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 Escape (2007)

  On Sunday, I left for college. Audrey was married during the week. Merril didn’t attend the civil marriage. Faunita was sick, so she missed her daughter’s wedding. Ruth went but told Audrey she had to accept the prophet’s will. The next day was the religious wedding, when Audrey and Merlin were married by the prophet. All of her parents went except me. (Even though I was two years younger than Audrey I was considered one of her mothers.) When I saw the wedding photos, Merlin and Audrey both looked miserable. At the reception, everyone from the community brought gifts and Audrey’s sisters sang songs. These big parties were great fun for everyone else, but not for the couple, especially the bride. Audrey had tried to cancel the reception because she didn’t think she could be around so many people celebrating her marriage. She was traumatized, humiliated, and in despair. But Merlin wanted to celebrate his marriage, and the reception went ahead as planned. When I came home that weekend, Audrey told me everything when we went on our long bike ride. She didn’t think she could ever learn to love Merlin. As we pedaled toward the reservoir she said, “If I have to live my entire life with a man who I can never love, then why couldn’t I have at least married someone of importance, as you did? Why did I, the daughter of an important man, get stuck marrying a nobody?” “Audrey,” I said, “I would have loved to have married a nobody who was my age or someone younger. I envy what you have. At least Merlin acts like he does love you. You can have a relationship with him if you decide to. I will never have a relationship with a man in my entire life and this will never change. Even if I wanted to, Barbara would never allow it. At least no one is trying to sabotage you and make you a bad person.” Audrey couldn’t see that her marriage was more desirable than mine. Word got around the community that she was mistreating him because she was in love with someone else. The rumors didn’t seem to bother Audrey, but they brought disgrace to Merril’s family, which he could not abide. He let her know that she had to do whatever it took to stop the rumors. Pregnancy seemed like the quick fix. Audrey told me that if she had a baby, it would stop the rumors. She told me that she thought if she had a baby with Merlin, she might learn to love him. She thought this even though she knew that once she had a child with Merlin she’d be trapped forever as his wife. But a few weeks after the pregnancy push began, Merlin got a job with a construction company out of town. Audrey asked me if she could go to school with me in the fall.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  2:42 A.M. The Orgy Room. A FILTHY HALO of murky light hangs over the entrance room. Beyond the smoky scrim and into other rooms, masses of shadows churn, breathing. Shirtless, Jim moves farther into the entrails of this one-story house—a “private club”: At the door you show a membership card to one of the gay baths, pay “dues,” sign another card, show I.D. The darkness of the converted house parts as Jim moves into it. Against one wall a row of men stand, some shirtless, some almost naked, others totally naked, some fully clothed, several in leather costume. Huddled before them are other bunched figures, moving hungrily from cock to cock. The odor of amyl nitrite bursts recurrently. Avoiding arbitrary hands inviting him into clustered bodies, Jim moves into another room. Figures float back and forth like somnambulists. In a smaller room, three men, pants to their knees, stand before a bending man, naked from the waist down. His mouth arcs from cock to cock, his head directed roughly by a hand, another, another. Glued to him from behind—hands clutching him by the waist pulling the exposed buttocks back and forth—a dark man pushes his cock in and out. To the side, other men, cocks in hands, wait to replace the thrusting cock, just as other cocks replace those lined before the man's frenziedly moving face. Still others watch coldly as if at a movie, cocks in their own or in others’ hands, cocks in others’ mouths. Tongues and hands surround Jim, who stands against another wall. He's not sure whether there are four or only three mouths shifting on his cock, balls, chest, under his arms, on his thighs, ass. Another mouth now. Even so, his cock will not harden. Has he come at all tonight? he wonders. He looks across the dirty dimness and sees another cluster almost identical to his. At its center is another muscular man, also shirtless, standing surrounded by groping hands and licking mouths. The two look at each other. For a moment it seems to Jim that that man, standing like him and staring at him, is being devoured in ritual sacrifice and is seeing him, Jim, the same. Jim pulls away. Bodies and mouths turn to others. Almost at the same time, the other man broke away too from the devouring cluster about him. His and Jim's eyes continue locked. The two men drift toward each other—but bodies flow between them, forming new groups about each. Standing figures, kneeling figures. Entangled limbs. And the thick wordless silence. Jim swims through pools of flesh. Sucked. Rimmed. Sucked. Licked. The acts mechanical and cold, the sounds of frenzy almost forced, like sobs, not moans. He can no longer see the muscular man.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  So spake I unto that same light which had before addressed me, and, as Beatrice willed, was my wish confessed. In no dark sayings, such as limed the foolish folk of old, before the Lamb of God who taketh sins away, was slain, but in clear words, and with precise discourse, answered that love paternal, hidden and revealed by his own smile: “Contingency, which beyond the sheet of your material stretcheth not, is all limned in the eternal aspect; albeit it deriveth not necessity from this, no more than doth the ship that droppeth down the stream from the sight wherein she doth reflect herself.4 Thence,5 as cometh to the ear sweet harmony from an organ, cometh to my sight the time that is in store for thee. As Hippolytus was severed from Athens by machination of his cruel and perfidious stepmother,6 so must thou needs sever thee from Florence. So it is willed, so already plotted, and so shall be accomplished soon, by him who pondereth upon it in the place where Christ, day in day out, is put to sale.7 The blame shall cleave unto the injured side in fame, as is the wont; but vengeance shall bear witness to the truth which doth dispense it. Thou shalt abandon everything beloved most dearly; this is the arrow which the bow of exile shall first shoot. Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another’s bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount upon another’s stair. And that which most shall weigh thy shoulders down, shall be the vicious and ill company with which thou shalt fall down into this vale, for all ungrateful, all mad and impious shall they become against thee; but, soon after, their temples and not thine shall redden for it.8 Of their brurishness their progress shall make proof, so that it shall be for thy fair fame to have made a party for thyself. Thy first refuge and first hostelry shall be the courtesy of the great Lombard, who on the ladder beareth the sacred bird,9 for he shall cast so benign regard on thee that of doing and demanding, that shall be first betwixt you two, which betwixt others most doth lag. With him shalt thou see the one who so at his birth stamped by this strong star, that notable shall be his deeds. Not yet have folk taken due note of him, because of his young age, for only nine years have these wheels rolled round him.10 But ere the Gascon have deceived the lofty Henry, sparkles of his virtue shall appear in carelessness of silver and of toils.11 His deeds munificent shall yet be known so that concerning them his very foes shall not be able to keep silent tongues. Look to him and to his benefits; by him shall many folk be changed, altering state, the wealthy and the beggars;

• From Escape (2007)

  But there was a catch: even if a woman told on her husband, it could still backfire. If Warren liked her husband, he could take his side through a loophole Jeffs called “the power of inspiration.” God could act directly in a family by inspiring the husband. So if a husband was inspired to have sex with his wife when she wasn’t ovulating, then Warren would argue that God knew this was best for that man’s family and the woman could be seen as being in rebellion and face consequences. The bottom line was that Warren was gaining complete control over our lives; he could make the rules but also manipulate them to his advantage. The women who suffered most were those whose husbands didn’t like to have sex with them. Their husbands would say they were not worthy to bear their children and quit having sex with them altogether. This freed up men to just have sex with their most favorite wives. He’d tell the other wife that when she was worthy enough he would give her a baby. It was as crass as that. It wasn’t long after this decree went into effect that there was an upsurge of women in the community seeking antidepressants. Pregnant women started losing it because their husbands stopped having sex with them. (Since women were pregnant almost all of the time, they expected to continue having sex throughout their pregnancies, otherwise they rarely would have it.) Women would go into the clinic pregnant and distraught. The two nurse practitioners had the power to prescribe antidepressants. Pregnant women were put on Zoloft; everyone else got Prozac. This was not a secret. I heard about it both directly and indirectly from Shirley, one of the nurse practitioners, who worried that some of these pregnant women would have nervous breakdowns without the drugs. She said that at least a third of the wives in the community were on medication. (After several years of this, the Health Department was alerted to the number of prescriptions that were being written for antidepressants, looked at their charts, and said that women could not be on these medications for an extended period of time without seeing a therapist or a doctor. But if any serious action was taken as a result, I never heard about it.) Sex was power in the FLDS. If a man stopped sleeping with his wife, she was cut off at her knees. She lost power and status within her family. We always knew which wife in a family was like Barbara, the favorite. The woman having the most sex won in the intense sexual competition played out in polygamous families. Her husband treated her like a queen and she used that power to lord it over her sister wives. But children got caught in the crossfire of these sexual wars. Husbands tended to become more abusive toward the wives they no longer had sex with. They also mistreated the children of those wives.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  THE TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER How Apuleius was made a common Asse to fetch home wood, and how he was handled by a boy. After that I was thus handled by horses, I was brought home againe to the Mill, but behold fortune (insatiable of my torments) had devised a new paine for me. I was appointed to bring home wood every day from a high hill, and who should drive me thither and home again, but a boy that was the veriest hangman in all the world, who was not contented with the great travell that I tooke in climbing up the hill, neither pleased when he saw my hoofe torne and worne away by sharpe flintes, but he beat me cruelly with a great staffe, insomuch that the marrow of my bones did ake for woe, for he would strike me continually on the right hip, and still in one place, whereby he tore my skinne and made of my wide sore a great hole or trench, or rather a window to looke out at, and although it runne downe of blood, yet would he not cease beating me in that place: moreover he laded me with such great burthens of wood that you would thinke they had been rather prepared for Elephants then for me, and when he perceived that my wood hanged more on one side then another, (when he should rather take away the heavy sides, and so ease me, or else lift them up to make them equall with the other) he laid great stones upon the weaker side to remedy the matter, yet could be not be contented with this my great misery and immoderate burthens of wood, but when hee came to any river (as there were many by the way) he to save his feete from water, would leape upon my loynes likewise, which was no small loade upon loade. And if by adversity I had fell downe in any dirty or myrie place, when he should have pulled me out either with ropes, or lifted me up by the taile, he would never helpe me, but lay me on from top to toe with a mighty staffe, till he had left no haire on all my body, no not so much as on mine eares, whereby I was compelled by force of blowes to stand up. The same hangman boy did invent another torment for me: he gathered a great many sharp thornes as sharp as needles and bound them together like a fagot, and tyed them at my tayle to pricke me, then was I afflicted on every side, for if I had indeavoured to runne away, the thornes would have pricked me, if I had stood still, the boy would have beaten mee, and yet the boy beate mee to make me runne, whereby I perceived that the hangman did devise nothing else save only to kill me by some manner of meanes, and he would sweare and threaten to do me worse harme, and because hee might have some occasion to execute his malicious minde, upon a day (after that I had endeavoured too much by my patience) I lifted up my heeles and spurned him welfavouredly. Then he invented this vengeance against me, after that he had well laded me with shrubs and rubble, and trussed it round upon my backe, hee brought me out into the way: then hee stole a burning coale out of a mans house of the next village, and put it into the middle of the rubbell; the rubbell and shrubs being very dry, did fall on a light fire and burned me on every side. I could see no remedy how I might save my selfe, and in such a case it was not best for me to stand still but fortune was favourable towards me, perhaps to reserve me for more dangers, for I espyed a great hole full of raine water that fell the day before, thither I ranne hastily and plunged my selfe therein, in such sort that I quenched the fire, and was delivered from that present perill, but the vile boy to excuse himselfe declared to all the neighbours and shepheards about, that I willingly tumbled in the fire as I passed through the village. Then he laughed upon me saying: How long shall we nourish and keepe this fiery Asse in vaine?

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  It’s like when a plane descends, you know? Gradually, down through the clouds, and suddenly you can’t see anything? Except, with a plane, eventually you see the city. There was no city for me.” “Oh, Lionel,” she said. She rested her palm in his palm again, and he squeezed. It was the first time he had told someone about it. The whole of it. His throat was hot from talking and from trying to make himself known to another person. He put his head down on the table but went on squeezing Sophie’s hand. She threaded her fingers through his. “Anyway. I was okay until last week.” “You went back?” “I had this feeling—this totally random sensation. It was kind of a thought and kind of not a thought. A voice, maybe? Something.” “What did it say?” “You’ll think I’m nuts,” he said dryly. “If you don’t already.” “Then you’ve got nothing to risk.” “That’s true. It said—or showed me?—this image of myself, stepping out into traffic. I was on a sidewalk on my way home from the grocery store. And I was waiting for the light, and there were these cars coming on, and it just seemed possible to step out there and get swept away. It felt so real, for a minute I thought I had done it. But then I was just standing there on the sidewalk. And the cars were going by. And it was so cold. So I checked myself in.” “I think I know what you mean,” she said. People sometimes thought they knew what he meant, but what they usually meant was that sometimes, in their own lives, they had been disappointed. They had been a little unwell in totally manageable ways. What they meant was that they had suffered in the small ways that everyone suffered. But Sophie set the mug down and stroked his wrist as though she were stroking the head of a small animal. “My parents died. And then my sister, a few years ago, died. Overdose. And sometimes, I think, Fuck. Enough. Or sometimes, it’s like, Why not make it a full set? ” “Yeah,” he said. “I used to purge. Everybody thinks it’s about being skinny and being light for ballet. They think it’s to look a certain way. But I think most of us purge because of the control. Like, there’s a moment when you go from feeling full and awful to feeling clean and clear and bright. There’s just a moment, right before you get it all out, before you’re burning up and convulsing, when you feel something go ping and you know it’ll be all right. That’s what it’s about. That little ping of clarity. Anyway, I used to purge. When I lived with my grandma.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When he told the story at parties, he took his time: His mother and the other adults had been reading and rereading with increasing levels of despair and also hysteria a suicide note found in the hand of Lora Anne’s youngest son, an aspiring rapper and barber, who had shot himself once through the temple on the banks of the creek because he had been diagnosed with, among other rumored things, pancreatic cancer. Lora Anne was a preacher and drove miles upon miles to preach in nondenominational churches. Hartjes and his eleven cousins had been running around the rusty swing set, trying to coax it back into life, when out the wasps had come, and Hartjes, being slower and clumsier, had tripped and made himself an easy target. They’d stung him and he’d gone screaming into the house, and his mother had said it. “Then what am I supposed to say? I’m sorry?” Simon asked. “I just didn’t want you thinking I had lied about it, that’s all. I didn’t want you thinking it was a joke or that I’d made it up just to have something to say. I just wanted you to know that. I wasn’t complaining.” Hartjes drank the water he had been nursing, which was lukewarm now and tasted faintly of metal from the pipes. Simon hummed. He stirred the stew, which smelled to Hartjes like tomatoes and pepper, with the musky scent of venison. When Hartjes let his chair rock back and forth, balancing himself with the wide set of his feet, it sounded like a swinging door. His hunger felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  illi et inextricabili moli, sed immanitate praecepti consternata silens obstupescit. Tune formicula illa parvula atque ruricola, certa difficultatis tantae laborisque, miserta contubernalis magni dei socrusque saevitiam execrata discurrens naviter convocat corro- gatque cunctam formicarum accolarum classem: ‘ Miseremini terrae omniparentis agiles alumnae, mise- remini et Amoris uxori, puellae lepidae, periclitanti prompta velocitate succurrite/ Ruunt aliae super- que aliae sepedum populorum undae summoque studio singulae granatim totum digerunt acervum separatimque distributis dissitisque generibus e con- spectu perniciter abeunt. 11 “Sed initio noctis e convivio nuptiali vino ma- dens et fragrans balsama Venus remeat totumque revincta corpus rosis micantibus, visaque diligentia miri laboris, *Non tuum" inquit *Nequissima, nec tuarum manuum istud opus sed ilius, cui tuo, immo et ipsius malo placuisti’; et frusto cibarii panis ei proiecto cubitum facessit. Interim Cupido solus interioris domus unici cubiculi custo- dia clausus coercebatur acriter, partim. ne petulanti luxurie vulnus gravaret, partim ne cum sua cupita conveniret. Sic ergo distentis et sub uno tecto sepa- ratis amatoribus tetra nox exanclata. Sed Aurora commodum inequitante vocatae Psychae Venus infit talia : * Videsne illud nemus quod fluvio praeter. 264 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Bones. Milton smirks to himself. There’s a thought. What he wants is not to maim himself but rather to pry open the world, bone it, remove the ugly hardness of it all, the way one might take the spine from a deer or a fish or some other animal snared. Milton lifts the knife from his hand and stabs it into the table. When he was younger, he killed senselessly because the thrill of the act was like dipping his face into a clear, rushing stream. He didn’t have to consider the lives he ended. It was as if they were merely parts of a game, tokens to trade with his friends. If there was any merciful part of his childhood, it was that, the cleanness of it, how the act didn’t taint them, how the violence seemed to leave no trace at all. But he’s older now, and the meat of the world is full of bones. Everybody’s walking around all the time full of bones, full of jagged shards, flecks of hardness that need taking out and would, upon swallowing, prompt a person to choke. There’s no mercy in the basement tonight. Nolan, Milton thinks, and he squats by the table and thumbs the numb place left by the knife. He digs his nail into the thin, translucent space left by the knife until he sees the blood pooling beneath the skin. The pain abates quickly and leaves behind a memory so friable, so delicate, that it’s like blowing an eyelash and making a wish. Idaho. Milton lies down on the floor. The oblong shapes of boxed-up boyhood toys throw curious shadows that shift along the walls and the raw, unfinished struts of the basement. They look like the muscles of some enormous animal, getting ready to leap, to strike, to snatch him down into its shadowy belly. MASS Aleksander Igorevich Shapovalov—Sasha to those who loved him most in the world and Alek to everyone else, including himself—stared at the radiographic scans presented to him by his doctor in the intimate corner examination room and tried to think of what he’d tell his mother. “There’s a good chance it’ s nothing,” Dr. Ngost said. “But you’ll have to get a biopsy.” “A biopsy,” Alek said. “Yes. We’ll take a small piece of the mass and examine it. Then we’ll know more.” “But I don’t feel sick,” Alek said. “I just came because of this cough. I don’t feel sick.” “There’s a chance that you aren’t. There’s a chance it’s just a mass that we can take out. It happens sometimes. The body is full of odd turns.” “Full of odd turns,” Alek repeated—a nonsense phrase, too casual. Full of odd turns, like a clock or some other machine, routes and paths inside him swerving this way and that, and then suddenly an aberration, a deviation, a mass swelling up from below.

• From Escape (2007)

  I knew that the only way I could protect myself in my marriage was by remaining of value to Merril. Like every other polygamist wife, I had no say in whom I would marry and no way to divorce my husband if it did not work out. Sex was the only currency I had to spend in my marriage—every polygamist wife knows that. Once we are no longer sexually attractive to our husbands, we are doomed. A woman’s value is assigned in marriage, not earned. We all knew that a woman who is in sexual favor with her husband has a higher value than his other wives. This has enormous significance because a woman’s sexual power determines how she will be treated by other wives and how she will be respected by her stepchildren. And because of this, our sex lives were not our own. People knew when you were in favor, and everyone spoke about who was and wasn’t sleeping with her husband. A woman who possesses high sexual status with her husband has more power over his other wives. This means he will listen to her complaints more seriously and will discipline wives she might be angry with. Knowing her husband will enact retribution for her is an enormous weapon for a wife to wield. Sexual power also will often exempt a wife from physical labor or other family responsibilities. She can make sure that the wives she dislikes or feels might be sexual competitors are assigned the worst jobs and made to work the hardest in the family. A woman who is no longer physically attractive to her husband is stranded on dangerous grounds. She often winds up as a slave to the dominant wife. She has no voice to report on any shortcomings or abuse in the family. The sexually favored wives will often recruit the children of the less powerful wives and reward them for turning on their biological mothers. It is nothing short of ruthless vengeance. Every member of a polygamous family knows which wives hold power. When a new wife enters a family, it is imperative for her to establish power with her husband sexually. While there are exceptions, most men routinely change their favorite wives and don’t remain loyal to any woman indefinitely. A woman without any sexual currency to spend may find it difficult to have children. This undermines her future completely. Without children—or with even just a few—a woman has little long-term value to her husband or status within his family. Children are a woman’s insurance policy. Even if her husband takes a new and younger wife, a woman who has produced a bevy of beautiful children for him will have respect and status within the family.

• From Escape (2007)

  The morning we left, Tammy was the only happy one. Cathleen was still sulky and quiet. I was resigned but told myself I might see some good sights. If this was the one trip I was ever going to take, I wanted to see and learn as much as possible. We all had breakfast before driving to the airport. Barbara was sitting next to Merril and seemed totally heartbroken about losing him for seven days. It was the longest separation they’d had in the four years since I’d been married to Merril. Merril seemed filled with dread. But there was no way out for him. If he took just Barbara, his image within the community would be damaged. He had to at least feign commitment to his other wives. When he kissed Barbara goodbye, she began to cry. We piled into the car for the drive to the Las Vegas airport. There was so much luggage that it had to be crammed in around Cathleen and me in the backseat. Tammy had claimed the front seat to be next to Merril. She talked nonstop. Tammy was a geyser of gossip and kept spewing. Merril said almost nothing during the three-hour drive. When Cathleen tried to engage in the conversation, Tammy cut her off and accused her of being rude. According to Tammy, this was her trip and the conversation should focus only on her. She told Cathleen not to interrupt. Cathleen began to pout. Merril was despondent over leaving Barbara. I was upset about leaving Arthur and Betty and weak from morning sickness. Cathleen was sullen and self-pitying. Tammy was manic and agitated on her double dose of Clomid and completely obsessed with getting pregnant. We were traveling with about six other FLDS couples. It was not uncommon within the community for members who could afford it to take several vacations a year to places like Cancún or California. We were quite a sight in the airport in our long dresses and long underwear. It’s a safe bet that we were the only ones traveling to Hawaii without bikinis, shorts, or T-shirts. The men were casually dressed in slacks and shirts while we were all shrouded in our multiple layers. People stared at us, but we didn’t care. The strange looks we got didn’t bother me because I still believed we were God’s chosen people. I was only twenty-two and my childhood faith continued to be absolute. Even though I didn’t want to marry Merril, it didn’t challenge my belief system in any way. I never doubted the central tenet of our faith, which said that in order to come to earth a spirit must be worthy to incarnate into a priesthood home. We had to prove ourselves worthy before we could inhabit the spirit of a child.

• From Escape (2007)

  Audrey looked at me with desperate eyes. “It’s someone I don’t really know and he’s younger than I. Maybe he’s a nice guy. But I’m in love with someone else. I’ve been trying and trying to get Father to take me to see the prophet so I could ask to marry the man I love.” I didn’t know how to comfort Audrey. She was speaking forbidden words. It was not allowed in the FLDS for a young woman to get her heart set on marrying a man of her own choosing. Occasionally a young girl would tell the prophet that she felt she belonged to a certain man, but she would always also insist that what she wanted most was to do the Lord’s will, saying something like “I want to be by this man’s side in marriage if it is where I belong.” Marriage in the FLDS was always a divine revelation. The prophet received the news and then told the lucky couple. Audrey’s love for a man she didn’t belong to was something that could get her into a lot of trouble and bring disgrace to Merril’s family. A woman could only see the prophet with her husband or father. It was impossible for a woman to see him alone—even someone like Audrey, who was already twenty. Merril had agreed to take her to the prophet, but he never came home in time to make it happen and the meetings kept getting cancelled. “I feel like my whole life is ending. If I could have had one opportunity to talk to the prophet I would feel different about what is happening,” she said. I could certainly relate—my world had collapsed when I was forced to marry Merril, even though I wasn’t in love with someone else. “I have to do this. There is no other option now.” Audrey paced around the room. “If I refuse this man there is no way I’d be allowed to marry the other man, anyway. I will only bring disgrace on Father’s family.” Complicating matters was the fact that the man Audrey was in love with already had one wife. She could marry him only if the prophet assigned Audrey to him, which was unlikely since he now had plans for her to marry someone else. She would be seen as being in rebellion if she made her wishes known now. Her husband-to-be came to the house a day or two later and took her on a hike. (He had Merril’s permission to do so.) His name was Merlin. When Audrey returned home she found me and we went into my bedroom, where she cried. “He was really nice to me, but every time I look at him, I see him as the man who is stealing my future happiness.” I listened but knew there was really nothing to say. The trap had closed on her, too. The once-radiant nuss princess now felt she was condemned to marry a nobody.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  «Then poor Psyche went in all haste to the top of the mountain, rather to end her wretched life than to fetch any water, and when she was come up to the ridge of the hill, she perceived that it was very deadly and impossible to bring it to pass, for she saw a great rock, very high and not to be approached by reason that it was exceeding rugged and slippery, gushing out most horrible fountains of waters, which, bursting forth from a cavernous mouth that sloped downwards, ran below and fell through a close and covered watercourse which they had digged out, by many stops and passages, into the valley beneath. On each side she saw great dragons creeping upon the hollow rocks and stretching out their long and bloody necks, with eyes that never slept devoted to watch- 269 15 LUCIUS APULEIUS proxumam convallem latenter incidebant. Dextra laevaque cautibus cavatis proserpunt et longa colla porrecti saevi dracones inconnivae vigiliae luminibus addictis et in perpetuam lucem pupulis excubantibus. Iamque et ipsae semet muniebant vocales aquae; nam et ‘ Discede, et ‘ Quid facis? Vide, et ‘Quid agis ? Cave,’ et * Fuge,’ et‘ Peribis" subinde clamant. Sic impossibilitate ipsa mutata in lapidem Psyche quamvis praesenti corpore, sensibus tamen aberat, et inextricabilis periculi mole prorsus obruta lacrimarum etiam extremo solacio carebat. Nec Providentiae bonae graves oculos innocentis animae latuit aerumna: nam primi lovis regalis ales illa re- pente propansis utrimque pinnis affuit rapax aquila, memorque veteris obsequii, quo ductu Cupidinis Iovi pocillatorem Phrygium sustulerat, opportunam ferens opem deique numen in uxoris laboribus percolens, alti culminis diales vias deserit, et ob os puellae praevolans incipit: ‘At tu simplex alio- quin et expers rerum talium, speras te sanctissimi nec minus truculenti fontis vel unam stillam posse furari vel omnino contingere! Diis etiam ipsique Iovi formidabiles aquas istas Stygias vel fando com- peristi, quodque vos deieratis per numina deorum, deos per Stygis maiestatem solere! Sed cedo istam urnulam, et protinus arreptam complexamque fes- tinat libratisque pinnarum nutantium molibus inter genas saevientium dentium et trisulca vibramina dra- conum remigium dextra laevaque porrigens volentes 270 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VI

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  veritatem eruit, atque illam, minus quidem quam merebatur, sed quod dignus cruciatus alius excogitari non poterat, certe bestiis obiciendam pronuntiavit. . 29 Talis mulieris publicitus matrimonium confar- reaturus ingentique angore oppido suspensus ex- pectabam diem muneris, saepius quidem mortem mihimet volens consciscere, priusquam scelerosae mulieris contagio macularer vel infamia publici spectaculi depudescerem: sed privatus humana manu, privatus digitis, ungula rotunda atque mutila gladium stringere nequaquam poteram. Plane tenui specula solabar clades ultimas, quod ver in ipso ortu iam gemmulis floridis cuncta depingeret et iam purpureo nitore prata vestiret, et commodum dirupto spineo tegmine spirantes cinnameos odores promi- carent rosae, quae me priori meo Lucio redderent. Dies ecce muneri destinatus aderat; ad con- saeptum caveae prosequente populo pompatico favore deducor: ac dum ludicris scaenicorum choreis primitiae spectaculi dedicantur, tantisper ante por- tam constitutus pabulum laetissimi graminis, quod in ipso germinabat aditu, libens affectabam, subinde curiosos oculos patente porta spectaculi prospectu gratissimo reficiens. Nam puelli puellaeque virenti florentes aetatula, forma conspicui, veste nitidi, 524 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X this mischievous woman, far less than she deserved, but because there could be.no more cruel death invented for the quality of her offence, was con- demned by him to be eaten of wild beasts. Behold with this woman was I appointed to have to do in wedlock before the face of all the people ; but I, being wrapped in great anguish, and fearing the day of the triumph, when we two should so abandon ourselves together, devised rather to slay myself than pollute my body with this mischievous harlot, and so be defamed as a public sight and spectacle. But it was impossible for me to do this, considering that I lacked human hands, I lacked fingers, and I was not able to draw a sword with my hoofs being round and short; howbeit I did console myself for this utter misfortune with a small ray of hope, for I rejoiced in myself that springtime was come and was now making all things bright with flourishing buds, and clothing the meadows very brightly, so that I was in good hope to find some roses now bursting through from their thorny coats and breathing forth their fragrant odours, to render me to my human shape that I had before as Lucius. When the day of the triumph came, I was led with great pomp and magnificence to the theatre, whither when I was brought, I first saw the preamble of the triumph, dedicated with dances and merry taunting jests. In the mean season I was placed before the gate of the theatre, where on the one side I saw the green and fresh grass growing before the entry thereof, whereon I did gladly feed ; and sometimes I conceived a great delectation when I saw, when the theatre gates were opened, how all things were finely prepared and set forth ; for there I might see young boys and maidens in the flower of their youth, 525 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Maybe he’s had it wrong this whole time—it’s not that Abe and Tate bring it out of Nolan, and it’s not that Nolan brings it out of them. They’re always in the thick of violence. It moves through them like the Holy Ghost might—except the Holy Ghost never moved anybody to rape a girl or ruin her life. The Holy Ghost never moved anybody to bash a boy’s head in. There was some other god, then, a god for whom the spilling of blood was a prayer, an act of devotion. And they’ve been praying to that god their whole lives. The streetlights glow, and bits of grass stick up coarsely from the pools of shadow below them. Milton puts the butt of his hand to his eye, which is throbbing, low and deep. The pressure in his chest intensifies, and he thinks, in that moment, of cutting himself open to let it out. Toward home, then, he says to himself. Toward home. His steps are stiff, ragged, hard, but he keeps going. One foot in front of the other until he’s at his door. The lights are off. He unlocks the door and pushes it open with his hip. Then it’s down the stairs, into the warm cave of the basement. He tugs on the cord and the basement is once again bathed in dim, yellow light. His mouth is sour and skunky from vomit and spit. His hand feels filmy and gritty, from Abe’s come and blood and the dirt and the grass. He glances down and sees smudges on his palm, white mucosal remnants, like he’s squeezed snails or slugs. There was a time when he and Nolan were boys and playing out by the creek, when they’d catch frogs and other small animals and bash them with rocks until they resembled nothing like themselves or anything else. And when they got older, they shot deer and pulled fish from the river and held them up, grinning into cameras, smiling like Look what I’ve done. Milton turns and sees along the back wall of the basement his father’s work stand. Hard, flat wood with metal rivets to keep it in place. A string of knives hang along the wall. Milton puts his hand against one medium-size knife, touches its cold, silver surface. He takes it down and holds it against the fat of his palm. Nolan, he thinks. He slides the knife up, though not breaking skin. He presses it to the crease below his fingers. Nolan, he thinks again, and he puts the back of his hand against the table in the corner. He couldn’t cut his fingers off even if he wanted to. Not with this knife, its edge too dull, his bones too thick.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Lionel’s mouth was dry and he motioned for the cup back. She shook her head, refused him. “But then he came in. I made coffee, we talked a bit.” “What did you talk about?” “That’s so funny,” Lionel said. “People say that, We talked. But I don’t remember a single thing we said to each other. He asked, Where do you sleep? ” “No.” “He did.” Sophie put her face behind her hand and shook her head. She groaned. “It was nice, actually.” “Are you with someone?” “No,” Lionel said. “God no.” “Why not?” Lionel considered the question. Then he unbuttoned his left sleeve and rolled it up to his elbow. His forearm was covered in a network of scars, culminating in a series of deep gouges near his wrist. His forearms were paler than the rest of him, except for this cluster of keloids with their tannish, reddish undertones. And sometimes, in the winter months, they grew dry and rubbery. Sophie took in the view and Lionel watched her for the usual choreography of sympathy and disgust. She reached out and brushed her fingers across his arm and made a low, appraising hum. He could barely feel her touch. With the keloids, it was either too much sensation or nothing at all. Sometimes they burned powerfully or throbbed so much he couldn’t sleep. His doctors had said that it was a real pain, but also not a real pain. They stopped short of saying it was psychosomatic. They didn’t like that term, because it implied an unreal element, no matter how careful they were about contextualizing their comments. “What happened?” she asked. “If that’s not too personal?” “I tried to kill myself. Which, I guess, is a little obvious. But I made a real hash of it. My roommate found me. Then I did some inpatient stuff. And some outpatient stuff. Not a lot of room for extracurriculars.” “Sounds like a lot.” “Yeah, last year, I was just . . . in this bad way. I felt really unsafe. I felt so sick, all the time. Like, really sick. Like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. And I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t think. That was hardest—the not thinking. My mind wasn’t even empty, just hazy. Like standing in a room you know perfectly well, but you can’t see anything because it’s full of this burning smoke. It was just. Impossible, and I was so scared—like this was going to be my life, I was never going to be okay again. I wanted some relief, I guess. I wanted to get out.” “Did you always struggle with that stuff?” “No,” Lionel said. “Well . . . yes? No and yes. I was always anxious. But the first two years of grad school were really hard, brutal. And I found it really hard to cope.

• 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 Filthy Animals (2021)

  The light in Simon’s room was almost blue with cold. Hartjes dropped his jacket on the floor. He got into the bed and Simon climbed in next to him. Then on top of him. Simon’s hard hands scraped over his chest and stomach, started to go lower. Hartjes reached for them sharply, and in retaliation Simon latched onto his neck. The damp, persistent heat of it. Hartjes closed his eyes. Simon kissed and bit a path upward until Hartjes had no choice but to kiss him back. Hartjes closed his eyes and put his arms around Simon, held him close. He rocked their bodies together, and then he rolled onto Simon and pressed him flat into the mattress. He could give Simon this, he thought. He couldn’t want him back in the same way, but he could give him this. Hartjes kissed him rougher and more deeply, pressed Simon flatter. The bed shook a little. Simon moaned, but when Hartjes wouldn’t let him draw any fresh breath, he bucked. Hartjes held on, his own breath sour and hot now, their mouths fighting. Hartjes pushed at Simon, felt the terrible weakness of his limbs. At first Simon punched at his chest. He fought. He twisted. He kicked. He tried to get out from under Hartjes, but Hartjes wouldn’t let him. Hartjes ran the seam of his palm along Simon’s throat, felt the muscle of it jump and squirm like the backs of his dogs. No fur. Just the slippery animal surface, the gooseflesh, the chilled skin waiting. Hartjes squeezed, felt the muscle contract. Simon wheezed, gave a bronchial cough. Simon stared up at him. Hartjes could feel Simon getting hard and then going soft. He could feel the wet warmth cooling against his stomach. He could feel Simon twisting and writhing and trying to scrape something out of this. But he held on. The tiny vessels in Simon’s eyes thickened. The circles of his pupils shrank, opened, shivered in the blue of his irises. Simon turned red and his cheeks swelled like he was holding his breath. Hartjes tracked back through the hall and down the stairs and into the living room, where the light was on. Hartjes stumbled on the foot of the stairs. The living room was the same sepia shade as the upstairs, had the same blue-and-gold wallpaper that had faded with time. The light had been off. He and Simon had climbed the stairs in darkness. It was a trick being played on him. He gripped at his head and beat the hard fat of his palms against his skull. He should never have said anything about his mother. He should never have gone up those stairs. It all felt so impossible—that his mother was dead, that he’d hurt Simon, thinking he could give him what he wanted, that he stood now under a light that he had seen Simon turn off. None of it made sense. But that was a kind of sense, too.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles got off him then, and Lionel sat up. Blood had pooled in the back of his head, making him dizzy. He rested his back against the legs of the chair. And he took the pieces of the ruler from Charles. He felt safe with them there. A part of his old life, who he used to be. “Why’d you do it?” Charles asked, and when Lionel did not answer, he added, “It must have hurt like hell.” “You know how sometimes an animal will chew its arm off to get loose if it’s desperate enough?” Lionel turned his arm over and looked down at the scars there. They were mute. Whatever wisdom or clarity they had given him was gone. What he saw was a mass of tissue stitched back together. What he saw was only evidence of his body’s history. And to try to discern old moods, old insights, was just chasing shadows. “Be serious, Lionel.” Lionel wanted to laugh at that, being accused of not taking his own suicide seriously enough because he had tried to tell the truth about it. There was no why . No coherent theorem. It had been all gesture, as empty an idiom as the references from the potluck last night. When you tried to explain it, all the meaning went out of it. But Charles was looking at him with the expectation of an answer, and Lionel did not have one. Not a satisfactory one anyway. He felt as unprepared now to answer the question of why as he had when his mother first asked him last year. Why was an anachronism. “You only ask why if you’ve never tried it,” he said. Charles took Lionel’s hand in his own. Lionel saw Charles’s eyes flick to the particular array of scars. The hashwork of them. Nothing systematic or intentional about it. “I think you’re very brave,” Charles said with a degree of sincerity that made Lionel wish he could take back everything he had said. Sincerity was a condescending emotion. People went around calling you brave when you tried to kill yourself and failed. They called you brave when you went limping through your life, as if the very difficulty of it were a sign of moral courage or valor. But there was nothing noble in suffering. There was nothing brilliant or good about the failed endeavor to exit one’s life. There was nothing courageous about the persistence of life, the prolonged project of living. People called you brave for going on because it affirmed their own value system. They considered their own life worth living, and so they considered every life worthy. But it had to be true that life could be discarded when it was no longer of use. It had to be true that a person could ball their life up and throw it out with the trash if they found they had no desire to go on.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Some lives, Lionel thought, had to be ordinary or ugly or painful. Ending your life had to be on the table. If you were the one really in control, and you were in it for yourself, then ending your life certainly had to be an option if you wanted it to be. But people called you brave for going on. They called you brave even if you only lingered in the world because you’d lost your real courage at the moment it mattered most. “That’s what people say when they’re uncomfortable,” Lionel said. “What?” “I’m not brave.” “Don’t get worked up,” Charles said. “Man, whatever.” Lionel lay down under the table. Gray spiderwebs and caught dust billowed in the corners of the legs. He could see the pencil marks of the carpenter who had made the table. He reached up and brushed the faded blue numbers. He scratched the wood with his nails. Charles crawled under the table, too. They lay on their backs, head to head, looking up into the blank underside of the table as though it were the night sky. “You ever feel like your life is getting away from you, Lionel?” “Yeah. All the time.” “If I don’t get this thing at PNB, I think that might be it for me.” “As a dancer?” “Yeah. Maybe you can put in a word for me at your proctoring thing.” “Absolutely. You bet.” “A dancer only gets so many years. And that’s if they’re brilliant.” Lionel knew better than to say that Charles was brilliant. It would have been insulting. Charles sighed. “I’m going back to the program in the spring.” “If I had another three years of this ,” Charles said, waving, gesturing to Lionel’s life, apartment, world, whatever. “You had this little blip. And you’ll get to go back.” It was true, Lionel thought, that he’d return to his life. That had been the thing he wanted most. But listening to Charles, it sounded childish. It sounded simple and easy. It was another form of condescension. “You’re kind of self-pitying right now,” Lionel said. “All I’m saying is, you’ve got this nice setup. And I’m here with a bum fucking knee, about to suck some old guy’s dick so maybe he’ll arrange an audition for me. So that maybe I can get another two years out of doing the thing I love most. You tell me who’s self-pitying. You’re the cutter.” Lionel almost gasped at the fluidity of the remark. The way it snapped off at the end. “I think it’s possible for my life to be shitty and also for your life to be shitty. Maybe you should keep your eyes on your own paper,” Lionel said.