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 Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Our whole family helped us financially. My mother and her husband gave us their savings. Art’s sister gave us money too. I’m embarrassed to tell you how much. You sit in the clinic’s waiting room, you look around, and you think, ‘All those privileged people; I guess I’m one of them now.’ So you can imagine how awful it was when it didn’t work. Not only could I not get pregnant; I couldn’t even make it happen by paying a fortune. That’s what I call bad genes.” “Just a second.” I try to slow her down to make sure I follow her. “So you were married in your twenties and didn’t have children; then in your thirties you got divorced and met Art and tried to get pregnant right away—” “Exactly,” she cuts me off. “Art and I were both married before, but our love was like nothing we had ever experienced. It was very intense from the first day we met. I’ll tell you about it one day.” “And you are here because you are about to have a child,” I say. “Exactly,” Alice confirms. “Another woman is about to give birth to my child.” “A surrogate mother?” I assume. “Yes. We got an egg donation too. It’s not my biological child. It’s a girl, by the way,” she adds, making sure I have all the information, but I can’t find where she is emotionally. Alice continues. “So you see, there are three women involved in the creation of this baby: an egg donor, a surrogate mother, and me—at this point a woman without a role. The fourth person is Art. This child is going to be his biologically. Did I tell you that he has a daughter from his first marriage? Lili. She is amazing, so we know that he has good genes.” She smiles. “Oh, and one more detail,” Alice continues. “Since we had already emptied everyone’s bank accounts for the IVF, we still needed to figure out how to pay for the surrogacy. We took a loan out but it is insane. I’ll tell you about that too.” “There is a lot to talk about,” I note. “How are you dealing with all of this?” I ask as I try to get closer to the emotional struggle I believe Alice is here to explore. She doesn’t answer. “I don’t know, actually,” she then says quietly. “I am not sure how I feel about it. Some days I am disappointed with myself. I feel damaged, that I’m a failure and I’m not going to be anyone for this baby. On other days, I feel relief. First, because being pregnant and giving birth doesn’t sound like fun. It doesn’t feel like something I’ll be sad to skip. But the real reason, and I know this sounds awful, is that I would rather have a child who doesn’t carry my genes.

• 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.

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

  Edward and Wallis were married in France on June 3, 1937, a little more than a month after her second divorce was final. As part of his wedding gift to his bride, Edward gave Wallis a diamond coronet, a poor substitute for a crown. Edward’s brother, now King George VI, gave them the honorary titles of duke and duchess of Windsor. But the royal family would snub Wallis until the end of her days, never receiving her into the family and never allowing her to be called a Royal Highness. It is likely that the bitterness of the royal family toward Wallis was intensified by their knowledge of her philandering with the car salesman. But the duke insisted that until his wife was received and allowed the title, he would stay clear of Great Britain. Though the marriage caused a constitutional crisis for the British monarchy, Edward’s abdication saved Britain from having a supporter of Nazi Germany on the throne during World War II. Edward, a fan of all things German and fluent in the language, was frequently seen to give a limp Nazi salute on the streets of London throughout the 1930s. When Hitler heard of the abdication he groaned, “I’ve lost a friend to my cause!”8 In 1937 the newly minted duke and duchess of Windsor visited the Führer for fourteen days, greeting the crowds with “Heil Hitler!” and scandalizing George VI and the British people. There is indeed some documentation that indicates Hitler was planning, once he conquered Britain, to install Edward and Wallis as puppet king and queen, dancing to Nazi commands. After a stint as governor of the Bahamas during World War II—where Edward had been placed to keep him as far away as possible from his Nazi friends—the duke and duchess set off on a lifetime of meaningless wandering: shopping in Paris, fashion shows in New York, August in the south of France, winters in Palm Beach. Wallis’s famed charm congealed behind a hard mask of disappointment, and the duke became more doddering than ever, playing the bagpipes drunk in the middle of the night, or speaking only German for hours at a party where no one could understand him. The desiccated pair seemed glued to each other at the hip, each holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Like cracked and peeling portraits of their former selves, they became yellowed by tobacco, dried up by alcohol. In Ernest Simpson, Wallis had given up a highly intelligent, hardworking husband and replaced him with a thickheaded man with nothing to do, a millstone of a mate she could only divorce to shrieks of laughter echoing across the world. At one party when the duke had left the room, his wife informed her guests, “No one will ever know how hard I work to try to make the little man feel busy!”9 At social events she would often remind him, “Don’t forget, darling, you’re not king anymore!”10

• From Wild (2012)

  “Here you go,” the woman said, returning with my box and setting it on the counter. “It’s the only one that’s got a girl’s name on it. That’s how I knew.” She reached across the counter to me. “This came too.” In her hand was a postcard. I took it and read it: I hope you made it this far, it said in a familiar scrawl. I want to be your clean boyfriend someday. I love you. Joe. On the other side was a photograph of the Sylvia Beach Hotel on the Oregon coast, where we’d stayed together once. I stared at the photograph for several moments, a series of feelings washing over me in waves: grateful for a word from someone I knew, nostalgic for Joe, disappointed that only one person had written to me, and heartbroken, unreasonable as it was, that the one person who had wasn’t Paul. I bought two bottles of Snapple lemonade, a king-sized Butterfinger, and a bag of Doritos and went outside and sat on the front steps, devouring the things I’d purchased while reading the postcard over and over again. After a while, I noticed a box in the corner of the porch stuffed full with mostly packaged backpacker food. Above it there was a handwritten sign that said: PCT hiker FREE box!!! Leave what you don’t want! Take what you do! A ski pole was propped behind the box, precisely the thing I needed. It was a ski pole fit for a princess: white, with a bubble-gum-pink nylon wrist strap. I tested it out for a few steps. It was the perfect height. It would help me across not only the snow, but also the many stream fords and rockslides that no doubt lay ahead. I walked with it an hour later as I made my way along the dirt road that went in a loop around the campground, looking for Greg, Matt, and Albert. It was a Sunday afternoon in June, but the place was mostly empty. I passed by a man preparing his fishing gear and a couple with a cooler of beer and a boom box and eventually came to a campsite where a shirtless gray-haired man with a big tan belly sat at a picnic table reading a book. He looked up as I approached. “You must be the famous Cheryl of the enormous backpack,” he called to me. I laughed in agreement. “I’m Ed.” He walked toward me to shake my hand. “Your friends are here. They all just caught a ride up to the store—you must have missed them as you were coming—but they asked me to watch for you. You can set up your tent right over there if you’d like. They’re all camped here—Greg and Albert and his son.” He gestured to the tents around him. “We were taking bets who’d arrive first. You or the two boys from back east coming up behind you.” “Who won?” I asked.

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

  “Better she than another”In 1725 fifteen-year-old Louis XV married a dowdy twenty-two-year-old Polish princess for her family’s proven fertility. Boring, religious, and intellectually limited, Marie Leczinska was called one of the two dullest queens in Europe by her own father, the other dull queen being his wife. Marie preferred to pray away her mornings in church, and wile away her afternoons in needlework and cards. Like all eighteenth-century ladies, she had studied music and painting. But her paintings never rose above the level of childish cartoons, and nothing horrified her ladies-in-waiting more than the queen’s announcement that she would play the piano for them. Marie was adrift in the dazzling French court, which boasted the most attractive, witty, and sophisticated men and women in Europe. She did, however, fulfill her promise of fecundity, launching no fewer than ten royal children into the world in as many years. Her frequent lament was, “What, always in bed, always pregnant, always giving birth!”33 For eight years, Louis was a royal anomaly in terms of his punctilious fidelity to his wife. The promising lad grew into an extremely handsome man, with a well-formed physique, strong jaw, high cheekbones, and aquiline nose. Marie must have been pleased that despite her dullness and Louis’s brilliance, Louis rarely looked at other women. She was devastated when Louis took one of her ladies-in-waiting, Madame de Mailly, as his mistress. Madame de Mailly was plain, kind, and content to walk around Versailles in torn petticoats rather than ask her royal lover for money. The king’s next two mistresses—both sisters of his first—were not so generous. Insolent and grasping, they went out of their way to insult the queen publicly, to flaunt their beauty against her plainness, their wit against her dullness. His third mistress, Madame de Châteauroux, even had holes bored into the walls of the queen’s apartments so that her friends could spy for her. When the king chose a new mistress, a Parisian bourgeoise rather than a haughty noblewoman, Marie must have hoped for better treatment. To take up the position of maîtresse-en-titre and live at Versailles, Louis’s mistress had to be given a title and officially presented at court. The title was easy—the king granted twenty-four-year-old Jeanne-Antoinette d’Etioles the marquessate of Pompadour. But the presentation was nerve-racking. The freshly minted marchioness had to be presented to the king and queen in two separate chambers before the eyes of the entire court. The candidate could not afford to make the least mistake. Her presentation involved walking forward in an enormous skirt extending three feet on either side and weighing more than forty pounds. She would curtsy to the monarchs, listening to the few words they deigned to say, then walk backward, curtsying, all the while kicking her long train out of her way. The entire procedure needed to appear effortless. Tripping over the train or, heaven forbid, falling, would ensure a lifetime of ridicule at court.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In a letter to Camerarius, 1552, Melanchthon expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which Calvin emphasized the doctrine of predestination, and attempted to force the Swiss churches to accept it in the Consensus Genevensis.563 Calvin made another attempt in 1554 to gain him to his view, but in vain.564 On one point, however, he could agree to a certain modification; for he laid stress on the spontaneity of the will, and rejected Luther’s paradoxes, and his comparison of the natural man to a dead statue. It is greatly to the credit of Calvin that, notwithstanding his sensitiveness and intolerance against the opponents of his favorite dogma, he respected the judgment of the most eminent Lutheran divine, and gave signal proof of it by publishing a French translation of the improved edition of Melanchthon’s Theological Commonplaces in 1546, with a commendatory preface of his own,565 in which he says that the book was a brief summary of all things necessary for a Christian to know on the way of salvation, stated in the simplest manner by the profoundly learned author. He does not conceal the difference of views on the subject of free will, and says that Melanchthon seems to concede to man some share in his salvation; yet in such a manner that God’s grace is not in any way diminished, and no ground is left to us for boasting. This is the only example of a Reformer republishing and recommending the work of another Reformer, which was the only formidable rival of his own chief work on the same subject (the Institutes), and differed from it in several points.566 The revival of the unfortunate eucharistic controversy by Luther in 1545, and the equally unfortunate controversy caused by the imperial Interim in 1548, tried the friendship of the Reformers to the uttermost. Calvin respectfully, yet frankly, expressed his regret at the indecision and want of courage displayed by Melanchthon from fear of Luther and love of peace. When Luther came out a year before his death with his most violent and abusive book against the "Sacramentarians,"567 which deeply grieved Melanchthon and roused the just indignation of the Zwinglians, Calvin wrote to Melanchthon (June 28, 1545): 568—

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

  Over a period of twenty years, Dorothy bore William ten children. To generate the greatest possible revenues, she performed all over England, often bumping about for days in a carriage on muddy roads. But however generous her acting income, it was immediately siphoned off for the care of her fourteen children—education for the boys, dowries for the girls, and gambling debts for sons and sons-in-law. In 1797 the duke and Dorothy moved into the elegant Bushy House. This venerable mansion was not a gift from William to his mistress, but a gift from the mistress to her prince. In one letter complaining about the pace of her acting engagements, Dorothy wrote, “I have been playing [acting], and fagging myself to death, but it has enabled me to pay a good part of the purchase money of my house.”22 In 1810, as William ran headlong into debt, Dorothy felt him slipping away from her and worked harder than ever for the cash she hoped would bind him to her; but as she jolted across England for performances, the duke began courting an heiress of twenty-two. When the heiress rejected him, William coldly informed Dorothy that they must part, as he considered his relationship with her a primary obstacle to a successful matrimonial suit. By 1815, in poor health and besieged by her own creditors and those of impecunious family members, Dorothy escaped to France rather than face debtors’ prison. The duke, her lover of twenty years and father of ten of her children, refused to lift a finger. She was not even allowed to write to him. In France, worn down by disappointment and worry, Dorothy’s health took a turn for the worse. She awaited eagerly each day’s mail, hoping against hope for news that she could return home to England. Her neighbors in France, including many British expatriates, admired Dorothy’s loyalty and fortitude. They never heard her say an unkind word about the duke. One day, when the post failed yet again to bring her a letter, Dorothy collapsed and died. She was buried in a corner of the churchyard through the charity of friends. None of her family was present at her death or burial. When William became king in 1830, the dark whispers about his treatment of Dorothy rose into a pained cry. One paper lambasted him: “The people…have witnessed a man who has inundated his country with bastards, and deserted the deserving but helpless mother of his offspring, and finally left her to perish like a dog in the streets, and to be buried as a pauper at the public charge when she ceased to maintain him by her own exertions.”23 After her death, one of her daughters revealed that the duke of Clarence had borrowed—and never repaid—some thirty thousand pounds from Dorothy.

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

  According to the prince’s valet at the time, Stephen Barry, just before his engagement to Diana was announced Charles said, “I’m making an awful bloody mistake.”13 Days before the wedding, Barry said, “He told myself and Lord Romsey that Camilla was the only woman he had ever loved. He told us: I could never feel the same way about Diana as I do about Camilla.”14 In the eighteenth-century tradition, family friend Lord Romsey assured Charles that in time his feelings would change and he would grow to love Diana. Diana, though only nineteen, quickly picked up on Charles’s love for Camilla and began to detest her. Though Camilla was invited to the wedding, Diana struck her name from the guest list for the wedding breakfast and the reception. A few days before the wedding, Diana found a wrapped gift from Charles to Camilla on the desk of his assistant. She opened it and found a bracelet. Diana felt it was highly inappropriate for Charles to give an old girlfriend such a gift days before his wedding. She almost canceled the wedding of the century. Diana certainly would have canceled had she known that the night before the wedding, while she was keeping a virginal vigil, her prince was rolling in bed with Camilla. He intended to be faithful to his wife, but wanted to get in one last night with his mistress as a single man. Charles was caught between the pincers of Baroque traditions and modern values. His marriage for dynastic purposes to a woman he did not love—no matter how beautiful—was just as much a sacrifice as Louis XIV’s to the dwarflike infanta of Spain. Diana, on the other hand, was living in the late twentieth century—not the seventeenth—fully believing Charles was marrying her for love. She had not been raised at a court where royal mistresses were an accepted convention that unloved royal wives were expected to endure with dignity. Worst of all, she had hoped that Charles was the solution to her life of aimless uncertainty and bruising loneliness. On her honeymoon cruise Diana found photos of Camilla in her husband’s calendar book and flew into a rage. “Why don’t you just face up to the truth and tell me it’s her you love and not me?” she cried, stricken with the awful knowledge.15 Suffering from bulimia, Diana raced to the toilet to vomit.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  On the use of running as a figure for effort looking to the achievement of a result, see & Rom. g1* i Cor. 9s4'28 Phil. 2" 3" 2 Thes. 3*. It is probable that in all cases the apostle has in mind the figure of running a race, as expressly in i Cor. p2*"". evx6^(o is used by Hippocrates in the sense "to make an incision," but with the meaning "to hinder" first in Polybius. Here, if the figure is that of a race, the word suggests a breaking into the course, getting in the way, or possibly a breaking up of the road. That Paul uses the aorist (resultative) rather than the present (conative) indicates that he is thinking of what his oppo- nents have already accomplished in their obstructive work. The present infinitive, -jteCesaOat, on the other hand, is progressive, so that the meaning of the whole expression is, "who has succeeded in preventing you from continuing to obey truth?" and the implication is that, though they have not fully adopted the views of Paul's oppo- nents, they have ceased to hold firmly to that which Paul taught them. we(6ea6at is difficult to render exactly into English. "Believe" ex- presses rather less, "obey" rather more, than its meaning. It de- notes not merely intellectual assent, but acceptance which carries with it control of action; cf. Acts 536' 37> 40; Rom. 2*. On the construction of xe$ea9at (inf. with n/fi after verbs of hindering), see Blf T 402, 483; Bl.-D. 429. The omission of the article with dk-rfletqc gives to it a qualitative force, and shows that, though what the apostle has in mind is doubtless the same that in 25 and 214 he calls -ft dtX^Oeta TOU efl- a-rreXCou, he desires to emphasise the quality of his message as truth, thus conveying the implication that they are turning from something that is true to something that is false. Cf. for similar anarthrous use of deX^0eta Rom. 91 2 Cor. 67 Eph. 421. Some authorities insert the article here (omitted by H*AB). Evidently some scribe, recognising that the reference was to the truth of the gospel, stumbled at the qual- itativeness of the expression. 8. $ ireio-jjiovr) OVK <k rov tcaKovvros ujuas. "This persuasion is not from him that calleth you." The restrictive article with T€ur/ioi"i7 makes it refer definitely to that persuasion just spoken of, viz., the persuasion no longer to hold (his message which is) truth. By ToO /caXoO^ros Paul means God. On the meaning of the term and its reference to God, see on i*; and on v, j-io 283 the omission of 0eoO, see on 2* 3s. The negative statement car- ries with it the positive intimation that the influence which is affecting them is one that is hostile to God, an intimation which is definitely expressed in v.9.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Love, for me, exists only in a moment of choice in a moment of time: there is no other manifestation except for the one available right now. Repeating those moments is the key. But the masseur was not real, I decided. He was only my transient sexual angel who kept reappearing with his heavenly message in my bedroom at preappointed hours. Perhaps, I thought, deep in my unexamined soul, I really am a conventional girl who simply got thrown out of orbit, and a boyfriend is what I need. Perhaps the masses knew something I didn’t about men and women and love and sex. So I also tried dating. Six weeks per male, quick to sex, oral, but every time they fucked me I felt fucked over and fired them, one by one. They’d get in, get off, roll over, and I’d feel used and underpaid. So I kept calling the masseur—whom I paid. It was a better deal. Disappointment is a great teacher—if one survives the lacerations to one’s romantic ideal. After my marriage ended I was willing, open, and angry, and nothing that others did or “society” suggested in terms of conducting relationships necessarily held any merit for me. Everything I knew hadn’t worked, so I was free to try anything. Most of all, I had valuable firsthand experience that “relationships” that exist in “real life” sooner or later lose their erotic excitement. Not a particularly original notion, but one I now owned. At the same time, being a dreamer, I was adamant that there had to be another way. All was now backwards to me: fuck love and love sucking. I was discovering that while the theatrical stage left me numb and afraid and invisible, the sexual stage brought out a spontaneous theatricality and confidence that I knew was my truest self—or at least the one that amused me most. So, like a sexual scientist, I set out to test my theories, to adjust them as needed, and to formulate new ones as they evolved. I had already lost everything, so I had nothing to lose. Thus I vacillated between experiments in the nightmare of attachment with nice-nice sex and the thrill of naughty sex without attachment—take your Tantra and shove it up your yoni. There were only two rules that governed my behavior. One was relentlessly safe sex—I became the Queen of Condoms. The second was the importance of quality control. If the sex isn’t awesome, or at least fascinating, get out, stop, shift gears, and change direction with minimum discussion. There were, as a result, plenty of discarded bodies floating in the moat around my castle, but the drawbridge was always down, inviting new specimens into my laboratory. They came in droves.

• From Less (2017)

  “Mr. Arthur Less, our writer? The author of Kalipso ? It is wonderful to speak with you at last. Now, how can I help you?” (Sound of keys on a keyboard) “Yes, hello. It is nice to speak. I call over a fence. Not fence. ” (More keyboard sounds) “An error. ” “An error in the book?” “Yes! I call over an error in my book.” “I apologize. What is the nature of this error?” “My birth year is written one nine sex four.” “Again?” “My birth year is sex five.” “Do you mean you were born in 1965?” “Exactly. The journalists write that I have fifty years. But I have forty-nine years!” “Oh! We wrote your birth year wrong on the flap copy, and so journalists have been reporting that you’re fifty. When you’re only forty-nine. I’m so sorry. That must be so frustrating!” (Long pause) “Exactly exactly exactly.” (Laughter) “I am not an old man!” “Of course not. I’ll make a note for the next printing. And may I say in your photograph you look under forty? All the girls in the office are in love with you.” (Long pause) “I do not understand.” “I said all the girls in the office are in love with you.” (Laughter) “Thank you, thank you, that is very very nice.” (Another pause) “I like love.” “Yes, well, call me if you have any other concerns.” “Thank you and good-bye!” “Have a good day, Mr. Less.” What a delight, for Arthur Less, to be in a country where he at last speaks the language! After the miraculous reversal of his Italian fortunes, in which he stood up in a daze and accepted a heavy golden statuette (which would now have to be figured into his luggage weight allowance)—the journalists shrieking as in an operatic finale—he is to arrive in Germany on the winds of success. Added to this: his fluency in German, and his esteemed position of professor, and how forgotten are the cares of Gestern! Chatting with the stewards, babbling freely with passport control, it seems almost possible he has forgotten that Freddy’s wedding is a matter of mere weeks away. How heartening it is to watch him speak; how disconcerting, however, to listen.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Lost an earring I loved. The cute newspaper boy: the cliché was too good to resist. And he did deliver. I tried returning to a former boyfriend. Great friend, not a lover. Then there was the guy who held me fast with one arm, his tongue buried in my mouth, his cock vertical against me while madly waving with his free hand for a cab to take me away. This has become my favorite image of male ambivalence. There was the magician who could produce my jack of hearts out of sealed cement only seconds after I handed it to him but who, remarkably for a trickster, couldn’t eat pussy to save his life. Talents vary. One Paul Newman–like prospect found me at Starbucks and caught me with his eyes. He could ejaculate, stay hard, and come again, often three times in row. Remarkable. I wondered if they were three full orgasms, or if he had simply learned to parse out one big one to impress the girls. He even attempted boyfriend status, but his patronizing butt-patting made me crazy. One evening, when he arrived for a date and asked to hang his clean shirt for the next morning in my closet, I knew I was done with him. What presumption. Sex does not mean breakfast. Happily, the beautiful boys—tall, svelte, toned, thoughtful, loving, full of poetry and music—never considered sleeping over, but they did not yet know how to fuck, either. I was intrigued by two feet guys. Sucking, kissing, rubbing my feet in stilettos, they garnered erections like steel. But was it me or my shoes? I do have some great shoes. They both had big cocks—about the height of my heels, strangely enough—dispelling any misconception I might have had that their fetish was compensatory. A charming young Frenchman produced the thickest cock I’d ever seen up close. He knelt above me, shoving this enormous protrusion toward my mouth, saying “Suck it, suck it,” with a strong French accent. It was the size of a corncob. I was terrified. Condoms didn’t fit, they kept rolling back to the tip like a bad joke that was very funny. Finally, I rolled one on three inches with much cock to spare and we had a three-inch, fat fuck. After seriously considering the evidence of my current sexual escapades, I concluded that I did not like intercourse. The Young Man had been a strange exception. Either they were not so big, and I felt little, and the whole event felt feeble: the Princess and the Pea.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  He dropped his other hand from the wall where it had been resting and took hold of his balls very firmly, while he continued to maul, press and squeeze his penis. It did not get very hard. He was experiencing pleasure, but he could not reach a climax. He was disappointed. He had tried every motion of finger and hand. Now he held his limp penis wistfully. He weighed it, puzzled over it and then covered it within his pants, buttoned his shirt and left the place. Pierre was wide awake now. The memory of the drowned woman haunted him again, mingled now with the picture of the young boy playing with himself. He was lying there, tossing, when a light again appeared from the water closet. Pierre could not keep from looking. Sitting there was a woman of about fifty, enormous, solid, with a heavy face and gluttonous mouth and eyes. She had only sat for a moment when someone tried the door. Instead of sending him away, she opened it. And there appeared the boy who had been there earlier. He was amazed that the door had opened. The old woman did not move from the seat but drew him in with a smile and closed the door. “What a lovely boy you are,” she said. “Surely you must have a little friend already, no? Surely you must already have had a little pleasure with women?” “No,” said the boy timidly. She talked to him easily, as if they had met in the street. He had been taken by surprise and stared at her. All he could see was her full-lipped mouth smiling and her insinuating eyes. “Never had any pleasure at all, my boy, you can’t tell me that?” “No,” said the boy. “Don’t you know how?” asked the woman. “Haven’t your friends in school told you how?” “Yes,” said the boy, “I have seen them do it, with their right hand they do it. I tried, but nothing happened.” The woman laughed. “But there is another way. Never learned another way, really? No one told you anything? You mean you only know how to do it with your own hand? Why, there’s another way that always works.” The boy eyed her with suspicion. But her smile was wide, generous, reassuring. The caresses he had given himself must have left a certain disturbance in him, because he made a step towards the woman. “What’s the way you know?” he said with curiosity. She laughed. “You really want to know, eh? And what happens if you enjoy it? If you really enjoy it, will you promise to come and see me again?” “I promise,” said the boy. “Well, then, climb on my lap, this way, just kneel on me, don’t be afraid. Now.”

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  28 35 Eph. 11 20 22, That the preposition dé denotes not antecedent cause but mediate agency, the object of the preposition being that through which the xfotts becomes effective, is made practically certain not on grammatical grounds, but because of the nature of the two attitudes expressed by axiotts and &y&mn as conceived of by the apostle. See above in the larger print. See note on d:& under 1! and ¢f. 2 Cor. 15, where a similar relation is expressed by év. Since xtotts is without the article, the participle, though anarthrous, may be attributive, “which works”; but 22° suggests that to express this thought Paul would have written xiotts 4 éveoyouyévn, and makes it likely that évepyounévy is adverbial, expressing means or cause. 7. “Erpéyere xahads: Tis buds éevéxopev adnbeia un TweideBar; ““Ve were running well; who hindered you from obeying truth?” As in 4”, the apostle breaks off argument to make an appeal to the feelings of his readers by reminiscence of the former conduct 282 GALATIANS of the Galatians before they fell under the influence of the judaisers. It is to this time obviously that the imperfect erpéyere refers. Tés Uuas, etc., is not a question for informa- tion but of appeal. On the use of running as a figure for effort looking to the achievement of a result, see 22 Rom. g'® x Cor. 974-26 Phil. 216 34 2 Thes. 3. It is probable that in all cases the apostle has in mind the figure of running a race, as expressly in 1 Cor. 92426. évxémtw is used by Hippocrates in the sense “to make an incision,” but with the meaning “to hinder” first in Polybius. Here, if the figure is that of a race, the word suggests a breaking into the course, getting in the way, or possibly a breaking up of the road. That Paul uses the aorist (resultative) rather than the present (conative) indicates that he is thinking of what his oppo- nents have already accomplished in their obstructive work. The present infinitive, me(0ec8at, on the other hand, is progressive, so that the meaning of the whole expression is, “who has succeeded in preventing you from continuing to obey truth?” and the implication is that, though they have not fully adopted the views of Paul’s oppo- nents, they have ceased to hold firmly to that which Paul taught them. ne(OecOat is difficult to render exactly into English. ‘‘ Believe” ex- presses rather less, “obey” rather more, than its meaning. It de- notes not merely intellectual assent, but acceptance which carries with it control of action; cf. Acts 5%* 37, 49; Rom. 28. On the construction of xelOecOat (inf. with yy after verbs of hindering), see BMT 402, 483; BI1.-D.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Did he focus all his attention on me? Was he gentle and nasty and charming and completely devoted to multiplying my pleasures? Oh yes, he loved me all right. And this kind of love became the kind I wanted. I began distrusting mental men, talking men, and love’s verbal declarations. One cannot love by words alone. I had tried that. Giving and receiving words of love, however witty or Shakespearean, is a ruse propounded by poets with inept dicks. One loves by act. Language can clarify and explain and amuse, but it cannot change your being. Experience can. Sure, I was in love with him. Until I wasn’t. I don’t believe love is only real when it endures for many years and is marked by the ring of marriage. My wedding ring had only confined me, robbing me, eventually, of freedom and love alike. Love, for me, exists only in a moment of choice in a moment of time: there is no other manifestation except for the one available right now. Repeating those moments is the key. But the masseur was not real, I decided. He was only my transient sexual angel who kept reappearing with his heavenly message in my bedroom at preappointed hours. Perhaps, I thought, deep in my unexamined soul, I really am a conventional girl who simply got thrown out of orbit, and a boyfriend is what I need. Perhaps the masses knew something I didn’t about men and women and love and sex. So I also tried dating. Six weeks per male, quick to sex, oral, but every time they fucked me I felt fucked over and fired them, one by one. They’d get in, get off, roll over, and I’d feel used and underpaid. So I kept calling the masseur—whom I paid. It was a better deal. Disappointment is a great teacher—if one survives the lacerations to one’s romantic ideal. After my marriage ended I was willing, open, and angry, and nothing that others did or “society” suggested in terms of conducting relationships necessarily held any merit for me. Everything I knew hadn’t worked, so I was free to try anything. Most of all, I had valuable firsthand experience that “relationships” that exist in “real life” sooner or later lose their erotic excitement. Not a particularly original notion, but one I now owned. At the same time, being a dreamer, I was adamant that there had to be another way. All was now backwards to me: fuck love and love sucking. I was discovering that while the theatrical stage left me numb and afraid and invisible, the sexual stage brought out a spontaneous theatricality and confidence that I knew was my truest self—or at least the one that amused me most. So, like a sexual scientist, I set out to test my theories, to adjust them as needed, and to formulate new ones as they evolved. I had already lost everything, so I had nothing to lose.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  4. Sid, ££ roi>9 vrapeKra/CTOvs ^evSaSe'X^ow, "now it was because of the false brethren surreptitiously brought In." The question what this phrase limits, L e*, what it was that was done because of the false brethren, is one of the most difficult of all those raised by the passage. The most probable view is that it is to be associated with the idea of pressure, ur- gency, implied in ovS£ yvay/cdarOy. The meaning may then be expressed thus: "And not even Titus * . . was compelled to be circumcised, and (what shows more fully the significance of the fact) it was urged because of the false brethren." If this is correct it follows that there were three parties to the situation under discussion in Jerusalem. There were, first, Paul and Barnabas, who stood for the policy of receiving Gentiles as Christians without circumcision; on the other hand, there were those whom Paul characterises as false brethren, and who contended that the Gentile Christians must be circumcised; and finally there were those who for the sake of the second party urged that Paul should waive his scruples and consent to the circumcision of Titus. This third party evidently consisted of the pillar apostles, with whom Paul held private conference (v.8) and who because of Paul's representations finally themselves yielded and gave assent to Paul's view (w.*-9). With the second party it does not appear that Paul came into direct contact; they are at least mentioned only as persons for whose sake, not by whom, certain things were done. It is thus dearly implied that they who in person urged the circumcision of Titus (<M So/cowm) did not themselves regard it as necessary except as a matter of expediency, as a concession to the feelings or convictions of those whom Paul designates as false brethren, but who were evidently regarded by the other apostles rather as persons whose prejudices or convictions, however mis- taken, it was desirable to consider. On the question whether the apostles carried their conciliatory policy to the extent of the cfmimd^oa of all G^ntHe coaverts? see fn, p* gi« 78 GALATIANS

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  that righteousness is through law is to say that God's grace manifest in his death was useless. Such an interpretation of the argument, though not perhaps impossible, is open to two objections: first, that the form of expression, "I do not set aside," etc., suggests a denial of something that is said or might be speciously said against Paul's view, rather than a claim made by himself for his view or an objection to his opponent's view; and, secondly, that it makes the e? ydtp sentence a proof of something only remotely implied in the preceding statement instead of taking it as directly related to what is expressed in the pre- ceding sentence, viz., that Paul's view does not involve a setting at nought of God's grace. IH. REFUTATORY PORTION OF THE LETTER. THE DOCTRINE THAT MEN, BOTH JEWS AND GENTILES, BECOME ACCEPTABLE TO GOD THROUGH FAITH RATHER THAN BY WORKS OE LAW, DEFENDED BY THE REFUTATION OF THE ARGUMENTS OF THE JUDAISERS, AND CHIEFLY BY SHOWING THAT THE "HEIRS OF ABRAHAM" ARE SUCH BY FAITH, NOT BY WORKS OF LAW (CHAPS. 3, 4). I, Appeal to the early Christian experience of the Gala- Urns (sl-»). Leaving the defence of his doctrine through the assertion of Ms own direct divine commission, the apostle now takes up that defence by refuting the objections to it brought by his op- ponents, the judalsers. Vv.1*11 begin that refutation by appeal- ing to the early Christian experience of the GalatianSj which, as both they and he well knew,, was not in the sphere of law, but of faith, Oh foolish Gators, you, before wha$$ Jesus Christ was ? lThis I from ymf ye the Spirit on grwnd of qf Imv or of a kmring of faith f ®Are ye 50 ? Spirit are ye now t *Did ye suffer $o many in f If it reatty ut&b^m mm, ^He therefore that m, i .143 the Spirit richly to you and wrought miracles among you, did he do these things on ground of works of law or of a hearing of faith ?

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  ing to them was occasioned by illness on his part (4**) ; intend- ing to go in some other direction, he was led by illness to go to Galatia, or being on his way through Galatia and not intend** tag to tarry there, he was led to do m by Illness- He pro- claimed to Christ and him crucified, preaching that could through faith hi the Christ from the evil age and attain the approval of God apart from of law (j1* »}. He on Ms converts no Jewish but a purely . spiritual Christianity (j8-1 4**11 5** *}* The him and his with (4W'W). They (j11) and the jfll of the Spirit, them 01 Ills Cj14). That Paul visited them a sec* ond is by the evidence of Is 4ts» m the had (i1), tint if m the had not fi* 51)* a * fit «mf Iff 4k 4ft » llV 1NTEOBUCT10N been made to draw them away from the gospel as Paul had preached it to them (i7 5W). This new doctrine to PauPs was of a judaistic and legalistic type* Its advocates evidently endeavoured to win the Galati&ns to it by to the promises to Abraham and his seed recorded In the Old Testament. Though the letter makes no definite quotation from the language of these teachers it in easily evident from the counter argument of the apostle in chapters 3 4 they had taught the Galatians either that salvation waa ble only to those who were, by blood or adoption f children of Abraham^ or that the highest privileges only to See especially 3T» s» " 4n*m. They had laic! circumcision, this being the initiatory rite by a was adopted into the family of had cautiously abstained from to fit* Galatians the whole Jewish Iawf or out was logically involved in what had induced them to adopt the Jewish ami (41*). To these doctrinal of the sufficient to was added a stilt to meat The is by i and t thai the or was a* cine 0! lit ttit tian communityy and that the who it was one on wtt «rf An was a t$r mfe* He was a of of the to tit tint fltf tit* that ttii? tele was to Iff in toy he nf ito i ift of foul they » 4 t$tn t*t at an in the of l\Mit a* u .4 Ute INTRODtJCTION Iv Twelve, a man who knew nothing of Christiamty except what he had learned from the Twelve, and preached this in a per- verted form. This appears from the nature of Paul's defence of his independent authority as an apostle in the first two chap- ters of the letter, and indicates that with their theory of a lim- ited apostolate the judaisers had associated the claim that the apostolic commission must; proceed from the circle of the origi- nal Twelve. See detached note on *A7rrf<rroXos, pp. 363^.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  must be taken as a passive, no instance of the middle being found elsewhere, and there being no occasion for change from active to middle form. Iv %a>4 defines the sphere in which alone xaXfcv £»jXouff6at is true. IC&VTOTS is in evident antithesis to the following phrase, seal ^f) . . . xpfcg 6[Aa<;. The addition of this phrase, with its definite personal pronoun shows that xoUv . . . xaX$, though in form simply a general maxim, had in the apostle's mind specific reference to the existing situation, the relations of the Galatians to Paul and his opponents. The words might therefore mean, "I do not object to others as well as myself seeking to gain your friendship, so only they do it in a good thing, in the realm of that which is for your good/' It is an objection to this interpretation that ^ pi6vov . . . 5puz<; awk- wardly expresses the idea "by others as well as myself," and that such a disclaimer of desire on the apostle's part to monopolise the interest and affection of the Galatians does not lead naturally to v.19. The words may also be explained by taking Paul as the implied subject of £»jXoua0ac. "It is a fine thing — I myself could desire — to be sought after, in a good thing — always, when I am away from you as well as when I am present.'* In this case the sentence is a thinly veiled re- proach of the Galatians for their fickleness in changing their attitude towards him, now that he is no longer with them. The change in im- plied subject of t;TQXoua6ott without indication that the reference is now to the apostle himself is an objection to this interpretation, though not a decisive one; the apostle may have preferred to leave the reference somewhat veiled. But it is difficult on this interpretation to account for Iv xaXip, no such qualification being called for if the apostle is think- ing of the Galatians seeking after him. Probably, therefore, the inter- pretation first proposed is the true one. 8£ is in that case adversative, marking an antithesis between the frqXouv of the judaisers, which he disapproves, and his own, which he justifies. 248 GALATIANS