Embarrassment

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 Things They Carried (1990)

  Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did? I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was crying. Now, perhaps, you can understand why I've never told this story before. It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity. All I could do was cry. Quietly, not bawling, just the chest-chokes. At the rear of the boat Elroy Berdahl pretended not to notice. He held a fishing rod in his hands, his head bowed to hide his eyes. He kept humming a soft, monotonous little tune. Everywhere, it seemed, in the trees and water and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sorrow, sorrow like I had never known it before. And what was so sad, I realized, was that Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave. That old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream. Bobbing there on the Rainy River, looking back at the Minnesota shore, I felt a sudden swell of helplessness come over me, a drowning sensation, as if I had toppled overboard and was being swept away by the silver waves. Chunks of my own history flashed by. I saw a seven-year-old boy in a white cowboy hat and a Lone Ranger mask and a pair of bolstered six-shooters; I saw a twelve-year-old Little League shortstop pivoting to turn a double play; I saw a sixteen-year-old

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I swallowed the warm liquid in my mouth, but it went down wrong and I was sputtering. “Who here masturbates?” Linda asked. No hand went up. Even the giggling stopped. “It’s very natural,” she said. “You don’t have to be shy about it. Does everyone know what masturbation is?” I squirmed on my pillow and glanced quickly about the room. Every face was red. “How about you, Becky?” At once, all eyes were on Becky. It seemed that even breathing stopped. Would Becky admit to this? The redness that flushed her face seemed to shoot up to the roots of her short blond hair. She shook her head vehemently, lowered her eyes and began to pluck frantically at the fringe of her pillow. Please don’t pick me, I prayed to myself. “I mention masturbation,” Linda said, “because for children it is the beginning of a healthy interest and relationship with our own sexuality, preparation for adulthood, when we begin having intercourse. Of course masturbation doesn’t end in childhood. Adults masturbate, I masturbate, your parents do, everyone does, but usually no one likes to talk about it.” She gave a little laugh. “I have even seen some of you girls masturbate when you didn’t know I was looking. I won’t name any names.” Torturously embarrassed, I wanted to be doing anything else at that moment—matching socks, washing windows, even watching the monumentally boring historical videos of ancient cultures that we were forced to look at as part of our curriculum—anything other than sitting in that room imagining my mother masturbating and Linda spying on us. To our collective relief, Linda finally left the topic and moved on to the physical act of consummation between a man and woman. A second demonstrator joined the lesson and gave us all the technical details of what happens during intercourse. “Sex feels really good,” she gushed. “For women, though, the first few times can be painful because we have something inside of our vaginas called a hymen.” The sex lesson started in the afternoon and progressed into the night. Long, relentless and needling to our young minds, the lecture demanded our full attention. At seven years old, I was not particularly interested in the smooth architecture of an erect penis or how many thrusts it might take for a man to ejaculate, although I was surprised to learn that it typically took between seventeen and twenty thrusts. When we took a break, I made a hole with one hand, then placed the index finger of my other hand into the hole with quick jabs, imagining the penis and counting. Somehow the total didn’t seem right. The number seemed too few for something that was supposed to be so enjoyable. We moved on to the subject of menstruation. A long, thick menstrual pad was passed around, complete with a slim white belt. I tried to understand that one day I would be bleeding out of my vagina and would need to wear the strange diaper-like thing.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  She gave a little laugh. “I have even seen some of you girls masturbate when you didn’t know I was looking. I won’t name any names.” Torturously embarrassed, I wanted to be doing anything else at that moment—matching socks, washing windows, even watching the monumentally boring historical videos of ancient cultures that we were forced to look at as part of our curriculum—anything other than sitting in that room imagining my mother masturbating and Linda spying on us. To our collective relief, Linda finally left the topic and moved on to the physical act of consummation between a man and woman. A second demonstrator joined the lesson and gave us all the technical details of what happens during intercourse. “Sex feels really good,” she gushed. “For women, though, the first few times can be painful because we have something inside of our vaginas called a hymen.” The sex lesson started in the afternoon and progressed into the night. Long, relentless and needling to our young minds, the lecture demanded our full attention. At seven years old, I was not particularly interested in the smooth architecture of an erect penis or how many thrusts it might take for a man to ejaculate, although I was surprised to learn that it typically took between seventeen and twenty thrusts. When we took a break, I made a hole with one hand, then placed the index finger of my other hand into the hole with quick jabs, imagining the penis and counting. Somehow the total didn’t seem right. The number seemed too few for something that was supposed to be so enjoyable. We moved on to the subject of menstruation. A long, thick menstrual pad was passed around, complete with a slim white belt. I tried to understand that one day I would be bleeding out of my vagina and would need to wear the strange diaper-like thing. I felt dubious about this information and pondered it like I’d pondered the thrusting business. Late that night, the workshop finally ended. We girls went to bed

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  To our collective relief, Linda finally left the topic and moved on to the physical act of consummation between a man and woman. A second demonstrator joined the lesson and gave us all the technical details of what happens during intercourse. “Sex feels really good,” she gushed. “For women, though, the first few times can be painful because we have something inside of our vaginas called a hymen.” The sex lesson started in the afternoon and progressed into the night. Long, relentless and needling to our young minds, the lecture demanded our full attention. At seven years old, I was not particularly interested in the smooth architecture of an erect penis or how many thrusts it might take for a man to ejaculate, although I was surprised to learn that it typically took between seventeen and twenty thrusts. When we took a break, I made a hole with one hand, then placed the index finger of my other hand into the hole with quick jabs, imagining the penis and counting. Somehow the total didn’t seem right. The number seemed too few for something that was supposed to be so enjoyable. We moved on to the subject of menstruation. A long, thick menstrual pad was passed around, complete with a slim white belt. I tried to understand that one day I would be bleeding out of my vagina and would need to wear the strange diaper-like thing. I felt dubious about this information and pondered it like I’d pondered the thrusting business. Late that night, the workshop finally ended. We girls went to bed quietly, no doubt mentally numb from our strange seminar, exhausted from working and hungry from the diet.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “At some point or another we discover masturbation, and it’s a very nice feeling, wouldn’t you all agree?” she said. I swallowed the warm liquid in my mouth, but it went down wrong and I was sputtering. “Who here masturbates?” Linda asked. No hand went up. Even the giggling stopped. “It’s very natural,” she said. “You don’t have to be shy about it. Does everyone know what masturbation is?” I squirmed on my pillow and glanced quickly about the room. Every face was red. “How about you, Becky?” At once, all eyes were on Becky. It seemed that even breathing stopped. Would Becky admit to this? The redness that flushed her face seemed to shoot up to the roots of her short blond hair. She shook her head vehemently, lowered her eyes and began to pluck frantically at the fringe of her pillow. Please don’t pick me, I prayed to myself. “I mention masturbation,” Linda said, “because for children it is the beginning of a healthy interest and relationship with our own sexuality, preparation for adulthood, when we begin having intercourse. Of course masturbation doesn’t end in childhood. Adults masturbate, I masturbate, your parents do, everyone does, but usually no one likes to talk about it.” She gave a little laugh. “I have even seen some of you girls masturbate when you didn’t know I was looking. I won’t name any names.” Torturously embarrassed, I wanted to be doing anything else at that moment—matching socks, washing windows, even watching the monumentally boring historical videos of ancient cultures that we were forced to look at as part of our curriculum—anything other than sitting in that room imagining my mother masturbating and Linda spying on us.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Linda stood in the doorway holding a large cowbell and hitting it with a metal rod, her movements measured and methodical. Sophie was already out of bed. As Linda left our doorway, clanging as she moved to the next room, I watched my roommate pad over to me, a silhouetted figure in shadowy lighting. “It’s time to get up,” she said. “We have to get ready for inspection.” I removed my bed covers and glimpsed several girls still in their gowns running down the hallway. Sophie turned on the overhead light and I watched as she briskly made her bed. Without turning, she told me to make up my own bed. She looked over my work, pulled a little at the gray blanket to unfurl a wrinkle and tucked in the corners tighter, emphasizing the crispness of the folds. This constant quest for perfection puzzled me. I followed her to the bathroom, where the three sinks were already in use, each with one or two girls vigorously brushing their teeth. The other children eyed me, but their curiosity was gone. We shrugged off our gowns, and I stepped in line behind the other naked girls waiting to enter the massive shower room. Each stood naturally, some yawning. They were used to this strange situation. I didn’t know how to act or where to put my hands as I still hadn’t grown used to the naked lineup. At my home, people didn’t stand naked in a crowd. Everyone had privacy in the bathroom. The door always remained locked. I needed to go number one and make a BM. I peered over my shoulder at the room where the toilets were. I already knew what was there: two toilets with no doors. I wasn’t sure I could go to the bathroom with other people watching me. Several girls emerged from the showers, their bodies slick and dripping wet. Our group was next. There were five showerheads and thick bars of green soap in holders. In an instant, the enormous stall fogged with steam. I wrapped one of the short, thin white towels around my body and tiptoed to the toilets. A girl sat on one of them, wiping herself. I turned to leave. “Look,” she called out. I glanced over my shoulder. Her cheeks indented in a dimpled smile, she held the paper smeared brown with feces. “It’s poop,” she chirped. Unsure what to say, I turned around and scurried to my room, where I finished getting ready for the inspection. Sophie had already dressed. Wielding a white rag, she dusted our dressers, nightstands and lamps, glimpsing now and then at the cloth. “The demonstrator always checks to make sure that everything is clean and that our clothes have no dirt or stains.” I looked down at my overalls and didn’t see any spots or dirt marks. My tennis shoes were creased and a bit scuffed. They were obviously a second-hand pair. Sophie handed me some shoe polish.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  It’s like the M&Ms commercial. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands,” I sang. Andrew still didn’t laugh. Maybe he hadn’t seen that commercial, I thought, so I tried another joke, an easy one about a person staying in a hotel room who hears small voices moaning from the bathroom. “‘When the log rolls over, we’re all going to die!’” I said, imitating the voices. “The person freaks out, grabs his stuff and checks out of the hotel. Then another person checks into the room. He hears the voices, freaks out and runs out of the room. Then a third person checks into the room. He hears the voices and is curious, not scared like the others, so he enters the bathroom to check things out. He looks careful-like into the toilet bowl and guess what he finds? A group of ants sitting on a turd.” I laughed myself silly at this punch line, but Andrew didn’t seem to get the joke. “All right,” I said. “This one’s really funny.” I was about to launch into the joke about a man who was supposed to gather golf balls, but tried to get King Kong’s balls instead, when Andrew leaned toward Theresa and whispered into her ear. Her cheeks tinged with red, she stood up and motioned to me to follow her. We went out to the foyer. “Celena, Andrew wants you stop telling the penis jokes and poop jokes. They’re making him uncomfortable.” I felt my face grow hot. I thought I was being such a great dinner partner. We returned to the table, and for the rest of the meal I barely looked at Andrew. Theresa made good on her promise and a trip was arranged for us to go to Los Angeles to visit my father and other relatives for a weekend. Later she told me that she hadn’t requested the visit outright, predicting that the request would be turned down. Instead, she’d applied for welfare, knowing Synanon would gladly accept the money. She then told management that since the organization was receiving public aid, my father had a legal right to visitation. We arrived at my grandparents’ home in the early evening. It felt strange to be back at the house where I’d spent my days in refuge from Aunt Terry, who lived across the street. My father arrived shortly after we did, seeming to burst through the door. “Hey!” he called. “Daddy!” I ran into his open arms, and he held me tight, laughing, his voice deep and rumbling. His warmth seemed to spread into my own being. He smelled of aftershave and spicy cologne. His shiny brown face and large forehead gleamed in the light. His dark eyes crackled with humor. I felt as if we had seen each other only yesterday. My father sat on the sofa and pulled me onto his lap.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “Really—you couldn’t expect to keep your pleasure in the fantasies secret, could you? You revealed that simply by coming here. Ah? And because it is a secret no longer, you sit there with your cheeks moving through alternate shades of plum, while I rear back in my chair and laugh.” He leaned his elbows on the scarred table top. “I do laugh.” His voice was very sober and gentle. “Can you laugh with me? Because I’m not laughing at you.” He waited until her eyes could stay with his. “Is it such a terrible thing to content yourself with only visiting places like this in sleazy books or in . . . what do they call them—underground comics? If their reports are uninformed, blurred, or inaccurate, you’re intelligent enough to doctor them back to your individual specifications, edit out those particular bits which to you are personally distasteful, thanks to either your or the author’s prejudices. Don’t you think I have this fantastic preoccupation as well as you? I’m an artist: imagination is a weakness we share. If you could merely arrive, tear off your clothes, throw yourself between the knees of whatever buck hauled out his—” He stopped, because she was looking down at her hands. “You tried. Quite admirably, I might add.” “It was so dark in there, I couldn’t even see who it was who . . .” “But you were afraid they could see you? They could, you know. You were the last one in. There was a light on in the hall. When you stepped through the open door, there was a moment when your eager, expectant face was in full view of all those already—I’m sorry. I’m being cruel. But my simple point is: even so, it doesn’t matter. We, above all people, have learned how to keep secrets. When you leave here, no one outside will know. Your skirt is neat; you’ve sustained no terribly large bruises; your hair? That can be counted to the sea breeze outside—” “Ohhh . . .” on an indrawn breath. “My . . . do you have a . . .” She reached for his arm: stopped before she touched him, stared at her hand, jerked it back. “. . . comb. Oh I can’t . . . anymore, I’m afraid to . . . You must have a—comb? I . . . ” She let her head fall forward. Her shoulders shook twice. The dark red hair, which wasn’t very messy at all, swung forward. When she looked up, bright tracks descending her cheeks, she blinked. “I’m afraid to . . .” (Head shaking.) “. . . touch anybody, now!” Proctor reared his chair back again and locked his hands over his stomach. “Go home, Peggy-Ann. Go home. It will all be over in a sleep and a shower and the nice, smiling man who will come tomorrow—if not tomorrow, next month, next year.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  When the rhythm dangled him over the coming chasm he hissed. Dove threw back his head. “Yeah, fuck me, Dove,” Nig lipped without voice on Dove’s ear, tasting salt and things more bitter. “Yeah, you like that pig sticker! Don’t you; yes you, like it, baby! “Fuck me, yeah and, fuck me. Twitch your pretty, ass. Swing your sweet white ass on my pecker, brother!” Dove squeezed his cock head. Jerked. Nig shot. Dove felt the last thrust lock; the locked loins shook. Tongue and a torrent of air. Dove came all over his hand. Nig hung from Dove’s back. Dove lifted his hands: glistening grey strands, drooping. He caught one on his tongue. Nig pulled out. Dove almost drew blood from the two fingers in his mouth. Nig squatted in the doorway. He rubbed Dove’s foot. Once put his head against Dove’s thigh. Dove leaned back on the jamb and licked his hand more. Then he dropped it. Later he felt lips close over his forefingers: lip and tongue, moving on the flesh between, the hard heel, the rough palm. Still later, after he had closed his pants he still stood, stroking the sweaty neck, the crisp hair on Nig’s bony, long head. —THE END— The girl said, “Oh . . .” with no voice at all. Proctor watched embarrassment beat behind her face like a hot bird whose wings brushed her cheeks, pulled away, then beat again. He said, “Now try to get hold of yourself.” “But I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She looked down, and her thin fingers pulled to the table’s edge. She crushed her shoulders together under the red blouse. When she saw the middle button still undone, her fingers flew to fasten it. Proctor put his bare feet wide in the sawdust, pushed the forelegs of his chair up. “What’s your name?” “. . . Peggy-Ann,” she breathed. Her face reddened again. The name trembled in her mouth like a confession. “Who told you about what goes on here at the Hall of Mirrors? ” Laughter above them. A crash. A woman screamed. Another scream ended in laughter. Her eyes veered wild among the empty tables, slid across the deserted bar, and passed over the window curtains. He thought: she expects the sound itself to break ceiling or walls, take form, and attack her. Niger lifted his head by the foot of the steps and watched her, panting. Her eyes caught the dog’s. She closed her mouth and tried to push back into the chair. “Who told you?” Proctor repeated. But gently. His hand strayed in the white hair of his stomach to scratch under his buckle. Her eyes came to his, and after silent seconds, faltered into blinking. She began to shake her head. “Catherine?” Her head stopped. “I thought so. Doesn’t matter.”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Stop action film: a white orchid from bud to bloom. Breath regular. Mucus drips his knuckles. Still stiff, the shaft glistens. Pearls on black wire. “Kirsten?” He swung his feet over the edge, his shoulders hunched (dull as cannon shot); his dirty shirt was sleeveless. Buttons: copper. “Kirsten!” His voice: maroons, purples, a nap between velvet and suede. “Come down here!” When the door cracked, he laughed. Her hair was yellow, paler than the light. Her smock, torn at her neck, hung between her breasts. One dull aureole rose on the blue horizon. Her face moved with its laughter before she saw, “Captain, you . . . ?” saw, and smothered it, to have it break again. Blue eyes widened in the half dark. “What do you want?” She stepped on to the rug. A copper anklet sloped beneath the knob of her ankle, crossed low on her calloused heel. (Uneven hem brushes smudged knees.) A print sash bound her belly. “Where is your brother?” “In the wheelhouse, asleep.” “Where were you?” “On deck. I was sitting in the sun.” “With the men on the docks all coming by to stare? How many with their hands in their pockets?” “Oh . . . !” “None of them with what I got.” He leaned back. His fingers tracked his stomach. “Come here. Tell me what’s for supper.” “Your thoughts have gone as high as your gut, now?” “How do you and the boy get chores done if you sleep and sun all the time?” “But what is there to do in port?” She stepped across the rug, laughing. He grabbed her wrist. She stumbled and he caught: “How many times!” She pushed his chest. Her wrist turned under slippery fingers. “Five times? Six? I’ll say seven—” “But see, you’ve already—” “Once already. Six more now.” He kneaded her inner thigh. “Captain . . . !” She tried to pull away. His hand went beneath the hem. She shrieked and bit the sound off. What spilled after was a giggle. “How many years have I had you two, now?” His forearm shifted like bunched blacksnakes. She tried to push his hand from under her skirt. Stopped trying. She opened her lips and caressed his arm. “How many years? Seven. Now, once for each year you’ve worked on my boat.” He looked down at himself. She touched where he looked: she took it, slipping the loose skin from the head. When she fingered beneath the twice full bag, he arched his back. “Pig. Sit on it. Little white pig . . .” Three calloused fingers were knuckle deep in her. She bent; her hair swept his face. He caught it in his yellow teeth, twisted his head. Kirsten grabbed at her hair, and made an ugly sound. His teeth opened on laughter; it and her hair spilled black lips mottled with cerise. Barking. Claws at wood.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Curtis can’t afford marijuana, Richard says, adding, It’s probably floating up from the alley. And with that, I tell him how—visiting me once at college—Mother got gunched out of her brains with my pals. In my twenties, she sat in on a poetry workshop with Etheridge, and afterward, I found her on his back step sharing a blunt with him and a bunch of young brothers. Which embarrassed me at the time, since she flirted like a saloon floozy, but also since her lack of maternal posture always unconsciously felt like some failure of mine on the child front. By the end of the Mother stories, Richard’s finger-combing through the suds in my hair with warm water has sent an ease from the scalp down my spine and along my limbs. She’s in good hands with Curtis, Richard says. He’s wrapped my hair in a towel, and I sit upright. And there’s nobody else here? We closed the shop for you two. Very exclusive, Richard says, adding, we have caught kids getting high in the alley before. Not long after, Curtis swans in, giving off an odor of patchouli oil as he rifles a drawer. He says, Your mom’s a riot. I’m gonna visit her in Texas. She knows a place I can buy ostrich-skin cowboy boots. I’m sure she does, I say. Some time later, when Curtis presents her, I see he’s jacked her hair up into a concoction only a drag queen could relish. Her eyes are glassy, and her neck has that bobblehead swivel. Mother! I say. Don’t I look precious? she says, hands on her hips. You look high! Do you think? Curtis says. She made me do it that high. Mother tips her head coquettishly, which, with the giant hairdo, has the effect of a topiary starting to topple over. She says, We smoked a little maryjane. Then we’re in Warren’s tiny backseat. As he navigates the river road traffic to the Ritz, I’m violently trying to de-escalate her hair. Why now, Mother? I say, almost in tears. Why’d you have to start now? Ow, she says. She’s holding her ears as I tug. Don’t ruin your mascara. You reek of marijuana, I say. The city of Cambridge is sliding away behind us. At the boathouse, we pass somebody hauling a lone scull from the water. I apologize to Warren as I work at the vast rats’ nest of her head. I don’t smell anything, he says. With Warren, you can never know if this is impeccable denial or politeness. Maybe at all those heavy-drinking WASP

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “Fuck me, yeah and, fuck me. Twitch your pretty, ass. Swing your sweet white ass on my pecker, brother!” Dove squeezed his cock head. Jerked. Nig shot. Dove felt the last thrust lock; the locked loins shook. Tongue and a torrent of air. Dove came all over his hand. Nig hung from Dove’s back. Dove lifted his hands: glistening grey strands, drooping. He caught one on his tongue. Nig pulled out. Dove almost drew blood from the two fingers in his mouth. Nig squatted in the doorway. He rubbed Dove’s foot. Once put his head against Dove’s thigh. Dove leaned back on the jamb and licked his hand more. Then he dropped it. Later he felt lips close over his forefingers: lip and tongue, moving on the flesh between, the hard heel, the rough palm. Still later, after he had closed his pants he still stood, stroking the sweaty neck, the crisp hair on Nig’s bony, long head. —THE END—The girl said, “Oh . . .” with no voice at all. Proctor watched embarrassment beat behind her face like a hot bird whose wings brushed her cheeks, pulled away, then beat again. He said, “Now try to get hold of yourself.” “But I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She looked down, and her thin fingers pulled to the table’s edge. She crushed her shoulders together under the red blouse. When she saw the middle button still undone, her fingers flew to fasten it. Proctor put his bare feet wide in the sawdust, pushed the forelegs of his chair up. “What’s your name?” “. . . Peggy-Ann,” she breathed. Her face reddened again. The name trembled in her mouth like a confession. “Who told you about what goes on here at the Hall of Mirrors?” Laughter above them. A crash. A woman screamed. Another scream ended in laughter. Her eyes veered wild among the empty tables, slid across the deserted bar, and passed over the window curtains. He thought: she expects the sound itself to break ceiling or walls, take form, and attack her. Niger lifted his head by the foot of the steps and watched her, panting. Her eyes caught the dog’s. She closed her mouth and tried to push back into the chair. “Who told you?” Proctor repeated. But gently. His hand strayed in the white hair of his stomach to scratch under his buckle. Her eyes came to his, and after silent seconds, faltered into blinking. She began to shake her head. “Catherine?” Her head stopped.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Kelley returns to say there isn’t any more asparagus, and the cook bellows from the kitchen, Tell him if he ate like a normal man, there would’ve been enough asparagus. Which holler blows invisibly through the room. Again Mrs. Whitbread covers her mouth with her napkin, and Warren’s eyes aren’t beaming over at mine. The Whitbread talent for ignoring the ugly obvious is a quality I covet. Before we leave the table, we’re supposed to give our breakfast requests to the cook via Kelley. Mrs. Whitbread finds it odd that I won’t have at least a poached egg. But in the tract houses I visited as a kid, you declined food, presuming a spare larder made any offering a polite show. You’ll starve into a little chicken, Mrs. Whitbread says, standing and placing her napkin on the table. Over port in the library, I manage to sip daintily—having swilled enough wine at dinner to keep pace with Warren’s father—while I flip through portraits. In the small solitary time I’d had with Warren after tea, I’d tried to drag out some explanation of the house, the family’s history, but he’d dozed by the pool instead. Sitting in their library, the Whitbreads are only slightly more forthcoming. So I pore over the photo albums like a scholar trying to decipher the rules of the realm. With each flip of the page, I tune in more keenly to what the sloppy shoe box of photos in my homestead holds: Mother’s cousin Henry drunk in Mexico, dressed as a matador; Daddy and his brothers with alligators they’d killed for the hides strung from a tree. How would the society page editor chronicle my lineage for this historic visit to Fairweather Hall? At that time my family is broke out in the kind of misery common to sharecroppers in Faulkner novels. Just that month Daddy had suffered a stroke. While drinking at the VFW bar, he’d toppled off a bar stool. He’s still alive but paralyzed and speechless, barely aware that Mother’s popping valium like pop-tarts. But the Whitbreads’ photo album bulges with enough presidents to fill a high school history book. Both Roosevelts practiced in the family firm. Here’s Great-grandfather in the old touring car with McKinley right before he was shot. Warren gets quiet during the stories. He was bred in quiet and carries quiet in him but elegance also. Even picking burrs out of Tiger’s tail he can pull off with gravitas. But he can also drift far from me into himself. Sitting across from him, I can’t meet his eyes. Maybe he’s patiently irritated with how awed I am by the posh household he’s fleeing. Or maybe I’m breaking rules of comportment subtle enough to resemble the minuscule gaffes you get demerits for in precision diving contests. Warren’s grandfather—in riding gear circa 1930-something, holding a polo mallet—is Warren’s exact double. Here’s the cover of The New York Times that falsely reported his death after a fall. Mr.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  He stretched out his hands and laid them on the table. “She’s tired of our lives now. Certainly by now she’s gone on to . . . well, I’m sure her doings would seem bizarre even to us. Still, I notice she has no compunction about steering you back into the tangles of what she, no doubt, considers a swamp.” He noticed that when he touched the table Peggy-Ann’s fingers retreated into her lap, meshed in a pale knot. “I’m also sure she didn’t misrepresent us. Can you tell me why you thought you would enjoy it here?” She shook her head again. “Oh, I’m so sor . . .” That word failed. She tried three more; could make no sound; could only beg with her eyes. He let the chair legs tap down. “We’ll let it go by saying you just wanted to see for yourself. I dare say you’ve done quite a bit of ‘experimenting’ in your . . . time. You’re very attractive. Are you twenty yet?” She hazarded a nod. “Older?” With a small jerking motion, she shook: no. “I dare say you’re also bright. Catherine never had time for stupid women. Or stupid men either.” “I . . . I didn’t know her well.” “Then your intellect must have impressed her very much, if she recommended us so quickly.” “I feel so . . . silly . . .” in a voice that communicated only terror. “No. Not silly. You have quite a lot of time left to wander this globe. You must find out who you are. So. You’ve discovered, now, you are the sort of person who can enjoy such things as pass in these rooms only in fantasies—eh?” Her eyes jerked back up to his. He laughed. “There, with your pretty green eyes and your red hair all awry—” Her hands started for her hair, stopped when Proctor laughed again. “Really—you couldn’t expect to keep your pleasure in the fantasies secret, could you? You revealed that simply by coming here. Ah? And because it is a secret no longer, you sit there with your cheeks moving through alternate shades of plum, while I rear back in my chair and laugh.” He leaned his elbows on the scarred table top. “I do laugh.” His voice was very sober and gentle. “Can you laugh with me? Because I’m not laughing at you.” He waited until her eyes could stay with his. “Is it such a terrible thing to content yourself with only visiting places like this in sleazy books or in . . . what do they call them—underground comics? If their reports are uninformed, blurred, or inaccurate, you’re intelligent enough to doctor them back to your individual specifications, edit out those particular bits which to you are personally distasteful, thanks to either your or the author’s prejudices.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “Fuck me, yeah and, fuck me. Twitch your pretty, ass. Swing your sweet white ass on my pecker, brother!” Dove squeezed his cock head. Jerked. Nig shot. Dove felt the last thrust lock; the locked loins shook. Tongue and a torrent of air. Dove came all over his hand. Nig hung from Dove’s back. Dove lifted his hands: glistening grey strands, drooping. He caught one on his tongue. Nig pulled out. Dove almost drew blood from the two fingers in his mouth. Nig squatted in the doorway. He rubbed Dove’s foot. Once put his head against Dove’s thigh. Dove leaned back on the jamb and licked his hand more. Then he dropped it. Later he felt lips close over his forefingers: lip and tongue, moving on the flesh between, the hard heel, the rough palm. Still later, after he had closed his pants he still stood, stroking the sweaty neck, the crisp hair on Nig’s bony, long head. —THE END—The girl said, “Oh . . .” with no voice at all. Proctor watched embarrassment beat behind her face like a hot bird whose wings brushed her cheeks, pulled away, then beat again. He said, “Now try to get hold of yourself.” “But I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She looked down, and her thin fingers pulled to the table’s edge. She crushed her shoulders together under the red blouse. When she saw the middle button still undone, her fingers flew to fasten it. Proctor put his bare feet wide in the sawdust, pushed the forelegs of his chair up. “What’s your name?” “. . . Peggy-Ann,” she breathed. Her face reddened again. The name trembled in her mouth like a confession. “Who told you about what goes on here at the Hall of Mirrors?” Laughter above them. A crash. A woman screamed. Another scream ended in laughter. Her eyes veered wild among the empty tables, slid across the deserted bar, and passed over the window curtains. He thought: she expects the sound itself to break ceiling or walls, take form, and attack her. Niger lifted his head by the foot of the steps and watched her, panting. Her eyes caught the dog’s. She closed her mouth and tried to push back into the chair. “Who told you?” Proctor repeated. But gently. His hand strayed in the white hair of his stomach to scratch under his buckle. Her eyes came to his, and after silent seconds, faltered into blinking. She began to shake her head. “Catherine?” Her head stopped.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  You want something from me? I’m simply telling you what I can offer. You come up here like a man who wants to eat pussy and stick ass. I haven’t been a pimp for a while.” The captain grinned. “Not to say . . .” Proctor drew his fist up his thigh “. . . I have no talent there.” Suddenly he looked over his shoulder and called: “Benny!” A lizard scurried along the bars of a bird cage, stared at them with a red eye. From a doorway, hung with paisley drape, came a sleepy boy, fifteen or sixteen. Proctor said: “Bring us some coffee.” Black hair, olive dark (the high cheeks of a Puerto Rican), eyes curious through fatigue: a long body carved by physical labor. He went over to the stove and began to make coffee. His hands were clumsily affectionate with the pots. “Benny spends much time here. He helps me with my work. I grind my own colors, stretch and prime my own canvas. Benny does a lot of that. He prepares stones for sculpture, polishes finished works for me, sharpens chisels.” The boy brought the captain his cup. Something large swung in the left pant leg. “Your boy here is hung like a horse.” Proctor laughed and Benny got embarrassed. “It’s a good handful to play with, hey, boy?” the captain said. As Benny turned, the captain smacked his butt. The boy glanced back, did not know what to do, so moved to his employer. He gave Proctor his cup, then dropped cross-legged to the floor by the artist’s knee. Proctor ran his hand across the boy’s hair. Benny let his head fall forward. “A good boy,” Proctor said. “He does what I tell him.” “Suck dick?” The captain was aware that Proctor was trying to keep an expression off his face. The captain nodded toward the boy. “Hey, Benny, how long is your master’s?” Benny looked wary, but his eyes fixed between his master’s legs . . . Proctor brought his knees together. “Bigger’n mine,” Benny said. Then, as Proctor let his legs open again, the boy reached between the denim thighs. Proctor looked at the beamed ceiling. His hand went back to the boy’s head. Wait. The hand working. (Sometimes . . .) “Suck it.” Benny shrugged, turned on his knees between Proctor’s boots. Proctor stood up, looking at the captain. He put his hands in his pockets. Benny opened the fly halfway. Proctors separating fists ran the zipper the rest down. The cock came out like a grey-mained bronc, and disappeared in Benny’s face. The captain drank half his coffee. Walked over. Pulled out Proctor’s testicles. The shaft slicked in and out of Benny’s mouth. The captain kneaded his own crotch. He touched Proctor’s buttocks.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  When the rhythm dangled him over the coming chasm he hissed. Dove threw back his head. “Yeah, fuck me, Dove,” Nig lipped without voice on Dove’s ear, tasting salt and things more bitter. “Yeah, you like that pig sticker! Don’t you; yes you, like it, baby! “Fuck me, yeah and, fuck me. Twitch your pretty, ass. Swing your sweet white ass on my pecker, brother!” Dove squeezed his cock head. Jerked. Nig shot. Dove felt the last thrust lock; the locked loins shook. Tongue and a torrent of air. Dove came all over his hand. Nig hung from Dove’s back. Dove lifted his hands: glistening grey strands, drooping. He caught one on his tongue. Nig pulled out. Dove almost drew blood from the two fingers in his mouth. Nig squatted in the doorway. He rubbed Dove’s foot. Once put his head against Dove’s thigh. Dove leaned back on the jamb and licked his hand more. Then he dropped it. Later he felt lips close over his forefingers: lip and tongue, moving on the flesh between, the hard heel, the rough palm. Still later, after he had closed his pants he still stood, stroking the sweaty neck, the crisp hair on Nig’s bony, long head. —THE END— The girl said, “Oh . . .” with no voice at all. Proctor watched embarrassment beat behind her face like a hot bird whose wings brushed her cheeks, pulled away, then beat again. He said, “Now try to get hold of yourself.” “But I . . . I didn’t know . . .” She looked down, and her thin fingers pulled to the table’s edge. She crushed her shoulders together under the red blouse. When she saw the middle button still undone, her fingers flew to fasten it. Proctor put his bare feet wide in the sawdust, pushed the forelegs of his chair up. “What’s your name?” “. . . Peggy-Ann,” she breathed. Her face reddened again. The name trembled in her mouth like a confession. “Who told you about what goes on here at the Hall of Mirrors? ” Laughter above them. A crash. A woman screamed. Another scream ended in laughter. Her eyes veered wild among the empty tables, slid across the deserted bar, and passed over the window curtains. He thought: she expects the sound itself to break ceiling or walls, take form, and attack her. Niger lifted his head by the foot of the steps and watched her, panting. Her eyes caught the dog’s. She closed her mouth and tried to push back into the chair. “Who told you?” Proctor repeated. But gently. His hand strayed in the white hair of his stomach to scratch under his buckle. Her eyes came to his, and after silent seconds, faltered into blinking. She began to shake her head. “Catherine?” Her head stopped. “I thought so. Doesn’t matter.”

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Warren explains I hadn’t gone to Princeton but to a hippie school that just went belly-up. With that in the open, we fall to sawing our food. The cutlery weighs about a pound—a heft that sends some ineffable message. And what are two young poets reading? Mr. Whitbread asks. I babble on about the memoirs of Chilean poet Neruda, for ballast throwing in some pretentious French philosophy I’ve never so much as held in my hands. Mr. Whitbread asks for more asparagus, and Kelley vanishes with the bowl. How about you, Warren? Warren—having barely touched his food—dabs his mouth before saying, A biography of Samuel Johnson. Boswell? Mr. Whitbread says. I loved Boswell. How he described spying on Mr. and Mrs. Johnson through the bedroom keyhole in flagrante delicto like two walruses. Mrs. Whitbread ducks her head, and I try not to snicker, for any talk of sex in those environs seems particularly wanton. This is by Walter Jackson Bate, Warren says. Bate’s a campus luminary you can see sashaying through the library stacks wearing a little porkpie hat like Art Carney in The Honeymooners. Kelley returns to say there isn’t any more asparagus, and the cook bellows from the kitchen, Tell him if he ate like a normal man, there would’ve been enough asparagus. Which holler blows invisibly through the room. Again Mrs. Whitbread covers her mouth with her napkin, and Warren’s eyes aren’t beaming over at mine. The Whitbread talent for ignoring the ugly obvious is a quality I covet. Before we leave the table, we’re supposed to give our breakfast requests to the cook via Kelley. Mrs. Whitbread finds it odd that I won’t have at least a poached egg. But in the tract houses I visited as a kid, you declined food, presuming a spare larder made any offering a polite show. You’ll starve into a little chicken, Mrs. Whitbread says, standing and placing her napkin on the table. Over port in the library, I manage to sip daintily—having swilled enough wine at dinner to keep pace with Warren’s father—while I flip through portraits. In the small solitary time I’d had with Warren after tea, I’d tried to drag out some explanation of the house, the family’s history, but he’d dozed by the pool instead. Sitting in their library, the Whitbreads are only slightly more forthcoming. So I pore over the photo albums like a scholar trying to decipher the rules of the realm. With each flip of the page, I tune in more keenly to what the sloppy shoe box of photos in my homestead holds: Mother’s cousin Henry drunk in Mexico, dressed as a matador; Daddy and his brothers with alligators they’d killed for the hides strung from a tree.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  The village proletariat produced a large number of folk-artists, sculptors, painters, ornament makers, tailors, singers and players, saga-tellers and folk-writers” (290–291). I now turn from that general context to a specific text about Jesus. Though it is not from the Common Sayings Tradition, I introduce it here because it will, in any case, haunt the background to the following discussion of units from that corpus. The Greek text of Mark 6:3 records that Jesus’ contemporaries asked incredulously about him, “Is not this the tekton? ” We usually translate that term as carpenter , which creates a problem for our contemporary imagination. The question is not what that term means for us but what it meant within a peasant economy in the early-first-century Jewish homeland. Mark locates the scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, and he is followed in that detail by both Matthew and Luke. John, who locates it in the synagogue at Capernaum, is probably giving an independent version of that local reaction to Jesus. I give all four texts here, but I am especially interested in how Matthew and Luke rephrase their Markan source: Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us? (Mark 6:3) Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this? (Matthew 13:55–56) Is not this Joseph’s son? (Luke 4:22) Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? (John 6:40) That is a very interesting change in Matthew 13:55 and Luke 4:22. Each in its own way avoids saying that Jesus was a carpenter . Matthew shifts the term to Joseph, and Luke avoids it entirely. This is my question: Do they find Jesus-as-carpenter somewhat offensive, and is that the reason for those changes? The following parallel case prompts an affirmative answer. Mark 10:35 has “James and John, the sons of Zebedee,” ask, with ineffable obtuseness, for first seats in the kingdom immediately after Jesus has described his impending passion in terrible detail. It is hard to miss the awful inappropriateness of that reaction. What do Matthew and Luke do with it? Matthew 20:20 saves their dignity by changing the passage to a request from “the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” It is now not the sons themselves but their mother who pleads for first seats on their behalf. And Luke simply omits the entire unit. He follows Mark 10:32–34 (the unit just preceding the first-seats request) in his own 18:31–34, ignores Mark 10:35–45, and then follows Mark 10:46–52 (just after the request) in his own 18:35–43. As earlier with Jesus as carpenter, so here with John and James as dumb and dumber, Matthew and Luke use exactly the same procedure to solve a Markan embarrassment.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I babble on about the memoirs of Chilean poet Neruda, for ballast throwing in some pretentious French philosophy I’ve never so much as held in my hands. Mr. Whitbread asks for more asparagus, and Kelley vanishes with the bowl. How about you, Warren? Warren—having barely touched his food—dabs his mouth before saying, A biography of Samuel Johnson. Boswell? Mr. Whitbread says. I loved Boswell. How he described spying on Mr. and Mrs. Johnson through the bedroom keyhole in flagrante delicto like two walruses . Mrs. Whitbread ducks her head, and I try not to snicker, for any talk of sex in those environs seems particularly wanton. This is by Walter Jackson Bate, Warren says. Bate’s a campus luminary you can see sashaying through the library stacks wearing a little porkpie hat like Art Carney in The Honeymooners . Kelley returns to say there isn’t any more asparagus, and the cook bellows from the kitchen, Tell him if he ate like a normal man, there would’ve been enough asparagus . Which holler blows invisibly through the room. Again Mrs. Whitbread covers her mouth with her napkin, and Warren’s eyes aren’t beaming over at mine. The Whitbread talent for ignoring the ugly obvious is a quality I covet. Before we leave the table, we’re supposed to give our breakfast requests to the cook via Kelley. Mrs. Whitbread finds it odd that I won’t have at least a poached egg. But in the tract houses I visited as a kid, you declined food, presuming a spare larder made any offering a polite show. You’ll starve into a little chicken, Mrs. Whitbread says, standing and placing her napkin on the table. Over port in the library, I manage to sip daintily—having swilled enough wine at dinner to keep pace with Warren’s father—while I flip through portraits. In the small solitary time I’d had with Warren after tea, I’d tried to drag out some explanation of the house, the family’s history, but he’d dozed by the pool instead. Sitting in their library, the Whitbreads are only slightly more forthcoming. So I pore over the photo albums like a scholar trying to decipher the rules of the realm. With each flip of the page, I tune in more keenly to what the sloppy shoe box of photos in my homestead holds: Mother’s cousin Henry drunk in Mexico, dressed as a matador; Daddy and his brothers with alligators they’d killed for the hides strung from a tree. How would the society page editor chronicle my lineage for this historic visit to Fairweather Hall? At that time my family is broke out in the kind of misery common to sharecroppers in Faulkner novels. Just that month Daddy had suffered a stroke. While drinking at the VFW bar, he’d toppled off a bar stool. He’s still alive but paralyzed and speechless, barely aware that Mother’s popping valium like pop-tarts. But the Whitbreads’ photo album bulges with enough presidents to fill a high school history book.