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 Going Clear (2013)

  There were no days off, although they were allowed to call their families on Christmas. Their sole diversion was watching the big Scientology galas on television. After all, the elaborate sets for these events were constructed by the RPF’ers in Los Angeles or at Flag Base in Clearwater. To view the big Cruise event, they were all taken to the mess hall. One of the penitents was Mark McKinstry, who had been National Sales Manager at Bridge Publications when the movie version of Battlefield Earth, starring John Travolta, came out in 2000. Hubbard’s tale is about an alien race of “Psychlos,” who have turned people into slaves—until a hero arises to liberate humanity. Travolta had worked for years to get the movie made, and wound up paying a significant portion out of his own pocket. It was at the peak of his career. “I told my manager, ‘If we can’t do the things now that we want to do, what good is the power?’ ” he remarked at the time. Miscavige had been deeply involved in the filming from the beginning. He would watch dailies of the film in Clearwater while he was overseeing the handling of the Lisa McPherson case. His critiques would then be typed up and sent to the Scientology representative who was always at Travolta’s side. When the movie was completed, Miscavige called Travolta to congratulate him, saying that LRH would be proud. He predicted it was going to be a blockbuster. McKinstry had been working for a year promoting the movie edition of the book. He traveled across the country with Travolta to push the book in bookstores, malls, and Walmarts. About 750,000 copies were sold. Like many others who have spent time with Travolta, McKinstry came to like him immensely. The actor was devoting a substantial amount of his own time and energy to making the book a success. But when the movie came out, it was a critical and box-office catastrophe. Even at the premiere, Sea Org members had to be bused in to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to fill the empty seats for as many as three shows a day. For some of them, it was the first movie they had seen in years. “ ‘Battlefield Earth’ may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century,” the New York Times critic observed, in what proved to be a typical review. There were false accusations that the film contained subliminal messages promoting Scientology. Travolta’s career went into a lengthy dark period. Cruise later complained to Miscavige, saying that the movie was terrible for the church’s public image.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  What is it that renders married ties unbearable? The too-great intimacy, the sordid cares, the triviality of every-day life. The young bride must love indeed if she feels no disappointment when she sees her mate just awakened from a fit of tough snoring, seedy, unshaven, with braces and slippers, and hears him clear his throat and spit—for men actually spit, even if they do not indulge in other rumbling noises. "The husband, likewise, must love indeed, not to feel an inward sinking when a few days after the wedding he finds his bride's middle parts tightly tied up in foul and bloody rags. Why did not nature create us like birds—or rather, like midges—to live but one summer day—a long day of love? "On the night of this next day Teleny surpassed himself at the piano; and when the ladies had finished waving their tiny handkerchiefs, and throwing flowers at him, he stole away from a host of congratulating admirers, and came to meet me in my carriage, waiting for him at the door of the theatre; then we drove away to his house. I passed that night with him, a night not of unbroken slumbers, but of inebriating bliss. "As true notaries of the Grecian god, we poured out seven copious libations to Priapus—for seven is a mystic, cabalistic, propitious number—and in the morning we tore ourselves from each other's arms, vowing everlasting love and fidelity; but, alas! what is there immutable in the ever-changing world, except, perhaps, the sleep eternal in the eternal night." "And your mother?" "She perceived that a great change had been wrought in me. Now, far from being crabbed and waspish, like an old maid that cannot find rest anywhere, I was even-tempered and good-humoured. She, however, attributed the change to the tonics I was taking, little guessing the real nature of these tonics. Later, she thought I must have some kind of liaison or other, but she did not interfere with my private affairs; she knew that the time for sowing my wild oats had come, and she left me complete freedom of action." "Well, you were a lucky fellow." "Yes, but perfect happiness cannot last long. Hell gapes on the threshold of heaven, and one step plunges us from ethereal light into erebian darkness. So it has ever been with me in this chequered life of mine. A fortnight after that memorable night of unbearable anguish and of thrilling delight, I awoke in the midst of felicity to find myself in thorough wretchedness. "One morning, as I went in to breakfast, I found on the table a note which the postman had brought the evening before. I never received letters at home, having hardly any correspondence, save a business one, which was always transacted at the office.

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

  Once they had achieved imperial rule, alas, the Hasmoneans’ piety was unable to sustain the brute realities of political dominance, and they became as cruel and tyrannical as the Seleucids. At the end of the second century BCE, a number of new sects sought a more authentically Jewish alternative; Christianity would later share some of their enthusiasms. To initiate their disciples, all these sects set up systems of instruction that became the closest thing to an educational establishment in Jewish society. Both the Qumran sect and the Essenes—two distinct groups that are often erroneously identified—were attracted toward an ethical community life: meals were eaten together, ritual purity and cleanliness were stressed, and goods were held in common. Both were critical of the Jerusalem temple cult, which, they believed, the Hasmoneans had corrupted. Indeed, the Qumran commune beside the Dead Sea regarded itself as an alternative temple: on the cosmic plane, the children of light would soon defeat the sons of darkness, and God would build another temple and inaugurate a new world order. The Pharisees were also committed to an exact and punctilious observance of the biblical law. We know very little about them at this date, however, even though they would become the most influential of these new groups. Some Pharisees led armed revolts against the Hasmoneans but finally concluded that the people would be better off under foreign rule. In 64 BCE, therefore, as the Hasmonean excesses had become intolerable, the Pharisees sent a delegation to Rome requesting that the empire depose the regime. The following year the Roman warlord Pompey invaded Jerusalem, killing twelve thousand Jews and enslaving thousands more. Not surprisingly, most Jews hated Roman rule, but no empire can survive unless it is able to co-opt at least some of the local population. The Romans ruled Palestine through the priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem, but they also created a puppet king, Herod, a prince of Idumea and a recent convert to Judaism. Herod built magnificent fortifications, palaces, and theaters throughout the country in the Hellenistic style and on the coast constructed Caesarea, an entirely new city, in honor of Augustus. His masterpiece, however, was a magnificent new temple for Yahweh in Jerusalem, flanked significantly by the Antonia fortress, manned by Roman troops. A cruel ruler, with his own army and secret police, Herod was extremely unpopular. The Jews of Palestine were therefore ruled by two aristocracies: the Herodians and the Sadducees, the Jewish priestly nobility. Both collected taxes, so Jews bore a double tax burden.11

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Spectator, Capt. Humbert Reynolds, Rene Lafayette, Winchester Remington Colt, et cetera— accumulating about twenty aliases over the years. He said that when he was writing stories he would simply “roll the pictures” in his mind and write down what he saw as quickly as possible. It was a physical act: he would actually perspire when he wrote. His philosophy was “First draft, last draft, get it out the door.” Ron and Polly’s son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., was born prematurely on May 7, 1934, in Encinitas, California, where the couple had gone to vacation. The baby, whom they called Nibs, weighed little more than two pounds at birth. Ron fashioned an incubator out of a cupboard drawer, using a lightbulb to keep it warm, while Polly fed Nibs with an eyedropper. Two years later, in New York City, Polly gave birth to a daughter, Katherine May Hubbard, whom they called Kay. In 1936, the family moved to Bremerton, Washington, near where Ron’s parents were then living, as well as his mother’s family, the Waterburys. They warmly accepted Polly and the kids. Ron was doing well enough to buy a small farm in nearby Port Orchard with a house, five bungalows, a thousand feet of waterfront, and a view of Mount Rainier—“the prettiest place I ever saw in my life,” he wrote to his best friend, Russell Hays, a fellow author of pulps who lived in Kansas. Ron spent much of his time in New York, however, cultivating his professional contacts, and leaving his wife and children for long periods of time. Hubbard pined for Hollywood, in what would be a long-term, unrequited romance. Despite his overtures, he received only “vague offers” from studios for short-term contracts. “I have discarded Hollywood,” he complained to Hays. “I haven’t got enough charm.” But by spring of 1937, Columbia Pictures had finally optioned one of Hubbard’s stories to be folded into a serial, titled The Secret of Treasure Island. Hubbard quickly moved to Hollywood, hoping to finally make it in the movie business. (He later claimed to have worked on a number of films during this time—including the classic films Stagecoach, with John Wayne, and The Plainsman, with Gary Cooper—but he never actually received any film credits other than The Secret of Treasure Island.) By midsummer he had fled back to the farm in Washington, blaming the long hours, tension, and “dumb Jew producers.” Once again, he threw himself into writing the pulps with a fury, but also with a new note of cynicism. “Never write about a character type you cannot find in the magazine for which the story is intended,” he advised Hays. “Never write about an unusual character.”

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

  Carefully briefed by the French Institut d’Égypte, he addressed the sheikhs of the Azhar madrassa in Arabic, expressing his deep respect for the Prophet and promising to free Egypt from the oppression of the Ottomans and their Mamluk agents. Accompanying the French army was a corps of scholars, a library of modern European literature, a laboratory, and a printing press with Arabic type. The ulema were not impressed: “All this is nothing but deceit and trickery,” they said, “to entice us.” 86 They were right. Napoleon’s invasion, exploiting Enlightenment scholarship and science to subjugate the region, marked the beginning of Western domination of the Middle East. To many it seemed that the French Revolution had failed. The systemic violence of Napoleon’s empire betrayed revolutionary principles, and Napoleon also reinstated the Catholic Church. For decades the hopes of 1789 were dashed by one disillusioning event after another. The glory days of the fall of the Bastille were followed by the September Massacres, the Reign of Terror, the Vendée genocide, and a military dictatorship. After Napoleon’s fall from power in 1814, Louis XVIII (the brother of Louis XVI) was returned to the throne. But the republican dream refused to die. The republic was revived for two brief periods, during the Hundred Days before Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and for a brief period between 1848 and 1852. In 1870 it was restored yet again, this time lasting until it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1940. Instead of seeing the French Revolution as a failure, therefore, we should perhaps see it as the explosive start of a lengthy process. Such massive social and political change overturning millennia of autocracy cannot be achieved overnight. Revolutions take a long time. But unlike several other European countries, where aristocratic regimes were so deeply entrenched that they managed to hang on, albeit in limited form, France eventually achieved its secular republic. We should bear this long-drawn-out and painful process in mind before dismissing as failures revolutions that have taken place in our own time in Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia, for example. The French Revolution may have changed the politics of Europe, but it did not affect the agrarian economy. Modernity came of age in Britain’s Industrial Revolution, which began in the later eighteenth century, though its social effects would not be truly felt until the early nineteenth. 87 It started with the invention of the steam engine, which provided more energy than the country’s entire workforce put together, so the economy grew at an unprecedented rate. It was not long before Germany, France, Japan, and the United States followed Britain’s lead, and all these industrialized countries were forever transformed. To man the new machines, the population had to be mobilized for industry instead of agriculture; economic self-sufficiency now became a thing of the past. The government also began to control the lives of ordinary folk in ways that had been impossible in agrarian society.

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

  The victory of the Nicene faith, which Gregory had thus inwardly promoted in the imperial city, was outwardly completed by the celebrated edict of the new emperor Theodosius, in February, 380. When the emperor, on the 24th of December of that year, entered Constantinople, he deposed the Arian bishop, Demophilus, with all his clergy, and transferred the cathedral church1980 to Gregory with the words: "This temple God by our hand intrusts to thee as a reward for thy pains." The people tumultuously demanded him for bishop, but he decidedly refused. And in fact he was not yet released from his bishopric of Nazianzum or Sasima (though upon the latter he had never formally entered); he could be released only by a synod. When Theodosius, for the formal settlement of the theological controversies, called the renowned ecumenical council in May, 381, Gregory was elected by this council itself bishop of Constantinople, and, amidst great festivities, was inducted into the office. In virtue of this dignity he held for a time the presidency of the council. When the Egyptian and Macedonian bishops arrived, they disputed the validity of his election, because, according to the fifteenth canon of the council of Nice, he could not be transferred from his bishopric of Sasima to another; though their real reason was, that the election had been made without them, and that Gregory would probably be distasteful to them as a bold preacher of righteousness. This deeply wounded him. He was soon disgusted, too, with the operations of party passions in the council, and resigned with the following remarkable declaration: "Whatever this assembly may hereafter determine concerning me, I would fain raise your mind beforehand to something far higher: I pray you now, be one, and join yourselves in love! Must we always be only derided as infallible, and be animated only by one thing, the spirit of strife? Give each other the hand fraternally. But I will be a second Jonah. I will give myself for the salvation of our ship (the church), though I am innocent of the storm. Let the lot fall upon me, and cast me into the sea. A hospitable fish of the deep will receive me. This shall be the beginning of your harmony. I reluctantly ascended the episcopal chair, and gladly I now come down. Even my weak body advises me this. One debt only have I to pay: death; this I owe to God. But, O my Trinity! for Thy sake only am I sad. Shalt Thou have an able man, bold and zealous to vindicate Thee? Farewell, and remember my labors and my pains."

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

  Some Muslims, however, were more critical: Ibn al-Athir argued that this clemency was a serious military and political error, because the Franks managed to retain a narrow coastal state stretching from Tyre to Beirut, which continued to threaten Muslim Jerusalem until the late thirteenth century. 83 Ironically, as military jihad became embedded in the spirituality of the Greater Jihad, Crusading was increasingly driven by material and political interests that sidelined the spiritual. 84 When Pope Urban summoned the First Crusade, he had usurped the kings’ prerogative in his bid for papal supremacy. The Third Crusade (1189–92), led and convened by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip II of France, and Richard I of England, reasserted the temporal rulers’ monopoly of violence. While Saladin inspired his soldiers with hadith readings, Richard offered his men money for every stone of Acre’s city wall torn down. A few years later the Fourth Crusade was hijacked purely for commercial gain by the merchants of Venice, the new men of Europe, who persuaded the Crusaders to attack their fellow Christians in the port of Zara and plunder Constantinople in 1204. Western emperors governed Byzantium until 1261, when the Greeks finally managed to expel them, but their incompetence in the intervening period may have fatally weakened this sophisticated state, whose polity was far more complex than any Western kingdom at this date. 85 Pope Innocent III reclaimed papal libertas in 1213 by summoning the Fifth Crusade, which attempted to establish a Western base in Egypt, but the Crusaders’ fleet was incapacitated by an epidemic and the land army cut off by the rising flood waters of the Nile during the march to Cairo. The Sixth Crusade (1228–29) entirely subverted the original Crusading ideal because it was led by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II, who had recently been excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX. Brought up in cosmopolitan Sicily, Frederick did not share the Islamophobia of the rest of Europe and negotiated a truce with his friend Sultan al-Kamil, who had no interest in jihad. Frederick thus recovered Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth without fighting a single battle. 86 But both rulers had misjudged the popular mood: Muslims were now convinced that the West was their implacable enemy, and Christians seemed to think it more important to fight Muslims than to get Jerusalem back.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "My mother seeing me frown, added, smilingly: "'What, Camille, are you going to become as vain as some acknowledged belle, who cannot hear anybody made much of without feeling that any praise given to another woman is so much subtracted from what is due to her?' "'All women are free to fall in love with him if they choose,' I answered snappishly, 'you know quite well that I never piqued myself either on my good looks or upon my conquests.' "'No, it is true, still to-day you are like the dog in the manger, for what is it to you whether the women are taken up with him or not, especially if it is such a help to him in his career?' "'But cannot an artist rise to eminence by his talent alone?' "'Sometimes,' added she with an incredulous smile, 'though seldom, and only with that superhuman perseverance which gifted persons often lack, and Teleny—' "My mother did not finish her phrase in words, but the expression of her face, and above all of the corners of her mouth, revealed her thoughts. "'And you think that this young man is such a degraded being as to allow himself to be kept by a woman, like a—' "'Well, it is not exactly being kept—at least, he would not consider it in that light. He might, moreover, allow himself to be helped in a thousand ways otherwise than by money, but his piano would be his gagne-pain.' "'Just like the stage is for most ballet-girls; then I should not like to be an artist.' "'Oh! they are not the only men who owe their success to a mistress, or to a wife. Read "Bel Ami," and you will see that many a successful man, and even more than one celebrated personage, owes his greatness to——' "'A woman?' "'Exactly; it is always: Cherchez la femme.' "'Then this is a disgusting world.' "'Having to live in it, we must make the best of it we can, and not take matters quite so tragically as you do.' "'Anyhow, he plays well. In fact, I never heard anyone play like he did last night.' "'Yes, I grant that last night he did play brilliantly, or, rather, sensationally; but it also must be admitted that you were in a rather morbid state of health and mind, so that music must have had an uncommon effect upon your nerves.' "'Oh! you think there was an evil spirit within me troubling me, and that a cunning player—as the Bible has it—was alone able to quiet my nerves.' "My mother smiled. "'Well, now-a-days, we are all of us more or less like Saul; that is to say, we are all occasionally troubled with an evil spirit.' "Thereupon her brow grew clouded, and she interrupted herself, for evidently the remembrance of my late father came to her mind; then she added, musingly— "'And Saul was really to be pitied.'

• From Mud Vein (2014)

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

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Hello, Senna.” His voice always distinct, nasally with an accent he tried not to have. My father was born in Wales and moved to America when he was twenty. He retained the European mentality and accent and dressed like a cowboy. It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen. “How was your Christmas?” I immediately felt cold. “Fine. How was yours?” He began a detailed minute-by-minute account of how he spent Christmas Day. I was, for the most part, grateful I didn’t have to speak. He wrapped things up by telling me about his promotion at work; he said the same thing he repeated every time we spoke. “I’m thinking about taking a trip out there to see you, Senna. Should be soon. Bill said I get an extra week’s vacation this year because I’ve been with the company twenty years.” I’d lived in Washington for eight years and he’d never come to visit me once. “That’d be great. Listen Dad, I’ve got some friends coming over. I should go.” We said our goodbyes and I hung up, resting my forehead on the wall. That would be it from him until the end of April, when he would call again. The phone rang a second time. I almost didn’t answer it, but the area code is from Washington. “Senna Richards, this is the office of Dr. Albert Monroe.” I racked my brain trying to place the doctor and his specialty, and then for the second time that day, my blood ran cold. “Something came up on your scan. Dr. Monroe would like you to come in to the office.” I was leaving my house the next morning, walking to my car when his hybrid pulled into my horseshoe driveway. I stopped to watch him climb out and pull on his jacket. It was casual, almost beautiful in its grace. He’d never come this early before. It made me wonder what he did on the mornings of his days off. He walked toward me and stopped just in time to keep two solid feet between us. He was wearing a light blue fleece, pushed up past his elbows. I was shocked to see the dark ink of tattoos peeking out. What type of doctor had tattoos? “I have a doctor’s appointment,” I said stepping around him. “I’m a doctor.” I was glad to be turned away from him when I smiled. “Yes, I know. There are quite a few others in the state of Washington.” His head jerked back like he was surprised I was anything but the stoic, expressionless victim he’d been cooking for. I was opening the driver’s side door to my Volvo when he held out his hand for my keys. “I’ll drive you.” I dropped my eyes into his hand and snuck another look at the tattoos.

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

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

• From Mud Vein (2014)

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

• From Mud Vein (2014)

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

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

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

• From Going Clear (2013)

  This was the disaster the church had been dreading. When the courthouse opened that Monday, there were fifteen hundred Scientologists lined up. They filled three hallways of the courthouse and overwhelmed the clerk’s office with requests to photocopy the documents in order to keep anyone else from getting their hands on the confidential materials. They kept it up until the judge issued a restraining order at noon, pending a hearing later in the week. Despite these efforts, the Los Angeles Times managed to get a copy of the OT III materials and published a summary of them. “A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times account begins. In a studiously neutral tone, the lengthy article reveals Scientology’s occult cosmology. The planet Earth, formerly called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. Although the details were sketchy, the secrets that had stunned Paul Haggis were suddenly public knowledge. The jury awarded Wollersheim $30 million. 4 Worse than the financial loss was the derision that greeted the church all over the world and the loss of control of its secret doctrines. The church has never recovered from the blow. The other court challenge that year involved Julie Christofferson Titchbourne, a young defector who had spent her college savings on Scientology counseling. She argued that the church had falsely claimed that Scientology would improve her intelligence, creativity, communication skills, and even her eyesight. For the first time, much of Hubbard’s biography came under attack. The litigant said that Hubbard had been portrayed as a nuclear physicist and civil engineer. The evidence showed that he attended George Washington University but never graduated. In response to Hubbard’s claim that he had cured himself of his injuries in the Second World War, the evidence showed he had never been wounded. Other embarrassing revelations came to light. The church stated that Hubbard was paid less than the average Scientology staff member—at the time, about fifteen dollars a week—but witnesses for the plaintiff testified that in one six-month period in 1982, about $34 million had been transferred from the church into Hubbard’s personal bank from a Liberian corporation. 5 One former Scientologist described training sessions in which members were hectored and teased over sensitive issues until they were desensitized and would no longer react. In two such instances of “bull-baiting,” Christofferson Titchbourne saw the eight-year-old son of the registrar repeatedly put his hands down the front of a woman student’s dress and a female coach unzipping the pants of a male student and fondling his genitals. The jury seemed most disturbed by testimony that members of the Guardian’s Office had culled the auditing files of members, looking for salacious material that could be used to blackmail potential defectors. Christofferson Titchbourne had originally sought a $30,000 refund from the church. The jury awarded her $39 million.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

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

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  At the same time they appear to have shaken off many of the traditional role-playing devices vis-a-vis men. Almost everyone I’ve met has lost someone in what they call the “Great Patriotic War,” which is our Second World War. I was interviewed by Oleg this evening, one of the officials of the Union of Soviet Writers, the people who had invited me to Russia and who were footing the bill. In my interview with him I learned the hotel that we’re staying in was originally a youth hostel and Oleg apologized because it was not as “civilized,” so he said, as other Moscow hotels. I came across this term civilized before, and I wondered whether it was a term used around Americans or whether it meant up to American standards. Increasingly I get a feeling that American standards are sort of an unspoken norm, and that whether one resists them, or whether one adopts them, they are there to be reckoned with. This is rather disappointing. But coming back to the hotel, I notice that the fixtures here are a little shabby, but they do work, and the studio beds are a bit adolescent in size, but they are comfortable. For a youth hostel it’s better than I would ever hope for. Of course, I can’t help but wonder why the African-Asian Conference people should be housed in a youth hostel, particularly an “uncivilized” one, but I don’t imagine that I’ll ever get an answer to that. All hotel rooms cost the same in the Soviet Union. Utilities, from my conversation with Helen while we were riding the Metro down to send a cable, utilities are very inexpensive. The gas to cook with costs sixteen kopecs a month which is less than one ruble (about $3.00) and the most electricity Helen says that she uses, when she’s translating all day long in winter, costs three rubles a month. That is very expensive, she says. The two-room apartment which she and her mother share costs eight rubles a month. Oleg does not speak English, or does not converse in English. Like many other people I was to meet during my stay in Russia, he understands English although he does not let on. Oleg said through Helen that he wants me to know it was very important for us to meet other writers and that the point of the Conference was for us to get together. I thanked him for the twenty-five rubles I had been given as soon as I arrived here in Moscow, which I have been told was a gift from the Union of Soviet Writers for pocket money. I spoke of the oppressed people all over the world, meeting to touch and to share, I spoke of South Africa and their struggle. Oleg said something very curious. “Yes, South Africa is really very bad. It is like a sore upon the body that will not heal.” This sounded to me both removed and proprietary. Unclear.

• From How to Be a Great Lover (1999)

  Men will often watch how a woman eats and drinks to get a sense of how she will kiss and make love. The more robust a woman’s appetite, the more likely she’ll be open and passionate. What is sadder than those who say they’ve lost the passion are the confessions from those who say they’ve never had it. To be spending time in a romantic relationship without experiencing the ride of a passionate kiss is unconscionable. Kissing is the essence of romance out of which passion emerges, and in an ongoing relationship, you deserve sensuality. Whether you’re trying to create it or re-create it doesn’t matter. No one else is more entitled to passion, regardless of age or length of time in a relationship, than you are. The only prerequisite for passion is a desire to have it. The History of KissingKissing just may be the greatest form of communication ever invented. According to one legend, the kiss was created by medieval knights for the ridiculous purpose of determining whether their wives had been nipping at the mead barrel while they were off crusading. Fortunately, kissing did not remain limited to alcohol detection. In the past, some young women believed babies were the result of a passionate kiss. (They had the right idea, of course, but they just didn’t follow the thought to its biological conclusion.) Indeed, kissing not only survived, it has thrived, and for good reason. Secret from Lou’s Archives The word “kiss” comes from the 12th-century English word “cyssan,” which refers to “wet, soul, or tongue.” The more likely (and sweeter) explanation of the origin of the kiss extends back to the bond between mother and child when, before the invention of jars of baby food, mothers had to first chew food in order to give it to their child. The emotional connection that takes place here goes way beyond the giving and receiving of food. It’s about peace and safety and a sensation of being exactly where each other belongs. The reason a baby often falls asleep at her mothers breast long after she’s finished eating is that the feeling of lips on flesh is so comforting. Human lips not only contain sebaceous glands, they also are filled with extremely sensitive nerve endings. When these nerve endings come in contact with another person’s lips or skin, the connection creates a language of its own. We all want to be fluent in lip language in order to send clear messages or receive them in the spirit with which they are intended. A kiss can be kind, empathetic, sympathetic, sad, final, cute, polite, invitational, passionate, ravaging, or aloof. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a kiss is worth a billion. It can be used to deliver any kind of communication one desires, provided one is skilled in the art. And no kiss has ever been wasted—not even the kiss of death.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  So I wondered, why doesn’t Mary deal with Afrekete as an example? Why are her goddess images only white, western european, judeo-christian? Where was Afrekete, Yemanje, Oyo, and Mawulisa? Where were the warrior goddesses of the Vodun, the Dahomeian Amazons and the warrior-women of Dan? Well, I thought, Mary has made a conscious decision to narrow her scope and to deal only with the ecology of western european women. Then I came to the first three chapters of your Second Passage, and it was obvious that you were dealing with noneuropean women, but only as victims and preyers-upon each other. I began to feel my history and my mythic background distorted by the absence of any images of my foremothers in power. Your inclusion of African genital mutilation was an important and necessary piece in any consideration of female ecology, and too little has been written about it. To imply, however, that all women suffer the same oppression simply because we are women is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy. It is to ignore how those tools are used by women without awareness against each other. To dismiss our Black foremothers may well be to dismiss where european women learned to love. As an African-american woman in white patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience distorted and trivialized, but it is terribly painful to feel it being done by a woman whose knowledge so much touches my own. When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark and true depth which understanding serves, waits upon, and makes accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this depth within each of us that nurtures vision. What you excluded from Gyn/Ecology dismissed my heritage and the heritage of all other noneuropean women, and denied the real connections that exist between all of us. It is obvious that you have done a tremendous amount of work for this book. But simply because so little material on non-white female power and symbol exists in white women’s words from a radical feminist perspective, to exclude this aspect of connection from even comment in your work is to deny the fountain of noneuropean female strength and power that nurtures each of our visions. It is to make a point by choice. Then, to realize that the only quotations from Black women’s words were the ones you used to introduce your chapter on African genital mutilation made me question why you needed to use them at all. For my part, I felt that you had in fact misused my words, utilized them only to testify against myself as a woman of Color. For my words which you used were no more, nor less, illustrative of this chapter than “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” or any number of my other poems might have been of many other parts of Gyn/Ecology.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

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