into my cell. The next day my companions asked what had become of Suzanne and I told them; they were hardly surprised; all were awaiting the same fate and each, like me, seeing therein a term to their suffering, passionately longed for it. And thus two years went by, Roland indulging in his customary debauchery, I lingering on with the prospect of a cruel death, when one day the news went about the chateau that not only were our master's expectations satisfied, not only had he received the immense quantity of Venetian funds he had wished, but that he had even obtained a further order for another six millions in counterfeit coin for which he would be reimbursed in Italy when he arrived to claim payment; the scoundrel could not possibly have enjoyed better luck; he was going to leave with an income of two millions, not to mention his hopes of getting more: this was the new piece of evidence Providence had prepared for me.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  …picture me for the next eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour as still as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven, his eyes closed…A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with the rest?…However, it cannot be concealed that in that case, I must somehow have fallen overboard, or there must have been a wreck at last.187 She is traumatically cast out of the middle class quite unprepared to live, for all the world had expected her to exist parasitically. She now lacks the prerequisites: a face, respectable social connections, and parents to place her. She is a serf without a proprietor who must become a wage slave, namely a governess or teacher. The only way out, and it’s a desperate track, is to learn the world and books. Villette chronicles her formal and informal education in the acquisition of her own competence through both. But what work can Lucy do; what occupations are open to her? Paid companion, infant nurse, governess, schoolteacher. As they are arranged, each is but another name for servant. Each involves starvation wages which only a lifetime of saving could ever convert to ransom. There is another humiliation in the fact of servant status which rested with particular severity on middleclass women who in taking employment are falling a step below the class of their birth. (While a paid companion, Lucy encounters a schoolmate now the mistress of a household-Lucy had been visiting another servant in the kitchen.) Furthermore, these occupations involve “living-in” and a twenty-four-hour surveillance tantamount to imprisonment. The only circumstances under which Lucy is permitted an occupation are such that they make financial independence and personal fulfillment impossible. It is not very hard to understand her envy at the gratification and status which Paul and John are given automatically in their professions. One might well ask. as Lucy does unceasingly, is it worth it then, under these conditions. to work? Is it not easier to keep falling into daydreams about prince charmings who will elevate one to royalty, or so they claim? At any rate, they could provide easy security and a social position cheaply attained. They will provide, if nothing else, the sexual gratification which women occupied like Lucy arc utterly forbidden to enjoy.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Still I continued in a state of stupidity, or melancholic despair, as my spirits could not yet recover from the violent shocks that they had received; and the accommodating landlady had actually left the room, and me alone with this strange gentleman, before I had observed it, and then I observed it without alarm, for I was now lifeless, and indifferent to every thing. The gentleman, however, no novice in affairs of this sort, drew near me; and, under the pretence of comforting me, first with his handkerchief dried my tears as they ran down my cheeks: presently he ventured to kiss me on my part, neither resistance nor compliance. I sat stock still; and now looking on myself as bought by the payment that had been transacted before me. I did not care what became of my wretched body: and wanting life, spirits, or courage to oppose the least struggle, even that of the modesty of my sex, I suffered, tamely, whatever the gentleman pleased; who proceeding insensibly from freedom to freedom, insinuating his hand between my handkerchief and bosom, which he handled at discretion: finding thus no repulse, and that every thing favoured, beyond expectation, the completion of his desires, he took me in his arms, and bore me, without life or motion, to the bed, on which laying me gently downed, and having me at what advantage he pleased, I did not so much as know what he was about, till recovering from a trance of lifeless insensibility, I found him buried in me, whilst I lay passive and innocent of the least sensations of pleasure: a death-cold corpse could scarce have less life or sense in it. As soon as he had thus pacified a passion which had too little respected the condition I was in, he got off, and after recomposing the disorder of my clothes, employed himself with the utmost tenderness to calm the transports of remorse and madness at myself, with which I was seized, too late, I confess, for having suffered on that bed, the embraces of an utter stranger I tore my hair, wrung my hands, and beat my breast like a mad woman. But when my new master, for in that light I then viewed him, applied himself to appease me, as my whole rage was levelled at myself, no part of which I thought myself permitted to aim at him, I begged of him with more submission than anger, to leave me alone, that I might, at least, enjoy my affliction in quiet. This he positively refused, for fear, as he pretended, I should do myself a mischief. Violent passions seldom last long, and those of women least of any.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  That is what I suffered, Madame, but at least my honor was respected even though my modesty assuredly was not. Their calm restored, the bandits spoke of regaining the road, and that same night we reached Tremblai with the intention of approaching the woods of Chantilly, where it was thought a few good prizes might be awaiting us. Nothing equaled my despair at being obliged to accompany such persons, and I was determined to part with them as soon as I could do so without risk. The following day we fell hard by Louvres, sleeping under haystacks; I felt in need of Dubois' support and wanted to pass the night by her side; but it seemed she had planned to employ it otherwise than protecting my virtue from the attacks I dreaded; three of the thieves surrounded her and before my very eyes the abominable creature gave herself to all three simultaneously. The fourth approached me; it was the captain. "Lovely Therese," said he, "I hope you shall not refuse me at least the pleasure of spending the night with you?" and as he perceive my extreme unwillingness, "fear not," he went on; "we'll have a chat together, and I will attempt nothing without your consent. "O Therese," cried he, folding me in his arms, " 'tis all foolishness, don't you know, to be so pretentious with us. Why are you concerned to guard your purity in our midst? Even were we to agree to respect it, could it be compatible with the interests of the band? No need to hide it from you, my dear; for when we settle down in cities, we count on you to snare us some dupes." "Why, Monsieur," I replied, "since it is certain I should prefer death to these horrors, of what use can I be to you, and why do you oppose my flight?" "We certainly do oppose it, my girl," Coeur-de-fer rejoined, "you must serve either our pleasures or our interests; your poverty imposes the yoke upon you, and you have got to adapt to it. But, Therese, and well you know it, there is nothing in this world that cannot be somehow arranged: so listen to me, and accept the management of your own fate: agree to live with me, dear girl, consent to belong to me and be properly my own, and I will spare you the baneful role for which you are destined." "I, Sir, I become the mistress of a -"

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The thirty-six-year-old woman, six months pregnant, as I have told you, is perched upon a pedestal eight feet high; unable to pose but one leg, she is obliged to keep the other in the air; round about her, on the floor, are mattresses garnished three feet deep with thorns, splines, holly; a flexible rod is given to her that she may keep herself erect; it is easy to see, on the one hand, that it is to her interest not to tumble, and on the other, that she cannot possibly retain her balance; the alternatives divert the monks; all four of them cluster around her, during the spectacle each has one or two women to excite him in divers manners; great with child as she is, the luckless creature remains in this attitude for nearly a quarter of an hour; at last, strength deserts her, she falls upon the thorns, and our villains, wild with lust, one last time step forward to lavish upon her body their ferocity's abominable homage... the company retires. The superior put me into the keeping of the thirty-year-old girl of whom I made mention; her name was Omphale; she was charged to instruct me, to settle me in my new domicile. But that night I neither saw nor heard anything. Annihilated, desperate, I thought of nothing but to capture a little rest. In the room where I had been installed I noticed other women who had not been at the supper; I postponed consideration of these new objects until the following day, and occupied myself with naught else but repose. Omphale left me to myself; she went to put herself to bed; scarcely had I stepped into mine when the full horror of my circumstances presented itself to me in yet more lively colors: I could not dispel the thought of the execrations I had suffered, nor of those to which I had been a witness. Alas! if at certain times those pleasures had occurred to my wandering imagination, I had thought them chaste, as is the God Who inspires them, given by Nature in order to comfort human beings; I had fancied them the product of love and delicacy. I had been very far from believing that man, after the example of savage beasts, could only relish them by causing his companion to shudder... then, returning to my own black fate...

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  Through Athena’s deciding vote, Orestes is not only acquitted but reinvested with his patrimony. Having entirely appropriated the creative force of fertility for the male, patriarchal dogma shall not stop short of devaluating female existence as well. And such is the force of the decision: “Zeus so ordained and Zeus was right…their two deaths are in no way to be compared” Apollo legislates, finding Clytemnestra, in taking the life of Agamemnon, husband, king and father, guilty of a very grave crime indeed, but exonerating Orestes in taking a woman’s life, though it be his own mother’s. The Furies, whose wrath Aeschylus had designed to give off the pathos of foregone defeat, are never permitted to pose any real threat, and lament helplessly: The old is trampled by the new! Curse on you younger gods who overrule The ancient laws… The Furies, who are of course fertility goddesses, had considered wreaking their revenge in a murrain all over Greece, “a sterile blight” on “plant and child.” But Athena stands by to cajole them out of their rage and into an ancillary role within the new order. By dint of fair talk and the threat that since their day is over they would be wise to co-operate, she coaxes the Furies into a bargain which appears to afford them no benefits beyond survival—yet is an absolute necessity to the new order. For all his boasting that he is the sole source of life, patriarchal man, by tacit concession, appears to acknowledge that he cannot prosper without the assistance of the female principle. So Athena wheedles the Furies to provide. Blessings from earth and sea and sky; blessing that breathes In wind and sunlight through the land; that beast and field Enrich my people with unwearied fruitfulness, And armies of brave sons be born… Ignominious in their defeat, The Furies jump at the offer of a home in Athens and launch into five pages of local chamber of commerce rhapsody. In Aeschylus’ dramatization of the myth one is permitted to see patriarchy confront matriarchy, confound it through the knowledge of paternity, and come off triumphant. Until Ibsen’s Nora slammed the door announcing the sexual revolution, this triumph went nearly uncontested. III DIGRESSION ON THE EVIDENCE OF SEXUALITY

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And let me tell you, that old, old, old, decrepit geometry book hit my heart with the force of a nuclear bomb. My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud. What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you? [image "A comic-style illustration of a character labeled ‘Mister P’ being hit by another character throwing a book. The impact is emphasized with the word ‘SMASH!’ prominently displayed nearby." file=image_rsrc4RW.jpg] Hope Against Hope [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] Of course, I was suspended from school after I smashed Mr. P in the face, even though it was a complete accident. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly an accident. After all, I wanted to hit something when I threw that ancient book. But I didn’t want to hit somebody, and I certainly didn’t plan on breaking the nose of a mafioso math teacher. “That’s the first time you’ve ever hit anything you aimed at,” my big sister said. “We are so disappointed,” my mother said. “We are so disappointed in you,” my father said. My grandmother just sat in her rocking chair and cried and cried. I was ashamed. I’d never really been in trouble before. A week into my suspension, I was sitting on our front porch, thinking about stuff, contemplating, when old Mr. P walked up our driveway. He had a big bandage on his face. “I’m sorry about your face,” I said. “I’m sorry they suspended you,” he said. “I hope you know that wasn’t my idea.” After I smashed him in the face, I figured Mr. P wanted to hire a hit man. Well, maybe that’s taking it too far. Mr. P didn’t want me dead, but I don’t think he would have minded if I’d been the only survivor of a plane that crashed into the Pacific Ocean. [image "A comic-style illustration of a person standing on a tiny island featuring a single palm tree. The island is labeled ‘The world’s smallest reservation.’ The person has a speech bubble saying ‘Sigh.’" file=image_rsrc4RX.jpg] At the very least, I thought they were going to send me to jail. “Can I sit down with you?” Mr. P asked. “You bet,” I said. I was nervous. Why was he being so friendly? Was he planning a sneak attack on me? Maybe he was going to smash me in the nose with a calculus book. But the old guy just sat in peaceful silence for a long time. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just sat as quietly as he did. That silence got so big and real that it felt like three people sat on the porch. “Do you know why you hit me with that book?” Mr. P finally asked. It was a trick question. I knew I needed to answer correctly or he’d be mad. “I hit you because I’m stupid.” “You’re not stupid.” Wrong answer. Shoot. I tried again.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I mean, I can’t even tell you how I found the strength to get up every morning. And yet, every morning, I did get up and go to school. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. I was so depressed that I thought about dropping out of Reardan. I thought about going back to Wellpinit. I blamed myself for all of the deaths. I had cursed my family. I had left the tribe, and had broken something inside all of us, and I was now being punished for that. No, my family was being punished. I was healthy and alive. Then, after my fifteenth or twentieth missed day of school, I sat in my social studies classroom with Mrs. Jeremy. Mrs. Jeremy was an old bird who’d taught at Reardan for thirty-five years. [image "Comic strip titled ‘Why I Did Actually Miss a Lot of School’ with five panels illustrating various reasons for missing school, including funerals, transportation issues, and family concerns." file=image_rsrc4T8.jpg] I slumped into her class and sat in the back of the room. “Oh, class,” she said. “We have a special guest today. It’s Arnold Spirit. I didn’t realize you still went to this school, Mr. Spirit.” The classroom was quiet. They all knew my family had been living inside a grief-storm. And had this teacher just mocked me for that? “What did you just say?” I asked her. “You really shouldn’t be missing class this much,” she said. If I’d been stronger, I would have stood up to her. I would have called her names. I would have walked across the room and slapped her. But I was too broken. Instead, it was Gordy who defended me. He stood with his textbook and dropped it. Whomp! He looked so strong. He looked like a warrior. He was protecting me like Rowdy used to protect me. Of course, Rowdy would have thrown the book at the teacher and then punched her. Gordy showed a lot of courage in standing up to a teacher like that. And his courage inspired the others. Penelope stood and dropped her textbook. And then Roger stood and dropped his textbook. Whomp! Then the other basketball players did the same. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! And Mrs. Jeremy flinched each and every time, as if she’d been kicked in the crotch. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Then all of my classmates walked out of the room. A spontaneous demonstration. Of course, I probably should have walked out with them. It would have been more poetic. It would have made more sense. Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn’t have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST! And that thought just cracked me up. It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. But it was sure funny.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "I felt my brain reeling. I was losing my senses. I cursed this beautiful world of ours—this paradise, that man has turned into a hell. I cursed this narrow-minded society of ours, that only thrives upon hypocrisy. I cursed our blighting religion, that lays its veto upon all the pleasures of the senses. "I was already climbing on the parapet, decided to seek forgetfulness in those Stygian waters, when two strong arms clasped me tightly and held me fast." "It was Teleny?" "It was. "'Camille, my love, my soul, are you mad?' said he, in a stifled, panting voice. "Was I dreaming—was it he? Teleny? Was he my guardian angel or a tempting demon? Had I gone quite mad? "All these thoughts chased one another, and left me bewildered. Still, after a moment, I understood that I was neither mad nor dreaming. It was Teleny in flesh and blood, for I felt him against me as we were closely clasped in each other's arms. I had wakened to life from a horrible nightmare. "The strain my nerves had undergone, and the utter faintness that followed, together with his powerful embrace, made me feel as if our two bodies clinging closely together had amalgamated or melted into a single one. "A most peculiar sensation came over me at this moment. As my hands wandered over his head, his neck, his shoulders, his arms, I could not feel him at all; in fact, it seemed to me as if I were touching my own body. Our burning foreheads were pressed against each other, and his swollen and throbbing veins seemed my own fluttering pulses. "Instinctively, and without seeking each other, our mouths united by a common consent. We did not kiss, but our breath gave life to our two beings. "I remained vaguely unconscious for some time, feeling my strength ebb slowly away, leaving but vitality enough to know that I was yet alive. "All at once I felt a mighty shock from head to foot; there was a reflux from the heart to the brain. Every nerve in my body was tingling; all my skin seemed pricked with the points of sharp needles. Our mouths which had withdrawn now clung again to each other with newly-awakened lust. Our lips—clearly seeking to engraft themselves together—pressed and rubbed with such passionate strength that the blood began to ooze from them—nay, it seemed as if this fluid, rushing up from our two hearts, was bent upon mingling together to celebrate in that auspicious moment the old hymeneal rites of nations—the marriage of two bodies, not by the communion of emblematic wine but of blood itself. "We thus remained for some time in a state of overpowering delirium, feeling, every instant, a more rapturous, maddening pleasure in each other's kisses, which kept goading us on to madness by increasing that heat which they could not allay, and by stimulating that hunger they could not appease.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And it’s not like my mother and father were born into wealth. It’s not like they gambled away their family fortunes. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people. Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands. Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams. Given the chance, my mother would have gone to college. She still reads books like crazy. She buys them by the pound. And she remembers everything she reads. She can recite whole pages by memory. She’s a human tape recorder. Really, my mom can read the newspaper in fifteen minutes and tell me baseball scores, the location of every war, the latest guy to win the Lottery, and the high temperature in Des Moines, Iowa. [image "An illustration showing two figures representing the artist’s parents. One figure is holding books and dressed in professional clothing. The other figure is playing a saxophone, wearing casual clothes and a hat." file=image_rsrc4RP.jpg] Given the chance, my father would have been a musician. When he gets drunk, he sings old country songs. And blues, too. And he sounds good. Like a pro. Like he should be on the radio. He plays the guitar and the piano a little bit. And he has this old saxophone from high school that he keeps all clean and shiny, like he’s going to join a band at any moment. But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are. It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it. Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. So, poor and small and weak, I picked up Oscar. He licked my face because he loved and trusted me. And I carried him out to the lawn, and I laid him down beneath our green apple tree. “I love you, Oscar,” I said. He looked at me and I swear to you that he understood what was happening. He knew what Dad was going to do. But Oscar wasn’t scared. He was relieved. But not me. I ran away from there as fast as I could.