Disappointment

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 Another Country (1962)

  She looked at him wearily, with mockery and pity. “Oh, Vivaldo,” she said, “what a busy little mind you’ve got.” Then her manner changed, and she said, very coldly, “You don’t really have the right, you know, to worry about who I talk to. And what you’re suggesting doesn’t flatter me at all.” She kept her voice low, but it had begun to shake. “Maybe, now, I’ll behave like what you think I am!” She walked over to the bar and stepped between Richard and Ellis. She was smiling. Ellis put one hand on her elbow and his face changed as he spoke to her, becoming greedier and more vulnerable. Richard went behind the bar to pour Ida a drink. Vivaldo could have joined them, but he did not dare. Her outburst had come so mysteriously, and with such speed, that he was afraid to think of what might happen if he walked over to the bar. And she was right; he was wrong. Who she talked to was none of his business. But her reaction had been so swift and terrible! Now, his advantage was gone. His patiently amassed and hoarded capital—of understanding and gallantry—had vanished in the twinkling of an eye. “I’d like you to meet Sydney Ingram. This is Vivaldo Moore.” Cass was at his shoulder, presenting the newcomer, of whose arrival he had been vaguely aware. He had come alone. Vivaldo recognized his name because the boy’s first novel had just been published and he wanted to read it. He was tall, nearly as tall as Vivaldo, with a pleasant, heavy-featured face and a great deal of black hair and, like Vivaldo, was dressed in a dark suit, probably his best one. “I’m delighted to meet you,” Vivaldo said—sincerely, for the first time that evening. “I’ve read his novel,” Cass said, “it’s wonderful, you must read it.” “I want to,” said Vivaldo. Ingram smiled, looking uncomfortable, and stared into his glass as though he wished he could drown in it. “I’ve circulated enough for the time being,” Cass said. “Let me stay with you two for a while.” She led them slowly toward the big window. It was twilight, the sun was gone, soon the street lamps would be turned on. “Somehow, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a literary hostess.” “You looked fine to me,” said Vivaldo. “You weren’t trying to keep up a conversation with me. My attention just keeps wandering, I can’t help it. I might as well be in a room full of physicists.” “What are they talking about over at the bar?” Vivaldo asked. “Steve Ellis’s responsibility to the televiewers of America,” Ingram said. They laughed. “Don’t laugh,” said Ingram, “he, too, can become President. At least, he can read and write.” “I should think,” said Cass, “that that would disqualify him.”

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Sex changes the way we see ourselves, breaking and remaking the boundaries of the body and of relationships. It’s a door that swings only one way, preventing return. Sex turns us literally inside out, molds and subverts fundamental assumptions. Sex has a unique ability in the human realm to both brutalize and comfort the individual. Turning away from sex means turning away from ourselves, turning away others; fear of sex means fear of others. Without crossing through the country of sex, there’s a lot of other territory we can’t begin to traverse. But then again. The first time I had sex—with forethought and contraception and careful planning—all I could say was, “Is that all?” My poor partner, years older than me but still naive about anatomy, could only nod. Was that really what all the fuss was about? I wondered. Was that what my parents did, what happened in the movies when the lights went out, was that momentary shiver the Sturm und Drang of eons? I felt a little … disappointed. I grew up, in the late sixties and early seventies, into the kind of young feminist who believed in the agenda of equality without having read much of the theory. I learned the lingo, talked the talk, walked the walk a little bit. But my secret sexual fantasies seemed to wiggle free of my politics no matter what, seemed to expand and sometimes explode into my manifestly unfeminist consciousness. Part of the feminist agenda, I believed, was raising my own and other people’s consciousnesses to the point where images of heterosexual oppression and traditional roles simply disappeared. Therefore, my sexual fantasies would be reeducated along with my relationships and language. But even reading feminist theory didn’t help that. Parts of my consciousness refused to rise, staying far below the sanitized plain of social politics.

• From Another Country (1962)

  And, with a curious helplessness, she took his arm. “How can you love somebody you don’t know anything about? You don’t know where I’ve been. You don’t know what life is like for me.” “But I’m willing,” he said, “to spend the rest of my life finding out.” She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Vivaldo. You may spend the rest of your life finding out—but it won’t be because you’re willing.” And then, with ferocity, “And it won’t be me you’ll be finding out about. Oh, Lord.” She dropped his arm. She gave him a strange side glance; he could not read it, it seemed both pitying and cold. “I’m sorry to have hurt your feelings, I’m not trying to kill you. I know you’re not responsible for—for the world. And, listen: I don’t blame you for not being willing. I’m not willing, nobody’s willing. Nobody’s willing to pay their dues.” Then she moved forward, smiling, to greet Eric and Cass. “Hello, kids,” she said—and Vivaldo watched her, that urchin grin, those flashing eyes—“how you been making it?” She tapped Eric lightly on the cheek. “They tell me you’re beginning to enjoy New York almost as much as you enjoyed Paris. How about that? We’re not so bad over here, now, are we?” Eric blushed, and humorously pursued his lips. “I’d enjoy it a whole lot more if you’d put your rivers and bridges in the middle of the city instead of having them all pushed off on the edges this way. You can’t breathe in this city in the summertime; it’s frightening.” He looked at Vivaldo. “I don’t know how you barbarians stand it.” “If it wasn’t for us barbarians,” said Vivaldo, “you mandarins would be in one hell of a fix.” He kissed Cass on the forehead, and struck Eric lightly on the back of the neck. “It’s good to see you, anyway. ” “We’ve got good news,” said Cass, “though I guess I really ought to let Eric tell it.” “Well, we’re not absolutely certain that it’s good news,” said Eric. He looked at Ida and Vivaldo. “Anyway, I think we ought to keep them in suspense for awhile. If they don’t think I’m the greatest thing they ever saw in this movie, why, then, I think we just ought to let them find out what’s happening when the general public finds out.” And he threw his chin in the air and swaggered toward the box office. “Oh, Eric,” cried Cass, “ can’t I tell them?”

• From Another Country (1962)

  He gets up at some predawn hour and goes straight to his study and stays there until it’s time to go to work; comes home, goes straight to his study and stays there until it’s time to go to bed. I hardly ever see him. The children no longer have a father, I no longer have a husband.” She laughed. “He did manage to grunt something the other morning about it’s going very well.” “It certainly sounds as though it’s going well.” Vivaldo looked at Cass enviously. “And you say it’s new?—it’s not the same novel he was working on before?” “I gather not. But I really know nothing about it.” She dragged on her cigarette again, crushed it under her heel, immediately began searching in her bag for another. “Well, I’ll certainly have to come by and check on all this for myself,” said Vivaldo. “At this rate, he’ll be famous before I am.” “Oh, I’ve always known that,” said Cass, and lit another cigarette. Rufus watched the pigeons strutting along the walks and the gangs of adolescents roaming up and down. He wanted to get away from this place and this danger. Leona put her hand on his. He grabbed one of her fingers and held it. Cass turned to Rufus. “Now, you haven’t been working on a novel, why haven’t you come by?” “I’ve been working uptown. You promised to come and hear me . Remember?” “We’ve been terribly broke, Rufus——” “When I’m working in a joint, you haven’t got to worry about being broke, I told you that before.” “He’s a great musician,” Leona said. “I heard him for the first time last night.” Rufus looked annoyed. “That gig ended last night. I ain’t got nothing to do for awhile except take care of my old lady.” And he laughed. Cass and Leona looked briefly at each other and smiled. “How long have you been up here, Leona?” Cass asked. “Oh, just a little over a month.” “Do you like it?” “Oh, I love it. It’s just as different as night from day, I can’t tell you.” Cass looked briefly at Rufus. “That’s wonderful,” she said, gravely. “I’m very glad for you.” “Yes, I can feel that,” said Leona. “You seem to be a very nice woman. ” “Thank you,” said Cass, and blushed. “ How ’re you going to take care of your old lady,” Vivaldo asked, “if you’re not working?” “Oh, I’ve got a couple of record dates coming up; don’t you worry about old Rufus.” Vivaldo sighed. “I’m worried about me . I’m in the wrong profession—or, rather, I’m not. In it, I mean.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Money was one example of our social structure where the rules that applied to the group about always telling the truth did not apply to Limori herself. This always bothered me when I became aware through rumour or innuendo that someone had made a large donation to Limori’s cause, although I was loath to acknowledge it at the time. One of the hardest truths I have had to face in my recovery was that, financially, Limori lives off the backs of those who follow her. She lives a lifestyle of comfort while her disciples work tirelessly and for free. Acknowledging this added greatly to my feelings of betrayal. DisciplesThe images that we most often see of cults are of almost overwhelmingly large groups, and those that we see of gurus are of people who are successful at recruiting new members to add to the flock, which increases the guru’s power and income. I’ve often reflected on how ineffective Limori was at recruiting new members to her cult. For whatever reason, she was not the type of guru who was able to attract new members while simultaneously keeping a tight reign on those of us already indoctrinated. The Wednesday night group reached its peak numbers in the very early 1990s. When Sheila split off from the group, some of the faithful followed her. After that, the numbers in the group dwindled. The attendance at Thursday night was at its peak possibly fifteen people, but gradually Limori pushed a few of these faithful away or alienated them in some way, including Gary, Richard, Norman and his wife, Nelly, and others who haven’t been a part of my narrative. So, thankfully, she is left now with only a handful of true believers, including Michael, as opposed to some gurus, who command the attention and pocketbooks of thousands of people. I’m not enough of an expert on cults and gurus to know why this is the case with this particular group leader. I would need to understand thought reform in more depth to know what part of Limori’s technique failed to attract new followers. But I can make an educated guess based on my experience. I think that once she reached a certain level of power with those of us who were involved, and had successfully indoctrinated us and held us to her, she became a little drunk with her own power, and this was repellent to any newcomers. She believed her own spin a little too much for the tastes of those who had not met her before. At a certain point, she seemed unable to be patient with the seduction phase of drawing someone new into her orbit; she would immediately go into fast forward with almost total strangers. She often had new people on her fishing line but she would lose them because she would try to pull them into the boat too quickly.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "Hang Miss Randal!" and Laurie knocked the hat off his face with a look that left no doubt of his sentiments toward that young lady. "I beg pardon, I thought..." and there she paused diplomatically. "No, you didn't, you knew perfectly well I never cared for anyone but Jo," Laurie said that in his old, impetuous tone, and turned his face away as he spoke. "I did think so, but as they never said anything about it, and you came away, I supposed I was mistaken. And Jo wouldn't be kind to you? Why, I was sure she loved you dearly." "She was kind, but not in the right way, and it's lucky for her she didn't love me, if I'm the good-for-nothing fellow you think me. It's her fault though, and you may tell her so." The hard, bitter look came back again as he said that, and it troubled Amy, for she did not know what balm to apply. "I was wrong, I didn't know. I'm very sorry I was so cross, but I can't help wishing you'd bear it better, Teddy, dear." "Don't, that's her name for me!" and Laurie put up his hand with a quick gesture to stop the words spoken in Jo's half-kind, half-reproachful tone. "Wait till you've tried it yourself," he added in a low voice, as he pulled up the grass by the handful. "I'd take it manfully, and be respected if I couldn't be loved," said Amy, with the decision of one who knew nothing about it. Now, Laurie flattered himself that he had borne it remarkably well, making no moan, asking no sympathy, and taking his trouble away to live it down alone. Amy's lecture put the matter in a new light, and for the first time it did look weak and selfish to lose heart at the first failure, and shut himself up in moody indifference. He felt as if suddenly shaken out of a pensive dream and found it impossible to go to sleep again. Presently he sat up and asked slowly, "Do you think Jo would despise me as you do?" "Yes, if she saw you now. She hates lazy people. Why don't you do something splendid, and make her love you?" "I did my best, but it was no use." "Graduating well, you mean? That was no more than you ought to have done, for your grandfather's sake. It would have been shameful to fail after spending so much time and money, when everyone knew that you could do well." "I did fail, say what you will, for Jo wouldn't love me," began Laurie, leaning his head on his hand in a despondent attitude. "No, you didn't, and you'll say so in the end, for it did you good, and proved that you could do something if you tried.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Certainly a lot of violent material has sexual overtones; the mistake is assuming that anything with sex in it is primarily about sex. Sex is so much a part of our media culture, and ourselves, that it would be surprising not to see sexual overtones in any emotionally intense work. It is hard to separate sex out of the complex texture of our lives. But my point is that such weaving of sex and pain, death and desire, in art and media takes place outside the limited world of porn. It takes place in the mainstream culture rather than on the edge. Susan Sontag, exhaustively trying to prove that certain works of pornography qualify as “literature,” notes the form’s “singleness of intention” as a point against it. A narrow focus seems less important to any work’s merit than the narrowness of its effect. I am interested in literature, pornographic and otherwise, by my responses to any given piece. My responses to pornography are often layered and complex and multiple. Some explicitly sexual images are almost Jungian, repetitive and exaggerated, filled with mythic potency and symbolic acts. A lot of porn is junk. Much is cheesy or mechanical. Some films disturb me by the unhappiness I sense, as though the people I see wished only to be somewhere else. I wish for more craft. I tire of browsing stacks of boxes titled Fucking Brunettes and Monumental Knockers. I am sometimes overwhelmed by how entrenched the iconography of porn is, what a huge and immobile rock this is for women to move. I don’t dislike all these repetitive images so much as I dislike the limited menu. Sex is infinitely variable, and porn should be, too. The only way porn will expand is by women entering its walls and pressing outward, to make more space. I know I break a rule when I enter the adult store, whether my entrance is simply startling or genuinely unwelcome. Only once has anything happened to remind me of this, and it happened the first time I went to the adult store alone. I had dressed in baggy jeans and a pullover sweater, and tied my long hair up in a bun. After a while I was approached by a fat man with a pale, damp face and thinning hair. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m not trying to come on to you or anything, but I can’t help noticing you’re, you know, female.” I could only nod. “And I wonder,” he continued, almost breathless, “if you like this stuff”—and he pointed at a nearby picture of a blond woman in red lingerie. “You see, my girlfriend, she broke up with me, and I’d bought her all this stuff—you know, sex clothes—and she didn’t like it.” He paused. “I mean, it’s out in the back of my truck right now. If you just want to come outside, you can have it.” I turned away without a word.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Second, I wanted to help family members of those in a cult understand why their loved one would do something that, from the outside, looks so destructive and painful. And the third reason, which I don’t talk about much, is that I wanted to save the man I loved, “Michael,” who was still in the cult. This book is dedicated to him, and it was my fervent hope that he would read it and reconnect with his authentic, loving self. In May 2019 Michael released his own book about his experiences with the woman I call Limori. Of course, I bought it the minute it was available and read it immediately. Since then, I’ve been thinking about my response to his book. I thought of leaving a review on Amazon but realized I had more to say than would be appropriate in a review. Then I realized I could leave my thoughts here in one of my updates. So here goes. Michael’s book is called Into God’s Light (by Timothy Noble) and is a retelling of his life since the late 1990s, when he began following the woman I call Limori. It details some of the spiritual and mystical experiences he had, which he attributes mostly to her. The book takes us from before Michael knew Limori through their first connections and into their deepening guru–follower relationship, on through her death and into the present day. He goes into detail about many of the extraordinary spiritual experiences that he’s had and some of the lessons he’s learned; he also explains his devotion to Limori and all the things he believes she stood for. The gist of the book is that, in Michael’s opinion, Limori was a mighty spiritual being who blessed everyone around her with her amazing divine energy, spiritual mastery, and magnificence. He describes Limori as having an “awe-inspiring connection to the Beings of Light and to God himself.” He does mention that Limori was a “tough” teacher, but qualifies this a few times by saying that in order to get through to her followers’ egos, she needed to be that way. The book is a competently written short read, and the reader definitely comes to understand that the author is and was utterly devoted to Limori and thinks she was a great spiritual teacher and master. Aside from that, however, I’m not sure what the book’s purpose is, other than an exercise in stroking the author’s ego and that of his deceased guru. It doesn’t teach or inform the reader in any way. What I seeHere’s my main problem with Michael’s retelling of life with Limori: he leaves out 80 percent of the experience of being near her. I recognized many of the events he describes because I was there too, but he omits any part of the story that is not flattering and complementary to Limori.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  And yet in other ways the convent was simply not the same. The old hushed silence had gone. Nuns stood in groups, chatting and laughing—sometimes quite loudly. They wore short utilitarian skirts and flighty little veils. Doors closed noisily, and the younger nuns often swung their arms as they walked with defiant casual-ness. Even in church there was a new restlessness. In the old habit you had to kneel perfectly still or the veil fell over your shoulders like a tent and your legs tangled and twisted the voluminous skirts. I had no romantic regrets about the old habit. It was hot, inconvenient, and unhygienic. But the modern dress gave the nuns greater freedom of movement, and I noticed that some of them fidgeted in their pews, as though the imposed stillness had become more of a strain. Or—and this was an arresting thought—perhaps I had not been the only one who had had difficulties with prayer. The next morning, I knelt with a few other seculars in the chapel for Mass, which was now said facing the people, in accordance with the directives of the Vatican Council. When the nuns processed up the aisle to receive Communion, I glanced at Rebecca and felt the shock as acutely as though I were seeing her emaciated frame for the first time. The whole decorous structure of the convent suddenly seemed a sham. The nuns who gathered together around the altar seemed an image of prayerful community, and yet they were allowing one of their number to waste away before their very eyes. They might have comfortable chairs in the community room and take more frequent baths, but the old attitudes were still in place. How could women who had spent thirty or forty years in the religious life and been even more indelibly shaped by the old system than I change overnight? No, I told myself as I watched them file back to their seats, their eyes cast down and their gaze directed inward, it was no good looking back with nostalgia. When the world outside seemed baffling, I sometimes felt homesick for a way of life that, with all its shortcomings, was at least familiar, just as I had instinctively relaxed when I had walked into the convent yesterday. I could only move forward, however difficult that might seem.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Although all the boys I met had watched porn—one equated his morning session to sneezing—they didn’t all relate to it in the same way. A small group, after some experimentation, had rejected explicit media entirely. “In middle school, porn was considered cool,” a senior at a Southern California high school told me. “Guys knew the names of porn stars. And I watched it almost because it was like the unknown—like the same impulse that makes me want to climb a rock or go to a forest. But pretty quickly, I was like, ‘This is just so fucked up.’ What’s on the screen isn’t actually sensual, not for either person. And often the only part that’s touching between the two people is their genitals. That’s literally all that’s touching. And I was like, ‘What am I watching?’ It doesn’t make sense to me, how you can look at a woman with tremendous respect and then go watch porn. So I stopped.” A second group felt that their porn use had no effect on them, many of them asserting, “I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” That, as it happens, is the instinctive response people give to any suggestion of media influence. None of us wants to think we’re so impressionable, though we’re quick to recognize that others are (several of the boys I interviewed made grim predictions about the impact of iPhones, video games, social media, and porn on “the next generation,” by which they meant their slightly younger siblings). But decades of research show that what we consume becomes part of our psyches, unconsciously affecting how we feel, think, and behave. When false information is embedded into a fictional story, people will come to believe it (yes, reader, you would, too), and those beliefs are strengthened over time. Consider the college students who were given a short story containing the bogus “fact” that exercise weakens the heart and lungs. When questioned directly afterward, they were unconvinced this was true, but two weeks later, they had become certain it was. Karen Dill-Shackleford, a media psychologist at Fielding Graduate University, speculates that there is something about the way we suspend disbelief when swept up in a story that opens us to uncritically and even permanently accepting its reality (that theory also partly explains both the spread of fake news and why the repetition of obvious lies can be a successful ploy for political candidates).

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  After such a long history of mutual benefit, technology now seems to be turning on pornography. It is happening in many ways. Newer versions of the major web browsers—Explorer, Firefox and Safari—all include a “privacy mode” (often referred to as a “porn mode” by the blogging classes) that can delete all history, including cookies, at the end of a browsing session. The obvious purpose of such an option is to cover one’s tracks after visiting pornographic websites. But those tracks also contain the information necessary for affiliate programs to work. With privacy mode enabled, adult webmasters no longer have a record of who referred customers to their site. On an entirely different front, pornography has suffered from its early adoption of high-definition television. When the industry moved to hi-def formats like Blu-ray and HD DVD, porn stars discovered that hitherto invisible “flaws”—from moles and wrinkles to razor burn and surgery scars—were suddenly visible to audiences. This forced actors and producers to take all manner of compensatory action, including changing camera angles, increasing makeup, changing diet and exercise habits and even undergoing cosmetic surgery to remove the smallest imperfections. The technology had created too much clarity for the fuzzy fantasies that are at the heart of pornography. Things were looking so grim in early 2009 that Hustler’s Larry Flynt, Girls Gone Wild’s Joe Francis and others in the industry appealed to the U.S. government for a $5-billion “porn bailout.” This (unsuccessful) bid for government aid demonstrates more than the dire situation faced by America’s porn moguls. It points to the mainstreaming of the porn industry. Yet this move out of the margins is also damaging in some ways, diminishing pornographers’ power to experiment and innovate. Pornography’s traditionally marginal existence places unique exigencies on them. They have contended with prosecution, persecution, censors and censurers, and many of their technological leaps were a result of these struggles. Those companies that become more mainstream necessarily lose that edge. Christie Hefner gave a lecture in 2008 (at IdeaCity, an annual speakers’ festival coincidentally founded and organized by Citytv maverick Moses Znaimer) in which she spoke about the empire created by her father, Hugh, which she was running at the time. (In 2009 she stepped down as CEO of Playboy Inc., a position she had held since 1988.) After her talk, I caught her in the hall and explained my research, in the hopes that she could offer some views on the concept of the adult industry as tech pioneer. She shut me down immediately. “That’s not Playboy,” she said.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  What may be of more immediate concern to guys themselves, though, is that male porn users report less satisfaction than others with their sex lives, their own performance in bed, and their female partners’ bodies—and the effect becomes apparent among those who indulge as rarely as a few times a year. There is even speculation that because of its convenience as well as low physical and emotional investment—porn never rejects you, never makes demands of you, never wants you to talk about your feelings—the rise in porn use is partially responsible for the lower rates of intercourse among millennials: not, I imagine, quite the victory abstinence-only advocates were going for. That reduction of pleasure in partnered sex was what concerned the majority of my interviewees. Even when they felt their porn habit was at reasonable levels, more than half had, at one point or another, cut back on their use, much the way they would if they were drinking too much or smoking too much weed. A high school senior in New England told me he took a break when he found himself daydreaming during math class about a female friend who sat across from him, and realized that he wasn’t fantasizing about what she’d look like naked, or even what it might be like to have sex with her. “I was thinking about what she’d look like with cum on her face,” he said. “That was a wake-up call for me.” Reza, a sophomore at a Boston college, believed porn increased his awareness of real women’s physical imperfections. “I’ve got things narrowed down to a very, very specific body type that turns me on,” he explained. “Like the size of the areola and its color, that sort of thing. It’s probably not all driven by porn, but I figured out what I liked from that and I think I wouldn’t have otherwise. It doesn’t ruin my relationships, but it’s not nice when I’m trying to talk my girlfriend into liking a part of her body, but I’m secretly thinking, Well, actually, I would prefer . . .” And Kevin, a high school junior from Kentucky, said that after masturbating to “all those skinny white women” (he’s Caucasian), he was having a hard time becoming aroused by his African American girlfriend’s body, which was neither of those things. “I still watch porn five or more times a week, though,” he admitted. “It’s so easy, and I’m a lusty, young teenager. But sometimes I wonder if I’m only depriving myself of a better sexual relationship and that’s kind of depressing.”

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Again I read there, that God the Word was born not of flesh nor of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. But that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, I read not there. For I traced in those books that it was many and divers ways said, that the Son was in the form of the Father, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, for that naturally He was the Same Substance. But that He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, and that the death of the cross: wherefore God exalted Him from the dead, and gave Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should how, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father; those books have not. For that before all times and above all times Thy Only-Begotten Son remaineth unchangeable, co-eternal with Thee, and that of His fulness souls receive, that they may be blessed; and that by participation of wisdom abiding in them, they are renewed, so as to be wise, is there. But that in due time He died for the ungodly; and that Thou sparedst not Thine Only Son, but deliveredst Him for us all, is not there. For Thou hiddest these things from the wise, and revealedst them to babes; that they that labour and are heavy laden might come unto Him, and He refresh them, because He is meek and lowly in heart; and the meek He directeth in judgment, and the gentle He teacheth His ways, beholding our lowliness and trouble, and forgiving all our sins. But such as are lifted up in the lofty walk of some would-be sublimer learning, hear not Him, saying, Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls. Although they knew God, yet they glorify Him not as God, nor are thankful, but wax vain in their thoughts; and their foolish heart is darkened; professing that they were wise, they became fools.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  [image file=image_rsrc1FT.jpg] EIGHTEEN [image file=image_rsrc1FU.jpg] Down but Not OutFor forty thousand years, pornography, erotica and sexual representation have shaped the tools human beings use to express themselves. If anything, pornography’s influence has increased over time. Millennium by millennium, it has grown in power, exerting its greatest influence on the technologies of this century and the last. The formula is hard to improve upon: pornography, a possibly addictive product, supplied to a near-insatiable market, jumps up in value each time it is recreated or repackaged for a new medium. It is a low-cost, high-return means of drawing in early adopters, who will do or pay anything to receive their adult content in a new, better, faster, clearer, easier way. Pornography bears all the hallmarks of an unstoppable force in technological development. Yet a surprising number of people in the industry—people who a decade ago would have been only too happy to sing their own praises on this subject—think the glory days are over and that pornography’s influence is waning. Playboy’s Reena Patel is among those who question whether the adult industry still leads the pack. She is one of many who think it was true ten years ago, but not any more. “At this point, I think that people that were leading the technology in the past are trying to figure out ways to use the social networking platforms or other technology out there to make money on the web,” she says. While many of these Web 2.0 applications benefit from the same kind of emergent sex that helped shape the early Internet, pornography businesses are now scrambling as much as any mainstream media company to understand whether and how they can capitalize on these latest trends. The pace of technological change confounds pornographic and non-pornographic media companies alike, but purveyors of pornography have also seen a powerful resurgence of an old threat to their livelihood: free porn. And unlike in the days of the early Internet, free online pornography has proliferated at a level of quality and convenience that matches the pay sites. The web-ranking site Alexa.com keeps track of the most visited and used sites on the Internet. At the time of writing, tube sites occupied positions 47 and 51 on the list. (Google.com holds the top position, with ten more Google sites also placing in the top 50. Yahoo!, YouTube and Facebook hold positions 2, 3, and 4, with Microsoft, MySpace, several blog clearing houses, photo-sharing sites and a number of Russian and Chinese social networking sites making up the majority of the top 50.) These tube sites are far and away the top-ranked pornographic sites and among the most visited destinations on the web. Tube sites’ traffic dwarfs that of fee-based porn businesses.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  “Karen, my dear, how very nice to see you.” I looked up from my breakfast, which I was enjoying in the elegant parlor. How odd it was to be waited on in this way, as I had so often waited on visitors, bringing in coffee, toast, and eggs, while a few hundred yards away the community were eating cornflakes, bread, and margarine. There were some advantages to secular life, I reflected, helping myself to more marmalade but hastily suppressing my involuntary smile of enjoyment when Mother Frances came into the room. She looked somewhat less imposing in her new habit, but she had recently been promoted to become one of the provincial councillors. “But I’m interrupting your breakfast.” Mother Frances gestured toward the hot buttered toast. “Not at all, Reverend Mother.” Instantly I became the young nun again, unable to swallow a single mouthful while my former superior stood waiting to speak to me. “Well, you’re looking very well,” she went on, settling herself in one of the oak carvers at the head of the table. “Are you well?” “Not really, Reverend Mother.” I knew that I was supposed to say that everything was fine, but I suddenly pictured Rebecca’s stricken face. “I’m finding it very hard—almost impossible—to adapt. And it seems to be making me ill.” I briefly gave her the headlines: the fainting, the panic attacks, and the psychiatrist. “Oh really, Sister—Karen, I mean.” She corrected herself, laughing lightly but without amusement. “I really had hoped that you would grow out of all that nonsense! It’s high time, surely. You must be twenty-five? Twenty-six?” “Twenty-five,” I replied, though I couldn’t really see what my age had to do with it. “Well, there you are, then. Far too old for these childish displays.” “But how do I adjust?” Perhaps she should understand the problem so that she could advise other nuns who were thinking of leaving. “I trained to become a nun for five solid years. You know what it was like. You call it ‘formation’ now, I believe, and that’s what it is. It’s a training that shapes you at a very deep level. And I just can’t stop being a nun. I need a new training—one that is equally intensive—to turn me into a secular. Undoing habits and attitudes which are now engrained. I don’t know how to do this. You and Mother Walter made me a nun, but how do I reverse that? I don’t have anybody to help me deprogram myself, and I don’t think I can do it alone.” “Still as dramatic as ever, I see.” Mother Frances sounded bored, as she often did when, I suspected, she felt on uncertain ground. “It’s bound to be difficult at first. Of course it is.” She smiled brightly, and in an effort, perhaps, to avoid my eye, she started to brush away the crumbs scattered on the gleaming tabletop. “But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.”

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Most fantasies have exaggerated or forbidden elements; some are genuinely scary or painful—and worth dreaming of still. But fantasies aren’t about our ordinary lives. Fulfilling the plot of a fantasy in real life is almost certain to be disappointing because it means losing this control, control over what we can never control, and in exchange, returning to a world that is often mundane, uncomfortable, and ambivalent. A world that condemns the world of the fantasy in the first place. I suspect the man who goes to a prostitute to fulfill his fantasy of having sex with a prostitute is really fulfilling a wish—a psychic dare—and not the complex subconscious narrative ground of fantasy that makes prostitutes so desirable to him. If I fulfilled my fantasy of being a prostitute by taking on a client, I don’t think the fantasy would be satisfied at all. It wouldn’t be the same—couldn’t be, at least in part because the “me” that is the prostitute is not exactly me. I sometimes find it disturbing to read about people making their fantasies come true for real. I won’t soon forget a long and terribly uncomfortable story by a woman who dressed in a little-girl nightie and had her “daddy” (another woman) awaken her, seduce her, spank her until she collapsed in childish weeping, and then comfort her and put her back to bed. The extraordinary courage of the writer melds with the rarity of anyone going about conquering her private fears this way. This is primal scream therapy, true-life recovery, and real sex all at once. For the most part, I suspect such efforts don’t work as well, because the psychic impetus has to be so strong. Just as we can be both subject and object of pornography, move in and out of its power that way, within fantasy we can be mover or moved, giver or receiver—we can be top or bottom, man or woman. More specifically, we can be imagined man and imagined woman. Women become boys and men become mothers, fucking boys, or girls, fucking girls, or goats, or brothers, or fathers fucking mothers or schoolteachers or angels, or dogs. Men have no penises but giant vaginal mouths, women thrust and intrude upon men. Blurring is inevitable. In our sexual fantasies we transmutate like superheroes of the boudoir, sprouting pricks, wings, breasts, tentacles, growing in stature and magical staying power. All Americans share the fantasy of physical beauty and strength. Those with bodies beyond normal often fill our fantasies; they are dream creatures, incubus and succubus, heroines and heroes, archetypes of the possible. We would like to be them; in fantasy, we are them.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  No one ever needs to take a deep breath, walk into the XXX store, and ask for a movie with an embarrassing title again. (I’m glad I had to do that—it was hard the first few times, but I learned a lot, about myself and about all those scary other people behind that door.) Anything legal is easy enough to find. (I want to make it clear that I am talking about consensual acts between adults.) Fetish-based material that once required research and a big time commitment to find is readily available. I have to laugh at the trend these days toward so-called vintage porn; many of the movies are ones I asked for with such trepidation twenty years ago. The sheer quantity of amateur pornography available for free staggers me. There are a lot of curious and enterprising plumbers and soccer moms out there, but I’m not sure how many really grasp the tentacular grip of the Internet on every picture posted. Perhaps they all do; exhibitionism is a common sexual urge, and we live in the most exhibitionistic of times. Reality television has crept along this edge for a while now. How long before we have a competition to be the next big porn star? Until recently, I hadn’t looked at pornography for quite a while. I wasn’t interested—it’s one of the ways twenty years has changed me. The baby boomers with their intricate sense of entitlement have begun to retire; my generation, the first to thoroughly enjoy reliable birth control and to march for gay liberation, is balding or in menopause. Young women talk more easily about sex than I did at the same age, but they seem no wiser; they’re still discovering fire. People have had fire for some time, and each generation discovers it anew; we certainly did, with a lot of self-congratulation. Great sexual literature, spanning centuries—erotica, advice, science, anthropology, some really good and nasty stuff—fills the shelves of good bookstores and many libraries, but only the dreadful Fifty Shades of Grey is on the bestseller list. Many people interested in sexual culture are ambivalent about that book’s success. On the one hand, people are openly reading a book intended for masturbation. But on the other, it’s a bad book. Perhaps if Macho Sluts or Mr. Benson were published now, they would be sold on display tables at Barnes & Noble. Or perhaps not—real pornography may be defined by its outlaw status; pornography is pornographic because it violates the mainstream point of view. That Shades of Grey is so successful is a mark of what’s missing.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  One month our donor friend tells us that he has to go out of town for a college reunion. Not wanting to lose the month’s egg, we trudge back to the bank. We track the egg’s progress via ultrasound: it looks bulbous and beautiful and ready to burst out of its follicle in the late afternoon, but by the next morning there is no sign of it, not even a trace of fluid from its ruptured sac. I am beyond frustrated, beyond hope. But Harry—always the optimist!—insists it might not be too late. The nurse concurs. Knowing that I have a bad habit of deeming myself lost and getting off the freeway one exit before I would have found my way, I decide, once again, to join them. [Single or lesbian motherhood] can be seen as [one] of the most violent forms taken by the rejection of the symbolic … as well as one of the most fervent divinizations of maternal power—all of which cannot help but trouble an entire legal and moral order without, however, proposing an alternative to it. Given that one-third of American families are currently headed by single mothers (the census doesn’t even ask about two mothers or any other forms of kinship—if there is anyone in the house called mother and no father, then your household counts as single mother), you’d think the symbolic order would be showing a few more dents by now. But Kristeva is not alone in her hyperbole. For a more disorienting take on the topic, I recommend Jean Baudrillard’s “The Final Solution,” in which Baudrillard argues that assisted forms of reproduction (donor insemination, surrogacy, IVF, etc.), along with the use of contraception, herald the suicide of our species, insofar as they detach reproduction from sex, thus turning us from “mortal, sexed beings” into clone-like messengers of an impossible immortality. So-called artificial insemination, Baudrillard argues, is linked with “the abolition of everything within us that is human, all too human: our desires, our deficiencies, our neuroses, our dreams, our disabilities, our viruses, our lunacies, our unconscious and even our sexuality—all the features which make us specific living beings.”

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  ©2001 The Teaching Company. 72 E. I n d e s c r i b i n g t h e o r i g i n s o f t h e quarrel, the canto singles out Buondelmonte—in effect the “founder” of Dante’s own White Guelf faction—as the one chiefly to blame for the precipitating incident. IV. I n C a n t o 1 7 , C a c c i a g u i d a c o n t i n u e s t h e d i s c o u r s e i n t o t h e f u t u r e a n d gives a remarkable, sustained account of Dante’s upcoming exile. A. D a n t e t e l l s C a c c i a g u i d a t h a t h e i s r e a d y f o r a f u l l e r a c c o u n t o f what earlier predictions have suggested will happen to him. Dante does not give in to fatalism—he knows his own moral responsibility. B. C a c c i a g u i d a t e l l s h i m o f e x i l e b y s p e c i f i c a l l y d e s c r i b i n g t h e hardships that it will entail (“the arrows in the bow your exile will shoot”). 1. D a n t e w i l l k n o w t h e s a l t y t a s t e o f o t h e r s ’ b r e a d . ( F l o r e n t i n e bread is made without salt.) 2. H e w i l l c l i m b s t a i r s t h a t a r e n o t h i s o w n . 3. M o s t o f a l l , h e w i l l b e i n t h e c o m p a n y o f r a s c a l s a n d k n a v e s . 4. H e w i l l s p e n d h i s e a r l y e x i l e t r y i n g t o g e t b a c k . C.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  And so there was. If a thesis is failed—not simply referred back to the student for correction, but failed outright, as mine had been—the examiner is expected to write a very detailed report, going through the text page by page, point by point, and drawing attention to errors and flaws. Professor Courtney, however—at least, this is what I was told—had written half a paragraph to the effect that I was a clever young woman, but that in his view the topic of my thesis was unsuitable for a doctorate. This reflected badly on the university, which had approved the subject, and the faculty was furious. Now, apparently, when it was too late, the Academic Board was also incensed that I had not had an internal examiner, and insulted by what they regarded as Courtney’s arrogant brevity. They wrote back, I was told, telling him that he had failed as an examiner on eleven points and that it would be a long time before he was invited to examine for Oxford again. But what were they going to do with me? For five months, the faculty discussed my fate. In any other university, I expect that the thesis could have been reexamined, but Oxford was a law unto itself. There had not been a case like this before (though a few dons darkly recalled something similar happening fifteen years earlier in the History Faculty), and many felt that reexamination would create a dangerous precedent. Any student could demand the right to get a better result. To my surprise, I found that I had powerful champions. Some of the most distinguished members of the board pleaded my cause and argued for me with passion, and this I found consoling: not everybody, apparently, thought I was a fool and a failure. Some remembered my very nice undergraduate degree and were outraged by what had happened. For months there was deadlock. I had very little hope of a favorable outcome, and knew that whatever happened, there would always be something questionable about me in academic circles. In any event, in July 1975, Dame Helen, the chairman of the board, settled the matter. An injustice had been done, she told the dean of graduate studies, who was staunchly on my side. She was very sorry for Miss Armstrong, but the sanctity of the Oxford doctorate could only be impaired by reexamination.