Disgust

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 Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “That is an expression, Sir John,” said Marianne, warmly, “which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and ‘setting one’s cap at a man,’ or ‘making a conquest,’ are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.” Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as heartily as if he did, and then replied, “Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other. Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining of ankles.” CHAPTER X. Marianne’s preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision, styled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to make his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more than politeness; with a kindness which Sir John’s account of him and her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview to be convinced. Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister’s, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardly be seen without delight. From Willoughby their expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the remembrance of his assistance created. But when this passed away, when her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay.

• From The City of God

  125 Lecture 6 Transcript—The Price of Empire (Books 2–3) Nor is the dissoluteness he disapproves of a merely this-worldly decadence. In fact, it exemplifies the religious impiety of those who are drawn to worldly delights. Augustine draws parallels between human dissolution and the dissoluteness of the demons, the fallen angels whom he thinks flit about our world, trying to seduce us into sin and servility before their will. We’ll talk more about the demons more fully a bit later. Here, what’s important is that this dissoluteness spills over from the depraved’s absorption in this-worldly goods and pleasures, their hostility towards their own integrity and dignity as moral agents, and it even infects their dealings with the divine. Everything from food to the gods is treated, Augustine thinks, as a device for the dissolute’s own private pleasure. In this way, Augustine suggests, the end state of the depraved is as much a properly theological concept as it is a political one. It encourages a wholly absorbing self-indulgence and fantasy life, which in turn reinforces our belief that this sort of domination is the only way we can be truly happy in the world. And this in turn infects our dealings with the divine, for once we become people for whom happiness amounts to nothing but the immediate satisfaction of our basest desires, we will inevitably begin to treat our gods just like we treat our servants. This debased and dissolute vision of happiness is exhibited in the public spectacles and dramas that the Romans put on and flocked to see—those moments when, for Augustine, their psycho-political souls, as it were, are most vividly on display, where the spectacles themselves become a spectacle, as the audience as well as the players are now put on the stage. It’s important to remember what I said earlier regarding Augustine’s complaints about the spectacles and the performances. First of all, don’t think he was against what we would recognize as plays or live dramas or operas. The spectacles were far more than this; often they involved real violence, inertly witnessed by the audience. When he

• From The City of God

  181 Lecture 9—Public Religion in Imperial Rome (Books 6–7) › Here again Augustine pounces. Varro talks about being pious before the mystery and hints at esoteric and probably naturalistic interpretations of the select gods, but none of his sophistry will get us to the true God. Instead it is all an effort to make the city’s gods palatable to intellectuals and encourage their sloth. ›Augustine asks who “selects” the select gods to receive the false honor of being naturalistic forces. Varro and his cronies may think they do, but in fact, they themselves have been seduced by the demons they direct others to obey. ›Worse yet, these select gods are not what anyone would call natural forces; they are social pathologies such as war and marital rape, camouflaged demons that seem natural only to those trapped inside them. Varro lets them be called gods simply because he is afraid. „Varro’s cowardice and sloth disgust Augustine, and Varro’s blindness to social pathology angers him. But more deeply still there is a kind of futility to Varro’s efforts that makes Augustine feel pity for him. „Augustine’s compassion arises from Varro’s ultimate failure of imagination, his unexamined assumption of the idea of the god or gods as the soul’s universe. Varro is a monotheist, but a kind of pantheistic monotheist, who believes that divinity is the way that this material world is charged with a sort of transcendent mystery. Varro talks about being pious before the mystery and hints at esoteric and probably naturalistic interpretations of the select gods, but none of his sophistry will get us to the true God. Instead it is all an effort to make the city’s gods palatable to intellectuals and encourage their sloth.

• From The City of God

  186 Books That Matter: The City of God the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. Gibbon was right about the Romans. They worried that other attachments and loyalties might damage attachment to the civic good. They were in no way idiots. They had questions and doubts about their gods, and some of those doubts and questions were very, very profound. And they were quite smart—smart enough to allow themselves not to be too troubled by religious questions, as well. Religion, they thought, should be obeyed for its civic benefits, regardless of whether you think it is literally true. In this lecture, we look at Books 6 and 7 of The City of God, and especially Augustine’s critique of this nest of ideas. He found this view quite popular among his pagan contemporaries, and even among the Christians who were among the elite classes, as well. He also found it horrifying, and his critique of it is savage, acute, and exemplary. Here, we’ll see why. Here, we want to look at the details of this critique, the character of the view under critique, and assess the advantages and disadvantages of both positions. Now remember, the first five books assessed Roman popular religion and belief in this-worldly happiness. This project foundered, Augustine thought, on the problem of evil, the fact that in our world there’s always enough trouble to undermine our confidence in any secure worldly achievement as lasting. Our inevitable confrontation with this fact works to undo our capacity to be happy wholly in terms of worldly goods. Thus these books were about basic existential problems of humanity—the inescapable fact of suffering and the inevitability of our fragility. And they argued that the pagan gods don’t ensure this- worldly success. In a way, they were an extended reflection on the consequences of the loss of moral innocence, our recognition of the problem of evil.

• From The City of God

  Why allege to me the mere names and words of "glory" and "victory? " Tear off the disguise of wild delusion, and look at the naked deeds: weigh them naked, judge them naked. Let the charge be brought against Alba, as Troy was charged with adultery. There is no such charge, none like it found:the war was kindled only in order that there "Might sound in languid ears the cry Of Tullus and of victory. " [143] This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and parricidal war,--a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when he has spoken with brief but hearty commendation of those primitive times in which life was spent without covetousness, and every one was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on:"But after Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory consisted in the greatest empire;" [144] and so on, as I need not now quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory. For, as our Scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth. " [145]Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute a difference, that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the wide plains were filled with the carcasses not of two gladiators, but of many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed not by the amphitheatre, but by the whole world, and furnished a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their posterity, so long as the fame of it is handed down?

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  His son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr. Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters. Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for them. He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:—he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;—more narrow-minded and selfish. When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother’s fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity. “Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.” He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent. No sooner was his father’s funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood, without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law, arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her right to come; the house was her husband’s from the moment of his father’s decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood’s situation, with only common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;—but in her mind there was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of immovable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of showing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it.

• From The City of God

  126 Books That Matter: The City of God was against the spectacles, he was against rape on the stage; murder with real blood spraying the audience, like snuff films. Furthermore, spectacles were more than just entertainment. They were explicitly rituals for the city, civic and religious at once, and they attempted to express something of deep importance for the citizens. He’s not fulminating against the ancient version of going to the movies; he’s concerned about the kinds of civic rituals that, repeated over a lifetime, groove particular and pernicious channels into peoples’ souls. Instead of attending, rapt, at these perverse entertainments, Augustine says, people should look to the true spectacles that God provides: the wonders of Creation, the glorious stories of saints and martyrs. In sum, he says, the Christian liturgy—the celebrations, feast days, and overall way of life of the churches—offer a rival set of spectacular entertainments to the pagan world’s spectacular self- presentations, and it is to these true spectacles, he says, that we should give heed. But the spectacles are not the ultimate object of Augustine’s hostility. Through them we are also brought face to face with another set of agents whom Augustine discusses—namely, the demons. For Augustine, following the pagans, it was gods and not humans, who instituted the spectacles and the games. But these gods, for Augustine, were in fact demons. Now, demons appear in The City of God—in Augustine’s text The City of God—in a way unlike their portrayal elsewhere in Augustine’s writing. In the Confessions, for example, evil is all-too-human, and Satan only merits two mentions. But in The City of God, Satan and the demons have a very functional role in Augustine’s depiction of the cosmic and, more importantly, the social order. They are active and dynamic forces, seducing humans to self-deception and doom.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Good heavens!” cried Elinor, “could it be—could Willoughby!”— “The first news that reached me of her,” he continued, “came in a letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly, which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom he had made poor and miserable; but had he known it, what would it have availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who can feel for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.” “This is beyond every thing!” exclaimed Elinor.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 28. --Of the Victory of Sylla, the Avenger of the Cruelties of Marius. Then followed the victory of Sylla, the so-called avenger of the cruelties of Marius. But not only was his victory purchased with great bloodshed; but when hostilities were finished, hostility survived, and the subsequent peace was bloody as the war. To the former and still recent massacres of the elder Marius, the younger Marius and Carbo, who belonged to the same party, added greater atrocities. For when Sylla approached, and they despaired not only of victory, but of life itself, they made a promiscuous massacre of friends and foes. And, not satisfied with staining every corner of Rome with blood, they besieged the senate, and led forth the senators to death from the curia as from a prison. Mucius Scaevola the pontiff was slain at the altar of Vesta, which he had clung to because no spot in Rome was more sacred than her temple; and his blood well-nigh extinguished the fire which was kept alive by the constant care of the virgins. Then Sylla entered the city victorious, after having slaughtered in the Villa Publica, not by combat, but by an order, 7000 men who had surrendered, and were therefore unarmed; so fierce was the rage of peace itself, even after the rage of war was extinct. Moreover, throughout the whole city every partisan of Sylla slew whom he pleased, so that the number of deaths went beyond computation, till it was suggested to Sylla that he should allow some to survive, that the victors might not be destitute of subjects. Then this furious and promiscuous licence to murder was checked, and much relief was expressed at the publication of the proscription list, containing though it did the death-warrant of two thousand men of the highest ranks, the senatorial and equestrian. The large number was indeed saddening, but it was consolatory that a limit was fixed; nor was the grief at the numbers slain so great as the joy that the rest were secure. But this very security, hard-hearted as it was, could not but bemoan the exquisite torture applied to some of those who had been doomed to die. For one was torn to pieces by the unarmed hands of the executioners; men treating a living man more savagely than wild beasts are used to tear an abandoned corpse. Another had his eyes dug out, and his limbs cut away bit by bit, and was forced to live a long while, or rather to die a long while, in such torture. Some celebrated cities were put up to auction, like farms; and one was collectively condemned to slaughter, just as an individual criminal would be condemned to death. These things were done in peace when the war was over, not that victory might be more speedily obtained, but that, after being obtained, it might not be thought lightly of. Peace vied with war in cruelty, and surpassed it:for while war overthrew armed hosts, peace slew the defenceless. War gave liberty to him who was attacked, to strike if he could; peace granted to the survivors not life, but an unresisting death.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 5. --Of Apis King of Argos, Whom the Egyptians Called Serapis, and Worshipped with Divine Honors. In these times Apis king of Argos crossed over into Egypt in ships, and, on dying there, was made Serapis, the chief god of all the Egyptians. Now Varro gives this very ready reason why, after his death, he was called, not Apis, but Serapis. The ark in which he was placed when dead, which every one now calls a sarcophagus, was then called in Greek soros, and they began to worship him when buried in it before his temple was built; and from Soros and Apis he was called first [Sorosapis, or] Sorapis, and then Serapis, by changing a letter, as easily happens. It was decreed regarding him also, that whoever should say he had been a man should be capitally punished. And since in every temple where Isis and Serapis were worshipped there was also an image which, with finger pressed on the lips, seemed to warn men to keep silence, Varro thinks this signifies that it should be kept secret that they had been human. But that bull which, with wonderful folly, deluded Egypt nourished with abundant delicacies in honor of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis, because they worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. On the death of that bull, when they sought and found a calf of the same color,--that is, similarly marked with certain white spots,--they believed it was something miraculous, and divinely provided for them. Yet it was no great thing for the demons, in order to deceive them, to show to a cow when she was conceiving and pregnant the image of such a bull, which she alone could see, and by it attract the breeding passion of the mother, so that it might appear in a bodily shape in her young, just as Jacob so managed with the spotted rods that the sheep and goats were born spotted. For what men can do with real colors and substances, the demons can very easily do by showing unreal forms to breeding animals.

• From The City of God

  196 Books That Matter: The City of God of money. Augustine spends a great deal of time talking about the fact that Varro thinks it’s fine that one of the names of Jupiter is pecunia—money. Then things get more disturbing still. Augustine notes that some gods, such as Mars, seem to be naturalizing and even divinizing horrific human activities, such as war. Here, an imagined divinity has been used to grant legitimacy to a savage and by no means necessary human practice. And, at the end of his discussion of Mars, Augustine actually poignantly says, I only wish there were no real war, as much as there is no real Mars. And then, finally, things get even more gruesome indeed. Augustine offers a description of the veritable pantheon of gods who are involved, or so the Romans thought they were involved, in the wedding night of a newly married couple. It is not just that there is a god to baptize their fertility; there are gods whose job is to make the man aroused enough to have sex with the girl he has married—and most definitely it would have been a girl, not a woman—and there are other gods whose job is to hold that girl down while her husband has sex with her. That sounds a lot like marital rape, and in fact Augustine suggests it’s something close to it. He is not saying this, that is, as a way of approving what the Romans think their gods do. What kind of gods approve these things, egg on these behaviors in humanity? These are not gods at all, Augustine says; at best, they are demons. And Varro lets them be called gods simply because he is afraid of the populace. Now, Varro’s cowardice and sloth disgust Augustine, and Varro’s blindness to social pathology angers him. But more deeply still there is a kind of futility to Varro’s efforts that make Augustine most deeply feel pity for him. This is due to Varro’s ultimate failure of imagination, his unexamined assumption of the immanentism of this world, the idea that the god or gods are no more than the soul’s universe. Varro seems to be a

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She riffled absently through a file box on her desk and then turned back to me, her refined and motherly mouth slightly pursed. “You know, dear, there’s not too much choice of jobs around here for Colored people, and especially not for Negro girls. Now if you could type…” “No, ma’am, I can’t,” I said quickly. She closed her file with a snap. “I tell you what, dear. Most of our unskilled people find some sort of work in the ‘hardware’ factories on the other side of town. Why don’t you try some of the places over there? They don’t register with us, but you can walk right in and ask if they’re hiring. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Mrs. Kelly pushed her chair back, stood, and gave a little tug to her fawn-grey tailored suit. “As soon as you learn how to type you come back and see us, now, you hear?” I thanked her and left. The following week, I got a job running a commercial X-ray machine. Keystone Electronics was a relatively small factory as factories went in Stamford. It had a government contract to process and deliver quartz crystals used in radio and radar machinery. These small crystals were shipped from Brazil, cut at the plant and then ground, refined, and classified, according to how heavy an electrical charge they carried. It was dirty work. The two floors of the plant rang with the whine of huge cutting and refining machines. Mud used by the cutting crew was all over everything, cemented by the heavy oil that the diamond-grit blades were mounted in. Thirty-two mud saws were always running. The air was heavy and acrid with the sickly fumes of carbon tetrachloride used to clean the crystals. Entering the plant after 8:00 A.M. was like entering Dante’s Inferno. It was offensive to every sense, too cold and too hot, gritty, noisy, ugly, sticky, stinking, and dangerous. Men ran the cutting machines. Most local people would not work under such conditions, so the cutting crew was composed of Puerto Ricans who were recruited in New York City and who commuted every morning up to Stamford on company-paid tickets. Women read the crystals on a variety of X-ray machines, or washed the thousands and thousands of crystals processed daily in huge vats of carbon tetrachloride. All the help in the plant, with the exception of the foreman and forewomen, were Black or Puerto Rican, and all the women were local, from the Stamford area. Nobody mentioned that carbon tet destroys the liver and causes cancer of the kidneys. Nobody mentioned that the X-ray machines, when used unshielded, delivered doses of constant low radiation far in excess of what was considered safe even in those days. Keystone Electronics hired Black women and didn’t fire them after three weeks.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  This something else is love, of course, and it is with the handling of this love story that the movie really goes to town. It is true that no one in the original Carmen, least of all Carmen and her lover, are very clearly motivated; but there it scarcely matters because the opera is able to get by on a purely theatrical excitement, a sort of papier-mâché violence, and the intense, if finally incredible, sexuality of its heroine. The movie does not have any of this to work with, since here excitement or violence could only blow the movie to bits, and, while the movie certainly indicates that Carmen is a luscious lollipop, it is on rather more uncertain ground when confronted with the notion of how attractive she finds men, and it cannot, in any case, use this as a motivating factor. Carmen is thus robbed at a stroke of even her fake vitality and all her cohesiveness and has become, instead, a nice girl, if a little fiery, whose great fault—and, since this is a tragedy, also her triumph—is that she looks at “life,” as her final aria states it, “straight in de eye.” In lieu of sexuality the movie-makers have dreamed up some mumbo jumbo involving buzzards’ wings, signs of the zodiac, and death-dealing cards, so that, it appears, Carmen ruins Joe because she loves him and decides to leave him because the cards tell her she is going to die. The fact that between the time she leaves him and the time he kills her she acquires some new clothes, and drinks—as one of her arias rather violently indicates she intends to—a great deal of champagne is simply a sign of her intense inner suffering. Carmen has come a long way from the auction block, but Joe, of course, cannot be far behind. This Joe is a good, fine-looking boy who loves his Maw, has studied hard, and is going to be sent to flying school, and who is engaged to a girl who rather resembles his Maw, named Cindy Lou. His indifference to Carmen, who has all the other males in sight quivering with a passion never seen on land or sea, sets her ablaze; in a series of scenes which it is difficult to call erotic without adding that they are also infantile, she goes after him and he falls. Here the technicolored bodies of Dandridge and Belafonte, while the movie is being glum about the ruin of Joe’s career and impending doom, are used for the maximum erotic effect. It is a sterile and distressing eroticism, however, because it is occurring in a vacuum between two mannequins who clearly are not involved in anything more serious than giving the customers a run for their money. One is not watching either tenderness or love, and one is certainly not watching the complex and consuming passion which leads to life or death—one is watching a timorous and vulgar misrepresentation of these things.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  We thought there might be small anomalies of spontaneous generation, of course. But this—this is a personification of polymorphousness unlike anything the world of human suck-fuckery has ever known. I used to work as a trainer at Ocean Playground. The squid show there was nothing compared to this.” At that moment an enormous arm reached out of the oily liquid, and a huge hand grasped at nothing in the air. Five penises hung dangling off the forearm—it looked like a bizarre bagpipe. The hand was made up of half a dozen clustered vaginas. “That’s gross,” said Rhumpa. Harry made a little fatalistic laugh. “They’re pumping so much porn in here that it’s just feeding and feeding, and it grows a new appendage every few days. It’s got about ten arms. One’s really long, but a lot of them are smaller.” “I can see that it’s not pretty,” Rhumpa said. “But is it good or is it evil?” “Nobody knows,” said Harry. “Nobody knows its language.” “I’m going to try to talk to it,” said Rhumpa. She put her hands to her mouth. “Hey, longdog!” she called with loud authority. “Jizm! Weeperhole!” The pornhand paused for a moment, ceased groping, then subsided under the vermilion waves of mingling smut imagery. “You really know languages,” said Harry, impressed. Rhumpa knew she could talk to the pornmonster given enough time and quiet. “I can’t engage with it here,” she said. “Do you have a side chamber where we can go?” “Sure,” said Harry. “The sluice gate has an overflow tank, and sometimes the monster goes in there to rest.” Suddenly, several fountains of what looked like sperm, but orchid and navel orange in color, jetted up from the froth. Rhumpa looked at Harry questioningly. “It masturbates constantly,” Harry said. “You’ll have to put on a wetsuit.” Rhumpa nodded. They went to the room off the overflow tank. Rhumpa shucked off her shirt and pants and stepped into the suit. “Be careful,” said Harry. “Our containment system is only as good as its weakest link.” “Do you think it can feel love?” asked Rhumpa. “I doubt it,” said Harry. “I was reading Hawking’s book about the first seconds of the universe. I think our monster is as close as I’ll ever come to knowing what that’s like.” Harry hesitated. He looked a little green around the gills. “I’m going to have to leave you on your own here. I’ll be watching on the monitor. Men can’t take pornfumes for very long without fainting. We need breathing equipment. Women seem more immune.” Harry withdrew. Rhumpa walked out onto the tiled edge of the ancillary holding tank. She called out, “Hey, pornmonster! Cuntcall! Here it is!” She cupped her crotch through the wetsuit.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 4. --That the Worshippers of the Gods Never Received from Them Any Healthy Moral Precepts, and that in Celebrating Their Worship All Sorts of Impurities Were Practiced. First of all, we would ask why their gods took no steps to improve the morals of their worshippers. That the true God should neglect those who did not seek His help, that was but justice; but why did those gods, from whose worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life? Surely it was but just, that such care as men showed to the worship of the gods, the gods on their part should have to the conduct of men. But, it is replied, it is by his own will a man goes astray. Who denies it? But none the less was it incumbent on these gods, who were men's guardians, to publish in plain terms the laws of a good life, and not to conceal them from their worshippers. It was their part to send prophets to reach and convict such as broke these laws, and publicly to proclaim the punishments which await evil-doers, and the rewards which may be looked for by those that do well. Did ever the walls of any of their temples echo to any such warning voice? I myself, when I was a young man, used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles; I saw the priests raving in religious excitement, and heard the choristers; I took pleasure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses, of the virgin Coelestis, [90] and Berecynthia, [91] the mother of all the gods. And on the holy day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy for the ear--I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man--nay, so impure, that not even the mother of the foul-mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience. For natural reverence for parents is a bond which the most abandoned cannot ignore. And, accordingly, the lewd actions and filthy words with which these players honored the mother of the gods, in presence of a vast assemblage and audience of both sexes, they could not for very shame have rehearsed at home in presence of their own mothers. And the crowds that were gathered from all quarters by curiosity, offended modesty must, I should suppose, have scattered in the confusion of shame. If these are sacred rites, what is sacrilege? If this is purification, what is pollution? This festivity was called the Tables, [92] as if a banquet were being given at which unclean devils might find suitable refreshment. For it is not difficult to see what kind of spirits they must be who are delighted with such obscenities, unless, indeed, a man be blinded by these evil spirits passing themselves off under the name of gods, and either disbelieves in their existence, or leads such a life as prompts him rather to propitiate and fear them than the true God.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 18. --What Kind of Religion that is Which Teaches that Men Ought to Employ the Advocacy of Demons in Order to Be Recommended to the Favor of the Good Gods. In vain, therefore, have Apuleius, and they who think with him, conferred on the demons the honor of placing them in the air, between the ethereal heavens and the earth, that they may carry to the gods the prayers of men, to men the answers of the gods:for Plato held, they say, that no god has intercourse with man. They who believe these things have thought it unbecoming that men should have intercourse with the gods, and the gods with men, but a befitting thing that the demons should have intercourse with both gods and men, presenting to the gods the petitions of men, and conveying to men what the gods have granted; so that a chaste man, and one who is a stranger to the crimes of the magic arts, must use as patrons, through whom the gods may be induced to hear him, demons who love these crimes, although the very fact of his not loving them ought to have recommended him to them as one who deserved to be listened to with greater readiness and willingness on their part. They love the abominations of the stage, which chastity does not love. They love, in the sorceries of the magicians, "a thousand arts of inflicting harm," [314] which innocence does not love. Yet both chastity and innocence, if they wish to obtain anything from the gods, will not be able to do so by their own merits, except their enemies act as mediators on their behalf. Apuleius need not attempt to justify the fictions of the poets, and the mockeries of the stage. If human modesty can act so faithlessly towards itself as not only to love shameful things, but even to think that they are pleasing to the divinity, we can cite on the other side their own highest authority and teacher, Plato. [314] Virgil, AEn. 7, 338. Chapter 19. --Of the Impiety of the Magic Art, Which is Dependent on the Assistance of Malign Spirits. Moreover, against those magic arts, concerning which some men, exceedingly wretched and exceedingly impious, delight to boast, may not public opinion itself be brought forward as a witness? For why are those arts so severely punished by the laws, if they are the works of deities who ought to be worshipped? Shall it be said that the Christians have or dained those laws by which magic arts are punished? With what other meaning, except that these sorceries are without doubt pernicious to the human race, did the most illustrious poet say, "By heaven, I swear, and your dear life, Unwillingly these arms I wield, And take, to meet the coming strife, Enchantment's sword and shield. " [315] And that also which he says in another place concerning magic arts, "I've seen him to another place transport the standing corn," [316]

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  We even got to join the union. I was hired to run one of the two X-ray machines that read the first cuttings of raw quartz. This enabled the cutters to align their machines in such a way as to maximize the charge from each rock. Two machines were therefore stationed directly outside of the cutting room, open to the noise and mud and grit flying from the stone-cutters. These were the least desirable jobs for women because of the working conditions, and because there was no overtime or piecework bonuses to be made. The other machine was run by a young woman named Virginia, whom everybody called Ginger. I met her the first morning in the luncheonette across the street from the plant where I stopped to get coffee and a roll to celebrate my first day on the new job. We worked from 8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. with ten-minute coffee breaks at 10:00 A.M. and 2:30 P.M., and a half-hour lunch break at noon. The cutting “boys” made the first cut through the thick grease and mud of the machines, and then brought rough two-inch slabs to Ginger or me to be read for an electrical charge before they set the axis of their machines. The reading was obtained by a small X-ray beam passed through the crystal. There was a hood to be flipped to cover your fingers and prevent the X ray from touching you, but the second that it took to flip it down was often the difference between being yelled at for being too slow and a smooth-working relationship with the cutters. The rock was then sliced along the axis that had been marked with an oil pencil. We read it again, and it was sliced into slabs. Ginger and I read these slabs, tossing them, thick with grime and mud, into the barrels next to our machines. Those slabs were then taken away, washed in huge trays of carbon tetrachloride and cut into squares for the X-ray “reading room.” This was a cleaner, quieter place to work, where the crystals were read one last time and stacked according to degree charge. The women in the X-ray reading room made piecework bonuses over a large base expectation output, and these jobs were considered desirable. By cutting corners, saving time and not flipping the hood, it was possible to make a small weekly bonus. After the first week, I wondered if I could stick it out. I thought that if I had to work under those conditions for the rest of my life I would slit my throat.

• From The City of God

  Now had these things been feigned by the poets and acted by the mimics, they would without any doubt have been said to pertain to the fabulous theology, and would have been judged worthy to be separated from the dig nity of the civil theology. But when these shameful things,--not of the poets, but of the people; not of the mimics, but of the sacred things; not of the theatres, but of the temples, that is, not of the fabulous, but of the civil theology,--are reported by so great an author, not in vain do the actors represent with theatrical art the baseness of the gods, which is so great; but surely in vain do the priests attempt, by rites called sacred, to represent their nobleness of character, which has no existence. There are sacred rites of Juno; and these are celebrated in her beloved island, Samos, where she was given in marriage to Jupiter. There are sacred rites of Ceres, in which Proserpine is sought for, having been carried off by Pluto. There are sacred rites of Venus, in which, her beloved Adonis being slain by a boar's tooth, the lovely youth is lamented. There are sacred rites of the mother of the gods, in which the beautiful youth Atys, loved by her, and castrated by her through a woman's jealousy, is deplored by men who have suffered the like calamity, whom they call Galli. Since, then, these things are more unseemly than all scenic abomination, why is it that they strive to separate, as it were, the fabulous fictions of the poet concerning the gods, as, forsooth, pertaining to the theatre, from the civil theology which they wish to belong to the city, as though they were separating from noble and worthy things, things unworthy and base? Wherefore there is more reason to thank the stage-actors, who have spared the eyes of men and have not laid bare by theatrical exhibition all the things which are hid by the walls of the temples. What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable? And certainly they themselves have seen what they transact in secret through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not been able to conceal those same men miserably and vile enervated and corrupted. Let them persuade whom they can that they transact anything holy through such men, who, they cannot deny, are numbered, and live among their sacred things. We know not what they transact, but we know through whom they transact; for we know what things are transacted on the stage, where never, even in a chorus of harlots, hath one who is mutilated or an effeminate appeared. And, nevertheless, even these things are acted by vile and infamous characters; for, indeed, they ought not to be acted by men of good character. What, then, are those sacred rites, for the performance of which holiness has chosen such men as not even the obscenity of the stage has admitted?

• From The City of God

  These are the famous mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, all of which are shown to have reference to mortal seeds and to agriculture. Do these things, then,--namely, the tympanum, the towers, the Galli, the tossing to and fro of limbs, the noise of cymbals, the images of lions,--do these things, having this reference and this end, promise eternal life? Do the mutilated Galli, then, serve this Great Mother in order to signify that they who are in need of seed should follow the earth, as though it were not rather the case that this very service caused them to want seed? For whether do they, by following this goddess, acquire seed, being in want of it, or, by following her, lose seed when they have it? Is this to interpret or to deprecate? Nor is it considered to what a degree malign demons have gained the upper hand, inasmuch as they have been able to exact such cruel rites without having dared to promise any great things in return for them. Had the earth not been a goddess, men would have, by laboring, laid their hands on it in order to obtain seed through it, and would not have laid violent hands on themselves in order to lose seed on account of it. Had it not been a goddess, it would have become so fertile by the hands of others, that it would not have compelled a man to be rendered barren by his own hands; nor that in the festival of Liber an honorable matron put a wreath on the private parts of a man in the sight of the multitude, where perhaps her husband was standing by blushing and perspiring, if there is any shame left in men; and that in the celebration of marriages the newly-married bride was ordered to sit upon Priapus. These things are bad enough, but they are small and contemptible in comparison with that most cruel abomination, or most abominable cruelty, by which either set is so deluded that neither perishes of its wound. There the enchantment of fields is feared; here the amputation of members is not feared. There the modesty of the bride is outraged, but in such a manner as that neither her fruitfulness nor even her virginity is taken away; here a man is so mutilated that he is neither changed into a woman nor remains a man.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Moments after, Cheyenne’s clitoris went live. Her face cleared, and she beamed. “Finally!” she said. “Now down on the pussyrug, you two,” said Lila. “You must fix the repairs in place by gently grinding your gorgeous twats against each other.” Zilka and Cheyenne scissored themselves together and humped and ground, clit to blissfully reanimated clit. “Sealing it with a crimson pussy kiss,” said the Pearloiner, visibly moved. Lila opened a drawer and pulled out a large smooth wooden dildo, which she handed to the Pearloiner. “Madame, put this handmade Dendro wherever you would like it to go,” she said. The Pearloiner threw her strong tanned legs open and steered the dildo deep into her fur. She shook her head. “It’s good, but it’s not what I need,” she said. “I need live dick.” Lila pondered, then smiled. “Zilka, Cheyenne, take Madame P. to the pussywall and strap her so that her pussy and fanny are exposed for all to see. The last batch of Deprivos are arriving. They’ll take care of her hungry twitchet.” “Oh!” said the Pearloiner, feeling ripples of arousal. Rhumpa Visits the Pornmonste r A keeper named Harry, who wore short pants and had a little goatee, took Rhumpa to see the pornmonster. They went into the first airlock, and after the pressure equalized there they went into a second. It was darker there. The air was close, if not fetid. The hatch made a sucking sound and opened. They stood on the shore of a large underground lake, now the repository of the distilled contents of all the House of Holes’s pornsucker missions. Harry and Rhumpa went up a set of stairs hewn into the rock and stood on a balcony overlooking the lurid water, which glowed and glopped and slopped around the edges of the cavern. “It’s not terribly nice in here, is it?” said Rhumpa. Harry shook his head despairingly. “The more porn we’ve sucked out of the world, the larger the monster has grown,” he said. “This wasn’t in our forecasts. We thought there might be small anomalies of spontaneous generation, of course. But this—this is a personification of polymorphousness unlike anything the world of human suck-fuckery has ever known. I used to work as a trainer at Ocean Playground. The squid show there was nothing compared to this.” At that moment an enormous arm reached out of the oily liquid, and a huge hand grasped at nothing in the air. Five penises hung dangling off the forearm—it looked like a bizarre bagpipe. The hand was made up of half a dozen clustered vaginas. “That’s gross,” said Rhumpa.