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 The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And as a voice comes from a heart that sorroweth, such voice came from heaven, and thus it spake: “O my little bark, how ill art thou laden!”18 Then it seemed to me that the earth opened ’twixt the two wheels, and I saw a dragon come forth that fixed his tail up through the car; and like a wasp, that draws back her sting, drawing to him his spiteful tail he wrenched out part of the bottom and went his vagrant way.19 That which remained—even as teeming land with grass,—with those plumes, haply offered with sincere and kind intent, did again cover itself, and both wheels and the pole were covered again by them, such time that a sigh keeps the mouth open longer.20 Thus transformed, the sacred edifice put forth heads above its parts, three over the pole, and one at each corner. The first were horned like an ox, but the four had one single horn at the forehead; such monster never yet was seen.21 Seated upon it, secure as a fortress on a steep hill, a shameless harlot appeared to me, with eyes quick around. And, as though she should not be taken from him, a giant I saw erect at her side, and from time to time each kissed the other; but, because her lustful and vagrant eye she turned upon me, that fierce paramour did scourge her from head to feet. Then filled with jealousy and cruel with rage, he loosed the monster, and dragged it so far through the wood, that of this alone he made a screen between me and the harlot and the strange beast.22 1. Cf. Canto xxx, notes 19 and 20.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Whatever you say, Mom.’ ‘Just do me a favour, Zoor – just cool it this morning. I’d like to get through the day without everybody yelling.’ ‘Like I said – whatever you say.’ Kiki sat down at the kitchen table. She worked a wood-wormed groove at its edge with her finger. She could hear Zora’s eggs sizzle and spit under the pressure of the cook’s impatience, the stench of  the anatomy lesson burning pans already part of the process from the moment the gas was lit. ‘So where’d Levi get to?’ asked Zora brightly. ‘I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. He didn’t come back from work.’ ‘I hope he’s using protection.’ ‘Oh, God , Zora.’ ‘What? You should make a list of the subjects we’re not allowed to talk about any more. So I know.’ ‘I think he went to a club. I’m not sure. I can’t keep him home.’ ‘No, Mom,’ said Zora in a two-note trill, meant to pacify the paranoid, the tediously menopausal. ‘Of course no one’s saying that.’ ‘As long as he’s in on school nights. I don’t know what else I can do. I’m his mother – I’m not a jailer.’ ‘Look, I don’t care . Salt?’ ‘On the side – just there.’ ‘So, you doing anything today? Yoga?’ Kiki flopped forward in her chair and held her calves in both hands. The weight of herself tugged her further forward than most people. If she wanted, she could put her palms flat on the floor. ‘I don’t think so. I tore something last time.’ ‘Well, I won’t be here for lunch. I can only really eat one meal a day at this point. I’m going shopping – you should come,’ offered Zora, without enthusiasm. ‘We haven’t done that in for ever. I need some new shit to wear. I hate everything I own.’ ‘You look fine.’ ‘Right. I look fine. Except I don’t,’ said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air , or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies – it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home  On Beauty on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it. ‘I can’t face the mall today. I might go and see Carlene, actually.’ Zora swivelled round from her eggs. ‘Carlene Kipps?’ ‘I saw her Tuesday – she’s not too well, I think. I might take the lasagne in the icebox.’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  It has a cute little porcelain platform for the shit to fall on so you can inspect it before it whirls off into the watery abyss, and there is, in fact, no water in the toilet until you flush it. As a result German toilets have the strongest shit smell of any toilets anywhere. (I say this as a seasoned world traveler.) Then there’s the filthy rag of a public towel, hanging over a tiny wash basin which has only a cold water tap (for you to dribble cold water over your right hand—or whichever hand you happen to use). I did quite a lot of thinking about toilets when I lived in Europe. (That was how crazy Germany made me.) I once even attempted a classification of people on the basis of toilets. “The History of the World Through Toilets” (I optimistically wrote at the top of a clean page in my notebook) “an epic poem???” British: British toilet paper. A way of life. Coated. Refusing to absorb, soften, or bend (stiff upper lip). Often property of government. In the ultimate welfare state even the t.p. is printed with propaganda. The British toilet as the last refuge of colonialism. Water rushing overhead like Victoria Falls, & you an explorer. The spray in your face. For one brief moment (as you flush) Britannia rules the waves again. The pull chain is elegant. A bell cord in a stately home (open to the public, for pennies, on Sundays). German: German toilets observe class distinctions. In third-class carriages: rough brown paper. In first class: white paper. Called Spezial Krepp. (Requires no translation.) But the German toilet is unique for its little stage (all the world’s a) on which shit falls. This enables you to take a long look, choose among political candidates, and think of things to tell your analyst. Also good for diamond miners trying to smuggle out gems by bowel. German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything. Italian: Sometimes you can read bits of Corriere della Sera before you wipe your ass on the news. But in general the toilets run swift here and the shit disappears long before you can leap up and turn around to admire it. Hence Italian art. Germans have their own shit to admire. Lacking this, Italians make sculptures and paintings. French: The old hotels in Paris with two Brobdingnagian iron footprints straddling a stinking hole. Orange trees planted in Versailles to cover cesspool smell. Il est defendu de faire pipi dans la chambre du Roi. Lights in Paris toilets which only go on when you turn the lock. I somehow cannot make sense of French philosophy & literature vis à vis the French approach to merde.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In a sense, every poem is an attempt to extend the boundaries of one’s body. One’s body becomes the landscape, the sky, and finally the cosmos. Perhaps that’s why I often find myself writing in the nude. I had lost weight during our strange journey but I was still rather too fat for fashion; not obese but just about ten pounds too plump to get away with a bikini. Medium-sized breasts, big ass, deep navel. Some men claimed to like my figure. I knew (in the way one knows things one does not quite believe) that I was considered pretty and that even my big ass was considered attractive by some, but I loathed every extra ounce of fat. It had been a lifelong struggle: gaining weight, losing it, gaining it back with interest. Every extra ounce was proof of my own weakness and sloth and self-indulgence. Every extra ounce proved how right I was to loathe myself, how vile and disgusting I was. Excess flesh was connected with sex—that much I knew. At fourteen, when I had starved myself down to ninety-eight pounds, it was out of guilt about sex. Even after I had lost all the weight I wanted to lose—and more— I would deny myself water. I wanted to feel empty. Unless the hunger pangs boomed resoundingly, I hated myself for my indulgence. Clearly a pregnancy fantasy—as my husband the shrink would say—or maybe a pregnancy phobia. My unconscious believed that my jerking off Steve had made me pregnant and I was getting thinner and thinner to try to convince myself it wasn’t so. Or else maybe I longed to be pregnant, primitively believed that all the orifices of the body were one, and feared that any food I took would seed my intestines like sperm, and fruit would grow from me. You are what you eat. Mann ist was mann isst. The war between the sexes began with the sinking of male teeth into a female apple. Pluto lured Persephone to hell with six pomegranate seeds. Once she had eaten them the bargain was unbreakable. To eat was to seal one’s doom. Close your eyes and open your mouth. Down the hatch. Eat, darling, eat. “Just eat your name,” grandmother used to say. “My whole name?” “I…” she wheedled…(a mouthful of detested liver)…“S…” (a lump of mashed potatoes and carrots)…“A…” (more hard, overcooked liver)…“D…” (another lump of cold, carroty potato)…“O…” (a limp floweret of broccoli)…“R…” (she raises the liver to my lips again and I bolt from the table)…“you’ll get beriberi!” she shouts after me. Everyone in my family has a whole repertory of deficiency diseases (which haven’t been heard of in New York for decades).

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “We’ve got a steak we were about to grill,” the husband (Marty) offered nervously. “Would you like to join us?” When in doubt, eat. I knew his type. “Super,” said Adrian. The man who came to dinner. I could see he was really turned on by the prospect of screwing Judy with her husband looking on. That was his thing. Since Bennett was off the scene, he’d somewhat lost interest in me. We sat down to steak and the story of their lives. They’d decided to be reasonable, Marty said, instead of getting divorced like three-quarters of their friends. They’d decided to give each other plenty of freedom. They’d done a lot of “group things,” as he put it, on Ibiza, where they’d spent the month of July. Poor bastard, he didn’t look very happy. He was repeating some swinging sexual catechism like a bar mitzvah boy. Adrian was grinning. Converts already. He could just take it from there. “How about you?” Judy asked. “We’re not married,” I said. “We don’t believe in it. He’s Jean-Paul Sartre and I’m Simone de Beauvoir.” Judy and Marty looked at each other. They’d heard those names somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. “We’re famous,” I said snidely. “Actually, he’s R. D. Laing and I’m Mary Barnes.” Adrian laughed, but I could see I’d lost Judy and Marty. Pure self-protection. I felt a showdown coming on, and I had to throw my intellectual weight around. It was all I had left. “Right,” said Adrian. “Why don’t we just swap for starters?” Marty looked crestfallen. It wasn’t very complimentary to me, but the truth was I didn’t much want him either. “Be my guests,” I said to Adrian. I wanted to see him hoist on his own petard—whatever the hell that means. (I never have been sure.) “I think I’ll sit this one out. If you want me to, I’ll watch.” I had decided to outdo Adrian at his own game. Cool. Uninvolved. All that crap. Marty then leapt up to protest his virility. “I think we should swap or nothing,” he stammered. “Sorry,” I said, “I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I’m just not in the mood.” I was about to add, “Besides I may have clap…” but I decided not to ruin it for Adrian. Let him do his thing. I was tough. I could take it. “Don’t you think we should reach a group decision?” Judy said. Boy, was she ever the ex-girl scout! “I’ve already made my decision,” I said. I was awfully proud of myself. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to back down. I was saying no and liking it. Even Adrian was proud of me. I could tell by the way he was grinning. Character building, that’s what he was doing. He’d always been interested in saving me from myself. “Well,” I said, “shall we watch you or just sit near the swimming hole and talk? I’m amenable to either.”

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Personally, I am experientially blind to dubstep, although my teenage daughter clearly has that concept. Concepts also give meaning to the chemicals that create tastes and smells. If I served you pink ice cream, you might expect (simulate) the taste of strawberry, but if it tasted like fish, you would find it jarring, perhaps even disgusting. If I instead introduced it as “chilled salmon mousse” to give your brain fair warning, you might find the same taste delicious (assuming you enjoy salmon). You might think of food as existing in the physical world, but in fact the concept “Food” is heavily cultural. Obviously, there are some biological constraints; you can’t eat razor blades. But there are some perfectly edible substances that we don’t all perceive as food, such as hachinoko, a Japanese delicacy made of baby bees, which most Americans would vigorously avoid. This cultural difference is due to concepts. 7 Every moment that you are alive, your brain uses concepts to simulate the outside world. Without concepts, you are experientially blind, as you were with the blobby bee. With concepts, your brain simulates so invisibly and automatically that vision, hearing, and your other senses seem like reflexes rather than constructions. Now consider this: what if your brain uses this same process to make meaning of the sensations from inside your body—the commotion arising from your heartbeat, breathing, and other internal movements? From your brain’s perspective, your body is just another source of sensory input. Sensations from your heart and lungs, your metabolism, your changing temperature, and so on, are like the ambiguous blobs of figure 2-1. These purely physical sensations inside your body have no objective psychological meaning. Once your concepts enter the picture, however, those sensations may take on additional meaning. If you feel an ache in your stomach while sitting at the dinner table, you might experience it as hunger. If flu season is just around the corner, you might experience that same ache as nausea. If you are a judge in a courtroom, you might experience the ache as a gut feeling that the defendant cannot be trusted. In a given moment, in a given context, your brain uses concepts to give meaning to internal sensations as well as to external sensations from the world, all simultaneously. From an aching stomach, your brain constructs an instance of hunger, nausea, or mistrust. 8 Now consider that same stomachache if you’re sniffing a diaper heavy with pureed lamb, as my daughter’s friends did at her gross foods birthday party. You might experience the ache as disgust. Or if your lover has just walked into the room, you might experience the ache as a pang of longing.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  We ate flavorless mealy bananas, bruised peaches and very palatable potato chips, and die Kleine told me everything. Her voluble but disjointed account was accompanied by many a droll moue. As I think I have already observed, I especially remember one wry face on an “ugh!” basis: jelly-mouth distended sideways and eyes rolled up in a routine blend of comic disgust, resignation and tolerance for young frailty. Her astounding tale started with an introductory mention of her tent-mate of the previous summer, at another camp, a “very select” one as she put it. That tent-mate (“quite a derelict character,” “half-crazy,” but a “swell kid”) instructed her in various manipulations. At first, loyal Lo refused to tell me her name. “Was it Grace Angel?” I asked. She shook her head. No, it wasn’t, it was the daughter of a big shot. He— “Was it perhaps Rose Carmine?” “No, of course not. Her father—” “Was it, then, Agnes Sheridan perchance?” She swallowed and shook her head—and then did a double take. “Say, how come you know all those kids?” I explained. “Well,” she said. “They are pretty bad, some of that school bunch, but not that bad. If you have to know, her name was Elizabeth Talbot, she goes now to a swanky private school, her father is an executive.” I recalled with a funny pang the frequency with which poor Charlotte used to introduce into party chat such elegant tidbits as “when my daughter was out hiking last year with the Talbot girl.” I wanted to know if either mother learned of those sapphic diversions? “Gosh no,” exhaled limp Lo mimicking dread and relief, pressing a falsely fluttering hand to her chest. I was more interested, however, in heterosexual experience. She had entered the sixth grade at eleven, soon after moving to Ramsdale from the Middle West. What did she mean by “pretty bad”? Well, the Miranda twins had shared the same bed for years, and Donald Scott, who was the dumbest boy in the school, had done it with Hazel Smith in his uncle’s garage, and Kenneth Knight—who was the brightest—used to exhibit himself wherever and whenever he had a chance, and— “Let us switch to Camp Q,” I said.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  she’d say. As a professor, my father was good at guiding people to their own conclusions. He was dispassionate, sulky, even a little snide at times. I took after him. My mother did say once we were both “stone wolves.” But she herself had a cold aura, too. I don’t think she realized it. None of us had much warmth in our hearts. I was never allowed to have any pets. Sometimes I think a puppy might have changed everything. My parents died one after the other my junior year of college—first my dad from cancer, then my mother from pills and alcohol six weeks later. All of this, the tragedy of my past, came reeling back with great force that night I woke up in the supply closet at Ducat for the last time. It was ten at night and everyone had gone home. I trudged up the dark stairway to clean out my desk. There was no sadness or nostalgia, only disgust that I’d wasted so much time on unnecessary labor when I could have been sleeping and feeling nothing. I’d been stupid to believe that employment would add value to my life. I found a shopping bag in the break room and packed up my coffee mug, the spare change of clothes I kept in my desk drawer along with a few pairs of high heels, panty hose, a push-up bra, some makeup, a stash of cocaine I hadn’t used in a year. I thought about stealing something from the gallery—the Larry Clark photo hanging in Natasha’s office, or the paper cutter. I settled on a bottle of champagne—a lukewarm, and therefore appropriate, consolation. I turned off all the lights, set the alarm, and walked out. It was a cool early-summer night. I lit a cigarette and stood facing the gallery. The lasers weren’t on, but through the glass I could see the tall white poodle that looked out onto the sidewalk. It was baring its teeth, with one gold fang glinting in the light of the streetlamp. There was a red velvet bow tied around its little bouffant hairdo. Suddenly, a feeling rose up in me. I tried to squash it down, but it nestled into my bowels. “Pets just make messes. I don’t want to have to go around picking dog hairs out of my teeth,” I remembered my mother saying. “Not even a goldfish?” “Why? Just to watch it swim around and die?”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He looked sideways across his chest for it and grabbed it by one leg. He dangled it, watching it tread the air like a swimmer treading water. “Don’t kill it!” I pleaded. “I thought you were scared of it.” “I am, but I don’t want to see you kill it.” I shrank back. “How about this?” he said, pulling off one of its legs. “Oh God—don’t! I hate it when people do that.” Adrian went on plucking off the legs like daisy petals. “She loves me, she loves me not…” he said. “I hate that,” I said. “Please don’t.” “I thought you hated bugs.” “I don’t like them crawling on me—but I can’t stand to see them killed either. And it makes me sick to see you mutilate it like that. I can’t watch,” and I got up and ran back to the swimming hole. “I don’t understand you!” Adrian shouted after me. “Why are you so bloody sensitive?” I ducked under the water. — We didn’t speak again until after lunch. “You’ve ruined it,” Adrian said, “with your fretting and worrying and hypersensitivity.” “OK, then drop me off in Paris and I’ll fly home from there.” “With pleasure.” “I could have told you that you’d get sick of me if I ever displayed any human feelings. What kind of plastic woman do you want, anyway?” “Don’t be daft. I just want you to grow up.” “As defined by you.” “As defined by both of us.” “Aren’t you democratic,” I said sarcastically. We began packing the car, banging tent poles and gear. It took about twenty minutes, during which we didn’t exchange a word. Finally we got in the car. “I suppose it doesn’t mean anything to you that I cared enough about you to shake up my whole life for you.” “You didn’t do it for me,” he said. “I was just the excuse.” “I never would have been able to do it without feeling as strongly about you as I did.” And then with a shudder that went through my whole body, I remembered my longing for him in Vienna. The weakness in the knees. The churning guts. The racing heart. The shortness of breath. All the things he stirred in me which had made me follow him. I longed for him as he was when I first met him. The man he had become was disappointing. “The man under the bed can never be the man over the bed,” I said. “They’re mutually exclusive. Once the man comes up from under he’s no longer the man you desired.” “What the hell are you talking about?” “My theory of the zipless fuck,” I said. And I explained it as best I could. “You mean I disappoint you?” he asked, putting his arms around me and pulling me down until my head was in his lap. I smelled the gamy smell of his dirty trousers. “Let’s get out of the car,” I said.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She squeezed Jerome’s hand and he, surprised by this emotion, returned the pressure. Without any announcement, or at least not one the Belseys heard, the crowd began to file into the church. The interior was as simple as the exterior suggested. Wood beams ran between stone walls, and the rood screen was of a dark oak, plainly carved. The stained glass was pretty, colourful, but rather basic, and there was only one painting, high on the back wall: unlit, dusty and too murky to make anything of at all. Yes, when you looked up and around you – as one instinctively does in a church – everything was much as you might have imagined. But then your eyes came to earth again, and at this point all those who had entered this church for the first time suppressed a shudder. Even Howard – who liked to think himself ruthlessly unsentimental when it came to matters of architectural modernization – could find nothing to praise. The stone floor had been completely covered by a thin, orange-and-grey capsule carpet; many large squares of fuzzy industrial felt slotted together. The pattern therein was of smaller orange boxes, each with its own sad grey outline. This orange had grown brownish under the influence of many feet. And then there were the pews, or rather their absence. Every single one had been ripped out and in their place rows of conference chairs – in this same airport-lounge orange – were placed in a timid half-circle meant to foster (so Howard envisioned) the friendly, informal atmosphere in which tea mornings and community meetings are conducted. The final effect was one of unsurpassable ugliness. It was not hard to reconstruct the chain of logic behind the decision: financial distress, the money to be had from selling nineteenth-century pews, the authoritarian severity of horizontal aisles, the inclusiveness of semicircles. But no – it was still a crime. It was too ugly. Kiki sat down with her family on the uncomfortable little plastic chairs. No doubt Monty wanted to prove he was a man of the people, as powerful men so often like to do – and at his wife’s expense. Didn’t Carlene deserve better than a small ruined church on a noisy main road?  On Beauty Kiki felt herself quiver with indignation. But then, as people took their seats and soft organ music began, Kiki’s logic flipped all the way around. Jerome was right: this was Carlene’s place of local worship. Really Monty was to be commended. He could have had the funeral somewhere fancy in Westminster, or up the hill in Hampstead, or – who knows – maybe even in St Paul’s itself (Kiki did not pause over practicalities here), but no.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Her camp five years ago. Curious coincidence—… took her to a dude ranch about a day’s drive from Elephant (Elphinstone). Named? Oh, some silly name—Duk Duk Ranch—you know just plain silly—but it did not matter now, anyway, because the place had vanished and disintegrated. Really, she meant, I could not imagine how utterly lush that ranch was, she meant it had everything but everything, even an indoor waterfall. Did I remember the redhaired guy we (“we” was good) had once had some tennis with? Well, the place really belonged to Red’s brother, but he had turned it over to Cue for the summer. When Cue and she came, the others had them actually go through a coronation ceremony and then—a terrific ducking, as when you cross the Equator. You know. Her eyes rolled in synthetic resignation. “Go on, please.” Well. The idea was he would take her in September to Hollywood and arrange a tryout for her, a bit part in the tennis-match scene of a movie picture based on a play of his—Golden Guts—and perhaps even have her double one of its sensational starlets on the Klieg-struck tennis court. Alas, it never came to that. “Where is the hog now?” He was not a hog. He was a great guy in many respects. But it was all drink and drugs. And, of course, he was a complete freak in sex matters, and his friends were his slaves. I just could not imagine (I, Humbert, could not imagine!) what they all did at Duk Duk Ranch. She refused to take part because she loved him, and he threw her out. “What things?” “Oh, weird, filthy, fancy things. I mean, he had two girls and two boys, and three or four men, and the idea was for all of us to tangle in the nude while an old woman took movie pictures.” (Sade’s Justine was twelve at the start.) “What things exactly?” “Oh, things … Oh, I—really I”—she uttered the “I” as a subdued cry while she listened to the source of the ache, and for lack of words spread the five fingers of her angularly up-and-down-moving hand. No, she gave it up, she refused to go into particulars with that baby inside her. That made sense. “It is of no importance now,” she said pounding a gray cushion with her fist and then lying back, belly up, on the divan. “Crazy things, filthy things. I said no, I’m just not going to [she used, in all insouciance really, a disgusting slang term which, in a literal French translation, would be souffler] your beastly boys, because I want only you. Well, he kicked me out.”

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  A drop slid down a ridge between my ribs. I turned away, felt him sit on the edge of the bed, listened to his breathing. “I should go,” he said after a minute. “I’ve been here too long again. Claudia will start to worry.” I tried to lift my hand to give him the finger, but I couldn’t. I tried to speak but I groaned instead. “VCRs are going to be obsolete in a year or two, you know,” he said. Then I heard him in the bathroom, the clink of the seat hitting the tank, a spattering of piss, a flush, then a long rush of water at the sink. He was probably washing off his dick. He came back in and got dressed, then lay down behind me on the bed, spooned me for about twenty seconds. His hands were cold on my breasts, his breath hot on my neck. “This was the last time,” he said, as though he’d been put out, as though he’d done me some huge favor. Then he lurched up off the bed, making my body bounce like a buoy on an empty sea. I heard the door slam. I got up, pulled on some clothes, took a few Advil, and dragged the duvet from the bedroom to the sofa. There on the coffee table was a DVD player, still in its box. The sight of it disgusted me, the receipt tucked under the lid. Paid in cash. Trevor would have known I didn’t own any DVDs. I put on the Home Shopping Network. In a haze, I ordered a rice cooker from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, a cubic zirconia tennis bracelet, two push-up bras with silicone inserts, and seven hand-painted porcelain figurines of sleeping babies. I’d give them to Reva, I reasoned, to condole her. Finally, exhausted, I drifted off just a centimeter from my mind, and spent the night on the sofa in fitful half sleep, my bones digging hard into the sagging cushions, my throat itchy and sore, my heart racing and slowing at intervals, my eyes flicking open now and then to make sure I was really alone in the room. Six IN THE MORNING, I called Dr. Tuttle. “I’m having an insomnia flare-up,” I said, which was finally true. “I can hear it in your voice,” she said. “I’m low on Ambien.” “Well, that’s no good. Excuse me while I put the phone down for a moment.” I heard the whoosh of a toilet, some gutteral grunting that I assumed was the sound Dr. Tuttle made when she hoisted up her pantyhose, then a tinkle of water in the sink. She got back on the phone and coughed. “I don’t care what the FDA has to say: a nightmare is just an invitation to rewire your neurocircuits. It’s really a matter of listening to your instincts. People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  For a moment, a life like that didn’t sound bad at all, so I got up off the sofa and took an Infermiterol, brushed my teeth, went into my room, took off all my clothes, got into bed, pulled the duvet up over my head, and woke up sometime later—a few days, I guessed—gagging and coughing, Trevor’s testicles swinging in my face. “Jesus Christ,” he was mumbling. I was still adrift, dizzy. I closed my eyes and kept them closed, heard the crackling of his hand jerking his spit-covered penis, then felt him ejaculate on my breasts. A drop slid down a ridge between my ribs. I turned away, felt him sit on the edge of the bed, listened to his breathing. “I should go,” he said after a minute. “I’ve been here too long again. Claudia will start to worry.” I tried to lift my hand to give him the finger, but I couldn’t. I tried to speak but I groaned instead. “VCRs are going to be obsolete in a year or two, you know,” he said. Then I heard him in the bathroom, the clink of the seat hitting the tank, a spattering of piss, a flush, then a long rush of water at the sink. He was probably washing off his dick. He came back in and got dressed, then lay down behind me on the bed, spooned me for about twenty seconds. His hands were cold on my breasts, his breath hot on my neck. “This was the last time,” he said, as though he’d been put out, as though he’d done me some huge favor. Then he lurched up off the bed, making my body bounce like a buoy on an empty sea. I heard the door slam. I got up, pulled on some clothes, took a few Advil, and dragged the duvet from the bedroom to the sofa. There on the coffee table was a DVD player, still in its box. The sight of it disgusted me, the receipt tucked under the lid. Paid in cash. Trevor would have known I didn’t own any DVDs. I put on the Home Shopping Network. In a haze, I ordered a rice cooker from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, a cubic zirconia tennis bracelet, two push-up bras with silicone inserts, and seven hand-painted porcelain figurines of sleeping babies. I’d give them to Reva, I reasoned, to condole her. Finally, exhausted, I drifted off just a centimeter from my mind, and spent the night on the sofa in fitful half sleep, my bones digging hard into the sagging cushions, my throat itchy and sore, my heart racing and slowing at intervals, my eyes flicking open now and then to make sure I was really alone in the room. Six IN THE MORNING, I called Dr. Tuttle. “I’m having an insomnia flare-up,” I said, which was finally true. “I can hear it in your voice,” she said. “I’m low on Ambien.”

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This may be the only way to watch TV: I certainly saw some remarkable sights. Blondes and brunettes and, possibly, redheads-my screen was color le ss-w ashing their hair, relentlessly smiling, teeth gleaming like the grillwork of automobiles, breasts firmly, chillingly en cased-packaged, as it were-and brilliantly uplif ted, forever, all sagging corrected, forever, all middle age bul ge- middle age bu(!J'e!-d efeated, eyes as sensuous and mysterious as jelly beans, lips covered with cellophane, hair sprayed to the con sistency of aluminum, girdles forbidden to slide up, stockings defeated in their subversive tendencies to slide down, to turn crooked, to snag, to run, to tear, hands prevented from aging by incredibly soft detergents, fingernails forbidden to break by superbly smooth enamels, teeth forbidden to decay by mys terious chemical formulas, all conceivable body odor, under no matter what contingency, prevented for twenty-f our hours of every day, forever and forever and forever, children's bones knit strong by the foresight of vast bakeries, tobacco robbed of any harmful effects by the addition of mint, the removal of nicotine, the presence of filters and the length of the cigarette, tires which cannot betray you, automobiles which will make you feel proud, doors which cannot slam on those precious fingers or fingernails, diagrams illustrating- proving-how swiftly impertinent pain can be driven away, square-jawed youngsters dancing, other square-j awed youngsters, armed with guitars, or backed by bands, howling; all of this-and so much more!-pun ctuated by the roar of great automobiles, overtaking gangsters, the spatter of tommy-guns mowing them down, the rise of the organ as the Heroine braces herself to Tell All, the moving smile of the housewife who has just won a fortune in metal and crockery; news-news? from where?-dropping into this sea with the alertness and ir relevancy of pebbles, sex wearing an aspect so implacably dispiriting that even masturbation (by no means mutual ) seems one of the possibilities that vanished in Eden, and 692 NOTH ING PE RSONAL 693 murder one's last, best hope-sex of an appalling coyness, of ten in the form of a prophylactic cigarette being extended by the virile male toward the al uminum and cellophane girl. They happily blow smoke into each other's face, jelly beans, brilliant with desire, grillwork gleaming; perhaps-poor, betrayed ex iles-they are trying to discover if, behind all that grillwork, all those barriers, either of them has a tongue. Subsequently, in the longer and less explicit commercials in which these images are encased, the male certainly doesn't seem to have a tongue-perhaps one may say that the eat's got it; father knows best, these days, only in politics, which is the only place we ever find him, and where he proves to be-al as! -absolutely indistinguishable from the American boy.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  What is distressing is the conjecture this movie leaves one with as to what Americans take sex to be. The most important thing about this movie-and the rea son that, despite itself, it is one of the most important all Negro movies Hollywood has yet produced-is that the questions it leaves in the mind relate less to Negroes than to the interior life of Americans. One wonders, it is true, if Ne groes are really going to become the ciphers this movie makes them out to be ; but, since they have until now survived public images even more appalling, one is encouraged to hope, for their sake and the sake of the Republic, that they will continue to prove themselves incorrigible. Besides, life docs not pro duce ciphers like these: when people have become this empty they arc not ciphers any longer, but monsters. The creation of such ciphers proves, however, that Americans are far fr om empty; they are, on the contrary, very deeply disturbed. And CARMEN JONES 41 this disturbance is not the kind which can be cased by the doing of good works, but seems to have turned inward and shows every sign of becoming personal. This is one of the best things that can possibly happen. It can be taken to mean among a great many other things-that the ferment which has resulted in as odd a brew as Carmen Jones can now be ex pected to produce something which will be more bitter on the tongue but sweeter in the stomach. PART Two The Ha rlem Ghetto H ARLEM, physically at least, has changed very little in my parents' lifetime or in mine. Now as then the buildings arc old and in desperate need of repair, the streets are crowded and dirty, there are too many human beings per square block. Rents are 10 to 5 8 per cent higher than anywhere else in the city; food, expensive everywhere, is more expensive here and of an inferior quality; and now that the war is over and money is dwindling, clothes are carefully shopped for and seldom bought. Negroes, traditionally the last to be hired and the first to be fired, are finding jobs harder to get, and, while prices arc rising implacably, wages arc going down.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We arrive at the oldest, the most insistent and the most vehement charge faced by the homosexual: he is unnatural because he has turned from his lif e-giving function to a union which is sterile. This may, in itself , be considered a heavy, even an unforgivable crime, but since it is not so considered when involving other people, the unmarried or the poverty-stricken or the feeble, and since his existence did not alw ays invoke that hysteria with which he now contends, we are safe in sug gesting that his present untouchability owes its moti\'e power to several other sources. Let me suggest that his present de basement and our obsession with him corresponds to the de basement of the relationship between the sexes; and that his ambiguous and terrible position in our society reflects the am biguities and terrors which time has deposited on that rela tionship as the sea piles seaweed and wreckage along the shore. For, after all, I take it that no one can be seriously disturbed about the birth-rate: when the race commits suicide it will not be in Sodom. Nor can we continue to shout unnatural when ever we arc confronted by a phenomenon as old as mankind, a phenomenon, moreover, which nature has maliciously re peated in all of her domain. Ifw c arc going to be natural then this is part of nature; if we ref use to accept this, then we have rejected nature and must find another criterion. Ins tantly the Deity springs to mind, in much the same 596 OTH ER ES SAYS manner, I suspect, that he sprang into being on the cold, black day when we discovered that nature cared nothing for us. His advent, which alone had the power to save us from nature and ourselves, also created a self -awareness and, therefore, tensions and terrors and responsibilities with which we had not coped before. It marked the death of innocence; it set up the duality of good-and-e vil; and now Sin and Redemption, those mighty bells, began that crying which will not cease until, by another act of creation, we transcend our old morality. Before we were banished from Eden and the curse was uttered, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman", the homosexual did not exist; nor, properly speaking, did the heterosexual. We were all in a state of nature. We are forced to consider this tension between God and nature and are thus confronted with the nature of God be cause He is man's most intense creation and it is not in the sight of nature that the homosexual is condemned, but in the sight of God.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The chief deputy, Sam (Warren Oates), in terms of the weights and balances of the film has the best assignment, his role allowing him to be absolutely truthful, though never deep. Sam drives his patrol car, each night, off his route to watch a naked girl through the windows 518 THE DEVI L FIND S WO RK of her house. She is to be found thus, apparently, every night, at the hour that Sam drives by: and, so far as the film informs us, this is their only connection-a rather horrifying thought, when one considers how much of the truth it contains, for lives like that, and in such a to wn. The girl is a poor white, and is as marked by this misfortune as are the mulattoes of The Birth of a Nation, and she has a poor white brother, who appears to know nothing at all about his sister. There is the white boy, picked up for the murder after Virgil Tibbs's credentials have been established, and Virgil has agreed to remain on the case, or been coerced into doing so: this boy first hates, then learns to love the black cop who clears him, and saves his lif e. And there is the waiter in the diner, who refuses to serve Virgil Tibbs. This is an utterly grotesque creature, as hysterical as Nation's mulatto maid, presented as being virtually biologically inferior to everyone else. He, it turns out, is the lover of the exhibitionistic girl-a circumstance which one does not believe for a moment, not even in that sleepy little town-and he is the father of the child she is expecting. He is, also, the murderer. He com mitted the murder because (I think) he needed money for an abortion. The climactic scene, anyway, takes place outside the establishment of the lady who deals in abortions. This is an exciting scene indeed, but before I try to deal with this excitement, there are a couple of other scenes we should consider. One is the scene in the hothouse of the wealthy horticul turist, who is presented as being one of the most powerful men of the region. In this scene, Tibbs exhibits a somewhat unexpec ted knowledge of varieties of plant lif e. This allo ws his host to make clear his racial bias. (" These plants are delicate. They like the nigras. They need care.") One thing leads to another, so to speak, and, eventually, the wealthy horticultur ist slaps Tibbs in the face. Under the eyes of the Sheriff, Tibbs slaps him back. The wealthy host is astonished that the Sheriff docs not shoot Tibbs on the spot: the Sheriff, furious that anyone should suppose him capable of so base an action, throws his chewing gum on the ground (of the powerful host) and stalks out, after Virgil.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  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 NOTES OF A NATIVE SON arc not in\'olved in anything more serious than giving the cus tomers a run for their money. One is not watching either tenderness or love, and one is certainly not watching the com plex and consuming passion which leads to life or death-one is watching a timorous and vulgar misrepresentation of these things. And it must be said that one of the reasons for this is that, while the movie-makers are pleased to have Miss Dandridge flouncing about in tight skirts and plunging necklines-which is not exactly sexuality, either-the Negro male is still too loaded a quantity for them to know quite how to handle. The result is that Mr. Belafonte is really not allowed to do anything more than walk around looking like a spaniel: his sexuality is really taken as given because Miss Dandridge wants him. It does not, otherwise, exist and he is not destroyed by his own sexual aggressiveness, which he is not allowed to have, but by the sexual aggressiveness of the girl-or, as it turns out, not even really by that, but by tea leaves. The only reason, finally, that the eroticism of Carmen Jones is more potent than, say, the eroticism of a Lana Turner vehicle is that Carmen Jones has Negro bodies before the camera and Negroes are associ ated in the public mind with sex. Since darker races always seem to have for lighter races an aura of sexuality, this fact is not distressing in itself.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  (And, at that, it is probably more accurate to speak of Brando's presence, a pride, an agony, an irreducible dignity.) The Exorcist has absolutely nothing going for it, except Satan, who is certainly the star: I can say only that Satan was never like that when he crossed my path ( t( >r one thing, the evil one never so rudely underestimated me). His concerns were more various, and his methods more subtle. The Exorcist is not in the least concerned with damnation, an abysm far beyond the confines of its imagination, but with property, with safety, tax shelters, stocks and bonds, rising and falling markets, the con tinued invulnerability of a certain class of people, and the con tinued sanctification of a certain history. If The Exorcist itself believed this history, it could scarcely be reduced to so abject a dependence on special etTects. In Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., a young movie ac tress is shooting a film. She is t< mhright, and liberated, as can be gathered fr om her li berated language. The film she is CHAPTER THREE making is involved with a student uprising-in the book, she describes it as adttmb! ) ): in the film, one of her lines suggests that the students work within the system. This line, however, is neatly balanced by another, which suggests that the political perceptions of this fi lm-within-a-film may owe a great deal to Walt Disney. Before this, we have encountered the aged priest, who will become the exorcist, digging in the ruins of northern Iraq. This opening sequence is probably the fi lm's most ctlcctivc, ruthlessly exploiting the uneasiness one cannot but fed when touched by the energy of distant gods, unknown. It sets up, with some precision, the spirit of the terror which informs the Christian-pagan argument: it may be something of a pity that Ingmar Bergman could not have guided the film from there. However, Max von Sydow, the exorcist-rather like Marlon Branda, in The Godfather-having been exhibited, is now put on icc, and, if we wish to await his return, we have no choice but to sec the end of the movie. The horror of the demonic possession begins with what sound, to the heroine, like rats in the attic. Her daughter's dresses arc misplaced. Room temperatures change, alarmingly and inexplicably. Furniture is mysteriously moved about.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Nantwich proved to be a voracious eater with poor table manners. Half the time he ate with his mouth open, affording me a generous view of masticated pork and applesauce, which he smeared around his wine glass when he drank without wiping his lips. I attended to my trout with a kind of surgical distaste. Its slightly open barbed mouth and its tiny round eye, which had half erupted while grilling, like the core of a pustule, were unusually recriminatory. I sliced the head off and put it on my side-plate and then proceeded to remove the pale flesh from the bones with the flat of my knife. It was quite flavourless, except that, where its innards had been imperfectly removed, silvery traces of roe gave it an unpleasant bitterness. ‘Tell me why you don’t have a job,’ Nantwich asked after we had busied ourselves with our food for an uneasily long time. ‘We all need a job of work. Christ! Without a job doesn’t one just go do-lally?’ ‘It’s because I’m spoilt, I’m afraid. Too much money. I wanted to stay on at Oxford, but I didn’t get a First, though I was supposed to. I did work for a publisher for two years, but then I got out.’ ‘I mean, if you want a job I’ll get you one,’ Nantwich interrupted. ‘You’re very kind … I suppose I should do something soon. My father thought he could get me a job in the City, but I couldn’t face the idea of it, I’m afraid.’ ‘Your father?’ ‘Yes, he’s chairman of, oh … a group of companies.’ ‘Your money comes from him, then?’ ‘No, as it happens, it’s all from my grandfather. He’s very well off, as you can imagine. He’s settling his estate on my sister and me. We get it all in advance to avoid death duties.’ ‘Capital,’ said Nantwich; ‘as it were.’ He munched on for a bit. ‘But tell me, who is your grandfather?’ I had been supposing, somehow, that he knew, and I took a second to rethink everything in the light of the recognition that he didn’t. ‘Oh—er, Denis—Beckwith,’ I then hastened to explain. Again the sudden emission of interest. ‘My dear charming boy, do you mean to say that you are Denis Beckwith’s grandson?’ ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew.’ Often the intelligence met with a less enthusiastic reception. Then Nantwich’s interest had gone. ‘I suppose you come across each other in the House of Lords,’ I ventured. He had half turned and stared out of the window. When he swung back he leaned close to me and I smelt the pork in his mouth as he said: ‘That chap is a very interesting photographer, indeed.’