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 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.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “IT mean,” Theresa said gently, “that I have feelings about what happens to us, too. And you’re the only person I can really go to about them, and sometimes you’re not home. Remember last year when we went to buy you a new suit?” she asked. I winced in pain and turned away from the memoty. “Jess,” Theresa summoned me back. “It was a nightmare. I was there too, remember? We both felt humiliated. When we got home there was nobody in the world for me to turn to about it except you. But you had already shut down, and I knew it would be days or weeks before you relaxed again. I needed > you. I stared at my hands, clasped loosely on my lap. “You know how I feel sometimes, Theresa? Like I don’t have anything to give you. I would give you anything that was in my power, but I don’t feel like I have gifts for you. I mean that. You’re the strong one, you're the one who holds everything together, you get us through. All I can do is make love to you.” Theresa separated my hands. “Just love me, Jess. And please, please try to let me in sometimes.” “T’ve been trying to tell you what I’ve been wrestling with lately, but you haven’t wanted to talk about it.” I shrugged. “I can’t go on much longer without something changing.” Theresa sighed. “I’m a femme, Jess. I want to be with a butch. And I’m starting to feel like part of the women’s movement, even though I can’t be all the parts of who I am at the same time. My world’s expanding,” “Great,” I snorted. “Mine’s shrinking. But the hormones are like the looking glass for me. If I pass through it, my world could open up, too.” Theresa shook her head. “I don’t want to be with a man, Jess. I won’t do it.” “Td still be a butch,” I protested. “Even on hormones.” Then I said something I really feared, but regretted having spoken out loud. “Maybe you'd like it if I was a guy. It would be easier to be with me.” Theresa leaned back against the chair, the warmth in her face cooled. “TI put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I’m damn brave to love who I love. Don’t try to take who I am away from me.” My chin trembled. “Well, what do you think’s being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I dor” I sat stiffly as she wrapped her arms around me. “I don’t know, Jess,” she whispered. “I just don’t know anymore.” Theresa and I sat on the couch together for a long time without talking. We were both worn down and weary from months of low-level arguing and distance.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Kraepelin’s definition was largely lost in the nomenclature of trauma, yet it recognized the central aspect of fright—although the word “neurosis” has pejorative associations. In the wake of World War I, combat trauma was reincarnated as shell shock, simple, honest and direct. This bluntly descriptive phrase almost resounds like the maddening explosions of shells, shattering the stunned and trapped men into shaking, urinating and defecating uncontrollably in the cold, wet trenches. Like susto, this raw descriptive term had nothing distancing, dispassionate or disinfected about it. However, by World War II, any real reference to soldiers’ suffering was stripped of dignity and neutered to battle fatigue or war neurosis. The first term suggested that if a soldier heeded Grandma’s advice and took a good long rest, all would be just fine. This dismissive minimizing was especially insulting, and even ironic, given a suffering soldier’s profoundly disturbed capacity for restorative sleep. Even more demeaning was the pejorative use of the word neurosis, implying that a soldier’s “shell shock” was somehow due to a “character defect” or a nagging personal weakness—perhaps an “Oedipal complex”—rather than to one’s entirely appropriate terror of exploding shells or stark grief for fallen comrades and the horror of men killing men. These newer monikers separated civilians, families and doctors from the jagged reality of the soldiers’ profound suffering. In the aftermath of the Korean War, all remaining poignancy was excised from the next generation of war trauma terminology. The term used here for combat trauma, operational exhaustion (which was resurrected as combat operational exhaustion for the Iraq war), certainly had nothing gritty or real in respect to the horrors of war. It was an objectified term, more applicable to a laptop computer of today when left on too long and needing a reboot. Finally, the current terminology, derived largely from the experiences of the Vietnam War, is posttraumatic stress disorder. As PTSD, the universal phenomenon of terror and paralysis—in which the nervous system has been strained to the breaking point, leaving body, psyche and soul shattered—is now fully sanitized as a medical “disorder.” With its own convenient acronym, and serving the dispassionate nature of science, the archetypal response to carnage has now been artificially severed from its ravaging origins. Where it was once aptly conveyed by the terms fright paralysis and shell shock, it is now simply a disorder, an objectified collection of concrete and measurable symptoms; a diagnosis amenable to vested research protocols, detached insurance companies and behavioral treatment strategies. While this nomenclature provides objective scientific legitimacy to the soldiers’ very real suffering, it also safely separates doctor from patient. The “healthy” (“protected”) doctor treats the “ill” patient. This approach disempowers and marginalizes the sufferer, adding to his or her sense of alienation and despair. Less noticed is the likely burnout in the unprotected healer, who has been artificially hoisted onto a precarious pedestal as false prophet.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  on the number of people applauding, the size of the army they command, the crowd of courtiers that serve them. But this false sense of purpose has become greatly democratized and widespread through social media. Now almost any one of us can have the quantity of attention that past kings and conquerors could only dream about. Our self-image and self-esteem become tied to the attention we receive on a daily basis. In social media, this often requires becoming increasingly outrageous to capture eyeballs. It is an exhausting and alienating quest, as we become more of a clown than anything else. And each moment that the attention ebbs ever so slightly, a gnawing pain eats away at us: Are we losing it? Who is siphoning off the flow of attention that was ours? As with money and success, we have a much greater chance of attracting attention by developing a high sense of purpose and creating work that will naturally draw people to it. When the attention is unexpected, as with the success we suddenly have, it is all the more pleasurable. Cynicism: According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “Man would rather have the void as purpose than be void of purpose.” Cynicism, the feeling that there is no purpose or meaning in life, is what we shall call having “the void as purpose.” In the world today, with growing disenchantment with politics and the belief systems of the past, this form of the false purpose is becoming increasingly common. Such cynicism involves some or all of the following beliefs: Life is absurd, meaningless, and random. Standards of truth, excellence, or meaning are completely old-fashioned. Everything is relative. People’s judgments are simply interpretations of the world, none better than another. All politicians are corrupt, so it’s not really worth it to get involved; better to abstain or choose a leader who will deliberately tear it all down. People who are successful get there through gaming the system. Any form of authority should be naturally mistrusted. Look behind people’s motives and you will see that they are selfish. Reality is quite brutal and ugly; better to accept this and be skeptical. It’s really hard to take anything so seriously; we should just laugh and have a good time. It’s all the same. This attitude presents itself as cool and hip. Its adherents display a somewhat apathetic and sardonic air that gives them the appearance that they see through it all. But the attitude is not what it seems. Behind it is the adolescent pose of appearing to not care, which disguises a great fear of trying and failing, of standing out and being ridiculed. It stems from sheer laziness and offers its believers consolation for their lack of accomplishments. As hunters for purpose and meaning, we want to move in the opposite direction. Reality is not brutal and ugly—it contains much that is sublime, beautiful, and worthy of wonder. We see this in the

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “IT mean,” Theresa said gently, “that I have feelings about what happens to us, too. And you’re the only person I can really go to about them, and sometimes you’re not home. Remember last year when we went to buy you a new suit?” she asked. I winced in pain and turned away from the memoty. “Jess,” Theresa summoned me back. “It was a nightmare. I was there too, remember? We both felt humiliated. When we got home there was nobody in the world for me to turn to about it except you. But you had already shut down, and I knew it would be days or weeks before you relaxed again. I needed > you. I stared at my hands, clasped loosely on my lap. “You know how I feel sometimes, Theresa? Like I don’t have anything to give you. I would give you anything that was in my power, but I don’t feel like I have gifts for you. I mean that. You’re the strong one, you're the one who holds everything together, you get us through. All I can do is make love to you.” Theresa separated my hands. “Just love me, Jess. And please, please try to let me in sometimes.” “T’ve been trying to tell you what I’ve been wrestling with lately, but you haven’t wanted to talk about it.” I shrugged. “I can’t go on much longer without something changing.” Theresa sighed. “I’m a femme, Jess. I want to be with a butch. And I’m starting to feel like part of the women’s movement, even though I can’t be all the parts of who I am at the same time. My world’s expanding,” “Great,” I snorted. “Mine’s shrinking. But the hormones are like the looking glass for me. If I pass through it, my world could open up, too.” Theresa shook her head. “I don’t want to be with a man, Jess. I won’t do it.” “Td still be a butch,” I protested. “Even on hormones.” Then I said something I really feared, but regretted having spoken out loud. “Maybe you'd like it if I was a guy. It would be easier to be with me.” Theresa leaned back against the chair, the warmth in her face cooled. “TI put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I’m damn brave to love who I love. Don’t try to take who I am away from me.” My chin trembled. “Well, what do you think’s being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I dor” I sat stiffly as she wrapped her arms around me. “I don’t know, Jess,” she whispered. “I just don’t know anymore.” Theresa and I sat on the couch together for a long time without talking. We were both worn down and weary from months of low-level arguing and distance.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  as almost everyone rushed to convert paper shares into something real, into coin or metal of any kind. As the panic for cash accelerated, the Bank of England was nearly brought down—it came close to running out of currency. It was now clear in England that the party was over. Many had lost their fortunes and life savings in the sudden downfall. Isaac Newton himself had lost some £20,000, and from then on the mere mention of finance or banks would make him ill. People were trying to sell whatever they could. Soon there was a wave of suicides, including that of Charles Blunt, Sir John’s nephew, who slashed his throat after learning the exact nature of his losses. Blunt himself was hounded in the streets and nearly killed by an assassin. He had to quickly escape London. He spent the rest of his life in the town of Bath, scraping by on the very modest means still left to him after Parliament seized almost all of the money he had earned through the South Sea scheme. Perhaps in his isolation he could contemplate the irony of it all—he had indeed changed the course of history and assured his fame for all time, as the man who had conjured up one of the most absurd and destructive schemes ever devised in the history of business. • • • Interpretation: John Blunt was a pragmatic, hard-nosed businessman with a single goal—to make a lasting fortune for himself and his family. In the summer of 1719, however, this highly realistic man caught a fever of sorts. When he began to read about what was going on in Paris, he was struck by the drama of it all. He read vivid stories about average Frenchmen suddenly making fortunes. He had never thought prior to this that investments in joint- stock companies could yield such quick results, but the evidence from France was irrefutable. He wanted to bring similar good fortune to England, and in crafting his plan he naturally imitated many of the features of Law’s scheme, only increasing the scale of it. What is striking here, however, is that one rather obvious question never seemed to cross his mind. The scheme would depend on the share price rising. If those who converted their government IOUs into shares had to pay £200 per share instead of £100, they would receive fewer shares, which would leave more shares for South Sea to sell to the public and make a nice profit. If the shares were purchased at £200 they were now worth more if the price continued to rise and were sold at some point. Seeing the price rise would lure more creditors to convert their shares and more people to buy in. Everyone would win only if the price kept rising. But how could the price keep rising if it was not based on any real assets, such as trade? If the price started to fall, as it inevitably would, panic would

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  was not easy and it led nowhere. To Erickson, however, the moment he saw the man he understood the nature of the problem—through this gesture he was literally expressing the futile efforts in his life to get ahead and the despair this had brought him. Erickson went up to him and said, “Your life has had many ups and downs,” and as he did so, he shifted the motion of the arms to up and down. The man seemed interested in this new motion and it now became his tic. Working with an occupational therapist on site, Erickson placed blocks of sandpaper in each of the man’s hands and put a rough piece of lumber in front of him. Soon the man became enthralled with the sanding of the wood and the smell of it as he polished it. He stopped crying and took woodworking classes, carving elaborate chess sets and selling them. By focusing exclusively on his body language and altering his physical motion, Erickson could alter the locked position of his mind and cure him. One category that fascinated him was the difference in nonverbal communication between men and women and how this reflected a different way of thinking. He was particularly sensitive to the mannerisms of women, perhaps a reflection of the months he had spent closely observing his sisters. He could dissect every nuance of their body language. One time, a beautiful young woman came to see him, saying she had seen various psychiatrists but none of them were quite right. Could Erickson possibly be the right one? As she talked some more, never discussing the nature of her problem, Erickson watched her pick some lint off her sleeve. He listened and nodded, then posed some rather uninteresting questions. Suddenly, out of the blue, he said in a very confident tone that he was the right, in fact the only psychiatrist for her. Taken aback by his conceited attitude, she asked him why he felt that way. He said he needed to ask her one more question in order to prove it. “How long,” he asked, “have you been wearing women’s clothes?” “How did you know?” the man asked in astonishment. Erickson explained that he had noticed the way he had picked off the lint, without making a naturally wide detour around the breast area. He had seen that motion too many times to be fooled by anything else. In addition, his assertive way of discussing his need to test Erickson first, all expressed in a very staccato vocal rhythm, was decidedly masculine. All of the other psychiatrists had been taken in by the young man’s extremely feminine appearance and the voice he had worked on so carefully, but the body does not lie. On another occasion Erickson entered his office to see a new female patient waiting for him. She explained that she had sought him out because she had a phobia of flying. Erickson interrupted her.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  still so young. But suddenly she began to feel worn down and inarticulate. She wrote to a friend in the spring of 1962, “I’ve been writing for sixteen years and I have the sense of having exhausted my original potentiality and being now in need of the kind of grace that deepens perception.” One day shortly before Christmas of 1963, she suddenly fainted and was taken to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed her with anemia and began a series of blood transfusions to revive her. She was too weak now to even sit at her typewriter. Then a few months later they discovered a benign tumor that they needed to remove. Their only fear was that the trauma of the surgery would somehow reactivate the lupus and the powerful episodes of fevers that she had experienced ten years before. In letters to friends, she made light of it all. Strangely enough, now that she was at her weakest, she found the inspiration to write more stories and prepare a new collection of them for fall publication. In the hospital she studied her nurses closely and found material for some new characters. When the doctors prohibited her from working, she concocted stories in her head and memorized them. She hid notebooks under her pillow. She had to keep writing. The surgery was a success, but by mid-March it was clear that her lupus had come roaring back. She compared it to a wolf ( lupus is Latin for “wolf”) raging inside her now, tearing things up. Her hospital stay was extended, and yet despite it all, she managed here and there to get in her daily two hours, hiding her work from the nurses and doctors. She was in a hurry to scratch out these last stories before it was all over. Finally, on June 21, she was allowed to return home, and in the back of her mind she sensed the end was coming, the memory of her father’s last days so vivid within her. Pain or no pain, she had to work, to finish the stories and revisions she had started. If she could manage only an hour a day, so be it. She had to squeeze out every last bit of consciousness that remained to her and make use of it. She had realized her destiny as a writer and had led a life of incomparable richness. She had nothing now to complain about or regret, except the unfinished stories. On July 31, while watching the summer rain by her window, she suddenly lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. She died in the early hours of August 3, at the age of thirty-nine. In accordance with her last wishes, Flannery was buried next to her father. • • • Interpretation: In the years after the onset of lupus, Flannery O’Connor noticed a peculiar phenomenon: In her interactions with friends, visitors, and correspondents, she often found herself playing

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  implication in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley. In 1567 she was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in favor of her infant son, James VI. The following year she escaped imprisonment in Scotland and fled to England, putting herself in the hands of her cousin. Elizabeth had every reason to despise Mary and return her to Scotland. She was the polar opposite of Elizabeth—selfish, flighty, and immoral. She was a fervent Catholic, and around her she would attract all those in England and abroad who wanted to depose Elizabeth and put a Catholic on the throne. She could not be trusted. But to the dismay of Cecil, her councillors, and the English people, Elizabeth allowed Mary to stay in the country under a mild form of house arrest. Politically this seemed to make no sense. It infuriated the Scots and threatened relations between the two countries. As Mary began to secretly conspire against Elizabeth, and calls arose from all sides to have her executed for treason, inexplicably Elizabeth refused to take what appeared to be the rational step. Was it simply a case of one Tudor protecting another? Did she fear the precedent of executing a queen, and what it might mean for her own fate? In any event, it made her look weak and selfish, as if what mattered were protecting a fellow queen. Then, in 1586, Mary became involved with the most audacious plot to have Elizabeth murdered, upon which Mary would have become Queen of England. She had secret backing from the pope and the Spanish, and there was now incontrovertible proof of her involvement in the plot. This outraged the public, who could well imagine the bloody civil war that would have ensued if the plot had gone forward. This time the pressure on Elizabeth was too great—no matter if Mary had been a queen, she had to be executed. But yet again Elizabeth hesitated. A trial convicted Mary, but Elizabeth could not bring herself to sign the death warrant. To Cecil and those in the court who saw her daily, the queen had never appeared so distraught. Finally, in February of the next year, she caved to the pressure and signed the death warrant. Mary was beheaded the next day. The country erupted in celebration; Cecil and his fellow ministers breathed a sigh of relief. There would be no more conspiracies against Elizabeth, which would make the lack of an heir easier to bear. Despite her apparent mishandling of the situation, the English people quickly forgave her. She had proven that she could put the welfare of the country over personal considerations, and her reluctance only made the final decision seem all the more heroic. — King Philip II of Spain had known Elizabeth for many years, having been married to her half-sister, Queen Mary I. When Mary had imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower of London, Philip had managed to soften her stance and get Elizabeth released. He found the young

• 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 Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I exhaled through clenched teeth. “Yeah, Pll take i‘ His spirits seemed brighter. “Good, here’s the directions. Listen kid, nothing in life comes free.” During the week I lived on peanut butter sandwiches. On payday I treated myself to the cafeteria across from the factory. “Brisket,” I pointed to it. The man behind the cafeteria counter nodded and began to carve it. “Lo mismo,’ the older woman on my left told him. My stomach growled. The woman smiled knowingly at me. We both hungrily eyed the meat being carved. The stack of meat on my plate continued to grow, and still the man piled on more. The woman nodded at me. I raised both eyebrows. She sighed. “A man needs mote food,” she said. After work I bought two strong hasps and two locks at the hardware store and went back to the abandoned building on Mott Street. I installed them so I could lock the door from the inside or the outside. Then I bought a piece of plywood to cover a patch of floorboards and a cheap air mattress for a bed. On my first night in New York City ’'d been scared to death in this building at night. Now, a week later, I thought I'd die if I didn’t get a few nights of privacy. There was no running water in the building. But when one of the guys at the movie theater had found me rinsing a T-shirt in the men’s room sink, he told me Grand Central was a much better place to clean up. During the day I worked temp assignments washing dishes and loading trucks. After work I waited till the rush hour thinned, washed out a T-shirt in the men’s room in Grand Central Station, and took it home to dry. At dawn I went back to Grand Central Station to wash up. At that hour the men’s room belonged to homeless men who, like myself, struggled to hang onto the last shred of self-worth. On two occasions I suspected that a homeless man, bundled up in coats, was really a woman. Stone Butch Blues 253 Through a second agency I got a job as a night watchman. At least I could use the bathroom in private. I had to make rounds every sixty minutes. With the help of an alarm clock I could sleep forty- two minutes each hout. Double shifts were killing me, but I was driven to earn enough money to get a real apartment. As the weather got colder, I developed a cough I couldn’t quiet with lozenges and syrups. My throat was taw. I hoped it would go away. “Go home, for Christsakes,” one of the guys on the loading platform said earlier in the week. “Can't afford to,” I told him.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa slapped the table in anger. ““That’s a terrible word. They call you that to hurt you.” I leaned forward. “But [ve listened. They don’t call the Saturday-night butches he-shes. It means something, It’s a way we're different. It doesn’t just mean we're ... lesbians.” Theresa frowned. “What's the matter?” I shrugged. “Nothing, I just never said that word before. It sounds so easy when you say it. But to me it sounds too much like lezzie and lesbo. That’s a tough word for me to wrap my tongue around.” Theresa and I smiled at each other in spite of ourselves. “Honey,” my tone had changed, “I’ve got to do something. ’ve been fighting to defend who I am all my life. ’m tired. I just don’t know how to go on anymore. This is the only way I can think of I can still be me and survive. I just don’t know any other way.” Theresa sat back in her chair. “I’m a woman, Jess. I love you because you’re a woman, too. I made up my mind when I was growing up that I was not going to betray my desire by resigning myself to marrying a dirt farmer or the boy at the service station. Do you understand?” I shook my head sadly. “Do you wish I wasn’t a butch?” She smiled. “No. I love your butchness. I just don’t want to be some man’s wife, even if that man’s a woman.” Stone Butch Blues 159 I turned up my palms. “Then what should I do?” She shook her head. “T just don’t know.” Theresa asked me to pick up our dry cleaning and to go grocery shopping while she was at work. But the moment she left the house, I felt lost. I wandered into the backyard and knelt down beside Theresa’s garden. By the time the sun was directly overhead I was sitting between the rows of squash blossoms and tomato vines. This garden was a part of Theresa I didn’t know. And I began to realize this little patch of ground was a postage-stamp memory of the country soil in which she’d grown. Where was I when Theresa had planted this garden in the spring? Now it was overrun. I thought about the way things grow in their seasons and how much takes place underground. I thought about the things a gardener can’t control, like weather and critters. The sound of Theresa’s footsteps in the grass behind me was familiar, but it startled me nonetheless. I hadn’t realized it was late afternoon. I remembered earlier in the summer I’d found her working in her garden, sweaty and flushed with heat. I laid her down in the grass nearby and pressed her body into the dirt with my hips and kissed her 160 = Leslie Feinberg mouth until she made small sounds of desire I recognized. “Jess?” Theresa’s voice interrupted the memory. “What are you doing in my garden?” I sighed. “Just thinking.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He found her presence in the house oppressive. He wrote her a letter in which he finished by saying, “You attribute what has happened to everything except the one thing, that you are the unwitting, unintentional cause of my sufferings. A struggle to the death is going on between us.” Out of his increasing bitterness at her materialistic ways, he wrote the novella The Kreutzer Sonata , clearly based on their marriage and painting her in the worst light. For Sonya, the effect of all this was that she felt like she was losing her mind. Finally, in 1894, she snapped. Imitating one of the characters in a Tolstoy story, she decided to commit suicide by walking out into the snow and freezing herself to death. A family member caught up with her and dragged her back to the house. She repeated the attempt twice more, with no better effect. Now the pattern became sharper and more violent. Tolstoy would push her buttons; she would do something desperate; Tolstoy would feel remorse for his coldness and beg for her forgiveness. He would give in to her on some issues, for instance, allowing the family to retain the copyrights on his earlier books. Then some new behavior on her part would make him regret this. She constantly tried to pit the children against him. She had to read everything he wrote in his diaries, and if he hid them, she would somehow find them and read them on the sly. She watched his every move. He would berate her wildly for her meddling, sometimes falling ill in the process, which made her regret her actions. What was holding them together? Each one craved the acceptance and love of the other, but it seemed impossible to expect that anymore. After years of suffering through this, in late October of 1910, Tolstoy finally had had enough: in the middle of the night he stole away from the house with a doctor friend accompanying him, determined to finally leave Sonya. He was trembling all the way, in terror of being surprised and overtaken by his wife, but finally he boarded a train and got away from her. When she got the news, Sonya attempted suicide yet again, throwing herself in the nearby pond, only to be rescued just in time. She wrote Tolstoy a letter, begging him to come back. Yes, she would change her ways. She would renounce all luxuries. She would become spiritual. She would love him unconditionally. She could not live without him. For Tolstoy, his taste of freedom was short-lived. The newspapers were now full of accounts of his running away from his wife. Everywhere the train stopped, reporters, devoted fans, and the curious mobbed him. He could not take anymore the packed and freezing conditions on the train.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  While only a few humans actually die from fright, chronically traumatized individuals go through the motions of living without really feeling vital or engaged in life. Such individuals are empty to the core of their being. “I walk around,” said a gang-rape survivor, “but it’s not me anymore ... I am empty and cold ... I might as well be dead,” she told me on our first session. Chronic immobility gives rise to the core emotional symptoms of trauma: numbness, shutdown, entrapment, helplessness, depression, fear, terror, rage and hopelessness. The person remains fearful, unable to imagine safety from a never-ending (internal) enemy and unable to reengage in life. Survivors of severe and protracted (chronic) trauma describe their lives as those of “the living dead.” Murray has poignantly written about this state: “here it is as if the person’s primal springs of vitality had dried up, as if he were empty to the core of his being.” 51 In the poignant 1965 film The Pawnbroker, Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, an emotionally deadened Jewish Holocaust survivor who, despite his prejudice, develops a fatherly affection for a young black teenager who works for him. When, in the final scene, the boy is killed, Sol impales his own hand on the spike of a memo spindle so that he can feel something, anything. Trauma and Immobility: A Way Out In review: Trauma arises when one’s human immobility responses do not resolve; that is, when one cannot make the transition back to normal life, and the immobility reaction becomes chronically coupled with fear and other intense negative emotions such as dread, revulsion and helplessness. After this coupling has been established, the physical sensations of immobility by themselves evoke fear. A traumatized individual has become conditioned to be fearful of his or her internal (physical) sensations that now generate the fear that extends and deepens (potentiates) the paralysis. Fear begets paralysis, and fear of the sensations of paralysis begets more fear, promoting yet a deeper paralysis. In this way, a normally time-limited adaptive reaction becomes chronic and maladaptive. The feedback loop closes in on itself. In this downward spiral, the vortex of trauma is born. Successful trauma therapy helps people resolve trauma symptoms. The feedback loop is broken by uncoupling fear from immobility (see Figures 4.1a and 4.1b). Effective therapy breaks, or depotentiates, this trauma-fear feedback loop by helping a person safely learn to “contain” his or her powerful sensations, emotions and impulses without becoming overwhelmed. Thus, the immobility response is enabled to resolve as it is evolved to do. Uncoupling fear and allowing the normally time-limited immobility reaction to complete is, in principle, a straightforward matter. The therapist helps reduce the duration of immobility by gently diminishing the level of fear. In other words, the therapist’s job is to aid a client to gradually uncouple the fear from the paralysis, so as to gradually restore self-paced termination.

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

  “Yeah, but you shouldn’t kill Mom. Where are we going now?” “I’m going to drop you off at your uncle’s house.” “And where are you going?” “I’m going to kill myself.” “But don’t kill yourself, Dad.” “No, I’m going to kill myself.” The uncle Abel was talking about was not a real uncle but a friend. He dropped Isaac off with this friend and then he drove off. He spent that day and went to everyone, relatives and friends, and said his goodbyes. He even told people what he had done. “This is what I’ve done. I’ve killed her, and I’m now on the way to kill myself. Goodbye.” He spent the whole day on this strange farewell tour, until finally one of his cousins called him out. “You need to man up,” the cousin said. “This is the coward’s way. You need to turn yourself in. If you were man enough to do this, you have to be man enough to face the consequences.” Abel broke down and handed his gun over to the cousin, the cousin drove him to the police station, and Abel turned himself in. He spent a couple of weeks in jail, waiting for a bail hearing. We filed a motion opposing bail because he’d shown that he was a threat. Since Andrew and Isaac were still minors, social workers started getting involved. We felt like the case was open-and-shut, but then one day, after a month or so, we got a call that he’d made bail. The great irony was that he got bail because he told the judge that if he was in jail, he couldn’t earn money to support his kids. But he wasn’t supporting his kids—my mom was supporting the kids. So Abel was out. The case slowly ground its way through the legal system, and everything went against us. Because of my mother’s miraculous recovery, the charge was only attempted murder. And because no domestic violence charges had ever been filed in all the times my mother had called the police to report him, Abel had no criminal record. He got a good lawyer, who continued to lean on the court about the fact that he had children at home who needed him. The case never went to trial. Abel pled guilty to attempted murder. He was given three years’ probation. He didn’t serve a single day in prison. He kept joint custody of his sons. He’s walking around Johannesburg today, completely free. The last I heard he still lives somewhere around Highlands North, not too far from my mom. —

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  down by the constant anxieties about money and the subterranean existence. His father drank even more and held some odd jobs that were quite a step down from owning a business. He continued to beat his children. Anton’s younger siblings were no longer in school (the family could not afford it) and felt completely useless. Mikhail in particular was even more depressed than ever. Alexander had gotten work as a writer for magazines, but he felt he deserved much better and started to drink heavily. He blamed his problems on his father for following him to Moscow and haunting his every move. Nikolai, the artist, slept till late, worked sporadically, and spent most of his time at the local tavern. The entire family was spiraling downward at an alarming rate, and the neighborhood they lived in only made it worse. The father and Alexander had recently moved out. Anton decided he needed to do the opposite—move into the cramped room and become the catalyst for change. He would not preach or criticize but rather set the proper example. What mattered was keeping the family together and elevating their spirits. To his overwhelmed mother and sister he announced that he would take charge of the housework. Seeing Anton cleaning and ironing, his brothers now agreed to share in these duties. He scrimped and saved from his own medical school scholarship and got more money from his father and Alexander. With this money he put Mikhail, Ivan, and Maria back into school. He managed to find his father a better job. Using his father’s money and his own savings, he was able to move the entire family to a much larger apartment with a view. He worked to improve all aspects of their lives. He got his brothers and sister to read books he had chosen, and well into the night they would discuss and argue the latest findings in science and philosophical questions. Slowly they all bonded on a much deeper level, and they began to refer to him as Papa Antosha, the leader of the family. The complaining and self-pitying attitude he had first encountered had mostly disappeared. His two younger brothers now talked excitedly about their future careers. Anton’s greatest project was to reform Alexander, whom he considered the most gifted yet troubled member of the family. Once Alexander came home completely drunk, began to insult the mother and sister, and threatened to smash Anton’s face in. The family had become resigned to these tirades, but Anton would not tolerate this. He told Alexander the next day that if he ever yelled at another family member, he would lock him out and disavow him as a brother. He was to treat his mother and sister with respect and not blame the father for his turning to drink and womanizing. He must have some dignity—dress well and take care of himself. That was the new family code. Alexander apologized and his behavior improved, but it was a

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  King had learned his lesson from before—he had to keep up the pressure to the very end. Representatives of the white power structure reluctantly opened negotiations with King. At the same time, he sanctioned the demonstrators to continue their downtown marches, coming from all directions and stretching Connor’s police force to the breaking point. Frightened local merchants had had enough and asked the white negotiators to work on a comprehensive settlement with the black leaders, essentially desegregating the downtown stores and agreeing to the hiring of black employees. It was his greatest triumph so far; he had realized his ambitious goal. It did not matter now if the white authorities backtracked, as they inevitably would; Kennedy was caught in the trap, his own conscience pricked by what he had seen in Birmingham. Shortly after the settlement, he addressed the nation on television, explaining the need for immediate progress in civil rights and proposing some ambitious new laws. This led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It made King the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement, and soon a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Money now poured into the SCLC, and the movement seemed to have ineluctable momentum. But as before, the troubles and burdens for King only seemed to increase with each new victory. In the years following Birmingham he sensed a powerful reaction forming among conservatives and Republicans against the gains of the movement. They would work to halt further progress. He learned that the FBI had placed listening devices in his hotel rooms and had spied on him for years; they were now leaking stories and rumors to various newspapers. He watched as America descended into cycles of violence, starting with the assassination of Kennedy. He saw a new generation of black activists emerge under the banner of Black Power, and they criticized his adherence to nonviolence as weak and antiquated. When King moved the campaign to Chicago to try to stop discriminatory housing practices there, he brokered a settlement with local authorities, but black activists around the country harshly criticized him—he had settled for far too little. Shortly after this, an audience at a Chicago Baptist church loudly booed him, drowning out his talk with chants of “Black Power.” He grew depressed and despondent. In early 1965, he saw images of the Vietnam War in a magazine, and it sickened him. Something was deeply wrong with America. That summer he toured the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles after the violent riots that had scorched the area. The sight of so much poverty and devastation overwhelmed him. Here in the heart of one of the most affluent cities in America, the center of the fantasy industry, was an enormous neighborhood where large numbers of people lived in poverty and felt no hope for the future.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  conscience pricked by what he had seen in Birmingham. Shortly after the settlement, he addressed the nation on television, explaining the need for immediate progress in civil rights and proposing some ambitious new laws. This led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It made King the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement, and soon a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Money now poured into the SCLC, and the movement seemed to have ineluctable momentum. But as before, the troubles and burdens for King only seemed to increase with each new victory. In the years following Birmingham he sensed a powerful reaction forming among conservatives and Republicans against the gains of the movement. They would work to halt further progress. He learned that the FBI had placed listening devices in his hotel rooms and had spied on him for years; they were now leaking stories and rumors to various newspapers. He watched as America descended into cycles of violence, starting with the assassination of Kennedy. He saw a new generation of black activists emerge under the banner of Black Power, and they criticized his adherence to nonviolence as weak and antiquated. When King moved the campaign to Chicago to try to stop discriminatory housing practices there, he brokered a settlement with local authorities, but black activists around the country harshly criticized him—he had settled for far too little. Shortly after this, an audience at a Chicago Baptist church loudly booed him, drowning out his talk with chants of “Black Power.” He grew depressed and despondent. In early 1965, he saw images of the Vietnam War in a magazine, and it sickened him. Something was deeply wrong with America. That summer he toured the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles after the violent riots that had scorched the area. The sight of so much poverty and devastation overwhelmed him. Here in the heart of one of the most affluent cities in America, the center of the fantasy industry, was an enormous neighborhood where large numbers of people lived in poverty and felt no hope for the future. And they were largely invisible. America had a cancer in its system—extreme inequalities in wealth, and the willingness to spend vast sums of money on an absurd war, while blacks in inner cities were left to rot and riot. His depression now mixed with growing anger. In his conversations with friends, people noticed a new edge to him. In one retreat with his staff, he said, “All too many people have seen power and love as polar opposites. . . . [But] the two fulfill each other. Power without love is reckless, and love without power is sentimental.” At another retreat, he talked of new tactics. He would never abandon nonviolence as the means, but the civil disobedience campaign would have to be altered and intensified. “Nonviolence must mature to a new level . . . mass civil disobedience. There must

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  concerned a young man, Hazel Motes, determined to spread the gospel of atheism to a new scientific age. He thinks he has “wise blood,” with no need for any kind of spiritual guidance. The novel chronicles his descent into murder and madness and was published in 1952. After months of hospitalization and having sufficiently recovered at home, Flannery returned to Connecticut for a visit with the Fitzgeralds, hoping that in the near future she could perhaps resume her old life at their country home. One day, as she and Sally were taking a drive in the country, Flannery mentioned her rheumatoid arthritis, and Sally decided to finally tell her the truth that her overprotective mother, in league with the doctors, had kept from her. “Flannery, you don’t have arthritis, you have lupus.” Flannery began to tremble. After a few moments of silence, she replied, “Well, that’s not good news. But I can’t thank you enough for telling me. . . . I thought I had lupus, and I thought I was going crazy. I’d a lot rather be sick than crazy.” Despite her calm reaction, the news stunned her. This was like a second bullet in her side, the original sensation returning with double the impact. Now she knew for sure that she had inherited the disease from her father. Suddenly she had to confront the reality that perhaps she did not have long to live, considering how quickly her father had gone downhill. It was now clear to her that there would be no plans or hopes for living anywhere else but Milledgeville. She cut short the trip to Connecticut and returned home, feeling depressed and confused. Her mother was now the manager of her family’s farm, called Andalusia, just outside Milledgeville. Flannery would have to spend the rest of her life on this farm with her mother, who would take care of her. The doctors seemed to think she could live a normal length of life thanks to this new miracle drug, but Flannery did not share their confidence, experiencing firsthand the many adverse side effects and wondering how long her body could endure them. She loved her mother, but they were very different. The mother was the chatty type, obsessed with status and appearances. In her first weeks back, Flannery felt a sense of panic. She had always been willful, like her father. She liked living on her own terms, and her mother could be quite intense and meddlesome. But beyond that, Flannery associated her creative powers with living her own life outside Georgia, encountering the wide world, among peers with whom she could talk about serious matters. She felt her mind expanding with those larger horizons. Andalusia would feel like a prison, and she worried that her mind would tighten up in these circumstances. But as she contemplated death staring her in the face, she thought deeply about the course of her life. What clearly mattered to her more than friends or where she

• 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.”