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 Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Thanks, Pop,” Milton says, and he gently taps the door with his fist. His mother smiles at him and turns to the television. His father goes back through the kitchen doorway. Milton shuts the door behind him, lets it click firmly, and steps out into the cold. • • • It’s the very beginning of November, and the early-evening sky is the color of crushed lilacs. A thick forest of pine trees encircles their subdivision, and beyond that, in the distance, is the shadow of the mountain, one of those low hills at the cusp of Appalachia in northern Alabama. Standing in his driveway, Milton cranes his neck back and stares out over the top of his house and the next and the next, all the way into the city that has been built into this mountain, its lights like a string of pearls. Wood smoke crests on the air. He’s trying to fix the image of the mountain in his mind, because soon he’ll be halfway across the country, shoved down into a valley. After winter break, Milton’s parents are sending him to what they are calling an “enrichment program.” For the entire spring, he’s going to be on a small farm in Idaho, trying to make something of himself. No phone. No internet. Nothing but the hard slopes of the hills and what he imagines to be the vast plain of the sky, studded with stars, streaked with clouds. They have been disappointed with the shape his life has taken, and this is their last attempt, they say, their last big effort. Milton doesn’t know what they want from him. He’s seventeen today, and he feels that he should have more control over his life than he has. Nolan’s got it easy by comparison—his parents give him whatever he wants. Last week, on Glad Hill, he and Nolan got popped buying the pot they smoked earlier. Tate and Abe had said that this was it, this was the end of high cotton, and Nolan had shrugged. Nothing came of it, of course. No charge materialized, because it turned out that the cop who’d busted him had beaten a domestic charge the year before, thanks to Nolan’s dad. The thing that bugs Milton about it is not that Nolan gets off all the time. Nolan complained about his dad after the fact. He said he loved me, Nolan said. They don’t give a shit. It gets on Milton’s nerves. Nolan wouldn’t enjoy being treated like an animal circling his parents’ love like a too-small enclosure. Milton would just like a little elbow room.

• From Escape (2007)

  He knew then that he was marrying the wrong girl. As I later learned, after he asked the prophet for me by name, he went to see my father, who showed him my picture. That’s when he realized he’d asked for the wrong daughter. His intention had been to marry my sixteen-year-old sister Annette, who was the family beauty. She was tall and thin with blond hair that fell nearly to her knees. But when he talked to the prophet, Merril got our names mixed up. Apparently, Merril had gone to the prophet after my father sued him for damages in a business deal. He told Uncle Roy he’d lose millions of dollars if the lawsuit went through. His pitch to Uncle Roy was that if he married one of my father’s daughters, he’d be family and the lawsuit would be dropped. He had seen Annette and knew how beautiful she was, but confused her name with mine. Uncle Roy, in turn, told my father that he’d had a revelation from God about this marriage. Once he said that, there was no turning back. After Merril left the restaurant that morning, we went to Bullfrog. Mother and I went shopping for fabric for a wedding dress. In the FLDS culture, women make their wedding dresses well before their marriages, because sometimes a girl has only two hours’ notice before she’s married and the only way a woman can count on having a dress is by making it in advance. The dress is very modest; it’s white with long sleeves, a high neck, and a skirt that stops four inches above the ankles. There is no veil or other frills. It was really important to my mother that I have a wedding dress. When we got home late that Friday night, she stayed up all night sewing. I called my teachers at the community college and said I couldn’t take my finals and didn’t know when I would be able to reschedule them. I was a conscientious student and my teachers, who knew something unexpected must have happened to me, asked no questions. My father came into the room shortly after I finished making my calls and said Merril was coming to pick me up. He wanted to take me back to his house and introduce me to his family before we left for our wedding in Salt Lake City. The prophet was living in Salt Lake City and my parents didn’t want to postpone the marriage. I think they were worried that with more time, I’d find a way to get out of it or bolt as Linda had. I’m sure that’s why I was never allowed to be alone again after I was told about my marriage. My parents could not risk the humiliation they’d face if another daughter rebelled.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Now, this echo of divide-and-conquer in the past was polarizing the constituencies of two barrier-breaking “firsts,” never mind that the candidates were almost identical in content. As in history, a potentially powerful majority was being divided by an entrenched powerful few. Maybe attributing a divide-and-conquer motive was unfair in a country that treats everything like a horse race, but there had to be some reason why the press did not consider what I witnessed on the road—delight in two “firsts” with similar purpose—worth reporting. Soon, a person or a group’s choice of one candidate was assumed to be a condemnation of the other. I could feel fissures opening up between people who had been allies on issues for years. The long knives of reporters—plus a few shortsighted partisans in both campaigns—deepened those fissures until they bled. To make a case for linking racism and sexism instead of ranking them—and for unifying around one of these two firsts in the national election—I wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Coalition vs. Competition.” 8 I called either/or media questions “dumb and destructive,” since the two candidates were so much the same on issues. Also, it was way too soon to know who could survive the primaries, so I ended this way: “We could double our chances by working for one of these candidates, not against the other. For now, I’ve figured out how to answer reporters when they ask if I’m supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. I just say yes.” As the New York primary approached, I certainly wasn’t against either candidate, but I still had to decide who to vote for. So I sat down with a yellow pad and made a list of pros and cons for each. On the issues, there were differences of emphasis, but both wanted a country in which individual futures were not limited by sex or race, class or sexuality. Both advocated a foreign policy that was less about oil and support for dictators and more about support for democracies and the environment. Hillary had voted in the Senate for the first U.S. military action in Iraq—and some Obama supporters were making much of that—but Obama himself was honest enough to say that had he been in the Senate at that time and given the same false information about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” he didn’t know how he would have voted. The only obvious difference was experience. As a partner, Hillary Clinton had spent twelve years in state government, eight in the White House, plus eight more on her own in the U.S. Senate—all of them fighting the right-wing extremists who controlled what once was the Republican Party; the next president would face the same opposition.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Though he asked no one about it, reluctantly and with feigned indifference answered his friends’ inquiries as to how the book was going, and did not even inquire of the booksellers how the book was selling, Sergey Ivanovitch was all on the alert, with strained attention, watching for the first impression his book would make in the world and in literature. But a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no impression whatever could be detected. His friends who were specialists and savants, occasionally—unmistakably from politeness—alluded to it. The rest of his acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally—just now especially absorbed in other things—was absolutely indifferent. In the press, too, for a whole month there was not a word about his book. Sergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time necessary for writing a review, but a month passed, and a second, and still there was silence. Only in the _Northern Beetle_, in a comic article on the singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a contemptuous allusion to Koznishev’s book, suggesting that the book had been long ago seen through by everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule. At last in the third month a critical article appeared in a serious review. Sergey Ivanovitch knew the author of the article. He had met him once at Golubtsov’s. The author of the article was a young man, an invalid, very bold as a writer, but extremely deficient in breeding and shy in personal relations. In spite of his absolute contempt for the author, it was with complete respect that Sergey Ivanovitch set about reading the article. The article was awful. The critic had undoubtedly put an interpretation upon the book which could not possibly be put on it. But he had selected quotations so adroitly that for people who had not read the book (and obviously scarcely anyone had read it) it seemed absolutely clear that the whole book was nothing but a medley of high-flown phrases, not even—as suggested by marks of interrogation—used appropriately, and that the author of the book was a person absolutely without knowledge of the subject. And all this was so wittily done that Sergey Ivanovitch would not have disowned such wit himself. But that was just what was so awful. In spite of the scrupulous conscientiousness with which Sergey Ivanovitch verified the correctness of the critic’s arguments, he did not for a minute stop to ponder over the faults and mistakes which were ridiculed; but unconsciously he began immediately trying to recall every detail of his meeting and conversation with the author of the article. “Didn’t I offend him in some way?” Sergey Ivanovitch wondered. And remembering that when they met he had corrected the young man about something he had said that betrayed ignorance, Sergey Ivanovitch found the clue to explain the article.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The American soil is full of the corpses of my ancestors, through 4-00 years and at least three wars. Why i__s_m_�_fn:edom, my citizenship, in question now? What one begs the Amer- AMERICAN DREAM AND AMERICAN NEGRO 7 1 7 ican people to do, for all our sakes, is simply to acceot:/our historv _ _ It seems to me when I watch Americans in Europe that what they don't know about Europeans is what they don't know about me. They were not trying to be nasty to the French girl, rude to the French waiter. They did not know that they hurt their feelings: they didn't have any sense that this particular man and woman were human beings. Thev walked over them with the same so� qf.J:�_L�rJ djgnorance.and condescension, the chann..a.IJ.d..cheerfulness,.with which they had patted me on tbe_head.and-which made them upset when I was upset. When I was brought up I was taught in American history books that Mrica had no history and that neither had I. I was a savage abo�t whom the least sard the-bettef\\vfio fiad been saved by Europe and who had been brought to America_ill CQ!:Irse, I believed it. I diqr1 't h�v� much _c hQi�e .. These were the only books there were. Everyone else seemed to agree. If you went out of Harlem the whole world agreed. What you saw was much bigger, whiter, cleaner, safer. The garbage was collected, the children were happy. You would go back home and it would seem, of course, that this .was an-.ac;t4>t= - Goo. You. belonged where white peopl�_l;!t_j:Q!!. It is only since World War II that there has been a counter image in the world. That image has not come about because of any legislation by any American Government, but because Mrica was suddenly on the stage of the world and Mricans had to be dealt with in a way they had never been dealt with before. This gave the Amer:iqq_ Negro, for_the _ .first time, a sense of himself not as a savage. It has �reatec l and.will - create a great �anycol1undniffis . - ·· ---- One of the things the white worlp __ q()_��- not know,_b_uLI think I know, rs tli'[fo�ople are just like everybody s....�� we are also mercenaries, dictators, murderers, liars. We are human, too. Unless we can establish some kind of dialogue between those people who enjoy the American dream and those people who have not achieved it, we will be in terrible trouble. This is what concerns me most. We are sitting in this 718 OTHER ESSAYS room and we arc all civilized; we can talk to each other, at least on certain levels, so that we can walk out of here assum ing that the measure of our politeness has some effect on the world .

• From Escape (2007)

  The two attorneys asked the judge if they could meet to try to work out a deal. I didn’t quite know why that was happening. The judge put a time limit on their meeting and the rest of us sat and waited. When my attorney, Doug White, came back, he told me they’d reached a deal. I would get temporary custody, but Merril was going to get full visitation rights. The protective order would remain in place. Merril agreed to pay for counseling for his daughters—which he’d opposed—but only if the therapist was neutral about polygamy. In other words, the therapist was to be an advocate for the children and keep whatever feelings he or she had about polygamy out of the counseling sessions. I felt blindsided. My attorney had rolled over and handed Merril nearly everything he’d demanded. I told Doug I didn’t need as much protection as my children did. He said that I didn’t have any grounds on which to prove Merril should not be allowed to see his children unsupervised. “I have fought these cases before,” my attorney said, “and men will work hard to get the right for visitation, then once they get it they drop the whole thing and never see the kids. It is not something that is worth fighting for because it really isn’t an issue.” It was an issue to me—I felt we had been sold down the river. At the time I was unaware that I had the right to reject the deal my attorney made. I had lived so long without rights that I didn’t understand the ones I now had. The attorneys outlined their deal to the judge. She asked me if I was in agreement with this. I was in such a state of shock that I stood before her feeling numb and dazed. I had no idea I could converse with the judge, so I just said that yes, I agreed with the deal. What I learned later was that the judge discounted my allegations of abuse against Merril because I agreed in court to let him have unsupervised visitations. This made me look like either a bad mother or a liar. My credibility was shattered. Legally, I could now lose my children. A guardian ad litem was assigned to this case, but that had the potential to work against me because at this point all my children were saying they wanted to return to Merril. They believed there would be terrible repercussions against them if they sided with me. They knew that in FLDS society their father held all the power, and in their eyes that made me powerless. I hadn’t been allowed to parent them in a traditionally loving and nurturing way when I was living with Merril. They knew I was their mother, of course, but they had others.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Anywhere good?” Charles raised his eyebrows like he knew what good was, but Lionel suspected that he did not. No one did. Partly because there was no good for mathematicians. You got a job in a university or you were a consultant. If you were lucky. If you weren’t, you adjuncted at three separate community colleges and worked in the small, dark hours of the morning and the evening on whatever small corner of the universe you had carved out for yourself in your graduate studies, but with far fewer resources and far less time. And then, year over year, the light of your future dimmed and died like a far-flung star. In the end, you told people that you had once studied with a Nobel laureate. And that you had once given a paper at the same conference as Terry Tao. And that you had once been nominated for the Fields Medal. All of this while the people you went to graduate school with raced out ahead of you and solved the universe’s deep mysteries. Your peers superseded you until you could hardly remember what they were like when the two of you had stood in their kitchen one snowy fall night drinking rosé and toasting their graduation. Lionel knew and the host knew, and maybe, it was possible, Charles knew, too, that this was just polite dinner chatter. But it made Lionel feel worse. He sipped the wine, wishing in a cold, cruel part of himself that the host would fail his defense. But then Lionel ran over that thought with a bright white streak and erased it. The host’s lips parted and those great, expensive teeth of his flashed in the kitchen light. In the living room, the party went on. Voices rose and fell. And someone called for the wine. “Yeah,” the host said slowly. He put his hand at the small of Lionel’s back, leaned over, and kissed him. His lips were animal warm. Startlingly so. He seemed feverish. The host withdrew and winked at Charles. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you all about it.” Then he lifted the bottle over his head and posed at the doorway. There was a loud, shrill cheer. Charles turned to Lionel. “You okay?” Lionel set his glass on the counter. The host went out to adoring noise, and Lionel eased himself down to the floor. He braced his back against the cupboard. Charles took a seat opposite him, but sinking to the floor, he winced and hissed in pain. “I know what that’s like,” he said. “What?” “I know a couple assholes in my program, too.” Lionel nodded, then shook his head. “No, he’s not an asshole. He’s talented.” “You can be both.” “If you’re talented, don’t you deserve to be an asshole?” “I’m not sure that’s true,” Charles said. “But people seem to think it is.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Consider I pray you with your selfe, with what frivolous trifles so marvellous a thing is wrought: for by Hercules I swear I give her nothing else save a little Dill and Lawrell leaves, in Well water, the which she drinketh and washeth her selfe withall. Which when she had spoken she went into the chamber and took a box out of the coffer, which I first kissed and embraced, and prayed that I might [have] good successe in my purpose. And then I put off all my garments, and greedily thrust my hand into the box, and took out a good deale of oyntment and rubbed my selfe withall. THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER How Apuleius thinking to be turned into a Bird, was turned into an Asse, and how he was led away by Theves. After that I had well rubbed every part and member of my body, I hovered with myne armes, and moved my selfe, looking still when I should bee changed into a Bird as Pamphiles was, and behold neither feathers nor appearance of feathers did burgen out, but verily my haire did turne in ruggednesse, and my tender skin waxed tough and hard, my fingers and toes losing the number of five, changed into hoofes, and out of myne arse grew a great taile, now my face became monstrous, my nosthrils wide, my lips hanging downe, and myne eares rugged with haire: neither could I see any comfort of my transformation, for my members encreased likewise, and so without all helpe (viewing every part of my poore body) I perceived that I was no bird, but a plaine Asse.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When his parents split up, his dad used to call him every Thursday and on weekends. But Lionel didn’t know what to say to him, and they’d spend a couple minutes on the phone in total silence. Then his dad would ask to speak to his mom, and Lionel would give the phone over to her. Lionel wasn’t sure what you were supposed to say to other people over the phone. That time last year, when his dad came to see him after he’d tried to kill himself, had been the first time they’d seen each other in years. And what had his dad said? You look homeless. “I’ll send him an email,” Lionel said. Charles hooked his finger over the top of the pillowcase and pulled. It was looser than Lionel first thought, and the nails wedged into the wall squeaked. “I don’t think you secured this,” Charles said. “Is this just plaster?” Charles tapped the wall with his knuckles and frowned. “You’ve made your point.” Charles lowered himself to the floor. He was wearing a gray sweater and just his underwear, no socks. He stretched his legs out under the table and brushed Lionel’s ankles with his big toe. He rested his head against the cupboard doors and closed his eyes. Then he started to hum, and his toe switched back and forth over the knobs of Lionel’s ankle bones in time to the humming. “Is that what you’re working on?” Charles shook his head, but the humming grew louder, and he smirked a little. He was having fun at Lionel’s expense. “Very funny.” “You don’t know Tchaikovsky?” “Did Bach write that?” Lionel said. Charles laughed loudly, and it was like that sound from last night when he’d stood on the porch and howled. “Is Bach the only composer you know?” “I know about Chopin,” Lionel said. “He’s a composer.” “Well, with Bach and Chopin, you could probably fake your way through a dinner party.” “Is that what you do? Fake it?” “Don’t you?” Charles asked. Lionel felt stupidly hurt by that. Not because he objected in principle, but because it implied that the two of them sitting in Lionel’s kitchen was fake. Not real. “Sure,” Lionel said. “I’m a big faker.” He left the table and sat next to Charles on the floor. Closer to the window, he could hear the wind kissing the narrow gap at the top of the pillowcase. He reached up and back, his shoulder pinching a little, and pulled the broken halves of the ruler down. On the back, the blue marker had faded to black. He’d written his name there and the year he’d gotten it. Charles took the ruler from him and put the two halves together. “This has seen better days.” “Yeah,” Lionel said. Charles made to throw the ruler into the trash across the room. Lionel reached for it. “Don’t do that.” “It’s busted,” Charles said, holding the ruler out away from Lionel. “What’s the deal?”

• From Escape (2007)

  “It’s true,” she said. “I am really going to have a baby and I hope it will be a girl.” I thought Tammy would be overjoyed, but she seemed subdued. “Maybe if it’s not a girl then you’ll get one next time.” “Barbara was the first person I told, then Merril. I’ve waited a few weeks before telling my sister wives.” “Tammy, I’m so happy for you,” I said. Tammy and I were not close at this point because I no longer felt I could trust her. She was always tattling on her sister wives to Barbara. We’d barely been on speaking terms, but this broke the ice between us. Conceiving was never a problem for me, which made Tammy envy me. But now we were on even ground again. A few months later I became pregnant for the fourth time and was vomiting daily from morning sickness. Tammy gave birth in January. She wanted her delivery to be a big production. Not only did she invite Merril’s six wives, but she also wanted all of her sister wives from her marriage to the late prophet, Uncle Roy, to come, too. There were at least a dozen people in the delivery room. Thankfully, I was too sick to attend—one of the only gifts morning sickness ever gave to me. But Tammy’s baby became stuck in the delivery canal during labor. She had to be moved into several different and awkward positions to try and free the baby. I was told later that the mood at the clinic was tense because Tammy’s baby was in real trouble. Merril left the delivery room at that point. He was uncomfortable with the situation and found a place at the clinic to take a nap. Barbara went with him and rubbed his head, neck, and shoulders trying to help him relax and sleep. Tammy seemed to have been abandoned and betrayed in her hour of need. She had been blindly loyal to Barbara and Merril and was very upset that they had not stayed by her side during the traumatic birth. Her newborn son started having seizures after birth. Merril wouldn’t let her take him to the hospital, but she was allowed to see a doctor. Merril named Tammy’s son, Parley, without consulting her. Tammy had another name picked out for her son, and she wanted to include her family at the naming ceremony. But for whatever reason, Merril prevented this from happening. We had a family Sunday school in the living room. Tammy was there with Parley. After Sunday school ended, Merril took Parley away from her and asked his sons to help him name him. I had never been able to choose any of my children’s names or even participate in a discussion with Merril about them. This was just the way we did things in the FLDS, and I was used to the idea.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  The man surprises him: “Sorry—but I'm not into paying.” The man drives away angrily. Another replaces him. Jim walks to the driver's window. The motor of the car continues to purr. Shirtless, too, his pants at his ankles, cock hard, the driver, goodlooking, reaches out to touch Jim's groin. Now he pulls out Jim's cock. Jim touches the other's bare chest, stretching cock. He would like this man to come home with him, but he will not commit himself to suggesting it. Through the window the man's mouth pulls Jim's cock expertly into the deepest part of the throat—the rash scene instantly over. By mutual signal, they withdraw. Now a very handsome dark youngman drives by in a mangled sportscar. “You got a place?” he asks Jim. Jim is very attracted to him; he's glad he didn't go home with the other man. “Yeah—just a few minutes from here,” he says. But he won't ask him over, can't commit himself even now. “Follow you there?” “Sure.” And so the night will end early, Jim thinks. And long before the purgatorial dawn he avoids. 12:10 A.M. The Apartment. Two beautiful male bodies lie side by side naked. They don't touch. Neither moves. Each looks straight ahead, away from the other. Used to being pursued, each waits for the other to advance first. Both are severely turned on, cocks rigid. Now they glance at each other, each wanting the other even more now. But they look away. Their cocks strain in isolation. Nothing. Nothing. Jim jumps off the bed, the other reaches for his clothes simultaneously. Looking away from each other, both dress hurriedly, each cut deeply by regret they did not connect. VOICE OVER: Interview 2 VOICE OVER: Interview 2 I' M INTERVIEWED BY the editor of a radical gay newspaper. I explain that I never set out to do “research” on my books. City of Night began as a letter I wrote in El Paso to a friend of mine, telling him my experiences during Mardi Gras. I wrote Numbers in a frenzy of three months after I returned to Los Angeles and spent every day in Griffith Park counting sexual encounters. I wrote This Day's Death (the only book of mine I dislike, and increasingly) after I was busted. The interviewer remarks on the “pathos, despair, compulsion” in my books. I say: “I feel there's an element of all those in gay life. Despair is very real—and it's not an indictment of the gay world to say so. Consider the imposed schizophrenia, wearing a mask, putting it on, taking it off….” And the imposed religious guilt! It was the basis for confession. You had to tell your “trespasses” to a faceless, whispering voice that kept insisting, “How many times did you commit that sin? How many times?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They were cranky on the drive home, and mean, waspish to each other. They sniped and fought and insulted each other, until Marta pulled them over into a roadside motel, where the sheets were scratchy and hard. And she pushed Sigrid onto the bed and pulled her pants off. She pressed her face between Sigrid’s legs and kissed her against the outside of her panties. Sigrid was warm. She smelled like the field. After that, it was easygoing. They drove with the soft, blurry focus of people in love. Sigrid, who had gotten sunburned on the last day, drowsed. Marta played a Billie Holiday song and hummed along as they moved downward through the state. The trees gave way, turning steadily into flat fields drenched in yellow and green. The air grew thicker, heavier. And then, eventually, they were back. • • • One evening in the fall, Marta returned home to find Peter on her doorstep. He was tan and had filled out. He looked like a high-definition version of himself. He stood up the moment he saw her car. And, as she got out of it, he walked over to her. “Marta, it’s been a while,” he said. “A year,” she said, leaning against her car door. “How long have you been here?” “Here, as in the country, or here, as in town, or here, as in on your doorstep?” “All three, I guess,” she said. “I got in yesterday,” he said. “I came over a little while ago to see if you’d be here. But then I decided to wait.” She almost asked him what he was waiting for, but she didn’t. She almost asked him inside, but she didn’t. Peter seemed to be waiting for that, didn’t know what to do without the offer. “Can we sit down somewhere?” he asked, looking back toward the house. “The place is a mess,” she said. “Let’s just sit in my car.” “All right, then,” he said, and they got inside. Marta rested her hands on the wheel out of habit, stared directly ahead. Peter squirmed in the passenger seat. He had always driven when they were together. “This is funny, being in here again,” he said. “It is,” Marta offered. “Well, what’s on your mind?” “Oh, well. That’s a great question, a real great question.” He was fiddling with the center console. He lifted it, stared into its maw of papers and pill bottles, then dropped it shut. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m back.” “The thought did cross my mind,” she said. “My mother’s dying,” he said. “I came back to see her, and, well. I wanted to see you, too. I miss you.”

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  If only violence would stop for a comparable time! “[He] is correct in saying that I had ‘no desire to file an official complaint’ against the desk officer. What he omitted is that I never intended to file any official complaint whatsoever against anyone. I made clear to the investigating officer that my purpose was solely to bring attention to [this] … not to see anyone reprimanded.… It gives me no personal gratification to learn that two inexperienced officers … were chastised in this matter. “Finally, [he] commends me for coming to the aid of a fellow citizen. I appreciate his kind commendation. However, beyond that, a further disturbing implication arises. What a sad irony that we have reached a time when one is commended for doing what should be totally expected, the coming to the aid of any threatened being, whether he or she be a private citizen mugged or a police officer in trouble.” A few days later I receive the following letter from the Commanding Officer of the Internal Affairs Division of the Los Angeles Police Department: “An investigation has been conducted into your report of misconduct by members of this Department. “The investigation established that the concerned employees failed to take appropriate action when you notified them that a crime had just occurred. “You may be assured that this Department does not tolerate such conduct and that appropriate disciplinary action has been administered. “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. “Very truly yours.” But nothing changes. A year later, an attempt to get the police to thwart a potentially murderous attack, this time in a gay area, would be met with contemptuous indifference. 8:44 P.M. Greenstone Park. The Area of the Garage on Oak Street Greenstone Park. H E ATE AT home—a large steak, salad, green vegetables, milk. Honey. He showered. Changed to another set of Levi's and boots. Instead of a shirt, he wears the open brown-leather vest. He prepares a fresh thermosful of protein to carry with him. Where now? To Selma to hustle? To Greenstone for “numbers”? He could go to one of the many gaybars, but generally they're too frozen for him—“waxworks,” he calls them. The charade of drinking depresses him, and he doesn't care for liquor. The streets are the areas of defiance. Saturday night. Clear, hot. He goes to Greenstone Park. No cars, no shadows in the concrete house, no one along the paths. Only a silent, waiting eeriness. A limbo-time, when the hunt is shifting over. He stands desolately on the stone ledge. Now headlights wash over him for seconds. But the car drove on, stabbing further into the desolation. Didn't the man see him? He waits. The same car comes around again. Again it drives by. Still, no one. Jim walks along the deserted path, curiously courting the awareness of encroaching isolation, as if he were studying the features of a sleeping lover. Listening to the silence.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  135 to try to outgrow what they have been taught and which they instinctively know is wrong. As Hemingway himself said, this moment is the beginning of all modern American ¿ ction. Twain again laid the novel aside for a time, and when he came back to it, he ¿ nished it in a way that no one has liked very much. Huck ¿ nds Jim a prisoner on the Phelps farm, where he is joined by Tom Sawyer, who orchestrates an escape for Jim full of contrived details that come from books but which do not advance the cause of Jim’s freedom. Eventually, Tom announces that Miss Watson has died, freeing Jim in her will, thus making all of this a game. We understand Tom Sawyer’s part in this: this is just the way he is. What we do not understand is Huck’s part: why is Huck so willing to go along with Tom Sawyer’s outrageous plots? What has happened to the relationship he had with Jim on the raft, when he was willing to go to hell rather than abandon Jim? By the novel’s end, Huck becomes Sancho Panza to Tom’s Don Quixote again—a sidekick, whose moral growth on the trip down the river seems to be forgotten. The ending raises all manner of questions about what happens in the book: does Huck grow and change or not? Can an individual learn to transcend what he or she has been taught or not? The ending has been considered an artistic failure by some; by others, a deliberate artistic decision by Twain, who by the time he ¿ nished the book did not believe that we can transcend our experience, that we always carry with us our shore values. Twain’s ¿ nal views on what he called “the damned human race,” foreshadowed at the end of Huckleberry Finn , are captured in late stories like “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” and “The Mysterious Stranger.” They also show up in the Colonel Sherburn episode in Huckleberry Finn, suggesting that by the end of his life Twain had lost his faith in regional values and had come to believe that character and circumstance are our fate, which we can never transcend—a point we have already encountered in Madame Bovary. The ending of the novel has raised many questions, which you will need to decide for yourself as you read it. Ŷ

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  He who sits highest, and hath semblance of having left undone what he ought to have done, and who moves not his lips with the others’ songs, was Rudolph the Emperor, 5 who might have healed the wounds that were the death of Italy, so that too late through another she is succoured. The other, who looks to be comforting him, ruled the land where the water rises which the Moldau carries away into the Elbe, and the Elbe into the sea:

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  Whereas when the Oscar Wilde Bookshop opened in New York in 1967 there were scarcely enough titles to fill a single bookcase and the slack had to be taken up by biographies of stars and astrological charts, by the beginning of the twenty-first century there were thousands and thousands of backlisted books and several hundred new titles being published every year. There were gay murder mysteries and lesbian comics, biographies of almost every major (and minor) lesbian or gay figure from the past, gay gift books, gay cat books, gay picture books, studies of gay Hollywood, of gay Indian prostitutes, of ancient Greek homosexuality, even books for the children of lesbian or gay male parents. Since many gay bookstores kept backlisted books and every title had a very long shelf life, the gay or lesbian buyer had a huge, even overwhelming choice. But a new problem was facing the serious gay reader. Partly because the big chains were now openly stocking at least the most commercially viable titles, more and more lesbian and gay bookstores were shutting down. These closing stores had a dire effect on gay culture. For decades they had been venues for gay readings as well as centers for gay encounters—a nonsexual and nonalcoholic alternative to the bar scene, places that were less focused on youth and beauty and erotic availability and more directed towards intellectual curiosity across a wide social spectrum. There also seemed to be fewer and fewer gay and lesbian readers. Their disappearance was no doubt due to the general dumbing-down of the culture, and to the heightened gay presence in television and the cinema and local and even national politics. In the 1970s there were few elected gay officials and almost no gay movie stars or openly gay and lesbian TV personalities; as a result, writers were faute de mieux the primary spokespeople for the lesbian and gay community. Rita Mae Brown and Armistead Maupin were arguably the most famous lesbian and gay man of that period, now replaced by Ellen DeGeneres and a politician, say, such as Barney Frank, or an actor such as Rupert Everett. Whereas aspirations towards high culture had once been considered a necessary key to sophisticated gay life, in the dawning twenty-first century all that was needed by a young gay man was a good income, a pretty face, a taste for raves, and a gym-built body.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  On the night Nolan got popped, the same cop delivered Milton home in the back of the cruiser, but didn’t turn the lights on. Instead, he sent Milton out into the cool night on unsteady legs, tipsy and a little queasy. His parents looked at him as though from a precipice and shook their heads. No, that’s it, Milton. No more chances. How many times was that already since spring? Four? Five? No, Nolan wouldn’t like it one bit, parents whose love had a long, reproachful memory. Idaho had materialized as a vague threat in September, and that threat had grown ever more solid until they came into his room a few days before and laid it all out for him. His father had put the pamphlet in his hand. Milton had taken it, though he couldn’t meet their gazes. His room smelled damp on that day. Outside, he could hear music from a few houses over. Maybe it was best that he got some time away. That he spent some time on his own, learning how to be a man on his own terms. To see what the world would hold for him if he kept on this way. But Milton had wanted to ask them, What way? Because he drank? Because he smoked? Because he ran with Nolan and Tate and Abe? Because he’d stopped going to church? Because he stopped praying? He had sat clenching the slick, laminated pamphlet, its cover featuring a tough-looking boy with a white line down his face, on one side smirking, sneering, mean, and on the other a stern, hard gaze. But Milton couldn’t tell which was meant to be the before and which was supposed to be the after. He’d stared at the pamphlet, thinking, What’s so wrong with me? They said they’d write him letters when he went—or his mom had, anyway. His dad said nothing except that he expected him to do something with this chance, not to piss it away. Fucking Idaho. “Come on,” Nolan says. Milton squares his shoulders. He hasn’t told Nolan about Idaho or the camp yet, but soon he’ll have to. After Thanksgiving break they’ll have finals, and then Christmas vacation, and then it’s Idaho. He shoves his hands in his pockets. He can hear how pathetic he will sound if he’s like I have to tell you something or There’s something I gotta say. Like he’s about to ask Nolan to prom or to the fucking movies. There’s no way to get into it that isn’t dramatic or stupid. It’s all like showing off or making a scene. He can’t get it out and downplay it at the same time. So he keeps it to himself. He’ll text or something on the way to the airport. That’s when he’ll say it, when there’s no turning back, when the suddenness of the information will flash and disappear in the same instant. Easy. Simple.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Don’t be. It’s fine. We all make mistakes,” he said with as much patience as scorn. “We’ll take it from the top, if that’s okay with you.” “That would be wonderful,” Charles said through a tense jaw. “From the beginning, then, Magnus,” Farnland said, nodding to the slim pianist. The music started up again, and Charles sighed. He assumed a slouched, grumpy first. He could hear his knee click. The cartilage felt hot, like a delicate, burning fiber trapped under the bone. But when Farnland’s eyes came in search of him, his body had already slipped into the stream of the combination and was, for a moment, beyond reproach. “Dismal, dismal,” he said. Charles shared his barre with Mats and Alek. Mats was light-skinned with blond and brown curls. He had a boyish face, but his body was all mean, tight lines. He could jump to Jupiter, yet his quads were humble. Alek was self-conscious about his chipped front tooth and tried to conceal it by talking as little as possible, which made him seem shy or nice. Alek was a ferocious, expressive dancer with the kind of timing that made his dancing look totally effortless. “Long night,” Mats said. “The longest,” Charles droned, drawing his body up. His knee popped as he slid his foot forward and then flexed. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It wasn’t pain in the true sense of the word. It just burned, like a low, simmering flame. And just on the one side. He could see through to the end of the pain, its temporary nature. And this was a comfort. It hurt only on certain movements. Certain configurations of tension. For example, reversing the position, sliding the leg back and flexing the other way, was totally without discomfort. He logged this information, storing it for when he would need to compensate. His body was a long tally of adjustments and allocations. He could feel, though, his feet coming to life. The muscles warming as they stretched.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Then forms. Now he sees men leaning against the back wall or idling in the space behind the back row, at least eight hunters in the small area. Perhaps a dozen more sit in the rows farthest back. Now definite bodies and faces emerge like flotsam from a black sea. Throughout the cavernous mouth which almost devours the screen, there is only a scattering of permanently occupied seats, mainly by older men watching the screen raptly. Others shift constantly from row to row. The concentration of hunters is now in the back—those who have come to make it, not to see the cheap movie. Jim moves a few feet into the aisle, to be seen clearly; his torso is barely covered by a tight sleeveless T-shirt open in front. A man sitting at the end of the row near him leans into the aisle. Moving just slightly back, Jim allows his thigh to be brushed by the other's straining shoulder. The man opens Jim's pants and takes out his cock to suck. In the same row another man's head burrows into the lap of the man beside him. Jim retreats to the back. A man tries to grope him randomly, but he's very unattractive, and Jim moves away, to the other side of the theater; twin sides flank the squat projection booth. Fewer people here. He notices a handsome man a few rows ahead. Another sits next to him, but the first is clearly not interested in the second. Jim walks down the aisle, just slightly past the row the handsome man is in. The man looks at him. Now Jim stands at the end of that row. The man moves one seal over—separating himself farther from the other man on that row—and lowers the seat next to himself, inviting Jim. Jim sits. The man's hand floats over Jim's groin. Hands inside each other's flies feel warm growing cocks. Leaning over the seat, the man sucks Jim's cock. Then he straightens up His hand encourages Jim's head downward, to blow him Jim wants to, but not here. To move away, he uses the fact that another man has sat behind them. But he glances back hoping the man he sat next to will follow him elsewhere But he doesn't.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles asked. His voice cleaved through the kitchen, and Lionel regained some sense of equilibrium. “Yeah,” the host said, “I got a couple interviews.” “Anywhere good?” Charles raised his eyebrows like he knew what good was, but Lionel suspected that he did not. No one did. Partly because there was no good for mathematicians. You got a job in a university or you were a consultant. If you were lucky. If you weren’t, you adjuncted at three separate community colleges and worked in the small, dark hours of the morning and the evening on whatever small corner of the universe you had carved out for yourself in your graduate studies, but with far fewer resources and far less time. And then, year over year, the light of your future dimmed and died like a far-flung star. In the end, you told people that you had once studied with a Nobel laureate. And that you had once given a paper at the same conference as Terry Tao. And that you had once been nominated for the Fields Medal. All of this while the people you went to graduate school with raced out ahead of you and solved the universe’s deep mysteries. Your peers superseded you until you could hardly remember what they were like when the two of you had stood in their kitchen one snowy fall night drinking rosé and toasting their graduation. Lionel knew and the host knew, and maybe, it was possible, Charles knew, too, that this was just polite dinner chatter. But it made Lionel feel worse. He sipped the wine, wishing in a cold, cruel part of himself that the host would fail his defense. But then Lionel ran over that thought with a bright white streak and erased it. The host’s lips parted and those great, expensive teeth of his flashed in the kitchen light. In the living room, the party went on. Voices rose and fell. And someone called for the wine. “Yeah,” the host said slowly. He put his hand at the small of Lionel’s back, leaned over, and kissed him. His lips were animal warm. Startlingly so. He seemed feverish. The host withdrew and winked at Charles. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you all about it.” Then he lifted the bottle over his head and posed at the doorway. There was a loud, shrill cheer. Charles turned to Lionel. “You okay?” Lionel set his glass on the counter. The host went out to adoring noise, and Lionel eased himself down to the floor.