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 Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  just nodded. The four of us sat in silence around the table in the backroom of a neighborhood bar on the West Side. It was pretty empty. Jan, Grant, Edwin, and I didn’t look at each other. We stared at our beer bottles as though the answers we searched for could be found there. “T’ve been dreaming a lot lately,” I said. “I had this nightmare last night that I was being chased by something to the edge of a cliff. I’m scared of what’s coming behind me; I don’t know what’s ahead of me. And suddenly I decide I'd rather jump than wait for it to catch up to me.” “What’s it mean?” Grant asked me. “You know,” I told her. Grant shrugged. “I know how it feels. I don’t know what it means.” I looked at Ed. She knew what I was talking about. I knew she did. “I’ve been thinking about Rocco,” I said. Jan sighed and nodded. She used her thumbnail to scrape the label off her beer bottle. “I knew that’s what you were talking about.” I nodded. “T can’t help thinking maybe I’d be safe, you know?” Ed still wouldn’t look at me. Grant nodded. “God help me, I’ve been thinking about it, too. You know Ginni? She got on a sex- change program, now she calls herself Jimmy.” Edwin glared at Grant. “He asked us to call him he—remember? We ought to do it.” Jan put her beer bottle down on the table. “Yeah, but I’m not like Jimmy. Jimmy told me he knew he was a guy even when he was little. ’m not a guy.” Grant leaned forward. “How do you know that? How do you know we aren’t? We aren’t real women are we?” Edwin shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell I am.” I leaned over and put my arm around her shoulder. “You’re my friend.” Ed laughed sardonically. “Oh, great. Like I can really pay my rent with that.” I smacked her on the shoulder. “Fuck you.” Grant went to the bar to get another round of drinks; Jan went to the bathroom. I watched as she opened the door marked Ladies. No women ran out, and no men ran in to drag her out, so I figured she was OK. Ed punched me on the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “How long we been friends, Ed?” She dropped her eyes. “So how come you can’t tell me what’s going on with you? You know I’ve figured it out, but you won't talk to me.” Stone Butch Blues 155 Ed shrugged. “I feel ashamed.” “Ashamed you're doing it, or just ashamed?” Grant came back to the table balancing four beers. Jan returned a moment later. Ed rubbed her eyes over and over again. “What’s going on?” Grant asked. T looked at Ed. “It’s no shame,” I told her. Ed nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I spoke only with their sisters, the three goddesses called Fear, Pallor and Fever. I saw no “Asian luxury,” as had St. Augustine, or as he imagined he had. Nor did I see “the two twins born, so near together, that the second held the first by the heel.” But I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet, nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, nor did the sun strike it squarely, nor did the rain ever wash it. For the genuine Inferno which I had to postpone for twenty years I give you Myrtle Avenue, one of the innumerable bridlepaths ridden by iron monsters which lead to the heart of America’s emptiness. If you have only seen Essen or Manchester or Chicago or Levallois-Perret or Glasgow or Hoboken or Canarsie or Bayonne you have seen nothing of the magnificent emptiness of progress and enlightenment. Dear reader, you must see Myrtle Avenue before you die, if only to realize how far into the future Dante saw. You must believe me that on this street, neither in the houses which line it, nor the cobblestones which pave it, nor the elevated structure which cuts it atwain, neither in any creature that bears a name and lives thereon, neither in any animal, bird or insect passing through it to slaughter or already slaughtered, is there hope of “lubet,” “sublimate” or “abominate.” It is a street not of sorrow, for sorrow would be human and recognizable, but of sheer emptiness: it is emptier than the most extinct volcano, emptier than a vacuum, emptier than the word God in the mouth of an unbeliever. I said I did not know a word of French then, and it is true, but I was just on the brink of making a great discovery, a discovery which would compensate for the emptiness of Myrtle Avenue and the whole American continent. I had almost reached the shore of that great French ocean which goes by the name of Elie Faure, an ocean which the French themselves had hardly navigated and which they had mistaken, it seems, for an inland sea. Reading him even in such a withered language as English has become I could see that this man who had described the glory of the human race on his cuff was Father Zeus of Atlantis whom I had been searching for. An ocean I called him, but he was also a world symphony. He was the first musician the French have produced; he was exalted and controlled, an anomaly, a Gallic Beethoven, a great physician of the soul, a giant lightning rod. He was also a sunflower turning with the sun, always drinking in the light, always radiant and blazing with vitality.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I said good-by nonchalantly and I went down the street like a dead man. The next morning I was bound for the Coast, determined to start a new life. The new life was also a fiasco. I ended up on a ranch in Chula Vista, the most miserable man that ever walked the earth. There was this girl I loved and there was the other woman, for whom I felt only a profound pity. I had been living with her for two years, this other woman, but it seemed like a lifetime. I was twenty-one and she admitted to be thirty-six. Every time I looked at her I said to myself—when I am thirty she will be forty-five, when I am forty she will be fifty-five, when I am fifty she will be sixty-five. She had fine wrinkles under the eyes, laughing wrinkles, but wrinkles just the same. When I kissed her they were magnified a dozen times. She laughed easily, but her eyes were sad, terribly sad. They were Armenian eyes. Her hair, which had been red once, was now a peroxide blonde. Otherwise she was adorable—a Venusian body, a Venusian soul, loyal, lovable, grateful, everything a woman should be, except that she was fifteen years older. The fifteen years’ difference drove me crazy. When I went out with her I thought only—how will it be ten years hence? Or else, what age does she seem to have now? Do I look old enough for her? Once we got back to the house it was all right. Climbing the stairs I would run my finger up her crotch, which used to make her whinny like a horse. If her son, who was almost my age, were in bed we would close the doors and lock ourselves in the kitchen. She’d lie on the narrow kitchen table and I’d slough it into her. It was marvelous. And what made it more marvelous was that with each performance I would say to myself—This is the last time . . . tomorrow I will beat it! And then, since she was the janitress, I would go down to the cellar and roll the ash barrels out for her. In the morning, when the son had left for work, I would climb up to the roof and air the bedding. Both she and the son had T.B. . . . Sometimes there were no table bouts. Sometimes the hopelessness of it all got me by the throat and I would put on my things and go for a walk. Now and then I forgot to return. And when I did that I was more miserable than ever, because I knew that she would be waiting for me with those large sorrowful eyes. I’d go back to her like a man who had a sacred duty to perform.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And on this fringe of the virginal logic of perfection I am dancing the soul dance of white desperation, the last white man pulling the trigger on the last emotion, the gorilla of despair beating his breast with immaculate gloved paws. I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the center of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the angelic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars. In the moment all is clear to me, clear that in this logic there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow. The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless, uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own death, spiritually bright and hard. I was divided into endless yesterdays, endless tomorrows, resting only on the cusp of the event, a wall with many windows, but the house gone. I must shatter the walls and windows, the last shell of the lost body, if I am to rejoin the present. That is why I no longer look into the eyes or through the eyes, but by the legerdemain of will swim through the eyes, head and arms and legs, to explore the curve of vision. I see around myself as the mother who bore me once saw round the corners of time.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The empty belly, the wild look in the eye, the fear, the fear of worse, driving them on. One after the other, all the same, all goaded to desperation, out of the goad and whip of hunger building the loftiest skyscrapers, the most redoutable dreadnoughts, making the finest steel, the flimsiest lace, the most delicate glassware. Walking with O’Rourke and hearing nothing but theft, arson, rape, homicide was like listening to a little motif out of a grand symphony. And just as one can whistle an air of Bach and be thinking of a woman he wants to sleep with, so, listening to O’Rourke, I would be thinking of the moment when he would stop talking and say “what’ll you have to eat?” In the midst of the most gruesome murder I could think of the pork tenderloin which we would be sure to get at a certain place farther up the line, and wonder too what sort of vegetables they would have on the side to go with it, and whether I would order pie afterwards or a custard pudding. It was the same when I slept with my wife now and then; while she was moaning and gibbering I might be wondering if she had emptied the grounds in the coffee pot, because she had the bad habit of letting things slide—the important things, I mean. Fresh coffee was important—and fresh bacon with the eggs. If she were knocked up again that would be bad, serious in a way, but more important than that was fresh coffee in the morning and the smell of bacon and eggs. I could put up with heartbreaks and abortions and busted romances, but I had to have something under my belt to carry on, and I wanted something nourishing, something appetizing. I felt exactly like Jesus Christ would have felt if he had been taken down from the cross and not permitted to die in the flesh. I am sure that the shock of crucifixion would have been so great that he would have suffered a complete amnesia as regards humanity. I am certain that after his wounds had healed he wouldn’t have given a damn about the tribulations of mankind but would have fallen with the greatest relish upon a fresh cup of coffee and a slice of toast, assuming he could have had it. Whoever, through too great love, which is monstrous after all, dies of his misery, is born again to know neither love nor hate, but to enjoy. And this joy of living, because it is unnaturally acquired, is a poison which eventually vitiates the whole world. Whatever is created beyond the normal limits of human suffering, acts as a boomerang and brings about destruction. At night the streets of New York reflect the crucifixion and death of Christ.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I could exist with or without a body then. If I killed a little bird and roasted it over the fire and ate it, it was not because I was hungry but because I wanted to know about Timbuktu or Tierra del Fuego. I had to stand in the vacant lot and eat dead birds in order to create a desire for that bright land which later I would inhabit alone and people with nostalgia. I expected ultimate things of this place, but I was deplorably deceived. I went as far as one could go in a state of complete deadness, and then by a law, which must be the law of creation, I suppose, I suddenly flared up and began to live inexhaustibly, like a star whose light is unquenchable. Here began the real cannibalistic excursions which have meant so much to me: no more dead chippies picked from the bonfire, but live human meat, tender, succulent human flesh, secrets like fresh bloody livers, confidences like swollen tumors that have been kept on ice. I learned not to wait for my victim to die, but to eat into him while he was talking to me. Often when I walked away from an unfinished meal I discovered that it was nothing more than an old friend minus an arm or a leg. I sometimes left him standing there—a trunk full of stinking intestines. Being of the city, of the only city in the world and no place like Broadway anywhere, I used to walk up and down staring at the floodlit hams and other delicacies. I was a schizerino from the sole of my boots to the tips of my hair. I lived exclusively in the gerundive, which I understood only in Latin. Long before I had read of her in the Black Book I was cohabiting with Hilda, the giant cauliflower of my dreams. We traversed all the morganatic diseases together and a few which were ex cathedra. We dwelt in the carcass of the instincts and were nourished by ganglionic memories. There was never a universe, but millions and billions of universes, all of them put together no bigger than a pinhead. It was a vegetal sleep in the wilderness of the mind. It was the past, which alone comprises eternity. Amidst the fauna and flora of my dreams I would hear long distance calling. Messages were dropped on my table by the deformed and the epileptic. Hans Castorp would call sometimes and together we would commit innocent crimes. Or, if it were a bright freezing day, I would do a turn in the velodrome with my Presto bike from Chemnitz, Bohemia. Best of all was the skeleton dance. I would first wash all my parts at the sink, change my linen, shave, powder, comb my hair, don my dancing pumps.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Until the time when I would encounter a force strong enough to whirl me out of this mad stone forest no life would be possible for me nor could one page be written which would have meaning. Perhaps in reading this, one has still the impression of chaos but this is written from a live center and what is chaotic is merely peripheral, the tangential shreds, as it were, of a world which no longer concerns me. Only a few months ago I was standing in the streets of New York looking about me as years ago I had looked about me; again I found myself studying the architecture, studying the minute details which only the dislocated eye takes in. But this time it was like coming down from Mars. What race of men is this, I asked myself. What does it mean? And there was no remembrance of suffering or of the life that was snuffed out in the gutter, only that I was looking upon a strange and incomprehensible world, a world so removed from me that I had the sensation of belonging to another planet. From the top of the Empire State Building I looked down one night upon the city which I knew from below: there they were, in true perspective, the human ants with whom I had crawled, the human lice with whom I had struggled. They were moving along at a snail’s pace, each one doubtless fulfilling his microcosmic destiny. In their fruitless desperation they had reared this colossal edifice which was their pride and boast. And from the topmost ceiling of this colossal edifice they had suspended a string of cages in which the imprisoned canaries warbled their senseless warble. At the very summit of their ambition there were these little spots of beings warbling away for dear life. In a hundred years, I thought to myself, perhaps they would be caging live human beings, gay, demented ones, who would sing about the world to come. Perhaps they would breed a race of warblers who would warble while the others worked. Perhaps in every cage there would be a poet or a musician so that life below might flow on unimpeded, one with the stone, one with the forest, a rippling creaking chaos of null and void. In a thousand years they might all be demented, workers and poets alike, and everything fall back to ruin as has happened again and again.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  This exasperating girl, on the other hand, contained a tangible somethingness that she not only refused to expunge, but that seemed to willfully expand itself so that he banged into it with every attempt to invade her. He didn’t mind the somethingness; he rather liked it, in fact, and had looked forward to seeing it demolished. But she refused to let him do it. Why had she told him she was a masochist? He looked at her body. Her limbs were muscular and alert. He considered taking her by the neck and bashing her head against the floor. He stood abruptly. “I want to get something to eat. I’m starving.” She put her hand on his ankle. Her desire to abase herself had been completely frustrated. She had pulled him to the rug certain that if only they could fuck, he would enter her with overwhelming force and take complete control of her. Instead she had barely felt him, and what she had felt was remote and cold. Somewhere on her exterior he’d been doing some biting thing that meant nothing to her and was quite unpleasant. Despairing, she held his ankle tighter and put her forehead on the carpet. At least she could stay at his feet, worshiping. He twisted free and walked away. “Come on,” he said. — The car was in the parking lot. It was because of the car that this weekend had come about. It was his wife’s car, an expensive thing that her ex-husband had given her. It had been in Washington for over a year; he was here to retrieve it and drive it back to New York. Beth was appalled by the car. It was a loud yellow monster with a narrow, vicious shape and absurd doors that snapped up from the roof and out like wings. In another setting it might have seemed glamorous, but here, behind this equally monstrous building, in her unsatisfactory clothing, the idea of sitting in it with him struck her as comparable to putting on a clown nose and wearing it to dinner. They drove down a suburban highway lined with small businesses, malls and restaurants. It was twilight; several neon signs blinked consolingly. “Do you think you could make some effort to change your mood?” he said. “I’m not in a bad mood,” she said wearily. “I just feel blank.” Not blank enough, he thought. He pulled into a Roy Rogers fast food cafeteria. She thought: He is not even going to take me to a nice place. She was insulted. It seemed as though he was insulting her on purpose. The idea was incredible to her. She walked through the line with him, but did not take any of the shiny dishes of food displayed on the fluorescent-lit aluminum shelves.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Her voice fluttered against his skin. “David has a gig out of town next week. Will you come stay with me?” “Maybe.” — Sometimes, though, he thought Daisy was sort of a stupid little thing. He thought it when he looked at Diane and noticed the stern, distinct line of her mouth, her strong nose, the muscles of her bared arms flexing as she furiously picked her nails. She didn’t ask annoying questions about drugs. She never thought about being a misfit, or having a place in society. She loathed society. She sat still as a stone, her heavy-lidded eyes impassively half-closed, the inclination of her head in beautiful agreement with her lean, severe arm and the cigarette resting in her intelligent fingers. But it was too late. Diane wouldn’t talk to him anymore, except to insult him. She changed her medication days so she wouldn’t be on schedule with him. Sometimes she didn’t medicate at all. She said it made her cry. He found her crying one day when he came home from work. It was so rare to see Diane cry that it was several minutes before he realized there were tears on her face. She was sitting in the aging purple armchair by the window, one leg drawn up and bent so that her knee shielded her face. Her shoulders were in a tight curl, she held her long bare foot tightly in her hand. She watched him walk past her. She let him reach the doorknob before she said, “You’re seeing someone.” He stopped and faced her, thankful and relieved that she had said it first. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “I didn’t know how.” “You cowardly piece of shit.” “It’s nothing serious,” he said. “It’s just an obsession.” “It’s Daisy, isn’t it?” She said the name like it was a disease. “How did you know?” “The way you mentioned her name. It was sickening.” “I didn’t intend for it to happen.” “What a slime-bag you are.” It was then that he identified the glistening on her cheeks and chin. The tears were wrenching and poignant on her still face. He dropped his bag of jelly beans and moved toward her. He sat on the fat arm of the chair and put his arms around her rigid, shivering body. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s like before,” she said. “With Rita. It’s so repulsive.” “If you can stay with me through this, just wait it out…” “I want you out of here by the end of the month.” The tears shimmered through her voice, which quivered like sunlight in a puddle. He wanted to make love to her. “You’re the cruelest person I’ve ever known.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I did it gratis. When they fished the corpse out they found it was marked F.O.B. Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn; it was returned C.O.D. When I was asked later why I had killed myself I could only think to say—because I wanted to electrify the cosmos! I meant by that a very simple thing—The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western had been electrified, the Seaboard Air Line had been electrified, but the soul of man was still in the covered wagon stage. I was born in the midst of civilization and I accepted it very naturally—what else was there to do? But the joke was that nobody else was taking it seriously. I was the only man in the community who was truly civilized. There was no place for me—as yet. And yet the books I read, the music I heard assured me that there were other men in the world like myself. I had to go and drown myself in the Gulf of Mexico in order to have an excuse for continuing this pseudo-civilized existence. I had to delouse myself of my spiritual body, as it were. When I woke up to the fact that as far as the scheme of things goes I was less than dirt I really became quite happy. I quickly lost all sense of responsibility. And if it weren’t for the fact that my friends got tired of lending me money I might have gone on indefinitely pissing the time away. The world was like a museum to me; I saw nothing to do but eat into this marvelous chocolate layer cake which the men of the past had dumped on our hands. It annoyed everybody to see the way I enjoyed myself. Their logic was that art was very beautiful, oh yes, indeed, but you must work for a living and then you will find that you are too tired to think about art. But it was when I threatened to add a layer or two on my own account to this marvelous chocolate layer cake that they blew up on me. That was the finishing touch. That meant I was definitely crazy. First I was considered to be a useless member of society; then for a time I was found to be a reckless, happy-go-lucky corpse with a tremendous appetite; now I had become crazy. (Listen, you bastard, you find yourself a job . . . we’re through with you!) In a way it was refreshing, this change of front. I could feel the wind blowing through the corridors. At least “we” were no longer becalmed. It was war, and as a corpse I was just fresh enough to have a little fight left in me. War is revivifying. War stirs the blood.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  You no longer believe in reality but in thinking. And when you are pushed off the dead end your thoughts go with you and they are of no use to you. In a way, in a profound way, I mean, Christ was never pushed off the dead end. At the moment when he was tottering and swaying, as if by a great recoil, this negative backwash rolled up and stayed his death. The whole negative impulse of humanity seemed to coil up into a monstrous inert mass to create the human integer, the figure one, one and indivisible. There was a resurrection which is inexplicable unless we accept the fact that men have always been willing and ready to deny their own destiny. The earth rolls on, the stars roll on, but men, the great body of men which makes up the world, are caught in the image of the one and only one. If one isn’t crucified, like Christ, if one manages to survive, to go on living above and beyond the sense of desperation and futility, then another curious thing happens. It’s as though one had actually died and actually been resurrected again; one lives a supernormal life, like the Chinese. That is to say, one is unnaturally gay, unnaturally healthy, unnaturally indifferent. The tragic sense is gone: one lives on like a flower, a rock, a tree, one with Nature and against Nature at the same time. If your best friend dies you don’t even bother to go to the funeral; if a man is run down by a streetcar right before your eyes you keep on walking just as though nothing had happened; if a war breaks out you let your friends go to the front but you yourself take no interest in the slaughter. And so on and so on. Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show. Loneliness is abolished, because all values, your own included, are destroyed. Sympathy alone flourishes, but it is not a human sympathy, a limited sympathy—it is something monstrous and evil. You care so little that you can afford to sacrifice yourself for anybody or anything. At the same time your interest, your curiosity, develops at an outrageous pace. This too is suspect, since it is capable of attaching you to a collar button just as well as to a cause. There is no fundamental, unalterable difference between things: all is flux, all is perishable. The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within however you grow hard as a diamond. And perhaps it is this hard, magnetic core inside you which attracts others to you willy-nilly. One thing is certain, that when you die and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow; you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The subject of child prostitution almost always did, even after all this time. This was because she had told him, almost on meeting him, that she had left home at the age of fifteen and had, when she was sixteen, become a hooker for two months. She was a twenty-two-year-old college junior when they met, but the information had formed a fascinating gauze that floated over her for the entire time that he knew her. He went to a screening of the South American film after work. It was a beautifully photographed political allegory, the kind he nearly always liked. But the frame that stayed with him had nothing to do with politics. The dark child, raped by her brutal first customer, turns her head to avoid his kiss, and a flat, brilliant fish swimming in imaginary water is superimposed, with rippling subtlety, over her face, a memory, perhaps, of the pretty fish tank in her grandmother’s demolished mansion. When he got home he called one of the women he dated. “Nothing special,” he said. “Just checking up on you. Seeing how you are.” She was pleased by his call, and told him she’d been depressed all week because of an agent’s reaction to her writing. He lost interest in the conversation sooner than he’d expected. He told her he had to go, but that he’d call her soon. Then he called the woman who hated telephones. She was depressed too. Her father had been calling to talk to her about how awful his life was, sometimes before she made it out of the apartment in the morning. That was a little more entertaining, but he cut that short too. He made himself a quick dinner of packaged vegetable-flavored Indian noodles with butter. Then he opened a can of sardines and took them into his bedroom to eat in front of the TV. The best thing that he found to watch was a talk show featuring a beautiful teenaged movie star who had recently performed an erotic nude scene in a box office hit. He liked to watch her. Her precise, careful manner would have seemed stiff in a grown woman, but was charming in a child sex star. Half-formed illusions about meeting and seducing her absorbed him as he ate his noodles. He went to bed early. When he woke up, he realized that he’d been dreaming. A fourteen-year-old girl had been given to him to take care of by some vague authority. She was a lovely tall child with wide solemn eyes and long dark hair. She hated clothes and walked around the apartment naked. He was not just excited by this, he was exhilarated and moved by her innocence.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Her desire to abase herself had been completely frustrated. She had pulled him to the rug certain that if only they could fuck, he would enter her with overwhelming force and take complete control of her. Instead she had barely felt him, and what she had felt was remote and cold. Somewhere on her exterior he’d been doing some biting thing that meant nothing to her and was quite unpleasant. Despairing, she held his ankle tighter and put her forehead on the carpet. At least she could stay at his feet, worshiping. He twisted free and walked away. “Come on,” he said. — The car was in the parking lot. It was because of the car that this weekend had come about. It was his wife’s car, an expensive thing that her ex-husband had given her. It had been in Washington for over a year; he was here to retrieve it and drive it back to New York. Beth was appalled by the car. It was a loud yellow monster with a narrow, vicious shape and absurd doors that snapped up from the roof and out like wings. In another setting it might have seemed glamorous, but here, behind this equally monstrous building, in her unsatisfactory clothing, the idea of sitting in it with him struck her as comparable to putting on a clown nose and wearing it to dinner. They drove down a suburban highway lined with small businesses, malls and restaurants. It was twilight; several neon signs blinked consolingly. “Do you think you could make some effort to change your mood?” he said. “I’m not in a bad mood,” she said wearily. “I just feel blank.” Not blank enough, he thought. He pulled into a Roy Rogers fast food cafeteria. She thought: He is not even going to take me to a nice place. She was insulted. It seemed as though he was insulting her on purpose. The idea was incredible to her. She walked through the line with him, but did not take any of the shiny dishes of food displayed on the fluorescent-lit aluminum shelves. He felt a pang of worry. He was no longer angry, and her drawn white face disturbed him. “Why aren’t you eating?” “I’m not hungry.” They sat down. He picked at his food, eyeing her with veiled alarm. It occurred to her that it might embarrass him to eat in front of her while she ate nothing. She asked if she could have some of his salad. He eagerly passed her the entire bowl of pale leaves strewn with orange dressing. “Have it all.” He huddled his shoulders orphanlike as he ate; his blond hair stood tangled like pensive weeds. “I don’t know why you’re not eating,” he said fretfully. “You’re going to be hungry later on.” Her predisposition to adore him was provoked. She smiled. “Why are you staring at me like that?” he asked. “I’m just enjoying the way you look.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  235Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond õMiller began studying the Bible intently, and he became convinced that he’d hit on the true way to interpret biblical prophecy. He claimed that he’d discovered the date when Jesus would return to Earth. The Second Coming was to occur between March 1843 and March 1844. William Miller was a master of self-promotion, and at the peak of Miller’s career, he had probably 50,000 followers nationwide. õ But there was a problem: March 1844 came and went, and Jesus failed to show up. In response to the confusion, one of Miller’s followers took another look at the calculations and concluded that he’d been off by a year. õMiller announced a new date: He promised that Jesus would definitely return on October 22, 1844. And his followers threw themselves into evangelism, printing tracts and preaching about the end times with more zeal than ever. But the world failed to end again, and his followers were crushed. NEW APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES õHowever, the Millerite movement was not really over. A Millerite named Hiram Edson initially felt deep despair. But he eventually experienced a vision convincing him that Christ had, indeed, returned on the date Miller predicted. õThis return had been a heavenly event, not an earthly one, and Edson believed that the Bible’s end-time prophecies were still to come. A group of ex-Millerites, who called themselves Adventists, took heart in Edson’s vision and explanation of the prophecy. They later organized as the Seventh-day Adventist denomination in 1863. õAnother apocalyptic movement that emerged about a generation after Miller’s predictions is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are best known today for their determined door-to-door missionary work. They are dogged in their work because they believe we are in the end times and Armageddon is close at hand.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “We're all at this same crossroads, not just you,” I reminded her. “If you can’t open up to your friend, who the hell can you talk tor” Ed sighed. “I know I’ve got to talk about it.” “Will somebody tell me what the hell’s going on around here?” Grant wailed. Ed sighed. “I started on male hormones. I got them from this creepy quack.” “Holy shit,’ Grant said. “Wow. Hey, how the hell did you know, Jess?” I shrugged. “Your voice is changing, Ed. Just a little bit. I can hear it. Besides, I oughta know, ’m wrestling with the same shit myself.” Grant rapped the table with her fist in time to the music playing on the jukebox. “Hey, Ed. Can you give me the name of that doctor? I’m not saying I’m gonna do anything. I wouldn’t mind having some options, though. You know what I mean?” Ed nodded. 156 = Leslie Feinberg I thumped the table in frustration. “I wish I could talk to Rocco. Does anybody know where she is?” Heads shook no. “What happens? Does it just last for a little while? I mean can you go back to being a butch later, when it’s safe to come out?” Grant smiled sadly. “I saw this movie once. It was about this guy with a disease there was no cure for. So these scientists froze him. Later in the future they found a cure for the disease so these other doctors brought him back and cured him. The only thing was, he was from the past. He didn’t fit anymore.” I fought back tears. “Yeah, but we’re not sick.” Jan nodded her head. “Yeah, and what makes you think itll ever be safe again? It may be over for people like us. We may be stuck out here forever.” Jan’s head dropped low. “My sister says I can move out to Olean with her and her husband. They run a little dairy. The thing is, they said it’s only OK if I move out there alone, without Katie. They said they don’t want their daughters to see anything perverted.” Jan banged her fist on the table. “I’m forty-four fucking years old and my little sister’s treating me like she’s my mother. It’s not right. None of this is right.” I nodded. “What are you gonna do?” She shrugged. “I don’t know yet.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “I’m supposed to be the old bull. But now I wish I had someone older to talk to. I wish Butch Ro was still alive. She’d know what we should do.” I smiled sadly. “I don’t think so, Jan. I don’t think any of us knows what to do.” Grant stood up. “I’m going to buy a case of beer and go home to watch TV. You guys wanna come over?” I shook my head. Grant and Jan left together.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) As we see Christians called to the heavenly feast, where is the bread of righteousness, the drink of wisdom; so we see the Jews in reprobation. The children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness, that is, the Jews, who have received the Law, who observe the types of all things that were to be, yet did not acknowledge the realities when present. JEROME. Or the Jews may be called the children of the kingdom, because God reigned among them heretofore. CHRYSOSTOM. Or, He calls them the children of the kingdom, because the kingdom was prepared for them, which was the greater grief to them. AUGUSTINE. (cont. Faust. xvi. 24.) Moses set before the people of Israel no other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Christ sets forth the very same God. So that so far was He from seeking to turn that people away from their own God, that He therefore threatened them with the outer darkness, because He saw them turned away from their own God. And in this kingdom He tells them the Gentiles shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for no other reason than that they held the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To these Fathers Christ gives His testimony, not as though they had been converted after death, or had received justification after His passion. JEROME. It is called outer darkness, because he whom the Lord casts out leaves the light. HAYMO. What they should suffer there, He shews when He adds, There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Thus in metaphor He describes the sufferings of the tormented limbs; the eyes shed tears when filled with smoke, and the teeth chatter together from cold. This shews that the wicked in hell shall endure both extreme cold and extreme heat: according to that in Job, They shall pass from rivers of snow to the scorching heat. (Job 24:19.) JEROME. Weeping and gnashing of teeth are a proof of bones and body; truly then is there a resurrection of the same limbs, that sank into the grave. RABANUS. Or; The gnashing of teeth expresses the passion of remorse; repentance coming too late and self-accusation that he has sinned with such obstinate wickedness. REMIGIUS. Otherwise; By outer darkness, He means foreign nations; for these words of the Lord are a historical prediction of the destruction of the Jews, that they were to be led into captivity for their unbelief, and to be scattered over the earth; for tears are usually caused by heat, gnashing of teeth by cold. Weeping then is ascribed to those who should be dispersed into the warmer climates of India and Ethiopia, gnashing of teeth to those who should dwell in the colder regions, as Hyrcania and Seythia.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  359. For it is for these reasons that both Empedocles and Democritus and, we may probably say, every one of the other philosophers became involved in such opinions. For Empedocles also says that when men change their condition they change their knowledge, “ for understanding varies in men in relation to what is seen, ” according to him. And elsewhere he says, “ Insofar as they are changed into a different nature, to that extent it is proper for them always to think other thoughts. ” And Parmenides also speaks in the same way: “ For just as each has his mixture of many-jointed limbs, so intellect is present in men; for it is the same thing, the nature of the limbs, which exercises discretion in men—in all and in each; for that which is more is intellect. ” Anaxagoras is also recorded as saying to some of his companions that things were such to them as they thought them to be. And men also say that Homer maintained this view, because he made Hector, after he was stunned by the blow, think other thoughts; implying that people of sound and unsound mind both think but not the same thoughts. It is evident, then, that if both of these states of mind are forms of knowledge, beings must also be so and not so at the same time. 360. Hence their conclusion happens to be the most serious one. For if those who have seen most clearly the truth which it is possible for us to have (and these are those who seek and love it most), maintain such opinions and express such views about the truth, how is it unfitting that those who are trying to philosophize should abandon the attempt? For to seek the truth will be like chasing birds. 361. Now the reason these men held this opinion is that, while they investigated the truth about beings, they thought that sensible things alone exist; and in these much of the nature of the indeterminate, i.e., the kind of being which we have described (355), is present. Hence, while they speak in a plausible way, they do not say what is true; for it is more plausible to speak as they do than as Epicharmus did to Xenophanes.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I hated the thought of putting my Harley away for the winter. It was dangerous for me to ride—Td been driving without a license for three years—but I lived to cruise on that bike. It was my joy and my freedom. There were only two things I looked forward to every day: pumping iron at the nearby YMCA and whipping into the wind astride my motorcycle. When my alarm jangled in the morning, I awoke feeling small and terrified. I couldn’t find myself in my own life—there was no memory of me that I could grasp. There was no place outside of me where I belonged. So every morning I willed myself back into existence. I went to the gym already dressed in sweat clothes. That’s where I brought my tension and frustration, my rage and my fear. I put it all into my workout. I thought about my body a lot as I pressed against the resistance of cold iron. I enjoyed getting leaner and harder. Was that a goal the world had taught me? Probably. I thought of my femme lovers who cursed each thickness and fold in their bodies— the beautiful flesh I loved. But as I watched myself clench my muscles while I pumped, I found the weight and shape of my own body that pleased me. I concentrated on my discipline and endurance. I tried, in the best way I knew how, to love myself. I learned that strength, like height, is measured by who you're standing next to. I was considered a scrawny guy in the gym. That opinion was written on the faces of men whose muscles were bigger than mine. And all the while the lifetime of cruel judgments about my body and myself throbbed like unhealed wounds. Yet sometimes when I stood in front of my own mirror at home, I saw a powerful me. I couldn’t hold onto the image, though. It slipped like a globule of mercury from under my index finger. Maybe that was the lesson I tried to teach myself with each repetition—that power is something qualitatively more than strength. And that the world was wrong about me. I had a right to live. Every day the men around me came to exercise their bodies; I came to exorcise my demons. Euphoria was my reward for the tenacious workout that autumn morning. It was Saturday. There was nowhere to go, there was nothing to do. I turned up the collar on my leather jacket. Fall was here and winter was just behind it. The sky was overcast. The clouds were low, flat-bottomed, and dark as a bruise. I revved my bike without knowing where I was headed. I had money in my wallet and a whole weekend to ride as far as gasoline would take me. When the first raindrops plopped on my gas tank, I pulled over and put on my gear. Bolts of

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Stone Butch Blues TH1 didn’t want to see again. I thought about the time my parents caught me dressed in my father’s clothes. Warm memories flooded over me: butch friends, drag queen confidants, femme lovers. I couldn’t find them now. I was alone at this crossroads. I couldn’t bring myself to sink the needle into my thigh. Then I pictured my Norton, all smashed to smithereens in the pizzeria parking lot. I stabbed my thigh with the needle and injected the hormone. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I felt a wave of excitement—the possibility that something was going to change, that an enormous weight might be lifted from me. Maybe now I could finally be myself and just live. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the tile wall. After a while I stood up and put my chinos back on. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Still me, looking back at me. Nothing happened for the first two months. My voice hadn’t deepened. I knew that for a fact because every day I called telephone information and the operators still called me ma’am. The only changes I could notice were not what I’d hoped for. My skin broke out. My 178 = Leslie Feinberg body plumpened. My moods swung. Whatever was going to emerge wasn’t here yet, but it was coming. I'd have to say goodbye to Kim and Scotty soon. Gloria would never let me see the kids once I started to change. On a wintry Saturday I arranged to take them to the zoo. It was snowing so hard that the bus ride to Gloria’s house seemed to take forever. “T’m going away,” I told Gloria. “You want more coffee?” she asked. I covered my cup with one hand and shook my head. Gloria sat down next to me. “You tell the kids yet?” I shook my head. “Those kids think the sun rises and sets with you—I don’t get it.” Her words wounded me. “I’m loveable, Gloria, what can I tell your” She shook her head. “Be careful when you tell them, OK? They’re still shook up about their father and me.” I nodded. Scotty and Kim practically knocked each other overt running into the kitchen to greet me. They were both so bundled up I could only see their eyes between their hats and their scarves. Gloria tossed me the keys to her car. She looked upset. “Be careful, driving in the snow.” I didn’t think that’s what she was concerned about. “Don’t worry about us,” I told her. By the time we got to the zoo the snow was deep and fat flakes continued to fall. There weren’t many people out, just a few parents with their kids. “Let’s make snow angels,’ Kim suggested. “Not yet,’ I told her. “Let’s not get wet till we’re ready to leave.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa slapped the tabletop. “It’s always been hard. When has it ever been easier?” “T don’t fucking believe it!” I shouted. “Pm trying to tell you I can’t take it anymore, and you’re saying ’m going under?” Theresa leaned back in her chair and searched my face with her eyes. “Jess, I didn’t say you were going under.” The words echoed in the silence of the kitchen. I stood up and walked toward the bedroom. “Jess, wait a minute. Where are you going?” “To bed,” I told her. “I’m really tired.” Stone Butch Blues 151 When I arrived at the temp agency at dawn, I saw two men leaning up against the entrance to the labor office on Chippewa Street. “Hey, bulldagger,” the dark-haired man called to me. His friend laughed. They were both drunk. There must not be any jobs inside again. The blond man squeezed his crotch. “I got some work here for you, bulldagger. It’s a big job, you think you can handle it?” I pushed past their laughter. “Hi, Sammy.” I called out to the dispatcher. He smiled apologetically. “You want to wait around, Jess? Maybe by 10:30 we'll need a couple of guys.” I wondered if I fit into that work category— one of the guys. I looked around at the men who were waiting for work. Some stared into space, their non-filter cigarettes burning dangerously close to their tobacco- stained fingers. Others glared at me with heavy-lidded anger. I had done nothing to them, but at the moment I was the nearest person to hate. “Naw, Sammy. Call me later if you got anything. OK?” Sammy nodded and waved. “Maybe tomorrow, Jess.” “Yeah, maybe tomorrow.” I began to shore myself up to walk past the two men who I knew were waiting for me outside. As I 152 = Leslie Feinberg passed them, the dark-haired man hurled an empty pint bottle of rum at my feet. I fell backward, against the brick wall, startled. “You fucking he-shes. You stole our jobs,” he shouted as I hurried away. I wondered who I could blame. That night I awoke from a dream. Moonlight illuminated our bedroom. I wanted to go back to the dream, but I was wide awake. I was still immersed in the feel of it. In the dream I was walking through a town. All the windows were shattered. There was no sign of life: I couldnt find people. No dogs barked. Everything was silent. The town was surrounded by fields and woods. I followed a trail of wispy smoke in the sky above the forest. I found a hut in a small clearing. A small fire burned inside. I crawled inside the hut on all fours. I pressed my cheek to the warm earth floor near the fire and waited.