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 Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I feel myself floating out of my body, much the way I do in moments of crisis with my kids when I’ve cradled them after falls have broken their bones or bloodied their faces, and I remain preternaturally calm, managing their physical care while not allowing in the repulsion of gushing blood or limbs that seem to be bent in the wrong direction. Silently, I follow him to his bedroom and take my tank top and skirt off, folding them and placing them on his dresser, then lie down in my lacy bra and underwear. He strips down to his white briefs, and I see that his body is intimidatingly thick, solid and muscular. He goes down on me, and I am gone now: in my mind I am floating in a vast ocean, warm water carrying my body, sun beating down and saturating me. I don’t want to be in bed with this man, and the longer I stay here, the more I am disgusted by him – and, more horribly, by myself for being here. Sex has been purely fun and joyous and liberating and toe-curling and energizing and fulfilling and transcendent these past two months, but now the ugly side of it is lashing its forked tongue at me: asymmetry of power, physical vulnerability, fear, mistrust, revulsion. He puts on a condom and comes inside of me and then lies next to me, interrogating me about my sexual predilections. Do I like anal sex? Have I ever been with a woman? Am I interested in threesomes? What is the kinkiest thing I have ever done? I respond haltingly and do not ask him anything at all. Finally, I say that I have to get home to my kids and he strokes my upper thigh up to the curve of my hip and back down again to my waist, asking, “Can I have you one more time before you go?” The wording of his question is spot on, as that’s exactly what he’s doing: having me. And I am allowing it. “Sure,” I say quietly, because now I am so far gone that I suspect I will not return to my body for days. He straddles me and rolls me onto my stomach, then he enters me vaginally from behind. I lie like a ragdoll, just letting it happen. When he shudders and then collapses on top of me, I feel like all air has been pressed out of me and I wait for him to realize he is crushing me. I deserve this , I think, to feel breathless and powerless, because I have willingly made myself prostrate and obedient . Finally, he rolls off me and I wordlessly rise from the bed, taking my small pile of clothes from the dresser and heading to the bathroom, where I clean myself as best I can with toilet paper and water and put my clothes back on.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  There were fried potatoes, two kinds of vegetables, and two kinds of compote, and the circling bowls contained portions, as if each one were not an accompaniment and an ingredient, but the main course for everyone to gorge themselves on. Old red wine from the Möllendorpf company was drunk. Little Johann sat between his parents and with difficulty stowed a white piece of breast meat and farce in his stomach. He couldn't eat as much as Aunt Thilda, but felt tired and not very well; he was just proud that he was allowed to dine with the grown-ups, that one of those delicious milk rolls sprinkled with poppy seeds had been lying on his artfully folded serviette, that in front of him too three wine glasses stood there, while he usually drank from the small golden cup that Uncle Kröger had given him as a godfather … But when, while Uncle Justus began pouring oil-yellow Greek wine into the smallest glasses, the ice meringues appeared – red, white and brown - his appetite was stimulated again. Although it hurt his teeth almost unbearably, he ate a red one, then half a white one, finally had to try a piece of the brown one filled with chocolate ice cream, crunched the waffles with it, and sipped at that sweet wine and listened to Uncle Christian, who had started to talk. He talked about the Christmas party in the club, which had been very jolly. "Dear God!" he said in the tone he used to use when speaking of Johnny Thunderstorm. "The fellows drank Swedish punch like water!" "Ugh," the consul remarked curtly, lowering her eyes. But he ignored that. His eyes began to wander, and thoughts and memories were so vivid in him that they crossed his gaunt face like shadows. 'Do any of you know,' he asked, 'what it's like to have too much Swedish punch? I don't mean the drunkenness, but what comes next day, the aftermath... they're weird and disgusting... yes, weird and disgusting at the same time." "Enough reason to describe them in detail," said the senator. " Assez , Christian, we're not interested in that at all," said the Consul. But he ignored it. It was his peculiarity that at such moments no objection reached him. He was silent for a while, and then suddenly what was on his mind seemed ripe for communication. "You walk around feeling nauseous," he said, turning to his brother with a wrinkled nose. “Headaches and messy guts… well, that happens on other occasions too. But you feel dirty - ' and Christian rubbed his hands with a completely distorted face - 'you feel dirty and unwashed all over. You wash your hands, but it's no use, they feel damp and unclean, and your nails have something greasy... You bathe, but it doesn't help, your whole body seems sticky and unclean. Your whole body irritates you, irritates you, you disgust yourself...

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  She fishes around in the box with her fat fingers, nibbles a tiny piece to see if there is any juice inside, and then throws it on the floor for the dogs. The meal over, the guests rush away. They rush away precipitously, as if they feared a plague. Serge and I are left with the dogs—his wife has fallen asleep on the couch. Serge moves about unconcernedly, scraping the garbage for the dogs. “Dogs like very much,” he says. “Very good for dogs. Little dog he has worms… he is too young yet.” He bends down to examine some white worms lying on the carpet between the dog’s paws. Tries to explain about the worms in English, but his vocabulary is lacking. Finally he consults the dictionary. “Ah,” he says, looking at me exultantly, “tapeworms!” My response is evidently not very intelligent. Serge is confused. He gets down on his hands and knees to examine them better. He picks one up and lays it on the table beside the fruit. “Huh, him not very beeg,” he grunts. “Next lesson you learn me worms, no? You are gude teacher. I make progress with you. …” Lying on the mattress in the hallway the odor of the germicide stifles me. A pungent, acrid odor that seems to invade every pore of my body. The food begins to repeat on me—the Quaker Oats, the mushrooms, the bacon, the fried apples. I see the little tapeworm lying beside the fruit and all the varieties of worms that Serge drew on the tablecloth to explain what was the matter with the dog. I see the empty pit of the Folies-Bergère and in every crevice there are cockroaches and lice and bedbugs; I see people scratching themselves frantically, scratching and scratching until the blood comes. I see the worms crawling over the scenery like an army of red ants, devouring everything in sight. I see the chorus girls throwing away their gauze tunics and running through the aisles naked; I see the spectators in the pit throwing off their clothes also and scratching each other like monkeys. I try to quiet myself. After all, this is a home I’ve found, and there’s a meal waiting for me every day. And Serge is a brick, there’s no doubt about that. But I can’t sleep. It’s like going to sleep in a morgue. The mattress is saturated with embalming fluid. It’s a morgue for lice, bedbugs, cockroaches, tapeworms. I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it! After all I’m a man, not a louse. In the morning I wait for Serge to load the truck. I ask him to take me in to Paris. I haven’t the heart to tell him I’m leaving. I leave the knapsack behind, with the few things that were left me. When we get to the Place Péreire I jump out. No particular reason for getting off here. No particular reason for anything. l’m free —that’s the main thing.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  … But when the cable comes… when Miss Mona sends you the money, then you will come with me to look for a room, eh?” And in the next breath he urges me to stay as long as I wish—“six months… seven months, Endree… you are very good for me here.” Nanantatee is one of the Hindus I never did anything for in America. He represented himself to me as a wealthy merchant, a pearl merchant, with a luxurious suite of rooms on the Rue Lafayette, Paris, a villa in Bombay, a bungalow in Darjeeling. I could see from first glance that he was a half-wit, but then half-wits sometimes have the genius to amass a fortune. I didn’t know that he paid his hotel bill in New York by leaving a couple of fat pearls in the proprietor’s hands. It seems amusing to me now that this little duck once swaggered about the lobby of that hotel in New York with an ebony cane, bossing the bellhops around, ordering luncheons for his guests, calling up the porter for theater tickets, renting a taxi by the day, etc., etc., all without a sou in his pocket. Just a string of fat pearls around his neck which he cashed one by one as time wore on. And the fatuous way he used to pat me on the back, thank me for being so good to the Hindu boys—“they are all very intelligent boys, Endree… very intelligent!” Telling me that the good lord so-and-so would repay me for my kindness. That explains now why they used to giggle so, these intelligent Hindu boys, when I suggested that they touch Nanantatee for a five-spot. Curious now how the good lord so-and-so is requiting me for my benevolence. I’m nothing but a slave to this fat little duck. I’m at his beck and call continually. He needs me here—he tells me so to my face. When he goes to the crap-can he shouts: “Endree, bring me a pitcher of water, please. I must wipe myself.” He wouldn’t think of using toilet paper, Nanantatee. Must be against his religion. No, he calls for a pitcher of water and a rag. He’s delicate , the fat little duck. Sometimes when I’m drinking a cup of pale tea in which he has dropped a rose leaf he comes alongside of me and lets a loud fart, right in my face. He never says “Excuse me!” The word must be missing from his Gujarati dictionary. The day I arrived at Nanantatee’s apartment he was in the act of performing his ablutions, that is to say, he was standing over a dirty bowl trying to work his crooked arm around toward the back of his neck. Beside the bowl was a brass goblet which he used to change the water. He requested me to be silent during the ceremony.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I sat there silently, as I was bidden, and watched him as he sang and prayed and spat now and then into the washbowl. So this is the wonderful suite of rooms he talked about in New York! The Rue Lafayette! It sounded like an important street to me back there in New York. I thought only millionaires and pearl merchants inhabited the street. It sounds wonderful, the Rue Lafayette, when you’re on the other side of the water. So does Fifth Avenue, when you’re over here. One can’t imagine what dumps there are on these swell streets. Anyway, here I am at last, sitting in the gorgeous suite of rooms on the Rue Lafayette. And this crazy duck with his crooked arm is going through the ritual of washing himself. The chair on which I’m sitting is broken, the bedstead is falling apart, the wallpaper is in tatters, there is an open valise under the bed crammed with dirty wash. From where I sit I can glance at the miserable courtyard down below where the aristocracy of the Rue Lafayette sit and smoke their clay pipes. I wonder now, as he chants the doxology, what that bungalow in Darjeeling looks like. It’s interminable, his chanting and praying. He explains to me that he is obliged to wash in a certain prescribed way—his religion demands it. But on Sundays he takes a bath in the tin tub—the Great I AM will wink at that, he says. When he’s dressed he goes to the cupboard, kneels before a little idol on the third shelf, and repeats the mumbo jumbo. If you pray like that every day, he says, nothing will happen to you. The good lord what’s his name never forgets an obedient servant. And then he shows me the crooked arm which he got in a taxi accident on a day doubtless when he had neglected to rehearse the complete song and dance. His arm looks like a broken compass; it’s not an arm any more, but a knucklebone with a shank attached. Since the arm has been repaired he has developed a pair of swollen glands in the armpit—fat little glands, exactly like a dog’s testicles. While bemoaning his plight he remembers suddenly that the doctor had recommended a more liberal diet. He begs me at once to sit down and make up a menu with plenty of fish and meat. “And what about oysters, Endree—for le petit frère?” But all this is only to make an impression on me. He hasn’t the slightest intention of buying himself oysters, or meat, or fish. Not as long as I am there, at least. For the time being we are going to nourish ourselves on lentils and rice and all the dry foods he has stored away in the attic. And the butter he bought last week, that won’t go to waste either. When he commences to cure the butter the smell is unbearable.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I used to run out at first, when he started frying the butter, but now I stick it out. He’d be only too delighted if he could make me vomit up my meal—that would be something else to put away in the cupboard along with the dry bread and the moldy cheese and the little grease cakes that he makes himself out of the stale milk and the rancid butter. For the last five years, so it seems, he hasn’t done a stroke of work, hasn’t turned over a penny. Business has gone to smash. He talks to me about pearls in the Indian ocean—big fat ones on which you can live for a lifetime. The Arabs are ruining the business, he says. But meanwhile he prays to the lord so-and-so every day, and that sustains him. He’s on a marvelous footing with the deity: knows just how to cajole him, how to wheedle a few sous out: of him. It’s a pure commercial relationship. In exchange for the flummery before the cabinet every day he gets his ration of beans and garlic, to say nothing of the swollen testicles under his arm. He is confident that everything will turn out well in the end. The pearls will sell again some day, maybe five years hence, maybe twenty—when the Lord Boomaroom wishes it. “And when the business goes, Endree, you will get ten per cent—for writing the letters. But first Endree, you must write the letter to find out if we can get credit from India. It will take about six months for an answer, maybe seven months… the boats are not fast in India.” He has no conception of time at all, the little duck. When I ask him if he has slept well he will say: “Ah, yes, Endree, I sleep very well… I sleep sometimes ninety-two hours in three days.” Mornings he is usually too weak to do any work. His arm! That poor broken crutch of an arm! I wonder sometimes when I see him twisting it around the back of his neck how he will ever get it into place again. If it weren’t for that little paunch he carries he’d remind me of one of those contortionists at the Cirque Médrano. All he needs is to break a leg. When he sees me sweeping the carpet, when he sees what a cloud of dust I raise, he begins to cluck like a pygmy. “Good! Very good, Endree. And now I will pick up the knots.” That means that there are a few crumbs of dust which I have overlooked; it is a polite way he has of being sarcastic. Afternoons there are always a few cronies from the pearl market dropping in to pay him a visit.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Kepi is a scrounger, a sort of human tick who fastens himself to the hide of even the poorest compatriot. From Kepi’s standpoint they are all nabobs. For a Manila cheroot and the price of a drink he will suck any Hindu’s ass. A Hindu’s, mind you, but not an Englishman’s. He has the address of every whorehouse in Paris, and the rates. Even from the ten franc joints he gets his little commission. And he knows the shortest way to any place you want to go. He will ask you first if you want to go by taxi; if you say no, he will suggest the bus, and if that is too high then the streetcar or the metro. Or he will offer to walk you there and save a franc or two, knowing very well that it will be necessary to pass a tabac on the way and that you will please be so good as to buy me a little cheroot. Kepi is interesting, in a way, because he has absolutely no ambition except to get a fuck every night. Every penny he makes, and they are damned few, he squanders in the dance halls. He has a wife and eight children in Bombay, but that does not prevent him from proposing marriage to any little femme de chambre who is stupid and credulous enough to be taken in by him. He has a little room on the Rue Condorcet for which he pays sixty francs a month. He papered it all himself. Very proud of it, too. He uses violet-colored ink in his fountain pen because it lasts longer. He shines his own shoes, presses his own pants, does his own laundry. For a little cigar, a cheroot, if you please, he will escort you all over Paris. If you stop to look at a shirt or a collar button his eyes flash. “Don’t buy it here,” he will say. “They ask too much. I will show you a cheaper place.” And before you have time to think about it he will whisk you away and deposit you before another show window where there are the same ties and shirts and collar buttons—maybe it’s the very same store! but you don’t know the difference. When Kepi hears that you want to buy something his soul becomes animated. He will ask you so many questions and drag you to so many places that you are bound to get thirsty and ask him to have a drink, whereupon you will discover to your amazement that you are again standing in a tabac —maybe the same tabac! —and Kepi is saying again in that small unctuous voice: “Will you please be so good as to buy me a little cheroot?” No matter what you propose doing, even if it’s only to walk around the corner, Kepi will economize for you.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Even after he has slept with one of these mythical creatures he will still refer to her as a virgin, and almost never by name. “My virgin,” he will say, just as he says “my Georgia cunt.” When he goes to the toilet he says: “If my Georgia cunt calls tell her to wait. Say I said so. And listen, you can have her if you like. I’m tired of her.” He takes a squint at the weather and heaves a deep sigh. If it’s rainy he says: “God damn this fucking climate, it makes one morbid.” And if the sun is shining brightly he says: “God damn that fucking sun, it makes you blind!” As he starts to shave he suddenly remembers that there is no clean towel. “God damn this fucking hotel, they’re too stingy to give you a clean towel every day!” No matter what he does or where he goes things are out of joint. Either it’s the fucking country or the fucking job, or else it’s some fucking cunt who’s put him on the blink. “My teeth are all rotten,” he says, gargling his throat. “It’s the fucking bread they give you to eat here.” He opens his mouth wide and pulls his lower lip down. “See that? Pulled out six teeth yesterday. Soon I’ll have to get another plate. That’s what you get working for a living. When I was on the bum I had all my teeth, my eyes were bright and clear. Look at me now! It’s a wonder I can make a cunt any more. Jesus, what I’d like is to find some rich cunt—like that cute little prick, Carl. Did he ever show you the letters she sends him? Who is she, do you know? He wouldn’t tell me her name, the bastard… he’s afraid I might take her away from him.” He gargles his throat again and then takes a long look at the cavities. “You’re lucky,” he says ruefully. “You’ve got friends, at least. I haven’t anybody, except that cute little prick who drives me bats about his rich cunt.” “Listen,” he says, “do you happen to know a cunt by the name of Norma? She hangs around the Dôme all day. I think she’s queer. I had her up here yesterday, tickling her ass. She wouldn’t let me do a thing. I had her on the bed. … I even had her drawers off… and then I got disgusted. Jesus, I can’t bother struggling that way any more. It isn’t worth it. Either they do or they don’t—it’s foolish to waste time wrestling with them. While you’re struggling with a little bitch like that there may be a dozen cunts on the terrasse just dying to be laid. It’s a fact. They all come over here to get laid. They think it’s sinful here… the poor boobs! Some of these schoolteachers from out West, they’re honestly virgins… I mean it!

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  They sit around on their can all day thinking about it. You don’t have to work over them very much. They’re dying for it. I had a married woman the other day who told me she hadn’t had a lay for six months. Can you imagine that? Jesus, she was hot! I thought she’d tear the cock off me. And groaning all the time. “Do you? Do you?” She kept saying that all the time, like she was nuts. And do you know what that bitch wanted to do? She wanted to move in here. Imagine that! Asking me if I loved her. I didn’t even know her name. I never know their names… I don’t want to. The married ones! Christ, if you saw all the married cunts I bring up here you’d never have any more illusions. They’re worse than the virgins, the married ones. They don’t wait for you to start things—they fish it out for you themselves. And then they talk about love afterwards. It’s disgusting. I tell you, I’m actually beginning to hate cunt!” He looks out the window again. It’s drizzling. It’s been drizzling this way for the last five days. “Are we going to the Dôme, Joe?” I call him Joe because he calls me Joe. When Carl is with us he is Joe too. Everybody is Joe because it’s easier that way. It’s also a pleasant reminder not to take yourself too seriously. Anyway, Joe doesn’t want to go to the Dôme—he owes too much money there. He wants to go to the Coupole. Wants to take a little walk first around the block. “But it’s raining, Joe.” “I know, but what the hell! I’ve got to have my constitutional. I’ve got to wash the dirt out of my belly.” When he says this I have the impression that the whole world is wrapped up there inside his belly, and that it’s rotting there. As he’s putting on his things he falls back again into a semi-comatose state. He stands there with one arm in his coat sleeve and his hat on assways and he begins to dream aloud—about the Riviera, about the sun, about lazing one’s life away. “All I ask of life,” he says, “is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.” As he mumbles this meditatively he looks at me with the softest, the most insidious smile. “Do you like that smile?” he says. And then disgustedly—“Jesus, if I could only find some rich cunt to smile at that way!” “Only a rich cunt can save me now,” he says with an air of utmost weariness. “One gets tired of chasing after new cunts all the time. It gets mechanical. The trouble is, you see, I can’t fall in love. I’m too much of an egoist. Women only help me to dream, that’s all. It’s a vice, like drink or opium.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  as early as 1730, Franklin was complaining about “vagrants and idle persons” entering the colony. He wrote these words after having escaped impoverished circumstances not many years before. He had arrived in Philadelphia in 1723 as a runaway, meanly dressed in filthy, wet clothing. 22 For better or worse, the word “sorts” was meaningful. It loosely referred to different grades of commercial goods. Buttons and tobacco were classified in “sorts.” A 1733 advertisement in a New York newspaper offered “fans made and sold of richer and meaner sort.” Unlike the idiom of breeding stocks, which measured value through family bloodlines, commercial sorts placed more emphasis on outward appearance, as in the separation of quality goods from cheaper ones. As a commercial people, the British were inclined to think of their social classes along the same lines. When a newspaper referred to people of the “meanest quality,” it could as easily have been an appraisal of the texture of cloth, meaning something that was coarse, unfinished, composed of baser materials, and cheaply made. 23 In general, meanness meant poverty and a disagreeable dependence, whether in the form of a reliance upon charity or forced labor in a workhouse. Philadelphia, Boston, and New York all had almshouses. But meanness also attached to the condition of servitude, and was embodied in submissiveness. There was a stigma assigned to those of the lower classes, because they allowed themselves to be looked down upon, despised, and abused. The meaner sort was thought to possess a rude appearance, dull mind, and unrefined manners, and to indulge in vulgar speech. Meanness was filth and lowliness, yet another variation of the enduring class of waste people. 24 Franklin was not sympathetic to the plight of the poor. His design for the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751 was intended to assist the industrious poor, primarily men with physical injuries. The permanent class of impoverished were not welcome; they were simply shooed over to the almshouse. He felt the English were too charitable, an opinion he based on observing German settlers in his own colony, who worked with greater diligence because they came from a country that offered its poor little in the way of relief. When he talked about the poor, he sounded like William Byrd. In complaining about British mobs of the poor that raided the corn wagons in 1766, he charged that England was becoming “another Lubberland.” 25 Most men wanted a “life of ease,” Franklin concluded, and “freedom from care and labor.” Sloth was in itself a form of pleasure. This was why he contended that the only solution to poverty was some kind of coercive system to

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  control Bakkers to the gawking at rural Georgian white trashdom in TLC’s Here Comes Honey Boo Boo . Both the preacher’s perversions and the underage beauty contestant’s shenanigans tapped into the public’s attachment to the tawdry behavior of the American underclass. (Tammy Faye later starred in the reality show The Surreal Life in 2004.) The people whom the Praise the Lord Ministry conned were mainly poor whites; the majority of the program’s viewers were born-again, with less than a high school education, and were, most pitifully, unemployed. As one staffer revealed, PTL sent out appeals for money on the first of the month, when the Social Security and welfare checks were arriving. Critics of evangelical hypocrisy vented their rage, and one outraged editorialist attacked President Reagan himself for bringing “white trash front and center” when he entertained Bakker and other televangelists at the White House and told Americans they could learn from them about “traditional American values.” The Bakkers appeared on television day and night, “dressed like pimps,” massacring the English language and defiling religion. 40 The Bakkers were not even native to the South. Tammy Faye was born into a poor family of eight children in a small rural town in Minnesota, in a house without indoor plumbing. Her parents were Pentecostal preachers. Jim, the son of a machinist, came from Michigan. They relocated to North Carolina because it was where they knew a market existed for their Pentecostal religious message. Tammy Faye was the charismatic heart of the show, singing, crying, and thriving on her gaudy reputation, “à la Liberace,” as one religious scholar has concluded. Her physical appearance projected a class identity: frosted blonde hair, thick makeup, tanned skin, loud, colorful dresses, and trademark fake eyelashes. She was the picture of nouveau riche femininity. 41

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  wrote a piece in the Pennsylvania Gazette about the “scandalous Collection” of slaves, drunks, and low white servants who gathered at the outdoor fairs. As he gazed on his fellow Philadelphians, he accepted the cynical view of humanity that virtue was a rare and malleable trait. In his Autobiography, he told a story of how he gave up vegetarianism as a young man after he saw the belly of a fish cut open and all the little fish fall out. This story was a class parable, the lesson being that the big fish (or powerful elites) devoured weaker men. Franklin was not a disciple of the “Sermon on the Mount,” but believed instead that the poor were neither less greedy nor naturally humble compared to those above. If the little fish in his world were allowed to rise, they would be just as rapacious. 29 If inventive, Franklin was a man of his time, expressing a natural discomfort with unrestrained social mobility. For most Americans of the eighteenth century, it was assumed impossible for a servant to shed his lowly origins; the meaner sort, as one newspaper insisted, could never “wash out the stain of servility.” There were fears that the meaner sort were treading too close on the heels of those above them. 30 Franklin certainly never endorsed social mobility as we think of it today, despite his own experience. To be accurate, he fantasized that the continent would flatten out classes, but it was clear that this condition was contingent upon keeping poor people in perpetual motion. Franklin’s militia plan expressed a conservative impulse. Giving the accomplished middling sort a feeling of public respect and a sense of civic duty would yield them the solid contentment of happy mediocrity. Contentment might actually reduce the desire of more ambitious men to rise up the social ladder too quickly or recklessly. Franklin understood that maintaining class differences had its own appeal. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, the newspaper he edited, an article was published in 1741 that exposed why people preferred having a class hierarchy to having none. Hierarchy was easily maintained when the majority felt there was someone below them. “How many,” the author asked, “even of the better sort,” would choose to be “ Slaves to those above them, provided they might exercise an arbitrary and Tyrannical Rule over all below them ?” There was something desirable, perhaps even pleasurable, to use Franklin’s utilitarian axiom, in the feeling of lording over subordinate classes. To alter that measure of satisfaction required a drastic rewiring of the eighteenth-century mind. Again, for Franklin, the solution lay in a radical process of spreading people so far apart and in such sparsely settled territory that they would forget who was once above or below them. But did it make sense that the rich would sacrifice their class advantage

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Often signs of this disorder are first manifested in childhood and adolescence and are expressed through distorted patterns of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and oneself.14 In simple terms, this means that something is amiss, awry, or not quite right with the person, which creates problems in how he relates to the world. Robert Hare, an expert in the study of psychopathy, offered a description of the psychopathic personality that coincides with the behavior and actions of many cult leaders. Hare estimated that there are at least two million sociopaths, or psychopaths, in North America. He writes, "Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret."" To be clear, psychopathy is not the same as psychosis. The latter is characterized by an inability to differentiate what is real from what is imagined; boundaries between self and others are lost, and critical thinking is greatly impaired. While generally not psychotic, cult leaders may experience psychotic episodes, which may lead to the destruction of themselves or the group. An extreme example of this is the mass murder-suicide that occurred in November 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, at the Peoples Temple led by the Rev. Jim Jones. On his orders, more than goo men, women, and children perished as Jones deteriorated into what was probably a paranoid psychosis. Neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak states, "At the heart of the diagnosis of psychopathy was the recognition that a person could appear normal and yet close observation would reveal the personality to be irrational or even violent."16 Indeed, initially many persons with personality disorders appear quite normal. They present themselves to us as charming, interesting, and even humble. The majority, as authors Ken Magid and Carole McKelvey write, "don't suffer from delusions, hallucinations, or memory impairment, their contact with reality appears solid."" Some, on the other hand, may demonstrate marked paranoia and megalomania. In one clinical study of psychopathic inpatients, Darwin Dorr and Peggy Woodhall write: We found that our psychopaths were similar to normals (in the reference group) with regard to their capacity to experience external events as real and with regard to their sense of bodily reality. They generally had good memory, concentration, attention, and language function. They had a high barrier against external, aversive stimulation.... In some ways they clearly resemble normal people and can thus `pass' as reasonably normal or sane. Yet we found them to be extremely primitive in other ways, even more primitive than frankly schizophrenic patients.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The seasons are come to a stagnant stop, the trees blench and wither, the wagons roll in the mica ruts with slithering harplike thuds. In the hollow of the white-tipped hills, lurid and boneless Dijon slumbers. No man alive and walking through the night except the restless spirits moving southward toward the sapphire grids. Yet I am up and about, a walking ghost, a white man terrorized by the cold sanity of this slaughterhouse geometry. Who am I? What am I doing here? I fall between the cold walls of human malevolence, a white figure fluttering, sinking down through the cold lake, a mountain of skulls above me. I settle down to the cold latitudes, the chalk steps washed with indigo. The earth in its dark corridors knows my step, feels a foot abroad, a wing stirring, a gasp and a shudder. I hear the learning chaffed and chuzzled, the figures mounting upward, bat slime dripping aloft and clanging with pasteboard golden wings; I hear the trains collide, the chains rattle, the locomotive chugging, snorting, sniffing, steaming and pissing. All things come to me through the clear fog with the odor of repetition, with yellow hangovers and Gadzooks and whettikins. In the dead center, far below Dijon, far below the hyperborean regions, stands God Ajax, his shoulders strapped to the mill wheel, the olives crunching, the green marsh water alive with croaking frogs. The fog and snow, the cold latitude, the heavy learning, the blue coffee, the unbuttered bread, the soup and lentils, the heavy pork-packer beans, the stale cheese, the soggy chow, the lousy wine have put the whole penitentiary into a state of constipation. And just when everyone has become shit-tight the toilet pipes freeze. The shit piles up like ant hills; one has to move down from the little pedestals and leave it on the floor. It lies there stiff and frozen, waiting for the thaw. On Thursdays the hunchback comes with his little wheelbarrow, shovels the cold, stiff turds with a broom and pan, and trundles off dragging his withered leg. The corridors are littered with toilet paper; it sticks to your feet like flypaper. When the weather moderates the odor gets ripe; you can smell it in Winchester forty miles away. Standing over that ripe dung in the morning, with a toothbrush, the stench is so powerful that it makes your head spin. We stand around in red flannel shirts, waiting to spit down the hole; it is like an aria from one of Verdi’s great operas—an anvil chorus with pulleys and syringes. In the night, when I am taken short, I rush down to the private toilet of M. le Censeur, just off the driveway. My stool is always full of blood. His toilet doesn’t flush either but at least there is the pleasure of sitting down. I leave my little bundle for him as a token of esteem.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  | CHAPTER 3 |Once woman is dethroned by the advent of private property, her fate is linked to it for centuries: in large part, her history is intertwined with the history of inheritance. The fundamental importance of this institution becomes clear if we keep in mind that the owner alienated his existence in property; it was more important to him than life itself; it goes beyond the strict limits of a mortal lifetime, it lives on after the body is gone, an earthly and tangible incarnation of the immortal soul; but this continued survival can occur only if property remains in the owner’s hands: it can remain his after death only if it belongs to individuals who are extensions of himself and recognized, who are his own. Cultivating paternal lands and worshipping the father’s spirit are one and the same obligation for the heir: to ensure the survival of ancestors on earth and in the underworld. Man will not, therefore, agree to share his property or his children with woman. He will never really be able to go that far, but at a time when patriarchy is powerful, he strips woman of all her rights to hold and transmit property. It seems logical, in fact, to deny her these rights. If it is accepted that a woman’s children do not belong to her, they inevitably have no link with the group the woman comes from. Woman is no longer passed from one clan to another through marriage: she is radically abducted from the group she is born into and annexed to her husband’s; he buys her like a head of cattle or a slave, he imposes his domestic divinities on her: and the children she conceives belong to her spouse’s family. If she could inherit, she would thus wrongly transmit her paternal family’s riches to that of her husband: she is carefully excluded from the succession. But inversely, because she owns nothing, woman is not raised to the dignity of a person; she herself is part of man’s patrimony, first her father’s and then her husband’s. Under a strictly patriarchal regime, a father can condemn to death his male and female children at birth; but in the case of a male child, society most often put limits on this power: a normally constituted newborn male is allowed to live, whereas the custom of exposure is very widespread for girls; there was massive infanticide among Arabs: as soon as they were born, girls were thrown into ditches. Accepting a female child is an act of generosity on the father’s part; the woman enters such societies only through a kind of grace bestowed on her, and not legitimately like males. In any case, the stain of birth is far more serious for the mother when a girl is born: among Hebrews, Leviticus demands twice as much cleansing as for a newborn boy.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  When family and private patrimony incontestably remain the bases of society, woman also remains totally alienated. This is what has happened in the Muslim world. The structure is feudal in that there has never been a state strong enough to unify and dominate the numerous tribes: no power holds in check that of the patriarch chief. The religion that was created when the Arab people were warriors and conquerors professed the utmost disdain toward women. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them,” says the Koran; the woman has never held real power or mystic prestige. The bedouin woman works hard, she plows and carries burdens: this is how she sets up a reciprocal bond with her husband; she moves around freely, her face uncovered. The Muslim woman, veiled and shut in, is still today a kind of slave in most levels of society. I recall an underground cave in a troglodyte village in Tunisia where four women were squatting: the old, one-eyed, and toothless wife, her face ravaged, was cooking dough on a small brazier surrounded by acrid smoke; two slightly younger but equally disfigured wives were rocking children in their arms; one was breastfeeding; seated before a weaver’s loom was a young idol, magnificently dressed in silk, gold, and silver, knotting strands of wool. Leaving this gloomy den—realm of immanence, womb, and tomb—in the corridor leading up toward the light, I met the male, dressed in white, sparklingly clean, smiling, sunny. He was returning from the market, where he had bantered about world affairs with other men; he would spend a few hours in this retreat of his own, in the heart of this vast universe to which he belonged and from which he was not separated. For the old withered creatures, for the young bride doomed to the same degeneration, there was no other universe but the murky cave from which they would emerge only at night, silent and veiled.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Flinn was asked to testify about a policy Hubbard had written in 1965 titled “ Fair Game Law,” in which he laid down the rules for dealing with Suppressive Persons. That category includes non-Scientologists who are hostile to the church, apostates, and defectors, as well as their spouses, family members, and close friends. “ A truly Suppressive Person or Group has no rights of any kind,” Hubbard wrote. Such enemies, he said, may be “tricked, lied to or destroyed.” In 1965, he wrote another policy letter ambiguously stating, “The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. [The new ruling] does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.” The supposed revocation of Fair Game took place before Operation Snow White, the harassment of Paulette Cooper and other journalists, the persecution of defectors, and many other actions undertaken by church insiders that were done in the spirit, if not the name, of the original policy. “Almost all religious movements in their very early phase tend to be harsh,” Flinn reminded the court. He contended that they tend to evolve and become more lenient over time. As for disconnection, he declared that it was “functionally equivalent to other types of religious exclusions,” such as shunning of nonbelievers among Mennonites and the Amish. In the Book of Leviticus, for instance, which is part of the Torah and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, idolaters and those who have strayed from the faith were to be stoned to death. That practice has disappeared; instead, Orthodox Jews will sit Shiva for the nonbeliever, treating him as if he is already dead. “So this kind of phenomenon is not peculiar to Scientology,” Flinn concluded. The implication underlying Flinn’s testimony was that Scientology is a new religion that is reinventing old religious norms; whatever abuses it may be committing are errors of youthful exuberance, and in any case they are pale imitators of the practices once employed by the mainstream religions that judges and jurors were likely to be members of. In the 1990s, Flinn had interviewed several Scientologists who were doing RPF in Los Angeles. Their quarters didn’t look any worse than his cell in the monastery, where he slept on a straw bed on a board. He asked if they were free to go. They told him they were, but they wanted to stay and do penance.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Paranoia often accompanies the grandiosity, reinforcing the sequestering of the group and the need for protection against a perceived hostile environment. In this way, he creates an us-versus-them mentality. 4. Pathological LyingSociopaths lie coolly and easily, even when it is obvious they are being untruthful. It is almost impossible for them to be consistently truthful about either a major or minor issue. They lie for no apparent reason, even when it would seem easier and safer to tell the truth. This is sometimes called "crazy lying."26 Confronting these lies may provoke an unpredictably intense rage or simply a Buddha-like smile. Another form of lying common among cult leaders is known as pseudologica fantastica, which is an extension of pathological lying. Leaders tend to create a complex belief system, often about their own powers and abilities, in which they themselves sometimes get caught up. Psychiatrist Scott Snyder writes: "It is often difficult to determine whether the lies are an actual delusional distortion of reality or are expressed with the conscious or unconscious intent to deceive."27 These manipulators are rarely original thinkers. Plagiarists and thieves, they seldom credit the true originators of their ideas. They are extremely convincing, forceful in the expression of their views, and talented at passing lie detec tor tests. For them, objective truth does not exist-truth is whatever will help them achieve their needs. This type of opportunism is most difficult to understand for those who are not sociopaths. For this reason, followers are more apt to invent or go along with all kinds of explanations and rationales for apparent inconsistencies in behavior: "I know my guru must have had a good reason for doing this" or "He did it because he loves me-even though it hurts." 5. Lack of Remorse, Shame, and GuiltAt the core of the sociopath is a deep-seated rage, which is split off (i.e., psychologically separated from the rest of the self) and repressed. Some researchers theorize that this is caused by feeling abandoned in infancy or early childhood.28 Whatever the emotional or psychological source, sociopaths see those around them as objects, targets, or opportunities, not as people. They do not have friends; sociopaths have victims and accomplices-and the latter frequently end up as victims. For sociopaths, the ends always justify the means, and there is no place for feelings of remorse, shame, or guilt. Sociopathic cult leaders feel justified in all their actions because they consider themselves the ultimate moral arbiter. Nothing gets in their way. 6. Shallow EmotionsWhile sociopaths may display outbursts of emotion, these are more often than not responses calculated to obtain a certain result. They rarely reveal a range of emotions, and those they do reveal are superficial at best, and fabricated at worst. Positive feelings of warmth, joy, love, and compassion are more feigned than experienced. Such persons are unmoved by things that would upset the nonsociopathic person yet tend to be outraged by insignificant matters.

• From The Perfect Vagina: The Dangers of Extreme Plastic Surgery

  31:39 out for all and Sury well it's all a bit 31:42 31:42 new age for me it's funny isn't it how 31:43 31:43 you learn so much about yourself cuz I 31:45 31:45 it's really my head I think I'm really 31:46 31:46 liberal and then I go do things like 31:48 31:48 this actually perhaps I'm not that 31:52 31:52 liberal I'm clearly entirely the wrong 31:54 31:54 person to be doing this documentary oh 31:56 31:56 [ __ ] 31:60 31:60 [Music] 32:02 32:02 before setting off for London to see 32:04 32:04 Rosie who's due to have her stitches out 32:06 32:06 I decided to ask the painters and 32:08 32:08 decorators what they think of our Lady 32:10 32:10 flowers but you know what I wish I 32:12 32:12 hadn't 32:13 32:13 bothered what would what would you say 32:15 32:15 is a perfect vagina for you uh a shaven 32:19 32:19 one would you agree with that Kev no I 32:22 32:22 do like a bit of hair you like a bit of 32:23 32:23 hair and then what about the size size 32:25 32:25 of their lips and things like that I 32:27 32:27 prefer them tucked 32:29 32:29 in I don't like a like a squash head jog 32:32 32:32 some women can get flaps out tuck in 32:34 32:34 their socks have you had experience of a 32:36 32:36 lady with with not tucked in US be beef 32:39 32:39 Cur beef curing 32:42 32:42 like I mean is it something you kind of 32:44 32:44 look at though well yeah because um I do 32:47 32:47 like all sex you know giving and 32:49 32:49 receiving and 32:51 32:51 um it's like having a presentation with 32:54 32:54 you with your meal you know if it's all 32:56 32:56 slapped on you know and it's all you 32:57 32:57 know mer your peas out put you off a bit 33:00 33:00 it you know you got to have something 33:01 33:01 that looks nice you know before you 33:03 33:03 taste it when you're having sex for the 33:05 33:05 first time with a woman if she's got an 33:07 33:07 ugly Fanny sorry me I think you're being 33:10 33:10 very honest by telling us what you're 33:12 33:12 telling us John but at the same time I 33:14 33:14 do think you're being hideously sexist 33:17 33:17 you got some damp up here man as well I 33:19 33:19 need to put all beast on the coat before 33:21 33:21 you mtion see the I will just come 33:23 33:23 through again we'll do I'm not surprised 33:25 33:25 I'm 33:26 33:26 saddened I think the truth is I knew 33:29 33:29 really My Heart of heart that there were 33:31 33:31 going to be guys out there who responded 33:33 33:33 in that way but I think just to hear it 33:36

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  This all took place as she was entering puberty. It surprised her that she couldn’t remember any sexual feelings at all during her adolescence. Clearly, she had unconsciously suppressed her sexuality to avoid complicating her confusing emotional bond with her father even further. Once she started dating, she typically formed platonic friendships with men. In three amazing feats of intuitive attraction she had selected boyfriends with whom she could be close but who, because of their own insecurities, were reluctant to have sex with her. Thus she had spared herself the daunting task of examining her incest fear, the one difficult aspect of an otherwise wonderful relationship with her father. By keeping the spotlight on her boyfriends’ sexuality rather than on her own, she had kept her own lust in check. During our next session Ryan revealed that he often felt like his mother’s “little husband.” That day Ryan had been talking with his mom on the phone when she confided in him, as she often did, how lonely and unhappy she was with his father, who didn’t seem to care that much about her. As usual, Ryan was trying to comfort her when she whispered, “Oh, Ryan, you’re the only one who understands.” Although the exchange was all too familiar, a wave of revulsion suddenly engulfed his body, along with an overwhelming urge to hang up. Ryan added, “Sometimes she’s so damn needy it gives me the creeps.” Almost everyone is aware of how damaging sexual contact with an adult can be for a child. Not so widely recognized, however, is that certain kinds of overclose emotional involvements between parent and child, even when no overt sex is involved, can make it very difficult for the child to integrate love and lust as an adult. When Ryan and Janet made love, the combination of their intimate connection with sexual arousal apparently triggered old incest fears in both of them. When Ryan engaged in phone sex with sluttish fantasy women, not only was he acting out his identity as a depraved sex fiend, he was also directing his erotic attention toward someone as unlike his mother as possible. By separating love from lust he was honoring his father’s warnings while also steering clear of any interactions that might feel even vaguely Love and lust are inseparable parts of a larger whole for some, while for others they are irretrievably disconnected. Most of us, however, express our eroticism somewhere in the gray areas where love and lust both relate and conflict. Only by realizing that the two experiences are separate can we avoid painful self-delusions; to lust is not necessarily to love. By also recognizing that love and lust can and do interact, we open the door to the deepest mysteries of eros.