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)

  “Ts it dangerous?” I asked. Grant leaned forward to hear his answer. Dr. Monroe ripped the script off the pad. “It’s just hormones. Your body produces hormones naturally. Do you want this or not?” he asked, as he waved it back and forth. I nodded and took it. He ripped off a second and handed it to Grant. She looked unsure, but she put it in her pocket. Dr. Monroe counted our money, slipped it into his desk drawer, and bid us adieu. “One more thing,” I said. The doctor sighed heavily. “I need a referral for breast surgery.” He scribbled on a piece of paper. “Two thousand dollars,” he told me, handing me a name and phone number. Stone Butch Blues 15 It was over and we were back on the street. “C’mon.” I slapped Grant on the shoulder. “We'll go to the pharmacy, then I’ll buy you a beer.” She reluctantly agreed. We sat at the bar in the middle of the day. The bartender seemed to barely tolerate us. We each put out big brown paper bag filled with boxes of syringes and vials of hormones on the bar in front of us. “We'll have two beers and two shots,” I told the bartender. “No pun intended,’ I added as an aside to Grant, but she wasn’t listening. “What’s up, Grant?” “My whole fucking life is turning upside down,” she said. I could sure relate to that. “It’s a big deal, what we’re doing.” I agreed. She nodded, but there was something else on her mind. We ordered another round, and then another. Grant started to open up a little.“How’s it going to be with women? I mean, who would ever go out with us?” I wished she hadn’t said that out loud. “T’m forty-one years old,” she told me. “My life is so fucked up. There’s no place left for us. I just don’t know what to do.” Her tears plopped on the bar. We both looked around to see if any of the guys noticed she was crying. We picked up our packages and quickly moved over to a booth. Grant broke into silent sobs. It scared me to see her cry that way. 176 = Leslie Feinberg I leaned across the table and stroked Grant’s hair. “It’s gonna be OK,” I reassured het. “Oh yeah?” she said angrily. “Bullshit. It’s different for you.” “Are you kidding? Why’s it any different for me?” Grant blew her nose on a bar napkin. “There’s things about me you don’t know. Things I can’t tell anybody.” I tossed back a shot of whiskey. It burned my throat and warmed me all over. “Grant,” my voice sounded gentle, “there’s nothing you can’t tell me.” She studied my face. “I’m not a real butch,” she said. I looked at her blankly. “What?” I laughed incredulously. “Well, you could have fooled me.” She shook her head. “You don’t really know me.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Life is drifting by the show window. I lie there like a floodlit ham waiting for the ax to fall. As a matter of fact, there is nothing to fear, because everything is cut neatly into fine little slices and wrapped in cellophane. Suddenly all the lights of the city are extinguished and the sirens sound their warning. The city is enveloped in poison gas, bombs are bursting, mangled bodies flying through the air. There is electricity everywhere, and blood and splinters and loudspeakers. The men in the air are full of glee; those below are screaming and bellowing. When the gas and the flames have eaten all the flesh away the skeleton dance begins. I watch from the show window which is now dark. It is better than the sack of Rome because there is more to destroy. Why do the skeletons dance so ecstatically, I wonder. Is it the fall of the world? Is it the dance of death which has been so often heralded? To see millions of skeletons dancing in the snow while the city founders is an awesome sight. Will anything ever grow again? Will babes come out of the womb? Will there be food and wine? There are men in the air, to be sure. They will come down to plunder. There will be cholera and dysentery and those who were above and triumphant will perish like the rest. I have the sure feeling that I will be the last man on earth. I will emerge from the show window when it is all over and walk calmly amidst the ruins. I will have the whole earth to myself. Long distance calling! To inform me that I am not utterly alone. Then the destruction was not complete? It’s discouraging. Man is not even able to destroy himself; he can only destroy others. I am disgusted. What a malicious cripple! What cruel delusions! So there are more of the species about and they will tidy up the mess and begin again. God will come down again in flesh and blood and take up the burden of guilt. They will make music and build things in stone and write it all down in little books. Pfui! What blind tenacity, what clumsy ambitions! I am on the bed again. The old Greek world, the dawn of sexual intercourse— and Hymie! Hymie Laubscher always on the same level, looking down on the boulevard across the river. There is a lull in the nuptial feast and the clam fritters are brought in. Move over just a little, he says. There, like that, that’s it! I hear frogs croaking in the swamp outside my window. Big cemetery frogs nourished by the dead. They are all huddled together in sexual intercourse; they are croaking with sexual glee. I realize now how Hymie was conceived and brought into being. Hymie the bullfrog! His mother was at the bottom of the pack and Hymie, then an embryo, was hidden away in her sac.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The heavier my body becomes the lighter the atmosphere of the room; I am going to spread and spread until I fill the room with one solid mass of stiff jelly. I shall fill up even the cracks in the wall; I shall grow through the wall like a parasitic plant, spreading and spreading until the whole house is an indescribable mass of flesh and hair and nails. I know that this is death, but I am powerless to kill the knowledge of it, or the knower. Some tiny particle of me is alive, some speck of consciousness persists, and, as the inert carcass expands, this flicker of life becomes sharper and sharper and gleams inside me like the cold fire of a gem. It lights up the whole gluey mass of pulp so that I am like a diver with a torch in the body of a dead marine monster. By some slender hidden filament I am still connected with the life above the surface of the deep, but it is so far away, the upper world, and the weight of the corpse so great that, even if it were possible, it would take years to reach the surface. I move around in my own dead body, exploring every nook and cranny of its huge, shapeless mass. It is an endless exploration, for with the ceaseless growth the whole topography changes, slipping and drifting like the hot magma of the earth. Never for a minute is there terra firma, never for a minute does anything remain still and recognizable: it is a growth without landmarks, a voyage in which the destination changes with every least move or shudder. It is this interminable filling of space which kills all sense of space or time; the more the body expands the tinier becomes the world, until at last I feel that everything is concentrated on the head of a pin. Despite the floundering of this enormous dead mass which I have become, I feel that what sustains it, the world out of which it grows, is no bigger than a pinhead. In the midst of pollution, in the very heart and gizzard of death, as it were, I sense the seed, the miraculous, infinitesimal lever which balances the world. I have overspread the world like a syrup and the emptiness of it is terrifying, but there is no dislodging the seed; the seed has become a little knot of cold fire which roars like a sun in the vast hollow of the dead carcass. When the great plunder-bird returns exhausted from her flight she will find me here in the midst of my nothingness, I, the imperishable schizerino, a blazing seed hidden in the heart of death. Every day she thinks to find another means of sustenance, but there is no other, only this eternal seed of light which by dying each day I rediscover for her. Fly, O devouring bird, fly to the limits of the universe!

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

  265Lecture 27—Rebellion and Reform in Latin America õThey understood their actions as both a religious revolt and a political act. When they marched on Mexico City in 1810, they marched under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Their movement was never very organized, and morphed from a campaign for greater political liberty into a brawl between Indians, mestizos, and white Mexicans. õIn 1811 royal authorities captured Hidalgo and his aides and executed them. But other parish priests came along to take his place as leaders in the Mexican independence movement, and Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. Though he did not live to see that day, Hidalgo is commonly revered in Mexico. õIndependence, however, came with a cost. It cast Mexico into an era of political chaos. Power changed hands 35 times between 1822 and 1855. People were desperate for order, even if it meant repression, and local strongmen called caudillos stepped forward to fill this power vacuum. The most famous caudillo in Mexico was Antonio López de Santa Anna, who began as a soldier for the Spanish king battling the rebels, but switched sides to support the independence movement in the 1820s. õGenerally, church authorities figured it was in their best interest to stay on the caudillos’ good side. For example, in Argentina, many clergy supported Juan Manuel de Rosas—they put his picture on church altars and denounced his opponents as enemies of Jesus Christ himself. THE CHURCH AND LIBERAL REFORMERS õEventually, Argentinians got fed up with Rosas’s reign of terror and forced him to f lee the country for exile in England. The political reformers who overthrew the caudillos across Latin America often campaigned under the banner of liberalism. õIn the 19 th century, Latin American liberals considered themselves loyal products of the Enlightenment who defended the liberty of the individual against the unjust forces of tradition and superstition, 266The History of Christianity II particularly the monarchy and the Catholic Church. Liberals thought the Catholic Church could be a force for good as long as it stuck to spiritual matters and left politics in the hands of secular authorities. õThose who opposed the liberals called themselves conservatives. These were people in the upper classes who wanted to keep the social hierarchy just as it had been in colonial times. To them, the church played a crucial role in keeping the poor in their place and preserving social order, although in truth they wanted to control the church almost as much as the liberals did. õConservatives helped the church resist liberal reforms. Sometimes they did this overtly, for example, by withholding the right to a church marriage or burial to anyone who supported Mexico’s liberal constitution of 1857. Sometimes they found a roundabout way to resist, like finding ways to help church authorities keep some control over property they were required to transfer to the government.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  different hue across the wilderness: salmon, rose, lavender. The scent of sage was overpowering. Even before I saw the golden eagle gliding in the updraft above me, I heard it scream, as clearly as if it had come from my own throat. I longed to soar in flight with the eagle, but I felt rooted to the earth. The mountains rose to meet me. I walked toward them, seeking sanctuary, but something held me back. “Buck it,’ Mulroney spat. “Turn her over, her cunt’s too fuckin’ loose.” “Jeez Lieutenant, how come these fuckin’ bulldaggers don’t fuck men and they got such big cunts?” “Ask your wife,’ Mulroney said. The other cops laughed. I panicked. I tried to return to the desert but I couldn’t find that floating opening between the dimensions I’d passed through before. An explosion of pain in my body catapulted me back. I was standing on the desert floor again, but this time the sands had cooled. The sky was overcast, threatening to storm. The air pressure was unbearable. It was hard to breathe. From a distance I heard the eagle scream again. The sky was growing as dark as the mountains. Wind blew through my hair. 66 Leslie Feinberg I closed my eyes and turned my face up to the desert sky. And then, finally it released—the welcome relief of warm rain down my cheeks. THE RING WAS GONE. The only tangible proof it had ever existed were the blood blisters on my ring finger; the cops must have pried it off while my hands were cuffed and swollen. The ring was gone. I sat in my apartment and stared out the window. I couldn’t tell how long I'd been awake. Justine and Peaches had bailed me out. I recalled they told me there were no charges filed against any of us. Justine wanted to come upstairs with me when I got home, but I was adamant: I wanted to be alone. The first thing I did was take a bath. I put my head back and tried to luxuriate in the tub. Then I noticed the water turning deeper shades of pink and a current of red water between my legs. I instantly recalled the feel of the hard piece of shit against my tongue and I climbed out of the bathtub in panic, just making it to the toilet in time. Now I was tranquil. I didn’t feel much of anything at all. But even through this blessed serenity I grieved for the ring that would have protected me, ot at least offered me its wisdom. The ring was gone. There was nothing to hope for now. The ring was gone. Betty knocked on the door and let herself in. She noticed the plate of fried chicken she’d brought me last night was untouched. The chicken looked like human limbs, and I couldn’t bring myself to bite into flesh. The thought had sent me flying into the bathroom, retching,

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I thought I had found a living volcano, a female Vesuvius. I never thought of a human ship going down in an ocean of despair, in a Sargasso of impotence. Now I think of that black star gleaming through the hole in the ceiling, that fixed star which hung above our conjugal cell, more fixed, more remote than the Absolute, and I know it was her, emptied of all that was properly herself: a dead black sun without aspect. I know that we were conjugating the verb love like two maniacs trying to fuck through an iron grate. I said that in the frantic grappling in the dark I sometimes forgot her name, what she looked like, who she was. It’s true. I overreached myself in the dark. I slid off the flesh rails into the endless space of sex, into the channel-orbits established by this one and that one: Georgiana, for instance, of only a brief afternoon, Thelma, the Egyptian whore, Carlotta, Alannah, Una, Mona, Magda, girls of six or seven; waifs, will-o’-the-wisps, faces, bodies, thighs, a subway brush, a dream, a memory, a desire, a longing. I could start with Georgiana of a Sunday afternoon near the railroad tracks, her dotted Swiss dress, her swaying haunch, her Southern drawl, her lascivious mouth, her molten breasts; I could start with Georgiana, the myriad branched candelabra of sex, and work outwards and upwards through the ramification of cunt into the nth dimension of sex, world without end. Georgiana was like the membrane of the tiny little ear of an unfinished monster called sex. She was transparently alive and breathing in the light of the memory of a brief afternoon on the avenue, the first tangible odor and substance of the world of fuck which is in itself a being limitless and undefinable, like our world the world. The whole world of fuck like unto the ever-increasing membrane of the animal we call sex, which is like another being growing into our own being and gradually displacing it, so that in time the human world will be only a dim memory of this new, all- inclusive, all-procreative being which is giving birth to itself.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  In the midst of my explanation it suddenly seemed so profoundly tragic and ridiculous that Hymie shouldn’t know what ovaries were that I became drunk, as drunk I mean as if I had had a quart of whisky under my belt. From the idea of diseased ovaries there germinated in one lightning-like flash a sort of tropical growth made up of the most heterogeneous assortment of odds and ends in the midst of which, securely lodged, tenaciously lodged, I might say, were Dante and Shakespeare. At the same instant I also suddenly recalled my whole private train of thought which had begun about the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and which suddenly the word “ovaries” had broken. I realized that everything Hymie had said up till the word “ovaries” had sieved through me like sand. What I had begun, in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, was what I had begun time and time again in the past, usually when walking to my father’s shop, a performance which was repeated day in and day out as if in a trance. What I had begun, in brief, was a book of the hours, of the tedium and monotony of my life in the midst of a ferocious activity. Not for years had I thought of this book which I used to write every day on my way from Delancey Street to Murray Hill. But going over the bridge, the sun setting, the skyscrapers gleaming like phosphorescent cadavers, the remembrance of the past set in . . . remembrance of going back and forth over the bridge, going to a job which was death, returning to a home which was a morgue, memorizing Faust looking down into the cemetery, spitting into the cemetery from the elevated train, the same guard on the platform every morning, an imbecile, the other imbeciles reading their newspapers, new skyscrapers going up, new tombs to work in and die in, the boats passing below, the Fall River Line, the Albany Day Line, why am I going to work, what will I do tonight, the warm cunt beside me and can I work my knuckles into her groin, run away and become a cowboy, try Alaska, the gold mines, get off and turn around, don’t die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck, river, end it, down, down, like a corkscrew, head and shoulders in the mud, legs free; fish will come and bite, tomorrow a new life, where, anywhere, why begin again, the same thing everywhere, death, death is the solution, but don’t die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck, a new face, a new friend, millions of chances, you’re too young yet, you’re melancholy, you don’t die yet, wait another day, a stroke of luck, fuck anyway, and so on over the bridge into the glass shed, everybody glued together, worms, ants, crawling out of a dead tree and their thoughts crawling out the same way. . . .

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Edna sniffled and nodded. “I’m in deep freeze, Jess. And somehow I have to save myself. You can’t do it for me. And I don’t know how. I’m so scared.” 238 = Leslie Feinberg I reached for her out of instinct. She held me at an arm’s length with a light touch. Tears filled my eyes, but I reined myself in, knowing I had many nights ahead of me to grieve. “Why?” I asked her. “I just don’t understand why you can’t try.” She bit her lower lip. “I am trying, Jess. I have tried. I just don’t know what’s happening, I’m just as lonely as you are. I need so much. That’s what scares me, that and how much you need me.” “Oh, Edna. Isn’t there something I can do to keep you from leaving me? Isn’t there anything I can do to change your mind?” Edna shook her head. Tears streamed down her face. “Oh, Jess. I love you so much. Please believe mer” I was relieved when she came into my arms to cry, until I realized she was letting me hold her for the last time. A wave of panic almost drowned me. I could feel in my gut what my life was like before Edna came back into it. “Edna,” I whispered. She covered my lips with her fingertips. “I can’t,” she said. Edna held my face in both her hands and looked into my eyes. “What will you do, Jess? Oh god, I wish I was strong enough to save us both.” I looked away from her. “Dll be fine,’ I heard myself say. We both laughed out loud. “That was a very butch thing to say, wasn’t it?” I admitted. “Oh, very,” Edna laughed. We slipped back over the boundary of our laughter to our tears. I wondered if she would have left me if there had been more inside of me to love, or if I just could have needed less. Edna kissed me on the mouth. If I had moved toward her she would have pulled away. And so I held very still and her kiss lingered a moment longer. She stood up. “I’m so sorry, Jess.” If pleading would have kept her in my life I would have dropped to my knees, but I knew she wouldn’t stay. “Can I drive you home?” I asked, hoping for time to try to change her mind. She shook her head. I stood up and let my lips memorize her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. I loved the way age had softened her face. “Can't I see you sometime? Talk to your” She put her hand on my chest. “Maybe at some point. Not now.” Her lips were close to mine. I kissed her hesitantly. She didn’t draw away from me. For a moment I felt her need, then she pulled back. I watched Edna walk away from me. Stone Butch Blues

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

  AMBROSE. He is tormented also because to the luxurious man it is a punishment to be without his pleasures; water is also a refreshment to the soul which is set fast in sorrow. GREGORY. But what means it, that when in torments he desires his tongue to be cooled, except that at his feasts having sinned in talking, now by the justice of retribution, his tongue was in fierce flame; for talkativeness is generally rife at the banquet. CHRYSOSTOM. His tongue too had spoken many proud things. Where the sin is, there is the punishment; and because the tongue offended much, it is the more tormented. CHRYSOSTOM. Or, in that he wishes his tongue to be cooled, when he was altogether burning in the flame, that is signified which is written, Death and life are in the hands of the tongue, (Prov. 18:21.) and with the mouth confession is made to salvation; (Rom. 10:10.) which from pride he did not do, but the tip of the finger means the very least work in which a man is assisted by the Holy Spirit. AUGUSTINE. (de Orig. Anim. 4. 16.) Thou sayest that the members of the soul are here described, and by the eye thou wouldest have the whole head understood, because he was said to lift up his eyes; by the tongue, the jaws; by the finger, the hand. But what is the reason that those names of members when spoken of God do not to thy mind imply a body, but when of the soul they do? It is that when spoken of the creature they are to be taken literally, but when of the Creator metaphorically and figuratively. Wilt thou then give us bodily wings, seeing that not the Creator, but man, that is, the creature, says, If I take not the wings in the morning? (Ps. 139:9.) Besides, if the rich man had a bodily tongue, because he said, to cool my tongue, in us also who live in the flesh, the tongue itself has bodily hands, for it is written, Death and life are in the hands of the tongue. (Prov. 18:21.) GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. 5. de Beat.) As the most excellent of mirrors represents an image of the face, just such as the face itself which is opposite to it, a joyful image of that which is joyful, a sorrowful of that which is sorrowful; so also is the just judgment of God adapted to our dispositions. Wherefore the rich man because he pitied not the poor as he lay at his gate, when he needs mercy for himself, is not heard, for it follows, And Abraham said unto him, Son, &c.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A deer might, for example, avoid certain rocky outcroppings where it had previously escaped the lunging attack of a mountain lion. Humans, in contrast to animals, frequently remain stuck in a kind of limbo, not fully reengaging in life after experiencing threat as overwhelming terror or horror. In addition, they exhibit a propensity for freezing in situations where a non-traumatized individual might only sense danger or even feel some excitement. Rather than being a last-ditch reaction to inescapable threat, paralysis becomes a “default” response to a wide variety of situations in which one’s feelings are highly aroused. For example, the arousal of sex may turn unexpectedly from excitement to frigidity, revulsion or avoidance. Toward a Biology of Trauma In an attempt to understand the episode with Nancy, I was pulled in several new directions. First, I realized that, if not for trusting my gut instincts and a little bit of blind luck, I might just as easily have inadvertently “retraumatized” Nancy, leading to a worsening of her already severe symptoms. In addition, like the gambler who hits the jackpot early in his career, I would soon find out that such dramatic—one-time —“cures” would not always be the case. I was drawn into a consuming journey to uncover just what had transpired that summer day in 1969. As I discovered, it was crucial to “titrate” (gradually access) these physiological reactions so that they were not overwhelming. Just exposing a client to his or her traumatic memories and having the person relive them was, at best, unnecessary (reducing integration and feelings of mastery and goodness) and at worst retraumatizing for the individual. I also learned that the shaking and trembling, which constitute the discharge reactions, were often so subtle as to be barely noticeable to an outside observer. Often the manifestation of the discharge was a gentle muscular fasciculation (minute muscular trembling and quivers) or temperature change—such as going from very cold to very hot. These changes are generally monitored by observing color changes in the hands and face. Over the following decades, I explored the biological basis of trauma from a comparative study of animals and their nervous systems. This, I felt, would help me develop a systematic approach to healing trauma that could be reproduced reliably and systematically, as well as being sufficiently safe. This journey also fulfilled an early dream of mine: I became a (small) part of the space adventure. While still a Berkeley graduate student in medical biophysics, I was given a fellowship as a stress consultant at NASA for a year. My primary task—to help prepare our astronauts for the first space shuttle flight—gave me a unique opportunity to study people whose stress resilience was unusually robust. These observations inspired me to reflect back on my session with Nancy some years earlier: on her profound lack of resilience and her spontaneous transformation.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. Otherwise according to the first exposition. The Jews were indeed ignorant of Christ, but of the Holy Ghost they had had a sufficient communication, for the Prophets spake by Him. What He here saith then is this; Be it that ye have stumbled at Me because of the flesh which is around Me; but can ye in the same manner say of the Holy Spirit, We know Him not? Wherefore this blasphemy cannot be forgiven you, and ye shall be punished both here and hereafter, for since to cast out dæmons and to heal diseases are of the Holy Spirit, you do not speak evil against Me only, but also against Him; and so your condemnation is inevitable both here and hereafter. For there are who are punished in this life only; as they who among the Corinthians were unworthy partakers of the mysteries; others who are punished only in the life to come, as the rich man in hell; but those here spoken of are to be punished both in this world, and in the world to come, as were the Jews, who suffered horrible things in the taking of Jerusalem, and shall there undergo most heavy punishment. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm. vid. infra in cap. 25. 46.) This passage destroys that heresy of Origen, who asserted that after many ages all sinners should obtain pardon; for it is here said, this shall not be forgiven either in this world, or in the world to come. GREGORY. (Dial. iv. 39.) Hence we may gather that there are some sins that are remitted in this world, and some in the world to come; for what is denied of one sin, must be supposed to be admitted of others. And this may be believed in the case of trifling faults; such as much idle discourse, immoderate laughter, or the sin of carefulness in our worldly affairs, which indeed can hardly be managed without sin even by one who knows how he ought to avoid sin; or sins through ignorance (if they be lesser sins) which burden us even after death, if they have not been remitted to us while yet in this life. But it should be known that none will there obtain any purgation even of the least sin, but he who by good actions has merited the same in this life. 12:33–3533. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. 34. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. 35. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

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

  298 The History of Christianity II õ In the Netherlands, sphere sovereignty was actually meant to grant people more freedoms. That’s because in the Netherlands, those separate communities tended to break down along the lines of belief: Protestants, Catholics, atheists, socialists. The idea of sphere sovereignty was supposed to enhance civil liberties for each group. õ But in South Africa, the most obvious lines to white Afrikaners were racial. They drew on these Dutch Reformed ideas to create a powerful ideology of Christian nationalism. The result was a lot of freedom for whites and very little freedom for blacks. THE SOUTH AFRICAN LIBERATION TRADITION õ Black South African clergy and activists saw that many, if not most, white-dominated churches had decided to place themselves at the service of apartheid. But some South Africans looked to Christianity’s prophetic tradition. A number of anti-apartheid activists took the egalitarian, social justice strand of Christianity that inspired the American civil rights activists and combined it with African traditions. õ One man who spent most of his life trumpeting this prophetic call to South Africans was Desmond Tutu. Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1961 after he abandoned a career in education as a protest against a new law relegating black students to the worst schools. õ He combined the Christian notion that all humans are equal as creatures made in the image of God with the Bantu idea of ubuntu, which means “I am, because you are.” In other words: I deserve the same consideration as you, but we are also dependent on each other; we’re in this together. õ In the early years, the possibility that nonviolent protest could dismantle the apartheid regime probably seemed even more remote than its potential to end the Jim Crow laws in America. For example, bus boycotts in Johannesburg only won a small fare decrease and a vague promise that the government would take a look at low wages in the future. 299Lecture 30—The Gospel and Global Civil Rights õ Nonviolence seemed even more foolish after police gunned down 69 protestors at the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960—an event that led to a ban on the African National Congress, or ANC, which was the main organized voice of protest against apartheid. õ The ban on the ANC persuaded many anti-apartheid leaders, like Nelson Mandela, that nonviolent reform was a pipe dream. Mandela helped found a group called uMkhonto we Sizwe , meaning “Spear of the Nation” in the Xhosa language. This group carried out several bombings in the 1960s and 1970s. One killed 19 and wounded more than 200 people.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I felt like someone had taken a gun and shot holes in every part of me. But at the same time some part of me said, “Well, this makes sense.” Lorenzo was everything I wasn’t. He was popular. He was white. He’d upset the balance of everything by asking out the only colored girl in school. Girls loved him, and he was dumb as rocks. A nice guy, but kind of a bad boy. Girls did his homework for him; he was that guy. He was really good-looking, too. It was like when he was creating his character he traded in all his intelligence points for beauty points. I stood no chance. As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that she did. I would have picked Lorenzo over me, too. All the other kids were running up and down the corridors and out on the playground, laughing and smiling with their red and pink cards and flowers, and I went back to the classroom and sat by myself and waited for the bell to ring. [image file=image_rsrc2U6.jpg] Petrol for the car, like food, was an expense we could not avoid, but my mom could get more mileage out of a tank of petrol than any human who has ever been on a road in the history of automobiles. She knew every trick. Driving around Johannesburg in our rusty old Volkswagen, every time she stopped in traffic, she’d turn off the car. Then the traffic would start and she’d turn the car on again. That stop-start technology that they use in hybrid cars now? That was my mom. She was a hybrid car before hybrid cars came out. She was the master of coasting. She knew every downhill between work and school, between school and home. She knew exactly where the gradient shifted to put it into neutral. She could time the traffic lights so we could coast through intersections without using the brakes or losing momentum. There were times when we would be in traffic and we had so little money for petrol that I would have to push the car. If we were stuck in gridlock, my mom would turn the car off and it was my job to get out and push it forward six inches at a time. People would pitch up and offer to help. “Are you stuck?” “Nope. We’re fine.” “You sure?” “Yep.” “Can we help you?” “Nope.” “Do you need a tow?” And what do you say? The truth? “Thanks, but we’re just so poor my mom makes her kid push the car”?

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And there are tapes to prove that, too. Today that 37 year old white man with 13 years of police forcing was set free by eleven white men who said they were satisfied justice had been done and one Black Woman who said “They convinced me” meaning they had dragged her 4’10" Black Woman’s frame over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval until she let go the first real power she ever had and lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children. I have not been able to touch the destruction within me. But unless I learn to use the difference between poetry and rhetoric my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire and one day I will take my teenaged plug and connect it to the nearest socket raping an 85 year old white woman who is somebody’s mother and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed a greek chorus will be singing in 3/4 time “Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.” Solstice We forgot to water the plantain shoots when our houses were full of borrowed meat and our stomachs with the gift of strangers who laugh now as they pass us because our land is barren the farms are choked with stunted rows of straw and with our nightmares of juicy brown yams that cannot fill us. The roofs of our houses rot from last winter’s water but our drinking pots are broken we have used them to mourn the death of old lovers the next rain will wash our footprints away and our children have married beneath them. Our skins are empty. They have been vacated by the spirits who are angered by our reluctance to feed them in baskets of straw made from sleep grass and the droppings of civets they have been hidden away by our mothers who are waiting for us at the river. My skin is tightening soon I shall shed it like a monitor lizard like remembered comfort at the new moons rising I will eat the last signs of my weakness remove the scars of old childhood wars and dare to enter the forest whistling like a snake that had fed the chameleon for changes I shall be forever. May I never remember reasons for my spirit’s safety may I never forget the warning of my woman’s flesh weeping at the new moon may I never lose that terror which keeps me brave may I owe nothing that I cannot repay.

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

  ORIGEN. This may be understood in two ways. First thus; if any lover of this present life spares his life, fearing to die, and supposing that his life is ended with this death; he seeking in this way to save his life, shall lose it, estranging it from life eternal. But if any, despising the present life, shall contend for the truth unto death, he shall lose his life as far as this present life is concerned, but forasmuch as he loses it for Christ, he shall the more save it for life eternal. Otherwise thus; if any understand what is true salvation, and desire to obtain it for the salvation of his own life, he by denying himself loses his life as to the enjoyments of the flesh, but saves it by works of piety. He shews by saying. For he that will, that this passage must be connected in sense with that which went before. If then we understand the first, Let him deny himself, of the death of the body, we must take this that follows of death only; but if we understand the first of mortifying the propensities of the flesh, then, to lose his life, signifies to give up carnal pleasures. 16:26–2826. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 27. For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. 28. Verily I say unto you. There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. CHRYSOSTOM. Because He had said, Whoso will save, shall lose, and whoso will lose shall save, opposing saving to losing, that none should hence conclude that there was any equality between the losing on one side, and the saving on the other, He adds, What does it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his soul? As though He had said, Say not that he who escapes the dangers which threaten him for Christ’s sake, saves his soul, that is, his temporal life; but add to his temporal life the whole world, and what of all these things will profit a man if his soul perishes for ever? Suppose you should see all your servants in joy, and yourself placed in the greatest evils, what profit would you reap from being their master? Think over this within your own soul, when by the indulgence of the flesh that soul looks for its own destruction,

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I shrugged. “Yeah, but I just want the hormones. And the surgery.” Grant widened her eyes. “What kind of surgery?” I made a face. “What kind do you think? I don’t want to have breasts like this anymore.” Grant whistled low. “How do you know you’re not a transsexual? Maybe you should go to the program and find out.” I shook my head. “T’ve seen about it on TV. I don’t feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body. I just feel trapped.” Grant sipped her coffee. “I don’t know. Maybe I am teally a guy and I was just born wrong. That might explain a lot of stuff” “So why don’t you go to the program?” I asked het. She smiled wistfully. “Because what if I’m not? What if it turned out I’m something even worse than I thought? Maybe it’s better not to know.” I smiled and put my hand on top of hers. She looked around and pulled her hand away. I sighed. “TI don’t know what the fuck I am. I just don’t want to be different anymore. There’s no place to hide. I just want everything to stop hurting so much.” The whistle blew again. Grant stood up to go back to work. “TI almost got enough money together for the hormones. How about you?” I shrugged. “If we can get in a few doubles, Pl have the money soon.” “Tl wait for you,’ Grant said. For just a moment her hand rested on my shoulder. | “Will you help me put together my Texaco station?” Scotty held up a bag full of colorful plastic pieces. I sprawled out on the rug and spread out the parts. “How do you know where the pieces gor” Stone Butch Blues 71 Scotty asked. I held up the instructions. “I’ve got this. It’s like a map. It tells me this is A and this is B and these two go together.” They didn’t. “I mean this is A and maybe this is B.” They weren’t. I worked in silence. A commercial for pet rocks flashed across the television screen. Scotty looked mournful. “I wish I had a pet rock.” “A pet rock?” I laughed. “What’s that?’ He pointed at the TV. I stroked his head. “Don’t worry, Pll get you a really good rock.” Scotty rolled over on his belly and watched me very closely. “You’re not supposed to glue them together until you know where they go and you gotta put a newspaper on the rug,” he advised. “You know what I’m gonna be when I grow up?” I held up a tiny gas pump and something unrecognizable. For some reason they fit together. “What?” “T’m gonna be the wind.” Kim rolled her eyes. “He’s really weird. He sits outside and waits to feel the wind.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Take it easy,” I soothed him. Booker smashed the guy on the head with a bottle of ketchup. He said later it was the only thing he could grab in such a hurry. It did a fine job. I think it gave everyone a lift to see the Marine out cold, coveted in ketchup. The following weekend we heard the Marine had been found dead. No one knew who did it. When I got home that morning I reenacted the whole scene for Milli. Deep down I wanted so much to make love to her. I had wanted her all week. But we went to sleep still talking about what a hero Booker had been. It was the next Friday night that we fought so bitterly. I don’t even remember what started it. It doesn’t really matter. What mattered was that it was the kind of fight that’s so painful it takes the top layer of skin off your heart. I tried to go for a ride. My bike wouldn’t kick over. I stormed off for a walk around the block. When I came back, Milli was gone. I sat in the apartment for a long time in the dark. I was really upset. My brain wasn’t working too clearly, I remember that. That’s when I realized how we were running off the rails. I suddenly felt I had to apologize to her, to Stone Butch Blues W9 explain, or I’d lose her forever. So I went down to the Pink Pussy Kat. I don’t know what I was thinking. I paced outside the club smoking a cigarette. You couldn’t see inside the bar because the windows and doors were papered with shiny foil. As I opened the door Darlene saw me immediately. She had her arm around a sailor’s neck. She looked up at Milli, who was dancing in a little cage just above the bar. Milli had seen me too. Maybe I thought Milli wore an outfit when she danced. It wasn’t that it mattered, I just realized I had never wondered about it. I took in the sights and sounds and smells of the world in which she worked. I listened to the music she danced to: I never loved a man the way that I, I love you. I had been in so many sleazy bars there was something sort of familiar and commonplace about it all. I could see immediately who was working in the room. It was, of course, the women. But you could tell more by their attitude than their sex. This was, after all, a job. It paid well for women who could take care of themselves. And Milli could take care of herself. But I knew I had made a fatal error walking in the door—the last mistake I would be allowed to make. I realized in that moment it was too late for us. 120 = Leslie Feinberg I went back to our apartment to wait for her.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I nodded. “T can’t take it anymore.” “Jess,” Karla said, “with all the shit that went down I forgot to ask you what’s up. You said you needed to talk.” That moment was a turning point in my life. I felt like a dam ready to burst but I heard myself say, “Aw, it wasn’t that important.” Karla looked concerned. “Are you sure?” I nodded, feeling the last brick of the wall go up inside of me that might never come down again. “We're going down to Jefferson,” Karla said. “Wanna come?” I shook my head and hugged her goodbye. I didn’t want to face my parents. I knew they wouldn’t be home from work yet, if I hurried. As soon as I got home I took two pillowcases and stuffed all my pants and shirts into them. I reached deep into my closet and pulled out the backpack that contained the tie and jacket Al and Jacqueline had bought me. The ring! I took it out of my mother’s jewelry case and slipped it on my left hand. I hurried, afraid my parents would come home and catch me. I found a piece of paper and a pencil. I was sweating and my hand shook. Dear Mom and Dad, 1 wrote. “Whatcha doing?” Rachel asked me. “Shh!” I continued to write. I got kicked out of school. Its not my fault, in case you care. I’m almost sixteen. I was going to quit anyway. I have a job and money. I’m leaving. Please don't come after me. I dont want to live here anymore. 1 didn’t know what else to write. They could find me at my job if they wanted to, but there was a chance that they'd be as happy to be rid of me as I'd be relieved to be gone. Stone Butch Blues 41 “Whatcha doing?” Rachel asked me again. Her lip trembled. “Shh, don’t cry,” I told her. I gave her a hug. “Tm running away from home.” She shook her head. “You can’t,” she said. I nodded my head. “TI gotta try. ’m going crazy here.” “Tl tell,’ Rachel threatened. I rushed out the door, afraid to be caught by my parents at the last moment. They could use force to bring me back, have me arrested or commit me to an institution. Or they could let me go. It was up to them—Id learned that. I ran down the street until my lungs ached. When I was blocks away I leaned up against a lamppost and caught my breath. I felt free. Free to explore what freedom meant. I looked at my watch. It was time to go to work. I was almost sixteen years old. I had thirty-seven dollars in my pocket. “You're late,’ my foreman told me as I punched in. “Sorry,” I said, and started the machine up right away. “Damn kid,” he told Gloria. She kept her head down until he walked away. 48 Leslie Feinberg

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Or the words. “Robin...fuck...I love you, baby. Love you...” Dripping with sweat and shaking, he sagged into her as the white-hot ecstasy eased, his hips grinding mindlessly as he emptied himself inside her. She shuddered in his arms and a soft sob escaped her. “God... You’re an ass, Paul. You know that?” Fucking brilliant. He finally told her how he felt and it lacked all grace or romance. She’d walked away thinking he just wanted to get laid, and he’d hardly redeemed himself by cursing out his feelings in the middle of a full-throttle, no- preliminaries screw that had probably been heard by every guest on the floor. His forehead touched hers. Her arms fell to her sides, her exhales gusting over the perspiration-damp skin of his throat. “I have to go.” Paul’s gut knotted. He couldn’t let her walk out again. He wouldn’t survive it a second time. Gripping her behind the thighs, he hefted her up and kicked free of his boots and wide-legged jeans. In just his socks and shirt, with his dick still hard and buried in the sweetest pussy in the world, he carried her to the bedroom on shaky legs. “Not until you hear me out.” “I heard you loud and clear the last time.” Gritting his teeth, he pulled free of her and dropped her on the bed. Before she could scramble away, he caught her ankles and lifted her legs high and spread them wide. He looked down at her succulent pink pussy, the plump folds glistening with her desire. “I wasn’t done. I’m not done.” “I’m done.” He licked his lips, hungry for the taste of her. “We’ll see about that.” Recognizing the intent in Paul’s hazel eyes, Robin struggled to back away before he destroyed her again. She loved a man who was damaged. She could work with that if Paul wanted to heal, but he didn’t. The look on his face when she’d suggested they rendezvous in his hometown of Portland had told her all she needed to know—she was his biweekly screw, his hot piece in Vegas. And everyone knew what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas. She’d walked out of his hotel room that night with the intention of not looking back. She had told herself Paul Laurens was just a brief spate of madness in her life. But watching him leave the bar just now had been too much for her. She’d left her brother at the table without a word, chasing a man she couldn’t recover from. One last screw, she’d told herself. And then it would be over. Idiot. She craved him like a junky, and one fix was never enough. Paul sank to his knees between her legs, and her womb clenched greedily. Her pussy trembled with its eagerness to have his mouth on her; her clit throbbed with the need to feel his tongue stroking over it.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  She never let me see us as victims. We were victims, me and my mom, Andrew and Isaac. Victims of apartheid. Victims of abuse. But I was never allowed to think that way, and I didn’t see her life that way. Cutting my father out of our lives to pacify Abel, that was her choice. Supporting Abel’s workshop was her choice. Isaac was her choice. She had the money, not him. She wasn’t dependent. So in my mind, she was the one making the decision. It is so easy, from the outside, to put the blame on the woman and say, “You just need to leave.” It’s not like my home was the only home where there was domestic abuse. It’s what I grew up around. I saw it in the streets of Soweto, on TV, in movies. Where does a woman go in a society where that is the norm? When the police won’t help her? When her own family won’t help her? Where does a woman go when she leaves one man who hits her and is just as likely to wind up with another man who hits her, maybe even worse than the first? Where does a woman go when she’s single with three kids and she lives in a society that makes her a pariah for being a manless woman? Where she’s seen as a whore for doing that? Where does she go? What does she do? But I didn’t comprehend any of that at the time. I was a boy with a boy’s understanding of things. I distinctly remember the last time we argued about it, too. It was sometime after the bicycle, or when she was moving into her shack in the backyard. I was going off, begging her for the thousandth time. “Why? Why don’t you just leave?” She shook her head. “Oh, baby. No, no, no. I can’t leave.” “Why not?” “Because if I leave he’ll kill us.” She wasn’t being dramatic. She didn’t raise her voice. She said it totally calm and matter-of-fact, and I never asked her that question again. — Eventually she did leave. What prompted her to leave, what the final breaking point was, I have no idea. I was gone. I was off becoming a comedian, touring the country, playing shows in England, hosting radio shows, hosting television shows. I’d moved in with my cousin Mlungisi and made my own life separate from hers. I couldn’t invest myself anymore, because it would have broken me into too many pieces. But one day she bought another house in Highlands North, met someone new, and moved on with her life. Andrew and Isaac still saw their dad, who, by that point, was just existing in the world, still going through the same cycle of drinking and fighting, still living in a house paid for by his ex-wife. Years passed. Life carried on.