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 Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  53 The Society was not a militant organization but sought simply to bring modern institutions to the Egyptian public in a familiar Islamic setting. The Brothers built schools for girls and boys beside the mosque and founded the Rovers, a scout movement that became the most popular youth group in the country; they set up night schools for workers and tutorial colleges to prepare students for the civil service examinations; they built clinics and hospitals in the rural areas; and they involved the Rovers in improving sanitation and health education in the poorer districts. The Society also set up trade unions that acquainted workers with their rights; in the factories where the Brotherhood was a presence, they earned a just wage, had health insurance and paid holidays, and could pray in the company’s mosque. Banna’s counterculture thus proved that, far from being some obsolete vestige of another era, Islam could become an effective modernizing force as well as promote spiritual vitality. But the Brotherhood’s success would prove double-edged, for it called attention to the government’s neglect of education and labor conditions. Banna’s Society of Muslim Brothers thus came to be perceived not as a help but as a grave threat to the regime. The Society was not perfect: it tended to be anti-intellectual, its pronouncements often defensive and self-righteous, its view of the West distorted by the colonial experience, and its leaders intolerant of dissent. Most seriously, it had developed a terrorist wing. After the creation of the State of Israel, the plight of the Palestinian refugees became a disturbing symbol of Muslims’ impotence in the modern world. For some, violence seemed the only way forward. Anwar Sadat, future president of Egypt, founded a “murder society” to attack the British in the Canal Zone. 54 Other paramilitary groups were attached to the palace and the Wafd, and so it was perhaps inevitable that some Brothers should form the “Secret Apparatus” (al-jihaz al-sirri). Numbering only about a thousand, the Apparatus was so clandestine that even most of the Brothers had never heard of it. Banna denounced the Apparatus but could not control it and eventually it would both taint and endanger the Society. 55 When the Apparatus assassinated Prime Minister Muhammad al-Nuqrashi on December 28, 1948, the Society condemned the atrocity in the strongest terms. But the government seized this opportunity to suppress it. On February 12, 1949, almost certainly at the behest of the new prime minister, Banna was gunned down in the street. When Nasser seized power in 1952, the Society had regrouped but was deeply divided. In the early days while he was still unpopular, Nasser courted the Brotherhood, even though he was a committed secularist and an ally of the Soviet Union. When it became clear that he had no intention of creating an Islamic state, however, a member of the Apparatus shot him during a rally.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I was not like him, and he valued that. I think I made him feel more like an artist because he didn’t know how to suffer until I came into his life. But he didn’t understand me. He tried to change me. And that was our destruction. And then Isaac read that book to me, perched on the edge of my hospital bed, my breasts sitting in a medical waste container somewhere. Suddenly I was hearing Nick’s thoughts, seeing myself as he saw me, and I heard him calling to me. Nick Nissley was perfect. Perfect looking, perfectly flawed, perfect in everything he said. His life was graceful and his words were whetted to poignancy—both written and spoken. But he didn’t mean any of them. And that was the greatest disappointment. He was a pretender, trying to grasp what it felt like to live. So, he found me looking at a lake and grabbed me. Because I wore a shroud of darkness and he wanted desperately to understand what that was like. I was charmed for a while. Charmed that someone so gifted was interested in me. I thought that by being with him, his talent would rub off on me. I was always waiting to see what he would do next. How he would handle the waitress who spilled an entire dish of pumpkin curry on his pants (he took his pants off and ate his meal in boxers); or what he would say to the fan who tracked him down and showed up at his door while we were having sex (he signed her book half leaning out the door with his hair ruffled and a sheet wrapped around his waist). He taught me how to write by simply existing—and existing well. I can’t say for sure when it was that I fell in love with him. It might have been when he told me that I had a mud vein. It might have been days later when I realized it was true. But whatever moment it took for my heart to decide to love him, it decided swiftly, and it decided for me. God knows I didn’t want to be in love. It was cliché—men and women and their social conformities to celebrate love. Engagement pictures made me want to vomit—especially when they were taken on railroad tracks. I always pictured Thomas the Train rolling over them, his smiley blue face beaded with their blood. I didn’t want to want those things. Love was good enough, without the three-layered almond/fondant wedding cake and the sparkly blood diamonds encased in white gold. Just love. And I loved Nick. Hard. Nick loved wedding cake. He told me so. He also told me that he’d like for us to have one someday. In that moment, my heart rate slowed, my eyes glazed and I saw my entire life flash before my eyes. It was pretty—because it was with Nick. But I hated it.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  When I got home, I carried the CD inside. I set it on the kitchen counter and climbed the stairs. I had no intention of listening to anything Saphira Elgin said, but when I saw the cover of Nick’s novel lying next to my bed, I picked it up. It was a reflex—we’d been talking about the book, and now I was having a look. There was a fine layer of dust over the top. I wiped it off with my sleeve and studied the jacket for clues. The cover was not his style, but authors had little say over what cover went on their book. There is a team that does that at the publishing company. They brainstorm with cheap Flavia coffee, in a windowless conference room-that’s what my agent told me at least. If I was looking for Nick in the cover, I would not find him. The cover looked like a close-up of bird feathers: greys and whites and blacks. The title is angled in chunky white letters: Knotted . I opened it to the dedication page. That was as far as I’d gotten in the past before slamming it shut. For MV I breathed through my mouth, flexing my fingers across the open page like I was preparing to do something physical. My mind caressed the dedication again. For MV I turned the page. Chapter One She bought me with words; beautiful, promising and intricately carved words… My doorbell rang. I closed the book, set it on my nightstand, and went downstairs. There was no way in hell I was reading that. “We should just make you a key,” I said to Isaac. He was standing on my doorstep, arms loaded with paper grocery bags. I stepped aside to let him in. It was a snarky comment, but I’d said it with familiarity. “I can’t stay,” he said, setting the bags down on the kitchen counter. There was a brief sting, like a bee had wandered into my chest cavity. I wanted to ask him why, but of course I didn’t. It wasn’t my business where he went or who he went there with. “You don’t have to do this anymore,” I said. “I saw Dr. Elgin today. Drove there myself. I—I’m better.” He was wearing a brown leather jacket and his face was scruffy. It didn’t look like he came from the hospital. And on days he did there was always the faint smell of antiseptic around him. Today there was only aftershave. He rubbed his fingers across the hair on his face. “I scheduled your surgery for two weeks from Monday. That way you’ll have a few more sessions with Dr. Elgin.” My first instinct was to reach a hand up to feel my breasts. I’d never been one of those women who prided themselves on their bra size. I had breasts. For the most part I ignored them.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He sat up abruptly. ‘As I came here to say it, I’ll get the thing over!’ ‘Fire away, Brockett.’ ‘Do you think you’ll hate me if I’m frank?’ ‘Of course not. Why should I hate you?’ ‘Very well then, listen.’ And now his voice was so grave that Puddle put down her embroidery. ‘You listen to me, you, Stephen Gordon. Your last book was quite inexcusably bad. It was no more like what we all expected, had a right to expect of you after The Furrow, than that plant I sent Puddle is like an oak tree—I won’t even compare it to that little plant, for the plant’s alive; your book isn’t. Oh, I don’t mean to say that it’s not well written; it’s well written because you’re just a born writer—you feel words, you’ve a perfect ear for balance, and a very good all-round knowledge of English. But that’s not enough, not nearly enough; all that’s a mere suitable dress for a body. And this time you’ve hung the dress on a dummy—a dummy can’t stir our emotions, Stephen. I was talking to Ogilvy only last night. He gave you a good review, he told me, because he’s got such a respect for your talent that he didn’t want to put on the damper. He’s like that—too merciful I always think— they’ve all been too merciful to you, my dear. They ought to have literally skinned you alive—that might have helped to show you your danger. My God! and you wrote a thing like The Furrow! What’s happened? What’s undermining your work? Because whatever it is, it’s deadly! it must be some kind of horrid dry rot. Ah, no, it’s too bad and it mustn’t go on—we’ve got to do something, quickly.’ He paused, and she stared at him in amazement. Until now she had never seen this side of Brockett, the side of the man that belonged to his art, to all art—the one thing in life he respected. She said: ‘Do you really mean what you’re saying?’ ‘I mean every word,’ he told her. Then she asked him quite humbly: ‘What must I do to save my work?’ for she realized that he had been speaking the stark, bitter truth; that indeed she had needed no one to tell her that her last book had been altogether unworthy—a poor, lifeless thing, having no health in it. He considered. ‘It’s a difficult question, Stephen. Your own temperament is so much against you. You’re so strong in some ways and yet so timid—such a mixture—and you’re terribly frightened of life.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  According to Maslow, self-actualizers have peak experiences more frequently than the rest of us, but nearly everyone has them occasionally. Among his most provocative observations was that during and following peak experiences we temporarily take on many of the characteristics of self-actualizers. In other words, peaks offer us glimpses of our most authentic, healthiest selves and thus can serve us as guides to growth. Maslow saw peak experiences as crucial sources of “clean and uncontaminated data” about who we are and might become.2 When I began my formal studies of eroticism as a practicing psychotherapist I approached the challenge with Maslow’s insights in mind. I was convinced that if I devoted as much attention to peak sexual experiences as I did to problems, I could eventually discern truths about eroticism that would otherwise elude me. My first discovery was rather discouraging: even in the nonjudgmental atmosphere of therapy people rarely bring up their peak turn-ons spontaneously. And when I started asking I quickly learned that most clients required a high comfort level and a significant amount of courage before they were willing to disclose details about this extremely intimate material. I began encouraging clients who were grappling with sexual problems to explore their peak turn-ons, hoping the potential benefits of doing so would be obvious to them. In most cases I was wrong. The majority had trouble grasping the value of discussing their peak experiences; they just wanted to fix their problems. A prevalent comment was, “Sure I’ve had good sex in the past but what can that do for me now?” Out of necessity I became adept at gently challenging clients to set aside their preoccupation with problems for a while so they might learn more about their eroticism. I quickly saw that those who accepted my challenge typically made more rapid and long-lasting progress than those who insisted on focusing exclusively on their troubles. Some improvements came about when they used their peak turn-ons to help clarify their conditions for satisfying sex—an extremely important ingredient for successful sex therapy. Fred: Centerfold syndrome? Fred consulted me because his sexual desire for Janette, his wife of six years, had been declining for more than a year. Although he assumed she must have noticed the reduction in both the frequency of sex and his enthusiasm, Fred had no idea how to discuss his predicament with Janette without hurting her. Besides, he felt ashamed of himself and was convinced she couldn’t possibly understand what he was going through.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Hey! Here’s a hundred thousand words of ‘Why the hell did we break up anyway?’ It was Nick who had finally crippled me; it was Nick who took my belief away. And I decided sometime after I filed the restraining order against Isaac that it was a story worth telling. When we broke up it was his choice. Nick liked to love me. I was not like him, and he valued that. I think I made him feel more like an artist because he didn’t know how to suffer until I came into his life. But he didn’t understand me. He tried to change me. And that was our destruction. And then Isaac read that book to me, perched on the edge of my hospital bed, my breasts sitting in a medical waste container somewhere. Suddenly I was hearing Nick’s thoughts, seeing myself as he saw me, and I heard him calling to me. Nick Nissley was perfect. Perfect looking, perfectly flawed, perfect in everything he said. His life was graceful and his words were whetted to poignancy—both written and spoken. But he didn’t mean any of them. And that was the greatest disappointment. He was a pretender, trying to grasp what it felt like to live. So, he found me looking at a lake and grabbed me. Because I wore a shroud of darkness and he wanted desperately to understand what that was like. I was charmed for a while. Charmed that someone so gifted was interested in me. I thought that by being with him, his talent would rub off on me. I was always waiting to see what he would do next. How he would handle the waitress who spilled an entire dish of pumpkin curry on his pants (he took his pants off and ate his meal in boxers); or what he would say to the fan who tracked him down and showed up at his door while we were having sex (he signed her book half leaning out the door with his hair ruffled and a sheet wrapped around his waist). He taught me how to write by simply existing—and existing well. I can’t say for sure when it was that I fell in love with him. It might have been when he told me that I had a mud vein. It might have been days later when I realized it was true. But whatever moment it took for my heart to decide to love him, it decided swiftly, and it decided for me. God knows I didn’t want to be in love. It was cliché—men and women and their social conformities to celebrate love. Engagement pictures made me want to vomit—especially when they were taken on railroad tracks. I always pictured Thomas the Train rolling over them, his smiley blue face beaded with their blood. I didn’t want to want those things.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  When you’re creating a sensual environment, remember that it belongs to both of you. Always give yourselves the freedom to just say no to sex, but also remember that part of love is to be there for each other sometimes even when you’d rather be somewhere else. No one feels like making love all the time. Still, it is often those times when you least expect it that sex is the most exciting. Whether it is slow, romantic sex or quick and raunchy, when you’re with someone whom you care deeply about, it is always making love. [image file=image_rsrc1YD.jpg] “I’d always hated the way my husband kissed yet I didn’t know how to show him how I wanted him to really kiss me. I couldn’t believe the simple and loving technique you taught me to show him.” FEMALE SEMINAR ATTENDEE, NEW YORK STOCKBROKER, AGE 36 Kissing is where all sexual synergy starts. When your lips touch another’s, it’s the first sign, the first taste, of what is to come. At the same time, despite your mutual attraction to one another, if a kiss feels “off,” it’s difficult to not feel turned off. A married woman in a seminar told me that she doesn’t like the way her husband kisses. I asked, “Then how can you go beyond that if you don’t like to kiss?” She said, “We just don’t kiss; we skip that part.” I say, What a shame. Kissing is one of the best ways to get all the juices flowing. But as I listened to countless other women, I began to hear similar stories about their so-called “kissing dissatisfaction.” Since then I have heard a number of women and men in my seminars describe their disappointment that kissing is no longer a part of their sexual relationships. Most of the time, they talk about how passionate their kisses used to be, when they lasted for hours and were the driving force for every sexual encounter. But over time, that passion has slipped away from them, and the kisses slowly decrease in both quantity and intensity. Exactly when the passion began to fade is never quite clear, but most women are at a loss as to how or if it can be regained. The good news is that the disappointment is not specific to men or women, but women tend to volunteer their feelings of disappointment, and men won’t bring it up unless asked. But the fact remains, when kisses lose their heat, it is missed by both of you. Don’t be under the misconception that he’s no longer interested in kissing you passionately. He may not be interested in talking about it, because men are not often comfortable in any discussion that allows their vulnerability to be seen. What men want is evidence that they turn you on. More than anything else, that’s what turns them on. You can send that message in no uncertain terms by the way you kiss him. Secret from Lou’s Archives

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex. Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women. Thus, in a patriarchal power system where whiteskin privilege is a major prop, the entrapments used to neutralize Black women and white women are not the same. For example, it is easy for Black women to be used by the power structure against Black men, not because they are men, but because they are Black. Therefore, for Black women, it is necessary at all times to separate the needs of the oppressor from our own legitimate conflicts within our communities. This same problem does not exist for white women. Black women and men have shared racist oppression and still share it, although in different ways. Out of that shared oppression we have developed joint defenses and joint vulnerabilities to each other that are not duplicated in the white community, with the exception of the relationship between Jewish women and Jewish men. On the other hand, white women face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to join power; our racial “otherness” is a visible reality that makes that quite clear. For white women there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools. Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  We were poised for attack, not always in the most effective places. When we disagreed with one another about the solution to a particular problem, we were often far more vicious to each other than to the originators of our common problem. Historically, difference had been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness. In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline for living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity — Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized chocolate milk. Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures. Our persistence in examining the tensions within diversity encourages growth toward our common goal. So often we either ignore the past or romanticize it, render the reason for unity useless or mythic. We forget that the necessary ingredient needed to make the past work for the future is our energy in the present, metabolizing one into the other. Continuity does not happen automatically, nor is it a passive process. The 60s were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. They were vital years of awakening, of pride, and of error. The civil rights and Black power movements rekindled possibilities for disenfranchised groups within this nation. Even though we fought common enemies, at times the lure of individual solutions made us careless of each other. Sometimes we could not bear the face of each other’s differences because of what we feared those differences might say about ourselves. As if everybody can’t eventually be too Black, too white, too man, too woman. But any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve. The answer to cold is heat, the answer to hunger is food. But there is no simple monolithic solution to racism, to sexism, to homophobia. There is only the conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them, wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the same disease. By seeing who the we is, we learn to use our energies with greater precision against our enemies rather than against ourselves.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  As we move toward creating a society within which we can each flourish, ageism is another distortion of relationship which interferes without vision. By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes. The “generation gap” is an important social tool for any repressive society. If the younger members of a community view the older members as contemptible or suspect or excess, they will never be able to join hands and examine the living memories of the community, nor ask the all important question, “Why?” This gives rise to a historical amnesia that keeps us working to invent the wheel every time we have to go to the store for bread. We find ourselves having to repeat and relearn the same old lessons over and over that our mothers did because we do not pass on what we have learned, or because we are unable to listen. For instance, how many times has this all been said before? For another, who would have believed that once again our daughters are allowing their bodies to be hampered and purgatoried by girdles and high heels and hobble skirts? Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power. As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and tradition is too “alien” to comprehend. An example of this is the signal absence of the experience of women of Color as a resource for women’s studies courses. The literature of women of Color is seldom included in women’s literature courses and almost never in other literature courses, nor in women’s studies as a whole. All too often, the excuse given is that the literatures of women of Color can only be taught by Colored women, or that they are too difficult to understand, or that classes cannot “get into” them because they come out of experiences that are “too different.” I have heard this argument presented by white women of otherwise quite clear intelligence, women who seem to have no trouble at all teaching and reviewing work that comes out of the vastly different experiences of Shakespeare, Molière, Dostoyefsky, and Aristophanes. Surely there must be some other explanation. This is a very complex question, but I believe one of the reasons white women have such difficulty reading Black women’s work is because of their reluctance to see Black women as women and different from themselves. To examine Black women’s literature effectively requires that we be seen as whole people in our actual complexities — as individuals, as women, as human — rather than as one of those problematic but familiar stereotypes provided in this society in place of genunine images of Black women. And I believe this holds true for the literatures of other women of Color who are not Black.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  As a further reward, Miscavige offered Rathbun the opportunity to go to the Scientology ship, the Freewinds, and cruise the Caribbean for two years doing nothing but studying and training to be an auditor. Rathbun could finally obtain OT III. It was an offer he couldn’t resist. That was a rewarding time for Rathbun. But as soon as he got off the ship after his time away, Miscavige called him into his office and said, “I finally know who my SP is. The two years you were gone was the only unenturbulated time in my life.” He ordered him to Clearwater, his rank broken, as a trainee. That didn’t last, either. A number of tabloid sensations arose surrounding Scientology celebrities—Lisa Marie Presley was divorcing Michael Jackson, Kirstie Alley was divorcing actor Parker Stevenson—and Miscavige again turned to Rathbun to cool the press down. Then, on December 5, 1995, a Scientologist named Lisa McPherson died following a mental breakdown. She had rear-ended a boat that was being towed in downtown Clearwater, Florida, near the church’s spiritual headquarters. When paramedics arrived, she stripped off her clothes and wandered naked down the street. She said she needed help and was taken to a nearby hospital. Soon afterward, a delegation of ten Scientologists arrived at the hospital and persuaded McPherson to check out, against doctors’ advice. McPherson spent the next seventeen days under guard in room 174 of the Fort Harrison Hotel. For Scientologists, McPherson’s mental breakdown presented a confounding dilemma. McPherson had been declared Clear just three months before, after ten years of courses and auditing and substantial contributions to the church. The process had been like “a gopher being pulled through a garden hose,” she later said, but it had been worth it. “I am so full of life I am overwhelmed at the joy of it all!” she wrote. “WOW!” Clears are supposed to be invulnerable to mental frailty. People on the base knew that McPherson had been acting strangely before her breakdown. Marty Rathbun, who was at Flag Base during this time, remembers seeing McPherson screaming in the hallways of the Fort Harrison Hotel, because she had just been declared Clear. “Aaaaaah! Yahoo!” she cried. She looked insane. How did she get to be Clear when she was obviously irrational? And who was responsible for deciding that she had achieved that state? According to Rathbun and several other former church officials who were present at the time, the case supervisor who pronounced Lisa McPherson Clear was David Miscavige. He had gone to Flag in the summer of 1995 to take over the auditing delivered at the base. He would also supervise the treatment of McPherson that followed.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  IN THE SPACE of a year, Hubbard had gone from destitution and obscurity to great wealth and international renown, followed by a crashing descent. The foundation he had created to train auditors plummeted into debt and soon declared bankruptcy. Close supporters, such as John Campbell and Dr. Winter, deserted. Dianetics proved to be a fad that had swept the country, infatuating tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, but then burned itself out more quickly than the hula hoop. Once again, Hubbard got a house trailer, and this time he drove it to Lawrence, Kansas, where Russell Hays now lived. Hays instructed Hubbard to park his trailer on some raw land he owned nearby. “That didn’t please him,” Hays said. “I wouldn’t want to have to live with him, he’d get on my nerves.” Hubbard was drinking and had a number of drugs along with him, and he pressed Hays to supply him with marijuana. Hays later dried some horseweed and mailed it to Hubbard, signing the letter, “I. M. Reefer.” Hays advised the discouraged Hubbard to make use of his extensive mailing list. There were many followers who still believed in the man and his method. Some had had meaningful emotional breakthroughs. Others had experiences—such as leaving their bodies—that conclusively proved to them the validity of Hubbard’s claims. These acolytes provided the bedrock of support that Hubbard needed to regenerate his broken organization, rebuild his finances, and repair the stain on his reputation caused by his personal scandals. In addition to Hubbard’s relentless self-confidence, several new factors salvaged his movement. He had a new device, the E-Meter, developed by one of his followers, which Hubbard revealed in March 1952. The E- Meter would replace the Dianetic reverie with what appeared to be a more scientific approach, one that didn’t look so much like a hypnotic trance. “It sees all, knows all,” Hubbard declared. “It is never wrong.” And he had a new wife, Mary Sue Whipp, a petite Texan, twenty years his junior, whom he married that same month. She was already pregnant with the first of their four children. Hubbard also had a new name for his movement. From now on, it was Scientology. 1 According to the church, “There was something under the water and it was definitely hostile, and after they dropped their charges, there was oil and something sunk.... It definitely happened.” 2 A conspicuous example of Dianetic processing involved John Brodie, the outstanding quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who suffered an injury to his throwing arm in 1970 that threatened to end his career. Despite the best medical attention and physical therapy, his elbow remained sore and swollen. Finally, he went to Phil Spickler, a Scientologist and Dianetic auditor, who asked Brodie to tell him about previous incidents that might be keeping his arm from healing.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  Lying on his side, either he rests his best limb on her as on a brood mare, or else lying on top of her, the part of his body below the navel resting on the girl’s pubis, he presses his instrument against her without penetrating her. At that moment, the girl’s sex opens out, overexcited, particularly if she has a large organ. Thrusting his groin firmly against the girl’s pubis, he seizes her by the hair and stays crouched over her in order to scratch, bite, and strike her. Does that sound like something pleasurable to you? Even those who enjoy sex a little bit rough at times, or who view spanking as something erotic, wouldn’t take kindly to being pinned down like a brood mare in order to be scratched, bitten, and hit. Still, I don’t think that women at the time, unlike in modern India, were as disrespected as they were misunderstood. In spite of such slights toward women, in Vatsyayana’s original version of The Kama Sutra, women were nonetheless held in high esteem. The book makes it very clear that, from a mans perspective, being desired by a woman was considered an honor, and the seduction of a woman was a form of art. However, art, as we all well know, is and always has been a very subjective phenomenon. As the saying goes, One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or, as the case may be, one mans perspective isn’t necessarily another woman’s pleasure. My reason for sharing this particular excerpt from The Kama Sutra was to show you how easy it is to get irrelevant information in the area of sexual technique. And while I learned a lot about fourth-century Indian culture and picked up some very vivid tips on positions from it, The Kama Sutra was neither what I expected, nor what I needed. And so my quest for practical sexual knowledge continued. Secret from Lou’s Archives Ways women can gauge certain male features: I) the length from the tip of his index finger to the base of the palm of his hand indicates erect penis size; 2) the longer or wider the moon on his thumbnail, the longer or wider his penis will be. As one seminar attendee said, “It makes the ride on the subway so much more interesting!”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Whenever Cruise traveled abroad to promote his movies, he used the opportunity to lobby foreign leaders and American ambassadors to promote Scientology. Davis usually accompanied him on these diplomatic and lobbying missions. Cruise repeatedly consulted with former president Clinton, lobbying him to get prime minister Tony Blair’s help in getting the Church of Scientology declared a tax-deductible charitable organization in the United Kingdom. Rathbun was present for one telephone call in which Clinton advised Cruise he would be better served by contacting Blair’s wife, Cherie, rather than the prime minister, because she was a lawyer and “would understand the details.” Later, Cruise went to London, where he met with a couple of Blair’s representatives, although nothing came of those efforts. In 2003, he met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to express the church’s concerns over its treatment in Germany. Cruise had access to practically anyone in the world. That same year, Cruise and Davis lobbied Rod Paige, the secretary of education during the first term of President George W. Bush, to endorse Hubbard’s study tech educational methods. Paige had been impressed. For months, Cruise kept in contact with Paige’s office, urging that Scientology techniques be folded into the president’s No Child Left Behind program. One day Cruise flew his little red-and-white-striped Pitts Special biplane, designed for aerobatics, to Hemet, along with his Scientologist chief of staff, Michael Doven. Miscavige and Rathbun picked them up and drove them to Gold Base. Rathbun was in the backseat and recalls Cruise boasting to COB about his talks with the secretary. “Bush may be an idiot,” Miscavige observed, “but I wouldn’t mind his being our Constantine.” Cruise agreed. “If fucking Arnold can be governor, I could be president.” Miscavige responded, “Well, absolutely, Tom.” 2 IN 2001, Haggis was fired from Family Law, the show he had created. His career, which for so long seemed to be a limitless staircase toward fame and fortune, now took a plunge. He began working at home. Within a week, he started writing a movie script called Million Dollar Baby, based on a series of short stories by F. X. Toole. He spent a year working on it, drawing upon some of his own painful memories. He identified with the character of a sour old boxing coach, Frankie Dunn. Like Haggis, Frankie is estranged from his daughter. His letters to her are returned. He turns to religion, going to Mass every day and seeking a forgiveness that he doesn’t really believe in. Into the coach’s dismal life comes another young woman, Maggie Fitzgerald, an aspiring boxer from a white trash background.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  His pace is quick and I seem always to be a few feet behind him, pausing to look up at birds or down at tree trunks to inspect overgrown mushrooms. “I bet you’re the kind of person who takes her kids on nature walks and stops to look at every bug and flower,” he says. “Oh, I definitely am,” I say. “And I bet you’re not?” He laughs, which is answer enough. I am disappointed that as we walk, he does not reach for my hand or stop to give me even a quick kiss – anything to acknowledge my physical presence. For years, I have pushed Michael’s hands away from me because they always seemed to be coming at me, grabbing and tapping and rubbing, so persistent and needy, but now that he’s gone, I crave being touched. I want to feel the warmth of skin, the pressure of a body against my own. After the walk, we go home to change our clothes. I take mine off and walk around the apartment naked, getting a glass of water and digging in my tote bag for a more evening-worthy outfit. “I like how comfortable you are with your body,” he says, watching me. “I like how you walk around with no clothes on and feel no need to cover up. But, one question: have you ever thought about shaving all the hair from your pussy?” he asks. “Well, no, I haven’t,” I say. “I mean, there’s just a small patch of hair anyway, it’s pretty well-trimmed.” “I think it’s hot when women have no pubic hair,” he says. “Really?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. “I think it looks prepubescent. I’ve never understood how men find that sexy.” “It just is,” he says. “Would you think about shaving it all off?” “No, I wouldn’t. I want to look like a woman, not a little girl,” I say. He approaches me, saying, “Oh you definitely look like a woman,” and then kisses me until I’ve backed up against the wall, where he spins me around so that my breasts are pressed against it and he enters me from behind. He wraps his arm around my waist to hold me in place and I let out a yelp of pain as he penetrates me too forcefully, but then we settle into a rhythm. I come quickly and then he does. Immediately, I can feel his semen dripping down my leg and look down to see it making a small puddle on the floor. When he walks away, I grab a paper towel to clean the floor and then join him to rinse off in the shower. We stopped using condoms when I agreed to be exclusive with him. He wants to see if any of his friends are hanging around the firehouse and asks if I mind stopping by before we go to the bar he is taking me to.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I make a note to have a chat with the doormen when I’m back home – I would like to feel I have some semblance of privacy, the same way Michael does. In the afternoon, Michael and the kids convince me to walk down the beach to snorkel with them, so we borrow goggles and flippers from the resort and waddle to the water. The snorkeling area is all the way at the end of the beach, where Blaze sits. Mercifully, he is not in his regular spot at the moment, though I see his kayak at the water’s edge, laden with ripe tropical fruit. We swim out until the ocean floor seems far beneath us and I float on my stomach, hearing nothing but my breath as I gaze into the turquoise water and watch schools of brightly colored fish dart around me. It is serene and imperturbable here, and I’m grateful my kids knew to drag me here despite my wanting to be left alone like a sloth with my book. When I finally lift my head, I see Blaze standing in the shallow end, watching me. I raise my hand to acknowledge him, and he is still standing there a few minutes later when we all swim back in. I linger for a moment as Michael and the kids run ahead to return the snorkeling gear and ready the next activity, a Sunfish. “Did you have a good time last night?” he asks me quietly. I smile and nod, so he asks if we can do it again. I demur, saying I’m not sure I can get away. The kids are gesturing to me so that they can take me for a sail, so I tell Blaze that I better go and that I will come back to talk to him after the sailing excursion. Hudson is excited to show us his sailing skills, and we let him zoom through the water with the wind at our backs. By the time we arrive back at the beach after capsizing and bobbing in the water, waiting for the resort’s motorboat to rescue us, Blaze is long gone for the day. I am both disappointed and relieved, as I still hadn’t decided if I had the energy to have another go with him. I love the attention from him, but I had my adventure and think I’m done now. CHAPTER 47AuthorshipLate afternoon is my favorite time of vacation days – a cooler breeze moving in, the crowds packed up and gone. Georgia and I stroll along the beach, holding hands and splashing the water with our feet. “I don’t want to leave here. I wish we could stay forever,” she says wistfully. “I know, me too. It’s such a special place. Just think, someday you can come back here when you’re all grown up with your own kids,” I say.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  I’m absolutely convinced that if you take the time to understand erotic problems—even ones that don’t affect you personally—you’ll be surprised at how your appreciation of the erotic mind deepens. Eroticism is so intricately involved in the rough-and-tumble of living and loving that messy conflicts and difficulties are as unavoidable in the erotic realm as in life in general. As you know, those who expect life to be problem-free usually end up disappointed and demoralized. Healthy eroticism does not avoid problems; it works with and transforms them. The erotic problems we’ll be looking at are qualitatively different from those sex therapists have traditionally talked about. Ever since Masters and Johnson launched modern sex therapy in the late 1960s, the focus has been mostly on physiological function and dysfunction, especially two observable and measurable events: arousal (a man’s erection or a woman’s vaginal lubrication) and orgasm (reliably having one or more, but not “too fast” or “too slow”). As a result of this emphasis, most people assume that if the “equipment” is functioning properly everything else will pretty much take care of itself. Sex therapy has grown, and, as with all new fields, its range of inquiry has expanded. For example, many of today’s clients are concerned about a declining or absent urge for sex, traditionally called sex drive, libido, or horniness—now referred to simply as desire.1 Neither measurable nor directly observable, desire is a totally subjective state combining biochemical influences, memories of past sex, visualizations of future possibilities, and a predilection for attending to and interpreting everyday events in an erotic way. To study desire we must move beyond our preoccupation with sex organs and venture into more elusive territory where even the most sophisticated laboratory instruments become practically useless. In this chapter I want to call your attention to three types of erotic problems that frequently bring people into therapy. First, we’ll see how some of the same emotions that intensify arousal can also produce unwanted side effects that inhibit our desire or disrupt our capacities for arousal or orgasm. Second, we’ll consider how troublesome attractions can draw us toward partners who are destined to disappoint or hurt us. Third, we’ll discover how love-lust conflicts sometimes make it difficult or impossible to experience affection and passion with the same person. These problems all contain a similar paradox in which long-standing and compelling turn-ons turn out to be antithetical to satisfaction. As we’ve explored the dynamics of passion throughout Part I, I’ve given special attention to peak turn-ons anonymously described by The Group in the Sexual Excitement Survey, while encouraging you to examine your own. Although I’ve drawn extensively on my experience as a therapist, I believe it is crucial that our ideas about the erotic mind be based on a solid understanding of nonproblematic eroticism.

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

  Neither Charlemagne nor Lewis the Pious succeeded in subjugating Bohemia, and although the country was added to the diocese of Regensburg, the inhabitants remained pagans. But when Bohemia became a dependency of the Moravian empire and Swatopluk married a daughter of the Bohemian duke, Borziwai, a door was opened to Christianity. Borziwai and his wife, Ludmilla, were baptized, and their children were educated in the Christian faith. Nevertheless, when Wratislav, Borziwai’s son and successor, died in 925, a violent reaction took place. He left two sons, Wenzeslav and Boleslav, who were placed under the tutelage of their grandmother, Ludmilla. But their mother, Drahomira, was an inveterate heathen, and she caused the murder first of Ludmilla, and then of Wenzeslav, 938. Boleslav, surnamed the Cruel, had his mother’s nature and also her faith, and he almost succeeded in sweeping Christianity out of Bohemia. But in 950 he was utterly defeated by the emperor, Otto I., and compelled not only to admit the Christian priests into the country, but also to rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, and this misfortune seems actually to have changed his mind. He now became, if not friendly, at least forbearing to his Christian subjects, and, during the reign of his son and successor, Boleslav the Mild, the Christian Church progressed so far in Bohemia that an independent archbishopric was founded in Prague. The mass of the people, however, still remained barbarous, and heathenish customs and ideas lingered among them for more than a century. Adalbert, archbishop of Prague, from 983 to 997,130 preached against polygamy, the trade in Christian slaves, chiefly carried on by the Jews, but in vain. Twice he left his see, disgusted and discouraged; finally he was martyred by the Prussian Wends. Not until 1038 archbishop Severus succeeded in enforcing laws concerning marriage, the celebration of the Lord’s Day, and other points of Christian morals. About the contest between the Romano-Slavic and the Romano-Germanic churches in Bohemia, nothing is known. Legend tells that Methodius himself baptized Borziwai and Ludmilla, and the first missionary, work was, no doubt, done by Slavic priests, but at the time of Adalbert the Germanic tendency was prevailing. Also among the Poles the Gospel was first preached by Slavic missionaries, and Cyrillus and Methodius are celebrated in the Polish liturgy131 as the apostles of the country. As the Moravian empire under Rastislaw comprised vast regions which afterward belonged to the kingdom of Poland, it is only natural that the movement started by Cyrillus and Methodius should have reached also these regions, and the name of at least one Slavic missionary among the Poles, Wiznach, is known to history.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Anyone who commanded a victorious unit was given land, houses, and slaves. Qin had arguably developed the first secular state ideology, but Shang separated religion from politics, not because of its inherent violence but because religion was impracticably humane. Religious sentiment would make a ruler too benign, which ran counter to the state’s best interests. “A State that uses good people to govern the wicked will be plagued by disorder and be destroyed,” Shang insisted. “A state that uses the wicked to govern the good always enjoys peace and becomes strong.” 105 Instead of practicing the Golden Rule, a military commander should inflict on the enemy exactly what he did not wish for his own troops. 106 Unsurprisingly, Qin’s success was deeply troubling to the Confucians. Xunzi (c. 310–219), for example, believed that a ruler who governed by ren would be an irresistible force for good and his compassion would transform the world. He would take up arms only “to put an end to violence, and to do away with harm, not in order to compete with others for spoil. Therefore when the soldiers of the benevolent man encamp they command a godlike respect; and where they pass, they transform the people.” 107 But his pupil Li Si laughed at him: Qin was the most powerful state in China, because it had the strongest army and economy; it owed its success not to ren but to its opportunism. 108 During Xunzi’s visit to Qin, King Zhao told him bluntly: “The Confucians [ru] are no use in running a state.” 109 Shortly afterward Qin conquered Xunzi’s native state of Zhao, and even though the Zhao king surrendered, Qin troops buried 400,000 of his soldiers alive. How could a junzi exert any restraining influence over such a regime? Xunzi’s pupil Li Si now emigrated to Qin, became its prime minister, and masterminded the lightning campaign that resulted in Qin’s final victory and the establishment of the Chinese Empire in 221 BCE. Paradoxically, the Legalists drew on the same pool of ideas and spoke the same language as the Daoists. They also believed that the king should “do nothing” (wu wei) to interfere with the Dao of the Law, which should run like a well-oiled machine.

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

  dark colors, although Pastor endeavors to rescue the Church from the charge of total neglect of its duty and to clear the mediaeval hierarchy and theology from the charge of being responsible for the semi-paganism of the Renaissance. The mediaeval theology had put the priesthood in the place of the individual conscience. Far from possessing any passion to rescue Italy from a religious formalism which involved the seeds of stagnation of thought and moral disintegration, the priesthood was corrupt at heart and corrupt in practice in the highest seats of Christendom.1036 Finding the clerical mind of Italy insincere and the moral condition of the Church corrupt, Humanism not only made no serious effort to amend this deplorable state but, on the contrary, it contributed to the further decadence of morals by a revival of paganism, now Epicurean, now Stoical, attested both in the lives and the writings of many of its chief leaders. Gregorovius has felt justified in pronouncing the terrible sentence that the sole end of the Italian Renaissance was paganism.1037 The worship of classical forms led to the adoption of classical ideas. There were not wanting Humanists and artists who combined culture with Christian faith, and devoted their genius to the cause of truth and virtue. Traversari strictly observed the rules of his monastic order; Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Vittorino da Feltre, Ficino, Sadoleto, Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Michelangelo and others were devout Christian believers. Traversari at first hesitated to translate classic authors and, when he did, justified himself on the ground that the more the Pagan writers were understood, the more would the excellence of the Christian system be made manifest. But Poggio, Filelfo, Valla and the majority of the other writers of the Renaissance period, such as Ariosto, Aretino, Machiavelli, were indifferent to religion, or despised it in the form they saw it manifested. Culture was substituted for Christianity, the worship of art and eloquence for reverence for truth and holiness. The Humanists sacrificed in secret and openly to the gods of Greece and Rome rather than to the God of the Bible. Yet, they were not independent enough to run the risk of an open rupture with orthodoxy, which would have subjected them to the Inquisition and death at the stake.1038 Yea, those who were most flagrant in their attacks upon the ecclesiastics of their time often professed repentance for their writings in their last days, as Boccaccio and Bandello, and applied for extreme unction before death. So it was with Machiavelli, who died with the consolations of the Church which he undermined with his pen, with the half-Pagan Pomponius Laetus of Rome and the infamous Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini, who joined to his patronage of culture the commission of every crime.