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 Pisces (2018)

  I thought it was nice that there was a man on Earth who was happy to fuck her—not only to fuck her but to marry her. I wondered if this was where she got her confidence or if it was her confidence that had drawn her husband to her. When Rochelle first introduced me to Jamie, I was barely thirty, and had the luxury of time, a cool air about my future, zero apparent desperation. She probably thought I was normal. Through the years we would meet every six months or so at the same Colombian restaurant and make the same jokes about how her husband and Jamie both snored, the way they both acted like babies when they got a cold. There was an affected comfort in these casual insults, as if to say, I know this man is mine. He isn’t going anywhere. I could take him or leave him. I pretended to her that I didn’t want to marry Jamie, didn’t want to move in together, and had more than enough time with him. I was a woman contented with what she had and did not need more of anyone or anything. But now I became clingy with Rochelle, besieged her with a barrage of compulsive questioning about Jamie’s whereabouts. The questions were coupled with a series of neurotic affirmations on my part that he would be coming back, it was only a matter of when. Simply being around her in those first weeks made me feel connected to Jamie, though she wouldn’t tell me much. She looked at me like I was a woman who had caught a terrible disease that she never thought either of us would catch. She toyed with her dangling beaded earring and said she hadn’t seen him in a while, didn’t want to get in the middle. Then I saw a picture of them on Facebook, sitting next to each other at a birthday party. They each had glasses of wine and little dishes of flan, so fucking civilized. They were clinking glasses. Rochelle was clearly a traitor. I felt dissociated from my body, like my head was in a cloud of fog and my limbs were not under my jurisdiction. I started smoking weed around the clock, something I hadn’t done regularly since my early twenties, going to work at the library stoned. I made no progress on my book. I only wanted to lie around and eat sugar and fats: giant chocolaty drinks from Starbucks, bags of Hershey’s minis and gummy candy, tortilla chips with nacho cheese dip. I had always had a small frame and never gained weight easily, except in my hips, which were wide.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was sometimes like this now—she would shiver at the least provocation, the least sign of fatigue, for her splendid physical strength was giving, worn out by its own insistence. She dragged the coat more closely around her, and stared at the house which was reddening with sunrise. Her heart beat anxiously, fearfully even, as though in some painful anticipation of she knew not what—every window was dark except one or two that were fired by the sunrise. How long she stood there she never knew, it might have been moments, it might have been a lifetime; and then suddenly there was something that moved—the little oak door that led into that garden. It moved cautiously, opening inch by inch, until at last it was standing wide open, and Stephen saw a man and a woman who turned to clasp as though neither of them could endure to be parted from the arms of the other; and as they clung there together and kissed, they swayed unsteadily—drunk with loving. Then, as sometimes happens in moments of great anguish, Stephen could only remember the grotesque. She could only remember a plump- bosomed housemaid in the arms of a coarsely amorous footman, and she laughed and she laughed like a creature demented—laughed and laughed until she must gasp for breath and spit blood from her tongue, which had somehow got bitten in her efforts to stop her hysterical laughing; and some of the blood remained on her chin, jerked there by that agonized laughter. Pale as death, Roger Antrim stared out into the garden, and his tiny moustache looked quite black—like an ink stain smeared above his tremulous mouth by some careless, schoolboy finger. And now Angela’s voice came to Stephen, but faintly. She was saying something—what was she saying? It sounded absurdly as though it were a prayer—‘Christ!’ Then sharply—razor-sharp it sounded as it cut through the air: ‘You, Stephen!’ The laughter died abruptly away, as Stephen turned and walked out of the garden and down the short drive that led to the gates of The Grange, where the motor was waiting. Her face was a mask, quite without expression. She moved stiffly, yet with a curious precision; and she swung up the handle and started the powerful engine without any apparent effort. She drove at great speed but with accurate judgment, for now her mind felt as clear as spring water, and yet there were strange little gaps in her mind—she had not the least idea where she was going.

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

  Why had I so wholeheartedly embraced the fairy-tale notion of a happily ever after when I had so little evidence aside from schmaltzy television shows that such a thing existed? Why had it never occurred to me that my marriage could come to a screeching halt if I didn’t consistently keep my foot on the pedal? I had believed myself to be impervious to becoming a divorce statistic, above something as cliché as an affair. What did I know of this life if my most basic understanding of its essential elements had been wrong all along? I pictured a Jenga tower with my relationship with Michael at the very bottom, every other wood piece balancing on that base – my family, my past, my future, my sense of self. How was I to stay in one piece now? Watching my husband kiss our kids goodbye and then hearing the front door slam shut, I fought hard to control my reaction so the kids would not suspect anything awry. Soon I would have to come up with an explanation, but for now I had to get through my first night alone. I moved through the next days in a stupor, getting the kids off to school and then collapsing in tears. I cried to friends, I cried alone, I cried in the bathroom with the shower running when the kids got home from school, I cried in the pantry as I attempted to throw together meals for the kids. Twice a day I dropped CBD oil on my tongue that Erika had sent to help calm me. Jessica made an emergency appointment with a therapist she found for me, whose face looked so pained as I choked out my story that I cried even harder; after two sessions, when I realized she didn’t seem able to help me make a plan for how to move forward, I stopped seeing her. I was so lost that I felt I needed a cartographer, not a therapist. By Tuesday night, the kids were onto me. After I put Georgia to sleep, Daisy and Hudson approached me as a unified force, startling me with their intensity on getting to the truth. “Mom, where’s Dad?” Hudson asked, fixing his gray eyes on mine. “Upstate. Meetings,” I responded. “That doesn’t make sense,” Hudson said. “What’s really going on?” I took a deep breath and sat on the sofa. I had not planned this conversation, assuming I had at least a few days before I had to tackle it. “OK, guys, I’m sorry. I wanted to gather myself before talking to you. You know how Dad and I have been fighting a lot lately?” I asked. “No,” said Daisy, resolutely. “OK, well you know how we’ve been having a hard time with each other lately?” She shook her head again.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  The driver, whose name was Chase, pulled up in a silver Honda. He was cute, with a gap in his front two teeth—maybe age twenty-six at most. He looked like he was trying to grow a mustache, and his brown hair was past his ears under a baseball cap that read FML. He babbled that he was an actor, or was trying to become one. His favorite philosophy about acting was Uta Hagen’s, something about being a student of humanity. Well, for a student of humanity he was shitty at reading people. In my head I just kept saying, Shut up, shut up! I wanted to say, Don’t you know I am dying? But even in my dying I couldn’t be mean to him for fear that he would think I was a bitch. Why did I even care what he thought? Was my death that unimportant? How could I prioritize the feelings of this vacant, mustached kid over my own—me, who was probably dying? I repeated, “That’s nice” and “Oh, interesting,” and lay down in the backseat. I didn’t announce that I would be lying down, I just did it. He wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing, instead going on about an upcoming audition for a prescription allergy medication where he would play the son-in-law of a woman with adult allergies. He said he had mixed feelings about it, because he didn’t want to limit his range to pharmaceuticals. The part he really wanted was at an audition for Samsung next week. He was trying out to play the phone. “It’s not easy to make it in this town. I’m going up against two hundred other potential phones, at least,” he said, looking in the mirror at the traffic behind him. I noticed he had green eyes. He really was cute. I waited for him to comment on me lying supine in his backseat, but he didn’t ask if I was okay. I suppose this was normal behavior in California. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I wasn’t dead. I was breathing in the back of this cute idiot’s car. When we pulled up at Annika’s house, he stopped and said, “Okay, we’re here. Wish me luck with Samsung!” I opened my eyes and squinted at him. I wanted to tell him that I hoped he never got a part. “Wanna fuck?” I said instead. I was shocked when the words came out. He must have been too, because he turned around to look at me for the first time. “Are you serious?” “Totally.” “Here? In the car?” “Sure, why not.” “Someone might see us.” “I don’t care if you don’t care,” I said. “Man. I’ve been driving for three years and this has never happened. Yeah, why not? YOLO, right? Hold on,” he said, and put the car in reverse.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  They’re more than enough.” “I want a D cup. Metaphorically.” “And I want a thousand giant cocks. Or I think I do. But it’s a lie. Because even a thousand cocks would never be enough. And it’s crazy to think that they would. The fantasy is a lie.” “But I am crazy. And I don’t want to live without the fantasy,” I said. “You can do it. We can do it together.” “I don’t want to.” “Suit yourself,” she said. “Can I just tell you one more thing?” “What is it?” “Jamie got that woman pregnant. They’re moving in together.” “No! The scientist?” “It’s true.” “How the hell did that happen?” “They were fucking.” “No, I mean—oh Lucy, I’m so sorry.” “I know. How can I go back to Phoenix and face them?” “You can and you shall. Let’s just pray it totally destroys her pussy.” “She better get fat as hell.” “Well, now he’ll really be pining after you.” “Yeah?” “Oh yes. Nothing brings out a man’s quest for escape like a lactating woman with somebody else doing the sucking.” 52. I returned to the rocks. I knew I belonged there. If there was going to be desolation, no number of terrestrial men could fix me. I needed to go to the ocean, the primal tap, where the catalyst of my illness swam freely. If I was going to be alone and full of despair, let me at least be desolate here. Let me go cold turkey in the place I now loved most. Maybe it wouldn’t be so cold turkey after all? Maybe the fumes of memories could bring me down more gently. Only once in that week of waiting by the rocks did someone bother me. A lifeguard drove by in a jeep and asked me if everything was okay. I wanted to say, Well, actually, if you really want to know… but instead I said that I was fine. Then I told him I was a scientist conducting a study of the waves. “You know you’re not supposed to be out here this late at night,” he said. “I know. But it’s for the good of the tides.” “Are you sure you’re okay?” “I’m okay.” Then everything fell silent and he drove away. I took this to mean that I was supposed to be there. I was surely being tested, to see how strong and devoted I was. It was like I was part of some ancient worship ceremony, only instead of leaving candles, food, or wine at the altar, I was leaving myself. And instead of an altar there was the ocean. I would look out into the waves and for a moment I would really believe that I saw him. I had never seen him out in the waves, he never swam close enough to the surface, but now I constantly hallucinated him. Usually he was a bird skimming across the water.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Well, if that much despair can be generated by a forty-hour-a-week job, then just imagine how despondent and distressed one might become if one was forced to live in a gender that felt wrong for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Unlike most forms of sadness that I’ve experienced, which inevitably ease with time, my gender dissonance only got worse with each passing day. And by the time I made the decision to transition, my gender dissonance had gotten so bad that it completely consumed me; it hurt more than any pain, physical or emotional, that I had ever experienced. I know that most people believe that transsexuals transition because we want to be the other sex, but that is an oversimplification. After all, I wanted to be female almost my whole life, but I was far too terrified of the label “transsexual,” or of having potential regrets, to seriously consider transitioning. What changed during that twenty-some-year period was not my desire to be female, but rather my ability to cope with being male, to cope with my own gender dissonance. When I made the decision to transition, I honestly had no idea what it would be like for me to live as female. The only thing I knew for sure was that pretending to be male was slowly killing me. Transsexuals will often say that they can never know for sure whether they should physically transition until they begin taking hormones—if they find that they like the changes in their body and the way they feel, then it was the right decision; if not, then it was the wrong one. While not a particularly helpful bit of advice, it is consistent with my own personal experience. I honestly was not 100 percent sure that transitioning would ease my gender dissonance until after my first few weeks of being on female hormones. The way they made me feel, and the subsequent changes they brought about in my body, just felt… right . There is really no other word to describe it. It is typical for cissexuals to assume that trans people transition in order to obtain gender-related privileges of some sort. Such assumptions are undermined by the fact that post-transition transsexuals may end up being either female or male; being bisexual, homosexual, or heterosexual; or appearing gender-normative or gender-nonconforming. In my case, I went from being a straight man to a lesbian woman in the eyes of the world.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  And by the time I made the decision to transition, my gender dissonance had gotten so bad that it completely consumed me; it hurt more than any pain, physical or emotional, that I had ever experienced. I know that most people believe that transsexuals transition because we want to be the other sex, but that is an oversimplification. After all, I wanted to be female almost my whole life, but I was far too terrified of the label “transsexual,” or of having potential regrets, to seriously consider transitioning. What changed during that twenty-some-year period was not my desire to be female, but rather my ability to cope with being male, to cope with my own gender dissonance. When I made the decision to transition, I honestly had no idea what it would be like for me to live as female. The only thing I knew for sure was that pretending to be male was slowly killing me. Transsexuals will often say that they can never know for sure whether they should physically transition until they begin taking hormones—if they find that they like the changes in their body and the way they feel, then it was the right decision; if not, then it was the wrong one. While not a particularly helpful bit of advice, it is consistent with my own personal experience. I honestly was not 100 percent sure that transitioning would ease my gender dissonance until after my first few weeks of being on female hormones. The way they made me feel, and the subsequent changes they brought about in my body, just felt ... right. There is really no other word to describe it. It is typical for cissexuals to assume that trans people transition in order to obtain gender-related privileges of some sort. Such assumptions are undermined by the fact that post-transition transsexuals may end up being either female or male; being bisexual, homosexual, or heterosexual; or appearing gender-normative or gender-nonconforming. In my case, I went from being a straight man to a lesbian woman in the eyes of the world. And while I have lost the significant benefits of male and heterosexual privilege, I still consider my transition to be well worth it. Because for the first time in my life, I now regularly experience what I consider to be the most important gender privilege of all: feeling at home in my own sexed body. Rather than living with gender dissonance, I now experience gender concordance. Many cissexual people seem to have a hard time accepting the idea that they too have a subconscious sex—a deep-rooted understanding of what sex their bodies should be. I suppose that when a person feels right in the sex they were born into, they are never forced to locate or question their subconscious sex, to differentiate it from their physical sex. In other words, their subconscious sex exists, but it is hidden from their view.

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

  I beg him to talk to me or Daisy or a therapist or a friend, anything to expel what appears to be eating him alive and what he is using drugs to attempt to contain. My friends Jen and Rebecca, who experienced their parents’ divorces when they were teenagers, text him to share that they understand how he feels, to try to normalize his feelings, but he doesn’t respond to them. I am in despair and all I can do is remind him that I love him wholly and unconditionally, and will do anything I can to support him. It’s not enough – I need Michael to help us through this. The frustration at knowing I can’t access that help exasperates me, making me feel hopeless. In the meantime, I had become accustomed to frequent text exchanges with #3, but now there is only a flat static hum. I don’t want this past weekend to stop us dead in our tracks; even though it’s only been a couple of weeks since we met, I already miss the witty banter we had so effortlessly established. I call him for some small bit of reassurance, but he is circumspect. I remember this sinking feeling from my teens, that moment of knowing a boy’s interest in me was receding. Bigger than my disappointment about him in particular is the overarching fear that I will not be able to pull off what increasingly feels like a magic trick: being a present and available mother while also being present and available to a man who is not my husband. One role automatically negates the other, making her disappear. I am a mother, and the woman in me becomes invisible; I am a woman, and the mother cannot successfully do her job. One-night stands I am mastering – anything more feels firmly, preposterously out of reach. CHAPTER 10Mama BearMichael arrives upstate to pick up Georgia for the weekend and when he passes Hudson in the house, Hudson ignores him, walking by him as if he’s a piece of furniture he has to skirt around. The scene is heartbreaking and infuriating to witness. I don’t know exactly what Michael should be doing differently, but I feel certain that in his shoes I would camp outside Hudson’s room night and day until he was forced to acknowledge me. He is confident that Hudson will eventually come back to him, but I share none of his o ptimism. Hudson is famous in our family for his stubbornness and loyalty, neither of which will work in Michael’s favor any time soon. I am determined to come up with activities to keep Hudson busy and engaged with me, so I entice him with a trip to the Catskill Mountains, where there is a river with rapids and tubing. Where he is athletic and adventurous, I am fearful and cautious. I’m scared of the rapids and of getting wet in icy water, but I put on my game face.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  You had to hold out for these moments until you knew for sure they were gone and never coming back. I didn’t want group to ruin the way I felt. I saw this in Diana, with whom I still spoke. She had been in pain but couldn’t surrender—not until she knew it was truly over between her and the objects of her affection. It wasn’t enough for the tennis boys to ignore her texts. They would have to go further. They would have to tell her she disgusted them and it was never happening again. Even that might not be enough. In truth what she needed was to have no remaining options at all, no one left to fuck. She would have to burn through all of the tennis boys in Los Angeles, maybe in the state of California. Perhaps again in the future, the pain of not hearing from her conquests—the pain of waiting—would outweigh the potential for sparkle itself. Diana would come back to group and get strong for just a day or for a few weeks. But the moment she got a text, the moment that glitter reached out to her, she would forget what that pain had felt like. She would want only the glitter. Euphoric recall of past glitter would blind her to the suffering it had caused. Then, the group would become just an afterthought: a place for sick people to go, but not for her. She was not so bad off as the sick people. When she called me I could hear it in her voice. Who could blame her? Somehow she had gotten another taste of sparkle. Now that she had a taste or saw its potential she was going for it again. When she looked back at the group she saw sick, miserable humans, something she would want to block out having ever been a part of. But the women in the group would see her as the sick, miserable one. They thought she would either come back or face devastation. But they’d forgotten the sensation of what it was like out there, to be in the throes of madness. I didn’t tell Diana about Theo, either. I took Dominic for a quick walk. He began pulling me in the direction of Oakwood Park, but I didn’t have the energy for it. I held the leash tightly as he yanked and skipped in place, whimpering with his head pointing in that direction. I knew that I should give him what he wanted, a little piece of that effortless happiness, but I couldn’t play wolf woman today. My mind was too much elsewhere, already on the rocks, waiting, waiting for Theo to surface and transform my perception. My mind was already in the ocean. I decided I would call Claire. “How are you doing, dearest?” I asked. “I’m better,” she said. “David called. I’m seeing him tomorrow. I told him he isn’t giving me enough of what I need.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I knew he would fall out of love fast, but this had ended quicker than I thought. “Oh really?” I said. This was going to be good. “Yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. But I didn’t want to text it to you. And when I wasn’t hearing back I figured I would talk to you in person when you returned.” This was it. He wanted me back. He was leaving Megan for me, he just needed to be sure I still wanted to be with him too before he ended things. Men are cowardly. But I could understand that and had sympathy for him. Five minutes before, I had been lovesick over Theo. The heart contains multitudes. We all need someone in our lives, because ultimately, humans are weak. “Actually, I’m thinking of coming home early,” I said. “Oh yeah?” Now he sounded nervous. “What do you think about that?” “Listen, Lucy, I don’t know how to say this. I—I hope you aren’t thinking of coming home early for me.” Oh no. “No, not for you,” I stammered. “Okay, good. Because, uh, things have changed a little with Megan and me.” “How so?” I snapped. “Well, it appears—it appears she is pregnant. And she’s going to keep the baby. So we’re going to be parents together. She’s going to move in with me, at least for a while.” I was silent. “Lucy?” I couldn’t say anything. All those years I had tried to get us to cohabitate, and all it took for this blond scientist bitch was some little womb booger and there he was, boom, ready to commit. I didn’t want to show him I was angry. I didn’t want to curse him out, give him that satisfaction of knowing he had won. Where I thought I had all the power in my pocket it now belonged to a fetus. But I couldn’t say anything. No words would form. I was totally alone. “Hello, Lucy, are you there?” I was in a fetal position on the floor with stomach cramps. I didn’t say a word, just let him yammer a few more times until he hung up. What was I thinking? Jamie would have only been a bandage. It was Theo I really needed. But now he was gone forever. I was withdrawing fast. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. The hospital wouldn’t be right. What could they give me that could fix this? It wasn’t a real drug I was coming off of. It was way worse. 49. As I left the hospital, I wondered if Claire was right.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Good-bye, Martin.’ She watched him hurrying down the street, and when he was finally lost in its shadows, she turned slowly and made her own way up the hill, past the garish lights of the Moulin de la Galette. Its pitiful sails revolved in the wind, eternally grinding out petty sins—dry chaff blown in from the gutters of Paris. And after a while, having breasted the hill, she must climb a dusty flight of stone steps, and push open a heavy, slow- moving door; the door of the mighty temple of faith that keeps its anxious but tireless vigil. She had no idea why she was doing this thing, or what she would say to the silver Christ with one hand on His heart and the other held out in a patient gesture of supplication. The sound of praying, monotonous, low, insistent, rose up from those who prayed with extended arms, with crucified arms—like the tides of an ocean it swelled and receded and swelled again, bathing the shores of heaven. They were calling upon the Mother of God: ‘Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous, pauvres pêcheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort.’ ‘Et à l’heure de notre mort,’ Stephen heard herself repeating. He looked terribly weary, the silver Christ: ‘But then He always looks tired,’ she thought vaguely; and she stood there without finding anything to say, embarrassed as one so frequently is in the presence of somebody else’s sorrow. For herself she felt nothing, neither pity nor regret; she was curiously empty of all sensation, and after a little she left the church, to walk on through the wind-swept streets of Montmartre. CHAPTER 56 1 V alérie stared at Stephen in amazement: ‘But . . . it’s such an extraordinary thing you’re asking! Are you sure you’re right to take such a step? For myself I care nothing; why should I care? If you want to pretend that you’re my lover, well, my dear, to be quite frank, I wish it were true— I feel certain you’d make a most charming lover. All the same,’ and now her voice sounded anxious, ‘this is not a thing to be done lightly, Stephen. Aren’t you being absurdly self-sacrificing? You can give the girl a very great deal.’ Stephen shook her head: ‘I can’t give her protection or happiness, and yet she won’t leave me. There’s only one way . . .’ Then Valérie Seymour, who had always shunned tragedy like the plague, flared out in something very like temper: ‘Protection! Protection! I’m sick of the word. Let her do without it; aren’t you enough for her? Good heavens, you’re worth twenty Mary Llewellyns! Stephen, think it over before you decide—it seems mad to me.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He seemed to understand that I was hurting. He whined a little. I whined back at him and we whined together. I wanted to pretend it was just irritation, maybe the dawning of a mild yeast infection, which could be snuffed out with a bit of Monistat. But this was no yeast infection. It was a goddamn urinary tract infection. I hadn’t had one in years, but the feeling was not one you forget. The dull ache in the pelvis, the urgent need to pee, the burning. After my first three UTIs I had learned the secret at my college infirmary: always pee after sex. Pee immediately, within ten minutes, if possible. But I wasn’t about to pee in front of Garrett. I thought about how I was taught to wipe, as a little girl, after I’d gotten my first UTI. “From now on you’re going to wipe from front to back,” said the pediatrician. “Do you understand?” When Garrett tried to stick his dick into my asshole, and then abandoned the mission for my vagina, I did, for a split second, think, This can’t be good. Back to front. I tried to sleep but it was no use. I knew exactly what I needed: Pyridium to take the pain away and Cipro to kill the bug. I started moaning little things out loud in a deeply self-pitying way, like “Noooooo” and “Why meeeeeeee?” Part of me was reacting to the pain. But another part of me liked being melodramatic, babying myself. I managed to walk Dominic and then summon a car. The closest hospital was in Marina del Rey, not far. “Be good,” I said. “Mommy is very, very sick.” I heard myself talking to the dog, and it reminded me that I existed. Existence always looked like something other than I thought it would. 4. Then came the obsession. I started reading my weekly horoscopes and his (Sagittarius), parsing every word for a sign that the universe was going to bring us back together. If there was nothing about love I would read a different horoscope. I would read them until I found one that suited me—until it said this was my lucky day or week or month. I consulted a psychic, an old woman in Tempe who worked in the back of a Mediterranean restaurant. She said that I needed to focus on me, do work on myself and my “blocks” and more would be revealed. She suggested a powder made of quartz crystal to put in my bath. She said it would serve as a clearing of negativity. I bought it for $250 and soaked in it. Nothing happened. So I called more psychics. I realized how much time I had spent with Jamie.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And then she would stand up before her tall easel, swaying a little but with hand always steady. The brandy went into her legs, not her hands; her hands would remain disconcertingly steady. She would start some gigantic and heart-broken daub, struggling to lose herself in her picture, struggling to ease the ache of her passion by smearing the placid white face of the canvas with ungainly yet strangely arresting forms—according to Dupont, Wanda had genius. Neither eating nor sleeping she would grow very thin, so that everybody would know what had happened. They had seen it before, oh, but many times, and therefore for them the tragedy was lessened. ‘Wanda’s off again!’ some one might say with a grin. ‘She was tight this morning; who is it this time?’ But Valérie, who hated drink like the plague, would grow angry; outraged she would feel by this Wanda. There was Hortense, Comtesse de Kerguelen; dignified and reserved, a very great lady, of a calm and rather old-fashioned beauty. When Valérie introduced her to Stephen, Stephen quite suddenly thought of Morton. And yet she had left all for Valérie Seymour; husband, children and home had she left; facing scandal, opprobrium, persecution. Greater than all these most vital things had been this woman’s love for Valérie Seymour. An enigma she seemed, much in need of explaining. And now in the place of that outlawed love had come friendship; they were close friends, these one-time lovers. There was Margaret Roland, the poetess, a woman whose work was alive with talent. The staunchest of allies, the most fickle of lovers, she seemed likely enough to end up in the work-house, with her generous financial apologies which at moments made pretty large holes in her savings. It was almost impossible not to like her, since her only fault lay in being too earnest; every fresh love affair was the last while it lasted, though of course this was apt to be rather misleading. A costly business in money and tears; she genuinely suffered in heart as in pocket. There was nothing arresting in Margaret’s appearance, sometimes she dressed well, sometimes she dressed badly, according to the influence of the moment. But she always wore ultra feminine shoes, and frequently bought model gowns when in Paris. One might have said quite a womanly woman, unless the trained ear had been rendered suspicious by her voice which had something peculiar about it. It was like a boy’s voice on the verge of breaking. And then there was Brockett with his soft, white hands; and several others there were, very like him. There was also Adolphe Blanc, the designer—a master of colour whose primitive tints had practically revolutionized taste, bringing back to the eye the joy of the simple. Blanc stood in a little niche by himself, which at times must surely have been very lonely. A quiet, tawny man with the eyes of the Hebrew, in his youth he had been very deeply afflicted.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And I ask for so little, just to have you with me for a few days and nights—just to sleep with you in my arms; just to feel you beside me when I wake up in the morning—I want to open my eyes and see your face, as though we belonged to each other. Angela, I swear I wouldn’t torment you —we’d be just as we are now, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You must know, after all these months, that you can trust me—’ But Angela set her lips and refused: ‘No, Stephen, I’m sorry, but I’d rather not come.’ Then Stephen would feel that life was past bearing, and sometimes she must ride rather wildly for miles—now on Raftery, now on Sir Philip’s young chestnut. All alone she would ride in the early mornings, getting up from a sleepless night unrefreshed, yet terribly alive because of those nerves that tortured her luckless body. She would get back to Morton still unable to rest, and a little later would order the motor and drive herself across to The Grange, where Angela would usually be dreading her coming. Her reception would be cold: ‘I’m fairly busy, Stephen—I must pay off all these bills before Ralph gets home;’ or: ‘I’ve got a foul headache, so don’t scold me this morning; I think if you did that I just couldn’t bear it!’ Stephen would flinch as though struck in the face; she might even turn round and go back to Morton. Came the last precious day before Ralph’s return, and that day they did spend quite peaceably together, for Angela seemed bent upon soothing. She went out of her way to be gentle to Stephen, and Stephen, quick as always to respond, was very gentle in her turn. But after they had dined in the little herb garden—taking advantage of the hot, still weather—Angela developed one of her headaches. ‘Oh, my Stephen—oh, darling, my head’s too awful. It must be the thunder—it’s been coming on all day. What a perfectly damnable thing to happen, on our last evening too—but I know this kind well; I’ll just have to give in and go to my bed. I’ll take a cachet and then try to sleep, so don’t ring me up when you get back to Morton. Come to-morrow—come early. I’m so miserable, darling, when I think that this is our last peaceful evening—’ ‘I know. But are you all right to be left?’ ‘Yes, of course. All I need is to get some sleep. You won’t worry, will you? Promise, my Stephen!’

• From The Pisces (2018)

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

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

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

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

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

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

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

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

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

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

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