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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  By the way, you haven’t got a fountain pen you’d like to sell me, have you?” “Just sign right here,” he said, pretending to ignore my remarks. “And here, that’s it. Now then, Mr. Miller, I think I’ll say good day—and you’ll be hearing from the company in a few days.” “Better make it sooner,” I remarked, leading him to the door, “because I might change my mind and commit suicide.” “Why, of course, why yes, Mr. Miller, certainly we will. Good day now, good day!” Of course the installment plan breaks down eventually, even if you’re an assiduous buyer such as I was. I certainly did my best to keep the manufacturers and the advertising men of America busy, but they were disappointed in me it seems. Everybody was disappointed in me. But there was one man in particular who was more disappointed in me than anyone and that was a man who had really made an effort to befriend me and whom I had let down. I think of him and the way he took me on as his assistant—so readily and graciously—because later, when I was hiring and firing like a forty-two horse caliber revolver, I was betrayed right and left myself, but by that time I had become so inoculated that it didn’t matter a damn. But this man had gone out of his way to show me that he believed in me. He was the editor of a catalogue for a great mail order house. It was an enormous compendium of horseshit which was put out once a year and which took the whole year to make ready. I hadn’t the slightest idea what it was all about and why I dropped into his office that day I don’t know, unless it was because I wanted to get warm, as I had been knocking about the docks all day trying to get a job as a checker or some damned thing. It was cosy in his office and I made him a long speech so as to get thawed out. I didn’t know what job to ask for—just a job, I said. He was a sensitive man and very kindhearted. He seemed to guess that I was a writer, or wanted to be a writer, because soon he was asking me what I liked to read and what was my opinion of this writer and that writer. It just happened that I had a list of books in my pocket—books I was searching for at the public library—and so I brought it out and showed it to him. “Great Scott!” he exclaimed, “do you really read these books?” I modestly shook my head in the affirmative, and then as often happened to me when I was touched off by some silly remark like that, I began to talk about Hamsun’s Mysteries which I had just been reading. From then on the man was like putty in my hands.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Rule 32 petitions are required to include claims that were not raised at trial or on appeal and that could not have been raised at trial or on appeal. They are the vehicle to challenge a conviction based on ineffective counsel, the State’s failure to disclose evidence, and most important, new evidence of innocence. Michael and I put a petition together that asserted all of these claims, including police and prosecutorial misconduct, and filed it in the Monroe County Circuit Court. The document, which alleged that Walter McMillian was unfairly tried, wrongly convicted, and illegally sentenced, drew a lot of attention in Monroeville. Three years had passed since the trial. The initial confirmation of Walter’s conviction on appeal had generated significant press in the community, and most people now felt that Walter’s guilt was a settled matter. All there was left to do was wait for an execution date. Judge Key had retired, and none of the new Monroe County judges seemed to want to touch our petition, so it was transferred back to Baldwin County under the theory that the postconviction appeal should be handled in the same county as the initial trial. This made little sense to us, because a Monroe County judge had presided over the trial, but there was nothing we could do. Surprisingly, the Alabama Supreme Court agreed to stay our direct appeal process so that the Rule 32 petition could proceed. The general rule was that the direct appeal had to be completed before a postconviction collateral appeal under Rule 32 could be initiated. By staying the case, the Alabama Supreme Court had signaled there was something unusual about Walter’s case that warranted further review in the lower courts. The Baldwin County Circuit Court judge was now obligated to review our case and could be forced to grant our discovery motions, which would require disclosure of all police and prosecutorial files. This was a very positive development. We needed to have another meeting with the district attorney, Tommy Chapman, but this time we’d be going in armed with a court order to turn over police and prosecutorial files. We would also finally meet, in the flesh, the law enforcement officers involved in Walter’s prosecution: the D.A.’s investigator, Larry Ikner; ABI agent Simon Benson; and Sheriff Tom Tate.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “I can’t say that suddenly we didn’t know each other, or anything like that, because I actually know John very well. It isn’t even that we don’t love each other anymore, because I do love John, even if it’s more of a sisterly love at this point. People say that it gets that way after you’ve been married awhile.” She cut her salmon steak into pieces with polite, relaxed moves, as though pausing in a discussion of art or film. “Well, what is it, do you think?” asked Susan. Barbara sat back. “I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me—rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us. Do you know what I mean? I sound like a hippie, I know.” “No, I know what you mean.” “I don’t know. I didn’t see it that way at the time. He was just driving me crazy and I guess I was driving him crazy too.” “I don’t know anymore how much a relationship can be based on what comes from the inside,” said Susan. “With Steve and me, it’s all based on us, and it’s very genuine and very sweet but sometimes it seems as if we’re involved in a fantasy that has nothing to do with the real world. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t know, but it can begin to feel solipsistic.” She remembered what her father had said to her during an argument when she was fifteen years old: “You want to suck people dry, you expect them to pour out their guts to you and you to them over and over and over until you know everything, and it just doesn’t work that way. Relationships are built from ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ and ‘I’m fine.’ ” He had said this last word like a stake was being driven through his heart. “Do you remember Leisha?” “I sure do. The nutty one with the musician boyfriend. Why?” “I thought I saw her on the street today. There was this bag lady who looked just like her.” “Oh, my God.” “I didn’t realize that it wasn’t her until I was an inch from her face.” “What did you do?” “Gave her five dollars.” —

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  193 LECTURE 20 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND MORAL REFORM C hristianity has been a missionary faith from the moment that Jesus sent his apostles out to find converts. But the apostles argued passionately about what it really means to convert people to Christ: What parts of belief and practice are core to Christ’s message, and what is just cultural stuff that should be optional? Christ was a Jew, and his first followers were Jews, so should new Gentile converts have to follow the Jewish dietary code and get themselves circumcised? The apostles managed to settle that particular debate. But the underlying question is a profound one: How exactly do you make people and a society Christian? This lecture focuses on much later generations of missionaries and social reformers. They struggled with the same questions that dogged the earliest Christians. EARLY CATHOLIC MISSIONS õChristianity began in the Middle East and northern Africa. But after the Muslim invasions of the 7 th century, Christianity withered in most of Africa (with some exceptions, like the Coptic Church in Egypt). By the 1400s, with Christianity at least the nominal faith of all of Europe, European missionaries turned to Africa as a virtually untouched mission field. õPortuguese missionaries made inroads in West Africa in the late 1400s. They baptized a leader named Afonso, who then gained the throne of the Congo around 1506 and ruled as a Christian king for almost four 194The History of Christianity II decades. He learned Portuguese, built churches, encouraged missions, tried to stamp out pre-Christian religion, and even sent his son Henry to Portugal to be trained as a missionary. õBut when the Portuguese church responded to Afonso’s calls and sent priests to the Congo, they did not represent the new Christian religion well. Many abandoned their vows and took African slave girls as concubines. King Afonso was crushed. õThe Congolese experience sums up the paradox of Christian missions from its early centuries down to our own time: a divine message spread by quite fallible human beings who left a legacy of both sincere good works and savage exploitation.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He looked away. He squeezed the laminated menu between his fingers. He read the description of cold pasta three times. He turned his head and stared at her. She’d grown her hair out and was wearing it up in a ponytail that looked like a ball of brown wool. Even with her hand blocking her face, he could see that she wore almost no makeup, that her skin looked fresh and rosy in daylight. She was wearing an old cream-colored sweater with pink and blue tulips woven into it. He stared at the boy who sat across the table from her. He was a homely kid in his early twenties with a thick thatch of badly cut sandy hair that roared up over his forehead in a hideous bush. His crooked tortoiseshell glasses had one arm held on by a piece of grayish masking tape, and he wore a brown sweater thick enough to be a coat. His complexion was ruddy and coarse, his expression horribly cheerful. On a cruel impulse, he leaned forward and leered at the kid. The boy glanced at him affably and buried his spoon in the bowl of stew he had before him. “Yeah,” he said. “Simone’s been experiencing a lot of rejection from her old friends.” “I’m not really rejecting her,” said Jane. “I just want to put some distance between us emotionally. Enough so that she doesn’t feel compelled to call me every time her psychotic girlfriend starts slapping her around.” She was going to sit there and continue her conversation. “How many times has it been now?” asked the ugly kid through a mouthful of stew. “Five, counting the last girlfriend, three times at six in the morning. I mean, my God, where does she find these women? I didn’t think lesbians were into beating each other up.” A waitress in a short black leather skirt and leopard-skin tights charged his table. “Are you ready to order?” “No, no, not yet.” She smiled and roared off. He lowered his head to the plastic menu. He was not sure why this experience was such an unpleasant one. “I mean, her life is her life,” said Jane. “But the last time she called she actually got me over there to mediate between her and this crazed, muscle-bound black belt in God knows what, and they’re screaming at each other and Simone is threatening to cut her wrist, and oh, it was a mess.” “It sounds very theatrical.” “It’s like not only is she going to be a masochistic asshole, she wants an audience. I know I’m being cruel.” “I don’t think you’re cruel. Most people wouldn’t have put up with it as long as you did.” “It’s so tragic, though. She’s such a great person. And I know at least two really attractive, charming girls who’re dying to get into her pants, but she’s not interested. She likes bitches.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She sat, her legs curled in a kneeling position. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m scared.” “You should be scared,” he said. “I’m going to torture you.” He brandished the stick, which actually felt as though it would break on the second or third blow. They froze in their positions, staring at each other. She was the first to drop her eyes. She regarded the torn-off blanket meditatively. “You have really disappointed me,” she said. “This whole thing has been a complete waste of time.” He sat on the bed, stick in lap. “You don’t care about my feelings.” “I think I want to sleep in the next room.” They couldn’t sleep separately any better than they could sleep together. She lay curled up on the couch pondering what seemed to be the ugly nature of her life. He lay wound in a blanket, blinking in the dark, as a dislocated, manic and unpleasing revue of his sexual experiences stumbled through his memory in a queasy scramble. — In the morning they agreed that they would return to Manhattan immediately. Despite their mutual ill humor, they fornicated again, mostly because they could more easily ignore each other while doing so. They packed quickly and silently. “It’s going to be a long drive back,” he said. “Try not to make me feel like too much of a prick, okay?” “I don’t care what you feel like.” — He would have liked to dump her at the side of the road somewhere, but he wasn’t indifferent enough to societal rules to do that. Besides, he felt vaguely sorry that he had made her cry, and while this made him view her grudgingly, he felt obliged not to worsen the situation. Ideally she would disappear, taking her stupid canvas bag with her. In reality, she sat beside him in the car with more solidity and presence than she had displayed since they met on the corner in Manhattan. She seemed fully prepared to sit in silence for the entire six-hour drive. He turned on the radio. “Would you mind turning that down a little?” “Anything for you.” She rolled her eyes. Without much hope, he employed a tactic he used to pacify his wife when they argued. He would give her a choice and let her make it. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked. “You must be starving.” She was. They spent almost an hour driving up and down the available streets trying to find a restaurant she wanted to be in. She finally chose a small, clean egg-and-toast place. Her humor visibly improved as they sat before their breakfast. “I like eggs,” she said. “They are so comforting.” He began to talk to her out of sheer curiosity.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  JEROME. We ask where it is written that the Lord did wonders in Corozaim and Bethsaida? We read above, And he went about the towns and villages, healing all sicknesses, &c. (ch., 9:35.) among the rest, therefore, we may suppose that He wrought signs in Corozaim and Bethsaida. AUGUSTINE. (De Don. Pers. 9.) It is not then true that His Gospel was not preached in those times and places, in which He foreknew that all would be such, as were many in His actual presence, who would not even believe on Him when He raised men from the dead. For the Lord Himself bears witness that they of Tyre and Sidon would have done penitence in great humility, had the wonders of the Divine power been done in them. Moreover, if the dead are judged according to those deeds which they would have done had they lived, then because these would have believed had the Gospel been preached to them with so great miracles, surely they should not be punished at all, and yet in the day of judgment they shall be punished; for it follows, But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you. Those then shall be punished with more, these with less severity. JEROME. This is because Tyre and Sidon had trodden under foot the law of nature only, but these towns after they had transgressed the natural and the written Law, also made light of those wonders which had been wrought among them. RABANUS. We at this day see the words of the Saviour fulfilled; Corozaim and Bethsaida would not believe when the Lord came to them in person; but Tyre and Sidon have afterwards believed on the preaching of the Apostles. REMIGIUS. Capharnaum was the metropolis of Galilee, and a noted town of that province, and therefore the Lord mentions it particularly, saying, And thou, Capharnaum, shalt thou indeed be exalted to heaven. Thou shalt go down even to hell. JEROME. In other copies we find, And thou, Capharnaum, that art exalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; and it may be understood in two different ways. Either, thou shalt go down to hell because thou hast proudly resisted my preaching; or, thou that hast been exalted to heaven by entertaining me, and having my mighty wonders done in thee, shalt be visited with the heavier punishment, because thou wouldest not believe even these. REMIGIUS. And they have made the sins not of Sodom only and Gomorrah, but of Tyre and Sidon light in comparison, and therefore it follows, For if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would perhaps have remained unto this day. CHRYSOSTOM. This makes the accusation heavier, for it is a proof of extreme wickedness, that they are worse, not only than any then living, but than the wickedest of all past time.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was as if he and Alice had simultaneously decided—” Deana left her carrots and, putting her fingers on Connie’s lips, pitched the two of them into the center of the mattress. “God, you must be really depressed. I haven’t heard you talk like this for ages.” She stroked Connie’s hair and smoothed her eyebrows. The mattress rasped and squeaked as they curled against each other like kittens in a shoe box. — “Franklin invited me to a party where Alice will be. I don’t know what to do.” “Are you still thinking about that?” They had just finished their take-out Chinese meal. Small white containers ranged over the table with fork handles protruding erectly from their centers; little balls of hardening rice trailed from container to plate; the cats circled beneath them with stiff, ardent steps. Deana was still lazily eating her spareribs and drinking her Vita-C. “Connie, if this woman is such a bad memory, why don’t you just forget it? Why dwell on her? She isn’t in your life anymore.” Connie looked at the bright, cold flower of broccoli splayed prettily on the edge of her plate. “The thing is, Alice and I had a good time together. We’d go out to the movies, and then go for coffee and talk about the movie for hours, analyzing every character and gesture and the use of music and so on. I can remember when she ordered an anchovy sandwich and one of those sweet almond drinks and said, ‘Whenever I’m with you I feel like eating stuff that’s really fun and really bad for me.’ ” “Hmpf,” said Deana. “And then there was the time that she and Roger paid for my airfare so I could visit them at their summer cottage in Pennsylvania.” “So why don’t you go to Weston’s party and see her?” “Because there were other times when I felt she wasn’t my friend at all. I remember her telling me about some big party she had that she didn’t invite me to. She was complaining because she had wanted to have an equal number of highly successful males and females and she couldn’t find enough successful females. It suddenly occurred to her that it was sort of rude to be talking about this in front of me when she hadn’t even asked me to come, so she said, ‘I didn’t think of you because you’re not in the field and you would’ve been bored anyway. I know you can hold your own on your own terms, but you couldn’t deal with these people on their level.’ Can you imagine?” “Connie, were you in love with this woman?” “What?” “Did you have a thing for Alice?” “No. Not at all. Why do you ask?” “Because of the way you talk about it.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And though he was still too ill to attempt a return to even a moderate way of living, nevertheless it did his soul good. And so, when Uncle Ned, who was continually going on the water wagon and continually falling off it again, came round to the house one evening the old man delivered him a little lecture on the virtue of moderation. Uncle Ned was, at that moment, on the water wagon and so, when the old man, moved by his own words, suddenly went to the sideboard to fetch a decanter of wine every one was shocked. No one had ever dared invite Uncle Ned to drink when he had sworn off; to venture such a thing constituted a serious breach of loyalty. But the old man did it with such conviction that no one could take offense, and the result was that Uncle Ned took a small glass of wine and went home that evening without stopping off at a saloon to quench his thirst. It was an extraordinary happening and there was much talk about it for days after. In fact, Uncle Ned began to act a bit queer from that day on. It seems that he went the next day to the wine store and bought a bottle of sherry which he emptied into the decanter. He placed the decanter on the sideboard, just as he had seen the old man do, and, instead of polishing it off in one swoop, he contented himself with a glassful at a time—“just a thimbleful,” as he put it. His behavior was so remarkable that my aunt, who was unable to quite believe her eyes, came one day to the house and held a long conversation with the old man. She asked him, among other things, to invite the minister to the house some evening so that Uncle Ned might have the opportunity of falling under his beneficent influence. The long and short of it was that Ned was soon taken into the fold and, like the old man, seemed to be thriving under the experience. Things went fine until the day of the picnic. That day, unfortunately, was an unusually warm day and, what with the games, the excitement, the hilarity, Uncle Ned developed an extraordinary thirst. It was not until he was three sheets to the wind that some one observed the regularity and the frequency with which he was running to the beer keg. It was then too late. Once in that condition he was unmanageable. Even the minister could do nothing with him. Ned broke away from the picnic quietly and went on a little rampage which lasted for three days and nights. Perhaps it would have lasted longer had he not gotten into a fist fight down at the waterfront where he was found lying unconscious by the night watchman.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  308The History of Christianity II õFor a long time, many white, native-born American Protestants more or less took all of this for granted. They cared about politics, but weren’t very organized because they didn’t see a pressing need. Then the 1960s happened, with occurrences like the civil rights movement, the growth of the welfare state in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, and women’s and gay liberation. These trends seemed to signal the crumbling of traditional Christian culture as they knew it. õThe new activists and organizations that arose in the 1970s, groups like Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, did not invent organized conservative Christian activism. In many ways, the roots of this movement go back to the early days of the anti-communist movement. But these new groups displayed a new level of political savvy, national organization, and institution building. 309Lecture 31—Culture Wars and the Christian Right õFalwell was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher in Virginia with his own radio and TV programs, and he used his huge mailing list to organize his supporters. Falwell deserves a lot of credit for turning conservative white Protestants into a powerful voting bloc. õBut he also deserves much of the blame for the way that journalists in the mainstream media increasingly came to ignore the diversity of conservative Protestantism, equate all evangelicals with the Christian right, and assume Falwell was their anointed spokesman. õOther activists focused more closely on gender politics. Beverly LaHaye and her husband Tim published bestselling books telling women that what they called the radical feminist movement destroyed families. õIn the late 1970s, the campaign to end legal abortion started to become a signature cause for the Christian right. A few activists began making the case that abortion is murder, as well as a symbol for all that was wrong with the modern world. ACTIVISM ABROAD õEven though conservative American evangelicals and their main allies—Catholics and Mormons—were very focused on what was going on in their own country, all these groups were also missionary cultures tuned in to the spread of Christianity abroad. õBy the end of the 20 th century, conservative Christians were feeling pretty embattled in the U.S., but elsewhere in the world, especially the Global South, conservative churches were thriving. ACTIVISM AT BEIJING õThis lecture now moves to the late 1990s to discuss the United Nations. Many conservative Americans resented the United Nations because they viewed it as a meddling bunch of bureaucrats who thought they had the right to boss Americans around.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  7. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. 8. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. GLOSS. (ord.) Having related the preaching together with the miracles of one year before John’s enquiry, He passes to those of another year, namely after the death of John, when Jesus is already in all things spoken against, and hence it is said, At that time Jesus passed through the corn fields on the sabbath day. AUGUSTINE. (De Cons. Ev. ii. 34.) This which here follows is related both by Mark and Luke, without any question of discrepancy; indeed they do not say, At that time, so that Matthew has here perhaps preserved the order of time, they that of their recollection; unless we take the words in a wider sense, At that time, that is, the time in which these many and divers things were done, whence we may conceive that all these things happened after the death of John. For he is believed to have been beheaded a little after he sent his disciples to Christ. So that when he says at that time, he may mean only an indefinite time. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hon. xxxix.) Why then did He lead them through the corn fields on the sabbath, seeing He knew all things, unless He desired to break the sabbath? This he desired indeed, but not absolutely, therefore He broke it not without cause, but furnished a sufficient reason; so that He both caused the Law to cease, and yet offended not against it. Thus in order to soften the Jews, He here introduces a natural necessity; this is what is said, And his disciples being an hungred, began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. Although in things which are manifestly sinful, there can be no excuse, he who kills another cannot plead rage, nor he who commits adultery, lust, or any other cause; yet here saying that the disciples were hungry, He delivers them from all accusation. JEROME. As we read in another Evangelist, they had no opportunity of taking food because of the thronging of the multitude, and therefore they hungred as men. That they rub the ears of corn in their hands, and with them satisfy themselves, is a proof of an austere life, and of men who needed not prepared meats, but sought only simple food. CHRYSOSTOM. Here admire the disciples, who are so limited in their desires, that they have no care of the things of the body, but despise the support of the flesh; they are assailed by hunger, and yet they go not away from Christ; for had not they been hard pressed by hunger, they would not have done thus. What the Pharisees said to this is added, The Pharisees seeing it said unto Him, Behold, thy disciples do what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I am so thoroughly alive and healthy that I am like the luscious deceptive fruit which hangs on the Californian trees. One more ray of sun and I will be rotten. “Pourri avant d’être mûri!” Is it really me that is rotting in this bright California sunshine? Is there nothing left of me, of all that I was up to this moment? Let me think a bit. . . . There was Arizona. I remember now that it was already night when I first set foot on Arizona soil. Just light enough to catch the last glimpse of a fading mesa. I am walking through the main street of a little town whose name is lost. What am I doing here on this street, in this town? Why, I am in love with Arizona, an Arizona of the mind which I search for in vain with my two good eyes. In the train there was still with me the Arizona which I had brought from New York— even after we had crossed the state line. Was there not a bridge over a canyon which had startled me out of my reverie? A bridge such as I had never seen before, a natural bridge created by a cataclysmic eruption thousands of years ago? And over this bridge I had seen a man crossing, a man who looked like an Indian, and he was riding a horse and there was a long saddlebag hanging beside the stirrup. A natural millenary bridge which in the dying sun with air so clear looked like the youngest, newest bridge imaginable. And over that bridge so strong, so durable, there passed, praise be to God, just a man and a horse, nothing more. This then was Arizona, and Arizona was not a figment of the imagination but the imagination itself dressed as a horse and rider. And this was even more than the imagination itself because there was no aura of ambiguity but only sharp and dead isolate the thing itself which was the dream and the dreamer himself seated on horseback. And as the train stops I put my foot down and my foot has put a deep hole in the dream; I am in the Arizona town which is listed in the timetable and it is only the geographical Arizona which anybody can visit who has the money. I am walking along the main street with a valise and I see hamburger sandwiches and real estate offices. I feel so terribly deceived that I begin to weep. It is dark now and I stand at the end of a street, where the desert begins, and I weep like a fool. Which me is this weeping?

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Letting a place alone isn’t the same thing as artificial maintenance. Anyway, this is artificially accelerated development.” She argued with him happily, pointing out that he was contradicting an earlier-expressed belief that the government should manipulate the economy to protect the poor. “Yes, I suppose you’re right about that,” he said after her short speech. His indifferent capitulation left her forceful argument charging foolishly toward a vanishing target, and she changed the subject, telling him about the previous night. He especially liked the drunken argument with the lesbian, and said “fabulous” three times. Their eggs came in oblong dishes. The piped-in woodwinds sang stirringly of decency and order. “What are you doing now that you’ve left Christine’s?” he asked. “Are you working or writing?” “Neither one, really.” She thought: I’m trying to re-form my personality. “I’m looking for a job, probably some clerical thing. Maybe something part time.” “Have you considered something in an editorial capacity?” “I tried that when I first came here and it didn’t work out.” “Why not?” She shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t really interested enough.” She thought of trying to explain herself further, but ate her eggs instead. She remembered herself newly arrived in New York, nervously planning her future. She saw the ensuing events as a series of comic-strip pictures separated by dark borders. This was especially true of her job search—there she was, the round-shouldered applicant before the monotonous, large-handed boss. She remembered her interview with the most respected editor of the most prestigious publishing house in town: “Oh, yes, I remember Georgia Helman.” The editor had rolled his eyes as he mentioned the woman who had referred Stephanie to him, a woman who had been his associate for two years. “A rather pathetic case. The only reason I hired her was as a favor to a personal friend. She was so messed up with drugs and men, you know. But about you.” He looked at her as if she’d already been in his office several times. “If you really want to be a writer, then don’t move to New York. You’ll just wind up in some dank little dump in the East Village with bars on the windows, and oh, I don’t know.” He grimaced and flapped his hand with distaste. She reminded him that she had already moved to the city and he said, “Well, in that case, maybe you should try The New Yorker. They generally hire only friends and family, but you have a certain, I don’t know, fresh, insipid look they might like. I’ve gotten quite a few people in there. Would you like to have a drink tomorrow evening?” She had to admit that a large part of the reason she was even trying to get a job was for the approval of people she’d known in Illinois, many of whom were living in New York and thought of her as a hopeless neurotic who couldn’t do much of anything.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was too bad Leisha couldn’t see her now, with her steady job, her matching housewares, her kind and gentle boyfriend. It was also annoying to know that Leisha would come to some happy conclusion about her based on the current trappings of her life (“How wonderful it is that Susan has become so stable”) and then compare her favorably with the younger Susan. Susan examined her clearly lined face as she stood before the mirror. There had been changes in her during the last six years, and she thought most of them were good. But she was still, for better or worse, the same woman who had drunkenly screwed a stranger in the reeking can of a tacky bar and then run out into a cab, smiling as she pressed her phone number into his hand. She sighed and went into the “living area,” leaning against an exposed brick wall to look out a curtainless window. It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth. Susan now identified her early fascination with Leisha as a vicarious erotic connection with the ex-lover they had both slept with. She did not fantasize about Leisha and this man together, but she had been oddly gratified to experience secondhand the dynamic between him and this throaty-voiced little bad girl, and to reflect this dynamic back to Leisha, making it more of a drama by becoming another character in the story. Leisha had done the same, clearly enjoying her two-way link with their lover and the mysterious, contrary, perverse woman he had described to her, this tackily glamorous icon of a dirty-magazine woman who was also her reliable friend Susan. During the first year of their friendship they discussed and described him, pro and con, right down to the blond pinkness, the raised, strangely exposed quality of his genitals, and they were both greatly amused to discover that the sight of them talking and giggling together unnerved him. — She had dinner that night with her old friend Barbara. They went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street that served neat little dinners to predictably soothing music. Barbara was a jeweler who had never quite been able to become a big name in the industry, but whose work was a persistent presence in fashion magazines and department stores. She had recently separated from her husband of twelve years, a sculptor whom Susan had known. Barbara didn’t seem so much upset by the separation as appalled.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He looked at her and said, “Are you going to start being fun to be around or are you going to be a big drag?” She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t see how this followed her comment about the old lady. “I don’t know.” “I don’t think you’re very sexual,” he said. “You’re not the way I thought you were when I first met you.” She was so hurt by this that she had difficulty answering. Finally, she said, “I can be very sexual or very unsexual depending on who I’m with and in what situation. It has to be the right kind of thing. I’m sort of a cerebral person. I think I respond to things in a cerebral way, mostly.” “That’s what I mean.” She was struck dumb with frustration. She had obviously disappointed him in some fundamental way, which she felt was completely due to misunderstanding. If only she could think of the correct thing to say, she was sure she could clear it up. The blue puffball thing unfurled itself before her with sickening power. It was the same image of him holding her and gazing into her eyes with bone-dislodging intent, thinly veiling the many shattering events that she anticipated between them. The prospect made her disoriented with pleasure. The only problem was, this image seemed to have no connection with what was happening now. She tried to think back to the time they had spent in her apartment, when he had held her and said, “You’re cute.” What had happened between then and now to so disappoint him? She hadn’t yet noticed how much he had disappointed her. He couldn’t tell if he was disappointing her or not. She completely mystified him, especially after her abrupt speech on cerebralism. It was now impossible to even have a clear picture of what he wanted to do to this unglamorous creature, who looked as though she bit her nails and read books at night. Dim, half-formed pictures of his wife, Sharon, Beth and a sixteen-year-old Chinese hooker he’d seen a month before crawled aimlessly over each other. He sat and brooded in a bad-natured and slightly drunken way. She sat next to him, diminished and fretful, with idiot radio songs about sex in her head. — They were staying in his grandmother’s deserted apartment in Washington, D.C. The complex was a series of building blocks seemingly arranged at random, stuck together and painted the least attractive colors available. It was surrounded by bright green grass and a circular driveway, and placed on a quiet highway that led into the city. There was a drive-in bank and an insurance office next to it. It was enveloped in the steady, continuous noise of cars driving by at roughly the same speed. “This is a horrible building,” she said as they traveled up in the elevator.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  But, after they were married and stopped having sex, maybe this feeling of contentment would be enough? She started to ask Justin, to tell him of her fears, but his breath had grown slow and even, and she didn’t want to disturb his rest. He’d need all the strength he could get later. When she told him the wedding was off. After all, what did a stupid piece of paper mean in this day and age anyway? Maybe that was part of the problem. Deep inside she wanted a traditional wedding night, which meant they would touch each other in a way they had never experienced before. But in the two years they’d known each other, they’d already licked and sucked and penetrated each other’s bodies in every way possible. How could they manage anything new or surprising tonight? It would be so different if they had fallen in love a hundred and fifty years ago, at the height of Queen Victoria’s reign. Proper gentleman that he was, Justin would have courted her on countless Sundays after church before he asked her father for her hand. And yes, he’d have whirled her around the dance floor until her bosom was heaving and lifted her from carriages, his strong hands encircling her tiny, cinched waist. All the feelings she had down there, beneath her voluminous petticoats, would remain unnamed and unexpressed but in a subtle blush, a catch in her breath when he touched his lips to the back of her hand. And then, on their nuptial night, the famine of touch would suddenly turn to a free-for-all feast. Justin’s tongue would probe her mouth, his hands would caress her tender breasts, his manhood would sink inside her most intimate flesh for the very first time all in the same hour. How intense was that? Instead of dragging her off to a tapas bar and a dance club, her dearest girlfriends would attend her in her bridal chamber. They would guide her to the canopied bed, brush her long hair over her shoulders, tuck a fresh rosebud in the neckline of her flowing white nightgown for Justin to remove—literally, deflower—when he claimed his husbandly prerogative. In those days, a man owned his wife’s body as completely as he owned land or horses. Sophie wondered what she would have felt when Justin, her first and only lover, explored all the treasures of his new possession, brushing her sensitive nipples with his fingers, slipping his hand between her nether lips. Would her new husband be gentle or strangely transformed by lust? Would she weep from the total surrender of her heart, her body, her name? Would she cry out when he mounted her, wincing from the pain that was a woman’s duty and yet a secret pleasure as well?

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He superimposed it upon a picture of himself standing in a nightclub the week before, holding a drink and talking to a rather combative girl who wanted his number. “Some old people are beautiful in an unearthly way,” she continued. “I saw this old lady in the drugstore the other day who must’ve been in her nineties. She was so fragile and pretty, she was like a little elf.” He looked at her and said, “Are you going to start being fun to be around or are you going to be a big drag?” She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t see how this followed her comment about the old lady. “I don’t know.” “I don’t think you’re very sexual,” he said. “You’re not the way I thought you were when I first met you.” She was so hurt by this that she had difficulty answering. Finally, she said, “I can be very sexual or very unsexual depending on who I’m with and in what situation. It has to be the right kind of thing. I’m sort of a cerebral person. I think I respond to things in a cerebral way, mostly.” “That’s what I mean.” She was struck dumb with frustration. She had obviously disappointed him in some fundamental way, which she felt was completely due to misunderstanding. If only she could think of the correct thing to say, she was sure she could clear it up. The blue puffball thing unfurled itself before her with sickening power. It was the same image of him holding her and gazing into her eyes with bone-dislodging intent, thinly veiling the many shattering events that she anticipated between them. The prospect made her disoriented with pleasure. The only problem was, this image seemed to have no connection with what was happening now. She tried to think back to the time they had spent in her apartment, when he had held her and said, “You’re cute.” What had happened between then and now to so disappoint him? She hadn’t yet noticed how much he had disappointed her. He couldn’t tell if he was disappointing her or not. She completely mystified him, especially after her abrupt speech on cerebralism. It was now impossible to even have a clear picture of what he wanted to do to this unglamorous creature, who looked as though she bit her nails and read books at night. Dim, half-formed pictures of his wife, Sharon, Beth and a sixteen-year-old Chinese hooker he’d seen a month before crawled aimlessly over each other.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  290The History of Christianity II õBritain decriminalized both abortion and homosexual sex in 1967, and abortion was legal in some U.S. states even before the Supreme Court took the final step to legalize it nationally in 1973. õIn the United States, church attendance and membership numbers have been in a slow but sure decline since their peak in the 1960s, when about 40 percent went to church every week. There is little evidence of a revival anytime soon. As the sociologist Mark Chaves put it, “there is nothing, no indicator that traditional religiosity is going up.” CONCLUSION õAfter World War II, there was an international boom in the outward signs of religiosity. People across the West were desperate to return to order. But this boom in religious activity masked the deep intellectual, cultural, and political cracks in Christendom. The word secularization has helped describe the widening of these cracks into full-size canyons. õRecall Casanova’s three shifts: privatization, differentiation, and disenchantment. Religion is increasingly becoming a person’s private business, and less a mantle of morality draped over the public square. It has to be, if every person’s worldview is so different from his or her neighbor’s. In this context, religious skepticism and atheism have become not just the quiet views of a few outliers, but socially acceptable positions. õNote that while organized religion may be in retreat across Europe and North America, for decades a worldwide Pentecostal revival has been sweeping Africa as well as parts of Asia and Latin America. Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted many times in its 2,000-year history, and it is on the move once again. 291Lecture 29—Secularism and the Death of God SUGGESTED READING Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain. Schmidt, Village Atheists. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äAre church attendance statistics a valuable measure of whether or not a country is a “Christian nation”? äHow has the cultural authority of churches changed since the 1950s? äHow did Quebec transform from the most religious society in the West to one of the most secular? 292 LECTURE 30 THE GOSPEL AND GLOBAL CIVIL RIGHTS T his lecture uses the stories of the American civil rights movement and the South African battle over apartheid to explore how Christian institutions and ideas fit into the story of the worldwide struggle for civil rights that unfolded over the last half of the 20 th century. Even though the American and South African contexts were very different, both cases shared one big thing in common: Christianity was both a tool to reinforce white supremacy and a source of inspiration for those fighting for racial equality.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  It was an offhand remark after a silly night of playing the game “I Never” with some friends. It wasn’t meant to be an insult, or at least that is what he said after the fact. There was no maliciousness in his words; he’d spoken them matter-of-factly as he pulled the car into the driveway. “I think our sex life has gotten boring.” I didn’t necessarily disagree with him, but I was quick to point out all the crazy things we had done in the past. When we first got together, our nonstop sex sessions were the stuff of legend, and we could hardly keep our hands off each other. I was confident that our sex life was anything but boring. But, Blake was just as quick to point out that our last truly adventurous tryst had been years before. As much as I hated to admit it, the sad fact was, he was right. He stopped short of saying we were in a rut, but I read between the lines. Adventure and lust had been replaced by comfort and our daily routine, which sadly didn’t have much room for sex. I always thought it was just a natural part of being together for a long time. I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t all that thrilled about our bedroom life either, but in my heart I knew. He didn’t say anything more that night, but his words had sent me on a mission. And, that mission was never to be boring in bed again. Blake didn’t know it then, but he had unleashed a monster. I hit every adult toy and video shop in a nearly fifty-mile radius in search of the ticket to sexy, smutty bliss. Books, DVDs, toys; you name it, I bought it. We’d tried more positions from the Kama Sutra than I knew existed and came away with more than a few pulled muscles. One position, called the “pair of tongs,” nearly put us both in the emergency room. Some of the toys I picked up scared Blake, but he enjoyed the beautiful glass dildo I purchased almost as much as I did. We rented and watched all kinds of porn, and not just the kind with “women-friendly” plots and stories. Blake was stoked at first and happily shared his love of hot girl-on-girl action with me. But, soon he found that he preferred to watch most of it alone, like he always had before. The DVDs now sat in a pile by the small television on the dresser, neither of us watching them at all.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  356The History of Christianity II SECULARIZATION õFactors like declining church attendance numbers and the shrinking role of professional clergy in public life have many Christians, particularly in the Western world, wondering what to do. Some evangelical Christians in America have gone from calling themselves the moral majority to saying they must accept their role as a moral minority in a pagan culture. õSome conservatives have blamed all these things on the Social Gospel. For more than a century, they have called the Social Gospel a dangerous shift in the church’s focus from personal salvation and the life hereafter toward, instead, trying to save the world in the here and now. õIt’s not really the job of historians to call a faith a success or failure. But Christians themselves think in these terms all the time. And often, they’re very focused on numbers: baptism rates, the percentage of tithing members, and so on. This is true for liberal Christians as well as for conservatives. õBut to take the attitude that success is a numbers game is to adopt what the historian David Hollinger calls a “Christian survivalist” mentality. What if, instead, we ask the question from a historian’s perspective: Which Christian groups have had great historical significance? Which have changed the course of history? We see that many of the Christian traditions that are dwindling today, like the liberal Protestant denominations in North America, had an incredible role in shaping modern Western society. õHollinger points out that many of them took that uncomfortable, humbling experience they had in the mission field, where they learned to respect other cultures and skin colors, and brought it home, where they helped lead the civil rights movement, encouraged their fellow citizens to embrace more freedoms for women, urged them to view non-Christian religions with curiosity and compassion, and generally laid the groundwork for a more tolerant, peaceful, pluralist society. 357Lecture 36—The Challenge of 21 st -Century Christianity õThese churches are now shrinking; perhaps their historical moment is in its twilight. But judging by the Christian principle of the incarnation, the notion of making God’s presence real in the human world, these churches can’t be considered a failure. õFrom another angle, many people call secular modernity, not religion, the big failure: It has not brought peace, happiness, or material comfort to billions of people. War and terrorism rage in some areas. Drug addiction epidemics have destroyed families and communities in countries that are supposedly the wealthiest and most modern on earth. õPerhaps disappointment with the promises of modernity is a major reason for the global explosion of Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity during the 20 th century. These are faith traditions that boldly rebel against the claims of modern reason; they say people can speak in strange tongues and claim the gifts of prophecy and healing.