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 Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  His sainthood remains alive most visibly in the interest that people give to the way he lived his life. The power of his Confessions has assured a lively interest. Contemporary readers who come to Augustine most often take up the Confessions first, which is remarkable enough testimony to that work’s power. If readers of the last generation pick up even one book about Augustine, that first book is almost always a biography, and a particular biography—Peter Brown’s classic Augustine of Hippo (1967).617 Brown’s book, marvelous, imperfect, and enduring, was the first modern biography and easily outclassed all competitors. Whatever Augustine taught and did, he is reduced by this preference for life-story-telling to a more ordinary saint than he really is. Having achieved great repute, he is the more readily trivialized. Since he became the first saint known to have his own website (since 1994, when this writer became his webmaster), he has attracted a fairly steady flow of questions and inquiries. Many are quite specific and studious, even scholarly, but the commonest are more superficial. That he was born and lived in Africa leaves many readers, in an age of renewed consciousness of the troubled history of African relations with the developed world, wondering, “Was Augustine black?”618 No less rooted in contemporary concerns is the commonest doctrinal question, a search for a particular quotation: Did Augustine really say the benevolent ecumenical words recommending “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity”? No, he did not, but many have heard he did and very much hope he did, seeking an august, ancient, and improbable patronage for a contemporary predilection for ecumenism.619 What the dying saint thought, what he did, what was of his own doing, what was that of his friends, and what was that of those of us who have read and written of him since—these forces have turned him into a celebrity, known for being known, an object of curiosity, a pawn in our contemporary conversations. He saw us coming, deploring “a tribe eager to know about another man’s life, too lazy to amend their own.”620 Trivialization is not the only risk his future faces. The place of the churches that have been fondest of him is changing in our world, and those churches themselves have been reinventing themselves in ways that need less of him or figures like him. With them or without them, his future begins to shimmer uncertainly.

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

  My big weekend is approaching – and by “big” I mean that I have Friday night until Sunday afternoon kid-free – and I try to pin him down to make plans. He is vague about his schedule and finally writes a heartfelt text that he doesn’t think he should see me, that it’s unwise for him to invest further time and feelings in me when it seems unlikely that he will get what he wants out of this relationship. He wants a wife – not me as his wife, but not me if I don’t have the potential to someday be a wife. He says I should call him if I want to discuss it, but I don’t. I thank him for being straightforward and kind, tell him I have loved our time together and I hope he soon finds the lucky woman he can commit to. I feel a pang of disappointment and loss that takes me by surprise. Though we didn’t see much of each other, we had forged a strong connection and it had been reassuring to know there was someone out there who was keeping track of me, who felt invested in me. Will I ever meet another man as gentle and decent as this one? Truthfully, it seems unlikely, but aside from abandoning my life here in the city, tantalizing as that may seem, the writing on the wall is pretty clear: it’s time to move on. #4 has been equally dodgy about making plans for my free weekend, though he and I have only been in touch sporadically. Finally, I text him that I am anxious to cement plans so that I can maximize this rare opportunity of kid-free time, and he texts me back that he is sorry but it’s his family’s busy season at the orchard and he has to help. “I enjoy spending time with you, but I don’t want to chase after someone who doesn’t want to be chased by me. I know you’re busy, but I feel like you’re blowing me off and I would rather you just say so straight out so I stop suggesting we make plans. No hard feelings, I just want to be clear,” I text him. Later in the afternoon, my phone rings and I am surprised to see that it is him as we have never before spoken on the phone. I am walking in the door with Georgia after school, and I take the phone into my shower stall and close the glass door behind me for privacy. “Yeah, so hey listen, I got your text and I don’t want you to feel like I’m blowing you off. I really like being with you, it’s just that it felt like it was getting serious too quickly,” he says.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The explanations, which she bestowed on little Johann in return were suitable for awakening in him the idea that all his contemporaries were heavily afflicted with scrofula and "bad juices" - only he was not. And that didn't exactly help to strengthen his already lacking trust and impartiality. Senator Buddenbrook knew nothing of such details; but he saw that the development of his son, by nature and as a result of external influences, was by no means, for the time being, taking the direction which he wished to give it. If he had taken his education into his own hands, worked on his mind daily and hourly be able! But he didn't have the time for it, and he had to watch with pain how occasional attempts to do so failed miserably and only made the relationship between father and child colder and stranger. He had an image in mind that he longed to model his son: the image of Hanno's great-grandfather, as he himself knew him as a boy - a bright head, jovial, simple, humorous and strong... Couldn't he become like that? Was that impossible? And why?... He could at least have suppressed and banished the music, which alienated the boy from practical life, was certainly not useful to his physical health and was absorbing his mental faculties! Didn't his dreamy nature sometimes border on the insane? One afternoon, three quarters of an hour before dinner, which was at four o'clock, Hanno went down to the first floor alone. He had been practicing on the grand piano for a while and was now idle in the living room. He sat half reclining on the chaise longue, fumbling with the sailor's knot on his chest, and as his eyes slid sideways without searching for anything, he saw an open leather folder on his mother's dainty walnut desk - the folder with the family papers. He rested his elbow on the back pad and his chin in his hand and looked at things from afar for a while. No doubt Papa had occupied himself with it after second breakfast today and left it for further use. One was stuck in the folder, loose sheets lying outside had been weighed down with a metal ruler for the time being, Hanno slipped carelessly off the ottoman and went to the desk. The book was opened at the point where in the manuscripts of several of his ancestors and finally in his father's the entire family tree of the Buddenbrooks was arranged with brackets and rubrics in clear data. Kneeling with one leg on the writing chair, his softly wavy light brown hair propped in the palm of his hand, Hanno examined it Manuscript a little to one side, with the dull critical and a little contemptuous seriousness of complete indifference, and let his free hand play with Mama's pen, which was half gold and half ebony.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  As I listen to his tales of America I see how absurd it is to expect of Gandhi that miracle which will deroute the trend of destiny. India’s enemy is not England, but America. India’s enemy is the time spirit, the hand which cannot be turned back. Nothing will avail to offset this virus which is poisoning the whole world. America is the very incarnation of doom. She will drag the whole world down to the bottomless pit. He thinks the Americans are a very gullible people. He tells me about the credulous souls who succored him there—the Quakers, the Unitarians, the Theosophists, the New Thoughters, the Seventh-day Adventists, etc. He knew where to sail his boat, this bright young man. He knew how to make the tears come to his eyes at the right moment; he knew how to take up a collection, how to appeal to the minister’s wife, how to make love to the mother and daughter at the same time. To look at him you would think him a saint. And he is a saint, in the modern fashion; a contaminated saint who talks in one breath of love, brotherhood, bathtubs, sanitation, efficiency, etc. The last night of his sojourn in Paris is given up to “the fucking business.” He has had a full program all day—conferences, cablegrams, interviews, photographs for the newspapers, affectionate farewells, advice to the faithful, etc., etc. At dinner time he decides to lay aside his troubles. He orders champagne with the meal, he snaps his fingers at the garçon and behaves in general like the boorish little peasant that he is. And since he has had a bellyful of all the good places he suggests now that I show him something more primitive. He would like to go to a very cheap place, order two or three girls at once. I steer him along the Boulevard de la Chapelle, warning him all the while to be careful of his pocketbook. Around Aubervilliers we duck into a cheap dive and immediately we’ve got a flock of them on our hands. In a few minutes he’s dancing with a naked wench, a huge blonde with creases in her jowls. I can see her ass reflected a dozen times in the mirrors that line the room—and those dark, bony fingers of his clutching her tenaciously. The table is full of beer glasses, the mechanical piano is wheezing and gasping. The girls who are unoccupied are sitting placidly on the leather benches, scratching themselves peacefully just like a family of chimpanzees. There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  True idleness—ski-instructing, for example—was frowned upon in her family, but there was no need to hazard an office job. Generations of Caseys had pursued art collecting. They had donated a great number of cubist works, selected by Libbets’s savvy grandmother, to the Museum of Modern Art. The Caseys had also established the reputations of some nineteenth-century American painters—Eakins, Childe Hassam. Collecting was a more than adequate vocation. As were any of the arts-related pastimes. Her mother was a docent at the Metropolitan Museum, and her various older sisters and brothers, all of them out in the world now, were art historians and gallery owners. As long as Libbets kept painting, she was in good shape. The doormen at 930 Park let Paul up without buzzing. He suspected that they, too, had enjoyed her company for a joint or a beer. Libbets was everybody’s friend. Her comportment was flawless. She knew the kids who hung out in the Central Park band shell; she knew Adam Purple, the guy who shoveled horse shit in the park for his garden downtown; she knew David Cassidy, whose father lived in the building. The doormen at 930 had long hair and shifty smiles, the smiles of men uncomfortable with the way their fetching-and-carrying jobs stretched out in front of them. These countercultural doormen knew the difference between their station and Libbets’s, and they were ready for the first sign of condescension, just as they cherished the notion, like Libbets did, that the rich were just people, too. They could all share some dope. It was cool. So one of the doormen asked Paul if there was a party. Paul shook his head, mumbled. He skidded out of that scrape and into the next one. The elevator opened right into the Caseys’ foyer. They had the entire fourth floor of 930 Park. Paul set his blazer on a chair in the front hall. His heart raced with the recollection of Libbets’s peasant dresses, with the smell of the skin lotion she used, with the lopsided way she smiled. Except for the dim stutter of the television down the hall, there was an austere stillness to the premises. The foyer was carpeted with antique Orientals and decorated with pre-Columbian urns and with small American impressionist paintings by artists recognizable from any day-camp art-appreciation course. The elevator slid shut behind him. Libbets called out cheerfully. She came running out of the den. She slid, in stocking feet, across a bare strip of parquet. —Excellent, she said. We were waiting! We? We were waiting? The revelation of that horrible plural struck Paul like a blow in the solar plexus. We? And yet he followed his hostess. Sure enough, in the den, he found Francis Chamberlain Davenport IV, cleaning an ounce of dope on an open copy of Six Crises by Richard M. Nixon. All hope drained from Paul. —You oughta read this, Hood, Davenport said distractedly. All you need to know about the travails of life.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Instead of kissing her mouth, Henry shoved a snapshot in our faces. “Look at my new girlfriend.” He grinned, sunlight through the paned window of the front door shining on his bald pate. “That’s Hoki. She’s brought me back to life!” Rupert said, “She’s very beautiful.” Anaïs said, “She’s very young.” “Twenty-seven,” Henry leered, his face crumpling like a squashed piece of paper. Goosebumps of revulsion crept up my arms as I imagined his young girlfriend touching that old man’s wizened body. As if reading my mind, Henry said, “She won’t touch me because she thinks, at seventy-five, I’m too old for her. But I’ll win her. I won’t give up. All for love, heh, Anaïs?” “Until you win her,” Anaïs said under her breath. “You think I’m deaf, but I heard that.” His troll eyes twinkled. “What has happened to your faith in the inspiration of Eros, Anaïs? What does it matter how it ends, heh? It’s all the insanely beautiful, hellish and holy chase, doncha know?” Anaïs made a beeline to a couch and chairs and settled there. We all followed, Henry shuffling on his walker. He lowered himself into his armchair where a profusion of books and his dashed-off watercolors covered a side table. “So Henry,” Anaïs began, “I’m here because the last time we corresponded you begged me to let you pay me back.” “Pay you back for what?” he snarled. “For all the help I gave you at the beginning of your career.” He immediately softened. “Yes, yes, of course. Anything, Anaïs, I owe you.” Grinning lasciviously, he turned to Rupert. “She gave me everything she had, doncha know? Everything.” He hummed to himself and added, “Even her typewriter.” He tried to raise himself from the chair. “Do you need money?” His hands went to his pockets as if looking for his wallet, a clown doing mime. His round face looked eager as a child’s. “Give me the chance to repay you.” “Thank you. You are a good friend, Henry.” Anaïs smiled. “What I need from you is your help in getting my diary published.” “Anything I can do! I’ll call Barney Rosset at Grove. I always said that diary was your ticket to fame.” His sentences trailed off into the introspective hum that Anaïs had described in the diary pages she’d let me read about her affair with Henry. “But you’ll make peanuts from royalties, Anaïs, doncha know, hmm, hmm. Pea-nuts!” “They must be paying you something, Henry; this is an expensive house.” Anaïs looked around. I could tell she was not impressed with its bourgeois conventionality. “Yeah, running it is expensive, too. And so are my children, and my ex-wives, and Hoki’s new Jag, and all the hangers-on who come here needing to be fed. Sell your papers to a university, Anaïs, that’s where you get the dough.” “I tried that.” “No luck? Those white-gloved special collectors at UCLA bought everything from me. They should pay for your diaries ’cause I’m in ’em.”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Governor Abbott was there and said a few kind words of the sort that might be said of anyone not convicted of a felony. The deceased and the governor represented different parties, but L.D. thought it a smart move on Abbott’s part to plant a flag in the district, which had been solidly Democratic since the Civil War, but after Trump the chickens were out of the coop. At least, L.D. hoped so. The governor slyly called Walter a “friend and occasional ally,” overlooking votes that might be inconvenient to recall in the face of the fierce widow in the front row with the folded flag of Texas in her lap. Walter might be dead, but his influence lingered. After the eulogies—there must have been seven or eight of them, all on the same themes, good family man, selfless public servant, little truth in any of it—L.D. got in line to toss a few desiccated clods into Walter’s grave. He noticed old Ben Fortson hobbling in his direction so he moved off a bit to avoid him, but Ben would not be dodged. “My oh my oh my, looky who’s here,” Ben said, his eyes alight with deviltry. “Good day to you, Judge.” “You come all this way for Walter Dunne?” “He was a good man.” “True or not, he’s no use to you now,” Ben observed. “You’re a harsh old bastard, Ben.” Ben’s laugh detoured into a dry cough. “I seen you casting your eyes over this lot,” he said when he recovered. “I mighta been,” L.D. allowed. “What’s it to you?” “Walter’s not even in the ground and you’re shopping for his replacement.” “Not shopping. Poking around, like.” “Waste of your time.” Ben spat into the dust, the only moisture the soil had experienced in months. “You oughter run over to Alpine, talk to the mayor, he’s got an appetite for higher office, they tell me. Sees hisself as governor one day.” “He’s about as likely to get a blow job from the Queen of England.” L.D. indicated a portly man with slicked-back hair, dyed black, and jowls like a Great Dane. “What about Morales? Big family, Chamber of Commerce…” “Cartel money,” Ben said under his breath. A prosperous-looking figure was shaking hands with everybody in reach. “That would be who?” L.D. asked. “Charlie Ford. Owns the bank in Marfa. Beats his wife.” L.D. sighed. He had never expected this to be easy, especially out here in ground zero of nowhere. These people didn’t seem entirely real to him, more like actors with strong features, rounded up and dressed appropriately for a scene in which L.D. discovers the next Ronald Reagan. How likely was that? And they certainly felt the same about him, a stock character from the Big City in a gray Italian suit who happens to drop in, a visit to the zoo. He even had the pocket square, a true dude. “A female would be nice,” he said. “Keep up with the times.”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The auctioneer stood on a podium over the sawdust arena, spitting out numbers in a cascade of sixteenth notes as the ring manager paraded an emaciated steer in front of a couple dozen ranchers, who were more likely to be sellers than buyers. The animal and the audience shared a sleepy acceptance regarding their destiny, accounting for the submerged quality of the proceedings. Too many folks like Sonny had made the mistake of waiting for rain that never came. Now they were unloading their herds in a hurry, capsizing the market. The land wasn’t the only thing that had dried up; money had moved on, followed by hope. West Texas waged eternal war on optimists. Powdery motes swam in the air. Sonny spotted Doris at the top of the bleachers, so he hiked himself up the stairs. She had lines in her face that would do the Marlboro Man proud. Used to being the object of gossip just short of scandal, Doris surrounded herself with a harsh sense of humor like an electric fence, which kept the critics at a respectful distance. She ran the café in Alpine. She was a character. She was also Sonny’s mother. “What are you doing here?” Doris asked as Sonny sat down. “I might ask the same of you.” “I just came to ogle the boys,” Doris said, flicking the ash off her cigarette. “Look at the ass on that one.” Sonny didn’t respond to that. It could be a joke or she could be dead serious. “You got any stock left?” Doris asked. “We’re hanging on to the calves. Hope for better next year.” “Ed put down three heifers,” Doris said. “Right out in the field. Too weak to get in the trailer.” “Really, Mom, why are you here?” “I’m seeing Bud Schotz,” she said, indicating the auctioneer, Joe Frank’s dad. Buddy Holly glasses and a jaw like a doorknob. “Is that really true?” “We’re an item,” she declared. “We’ve been seen together.” “Well, I guess that’s good news.” “You guess right. He’s a man of means, and, you know, still functioning below the belt buckle.” “Mom, stop.” “Tender little ears you got.” Sonny had a kid sister, Marlene, who had long since packed up and moved off to Bangor, Maine, which if you look at the map is about the farthest point in the continental United States from Presidio County. So the parenting duties, in the sense of taking care of Doris, not the other way around, rested entirely on Sonny. “Any buyers here?” “Mostly the slaughterhouse. Fatso in the flat-brim buckaroo.” Doris indicated a corpulent individual down front. “Keep your voice down, Mom. He’s looking at you.” “Horrors.”

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  There is a road that seems much less thorny for the woman, that of masochism. When one works, struggles, and takes responsibilities and risks during the day, it is relaxing to abandon oneself at night to vigorous caprices. In love or naive, the woman in fact is often happy to annihilate herself for the benefit of a tyrannical will. But she still has to feel truly dominated. It is not easy for a woman who lives daily among men to believe in the unconditional supremacy of males. I have been told about the case of a not really masochistic but very “feminine” woman, that is, one who deeply appreciated the pleasure of abdication in masculine arms; from the age of seventeen, she had had several husbands and numerous lovers, all of whom gave her great satisfaction; having successfully carried out a difficult project where she managed men, she complained of having become frigid: her once-blissful submission became impossible for her because she had become used to dominating males and because their prestige had vanished. When the woman begins to doubt men’s superiority, their claims can only diminish her esteem for them. In bed, at moments where the man feels he is most fiercely male, the very fact of his miming virility makes him look infantile to knowing eyes: he is merely warding off the old castration complex, the shadow of his father, or some other fantasy. It is not always out of pride that the mistress refuses to give in to her lover’s caprices: she wants to interact with an adult who is living a real moment of his life, not a little boy fooling himself. The masochistic woman is particularly disappointed: a maternal, exasperated, or indulgent complaisance is not the abdication she dreams of. Either she herself will also have to make do with meaningless games, pretending to be dominated and subjugated, or she will run after men considered “superior” in the hope of coming across a master, or else she will become frigid.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  One might say that in general women do not make such a fuss; they seize the occasion without much questioning, and then they make do with their pride and sensuality. That is true. But it is also true that they bury in the secret of their hearts many disappointments, humiliations, regrets, and grievances whose equivalents are unknown—on the whole—to men. The man will almost surely get the benefit of pleasure from a more or less unsuccessful affair; the woman might well not profit from it at all; even if indifferent, she politely lends herself to lovemaking when the decisive moment arrives. The lover might prove to be impotent, and she will suffer from having compromised herself in a ludicrous escapade; if she does not reach arousal, then she feels “had,” deceived; if she is satisfied, she will want to hold on to her lover for a longer time. She is rarely completely sincere when she claims to envisage nothing more than a short-term adventure just for pleasure, because pleasure, far from freeing her, binds her; separation, even a so-called friendly one, wounds her. It is far more rare to hear a woman talk good-naturedly about a former lover than a man about his mistresses.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  But the very circumstances that orient the woman toward creation also constitute obstacles she will often be unable to overcome. When she decides to paint or write just to fill the emptiness of her days, paintings and essays will be treated as “ladies’ work”; she will devote little time or care to them, and they will be worth about as much. To compensate for the flaws in her existence, often the woman at menopause feverishly takes up the brush or pen: it is late; without serious training, she will never be more than an amateur. But even if she begins quite young, she rarely envisages art as serious work; used to idleness, never having experienced in her life the austere necessity of a discipline, she will not be capable of a steady and persevering effort, she will not compel herself to acquire a solid technique; she balks at the thankless and solitary trials and errors of work that is never exhibited, that has to be destroyed and done over again a hundred times; and as from childhood she was taught to cheat in order to please, she hopes to get by with a few ruses. This is what Marie Bashkirtseff admits. “Yes, I don’t take the trouble to paint, I watched myself today, I cheat.” The woman easily plays at working, but she does not work; believing in the magic virtues of passivity, she confuses conjurations and acts, symbolic gestures and effective behavior; she disguises herself as a Beaux-Arts student, she arms herself with her arsenal of brushes; planted in front of her easel, she allows her gaze to wander from the blank canvas to her mirror; but the bouquet of flowers, the bowl of apples, do not appear on their own on the canvas. Seated at her desk, musing over vague stories, the woman acquires a peaceful alibi in imagining she is a writer: but she must at some point make signs on the blank page; they have to have a meaning in the eyes of others. So the trickery is exposed. To please one need only to create mirages: but a work of art is not a mirage, it is a solid object; to construct it, one must know one’s craft. It is not only thanks to her gifts or personality that Colette became a great writer; her pen was often her livelihood, and she demanded of it the careful work that a good artisan demands of his tool; from Claudine to La naissance du jour (Break of Day), the amateur became professional: the progress brilliantly shows the advantages of a strict apprenticeship. Most women, though, do not understand the problems that their desire for communication poses: and this is what largely explains their laziness.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  This reasonable modesty is what has above all defined the limits of feminine talent until now. Many women have eluded—and they increasingly elude—the traps of narcissism and faux wonderment; but no woman has ever thrown prudence to the wind to try to emerge beyond the given world. In the first place, there are, of course, many who accept society just as it is; they are par excellence the champions of the bourgeoisie since they represent the most conservative element of this threatened class; with well-chosen adjectives, they evoke the refinements of a civilization “of quality”; they extol the bourgeois ideal of happiness and disguise their class interests under the banner of poetry; they orchestrate the mystification intended to persuade women to “remain women”; old houses, parks and kitchen gardens, picturesque grandparents, mischievous children, laundry, jams and jellies, family gatherings, clothes, salons, balls, suffering but exemplary wives, the beauty of devotion and sacrifice, small disappointments and great joys of conjugal love, dreams of youth, mature resignation—women novelists from England, France, America, Canada, and Scandinavia have exploited these themes to the utmost; they have attained glory and wealth but have not enriched our vision of the world. Far more interesting are the women insurgents who have indicted this unjust society; protest literature can give rise to strong and sincere works; George Eliot drew from her revolt a detailed and dramatic vision of Victorian England; however, as Virginia Woolf shows, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and George Eliot had to spend so much negative energy freeing themselves from external constraints that they arrived out of breath at the point where the major masculine writers were starting out; they have little strength left to benefit from their victory and break all the ties that bind them: for example, they lack the irony, the nonchalance, of a Stendhal or his calm sincerity. Nor have they had the wealth of experience of a Dostoevsky, a Tolstoy: it is why the great book Middlemarch does not equal War and Peace; Wuthering Heights, in spite of its stature, does not have the scope of Brothers Karamazov. Today, women already have less trouble asserting themselves; but they have not totally overcome the age-old specification that confines them in their femininity. Lucidity, for example, is a conquest they are justly proud of but with which they are a little too quickly satisfied. The fact is that the traditional woman is a mystified consciousness and an instrument of mystification; she tries to conceal her dependence from herself, which is a way of consenting to it; to denounce this dependence is already a liberation; cynicism is a defense against humiliation and shame: it is the first stage of assuming responsibility. In trying to be lucid, women writers render the greatest service to the cause of women; but—without generally realizing it—they remain too attached to serving this cause to adopt, in front of the whole world, the disinterested attitude that opens up wider horizons. When they pull away the veils of illusion and lies, they think they have done enough: nonetheless, this negative daring still leaves us with an enigma; for truth itself is ambiguity, depth, mystery: after its presence is acknowledged, it must be thought, re-created. It is all well and good not to be duped: but this is where it all begins; the woman exhausts her courage in dissipating mirages, and she stops in fear at the threshold of reality. This is why, for example, there are sincere and endearing women’s autobiographies: but none can compare with Confessions or Memoirs of an Egotist. We women are still too preoccupied with seeing clearly to try to penetrate other shadows beyond that clarity.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I cared less about the fact that Bob was gone than about the disruption his departure would inevitably cause. He was just the latest casualty in a long line of failed paternal candidates. There was Steve, a soft-spoken man with a temperament to match. I used to pray that Mom would marry Steve because he was nice and had a good job. But they broke up, and she moved on to Chip, a local police officer. Chip was kind of a hillbilly himself: He loved cheap beer, country music, and catfish fishing, and we got along well until he, too, was gone. One of the worst parts, honestly, was that Bob’s departure would further complicate the tangled web of last names in our family. Lindsay was a Lewis (her dad’s last name), Mom took the last name of whichever husband she was married to, Mamaw and Papaw were Vances, and all of Mamaw’s brothers were Blantons. I shared a name with no one I really cared about (which bothered me already), and with Bob gone, explaining why my name was J.D. Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments. “Yeah, my legal father’s last name is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see him.” Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures. To her credit, Mom had avoided abusive or neglectful partners, and I never felt mistreated by any of the men she brought into our home. But I hated the disruption. And I hated how often these boyfriends would walk out of my life just as I’d begun to like them. Lindsay, with the benefit of age and wisdom, viewed all of the men skeptically. She knew that at some point they’d be gone. With Bob’s departure, I had learned the same lesson. Mom brought these men into our lives for the right reasons. She often wondered aloud whether Chip or Bob or Steve made good “father figures.” She would say: “He takes you fishing, which is really good” or “It’s important to learn something about masculinity from someone closer to your age.” When I heard her screaming at one of them, or weeping on the floor after an especially intense argument, or when I saw her mired in despair after a breakup, I felt guilty that she was going through this for my sake. After all, I thought, Papaw was plenty good as a father figure. I promised her after each breakup that we would be okay or that we’d get over this together or (echoing Mamaw) that we didn’t need any damned men. I know Mom’s motives were not entirely selfless: She (like all of us) was motivated by the desire for love and companionship. But she was looking out for us, too. The road to hell, however, is paved with good intentions.

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

  I felt like someone had taken a gun and shot holes in every part of me. But at the same time some part of me said, “Well, this makes sense.” Lorenzo was everything I wasn’t. He was popular. He was white. He’d upset the balance of everything by asking out the only colored girl in school. Girls loved him, and he was dumb as rocks. A nice guy, but kind of a bad boy. Girls did his homework for him; he was that guy. He was really good-looking, too. It was like when he was creating his character he traded in all his intelligence points for beauty points. I stood no chance. As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that she did. I would have picked Lorenzo over me, too. All the other kids were running up and down the corridors and out on the playground, laughing and smiling with their red and pink cards and flowers, and I went back to the classroom and sat by myself and waited for the bell to ring. [image file=image_rsrc2U6.jpg] Petrol for the car, like food, was an expense we could not avoid, but my mom could get more mileage out of a tank of petrol than any human who has ever been on a road in the history of automobiles. She knew every trick. Driving around Johannesburg in our rusty old Volkswagen, every time she stopped in traffic, she’d turn off the car. Then the traffic would start and she’d turn the car on again. That stop-start technology that they use in hybrid cars now? That was my mom. She was a hybrid car before hybrid cars came out. She was the master of coasting. She knew every downhill between work and school, between school and home. She knew exactly where the gradient shifted to put it into neutral. She could time the traffic lights so we could coast through intersections without using the brakes or losing momentum. There were times when we would be in traffic and we had so little money for petrol that I would have to push the car. If we were stuck in gridlock, my mom would turn the car off and it was my job to get out and push it forward six inches at a time. People would pitch up and offer to help. “Are you stuck?” “Nope. We’re fine.” “You sure?” “Yep.” “Can we help you?” “Nope.” “Do you need a tow?” And what do you say? The truth? “Thanks, but we’re just so poor my mom makes her kid push the car”?

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  When we didn’t live together, sex was often and fantastic. But now that we’re married, once or twice a month is the norm. Unfortunately, this is mainly my issue. My partner is always ready and willing—me, I’m too tired, or stressed about work, or just not interested. I think she’s incredibly sexy, and she turns me on, but actually getting to the action is hard work sometimes! We sometimes schedule a “date.” It seems terribly unromantic, but it works. Actually, knowing for a day or two in advance that I’m gonna get laid, I get pumped up, and it turns out great. Invite your partner to masturbate in your loving presence. With your arms around her, self-pleasuring may seem less like a compromise. You can read her an erotic story or retell her favorite fantasy. Your participation will assure her of your commitment to her sexual pleasure. Plus you might end up getting aroused yourself. I have been blessed or cursed with a very healthy sex drive, while my partner tends to roller-coaster with hers. When she’s up, we’re pretty much on the same wavelength and it’s great. But when she is not interested, I will sometimes masturbate with her arms around me…. On occasion, this will turn her on and she will join in and we’ll have a nice sweet time. Masturbating with her there is far more satisfying than doing it alone. Use lube. Lots of lube. When you were dating, you probably left wet spots on restaurant seats. In that state of limerance, your sexual response seemed always at the ready. Now your physiological response has changed and you may need to build arousal to get your juices flowing. Put some lube on your fingers before you touch yourself. The increased wetness will lead to increased sensitivity and increased turn-on. Facing and Healing Triggers of Sexual Trauma Intimate relationships stir things up—for all of us. Whatever your history, being in an intimate relationship will call on you to look at yourself in new ways. For survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sex in the context of intimacy can be an opportunity to attend to the issues of the past and to deepen your own capacity for intimacy and sexual pleasure. It can also be scary. You get into a relationship, everything’s great…at first. But then all those old triggers, memories, and fears come bubbling up. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the relationship (though you might jump to that conclusion).Your history is offering itself up for healing.Your job is to pay attention.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  With another therapist, I only went to one session because she was the opposite: too quiet. She barely responded to anything I said in our sessions, just kept asking, “So how does that make you feel?” Ugh. How boring. I could do that myself, at home, for free. Another woman seemed competent during a consultation, but she butt-dialed me later that afternoon and left me a long voicemail. It was a drawn-out negotiation between her and her child: “No, Mommy won’t give you anything unless you clean your room. No, you need to go poop without Mommy.” The child was winning. I never called her back, which admittedly was unfair, but I didn’t think I could walk into her office and pretend I hadn’t listened to her laboriously debating her child’s poop. At the same time, in my reading, I discovered some evidence that traditional talk therapy might not actually be particularly effective for C-PTSD. In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes about how talk therapy can be useless for those for whom “traumatic events are almost impossible to put into words.” Some people are too dissociated and distanced from these traumatic experiences for talk therapy to work well. They might not be able to access their feelings, let alone convey them. For others, they’re in such an activated state that they have a hard time reaching into difficult memories, and the very act of recalling them could be retraumatizing. One study showed that about 10 percent of people might experience worsening symptoms after being forced to talk about their trauma. Between 40 percent and 60 percent of people drop out of therapy at some point. Most drop out within the first two sessions. And plenty of statistics show that even pointed, skills-based talk therapy is ineffective for PTSD. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of talk therapy where patients unlearn negative patterns of behavior and try to practice strategically positive patterns, is widely accepted as a treatment for PTSD. But it has abysmal statistics. In one study of seventy-four patients, eight got better with CBT, compared with four who received no therapy at all.[6] Still, my friend with C-PTSD, Lacey, mentioned that her therapist had helped her significantly. She said her therapist helped her restructure her life, creating boundaries and allowing her to take good care of herself. Which again reminded me of dating. It seems like the worst thing in the world, an absolute waste of time, until you find your person. And then all that effort, all that complaining and crying—it all becomes worth it, right? I really hoped it would all be worth it.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  In all these years, there had been just two serious boyfriends. One of them had been married. She certainly wasn’t going to introduce him to her family. She knew from the start he would never leave his wife and children. She knew she wasn’t his first affair. Yet she kept seeing him. For five years she saw him every week. If you asked her about him today she wouldn’t be able to explain it. Just that she’d been young and she’d enjoyed the attention, the thrill, the sex. The second man was decent and available. He’d proposed after a few months, with a diamond as big as her thumbnail. For a minute she thought she could learn to love him, could be happy with his promise of a big house in the suburbs, a maid to clean and cook, summer camp for Miri. But when it came time to introduce him to the family she couldn’t do it. They would see right through her. They would see the truth—she didn’t love him, wasn’t the least attracted to him and didn’t want to marry him, not even for an easier life. Sometimes she wondered about her first love, but not often. A girl gets in trouble, she marries the boy. They wind up hating each other, resenting each other and finally they get a divorce. By then it’s taken its toll on both of them and their children. No, she never wanted that, which is why she’d refused to allow her mother to call the Monskys and force Mike to marry her. Maybe she would fall in love again. If and when that happened she would introduce him to Miri. But until then, what was the point? MiriThe Osners’ living room glowed. The Hanukkah bush was gone, replaced by a fire in the fireplace, and, at the baby grand from Altenburgs on East Jersey Street, Dr. O sat on the upholstered bench, covered by a needlepoint canvas hand-stitched by Corinne. His fingers danced over the keys, never hesitating, the same fingers that worked magic in his patients’ mouths. The guests were singing around the piano, glasses of Scotch and rye and bourbon resting on coasters to avoid getting water marks on the polished ebony. If anyone was careless, Mrs. Barnes was there in a flash, slipping a coaster under a glass here, scooping a crumpled cocktail napkin into her pocket to be deposited in the trash in the kitchen, where Mrs. Jones and her daughters, Rhonda and Jamison, were stacking up Sloppy Joe sandwiches on silver platters. Mrs. Jones was also the Osners’ laundress, spending every Thursday at their house, washing and ironing the Osners’ clothes, their bed linens. At the end of the day Natalie’s blouses, every one perfect, would be lined up on hangers in her closet. Never any last-minute ironing with the ironing board set up in the Osners’ kitchen, the way it was at Miri’s, so that when you put on your blouse it was still warm.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Unfortunately, some people aren’t that lucky. You’ve probably known people who seem to repeat the same mistakes, whether in sex or love, consistently selecting partners who aren’t good for them or gravitating toward situations that turn out to be hurtful or frustrating. At first, you might think they’re just having a streak of bad luck. But as similar scenarios are repeated, you naturally begin to wonder whether an unseen script directs the participants toward a predetermined conclusion. And if you are the person experiencing such unsatisfying repetitions, you’re undoubtedly pretty discouraged. In this section our focus is on those consistently troublesome attractions that cannot be explained by bad luck alone. Your knowledge of the erotic mind can help bring to light hidden erotic motivations with the power to excite you even as they are pulling you in directions incompatible with fulfillment. Virtually any CET contains the potential for a wonderfully gratifying involvement or for a painful replay of an old story—or a head-spinning combination of the two. LONGING, LONG SHOTS, AND LOST CAUSESMen and women who are sexually drawn exclusively to available partners, it they exist at all, are in a distinct minority. Who hasn’t felt attracted to someone hopelessly out of reach? Some objects of longing, such as celebrities, nameless faces in magazines, or fascinating strangers admired from a distance, don’t even know you exist. Others are fantasy figures borne of pure imagination. Like most people, you may have yearned for someone who was already in a relationship, too young, or uninterested in you regardless of how strongly you felt. In the course of your lifetime you will almost certainly know the bittersweet excitement of desiring a partly available partner, happy to date or have sex with you but unwilling to get emotionally involved. If you’ve ever fallen under the spell of someone who vacillates between enthusiastic responsiveness and aloof detachment, you know firsthand how the intermittent reinforcement provided by an ambivalent lover makes you feel like a rat in a laboratory experiment. You press the button for a crumb of food even more frantically when the crumb is delivered occasionally and unpredictably. Some people protect themselves from the pain of unfulfilled yearning by blunting their desire or by acting as if they’re without emotional need. Others try to circumvent longing by responding only to people who pursue them, while steering clear of those they most desire. Although these strategies shield them from the pain of unrequited desire, the cost is reduced vitality and spontaneity. Luckily, most of us forge a workable, if imperfect, balance between the lure of yearning and the annoying reality that most attractions are destined not to be mutual.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  1 (September 1975): 6.“Until the Supreme Court decision of July” : Edwin McDowell, “Picture Book on Sex Is Withdrawn,” New York Times , September 19, 1982, Sec. 1 p. 61.“I distinguish pornography in terms of intent” : CS to RB, October 26, 2022.As part of their decision, the judges created the “Miller Test” : Miller v. California , 413 U.S. 15 (1973). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/ .In the draft, Davey wakes up and starts touching herself : Box 115 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed April 28, 2022.“I get Jane undressed down to her shirt and her underpants” : Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes (New York: Bradbury Press, 1981), p. 134.“We want this book to reach as many readers as possible, don’t we?” : Judy Blume, “Places I Never Meant to Be: A Personal View,” American Libraries , June/July 1999, pp. 62–67.“Why deprive kids in some parts of the country of what is, essentially” : Pat Scales, “Natural Born Editor,” School Library Journal , May 2001, pp. 50–53.“Without a doubt, the upheavals of the 1960s” : Marie Winn, “What Became of Childhood Innocence,” New York Times , January 25, 1981, sec. 6, p. 15.“Ultimately, I was not strong enough or brave enough” : Judy Blume, “Places I Never Meant to Be: A Personal View,” American Libraries , June/July 1999, pp. 62–67.Chapter Twenty-One Morals“They call her a Pied Piper leading kids down the wrong path” : Gay Andrews Dillin, “Judy Blume: Children’s Author in a Grown-Up Controversy,” Christian Science Monitor , December 10, 1981, p. B4.“How to Rid Your Schools and Libraries of Judy Blume Books” : Judy Blume, “Places I Never Meant to Be: A Personal View,” American Libraries , June/July 1999, pp. 62–67.created a flyer with the frightening title “X-Rated Children’s Books” : Found in Box 32 of the Judy Blume Papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Accessed May 11, 2022.“Blubber is a good name for her” : Judy Blume, Blubber (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 5.“If we’re going to do this we’re going to do it right” : Ibid., p. 130.As Fogel told the Washington Post : Lawrence Feinberg, “School’s Use of Candid Novels Draws Parents’ Fire,” Washington Post , February 25, 1980, p. A1.“It’s not a great piece of literature” : Ibid.“The fact that it is not resolved is the most important part of the book” : Ibid.“Blubber, she told her mother, is ‘the best book I ever read’ ” : Ibid.“Blume’s books are sympathetic stories of ordinary children” : Kathleen Hinton-Braaten, “Writing for Kids Without Kidding Around,” Christian Science Monitor , May 14, 1979, p. B10.“A growing number of iconoclasts are out to take the bloom” : Gay Andrews Dillin, “Judy Blume: Children’s Author in a Grown-Up Controversy,” Christian Science Monitor , December 10, 1981, p.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  are often referred to as anointed ones, and specifically “anointed of the Spirit” in reference to Isaiah 61. The mission of the prophet here is closely related to that of the servant in Second Isaiah—to bring good news to the oppressed and liberty to captives (cf. 42:7; 49:9). The “year of the L ORD ’s favor” is an allusion to the Jubilee Year of Leviticus 25, but here it seems to have the character of a final, definitive jubilee. It is also the day of God’s vengeance. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, this motif has a central place in the Melchizedek Scroll (11QMelchizedek), where it refers to a final, eschatological day of judgment. Isaiah 61:1-2 figures prominently in the New Testament as the text for Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19). The remainder of Isaiah 61 provides comfort for “the mourners of Zion” by promising them a glorious future, gilded by the wealth of the nations. In chapter 62, however, we get a sense that the promised glory did not materialize as fast as expected. The prophet urges those “who remind the L ORD . . . to give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem” (62:6-7). The tone of this chapter is still confident: the Lord has sworn, and so the restoration is assured. Nonetheless, the very need for insistent assurance hints at the problems that would be encountered by the people who returned to Jerusalem and the gap that would be apparent between the glorious promises and the modest fulfillment. A Divided Community Many of the other oracles in this section of the book of Isaiah have a very different tone, one of bitter recrimination that reflects disputes within the community. These oracles also presuppose a situation after the return to Judah, and are thereby distinguished from Second Isaiah. Chapter 57 complains that “the righteous perish and no one takes it to heart.” The reasons for this situation are not as clear as we might wish. The prophet accuses some unidentified people of fornicating “under every green tree,” practicing human sacrifice, and making illicit offerings to Molech (57:5-10). All of this sounds like the traditional polemic of the prophets against syncretistic cultic practices before the exile. It is