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 51 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Unlike the previous letters, this one arrived intact. Not a single hole anywhere. At first this had cheered Desdemona until she real- ized what it implied. There was no need for secrecy anymore. The in- vasion was already under way. At that point, Desdemona stood up from the kitchen table and, with a look of triumphant desolation, made a grave pronouncement: "God has brought the judgment down on us that we deserve," she said. She went into the living room, where she straightened a sofa cushion in passing, and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. There she undressed and put on her nightgown, even though it was only ten in the morning. And then, for the first time since being pregnant with Zoe and the last time before climbing in forever twenty-five years later, my grandmother took to her bed. For three days she had stayed there, getting up only to go to the bathroom. My grandfather had tried in vain to coax her out. When he left for work the third morning, he had brought up some food, a dish of white beans in tomato sauce and bread. The meal was still lying untouched on the bedside table when there came a knock at the front door. Desdemona did not get up to answer it but only pulled a pillow over her face. Despite this muf- fling, she heard the knocking continue. A little later, the front door opened, and finally footsteps made their way up the stairs and into her room. 194 "Aunt Des?" Tessie said. Desdemona did not move. "I've got something to tell you" Tessie continued. "I wanted you to be the first to know." The figure in the bed remained motionless. Still, the alertness that had seized Desdemona's body told Tessie that she was awake and lis- tening. Tessie took a breath and announced, "I'm going to call off the wedding." There was a silence. Slowly Desdemona pulled the pillow off her face. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table, put them on, and sat up in bed. "You don't want to marry Mikey?" "No." "Mikey is a good Greek boy." "I know he is. But I don't love him. I love Milton." Tessie expected Desdemona to react with shock or outrage, but to her surprise my grandmother barely seemed to register the confes- sion. "You don't know this, but Milton asked me to marry him a while ago. I said no. Now I'm going to write him and say yes." Desdemona gave a little shrug. "You can write what you want, honey mou. Miltie he won't get it." "It's not illegal or anything. First cousins can marry even. We're only second cousins. Milton went and looked up all the statutes."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  George galloped in the window. But the social drinkers and family men stopped showing up. By March of 1930, only half as many pa- trons gave the secret dactylic-spondaic knock on the basement door. Business picked up during the summer. "Don't worry," Lefty told Desdemona. "President Herbert Hoover is taking care of things. The worst is over." They skated along through the next year and a half, but by 1932 only a few customers were coming in each day. Lefty ex- tended credit, discounted drinks, but it was no use. Soon he couldn't pay for shipments of liquor. One day two men came in and repos- sessed the slot machine. "It was terrible. Terrible!" Desdemona still cried fifty years later, describing those years. Throughout my childhood the slightest men- tion of the Depression would set my yia yia off into a full cycle of 135 wailing and breast-clutching. (Even once when the subject was "manic depression.") She would go limp in her chair, squeezing her face in both hands like the figure in Munch's The Scream— and then would do so: "Mana! The Depression! So terrible you no can be- lieve! Everybody they no have work. I remember the marches for the hunger, all the people they are marching in the street, a million peo- ple, one after one, one after one, to go to tell Mr. Henry Ford to open the factory. Then we have in the alley one night a noise was ter- rible. The people they are killing rats, plam plam plam, with sticks, to go to eat the rats. Oh my God! And Lefty he was no working in the factory then. He only having, you know, the speakeasy, where the people they use to come to drink. But in the Depression was in the middle another bad time, economy very bad, and nobody they have money to drink. They no can eat, how they can drink? So soon papou and yia yia we no have money. And then"— hand to heart— "then they make me go to work for those mavros. Black people! Oh my God!"

• From Middlesex (2002)

  board light at the twenty-five thousand dollars in cash bundled inside. My mother had been awake when Milton slipped out of bed less than an hour earlier. Lying on her back, she heard him dressing in the dark. She hadn't asked him why he was getting up in the middle of the night. Once upon a time, she would have, but not anymore. Since my disappearance, daily routines had crumbled. Milton and Tessie often found themselves in the kitchen at four in the morning, drinking coffee. Only when Tessie heard the front door close had she become concerned. Next Milton's car started up and began backing down the drive. My mother listened until the engine faded away. She thought to herself with surprising calmness, "Maybe he's leaving for good." To her list of runaway father and runaway daughter she now added a further possibility: runaway husband. 499 Milton hadn't told Tessie where he was going for a number of rea- sons. First, he was afraid she would stop him. She would tell him to call the police, and he didn't want to call the police. The kidnapper had told him not to involve the law. Besides, Milton had had enough of cops and their blase attitude. The only way to get something done was to do it yourself. On top of all that, this whole thing might be a wild-goose chase. If he told Tessie about it she would only worry. She might call Zoe and then he'd get an earful from his sister. In short, Milton was doing what he always did when it came to important de- cisions. Like the time he joined the Navy, or the time he moved us all to Grosse Pointe, Milton did whatever he wanted, confident that he knew best. After the last mysterious phone call, Milton had waited for an- other. The following Sunday morning it came. "Hello?" "Good morning, Milton." "Listen, whoever you are. I want some answers." "I didn't call to hear what you want, Milton. What's important is what I want." "I want my daughter. Where is she?" "She's here with me." The music, or singing, was still perceptible in the background. It reminded Milton of something long ago. "How do I know you have her?" "Why don't you ask me a question? She's told me a lot about her family. Quite a lot." The rage surging through Milton at that moment was nearly un- bearable. It was all he could do to keep from smashing the phone against the desk. At the same time, he was thinking, calculating. "What's the name of the village her grandparents came from?" "Just a minute." The phone was covered. Then the voice said, "Bithynios." Milton's knees went weak. He sat down at the desk. "Do you believe me yet, Milton?" "We went to these caverns in Tennessee once. A real rip-off tourist trap. What were they called?" Again the phone was covered. In a moment the voice replied, "The Mammothonics Caves." 500

• From Middlesex (2002)

  I stood watching her, crestfallen, hating myself. Cool? I was any- thing but. I'd already made the Obscure Object sick of me. Feeling as if I might cry, I grabbed one of the black curtains and wrapped my- self up in it. I stood in the darkness, wishing I were dead. 337 I hadn't just been flattering her. She was good. Onstage, the Ob- ject's fidgetiness stilled itself. Her posture improved. And of course there was the sheer physical fact of her, the blood-tinged blade that she was, the riot of color that caught everyone's attention. The pan flute stopped and the hockey field got silent again. People coughed, getting it out of their systems. I peeked out from the curtains and saw the Object waiting to go on. She was standing just inside the middle arch, no more than ten feet from me. I had never seen her so serious before, so concentrated. Talent is a kind of intelligence. As she waited to go on, the Obscure Object was coming into hers. Her lips moved as if she were speaking Sophocles' lines to Sophocles himself, as if, contrary to all intellectual evidence, she understood the literary reasons for their endurance. So the Object stood, waiting to go on. Far away from her cigarettes and her snobbishness, her cliquish friends, her atrocious spelling. This was what she was good at: ap- pearing before people. Stepping out and standing there and speak- ing. She was just beginning to realize it then. What I was witnessing was a self discovering the self it could be. On cue, our Antigone took a deep breath and walked onstage. Her white robe was cinched around her torso with silver braid. The robe fluttered as she stepped out in the warm breeze. "Wilt thou aid this hand to lift the dead?" Maxine-Ismene replied, "Thou wouldst bury him, when 'tis for- bidden to Thebes?" "I will do my part, and thou wilt not, to a brother. False to him will I never be found." I wasn't on for a while. Tiresias wasn't that big a part. So I closed the curtain around me again and waited. I had a staff in my hand. It was my only prop, a plastic stick painted to look like wood. It was then I heard a small, choking sound. Again the Object said, "False to him will I never be found." Followed by silence. I peeked out the curtain. Through the central arch I could see them. The Ob- ject had her back to me. Farther downstage Maxine Grossinger stood with a blank look on her face. Her mouth was open, though no words were coming out. Beyond, just above the lip of the stage, was Miss Fagles's florid face, whispering Maxine's next line. It wasn't stage fright. An aneurysm had burst in Maxine Gros- singer's brain. At first, the audience took her quick stagger and 338

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  “Well, regardless,” said the Colonel, “we’re at a dead end. So one of you think of something to do. Because I’m out of investigative tools.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the creek, stood up, and left. We followed him. Even in defeat, he was still the Colonel. fifty-one days after THE INVESTIGATION STALLED, I took to reading for religion class again, which seemed to please the Old Man, whose pop quizzes I’d been failing consistently for a solid six weeks. We had one that Wednesday morning: Share an example of a Buddhist koan. A koan is like a riddle that’s supposed to help you toward enlightenment in Zen Buddhism. For my answer, I wrote about this guy Banzan. He was walking through the market one day when he overheard someone ask a butcher for his best piece of meat. The butcher answered, “Everything in my shop is the best. You cannot find a piece of meat that is not the best.” Upon hearing this, Banzan realized that there is no best and no worst, that those judgments have no real meaning because there is only what is, and poof , he reached enlightenment. Reading it the night before, I’d wondered if it would be like that for me—if in one moment, I would finally understand her, know her, and understand the role I’d played in her dying. But I wasn’t convinced enlightenment struck like lightning. After we’d passed our quizzes, the Old Man, sitting, grabbed his cane and motioned toward Alaska’s fading question on the blackboard. “Let’s look at one sentence on page ninety-four of this very entertaining introduction to Zen that I had you read this week. ‘Everything that comes together falls apart,’” the Old Man said. “Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.” We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did. Someday no one will remember that she ever existed , I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did . Because memories fall apart, too. And then you’re left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else’s, dying again.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  ashore to enjoy his usual lemon ice on the Smyrna waterfront. In- stead he lay on his back, still and alert, ordering his aides— who came and went with dispatches from the front— not to slam the door or stomp their feet. This was one of the commander's more lucid, pro- ductive days. When the Turkish Army had attacked Afyon two weeks earlier, Hajienestis had believed that he was dead and that the ripples of light reflecting on his cabin walls were the pyrotechnics of heaven. At two o'clock, his second-in-command tiptoed into the general's cabin to speak in a whisper: "Sir, I am awaiting your orders for a counterattack, sir." "Do you hear how they squeak?" "Sir?" "My legs. My thin, vitreous legs." "Sir, I am aware the general is having trouble with his legs, but I submit, with all due respect, sir"— a little louder than a whisper now—"this is not a time to concentrate on such matters." "You think this is some kind of joke, don't you, lieutenant? But if your legs were made of glass, you'd understand. I can't go into shore. That's exactly what Kemal is banking on! To have me stand up and shatter my legs to pieces." "These are the latest reports, General." His second-in-command held a sheet of paper over Hajienestis' face. " £The Turkish cavalry has been sighted one hundred miles east of Smyrna,' " he read. " 'The refugee population is now 180,000.' That's an increase of 30,000 people since yesterday." "I didn't know death would be like this, lieutenant. I feel close to you. I'm gone. I've taken that trip to Hades, yet I can still see you. Listen to me. Death is not the end. This is what I've discovered. We remain, we persist. The dead see that I'm one of them. They're all around me. You can't see them, but they're here. Mothers with chil- dren, old women— everyone's here. Tell the cook to bring me my lunch." Outside, the famous harbor was full of ships. Merchant vessels were tied up to a long quay alongside barges and wooden caiques. Farther out, the Allied warships lay at anchor. The sight of them, for the Greek and Armenian citizens of Smyrna (and the thousands and thousands of Greek refugees), was reassuring, and whenever a rumor circulated— yesterday an Armenian newspaper had claimed that the 44 Allies, eager to make amends for their support of the Greek invasion, were planning to hand the city over to the victorious Turks— the citi- zens looked out at the French destroyers and British battleships, still on hand to protect European commercial interests in Smyrna, and their fears were calmed.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Victoria Pappas stood half in and half out of the light, the shading across her body exacdy that of the photograph on page 8 of Lingerie Parisienne. Desdemona (costume lady, stage manager, and director all in one) had pinned up Victoria's hair, letting ringlets fall over her forehead and warning her to keep her biggish nose in shadow. Per- fumed, depilated, moist with emollients, wearing kohl around her eyes, Victoria let Lefty look upon her. She felt the heat of his gaze, heard his heavy breathing, heard him try to speak twice— small squeaks from a dry throat— and then she heard his feet coming to- ward her, and she turned, making the face Desdemona had taught her; but she was so distracted by the effort to pout her lips like the French lingerie model that she didn't realize the footsteps weren't approaching but retreating; and she turned to see that Lefty Stephanides, the only eligible bachelor in town, had taken off . . . . . . Meanwhile, back at home, Desdemona opened her hope chest. She reached in and pulled out her own corset. Her mother had given it to her years ago in expectation of her wedding night, saying, "I hope you fill this out someday." Now, before the bedroom mirror, Desdemona held the strange, complicated garment against herself. Down went her knee socks, her gray underwear. Off came her high- 35 waisted skirt, her high-collared tunic. She shook off her kerchief and unbraided her hair so that it fell over her bare shoulders. The corset was made of white silk. As she put it on, Desdemona felt as though she were spinning her own cocoon, awaiting metamorphosis. But when she looked in the mirror again, she caught herself. It was no use. She would never get married. Lefty would come back tonight having chosen a bride, and then he would bring her home to live with them. Desdemona would stay where she was, clicking her beads and growing even older than she already felt. A dog howled. Someone in the village kicked over a bundle of sticks and cursed. And my grandmodier wept silentiy because she was going to spend the rest of her days counting worries that never went away . . . . While in the meantime Lucille Kafkalis was standing exacdy . . as she'd been told, half in and half out of the light, wearing a white hat sashed with glass cherries, a mantilla over bare shoulders, a bright green, decollete dress, and high heels, in which she didn't move for fear of falling. Her fat mother waddled in, grinning and shouting, "Here he comes! Even one minute he couldn't stay with Victoria!" . . . . .

• From Middlesex (2002)

  left but us." "It's not right." Roofs crashed, people screamed, as Lefty put his lips to his sister's ear. "You promised you'd find me a nice Greek girl. Well. You're it." On one side a man jumped into the water, trying to drown him- self; on the other, a woman was giving birth, as her husband shielded her with his coat. "Kaymaste! Kaymaste!" people shouted. "We're burning! We're burning!" Desdemona pointed, at the fire, at every- thing. "It's too late, Lefty. It doesn't matter now." "But if we lived? You'd marry me then?" A nod. That was all. And Lefty was gone, running toward the flames. On a black screen, a binocular-shaped template of vision sweeps back and forth, taking in the distant refugees. They scream without sound. They hold out their arms, beseeching. "They're going to cook the poor wretches alive." "Permission to retrieve a swimmer, sir." "Negative, Phillips. Once we take one aboard we'll have to take them all." "It's a girl, sir." "How old?" "Looks to be about ten or eleven." 59 Major Arthur Maxwell lowers his binoculars. A triangular knot of muscle tenses in his jaw and disappears. "Have a look at her, sir." "We mustn't be swayed by emotions here, Phillips. There are greater things at stake." "Have a look at her, sir." The wings of Major Maxwell's nose flare as he looks at Captain Phillips. Then, slapping one hand against his thigh, he moves to the side of the ship. The searchlight sweeps across the water, lighting up its own circle of vision. The water looks odd under the beam, a colorless broth lit- tered with a variety of objects: a bright orange; a man's fedora with a brim of excrement; bits of paper like torn letters. And then, amid this inert matter, she appears, holding on to the ship's line, a girl in a pink dress the water darkens to red, hair plastered to her small skull. Her eyes make no appeal, staring up. Her sharp feet kick every so often, like fins. Rifle fire from shore hits the water around her. She pays no atten- tion. "Turn off the searchlight." The light goes off and the firing stops. Major Maxwell looks at his watch. "It is now 2115 hours. I am going to my cabin, Phillips. I will stay there until 0700 hours. Should a refugee be taken aboard during that period, it would not come to my attention. Is that understood?" "Understood, sir." It didn't occur to Dr. Philobosian that the twisted body he stepped over in the street belonged to his younger son. He noticed only that his front door was open. In the foyer, he stopped to listen. There was

• From Middlesex (2002)

  to Milton, had been scrambled by the boys over in Intelligence. Mil- ton had saluted and walked out. He'd continued down to the beach still unaffected, the bad news acting with a kind of discretion, allow- ing him these last few peaceful, deluded moments. He watched the sunset. He admired a neutral Switzerland of seals out on the rocks. He took off his boots to feel the sand against his feet, as if the world were a place he was only beginning to live in instead of somewhere he would soon be leaving. But then the fissures appeared. A split in the top of his skull, through which the bad news hissingly poured; a groove in his knees, which buckled, and suddenly Milton couldn't keep it out any longer. Thirty-eight seconds. That was the news. "Stephanides, we're switching you over to signalman. Report to Building B at 0700 hours tomorrow morning. Dismissed." That was what the CO. had said. Only that. And it was no surprise, really. As the invasion neared, there had been a sudden rash of injuries to sig- nalmen. Signalmen had been chopping off fingers doing KP duty. Signalmen had been shooting themselves in the feet while cleaning their guns. In the nighttime drills, signalmen lustily flung themselves onto the rocks. Thirty- eight seconds was the life expectancy of a signalman. When the landing took place, Seaman Stephanides would stand in the front of the boat. He would operate a sort of lantern, flashing signals in Morse code. This lantern would be bright, clearly visible to enemy positions onshore. That was what he was thinking about as he stood on the beach with his boots off. He was thinking that he would never take over his father's bar. He was thinking that he would never see Tessie again. Instead, a few weeks from now, he would stand up in a boat, exposed to hostile fire, holding a bright light. For a little while, at least. Not included in the News of the World: a shot of my father's AKA transport ship leaving Coronado naval base, heading west. At the Es- quire Theater, holding her feet off the sticky floor, Tessie Zizmo watches as white arrows arc across the Pacific. The U.S. Naval Twelfth Fleetforges ahead on its invasion ofthe Pacific, the announcer says. Final 192 destination: Japan. One arrow starts out in Australia, moving through New Guinea toward the Philippines. Another arrow shoots out from the Solomon Islands and another from the Marianas. Tessie has never heard of these places before. But now the arrows continue on, ad- vancing toward other islands she's never heard of— Iwo Jima, Oki- nawa—each flagged with the Rising Sun. The arrows converge from three directions on Japan, which is just a bunch of islands itself. As

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Limping, dragging, we returned home. My mother helped Des- demona out of the car and led her to the guest house out back. It took some time. Desdemona kept leaning on her cane to rest. Finally, outside her door, she announced, "Tessie, I am going to bed now." "Okay,^jyz#," my mother said. "You take a rest." "I am going to bed," Desdemona said again. She turned and went inside. Beside the bed, her silkworm box was still open. That morn- ing, she had taken out Lefty's wedding crown, cutting it away from her own so he could be buried with it. She looked into the box for a moment now before closing it. Then she undressed. She took off her black dress and hung it in the garment bag full of mothballs. She re- turned her shoes to the box from Penney's. After putting on her nightgown, she rinsed out her panty hose in the bathroom and hung them over the shower rod. And then, even though it was only three in the afternoon, she got into bed. For the next ten years, except for a bath every Friday, she never got out again. 270 THE IHEDITERRAHEAI1 DIET rpihe didn't like being left on earth. She didn't like being left in L=7| America. She was tired of living. She was having a harder and Q^J harder time climbing stairs. A woman's life was over once her husband died. Somebody had given her the evil eye. Such were the answers Father Mike brought back to us the third day after Desdemona refused to get out of bed. My mother asked him to talk to her and he returned from the guest house with his Fra Angelico eyebrows lifted in tender exasperation. "Don't worry, it'll pass," he said. "I see this kind of thing with widows all the time." We believed him. But as the weeks went by, Desdemona only be- came more depressed and withdrawn. A habitual early riser, she be- gan to sleep late. When my mother brought in a breakfast tray, Desdemona opened one eye and gestured for her to leave it. Eggs got cold. Coffee filmed over. The only thing that roused her was her daily lineup of soap operas. She watched the cheating husbands and scheming wives as faithfully as ever, but she didn't reprimand them anymore, as if she'd given up correcting the errors of the world. Propped up against the headboard, her hairnet cinched on her fore- head like a diadem, Desdemona looked as ancient and indomitable as the elderly Queen Victoria. A queen of a sceptered isle that consisted only of a bird-filled bedroom. A queen in exile, with only two atten- dants remaining, Tessie and me. 271 "Pray for me to die," she instructed me. "Pray for yiayia to die and go be with papou? . .

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I smoke to die.” one hundred nine days before DINNER IN THE CAFETERIA the next night was meat loaf, one of the rare dishes that didn’t arrive deep-fried, and, perhaps as a result, meat loaf was Maureen’s greatest failure—a stringy, gravy-soaked concoction that did not much resemble a loaf and did not much taste like meat. Although I’d never ridden in it, Alaska apparently had a car, and she offered to drive the Colonel and me to McDonald’s, but the Colonel didn’t have any money, and I didn’t have much either, what with constantly paying for his extravagant cigarette habit. So instead the Colonel and I reheated two-day-old bufriedos—unlike, say, french fries, a microwaved bufriedo lost nothing of its taste or its satisfying crunch—after which the Colonel insisted on attending the Creek’s first basketball game of the season. “Basketball in the fall?” I asked the Colonel. “I don’t know much about sports, but isn’t that when you play football?” “The schools in our league are too small to have football teams, so we play basketball in the fall. Although, man, the Culver Creek football team would be a thing of beauty. Your scrawny ass could probably start at lineman. Anyway, the basketball games are great.” I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them. In third grade—the very last year that one could play T-ball—my mother wanted me to make friends, so she forced me onto the Orlando Pirates. I made friends all right—with a bunch of kindergartners, which didn’t really bolster my social standing with my peers. Primarily because I towered over the rest of the players, I nearly made it onto the T-ball all-star team that year. The kid who beat me, Clay Wurtzel, had one arm. I was an unusually tall third grader with two arms, and I got beat out by kindergartner Clay Wurtzel. And it wasn’t some pity-the-one-armed-kid thing, either. Clay Wurtzel could flat-out hit , whereas I sometimes struck out even with the ball sitting on the tee. One of the things that appealed to me most about Culver Creek was that my dad assured me there was no PE requirement. “There is only one time when I put aside my passionate hatred for the Weekday Warriors and their country-club bullshit,” the Colonel told me. “And that’s when they pump up the air-conditioning in the gym for a little old-fashioned Culver Creek basketball. You can’t miss the first game of the year.” As we walked toward the airplane hangar of a gym, which I had seen but never even thought to approach, the Colonel explained to me the most important thing about our basketball team: They were not very good. The “star” of the team, the Colonel said, was a senior named Hank Walsten, who played power forward despite being five-foot-eight.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I made an effort not to exhale near Lara as she groggily extricated herself from the sleeping bag. We packed everything quickly, threw our empty bottles into the tall grass of the field—littering was an unfortunate necessity at the Creek, since no one wanted to throw an empty bottle of booze in a campus trash can—and walked away from the barn. Lara grabbed my hand and then shyly let go. Alaska looked like a train wreck, but insisted on pouring the last few sips of Strawberry Hill into her cold instant coffee before chucking the bottle behind her. “Hair of the dog,” she said. “How ya doin’?” the Colonel asked her. “I’ve had better mornings.” “Hungover?” “Like an alcoholic preacher on Sunday morning.” “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” I suggested. “Pudge.” She shook her head and sipped the cold coffee and wine. “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.” — We walked side by side down the washed-out dirt road on our way back to campus. Just after we reached the bridge, Takumi stopped, said “uh-oh,” got on his hands and knees, and puked a volcano of yellow and pink. “Let it out,” Alaska said. “You’ll be fine.” He finished, stood up, and said, “I finally found something that can stop the fox. The fox cannot summit Strawberry Hill.” Alaska and Lara walked to their rooms, planning to check in with the Eagle later in the day, while Takumi and I stood behind the Colonel as he knocked on the Eagle’s door at 9:00 A.M. “Y’all are home early. Have fun?” “Yes sir,” the Colonel said. “How’s your mom, Chip?” “She’s doing well, sir. She’s in good shape.” “She feed y’all well?” “Oh yes sir,” I said. “She tried to fatten me up.” “You need it. Y’all have a good day.” — “Well, I don’t think he suspected anything,” the Colonel said on our way back to Room 43. “So maybe we actually pulled it off.” I thought about going over to see Lara, but I was pretty tired, so I just went to bed and slept through my hangover. It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life. But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four. the last day THE NEXT MORNING, the first Monday of the new semester, the Colonel came out of the shower just as my alarm went off. As I pulled on my shoes, Kevin knocked once and then opened the door, stepping inside. “You’re looking good,” the Colonel said casually. Kevin’s now sported a crew cut, a small patch of short blue hair on each side of his head, just above the ear. His lower lip jutted out—the morning’s first dip. He walked over to our COFFEE TABLE , picked up a can of Coke, and spit into it. “You almost didn’t get me.

• From The Greatest Controversies of Early Christian History (2013)

  Jewish Apocalypticism e Jewish apocalypticists subscribed to four major tenets, the first of which was dualism, a belief that there were two fundamental components of reality: the forces of good and the forces of evil. The forces of good have as their head God himself; the forces of evil have a personal counterpart to God, the devil. 27 Scanned by CamScanner Lecture 4: is Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolis? 28 o Throughout most of the Hebrew Bible, there’s no word of the devil or Satan. When Satan appears in the Hebrew Bible, for example, in the Book of Job, he’s not an evil force that’s opposed to God but one of God's advisors. By the time of the Jewish apocalypticists, however, God had a personal enemy in Satan. o The world was not just a place where humans lived, but one where supernatural powers were in constant conflict. People had to side either with good and God or with evil and the devil. o This cosmic dualism worked itself out in a historical scenario so that history itself was understood to be dualistic. The historical age in which people were living was controlled by the forces of evil. That’s why there was so much pain and suffering in the world—because forces that are inimical to God were in control. But in the future, God would destroy the forces of evil and bring in his good kingdom. The second major tenet of apocalypticism was pessimism about the possibilities of life in this world. Apocalypticists believed that things were not going to get better, the forces of evil were gaining power and would continue to rule until the end of the age, when, literally, all hell would break loose. The third tenet was vindication: God would ultimately vindicate himself and his people. He would intervene in the course of affairs to destroy the forces of evil. We should not think that we can improve our lot in this world and build ourselves into the kingdom of God. The kingdom would be brought by an act of God at the end of the age. At that time, everything that had sided with evil and everything that was evil, including people, would be judged and destroyed. o When God intervened, there would be a resurrection, an idea that was also developed by Jewish thinkers at this time. The future resurrection of the dead was meant to explain why there was so much suffering in this world among righteous people. Scanned by CamScanner o At the end of time, all people would be raised from the dead, and if they had sided with God and suffered as a result, they would be rewarded. If they had sided with the powers of evil, they would be judged and annihilated.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  person with a terminal illness, I was eager to ignore the immediate symptoms, hoping for a last-minute cure. I veered back and forth be- tween hope and its opposite, a growing certainty that something ter- rible was wrong with me. But nothing made me more desperate than looking in the mirror. I opened the door and stepped back into the room. "I hate this hotel," I said. "It's gross." "It's not too nice," Tessie agreed. "It used to be nicer," said Milton. "I don't understand what hap- pened." "The carpet smells." "Let's open a window." "Maybe we won't have to be here that long," Tessie said, hope- fully, wearily. In the evening we ventured outside, looking for something to eat, and then returned to the room to watch TV Later, after we switched off the lights, I asked from my cot, "What are we doing tomorrow?" "We have to go the doctor's in the morning," said Tessie. "After that we have to see about some Broadway tickets," said Mil- ton. "What do you want to see, Cal?" "I don't care," I said gloomily. "I think we should see a musical," said Tessie. "I saw Ethel Merman in Hello, Dolly!" Milton recalled. "She came down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right back up the staircase and sang the song over again." "Would you like to see a musical, Callie>" 405 "Whatever." "Damnedest thing I ever saw," said Milton. "That Ethel Merman can really belt it out." No one spoke after that. We lay in the dark, in our strange beds, until we fell asleep. The next morning after breakfast we set off to see the specialist. My parents tried to seem excited as we left the hotel, pointing out sights from the taxi window. Milton exuded the boisterousness he reserved for all difficult situations. "This is some place," he said as we drove up to New York Hospital. "River view! I might just check myself in." Like any teenager, I was largely oblivious to the clumsy figure I cut. My stork movements, my flapping arms, my long legs kicking out my undersized feet in their fawn-colored Wallabees— all that ma- chinery clanked beneath the observation tower of my head, and I was too close to see it. My parents did. It pained them to watch me ad- vance across the sidewalk toward the hospital entrance. It was terrify- ing to see your child in the grip of unknown forces. For a year now they had been denying how I was changing, putting it down to the awkward age. "She'll grow out of it," Milton was always telling my mother. But now they were seized with a fear that I was growing out of control.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I would like to particularly thank the indomitable Todd Cartee and also Olga Charny, Sean Titone, Emmett Cloud, Daniel Alarcon, Jennifer Jenkins, Chip Dunkin, and MLS. TURN THE PAGE FOR A READERS GUIDE TO [image "looking for alaska" file=Image00006.jpg] JOHN GREEN [image file=Image00007.jpg] Readers Guide © 2019 by John Green Dear Reader, Looking for Alaska began for me in September of 2001. I’d just turned 24, and I was working at Booklist magazine as an editorial assistant and occasional book reviewer. One of my editors, the children’s book author Ilene Cooper, often encouraged me to actually write the boarding school story I was always pitching to her. She even gave me a deadline: March 1, 2002. Then on September 11, the World Trade Center was attacked. A few days later, my girlfriend and I broke up. I used to think that our breakup caused my nearly catastrophic period of depression that fall, but now I understand that my depression at least in part caused the breakup. At any rate, I was forced to take a leave of absence from my job at Booklist to focus on getting my brain straightened out. Before I left, Booklist ’s publisher, Bill Ott, wrote me a note that concluded, “Now, more than ever, watch Harvey .” He’d been bothering me for years to watch this old black-and-white movie called Harvey . My dad drove me home to Orlando, where I hadn’t really lived since leaving for boarding school when I was fifteen. I spent a couple weeks in daily therapy sessions, figuring out a medication regimen that worked, and watching a lot of TV, where the news people kept talking about 9/11, the day that changed history. Soon, they were talking about the pre-9/11 world and the post-9/11 world. One night watching cable news, I heard a psychologist say that Americans would organize their memories around that terrible day: before and after. It occurred to me that we almost always measure time in relation to what matters most to us: In the Christian calendar, we measure distance from the birth of Jesus. In the Islamic calendar, time is measured from the hijrah, the Muslim community’s journey from Mecca to Medina. The story I wanted to tell was about young people whose lives are so transformed by an experience that they can only respond by reimagining time itself. I’d stumbled onto a structure that could work for the book, but I had no energy to actually write it. And then I watched Harvey , a movie about a man named Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend is a six-foot-tall invisible white rabbit named Harvey. Elwood is mentally ill, and it’d be easy to characterize him as worthless, or hopeless, or useless—all the things I felt were true of myself. But Harvey doesn’t see Elwood that way at all—the movie portrays him as kind and loving and even heroic.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  The cedar swamp lay on one side of the house. On the other was a dirt and gravel road that led through an open field, treeless, with high yellow grass. The absence of trees was noticeable, and poking around out there I came upon a historical marker, nearly overgrown. It marked the site of a fort or a massacre, I don't remember which. Moss encroached upon the raised letters and I didn't read the whole plaque. I stood there for a while thinking about the first settlers and how they had killed one another over beaver and fox pelts. I put my 380 foot on the plaque, kicking off the moss with my sneaker, until I got tired of that. It was almost noon by now. The bay was bright blue. Over the rise I could sense the city of Petoskey, the smoke of stoves and chimneys down there. The grass got marshy near the water. I climbed up on the breakwall and walked back and forth, keeping my balance. I held my arms out and pranced, Olga Korbut style. But my heart wasn't in it. And I was way too tall to be Olga Korbut. Some- time later the whir of an outboard engine reached me. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look out over the shimmering water. A speed- boat was shooting past. At the wheel was Rex Reese. Bare-chested, drinking a beer and wearing sunglasses, he gunned the throttle, tow- ing a water-skier. It was the Object, of course, in her shamrock bikini. She looked almost naked against the expanse of water, only those two little strips, one above, one below, separating her from Eden. Her red hair flapped like a gale warning. She wasn't a beautiful skier. She leaned too far forward, bowlegged on the pontoons. But she didn't fall. Rex kept turning around to check on her while he sipped his beer. Finally the boat made a sharp turn and the Object crossed her wake, whipping along past the shore. A terrible thing happens when you water-ski. After you release the rope, you keep skimming over the water for a while, free. But there comes an inevitable moment when your speed fails to sustain your forward progress. The surface of the water breaks like glass. The depths open up to claim you. That was how I felt on land, watching the Object ski past. That same plunging, hopeless feeling, that emo- tional physics.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  tearing at the masses of hair that tumbled down. Her hair was com- pletely gray but still very fine and, in the light coming from the television, it appeared to be almost blond. The hair fell over her shoulders and spread out over her body like the hair of Botticelli's Venus. The face framed by this astonishing cascade, however, was not that of a beautiful young woman but that of an old widow with a square head and dried-out mouth. In the unmoving air of the room and the smell of medicine and skin salves I could feel the weight of the time she had spent in this bed waiting and hoping to die. I'm not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness. The lesson of Desdemona's suffering and rejection of life insisted that old age would not continue the manifold pleasures of youth but would instead be a long trial that slowly robbed life of even its smallest, simplest joys. Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye. As I was standing there taking my grandmother in, Desdemona suddenly turned her head and noticed me. Her hand went up to her breast. With a frightened expression she reared back into her pillows and shouted, "Lefty!" Now I was the one who was shocked. "No, yiayia. It's not papou. It's me. Cal." "Who?" "Cal." I paused. "Your grandson." This wasn't fair, of course. Desdemona's memory was no longer sharp. But I wasn't helping her out any. "Cal?" "They called me Calliope when I was little." "You look like my Lefty," she said. "I do?" "I thought you were my husband coming to take me to heaven." She laughed for the first time. "I'm Milt and Tessie's kid." As quickly as it had come, the humor left Desdemona's face and she looked sad and apologetic. "I'm sorry. I don't remember you, honey." "I brought you these." I held out the Epsom salts and baklava. "Why Tessie isn't coming?" 524 "She has to get dressed." "Dressed for why?" "For the funeral." Desdemona gave a cry and clutched her breast again. "Who died?" I didn't answer. Instead I turned down the volume on the televi- sion. Then, pointing at the birdcage, I said, "I remember when you used to have about twenty birds." She looked over at the cage but said nothing. "You used to live in the attic. On Seminole. Remember? That's when you got all the birds. You said they reminded you of Bursa." At the sound of the name, Desdemona smiled again. "In Bursa we have all kind of birds. Green, yellow, red. All kind. Little birds but very beautiful. Like made from glass." "I want to go there. Remember that church there? I want to go and fix it up someday."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  We weren't the only ones living in the park. Occupying some dunes on the other side of the field were homeless guys, with long beards, their faces brown from sun and dirt. They were known to ransack other people's camps, so we never left ours unattended. That was pretty much the only rule we had. Someone always had to stand guard. I hung around the Deadheads because I was scared alone. My time on the road made me see the benefits of being in a pack. We had left home for different reasons. They weren't kids I would ever have been friends with in normal circumstances, but for that brief time I made do, because I had nowhere else to go. I was never at ease around them. But they weren't especially cruel. Fights broke out when kids had been drinking, but the ethos was nonviolent. Every- one was reading Siddhartha. An old paperback got passed around the camp. I read it, too. It's one of the things I remember most about that time: Cal, sitting on a rock, reading Hermann Hesse and learn- ing about the Buddha. "I heard the Buddha dropped acid," said one Head. "That's what his enlightenment was." "They didn't have acid back then, man." "No, it was like, you know, a 'shroom." "I think Jerry's the Buddha, man." "Yeah!" "Like when I fucking saw Jerry play that forty-five-minute space jam on 'Truckin' in Santa Fe,' I knew he was the Buddha." In all these conversations I took no part. See Cal in the far under- hang of the bushes, as all the Deadheads drift off to sleep. I had run away without thinking what my life would be like. I had 472 1 fled without having anywhere to run to. Now I was dirty, I was run- ning out of money. Sooner or later I would have to call my parents. But for the first time in my life, I knew that there was nothing they could do to help me. Nothing anyone could do. Every day I took the band to Ali Baba's and bought them veggie burgers for seventy-five cents each. I opted out on the begging and the dope dealing. Mostiy I hung around the mimosa grove, in grow- ing despair. A few times I walked out to the beach to sit by the sea, but after a while I stopped doing that, too. Nature brought no relief. Outside had ended. There was nowhere to go that wouldn't be me.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  I closed thebathroomdoor,locked it,andbentcloseto themir- rorto examinemy face.Two darkhairs, stillshort, werevisibleabove my upper lip. I got tweezers outofmycase and pluckedthem.This mademy eyes water.Myclothes felttight.Thesleevesofmysweater were too short.Icombedmyhair and,optimistically,desperately, smiledat myself. Iknew thatmy situation, whateverit was,wasacrisisofsome kind. Icouldtell thatfrom myparents'false,cheery behaviorand fromourspeedy exitfromhome. Still,noonehadsaid a word tome yet. Miltonand Tessiewere treatingmeexactlyastheyalwayshad— as theirdaughter, inotiier words.Theyactedasthoughmyproblem was medicalandthereforefixable. SoIbegantohopeso,too.Likea personwitha terminalillness, Iwaseagertoignoretheimmediate symptoms, hopingfor a last-minute cure.I veered backandforth be- tweenhope anditsopposite, a growingcertaintythat somethingter- riblewas wrongwithme.Butnothing mademe moredesperate than looking in the mirror. I opened thedoorand stepped backintotheroom."Ihate this hotel,"I said. "It's gross." "It's nottoonice," Tessieagreed. "Itusedto be nicer,"saidMilton."Idon'tunderstandwhathap- pened." "Thecarpetsmells." "Let's open a window." "Maybewewon'thavetobehere thatlong,"Tessiesaid,hope- fully, wearily. Intheevening we venturedoutside,lookingforsomethingtoeat, and thenreturned tothe roomtowatchTV Later,after we switched offthelights, I asked frommycot, "What are wedoingtomorrow?" "Wehave togothedoctor's inthemorning," said Tessie. "Afterthat wehavetosee aboutsome Broadwaytickets,"saidMil- ton."What doyou wanttosee,Cal?" "Idon't care," I saidgloomily. "I thinkwe shouldsee amusical,"said Tessie. "I saw EthelMerman inHello,Dolly!" Miltonrecalled."She came down thisbig, long staircase,singing. Whenshefinished,theplace went wild. Shestopped theshow. So shejust wentrightback upthe staircase andsang the songoveragain." "Would youliketo seeamusical, Callie>" 405 "Whatever." "Damnedest thingI eversaw,"saidMilton."ThatEthel Merman can really beltitout." Noonespoke afterthat. We layin thedark,in our strange beds, untilwe fellasleep. Thenext morningafterbreakfast wesetofftoseethespecialist. My parents triedtoseemexcited as weleftthehotel,pointing outsights fromthetaxiwindow.Milton exuded theboisterousnesshereserved forall difficultsituations."Thisissomeplace," hesaidaswedrove up toNew YorkHospital."Riverview!Imight justcheck myself in." Likeanyteenager,Iwas largely oblivioustotheclumsyfigureI cut.My storkmovements, my flappingarms, mylonglegskicking outmy undersizedfeetintheirfawn-coloredWallabees—allthat ma- chineryclankedbeneaththeobservationtowerofmyhead,andIwas tooclosetoseeit. My parents did.Itpainedthem to watch mead- vanceacrossthe sidewalk toward thehospitalentrance.Itwasterrify- ing to seeyourchildinthegripofunknownforces. For ayearnow theyhadbeendenyinghowIwaschanging, puttingitdown to the awkwardage."She'll grow out ofit,"Miltonwasalwaystellingmy mother.ButnowtheywereseizedwithafearthatIwas growing out ofcontrol. We found the elevatorandrodeuptothe fourthfloor, then fol- lowedthearrowstosomethingcalledthe PsychohormonalUnit. Milton hadtheoffice numberwrittenoutonacard.Finallywe found therightroom.Thegraydoorwas unmarkedexceptforanex- tremelysmall, unobtrusivesign halfwaydownthatread: SexualDisordersand GenderIdentity Clinic Ifmyparents saw thesign, they pretendednot to.Milton loweredhis head, bull-like, andpushedthe dooropen. The receptionist welcomedusand toldus tohave a seat. The waitingroomwasunexceptional.Chairs lined thewalls,divided evenlyby magazine tables,andtherewas the usualrubbertree expir- inginthecorner.Thecarpetingwas institutional,witha hectic, stain- camouflagingpattern.Therewasevena reassuringly medicinal smell in the air.Aftermymother filled outthe insuranceforms,we were 406 shown intothe doctor's office. This, too,inspired confidence.An Eames chairstood behind the desk.By the window wasa LeCor- busier chaise,madeofchrome andcowhide.Thebookshelveswere filledwith medicalbooks andjournals andthewallstastefullyhung withart. Big-citysophistication attuned toaEuropean sensibility. The surroundofatriumphant psychoanalyticworld-view.Not to mentiontheEastRiverview outthewindows. We were a longway from Dr.Phil'sofficewithitsamateur oilsandMedicaidcases. Itwastwoor three minutesbefore wenoticedanythingoutofthe ordinary.Atfirstthecurios andetchingshadblendedinwiththe scholarlyclutteroftheoffice. Butaswesat waiting forthedoctor,we became aware ofa silent commotionallaround us. Itwaslike staring at thegroundand realizing, suddenly,that it isswarmingwithants. Therestfuldoctor'sofficewaschurningwithactivity.The paper- weightonhisdesk,forinstance, was not a simple,inertrock buta tinypriapuscarvedfromstone.Theminiaturesonthewallsrevealed theirsubjectmatterundercloserobservation.Beneathyellowsilk tents,onpaisleypillows,Mughalprincesacrobaticallycopulated withmultiplepartners,keepingtheirturbansinplace.Tessieblushed, looking;whileMiltonsquinted;andIhid inside myhairasusual. Wetriedtolooksomeplaceelseandsolookedatthe bookshelves. But hereitwasn'tsafeeither.Amida dullingsurroundofissuesof JAMA andTheNewEngland Journal of Medicineweresome eye- popping titles. One, with entwiningsnakesonthespine,wascalled Erotosexual PairBonding.There was a purple,pamphletythingenti- dedRitualizedHomosexuality:ThreeFieldStudies.Onthedesk itself, with abookmark init,wasa manual calledHap-Penis:SurgicalTech- niques inFemale-to-Male Sex Reassignment.Ifthesignonthefront door hadn'talready,Luce'soffice madeitclearjustwhatkind of spe- cialist myparentshadbrought metosee.(And,worse, to see me.) There weresculptures,too. Reproductions fromthetempleatKu- jaraho occupied corners ofthe roomalongwithhugejade plants. Against thewaxygreenfoliage, melon-breasted Hinduwomenbent over double, offeringup orificeslike prayerstothe well-endowed men who answeredthem.An overloaded switchboard,adirtygame of Twister everywhereyou turned. "Will you lookat thisplace?" Tessie whispered. "Sort of unusual decor,"said Milton. 407

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "How many?"saidChapterEleven. "Sixty-six.Got eightinFlorida." Thatwasas farasthehardsell went. Milton atehisHerculeshot dogs in silence.He knew perfectiywellwhy Gus wasactingsoover- friendly.Itwas becausehewas thinkingwhateveryonethinkswhen a girldisappears. Hewasthinking the worst. Thereweremoments when Miltondid,too. He didn'tadmit ittoanyone.Hedidn'tadmit it to himself.But whenever Tessie spoke about the umbilicalcord, whensheclaimed thatshe couldstillfeelmeouttheresomewhere, Miltonfound himselfwanting tobelieveher. OneSunday asTessieleftfor church,Miltonhandedheralarge bill."Lighta candleforGallic Getabunch." Heshrugged."Couldn't hurt." But after she wasgoneheshookhis head. "What'sthematterwith me? Lightingcandles!Christ!"Hewasfurious at himselfforgiving in tosuchsuperstition.Hevowedagainthathewouldfindme;he wouldgetmeback.Somehoworother.Achancewouldcomehis way,andwhenitdid,MiltonStephanides wouldn'tmissit. TheDeadcametoBerkeley.Mattandthe otherkidstroopedoffto theconcert.I wasgiventhe job to lookafterthecamp. Itis midnightinthe mimosagrove.Iawaken,hearingnoises. Lightsaremovingthroughthebushes.Voicesaremurmuring. The leavesover myhead turnwhiteandIcanseethe scaffoldingof branches.Lightspecklestheground,mybody,my face.In the next second aflashlightcomes blazingthroughtheopeninginmylair. Themen areonmeatonce. Oneshineshisflashlightinmyfaceas theother jumpsontomychest, pinningmyarms. "Riseand shine,"says theonewithdie flashlight. Itis twohomelessguysfromthe dunes opposite. Whiletheone sits ontop ofme,theotherbegins searchingthecamp. "What kind ofgoodies youlittlefuckersgotinhere?" "Look athim," says theother."Littlefucker's gonnashithispants." I squeeze mylegs together,thegirlishfearsstilloperatinginme. They arelookingfordrugsmainly.Theonewiththe flashlight shakes out the sleepingbagsandsearchesmy suitcase.After a while he comes backandgetsdownononeknee. "Where areallyourfriends, man?Theygo offandleave youall alone?" 475 Hehasbegun togothroughmy pockets.Soonhe findsmywallet and emptiesit.As he does,myschoolIDfallsout. Heshines the flashlighton it. "What'sthis? Yourgirlfriend?" He staresatthephoto,grinning."Yourgirlfriend like tosuck cock?Ibet shedoes."Hepicks up theID andholdsitoverthe front of hispants,thrustinghiships."Ohyeah,she does!" "Letmesee that," says the oneontopofme. TheguywiththeflashlighttossestheIDontomychest. Theguy pinning me lowershisfaceclose to mineand saysinadeepvoice,"Don't you move,motherfucker."Heletsgoofmyarms and picks uptheID. Icanseehisfacenow. Grizzled beard,badteeth,noseaskew, showingseptum.Hecontemplatesthesnapshot."Skinny bitch."He looksfrommetotheIDandhisexpressionchanges. "It's a chick!" "Quickontheuptake,man.Ialwayssaythataboutyou." "No,ImeanhimVHeispointingdownatme."It'sher!He's a she."Heholds up theIDfortheotherone to see.Theflashlightis againtrainedonCalliopeinher blazer andblouse. Atlengththekneelingmangrins."Youholding outonus? Huh? Yougotthegoodsstashedawayunderthosepants?Holdher,"heor- ders. Themanastridemepinsmyarmsagain whilethe other oneun- doesmybelt. I triedtofightthemoff.Isquirmedand kicked.But they were too strong.They gotmy pantsdowntomyknees.Theoneaimed the flashlight and thensprangaway. "Jesus Christ!" "What?" "Fuck!" "What?" "It's a fuckingfreak." "What?" "I'mgonna puke,man.Look!" Nosoonerhadtheother one donesothan heletgoofmeas thoughIwerecontaminated.He stoodup, enraged. Bysilent agree- ment,theythenbegantokickme.As they did, theyuttered curses. The onewhohadpinnedmedrovehistoeinto myside.I grabbed his legandhungon. 476 "Let go ofme,you fucking freak!" The otheronewaskicking me in thehead.Hediditthreeorfour times beforeIblackedout. WhenI came to, everything wasquiet.Ihad the impression they hadgone. Thensomebody chuckled."Crossswords," a voice said. The twinyellow streams, scintillant,intersected, soakingme. "Crawlback intothe holeyoucame outof,freak." Theyleftme there. Itwas still darkout whenIfound thepublicfountain by the aquar- iumand bathedinit.Ididn't seemtobebleedinganywhere.My right eye wasswollenshut.Myside hurt ifItook adeepbreath.Ihad mydad's Samsonitewithme. I hadseventy-five centstomyname.I wishedmorethananything that Icouldcallhome.Instead, Icalled BobPresto.Hesaidhewouldberightovertopickme up. 477 HERITlflPHRODITUS fs nosurprisethatLuce'stheory of gender identitywaspopularin theearlyseventies.Backthen,asmyfirstbarber put it,everybody wanted togo unisex.Theconsensus wasthatpersonalitywaspri- marilydeterminedbyenvironment,eachchild a blankslatetobe writtenon.Myownmedicalstorywasonlyareflectionofwhatwas happeningpsychologicallytoeveryoneinthoseyears.Womenwere becomingmorelikemenandmenwerebecomingmorelike women. For a little while during the seventies it seemedthatsexualdifference might passaway.Butthenanotherthinghappened. It wascalledevolutionarybiology. Under itssway,thesexes were separated again,menintohuntersand womenintogatherers. Nur- turenolonger formed us; naturedid.Impulsesof hominidsdating from 20,000 B.C. werestillcontrollingus. Andsotodayon televi- sion and inmagazines you get thecurrent simplifications. Why can'tmencommunicate? (Becausetheyhadtobe quietonthehunt.) Whydowomen communicate so well?(Becausetheyhad to call out toone another wherethefruitsand berrieswere.)Why can men never find thingsaroundthehouse?(Because they havea narrowfield ofvision,usefulintrackingprey.)Why can women findthingssoeasily? (Becauseinprotectingthenest theywere used toscanningawidefield.) Whycan'twomen parallel-park? (Because lowtestosteroneinhibits spatialability.)Why won'tmenask for directions?(Because askingfordirectionsisa signof weakness, andhuntersnever show weakness.)Thisis where we aretoday. Men 478