Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 44 of 267 · 20 per page

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  doves were satisfied with his plan, but in the end, his reputation for wisdom carried the day and his strategy was approved. Several months later the fateful war began. In the beginning, all did not proceed as Pericles had envisioned. The Spartans and their allies did not grow frustrated as the war dragged on, but only bolder. The Athenians were the ones to become discouraged, seeing their lands destroyed without retaliation. But Pericles believed his plan could not fail as long as the Athenians remained patient. Then, in the second year of the war, an unexpected disaster upended everything: a powerful plague entered the city; with so many people packed within the walls it spread quickly, killing over one third of the citizenry and decimating the ranks of the army. Pericles himself caught the disease, and as he lay dying he witnessed the ultimate nightmare: all that he had done for Athens over so many decades seemed to unravel at once, the people descending into group delirium until it was every man for himself. If he had survived, he almost certainly would have found a way to calm the Athenians down and broker an acceptable peace with Sparta, or adjust his defensive strategy, but now it was too late. Strangely enough, the Athenians did not mourn for their leader. They blamed him for the plague and railed at the ineffectiveness of his strategy. They were not in a mood anymore for patience or restraint. He had outlived his time, and his ideas were now seen as the tired reactions of an old man. Their love of Pericles had turned to hate. With him no longer there, the factions returned with a vengeance. The war party became popular. The party fed off the people’s growing bitterness toward the Spartans, who had used the plague to advance their positions. The hawks promised they would regain the initiative and crush the Spartans with an offensive strategy. For many Athenians, such words came as a great relief, a release of pent-up emotions. As the city slowly recovered from the plague, the Athenians managed to gain the upper hand, and the Spartans sued for peace. Wanting to completely defeat their enemy, the Athenians pressed their advantage, only to find the Spartans recover and turn the tables. Back and forth it went, year after year. The violence and bitterness on both sides increased. At one point Athens attacked the island of Melos, a Spartan ally, and when the Melians surrendered, the Athenians voted to kill all of their men and sell the women and children into slavery. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened under Pericles. Then, after so many years of a war without end, in 415 BC several Athenian leaders had an interesting idea about how to deliver the fatal blow. The city-state of Syracuse was the rising power on the island of Sicily. Syracuse was a critical ally of the Spartans, supplying them with much-needed resources. If the

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “What I said. You coming? Staying? I can’t be here,” Milton says. But that isn’t exactly what he means. What he really wants to say: Come with me. Come with me. Let’s go. Let’s get away from here. Let’s go be by ourselves. Let’s go. But he cannot ask that. And if he cannot ask it, Nolan cannot and will not answer him. “I’ll stay a little longer,” Nolan says. There are still three or four cops in the distance, watching the last of the smoke trickle out of the barrels. They put out the fire. They sent everyone home. But Nolan wants to stay here among the wreckage of the night, this lost evening. There’s a kind of sadness on his face, a flicker of regret, but Milton is not sure if the regret is for what’s happened to Abe or because the evening’s been busted up early. Nolan spits off to the side, kicks a few stones down the hill. “Maybe I’ll hit you up later. We can try this birthday thing again.” “All right,” Milton says. “Or you could stay, too,” Nolan says. “No, I can’t,” Milton says. “I guess not,” Nolan says, giving Milton a long, slow smile that leaves Milton chilled. Milton turns, moves underneath the black-stubble cedar and pine trees, the scent of burning paper wafting after him. He cuts into the woods, which are cloaked in a sooty mist. Milton runs without thinking, without caring what he will emerge into on the other side. What he craves is the sensation of distance traveled, raw mileage. It suddenly seems to him, snapping twigs and getting whipped by lashing vines, that Idaho is not the worst thing that could happen to him, that even if he were to stay, Nolan would already be lost to him. Milton reaches the other side of the woods. The night is thickening overhead. The mountain looms. He can see his house from here. His stomach turns. He retches. His throat is hot with vomit. His eyes water. In the distance, he can hear branches breaking. The woods shift with soft, hushed voices of motion. He leaves the woods entirely and steps back onto the street. Milton thinks again of all the homes and their interchangeable lives and wishes that it were as easy as stopping at someone else’s door, knocking, and switching places with the version of himself who lived there. If only he could enter into another version of his life, one in which things have not gone quite as horribly awry—if only he could pass from this world into the next or into the next, some other place without Abe or Tate, some place where he and Nolan might be as they were, though perhaps they have always been this way, full of violence and calamity.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Transactional sex can also serve as a legitimizing means of providing economic security. The devastating poverty facing Syrian refugee families in Jordan has led to an epidemic of child marriage, in a practical barter of youth and purity for marital “protection,” often between young teens and much older men. The sex work industry runs parallel to marriage, as another institution of survival sex. However, because prostitution is associated with poverty and social transgression, refugees who enter the sex trade—often because they cannot find other work—risk social stigma and imprisonment, in contrast to wives kept “secure” in subjugation. The question of “choice” dissolves at these social peripheries. A woman’s agency is mediated by basic needs, and sex becomes the last remaining vehicle for negotiating survival. Whether it happens to Syrian refugees or to survivors of gang warfare in Honduras, sexual violation on the migrant trail is a cruel symbol of a community’s dispossession and mass loss of dignity. Yet the institutionalization of sexual predation reveals a certain political economy of statelessness, in which rape serves as a currency of last resort for both sides of a social fissure. At the crossing, the migrant is never really charting her own path, but is being pushed by geopolitical currents. In the Care of Strangers Even in the supposedly more civilized “humanitarian” settings that Western countries offer migrants, rape culture is reproduced in binaries of security and deviance. Migritude extends relationships of colonial dominion. At temporary shelters in the Global North, sexual exploitation and domestic abuse persist, often because they are normalized into a given camp’s everyday functioning. Reported abuses have come from both migrants and security officers. Even in the better funded, more regulated detention centers in Europe, women face profound risks of sexual trauma along with social isolation and barriers to mental health services. Refugees may soon be barred altogether from European territory; by the end of 2016, public backlash against migrants in the West prompted EU ministers to route thousands of Syrian refugees from Greece into even more precarious migrant camps in Turkey, effectively closing the border and, according to humanitarian groups, denying countless trauma survivors crucial relief. In the US, Raquel, a former detainee from Central America, told aid lawyers about fleeing gang violence in her homeland to escape to what she thought would be a life of relative safety, only to wind up in federal detention and being sexually abused by an immigration officer: “I thought he was going to kill me. I thought I should have stayed in my home country if my life was going to end like this because at least I would have had more time with my children. He got in the cage with me and started unzipping his pants and pulling off my clothes. He exposed himself to me. He was angry that I would not take off my clothes.”

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated. “I won’t prevent you,” he might say. “You can go where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to you. How many roubles do you want?” All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them. “But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?” she said to herself afterwards. All that day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself, “If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I’m to do!...” In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over. And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  They were Princes of my same rank in the world, haughty, proud in their own lands, and also they were abject slaves as lowly now as I was. "I couldn't understand my own misery. I realized then that there would be endless variations in humiliation. It was not a hierarchy of punishments I face; it was rather endless changes. "But I was too frightened of failing the Queen to think very much. Again I lost sight of the past and the future. "As I knelt at her feet weeping silently, she ordered all of these Princes who were sore and aching and starved from the tortures of the Hall of Punishments to take paddles from the chest she kept for the purpose. "They formed a line of six to my right, each of his knees, his penis hardened as much by the sight of my suffering as by any pleasure that soon awaited them. "I was told to kneel up with my hands behind my back. As I ran this gauntlet I would not even be allowed the easier more concealing position on all fours. Rather I must struggle straight-backed, my knees apart, my own organ revealed, my progress slow as I sought to escape their paddles. They could see my face as well. I felt more exposed than I had when tethered in the kitchen. "The Queen's game was simple. I would be made to run the gauntlet and the Prince whose paddle pleased her the most, that is, the one whose paddle struck me the hardest and fiercest, would then be rewarded before I again commenced the gauntlet and so on. "I was urged by her to great speed; if I faltered, if my punishers accomplished too many blows, I should be delivered to them for an hour of rough sport out of her sight, I was promised. This terrified me. She would not even be there. It would not be for her pleasure. "I commenced at once. All their blows felt the same to me, loud, violent, and their laughter filled my ears as I struggled awkwardly in a position they had long ago learned to accomplish easily. "Rest came only with each little session of satisfying the Prince who had marked me the most severely. I must return to him where he knelt. The others were free to watch and watch they did, and then give permission to offer their instructions. "I had a half dozen masters eager to teach me contemptuously how to satisfy the one whom they supported with their arms as he shut his eyes and enjoyed the warm anxious sucking I afforded. "Of course all of them prolonged it as best they could for fullest satisfaction, and the Queen who sat nearby, her elbows on the arm of her chair watched all this approvingly. "Strange changes occurred in me as I performed my duties. There would be the frenzy of struggling past their paddles.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And with this he began to brush and stroke my penis. The more he stroked the more miserable I became, but each time it was almost too much for me he would withdraw the broom a quarter of an inch from my penis so that I struggled after it. It was more than I could bear, yet he would not allow me to move my feet, and paddled me immediately if I disobeyed him. I soon saw his game. I must thrust my hips forward as much as I could to keep my hungry penis in contact with the soft stroking bristles of the broom, and so I did, crying all the while as the girl gazed on with obvious delight. Finally, she begged to be allowed to touch me. I was so grateful for this I could not stop my sobs. The stable boy then put his broom under my chin and lifted my face. He said he wished to see me satisfy the young maid's curiosity. She had never really seen a young man spend his passion. And as he held me and scrutinized me and looked at my tear-stained face, she stroked my penis, and without pride or dignity, I felt my passion erupt into her hand, my face flushing with heat and blood as a shudder went through my loins relieving all of the days of frustration. "I was weak when it was finished. I had no pride, nor thoughts of past and future. I made no resistance when I was manacled. I wished only that the stable boy would come again soon, and I was drowsy and afraid when all the cooks and kitchen boys returned and commenced their inevitable idle sport with me. "The next few days were filled with the same terrible kitchen torments. I was paddled, chased, ridiculed and otherwise treated contemptuously. But I dreamed of the stable boy. Surely he would return. I don't think I even thought of her Highness. I felt only despair when I envisioned her. "Finally one afternoon, the stable boy came in and he was finely dressed in rose-colored velvet trimmed in gold. I was aghast. He ordered me washed and scrubbed. I was too excited to fear the rough hands of the kitchen boys, though they were merciless as ever. "My penis was rigid already at the mere sight of my stable boy Lord, but he told me quickly that it must be brought to perfect attention, and that I was to keep it thus, or be severely punished. "I nodded all to vigorously. Then he took the gag bit out of my mouth and replaced it with an ornate one.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Of late in Moscow and in the country, since he had become convinced that he would find no solution in the materialists, he had read and re-read thoroughly Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of life. Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as _spirit, will, freedom, essence,_ purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life more important than reason. At one time, reading Schopenhauer, he put in place of his _will_ the word _love_, and for a couple of days this new philosophy charmed him, till he removed a little away from it. But then, when he turned from life itself to glance at it again, it fell away too, and proved to be the same muslin garment with no warmth in it. His brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the theological works of Homiakov. Levin read the second volume of Homiakov’s works, and in spite of the elegant, epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he found in them. He was struck at first by the idea that the apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to man, but to a corporation of men bound together by love—to the church. What delighted him was the thought how much easier it was to believe in a still existing living church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God at its head, and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to accept the faith in God, in the creation, the fall, the redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious, far-away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a Catholic writer’s history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox writer’s history of the church, and seeing that the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each deny the authority of the other, Homiakov’s doctrine of the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers’ edifices. All that spring he was not himself, and went through fearful moments of horror.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Of course they scrubbed me roughly, and they took to paddling me again. It was then that I knew I was losing my senses. I was down on my hands and knees, though I was not shackled, and running desperately to hide from their paddles. I struggled to get under the kitchen tables, and everywhere I sought a moment's rest, they sought me out, moving the tables and chairs if need be to get at my buttocks with their paddles. Of course if I tried to rise, they pushed me down. I was desperate. "I found myself scurrying to the Page and kissing his feet just as I had seen Prince Gerald do with the Queen. "But if he told the Queen, it was of no use to me. The next day I was shackled as before, and awaiting the boredom and restlessness of the same mistresses and masters. Sometimes passing me, they stuffed into my anus some bit of food rather than throw it away, carrots, other roots, whatever they thought liken to a penis. I was raped over and over by these things, and had to expel them with great effort. They would not have spared my mouth, I suppose, had they not been commanded to leave me gagged as all such slaves are gagged. "And whenever I caught a glimpse of a Page I found myself pleading with him by all my gestures and manner of groaning. "I had no real thoughts during this time. Perhaps I had begun to think of myself as the half human thing that they thought I was. I don't know. To them I was a disobedient Prince sent to them because I deserved it. Any abuse was their duty. If the flies were bad, they would paint my penis and balls with honey to attract them and think that very clever. "Much as I feared the leather whip handles of the stable boys forced up my anus, I came to look forward to being taken to the cleaner, cooler places in the stable. Those boys at least thought it quite marvelous that they had a real Prince to torment. They rode me quite long and hard, but it was better than the kitchen. "I don't know how long it went on. Every time they unshackled me I was terrified. They soon took to throwing about the refuse on the floor and making me gather it up as they chased me with their paddles. I had lost all sense of the wisdom of merely keeping still, and flustered and in panic I ran this way and that to finish the task as they spanked me. Prince Gerald had never been so frantic. "Of course I thought of him as I found myself doing this.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The purgatorial moments, the saboteur announces. The stasis at dawn—the entrapping dawn, remember?—the time to be avoided in the cycle of the sexhunt. Why such a purgatory of questions in an experience so liberating? A hateful obeisance paid—beyond present control—to the powerful straight world that digs its talons deep, deep when we are most vulnerable—and continues to try, every moment, with stupid encyclicals, laws, denunciations. Yes, a hateful obeisance to imposed guilt. What kind of revolution is it that ends when one looks old, at least for most? What kind of revolution is it in which some of the revolutionaries must look beautiful? What kind of revolution is it in which the revolutionaries slaughter each other, in the sexual arenas and in the ritual of S & M? We're fighting on two fronts—one on the streets, the other inside. And is the abundant sex ever enough? No. But that is part of the joy: a hunt that goes on endlessly like the infinitely burgeoning sum of a geometric progression. “Ended” before its summation. Precisely! Without summation. What of men reduced to shadows, shadows reduced to mouths in alleys and parks? Jim uses many people—like the man who confronted him earlier in the parking lot; Jim doesn't want them, merely wants them to want him. He needs them as much as they need him, at times. And Jim does reciprocate—with those he desires; and with all, he's honest, he doesn't use subterfuge. The equation is, finally, even. A mutual using.… What of the aspect of contempt you've acknowledged in hustling, and implied in one-way sex? Then why not S & M? Because hustling and unreciprocated sex do not by definition include hatred. The argument is definitely not against sex without love, no, not at all, but against the substitution of hatred, which includes self-hatred, for sex. Even if affection is totally absent from hustling—the act of getting paid or paying does not, like S & M, rely on hatred and “torture.” The impact of hustling on the gay world is very limited, its “problems” may have more to do with prostitution than with gay identity; but S & M holds a strong reactionary power over gay freedom. Souls still hunting in the mist at 4:00 in the morning. Bodies crushed anonymously in garages, on porches. Revolutionary sex. The profligate sharing. And the beautiful choreography of the hunt. The silent dance. And the instant alienation after sex. Inherited attitudes, indoctrinated guilt. Is it ever enough? You asked that. Nothing is enough, the saboteur insists. Depression when the hunt pauses, just pauses. Your worth in the balance every moment, 100 triumphs wiped out by 1 rejection, stirring a purgatory of doubts, a hell. Sacrificed relationships. Sex always an ending, never a beginning.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly denied all idea of standing. Levin went up to the door of the room; it was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out. “I can’t stand any more of it,” said one red-faced gentleman. After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay. “I told you not to let anyone out!” he cried to the doorkeeper. “I let someone in, your excellency!” “Mercy on us!” and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his legs staggering in his white trousers. Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair, which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as they had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as they had followed Snetkov when he was elected. Chapter 31 The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that day with Vronsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought her up, to Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what _he_ was doing now alone in his study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still possible; and of what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other ideas of what would happen now after this rupture, came into her head; but she did not give herself up to them with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it. Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left her at that time. “Why didn’t I die?” and the words and the feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. “Yes, to die!... And the shame and disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account.” With the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand, vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after her death. Approaching footsteps—his steps—distracted her attention. As though absorbed in the arrangement of her rings, she did not even turn to him. He went up to her, and taking her by the hand, said softly: “Anna, we’ll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.” She did not speak. “What is it?” he urged. “You know,” she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into sobs. “Cast me off!” she articulated between her sobs. “I’ll go away tomorrow ... I’ll do more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck. I don’t want to make you wretched, I don’t want to! I’ll set you free. You don’t love me; you love someone else!” Vronsky besought her to be calm, and declared that there was no trace of foundation for her jealousy; that he had never ceased, and never would cease, to love her; that he loved her more than ever. “Anna, why distress yourself and me so?” he said to her, kissing her hands. There was tenderness now in his face, and she fancied she caught the sound of tears in his voice, and she felt them wet on her hand. And instantly Anna’s despairing jealousy changed to a despairing passion of tenderness. She put her arms round him, and covered with kisses his head, his neck, his hands. Chapter 25

• From Escape (2007)

  The news that Merril was marrying Cathleen made me fear I’d never become a mother. Merril had been having frequent sex with me in the seven months we’d been married and I’d not become pregnant. There was no chemistry between us. Sex between us was always cold and devoid of feeling. Merril never removed his long underwear when we had sex. Mine stayed on, too. The bedroom was completely dark. In my seventeen years of marriage, Merril only saw me naked a few times. I never saw him completely unclothed. He would come to my room late at night after I was asleep and climb on top of me. The sex was perfunctory—without either passion or intimacy. I thought the problem was that Merril was not attracted to me. The news that he was marrying Cathleen so soon after our wedding only confirmed my undesirability. When the phone call with Merril ended, I sat down on the steps and stared blankly at the wall. I felt as shocked and powerless as I had when I was pulled out of bed at 2 A.M. to hear my father tell me I was going to marry Merril. It felt like my life was at another dead end. Children were the only happiness I could count on. I knew Merril was lying when he said he hadn’t known about the marriage before he went to Salt Lake City. He’d known. Now I understood why Barbara had been so nervous and upset before they left that morning. She must have known about the upcoming nuptials and hated the thought that her husband was marrying again. She had great power with Merril, but not enough to stop him from pursuing his plans. Ruth was too unstable to be suspicious or register what was going on. It was customary in the FLDS to have a man’s wives witness his other weddings. This was called the Law of Sarah, after Abraham’s wife, who gave her slave, Hagar, to her husband after she failed to conceive. The presence of the other wives is a way of demonstrating—or pretending—that they are willing to give their husband to another woman. There is tremendous prestige in marrying a former prophet’s wife. It demonstrates to the community that after his death, the prophet sent a divine revelation about whom his wife should marry. For a prophet of God—even a deceased one—to have enough confidence and love for a man to give him one of his wives indicates a man of exceptional character. In fact, what was beginning to play out was the power grab between Merril and his cousin Truman Barlow. They knew they could enhance their prestige and status within the FLDS by quickly marrying several of Uncle Roy’s wives after his death.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  At the kitchen table, Simon sat with his skinny legs crossed, reading the paper. Hartjes came in through the side door (the front door had been bolted for as long as Hartjes had known him). Simon did not look up. He was a tall man, very pale, with thinning white-blond hair. He was just shy of middle age, a little under forty. Hartjes was younger, twenty-five. Two years before, they had met at a party, as people do, and they had fucked three times on three separate occasions, each a little worse, not to any degree that would have made any of the individual incidents awful, but when taken together they represented a doomed enterprise. A year earlier, after the last time they’d had sex, Hartjes said it would be best if they were just friends, and Simon said, “Sure, okay, sure.” But it was clear even then that Simon expected that Hartjes would change his mind, and sometimes he grew irritated that it was taking so long. “It’s getting warmer,” Hartjes said after he had washed his hands and sat down with a glass of water. “So it is,” Simon said from behind the paper. “And the river’s thawed,” Hartjes said. “So it is.” “And then I decided to kill myself,” Hartjes said. “So do it,” Simon said, not letting Hartjes have the satisfaction. “Some friend.” “I can get you a rope.” “Only if you cut me down after,” Hartjes said, putting his head on the table, which smelled like ground pepper and flour. “Har-dee-har-har.” Hartjes looked up and saw Simon watching him and beyond Simon into the front hall, where the stairs ran up to the second floor. There were pears in a bowl on the table. Hartjes put his cheek against his forearm and gazed out the window over the sink, into the tall pine trees and the gathering dusk. The kitchen was warm. The goats had come around the house and were trotting around the backyard, Guy and Bertram chasing two of the fatter hens. Simon lifted a cigarette from the ashtray and lit it. “I just hate the spring,” he said. “Well, with luck, we’ll all freeze to death long before then,” Simon said, knitting the paper together and apart. “What are you reading about over there?” “War, famine, misery, and two for one at the co-op.” Hartjes felt little kick in his gut. “What’s two for one at the co-op?” “Apples,” Simon said, lowering the paper so that Hartjes could see his expression. “They charged me full price!” “Racists.” “It’s probably about class,” Hartjes said grimly. “Oh, it’s about class, is it? I was raised poor, don’t you know. Maybe they’ll give me the two-for-one.” “I was raised poor. Poor me,” Hartjes said. “Yeah, but nobody expects me to have been raised poor. But look at me now. I live in a manse.” “You live in a shotgun house on a county road.” “A manse.” “My mother died, did I tell you?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  The acuity of the words stung Lionel right between the eyes. The air in the room was dense. His tongue felt heavy and numb. Something lodged at the base of his throat when he tried to respond. He coughed experimentally to see if he could clear it, but the hard knot of whatever it was remained stubbornly fixed. His neck bulged under his fingers. His skin was flushed and warm to the touch. He thought briefly that he was having an allergic reaction, that weird sense of driving panic and dry throat. His heart hammered along, and his eyes watered. Even the wool of his sweater itched and burned against his arms. He made another attempt at coughing loose whatever was in his throat. He beat on his chest to break up the tension, but there was no give. “People do kill themselves,” Lionel wheezed. “They do.” “Easy, buddy,” Charles said nervously. He slapped Lionel between the shoulders. The jolt of it made Lionel’s plate slide from his lap to the floor with a loud thunk. The wilted kale, coated in dressing, and the greasy avocado made a sad little pile. The conversation, that wall of party noise, dropped away, and it was just the curious silence of the voyeur and the watched. Their attention felt like metal prods inserted into his joints. “I need,” Lionel rasped, but then he stood up on his gummy legs. He went around the back of the chaise, and the host reached for him. The others called out: Is he all right? If I had to sit next to Charlie— Charles, what did you do? First door on the right! • • • Last fall, Lionel tried to kill himself. His attempt had not been subtle, so his father had flown in from his suburb of Houston and his mother had driven from her suburb of Detroit. They converged on him in Madison, furious and terrified as they reprimanded him for yet again being so careless with himself. He was held in UW Hospital for a few days. Held, because he could not leave of his own volition. What Lionel remembered with great clarity was the pain in his lower back: a hot ache just over his sacrum that throbbed all night. The doctor frowned at his EKG. The nurses spent a lot of time monitoring his respiration rate and his blood pressure. They told him to calm down and to think positive thoughts. They asked him about what he did, what he studied, said that he was young, that he was healthy, that he was okay, safe. He didn’t have to be so afraid. But his pulse stayed high, and eventually they had to give him a sedative, and he dropped into a blank void of sleep.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Yes, I’m very much worried, and that’s what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how? Why did the conductor run along the footboard, why are they shrieking, those young men in that train? why are they talking, why are they laughing? It’s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!...” When the train came into the station, Anna got out into the crowd of passengers, and moving apart from them as if they were lepers, she stood on the platform, trying to think what she had come here for, and what she meant to do. Everything that had seemed to her possible before was now so difficult to consider, especially in this noisy crowd of hideous people who would not leave her alone. One moment porters ran up to her proffering their services, then young men, clacking their heels on the planks of the platform and talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting her dodged past on the wrong side. Remembering that she had meant to go on further if there were no answer, she stopped a porter and asked if her coachman were not here with a note from Count Vronsky. “Count Vronsky? They sent up here from the Vronskys just this minute, to meet Princess Sorokina and her daughter. And what is the coachman like?” Just as she was talking to the porter, the coachman Mihail, red and cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain, evidently proud of having so successfully performed his commission, came up to her and gave her a letter. She broke it open, and her heart ached before she had read it. “I am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be home at ten,” Vronsky had written carelessly.... “Yes, that’s what I expected!” she said to herself with an evil smile. “Very good, you can go home then,” she said softly, addressing Mihail. She spoke softly because the rapidity of her heart’s beating hindered her breathing. “No, I won’t let you make me miserable,” she thought menacingly, addressing not him, not herself, but the power that made her suffer, and she walked along the platform.

• From Escape (2007)

  Suddenly, in the distance, I heard a noise. It had to be a snowplow! I saw the plow coming up the ridge with snow spitting in every direction. I ran across the road, jumping up and down to get the driver’s attention. I screamed and hollered but was drowned out by the snowplow’s grinding roar. The snowplow drove right past me. I ran down that road screaming and waving my arms. But it was no use. I was back in my frozen, silent crypt. As despair began closing in around me again, I heard something else. It was coming from the northbound highway below me. Two people were standing next to a car, waving. “Hey, are you all right?” “Yes!” I answered as I started to maneuver toward them, cautiously making my way down that cliff and toward the two strangers. The two turned out to be college students from California who were traveling to Brigham Young University in Provo. One of them had rolled his car. His girlfriend, driving behind him, had stopped. Her car was packed with what seemed like everything they owned, but the driver’s seat was clear. The two of them took turns staying warm by trading places in the car. When they saw how frozen I looked, both of them told me to sit down and warm up. I didn’t argue. The car was cold, but it was a relief not to be battling the elements. While we waited, we talked about the damage we had done to our vehicles. I couldn’t tell them that I was burning up with the fear that I might have killed my baby. When another snowplow appeared on the highway, the three of us jumped up and down and got it to stop. He had a radio and called for help. I told him my van was on the southbound highway. He called the police and a patrol car met me at my van. The officer walked around the smashed van. “You were in that when it crashed?” he asked. I nodded. “And you’re still standing? That must have been one hell of a ride.” I sat in the warmth of the patrol car and tried to fill out an accident report. But my fingers were still too stiff, so I dictated and the officer wrote down what I said. The snowplows had made the roads passable, and while I was still in the patrol car, one of Merril’s friends stopped by the van. The officer said he looked like someone I probably knew because he was dressed in typical FLDS clothes. I realized the man was Merril’s brother. While the two men were talking, another man from the community arrived. He stopped, too. After a brief consultation, he decided to take me home, and my brother-in-law said he’d wait for the tow truck to arrive.

• From Escape (2007)

  Larry looked at me. “Carolyn, you don’t have the flu. You have post-traumatic stress disorder.” I had never heard of PTSD before. He told me what it was. Physical and mental symptoms can develop that last for years. It’s common in combat veterans, survivors of sexual trauma and domestic violence, and anyone who has endured relentless stress or been through a natural catastrophe such as a hurricane, earthquake, or floods. Larry asked me if I was having nightmares. I said they’d started the third day after I escaped and never stopped. They were often about Merril or Barbara or someone in the family attacking my children. Other times the focus was on my being forced to do something in the cult I didn’t want to do. Nightmares are a classic component of PTSD. Larry said it was a chronic condition that could be managed and treated but would never completely go away. I felt blindsided. PTSD on top of everything else? How could I take care of everyone if I was sick? I asked him how I was supposed to cope. He told me to stay as functional as possible. He couldn’t tell me when I would get better because every case was different. But he stressed that the more I surrendered to PTSD, the worse it would get. I had to fight this and it wouldn’t be easy, but he made it clear to me that he’d be by my side. For six weeks I had been crawling to the bathroom to vomit. What kept me going was the thought that in a few more days I’d be better. Now I was being told I had a long-term condition with no end in sight. My head was spinning as I walked to the parking lot. I tried to put the key in the ignition and was shaking so badly the keys dropped to the floor. I was coming undone. My biggest fear was that if Merril learned I had a mental disorder I would lose custody of my children. I had barely been making it when I was well. Now this. Without my health I could lose everything. If I lost my children there would be no reason to remain on earth. Then an image came back to me. I remembered being in the accident on Black Ridge, feeling frozen and close to death. I remembered being claimed by a fatigue so deep that I wanted to lie down in a snowdrift and sleep forever. What had kept me going then was that I knew if I did, I would never see Arthur again. If I could find the strength then, I could find it again. Beneath everything, I still wanted to live. I had to get hold of myself. I would do it five minutes at a time, fewer if necessary. The big picture was too scary. Minutes were not as bad.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  After answering these questions, I was to write a contract stating that I would no longer engage in sexual behavior at the hospital and sign it. I held the pad and pencil in my hand as a frowning social worker led me to the Quiet Room. It was a tiny, square room where the floors and walls were padded with blue plastic mats. The door locked from the outside. I might have been overwhelmed by claustrophobia in there, but mercifully the door had a small, square window. The lock to the Quiet Room clicked shut. I sat down and stared at the questions. I put the pad and pencil down on the mat and lay on my back. Above me, two fluorescent lights flickered. I closed my eyes but I could still see the flickering inside my eyelids. I had no idea how to answer the questions. They seemed to be written in a foreign language. They seemed to pertain to someone else. They seemed like riddles. Fuck that. The purpose of the Quiet Room, as explained to me by a nurse when I had first been admitted, was to give patients a safe space to calm down if they needed it. I was calm. Most of the patients saw the Quiet Room as punishment. I did feel punished, but that was fine. The mat I lay on smelled like Lysol. I rolled my body up against the door so I couldn’t be seen through the window. I was invisible. I was alone. Nobody could touch me. The room was absolutely silent. Finally, so was I. Sixty-Three DaysAJ McKennaIT HAS BEEN SIXTY-THREE DAYS SINCE I STOPPED MAKING excuses for you. Since I stopped telling this exclusively as a story about my gender dysphoria. Since I shifted my focus from the fact that you stopped when I screamed, to the fact that you started at all. Sixty-three days. What does it say about me that I wish I could go back? Not to before it happened, though of course I wish for that. But I have gotten used to compromise, to settling for less. I would settle for going back to the way I felt sixty-four days ago. I feel weak for saying this, but I would. I know the strong thing to say is that it is better to admit what it was than to hide from it completely, the way I did for thirteen years. To say that I am facing up to it at last, and that this is a good thing. But I am not strong, and honestly? I resent having to face up to it. I resent having to be a survivor. “Survivor” is the “special needs” of victimhood. If I say I have survived, I’m fooling nobody. I didn’t.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Anna made no answer. The conductor and her two fellow-passengers did not notice under her veil her panic-stricken face. She went back to her corner and sat down. The couple seated themselves on the opposite side, and intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities. A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a clank of chains, and the man in her carriage crossed himself. “It would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that,” thought Anna, looking angrily at him. She looked past the lady out of the window at the people who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or stood on the platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a stone wall, a signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving more smoothly and evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the rails. The window was lighted up by the bright evening sun, and a slight breeze fluttered the curtain. Anna forgot her fellow passengers, and to the light swaying of the train she fell to thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air. “Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn’t conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?” “That’s what reason is given man for, to escape from what worries him,” said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and obviously pleased with her phrase. The words seemed an answer to Anna’s thoughts. “To escape from what worries him,” repeated Anna. And glancing at the red-cheeked husband and the thin wife, she saw that the sickly wife considered herself misunderstood, and the husband deceived her and encouraged her in that idea of herself. Anna seemed to see all their history and all the crannies of their souls, as it were turning a light upon them. But there was nothing interesting in them, and she pursued her thought.

• From Escape (2007)

  Cathleen and I left and sat with Merril’s other wives until he finished with Warren. The other wives looked at us like we were so stupid and were gloating because we were in trouble and they were not. In the car on the way home, Barbara asked Merril to lecture to us. “Father, I think all of your wives would be interested in hearing you teach us what obedience means to you. How do you feel about the importance of being obedient? Why would you not be able to have confidence in any woman who can’t remain obedient to you?” I cringed and stared out the window. As soon as I got home, I went downstairs to do my laundry. The clothesline was next to Cathleen’s bedroom. I could hear her crying when I was hanging up my clothes. I snuck into her room through my children’s nursery, which was connected by a bathroom to her nursery. This way, no one would be aware of what I had done. I didn’t want to get Cathleen into more trouble than we were already in. Cathleen had a look of desperation in her eyes. It was the violent desperation of an animal who would chew off a limb to escape from a trap. My voice was barely louder than a whisper. “Cathleen, I’m sorry for getting you into trouble. I will always be your friend, even if we can’t speak to each other anymore.” Cathleen nodded through her tears. I said goodbye and slipped through her room the same way I’d entered. It was now winter. I hung my wet laundry on the clothesline. The cold wind snapped it around and stung my hands. I knew that fighting for a life in this community was pointless. But Harrison was still too vulnerable and screaming most of the time for me to flee. I talked to his doctor at least every other day. He was hospitalized at St. George nearly every week to get his IV therapy. His weight was still an issue, as was finding the right medication for his pain. There was no way for me to run until he was at least holding his own. Now I had to devise a plan. I would continue having sex with Merril to decrease his suspicions. I would act repentant. Harrison was my inadvertent ally. Merril would never think that I’d dare escape with such a sick child. I knew I could outsmart him. I would wait. And watch. But I could not get pregnant again. I had to find a way to get birth control. A high-risk pregnancy could cost Harrison his life if I became too sick to care for him around the clock. I couldn’t take birth control pills because Merril’s other wives and daughters still rifled through my things. I had to get a shot of Depo-Provera. But how? Last Baby