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 Wild (2012)

  I took off my boots and sat down, doctoring my chawed-up feet. When Trina’s dog began to bark, I looked up and saw a young man, blond, blue-eyed, and lanky. I knew in an instant that he was a PCT hiker by the drag of his gait. His name was Brent, and once he introduced himself I greeted him like an old friend, though I’d never met him. I’d heard stories about him back in Kennedy Meadows. He’d grown up in a small town in Montana, Greg, Albert, and Matt had told me. He’d once gone into a deli in a town near the trail in southern California, ordered a sandwich with two pounds of roast beef in it, and eaten it in six bites. He laughed when I reminded him about it, and then he took his pack off and squatted down to get a closer look at my feet. “Your boots are too small,” he said, echoing what Greg had told me back in Sierra City. I stared at him vacantly. My boots couldn’t be too small. They were the only boots I had. “I think it was just all that descending from Three Lakes,” I said. “But that’s the point,” replied Brent. “With the right size boots, you’d be able to descend without hashing up your feet. That’s what boots are for, so you can descend.” I thought of the good people of REI. I remembered the man who made me walk up and down a small wooden ramp in the store for just this reason: to make sure my toes didn’t bang up against the ends of my boots when I went down and that my heels didn’t rub against the backs when I went up. They hadn’t seemed to in the store. There was no question now that I’d been wrong or that my feet had grown or that there was any denying that as long as I had these boots on my feet, I was in a living hell. But there was nothing to be done. I didn’t have the money to buy a new pair or any place to do it if I did. I put on my camp sandals and walked back to the store, where I paid a dollar to take a shower and dressed in my rain gear while my clothes washed and dried in the two-machine laundromat. I called Lisa while I waited and was elated when she answered the phone. We talked about her life and I told her what I could convey of mine. Together we went over my new itinerary. After we hung up, I signed the PCT hiker register and scanned it to see when Greg had passed through. His name wasn’t there. It seemed impossible that he was behind me. “Have you heard anything about Greg?” I asked Brent when I returned wearing my clean clothes. “He dropped out because of the snow.” I looked at him, stunned. “Are you sure?”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Your persistence reveals your faith, and your faith moves the heart of God. THIRTEEN Spiritual bypassing is not spiritual at allA while back, a friend of mine killed her car. The worst part is that it was a beautiful Mercedes-Benz; not brand-new or anything, but one of those cars that are timelessly cool, with real personality. Everybody loved it. That made its tragic passing even more painful. Here’s how it happened. My friend had recently moved to LA from the South, with a cute Southern accent and a head full of dreams. Apparently her focus was on her dreams, though, not the oil level in her car. When the “check oil” light first appeared, it was intermittent. But eventually it stayed on permanently, a glowing red alert on the instrument panel every time she drove. She didn’t think too much of it, though. Her dad had always taken care of things like that. She hoped that if she ignored it long enough, it would fix itself. This went on for months. The light stayed on, forlornly trying to warn her that the engine needed attention. Needless to say, ignoring the problem didn’t work, and the car didn’t fix itself. She drove that innocent Mercedes-Benz right into oblivion. There was no funeral. Too bad, because we all would have attended. RIP Mercedes-Benz. We still give my friend a hard time about her naiveté. But I wonder, how often do we do the same thing when it comes to problems in our minds and emotions? We ignore warning signs and hope that our traumas and dramas will fix themselves. Even worse, we often use spiritual language to cover up deep issues. We don’t do this intentionally, at least for the most part. But it’s easier to pray about things than to actually put in the work to fix them. This does a disservice to prayer, and it sets us up for failure. Yes, we should pray about everything, but that doesn’t mean prayer alone will fix everything. It was never meant to be a cure-all, a magic potion that would make all pain go away with no effort on our part. Prayer should accompany action, not replace it. Prayer should bring pain points to light, not hide them. Prayer should facilitate healing, not enable continued abuse. Prayer should empower and direct our efforts, not excuse our laziness. “JUST PRAY ABOUT IT” The tendency to use prayer and other spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid doing real work has a name.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘I have not been alone with Justine for months now. Do you understand? It ended when the painting ended. If you wish us to be friends you will never refer to this subject again’ smiling a little tremulously, for in the same breath Justine came sailing down upon them, smiling warmly, radiantly. (It is quite possible to love those whom you most wound.) She passed, turning in the candlelight of the room like some great sea-bird, and came at last to where I was standing. ‘I cannot come tonight’ she whispered. ‘Nessim wants me to stay at home.’ I can feel still the uncomprehending weight of my disappointment at the words. ‘You must’ I muttered. Should I have known that not ten minutes before she had said to Nessim, knowing he hated bridge: ‘Darling, can I go and play bridge with the Cervonis — do you need the car?’ It must have been one of those rare evenings when Pursewarden consented to meet her out in the desert — meetings to which she went unerringly, like a sleep-walker. Why? Why?

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  It is difficult to describe how unspeakably strange I found it to sit beside this vulgar double of the Nessim I had once known. I studied him keenly but he avoided my eye and confined his conversation to laboured commonplaces which he punctuated by yawns that were one by one tapped away behind ringed fingers. Here and there, however, behind this new façade stirred a hint of the old diffidence, but buried — as a fine physique may be buried in a mountain of fat. In the washroom Zoltan the waiter confided in me: ‘He has become truly himself since his wife went away. All Alexandria says so.’ The truth was that he had become like all Alexandria. Late that night the whim seized him to drive me to Montaza in the late moonlight; we sat in the car for a long time in silence, smoking, gazing out at the moonlit waves hobbling across the sand bar. It was during this silence that I apprehended the truth about him. He had not really changed inside. He had merely adopted a new mask. * * * * * In the early summer I received a long letter from Clea with which this brief introductory memorial to Alexandria may well be brought to a close. ‘You may perhaps be interested in my account of a brief meeting with Justine a few weeks ago. We had, as you know, been exchanging occasional cards from our respective countries for some time past, and hearing that I was due to pass through Palestine into Syria she herself suggested a brief meeting. She would come, she said, to the border station where the Haifa train waits for half an hour. The settlement in which she works is somewhere near at hand, she could get a lift. We might talk for a while on the platform. To this I agreed. ‘At first I had some difficulty in recognizing her. She has gone a good deal fatter in the face and has chopped off her hair carelessly at the back so that it sticks out in rats’ tails. I gather that for the most part she wears it done up in a cloth. No trace remains of the old elegance or chic. Her features seem to have broadened, become more classically Jewish, lip and nose inclining more towards each other. I was shocked at first by the glittering eyes and the quick incisive way of breathing and talking — as if she were feverish. As you can imagine we were both mortally shy of each other.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  It isn’t a very good novel. Whatever it was we entered, it wasn’t a novel. And if we followed an ex-con priest into a cave, all we found was sea lion excrement. I don’t know if the posse would agree with me on this, but it seemed to me like what we’d entered that year was an ending. The most extreme part or point of something. Or a small piece of something that is left after it has been used. Or perhaps it was simply Kesey’s last act - to further his own end. Every Oregon writer has a Kesey story. I’m serious - go to literary readings in Oregon and 85 percent of the time his name will rise, whether or not whoever is speaking knew him. Sometimes it’s about his house in Pleasant Hill. Sometimes it’s about the bus. Sometimes it’s about writing. Sometimes it’s about his “wild spirit.” Often, if I’m in the audience, it gives me a stomachache to hear his name used in such … soft and impotent ways. I think that everyone that knew Kesey knew him differently. Maybe that’s true about all larger than life people, or it may be that no one really ever knows them at all - we just have experiences near them and claim them as our own. We say their names and wish that something intimate is coming out of our mouths. But intimacy isn’t like in books or movies. It wasn’t until the following year, the year that was not the collaborative writing class, the year after the book we wrote that was not very good came out that made me feel like we’d utterly failed Kesey, the year after he’d ended up in the Mayo clinic for his affair with his lover, vodka, we met once at his coast house by ourselves. That night he boiled water and cooked pasta and dumped a jar of Ragu on it and we ate it with bent old forks. We drank whiskey out of tin cups. He told life stories. That’s what he was best at. Me? I didn’t have any stories. Did I? When it got dark he lit some crappy looking ancient candles. We sat in two wooden chairs next to each other looking out at the moonlit water. I distinctly remember trying to sit in the chair older and like I had been part of history. Which amounted to extending my legs out and crossing one ankle over the other and crossing my arms over my chest. I looked like Abe Lincoln. Then he said, “What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your life?” I sat there like a lump trying to conjure up the best thing that had ever happened to me. We both already knew what the worst thing was. Nothing best had happened to me. Had it? I could only answer worst. I looked out at the ocean. Finally I said, “Swimming.”

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Isabella didn’t mind. She was in love with another guy; she gave Naomi her blessing. A few years later, Isabella was a bridesmaid in Naomi and Sam’s wedding. Now, in her late thirties, Naomi looks back and tries to understand why she isn’t happy. I listen as she begins to unpack her relationship with her mother, her friendship with Isabella, her marriage with Sam. “What am I missing?” Naomi asks again, sounding desperate. It is clear to both of us that she has worked hard to keep herself from knowing the truth about her life and about the people around her. “I know it’s a cliché,” she says apologetically, “but life is short.” I’m aware that Naomi is referencing Isabella’s illness, which brings her in touch with the fragility of life. She feels frightened and disappointed. “On the surface I have everything I ever wanted and I love my family, but I feel so defeated, as if life were supposed to be something else, more than what it turned out to be. Now Isabella is sick and it makes me angry.” Naomi’s voice becomes louder. “Sometimes I feel that I don’t know anyone at all, not even Isabella. I feel betrayed and I’m not sure why.” I know what Naomi means. Naomi views Isabella, as well as her own childhood and her perfect mother, in ways that often don’t feel real. She idealizes the world around her as a way to protect herself from seeing things as they really are. It’s not just that she doesn’t know others; she is afraid to discover herself. Idealization is a defense mechanism that serves to keep the illusion that things, or people, are perfect, and even better than reality. It is based on the splitting between good and bad, which children do in order to organize a safe and predictable world. As we grow up and become less fragile, we allow ourselves to see the world as more complex. As adults, we sometimes use idealization to pretend that things are perfect, that people are not flawed and that we don’t have any negative feelings or ambivalence about them. “I always wanted to be like my mother. She was everything I wanted to be.” Naomi looks at me and adds in embarrassment, “But I failed.” I recognize how similar those feelings are to how Naomi feels about Isabella. In her idealization of both women she splits between good and bad and perceives them as all good and herself as a failure. This is her way to defend against feelings she can’t tolerate having about them and about herself. Naomi can’t let herself know how ambivalent she feels about them, how envious she can be, how angry. Rather, she directs those negative feelings toward herself. “She was always better than I was. She was beautiful, smart, talented, and I was myself.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  • What do I need to do to make my family or personal life more positive and rewarding now? Issues of BeliefSome former members liken their cult involvement to spiritual rape. This wound is deep and takes time to heal. Through the cult's indoctrination and manipulative techniques, members become convinced that their spiritual experiences are a consequence of allegiance to the leader and his carefully crafted path to enlightenment. In secular cults, members are led to feel that they are fulfilling their highest human potential through unquestioning belief and dedication to the group's ideology. Whether your experience was religious or secular, your realization that an enormous betrayal has taken place may cause you considerable pain. In response, you may now tend to reject all forms of belief. It can take many years to overcome your disillusionment and learn not only to trust your inner self but also to believe in something again. [image file=img/page0195_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0003.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0004.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0005.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0006.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0007.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0008.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0009.svg] [image file=img/page0195_0010.svg] Although it is a widespread misconception that all cults are religious, it is true that all cults tend to disrupt a person's core beliefs. This tends to affect all areas of life, which is why it is sometimes said that a cult experience has an effect on the spiritual being, the psyche, or the inner person. Coming to terms with spirituality or personal beliefs may be the most upsetting part of some people's postcult experience. Counselor William Kent Burtner writes: The emotions of wonder and awe, transcendence and mystery, are a deep part of each person.... While in most of us those feelings are directed toward God, creation and the discovery of the "really real," like any other emotion, they are subject to manipulation. Ex-cultists have experienced these manipulations profoundly and the memory of them remains vivid. If they have not rejected those feelings totally as a result of their "heavenly sting," they question whether they can find that sense of transcendence anywhere other than in the cult. The cult has told them that no other path exists beyond that of the group. In essence cultists have never really made a choice for the group, but rather have experienced a program that causes them to progressively close the door on alternatives. The only "choice" that remains to them is the group itself. The lingering question of where to experience that sense of transcendence needs to be addressed.... In leaving such a group, the ex-member finds himself in an enormous vacuum.10 A related difficulty may be a persistent nagging thought that you made a giant mistake in the group, that perhaps the teachings are true and the leader right; perhaps it is you who failed. Because of the cult's "mystical manipulation" (see Chapter 3), coupled with the most human desire to believe, people may search for a way to continue believing even after leaving the group.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In that same year, Anuttama Dasa, ISKCON's public affairs director, and the Communications Ministry commissioned Professor Burke Rochford Jr. to research and produce an academic report on the history ofgurukula. A sociology professor in Vermont and author of a prominent book about ISKCON, Rochford had been studying the boarding schools for almost twenty years.' Initially he learned of the child abuse in the same way as everyone else, by reading accounts of former students that came out in the 199os. Reform-minded devotees published Rochford's analysis in the ISKCON Communications Journal without clearing it with the hierarchy.9 Further, the public relations office supplied copies to the media, and the New York Times published a front-page report.10 A similar article by the Associated Press appeared in newspapers across the United States," and Rochford appeared on numerous talk shows to discuss his findings. My opinion, as an outside observer, is that this was the most meaningful gesture that ISKCON made toward reconciling with its children. As one ISKCON official told the media, "Even if we have to go through ten years of court cases and we lose every building in North America, it's more important [to resolve the issues so] we can give people spirituality."" Unfortunately, the publication of Rochford's paper led to internal divisions and outright hostility toward abuse survivors, including fistfights at temples. By 1999, ISKCON had polarized into two camps. The reformers genuinely wanted to help the victims and bring the matter out in the open. However, the conservative wing, which consisted of the majority of gurus and GBC members (and their followers), outnumbered the reformers, and seemed to want the victims to just go away. They opposed any open discussion or acknowledg ment of the problems. For his part, Rochford said he felt torn over his involvement. He wrote the article to help the survivors, but he expressed regret over the way it was received, saying, "Essentially I had been drawn into writing the article and exposing child abuse to promote a partisan political agenda."13 In 1999, the ISKCON Communications Office published a press release stating that it would raise one million dollars for Children of Krishna, Inc., and the Office of Child Protection.14 Unfortunately, the money never materialized. Moving OnIt seemed apparent to the victims and observers like me that ISKCON did not want to help. Many survivors needed counseling. They were trying to raise their own children, and many were suicidal or depressed. A few of us got together in 1999 and located an attorney who was interested in the case. Windle Turley met with the survivors, and in 2000, he initiated Children of ISKCON v. ISKCON. In May 2005, ISKCON settled the complaint, going into bankruptcy reorganization to pay millions in damages to the victims. Unfortunately, according to various reports, the organization has welcomed back some of the most notorious child abusers. In addition, the abuse was criminal in nature; yet, so far, no criminal charges have been filed.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  For Clea too the little book of Arnauti upon Justine seemed shallow and infected by the desire to explain everything. ‘It is our disease’ she said ‘to want to contain everything within the frame of reference of a psychology or a philosophy. After all Justine cannot be justified or excused. She simply and magnificently is; we have to put up with her, like original sin. But to call her a nymphomaniac or to try and Freudianise her, my dear, takes away all her mythical substance — the only thing she really is. Like all amoral people she verges on the Goddess. If our world were a world there would be temples to accommodate her where she would find the peace she was seeking. Temples where one could outgrow the sort of inheritance she has: not these damn monasteries full of pimply little Catholic youths who have made a bicycle saddle of their sexual organs.’ She was thinking of the chapters which Arnauti has entitled The Check, and in which he thinks he has found the clue to Justine’s instability of heart. They may be, as Clea thinks, shallow, but since everything is susceptible of more than one explanation they are worth consideration. I myself do not feel that they explain Justine, but to a degree they do illuminate her actions — those immense journeys they undertook together across the length and breadth of Europe. ‘In the very heart of passion’ he writes, adding in parentheses ‘(passion which to her seemed the most facile of gifts) there was a check — some great impediment of feeling which I became aware of only after many months. It rose up between us like a shadow and I recognized, or thought I did, the true enemy of the happiness which we longed to share and from which we felt ourselves somehow excluded. What was it?

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I bit my nail, and frowned. ‘Dreams,’ I said. He snapped his fingers. ‘The very stuff that stages are made of.’ ‘Where would we start?’ I said then. ‘Who would offer us a spot?’ ‘The manager here would. Tonight. I’ve already spoken with him -’ ‘Tonight!’ ‘Just one song. He’ll find space for you in his programme; and if they like you, he’ll keep you there.’ ‘Tonight...’ I looked at Walter in dismay. His face was very kind, and his eyes seemed bluer and more earnest than ever. But what he said made me tremble. I thought of the hall, hot and bright and filled with jeering faces. I thought of that stage, so wide and empty. I thought: I cannot do it, not even for Walter’s sake. Not even for Kitty’s. I made to shake my head. He saw, and quickly spoke again - spoke, perhaps for the first time in all the months that I had known him, with something that was almost guile. He said: ‘You know, of course, that we cannot throw over the idea of the double act, now that we have hit upon it. If you don’t wish to partner Kitty, there’ll be some other girl who does. We can spread the word, place notices, audition. You mustn’t feel that you are letting Kitty down...’ I looked from him to the stage, where Kitty herself sat on the edge of a beam of limelight, sipping at her cup, swinging her legs, and smiling at some word of the conductor’s. The thought that she might take another partner - might stroll before the footlights with another girl’s arm through hers, another girl’s voice rising and blending with her own - had not occurred to me. It was more ghastly than the image of the jeering hall; more ghastly than the prospect of being laughed and hissed off a thousand, thousand stages... So when Kitty stood in the wing of the theatre that night, waiting for the chairman’s cry, I stood beside her, sweating beneath a layer of grease-paint, biting my lips so hard I thought they would bleed. My heart had beat fast for Kitty before, in apprehension and passion; but it had never thudded as it thudded now - I thought it would burst right out of my breast, I thought I should be killed with fright. When Walter came to whisper to us, and to fill our pockets with coins, I could not answer him. There was a juggling turn upon the stage. I heard the creaking of the boards as the man ran to catch his batons, the clap-gasp-clap-gasp- cheer of the audience as he finished his set; and then came the clack of a gavel, and the juggler ran by us, clutching his gear. Kitty said once, very low, ‘I love you!’ - and I felt myself half-pulled, half-thrust beneath the rising curtain, and knew that I must somehow saunter and sing.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  So I had lost sight of her for a month or more; and indeed I did not think of her, having many other preoccupations at this time. Then, one hot blank afternoon, when I was sitting at my window watching the city unwrinkle from sleep I saw a different Melissa walk down the street and turn into the shadowy doorway of the house. She tapped at my door and walked in with her arms full of flowers, and all at once I found myself separated from that forgotten evening by centuries. She had in her something of the same diffidence with which I later saw her take up a collection for the orchestra in the night-club. She looked like a statue of pride hanging its head.

• From Less (2017)

  “There is also a four o’clock,” Rupali counters. “And the drowsy tree, which opens at sunrise and closes at sunset. The plants here are more punctual than the people. You will see. And this plant is more alive.” She touches her chappal to a small fern, which instantly shrinks from her touch, folding in its leaves. Less is horrified. They arrive at a spot where the coconut trees part. “Here is a possibly inspiring view.” It certainly is: a cliff overhanging a mangrove forest, at the edge of which the Arabian Sea flogs the coast as mercilessly as an Inquisitor, foaming up in white crests against the pale and impenitent sand. Beside him, at the cliffside, the coconut trees frame a view of birds and insects, as filled with living creatures as the waters of a coral shelf: eagles, red- and white-headed, floating in pairs high above, and covens of irritated crows massing on the treetops, and, nearby, yellow-black biplane dragonflies, buzzing around in a dogfight at the entrance of a little house. “And here is your little house.” The cottage, like the other buildings, is made in the South Indian style: all brick, with a tile roof over an open wooden lattice that lets in the air. But the cottage is pentagonal, and, curiously, rather than leave the space whole, the architects have divided it, like a nautilus shell, into smaller and smaller “rooms,” until it reaches the end of its ingenuity at a tiny desk and an inlaid portrait of the Last Supper. Less stares at this curiously for a moment. The paper trail has been lost, so it is hard to know whether, in his haste, Less missed a crucial piece of information, or whether it was delicately withheld by Carlos Pelu, but it turns out that, rather than a typical artist residency at which to finish a novel, a place full of art, providing three vegetarian meals a day, a yoga mat, and Ayurvedic tea, Arthur Less has booked himself into a Christian retreat center. He has nothing personal against Christ; though raised Unitarian—with its glaring omission of Jesus and a hymnal so unorthodox that it was years before Less understood “Accentuate the Positive” was not in the Book of Common Prayer—Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects. And yet he is somehow deflated. To travel to the other side of the world—only to be offered a brand he could so easily buy at home. “Services are Sunday morning, of course,” Rupali tells him, gesturing to a small gray church that, in the midst of these lively outbuildings, sits as humorless as a recess monitor. So here he will rewrite his novel. With God’s happiness.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Boring BeautyIn the first decade of the eighteenth century, Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, fell in love at first sight with a certain Mademoiselle Dieskau for her platinum hair, large blue eyes, and “neck of dazzling whiteness.” According to the elector’s biographer, Mademoiselle Dieskau “was, her mind excepted, the most accomplished creature nature ever formed.”22 But, he continues, “how beautiful soever Mademoiselle Dieskau really was, she could be called no better than a lump of snow. No vivacity could be found in her, she made no other answers than yes and no. The King was charmed with the great beauty of her person, he spoke to her…but was in despair when he found so little life in her.”23 But the desires of his body soon overcame the needs of his mind, and Augustus found himself in Mademoiselle Dieskau’s arms, having paid a large sum to her mother for the girl’s virginity. His physical urges assuaged, he left Mademoiselle Dieskau soon after in search of a woman of greater intelligence. Likewise, in 1680 Louis XIV was captivated by a new face at court, one Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Courtiers raved about her beauty. One ambassador described her as “an extraordinary blonde beauty, the like of which has not been seen at Versailles in many a year. A form, a daring, an air to astonish and charm even that gallant and sophisticated Court.”24 But after the initial wave of enthusiasm over Mademoiselle de Fontanges’s beauty died down, the next tide of gossip revolved around her shocking stupidity. The moment the girl opened her mouth, many tender fantasies inspired by her looks were immediately dispelled. Madame de Caylus wrote, “The King, in truth, was attracted solely by her face. He was actually embarrassed by her foolish chatter…One grows accustomed to beauty, but not to stupidity.”25 One courtier called the new mistress “beautiful as an angel and stupid as a basket.”26 Louis quickly tired of his stupid basket. The most bombastic empty-headed beauty was, without a doubt, nineteen-year-old Virginie di Castiglione, who in 1856 was sent by Italian prime minister Camillo Cavour to seduce Emperor Napoleon III of France, a mission she accomplished with lightning speed. Unburdened by modesty, Virginie called herself the most beautiful woman in the world and later expanded that to “the most beautiful woman of the century.”27 Many agreed with Virginie’s assessment of her beauty. Princess Metternich described Virginie’s face as “a delicious oval, her eyes dark green and velvety, surmounted by brows that could have been traced by a miniaturist’s pencil, her small nose…obstinate, yet absolutely regular, her teeth like pearls.”28

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But first, wash you, be clean; put away evil from your souls, and from before mine eyes, that the dry land may appear. Learn to do good, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow, that the earth may bring forth the green herb for meat, and the tree bearing fruit; and come, let us reason together, saith the Lord, that there may be lights in the firmament of the heaven, and they may shine upon the earth. That rich man asked of the good Master, what he should do to attain eternal life. Let the good Master tell him (whom he thought no more than man; but He is good because He is God), let Him tell him, if he would enter into life, he must keep the commandments: let him put away from him the bitterness of malice and wickedness; not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not bear false witness; that the dry land may appear, and bring forth the honouring of father and mother, and the love of our neighbour. All these (saith he) have I kept. Whence then so many thorns, if the earth be fruitful? Go, root up the spreading thickets of covetousness; sell that thou hast, and be filled with fruit, by giving to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and follow the Lord if thou wilt be perfect, associated with them, among whom He speaketh wisdom, Who knoweth what to distribute to the day, and to the night, that thou also mayest know it, and for thee there may be lights in the firmament of heaven; which will not be, unless thy heart be there: nor will that either be, unless there thy treasure be; as thou hast heard of the good Master. But that barren earth was grieved; and the thorns choked the word.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  It was generally accepted that bastards were more intelligent and better looking than legitimate children. The belief was that intercourse between a man and his mistress was truly an act of love, or at least genuine desire. And in that moment of conception, the passions of love and desire mingled to form a more impressive child than those wrung from forced copulation. Louis XIV, distressed that five of his six legitimate children died young, while so many of his bastards thrived, was informed by his doctors that he had given his best juice to his mistresses, leaving the queen with only the dregs of the glass. The truth was that compulsory marital sex between inbred cousins often produced another genetically inferior generation, with the poor health, plodding intelligence, and grim appearance of their parents. One day in the 1670s Louis XIV’s Queen Marie-Thérèse, mother of a prince just as dull and unattractive as herself, grew quite peeved when she heard courtiers raving about the king’s adorable, precocious sons with Madame de Montespan. “Everybody goes into ecstasies about those children while Monsieur le Dauphin is never even mentioned,” she complained.1 In addition to superior intelligence and looks, royal bastards were less arrogant than their legitimate half siblings, who sauntered about court prickly with the pride of their fully royal birth. Bastards had no official position other than what their father chose to bestow on them and usually offered him a fierce loyalty in return for his generosity. When Henry II of England lay dying in 1189, of all his children, only his bastard son Geoffrey Plantagenet sat by his side. Henry’s surviving legitimate sons, John and Richard, had allied themselves with the king of France and were rebelling against their father. “You alone have proved yourself my lawful and true son,” Henry grumbled. “My other sons are really the bastards.”2 The Love of Kings and BastardsThe king often loved his bastards far better than the princes and princesses coerced from his loins in the marriage bed. Nothing devastated Henri IV of France so much as seeing how his heir, the dauphin, was the spitting image of his mother, the unloved Queen Marie de Medici. According to a nobleman, soon after the birth of Henri’s bastard with Henriette d’Entragues, the king said that this child was “finer than that of the Queen, who resembles the Medici, being swarthy and fat.” When the queen was told of the king’s comment, “she wept bitterly.”3 As his bastard son grew up, Henri would point to him and say, “See how good-natured this son is and how much he resembles me. He is not a stubborn child like the Dauphin.”4 Henri’s court physician, Dr. Hérouard, wrote, “The Queen can’t understand how…the King…can give more caresses to the bastards than to the legitimate children…[and fears that] all the world will think that they are more loved by their father than the Queen’s children.”5

• From Less (2017)

  Yet, like those impossible beetles that survive years in the dunes, living only on desert rains, his novel somehow, over the years, kept selling. It sold in England, and France, and Italy. Less wrote a second novel, The Counterglow, which got less attention, and a third, Dark Matter, which the head of Cormorant Publishing pushed hard, giving it an enormous publicity budget, sending him to over a dozen cities. At the launch, in Chicago, he stood offstage and listened to his introduction (“Please welcome the magniloquent author of the critically acclaimed Kalipso… ”) and heard the whimpering applause of perhaps fifteen, twenty people in the auditorium—that dreadful harbinger, like the dark rain spots one notices on a sidewalk before the storm—and he was brought back to his high school reunion. The organizers had convinced him to do a reading billed, on the mailed invitation, as “An Evening with Arthur Less.” No one in high school had ever wanted an evening with Arthur Less, but he took them at their word. He showed up at low squat Delmarva High School (even squatter than in memory), thinking of how far he had come. And I will let you guess how many alumni came to “An Evening with Arthur Less.” By the publication of Dark Matter, he and Robert had parted, and since then, Less has had to live on desert rains alone. He did get the “shack” when Robert decamped to Sonoma (mortgage paid off after Robert’s Pulitzer); the rest he has patched together, that crazy quilt of a writer’s life: warm enough, though it never quite covers the toes. But this next book! This is the one! It is called Swift (to whom the race does not go): a peripatetic novel. A man on a walking tour of San Francisco, and of his past, returning home after a series of blows and disappointments (“All you do is write gay Ulysses, ” said Freddy); a wistful, poignant novel of a man’s hard life. Of broke, gay middle age. And today, at dinner, surely over champagne, Less will get the good news. In his hotel room, he puts on the blue suit (freshly dry-cleaned) and smiles before the mirror. Nobody came to “An Evening with Arthur Less.” Freddy once joked that Less’s agent was his “great romance.” Yes, Peter Hunt knows Less intimately. He handles the struggles and fits and joys that no one else witnesses. And yet, about Peter Hunt, Less knows almost nothing at all. He cannot even recall where he is from. Minnesota? Is he married? How many clients does he have? Less has no idea, and yet, like a schoolgirl, he lives on Peter’s phone calls and messages. Or, more precisely, like a mistress waiting for word from her man.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I blushed - I don’t know why - and forced a smile. ‘Oh, Rhoda! I am glad. Davy! How nice for you.’ I was not glad; it was not nice; the thought of having Rhoda as a sister-in-law - of having any kind of sister-in-law! - was peculiarly horrible. But I must have sounded pleased enough, for they both grew pink and smug. Then Aunt Rosina nodded towards my own hand. ‘No sign of a ring on your finger yet, Nance?’ I saw Alice shift in her seat, and shook my head: ‘Not yet, no.’ Father opened his mouth to speak; I could not bear, however, for the conversation to run down that particular road. I got up, and retrieved my bags. ‘I’ve bought you all some things,’ I said, ‘from London.’ There were murmurs and little interested ‘Oh’s at that. Mother said I shouldn’t have, but reached for her spectacles and looked expectant. I went to my Aunt, first, and handed her a bag full of packages. ‘These are for Uncle Joe, and Mike and the girls. This is for you.’ George next: I had bought him a silver hip-flask. Then Liza, and the baby ... I went all around the crowded room, and finished up at Alice: ‘This is for you.’ Her parcel - a hat, in a hat box - was the biggest. She took it from me with the smallest, straightest, stiffest smile you ever saw, and began slowly and self-consciously to pull at its ribbons. Now everybody had a gift but me. I sat and watched as they tore at their packages, chewing at my knuckle and smiling into my hand. One by one the objects appeared, and were turned and examined in the late morning light. The room grew quite hushed. ‘My word, Nancy,’ said Father at last, ‘you have done us proud.’ I had bought him a watch-guard, thick and bright as the one that Walter wore; he held it in his hand, and it seemed brighter than ever against the red of his palm, the faded wool of his jacket. He laughed: ‘I shall look quite the thing in this, now, shan’t I?’ The laugh, however, didn’t sound quite natural. I looked at Mother. She had a silver-backed brush and a hand-glass to match: they sat in their wrappers, in her lap, as if she were afraid to pick them up. I thought at once - what had never occurred to me in Oxford Street - how queer they would look beside her cheap coloured perfume bottles, her jar of cold-cream, on her old chest of drawers with its chipped glass handles. She caught my eye, and I saw that she had thought the same. ‘Really, Nance ...’ she said; and her words were almost a reproof. There were murmurs, now, from all around the room, as people compared presents. Aunt Rosina held up a pair of garnet earrings, and blinked at them.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Perhaps the ruler best known for choosing ugly mistresses was Philippe, duc d’Orléans, who became regent of France in 1715. Philippe was the nephew of Louis XIV and son of the formidable Elizabeth Charlotte, who was scandalized by his taste in women. Casting about a court with the most beautiful women in the world, Philippe would always select the ugliest to pleasure him in bed. His mother huffed, “He is not difficult in this regard; as long as they are good-humored, impertinent and have a hearty appetite for food and drink, he does not worry about their looks.”41 Never one to mince words, she once told her son that he visited his mistresses as he would his chamber pot and loudly reproached him for their ugliness. “Bah! Maman,” Philippe quipped, “in the night all cats are gray.”42 ThreeRivals for a King’s Love—The Mistress and the QueenNever has a woman who loves her husband liked his whore. —QUEEN CATHERINE DE MEDICI IN 1726 QUEEN SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF PRUSSIA, ADVISING HER daughter Wilhelmina on a possible marriage to Prince Frederick William of England, remarked that the young man was “a good-natured prince, kind-hearted but very foolish. If you will have sense enough to tolerate his mistresses, you will be able to do what you like with him.”1 A princess, trained from birth for the lofty role she would play as queen, understood the likelihood of her future husband’s keeping a mistress. She had only to look about her own court to see the mistresses of her father, uncles, and brothers. And yet the blushing royal bride invariably hoped her husband would be the exception; her husband would disport himself only in the sacred bower of Hymen, never returning to the sullied bed of Jezebel. Almost as invariably, she was disappointed. Raised as a hothouse flower, a princess was rudely plucked from her native soil and tossed into a cold foreign land where she would, over time, wilt. Blinded by tears, she boarded the gaily bedecked vessel to take her to her new country, knowing she would probably never see her parents, sisters, brothers, or friends again. Heart pounding with fear, she would disembark in a country where she could barely understand the language. To the jubilant ringing of church bells and the hearty crackling of bonfires, she would be taken to a court with alien customs, fashions, and politics. Initially, the princess bride, the new queen, was the blazing star of the court. Courtiers bowed and scraped before her, gave her expensive gifts, made pretty compliments, scurried behind her. But when the drum roll of the wedding festivities died down, the church bells were silenced, and the bonfires turned to ash, scheming courtiers usually grouped themselves around the king’s dashing mistress rather than his dull foreign queen.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The older, wiser woman had a great calming effect on the nervous young prince, who took great pains to follow her advice. Soon secret diplomatic dispatches sent from Berlin to the corners of Europe contained suspicions as to the nature of the relationship, even though pious Mary was two years older than the prince’s mother. Ministers and ambassadors suddenly became quite respectful to her. When the French called her a Pompadour, it was the greatest compliment. When the Germans called her a Pompadour, it was the deadliest insult. In 1888 Prince Willy became Kaiser Wilhelm II and soon referred all political matters to Mary before he announced his opinion. American newspapers went wild. The New York Tribune proclaimed, “Former New York Woman Dominates New Emperor.”19 The New York Transcript announced, “American Princess Sways the Haughty Kaiser—Romantic Story of Merchant’s Daughter Who Is Power Behind the German Throne.”20 A Boston paper declared, “Every step undertaken by the Kaiser is the outcome of her influence and intrigue.”21 The New York Tribune stated, “The Countess von Waldersee is so much Commander-in-Chief that she can toss out general officers filling the highest posts.”22 The New York Times reported, “Fortunate indeed is the incoming Ambassador who succeeds in winning the prestige of her personal interest. To him opens as by magic the door to the charmed inner circle, which otherwise is only to be approached after countless struggles with the all-pervading redtapeism of German official life.”23 Mary angled for the speedy demise of the all-powerful Chancellor Bismarck. She told the kaiser that he could never truly rule with the popular Bismarck in the way. While this was true, Mary’s main objective in removing the Iron Chancellor was to clear the path for her husband to succeed him. Using all her persuasion on the kaiser, Mary worked long and hard to topple the giant. In March 1890, Bismarck fell. Mary and Alfred waited confidently for the fruit of their seventeen years of joint effort—Alfred’s appointment as chancellor. But instead of immediately replacing Bismarck with Count von Waldersee, the kaiser chose another man for the job. Egged on by his new set of debauched friends, Willy decided that with Bismarck gone, Mary was the one standing in the way of his exercising complete power. He bristled as he read the newspapers referring to Mary as the power behind the throne. Instead of promoting Count von Waldersee, the kaiser publicly demoted him from the highest post in the army to commander of a corps in a suburb of Hamburg, making his disgrace the talk of Berlin. Mary and Alfred lived out their lives in dignified exile. Without Mary’s calming influence, Willy gradually degenerated into a paranoid megalomaniac, setting the wheels in motion for World War I.

• From Less (2017)

  How inconceivable to watch the man’s face blush with injury. Who knows why what I said wounded him; I suppose he liked to think of himself as a boy still. I had taken him for confident when he was in truth full of worry and terror. Not that I saw all that then, when he blushed and his eyes went down. I knew nothing of anxiety or other pointless human suffering. I only knew I had said the wrong thing. An old man appeared in the doorway. He seemed old to me: white oxford shirt, black spectacles, something like a pharmacist. “Arthur, let’s get out of here.” Arthur smiled at me and thanked me for a nice afternoon. The old man glanced at me and nodded briefly. I felt the need to fix whatever I had done wrong. Then, together, they left. Of course I did not know that it was the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Robert Brownburn. With his young lover, Arthur Less. “Another Manhattan, please.” It is later the same night; Arthur Less had better not be hungover for the interview tomorrow with Mandern. And he had better find something space operatic to wear. He is talking: “I’m traveling around the world.” This conversation takes place in a Midtown bar close to the hotel. Less used to frequent it as a very young man. Nothing has changed about the joint: not the doorman, dubious of anyone wanting to enter; not the framed portrait of an older Charlie Chaplin; not the lounge whose curved bar serves the young swiftly and the old tardily; not the black grand piano whose player (as in a Wild West saloon) dutifully plays whatever he is ordered to (Cole Porter, mostly); not the striped wallpaper, nor the shell-shaped sconces, nor the clientele. It is known as a place for older men to meet younger ones; two antiquities are interviewing a slick-haired man on a couch. Less is amused to think that now he is on the other end of the equation. He is talking to a balding but handsome young man from Ohio, who for some reason is listening intently. Less has not yet noticed, displayed above the bar, a Russian cosmonaut’s helmet. “Where to next?” the fellow asks brightly. He has a redhead’s missing lashes and freckled nose. “Mexico. Then I’m up for a prize in Italy,” Less says. He is drinking Manhattan number two, and it has done its job. “I’m not going to win it. But I had to leave home.” The redhead rests his head on his hand. “Where’s home, handsome?” “San Francisco.” Less is having a memory from nearly thirty years before: walking out of an Erasure concert with his friend, stoned, learning that the Democrats had retaken the Senate, and walking into this bar and declaring: “We want to sleep with a Republican! Who’s a Republican?” And every man in the place raising his hand.