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.

Page 17 of 79 · 20 per page

• From Action (2014)

  The ultimate showstopping move is cake. Try another right-now demonstration: Hold the palm of your dominant hand out with your fingers open. Close your hand so your fingers meet your palm. Count to three as you drag your fingertips along your skin, up slowly to the ball of your hand, stopping at their bases. Imagine imitating that soft, rolling touch around a penis. Or just go do that to a penis, if you have one handy. (Stop looking at me like that. I know what I just said, and I apologize.) HOW TO GIVE A BLOW JOB [image file=image_754.jpg] Giving a blow job is far less laborious than that name for it implies, but that wasn’t always as true for me in the past. Here’s an approximated transcript of some long-ago trepidation on this front: I’m supposed to give head? Do I do anything with my tongue? ARE TONGUES DISGUSTING? Ugh, this mouth-piece is like half sponge, half larvae… and it’s a part of my anatomy? “Sorry, I have TMJ. It just happened just now. I think I caught it at the bank; they never sanitize those pens.” Maybe you aren’t exactly salivating at this idea for some similar reason, but I hope you are. I was missing out when I let primness stop me from deep-throating someone I was into. That’s right: Believe in yourself and inhale that dick entire. Hold on a sec as I embroider this on a folksy/decorative sampler as a reminder to stay positive—good things can happen when you rise to life’s challenges. I would imagine self-confidence about giving this type of head is more accessible if you are also in possession of a penis and know how a mouth applied to that appendage feels stupendous and how it doesn’t. It’s still pretty basic, though. There are fairly trusty dicktates that can aid you in doing this well. If you’ve watched porn that depicts a blow job, you could have all kinds of wild notions of what’s expected of you and how to execute that, but at least one thing about BJs in skin pictures is true in reality: There is nothing hotter than someone looking up at you while you’re getting head. Make eye contact for at least half of the time you’ve got a penis in your facial vicinity! (If this feels overly ambitious, shyness-wise: Your recipient’s eyes may be closed for a lot of this anyhow.)

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  This Reform Judaism began as an almost wholly pragmatic movement and, as such, was guided entirely according to the principles of logos. Its aim, indeed, was to abolish the mythos of Judaism. Israel Jacobson (1768–1828) believed that if Judaism appeared less outlandish to the German people, this would improve the chances of emancipation. A layman and philanthropist, he established a school in Seesen, near the Garz mountains, where students studied secular as well as Jewish subjects. He also opened a synagogue where worship appeared to be more Protestant than Jewish. Prayers were said in the vernacular instead of Hebrew; there was German choral singing, a mixed choir, and a sermon in German, which was much more central to the service than before. The traditional rites were drastically reduced. In 1815, Jacobson and other laymen brought this modernized worship to Berlin, where they opened what they called private “temples” to distinguish them from the regular synagogues. In 1817, Edward Kley founded a new temple in Hamburg, where the reforms were even more revolutionary. Prayers pleading for the coming of the Messiah and the return to Zion were replaced by a prayer celebrating the brotherhood of all humanity: how could Jews pray for the restoration of a messianic state in Palestine when they wanted to become German citizens? By 1822, confirmation services, on the Protestant model, were held for girls and boys; the separate seating of men and women at services was also abandoned. The rabbis of Hamburg condemned this reform movement and even managed, by appealing to the Prussian government, to get the Berlin temples closed down.21 During the following years, therefore, many young Jews who might have found this reformed Judaism congenial, converted to Christianity. But the Hamburg temple remained open and new ones were established in Leipzig, Vienna, and Denmark. In America, the playwright Isaac Harby founded a reformed temple in Charleston. Reform would become very popular among American Jews, and, by 1870, a substantial proportion of the two hundred synagogues in the United States had adopted at least some Reform practices.22

• From Action (2014)

  When it comes to escaping most perplexing quagmires of sexual propriety, like how to contend with unexpected bodily effluvia, noises, behaviors, and getting caught masturbating by your roommate’s new girlfriend Marie (sorry, Marie—this Hitachi is truly thunderous and I didn’t hear you come in), act under one law: Instead of bugging out about your OWN potential humiliation and what this means about your sexual aptitude/worthiness, think about how to put the other person at ease about what is, in the grand context of life, history, and space, a nothing-event that you will have mostly forgotten about in a few weeks expeditiously. What is the gallant thing to do? Communicating that sense of calm and contextual awareness to your intended! Preserving your sense of personal security and confidence is easy when you consider that blights on what really should have resembled swan-sex enjoyed by fat-butted movie starlets on le Francebeach are also enjoyed by those same people, who are, by the way, fictitious. If someone shames you for any natural/unexpected/otherwise potentially mortifying phenomenon occurring from what you’re doing together, kick them to the curb with no compunction: Basic self-worth demands that you shouldn’t be made to feel guilty if the sex you’re having results in unwieldy bodily goings-on. No by-product of sex is repulsive enough to negate the commodities it manufactures: recreational sweetness and connection. And orgasms. If you find yourself actually hurt or otherwise medically dented-up by any kind of sexual contact, locate real medical care. Though you can pull a mental assist using the following list of what to do should your pride be jeopardized, it does not stand in for a health professional. That said, here’s everything you shouldn’t be embarrassed about. Queefing Queefing is the colloquial name for the sound vaginas expel when vacuoles of air are trapped in them and then come out. This usually happens when something is inserted into them, and the likelihood increases if that something is coming from an unusual angle or at a variegated speed. Queefs are normal and inevitable when you’re having interesting vaginal sex, and should be seen as a casual confirmation of that, not a ghastly interruption—or even something worth commenting on at all. Doing so is like admitting, “I have limited experience with etiquette.” Some alternate lines of thinking include… If you’re the queefer: Oh, a sound happened. Who cares? If you’re the bequeefed: Oh, a sound happened. Who cares? You do! Take it as a compliment. To the untrained ear, queefs might not seem harmoanius with the sighs of pleasure you’re more used to classifying as evidence that your work is appreciated, but if you’re smart, you’ll come to hear these as hot. Caught in the Act

• From Action (2014)

  If you live with people other than the ones you’re having sex with, they’re liable to know more of the intricacies of your goings-on than you’d both prefer, and vice versa. However vigilant you think you’re being, there’s always room for surprises here (especially if there’s a meager amount of actual room in your home): It’s possible you’ll be caught in some compromising situation. There are plenty of settings in which you can be witnessed in flagrante delicto. Public sex is the best precisely because of the risk of getting caught… until the rare occasion on which that risk is realized. And if you escape this life without someone interrupting you as you jerk off, it should go in your obituary with the rest of your notable achievements. You could be apprehended in one of these ways when you think no one else is home… and are dead wrong. Or maybe you and your partner are staying in a foreign living space with others for a big event, like a wedding, family reunion, or competitive spell-a-thon, got a little drunk after, and badly misjudged the window of private time you’d have back at the base. In any case: You’ve been caught, and your face is mad red. Regain your composure and maybe even, if you’re a halfway decent actor, pass off your indelicate intertwining as a more chaste entanglement by… • Considering your setting: Is it totally “inappropriate” for you to be boning in this context? Do you know you might harsh someone else’s good time (e.g., are you at a christening or something?). Then maybe don’t take off your clothes, or do so only with extreme caution. I don’t think it’s always bad to have sex in places you shouldn’t, as that will probably make for some of the most memorable sex of your life, but draw the line at having it somewhere that’s actively disrespectful to others (most of the time). • Consider your potential audience: If you find you’re not hurting anyone by being a brazen public-sex-having menace (e.g., a national park ranger is not going to be galled to the gills that you’ve deigned to desecrate a redwood with your grapplings—something no one has ever, ever done before). Many other non-forester people in non-woodland surroundings, if they have senses of humor, will laugh this off, and some might even be like, “Good for you—get yours.” That leans heavily on the age and relationship factors in play here: Your mom, unless she is simultaneously unshakably cool and kind of alarming, boundary-wise, will not duck out like “Soz!” and then text you for the blow-by-blow later on, whereas your best friend might be more inclined in this way.

• From Action (2014)

  Another thing I never want to do again: It took one new-at-the-time boyfriend, Graham, a while to feel comfortable in what he felt were esoteric new positions, like anything approaching the non-horizontal and firmly face-forward. One night, a lapse in his demureness involving a new rearrangement of positioning (prostrate; prostate) surprised me. At the time, I thought the most abhorrent interior design of our Holiday Inn room was a painting of a pond in which the lilies were literally gilded. I stared at it, lying on my stomach, as I linked its subject to the idea of having anal sex versus vaginal. I scoffed at myself and got back to enjoying the grip of the very specific pleasure-pain that comes only with taking it up the ass. I looked at the sheets after. Behold: Nightmare. I bugged out and covered the bed, dashing to the bathroom, scarlet all over. Graham was immaculately gracious; he knocked on the door of the bathroom as I showered in scalding water and my own woe: “Take all the time you need—but, look, it makes sense that this happened, given what we were doing, and I’m not grossed out at all.” I had to concede his point. I walked outside in a towel, evading his face for entirely different reasons than I had moments before. The lily had been not only un-gilded, for sure, but left to rot in a compost heap. He tried to salvage what he could of my pride. “I don’t think you’re gross,” he continued, and the precision of his kindness there is as follows: He knew there was no persuading me the situation wasn’t objectively putrid, but he wanted to convey that he still liked me and didn’t want me to seethe inwardly over an inadvertent by-product of having great sex, which is to say, the occasional Nightmare. Sweetly, he got to assuage MY anxieties about something that was, in essence, a microscopic (if colonoscopic) deal. See how even the most self-aggrandizingly “open-minded” sex-havers can find, to their grim surprise, that maybe they’re not as cool and carefree about the smashing together of anatomies as they envisioned themselves? This is why, when you shack up (or Holiday Inn up) with a slow-mover like Graham, it’s crucial to be kind, patient, and uncondescending. Your partner might, after all, end up as gallant as you had always prided yourself on being when you find, instead, that you’ve shit the bed. The Case for Celibacy

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  spread of Evangelical revival, probably because of traditional unflattering stereotypes about military behaviour. We need to see the army as like other institutions and communities in flux in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where uprooted individuals sought identity and frameworks for their lives amid confusion and danger: Evangelical principles were as likely to appeal to soldiers as to anyone else, perhaps more in view of their confrontations with violence and death. Moreover, the British army’s and navy’s steady embrace of a non-partisan patriotism chimed well with a general tendency in British Evangelicalism to keep away from politics unless absolutely necessary, while tending to patriotic conservatism.69 THE GREAT AWAKENINGS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION American Evangelicalism had its own preoccupations, which from the early eighteenth century produced its distinctive style of Protestant revival, soon christened ‘Great Awakenings’. These emerged at a time when the leaderships of many American Churches were feeling that the dreams of the first colonists had been betrayed; the Church establishments in several colonies represented only a minority of the population, and many people had no Church contacts at all. Just as in Old England, systems of Church discipline, once so important in New England’s sense of its identity, were now impossible to enforce. The tensions in trying to maintain them against such frightening phenomena as premarital sex and Quakers produced one embarrassing high-profile excess in 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts. A short-lived and belated repetition of Protestant English paranoia about witches led to around 150 prosecutions and nineteen executions, and then in short order to the discrediting of the old ethos. A similar witchcraft case in Connecticut in the same year was dropped after widespread and powerfully expressed disquiet from clergy and laity alike, and indeed one of the judges in the Salem trials, Samuel Sewall, subsequently repented and five years later publicly asked fellow members of his Boston congregation for forgiveness for what he had done.70 Before Wesley’s movement reached across the Atlantic, the Awakenings in the northern colonies were more purely Reformed, associated with Churches which sprang from Scottish or Dutch roots rather than from those of English origin. Scots had begun emigrating from their kingdom in the early seventeenth century, though their first destination had been not America but Ireland. King James VI and I, after succeeding to the English throne, encouraged them to settle there in order to counter Catholic militancy, sending them to the most

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  whose epistle did manage to worm its way into the New Testament canon, and I Enoch is also treated as mainstream inspired scripture by the Christian Church of Ethiopia.44 An interesting variety of Christian traditions and assumptions is based on this array of books; they were largely forgotten in mainstream Christianity, yet they were part of the mental furniture of the generation of Jesus and his disciples. One of the most significant Jewish communities formed in the Egyptian seaport city which remained as Alexander’s most spectacular single memorial, Alexandria: a symbol of the success of Hellenistic culture throughout the eastern Mediterranean. By the time of Jesus there may have been a million Jews there, the largest single community of Jews outside Palestine, and they were kept from dominating city politics only by the exclusive practices of their religion.45 Naturally in such a wealthy and prosperous community, it was a great temptation to take on the ways of the surrounding world: a Greek world. At least a century before hatred of all things Greek pushed Judas Maccabeus and his fellows into open rebellion against Antiochos, the Jews of Alexandria commonly spoke Greek instead of Hebrew, to the extent that they were forced to translate their sacred books into Greek to make sure that they did not lose touch with the meaning. The name given to this collection of translations (together with the Apocrypha books in Greek which Hellenized Jews themselves added) was an indication of how proud Greek-speaking Jews were of their achievement; it became known as the Septuagint, from the Latin word for seventy. This was a reference to the seventy-two translators who, legend said, had produced it in seventy-two days, and who were themselves an image of the seventy elders who had been with Moses on the sacred mountain during the Exodus.46 Jews later lost their enthusiasm for the translation and abandoned it for others when Christians wholeheartedly adopted it. In general these Hellenized Jews were much more interested in winning respect from Greeks for their culture than Greeks were interested in Judaism. They found that Greek reaction to what the translation revealed of Hebrew sacred literature posed problems: Greeks respected such ancient writings, but were also puzzled that a God who was supposed to be so powerful would do strange things like walk in the Garden of Eden or indulge in arguments with earthly men like Lot or Jonah. Many Jews came to feel that such apparent embarrassments in their stories must conceal deeper layers of truth and so must be allegories. Greeks had after all already applied this idea of allegorical meaning to their own myths and to the writings of Homer (see pp. 24–5), and the allegorical approach became naturalized among Alexandrian Jews in the biblical commentaries of Jesus Christ’s Jewish contemporary the scholar and historian

• From Action (2014)

  That turned out to be wrong—semen does not make for a good saline solution at all. The swelling was swift and stung badly… and I had a meeting to go to in an hour. How do you even lie about such a highly visible vision-based irritation? I had no idea, as I’m an unskilled liar with an overactive imagination, but not a useful one. I came up with a bee sting to the eye, an allergic reaction to eyedrops on just the one half of my face, and, “Oh, this remedial sports equipment I’m calling part of my head? I was crying! I was crying very hard about… having… sadness,” which doesn’t work if you’re trying to maintain a professional profile, but which I thought might still be better than the obvious conclusion of semen-eye. In the end, I canceled the meeting. If this happens to you: Don’t make my mistake of trying to be all casual about things. There’s come in your eye! Get thee to a faucet and wash it out with water immediately! If, like me, you do not actually have an allergy to eyedrops, employ those afterward. Make sure your eye is totally cleansed of all semen—leaving any behind will be sure to irritate it. Excrement Obviously, I have little timidity about working blue when it comes to sex—which makes it all the more ludicrous and prissy that, when it comes to talking about scatological, urine-based, or otherwise execrable topics, I blanch—a lot. (See how, there, I had to use the most distancing possible language because I’m too prim to say the word “shit” in the context of bodily functions? Do you know how irrationally peevish I am that I just did? THIS IS A TOTALLY SCATOLOGICAL TURN OF EVENTS, for me.) I am very selective about bodily fluids, sexually—except that one time that a boyfriend and I got uncharacteristically stoned, my home-for-once roommate was in the bathroom, and I really had to go. The solution we came up with, geniuses that we were, was that he could try drinking my pee. I remember laughing a lot and him saying, “It tastes like warm tea” and thinking, Why wouldn’t you just say “tea”? before deciding the phrase “warm tea” was a very tender way to describe the taste of your loved one’s piss in your mouth. That was a nice time. I never, ever want to repeat the experience, ever. (Unless, of course, I’m stoned again and the urge to urinate is outlasted by the duration of someone else’s shower. Thank God I smoke pot roughly once every bi-never.)

• From Action (2014)

  • Above all else, try lying: You don’t have to be an actor of Nude-Brando proportions, but you do have to put on a little show about what it was you were doing that was very much not sex, no way, no how. No one WANTS to go through the excruciating conversation about the fact that they recently saw someone’s butt for all it truly was. Do you know how badly the interloper is probably wishing you’ll fill out the tail end of the phony statement, “We were just…” rather than having to accept the reality that they were watching you get some? Lying is the stepladder out of any potential sinkhole of embarrassment on the culprit’s end, sure, but it’s also a relief on the other end. Blaming clothing-related mishaps helps with any apparent nakedness: You were fixing a broken button on your partner’s pants! They noticed your zipper was broken, and knew they had to step in to help! You were cleaning spilled punch off of their bra with your tongue! That is all VERY believable, as long as everyone is uncomfortable enough. Premature Ejaculation I have never understood the impulse to knock a premature ejaculatore, but I do get it! From what I’ve noticed, no guy wants to be remembered as the one who couldn’t last—the loveless phrase “two-pump chump,” which was popular among my high school girlfriends, whooshes to mind. Much like dudes who aren’t hung, these people will usually put extra muscle into making sure you feel amazing with other parts of their anatomies. This is great news if you don’t get off on penetration alone—so, this is great news for many, many people. If someone is looking to reframe how you characterize them sexually, they probably know the surefire way to go about doing that: giving you life-changing head. Not Enough Lube/Not Fitting I once had sex with a person whose genitalia fit so poorly into mine that getting him in me was like trying to hammer a bent-up screw into a sugar doughnut. I had no idea why this could be, or that it could even happen! We were frustrated because we had been involved in a dire mutual crush for two years or so, and having gotten out of a relationship about five minutes (fine, five days) beforehand, I summoned him to hang (fine, nail/screw/otherwise misapply hardware euphemisms to me). Even those you foster titanic infatuations with can be subject to compatibility-based bodily oddities. We tried all kinds of different positions and spit-based lubrications to try to make it work, which, eventually, it KIND of did? Instead of the natural pulse of intercourse it felt like… scraping?

• From Action (2014)

  The most painful thing that ever happened to my vagina was when a boyfriend added “ZEST” and “SPICE” to our sex life in a tragically straightforward sense. We had been revising a new recipe for wing sauce to exactitude every few days for one whole summer, so it was a shame that I utterly lost my appetite for it when, after dinner, Chris touched me without washing his hands. We had forgotten that pepper hurts body parts other than just your tongue, and wing-based pleasure morphed instantly into intense pain. Even as I was wincing and screaming “THIS IS NOT WHAT ‘HOT SEX’ IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN, YOU JAG” at Chris, I was laughing and grateful to have a new story to tell my friends for the month, but since then, I have taken care to avoid buffalo-style sex. Handling spicy foods like peppers—or wing sauce—before handling another person’s D or V is the living worst. Wash your hands eleven times if you think you’re going to bone after dinner, and maybe decide against cooking/eating scorch-inducing foods on a date. (And not only because they often incorporate beans, putting you at risk of “letting out” my British friend’s gaseous terror.) If you still heat things up in the most regrettable possible way, get in a cold shower immediately, wing sauce be damned to burn on the stove in retribution for how it burned me. Flush out the point of contact, then take a break from sex until the next day. If you don’t feel better in two hours, call a doctor. Getting Come in Your Eye I wear lots of makeup. As such, I’m far from intimidated by the prospect of effluvia around my general eye area. As with mascara, though, the key is making sure your optic nerves aren’t suddenly clouded with alien liquids by applying them to your face with precision. Did you know that when you see the world through a filter of semen, your eyes inflate and redden until they resemble rubber grade-school kickballs? If you’re masturbating and have a curved dick, or if you’re in the mood for a 100 percent natural facial treatment, consider your or your partner’s aim. I was given this unfortunate education recently, when I found myself looking down the barrel of a partner’s loaded dick. “Wait—!” I yelp-cooed, trying to preserve both my fake eyelashes and the sensuous tone of klymaxxx, to no avail on both counts. My vision blurred with come. I brushed my tear ducts gently with the back of my hand as the dude susurrated apologies: He had never done this before! He lost control! He was so so so so sorry! I played it cool: It had come from his body, so it couldn’t hurt me too badly, right? There was no need to jet off to the bathroom and flush my eyes immediately, as far as I was concerned.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  fetishized Luther’s emphasis on Christ’s sufferings for humankind, producing an obsession with Christ’s blood and wounds — ‘so moist, so gory’, as Zinzendorf’s Litany of the Wounds described them, with a relish which may have little appeal now. In 1749, after the Count himself had encouraged emotions in some Moravian communities to boil too high, in what was later euphemistically termed the ‘Sifting Time’, he now felt compelled to rein them in. He banned his people from celebrating Christ’s ‘little side-hole’ (Seitenhölchen). This was the toe- curling designation which he and they had given to the spear wound suffered by Christ on the Cross, a wound which represented for Zinzendorf ‘the Mother of our souls, as the earth is the mother of the body’. The Count’s embarrassment at the consequences of his devotional imagery led to a not untypical outburst which, in his struggle to regain control, blended his usual mystical language (much of it baffling to outsiders) with a choleric threat to bring the whole Moravian edifice crashing down. Having signed off a long and testy letter from London ‘Your brother, Ludwig’, he continued menacingly in a postscript: If you do not follow me, I will not only lay down my office completely in all Gemeinen [Moravian communities] and at the same time make a new departure to the heart of Jesus, but I also want to assure you in advance that the Elder-Office of the Savior will also cease. I know behind what I stand, and I cannot help myself.51 The crisis passed, and as Moravians travelled to missionary work in new settings, their bloodthirsty language struck unexpected chords with some of the peoples they met, particularly indigenous peoples in North America, and that brought Moravian missions great success. For one of the most significant characteristics of this ebullient yet tightly structured movement was its hunger to undertake missions overseas to non-Christians. People who had already exiled themselves once to join the Moravian family zestfully threw themselves into fresh exile to spread the excitement which they had experienced in their own new lives. This was the first Protestant Church to commit itself to the task with such consistency, just at the moment when Protestant powers were creating overseas empires which might aid the work. Pietist Lutheranism did offer one outstanding precedent. In 1706, when Count Zinzendorf was still only six years old, August Francke had encouraged a former student of Halle, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, to travel to India and begin mission among Hindus. Ziegenbalg was the first Protestant missionary in the subcontinent. He took advantage of the kingdom of Denmark’s modest but significant foothold at Tranquebar, the only European outpost in Asia offering a potential direct bridgehead for Pietism, to provide a base for his mission. He adopted strategies

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  58 R. L. Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (New York, 1999), Ch. 8, and 164. On the Morisco expulsions, B. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 310. 59 W. A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-century Spain (Princeton, 1981); W. A. Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, 1981). 60 J. Arrizabalaga, J. Henderson and R. French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven and London, 1997), Chs. 1, 2. 61 From a sermon in the Florence Duomo in 1495: J. C. Olin (ed.), The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (New York, 1992), 12. The ‘four things’ appear to be the four results which Savonarola wished his sermon to achieve, set out in its opening words (cf. ibid., 4): understanding, confirmation for the convinced, conversion of the unconvinced and confusion for the stubborn. 62 For the role of Bartolomeo Scala as mouthpiece for this innovative self- justification, see D. Wootton, ‘The True Origins of Republicanism: The Disciples of Baron and the Counter-example of Venturi’, in M. Albertone (ed.), Il repubblicanesimo moderno: l’idea di Repubblica nella riflessione storica di Franco Venturi (Naples, 2006), 271–304. 63 P. Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998), esp. 157, 272–302. 64 L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545 (Oxford, 1994). 65 J. W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 262; S. T. Strocchia, ‘Savonarolan Witnesses: The Nuns of San Jacopo and the Piagnone Movement in 16th-century Florence’, SCJ, 38 (2007), 393–417, at 414. 66 M. Reeves, Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period (Oxford, 1992), esp. essays by A. Morisi-Guera and J. M. Headley, 27–50 and 241–69. 67 There has been much modern embarrassment and obfuscation on Erasmus and Rogerus, but see sensible comment in J. Huizinga, Erasmus of Rotterdam (London, 1952), 11–12, and from Geoffrey Nuttall, JEH, 26 (1975), 403. 68 D. MacCulloch, ‘Mary and Sixteenth-century Protestants’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), The Church and Mary (SCH, 39, 2004), 191–217. 69 L.-E. Halkin, Erasmus: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1993), 225: cf. Opera omnia Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam, 1969–), I, 146–7. For Protestant wriggles on this subject, see MacCulloch, ‘Mary and Sixteenth-century Protestants’, 211–14.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  (The devices came in small, medium, and large sizes, but astronauts assigned a more scientific nomenclature to the fittings: “extra-large,” “immense,” and “unbelievable.”) Once out of his suit, the crewman would slip on the condom, then belly up to a valve and attach the other end to a bypass valve that, once it was opened, vented out the side of the spacecraft. If the procedure was timed properly, the astronaut could open the valve while urinating and expel the waste into space. If it was not timed properly, he risked exposing his tender parts to vacuum forces. To prevent that, Anders opened the valve too slowly on his first attempt, blowing off the personal end of his condom and sending twinkling golden droplets dancing weightless through the cabin. His timing improved after that, he made sure of it. Even when urine was expelled properly from the spacecraft, the crew couldn’t quite be done worrying about it. Just the tiny force necessary to vent the liquid—which turned to gleaming ice crystals in the sunlit cold of space—could have a profound effect on the spacecraft’s trajectory and would have to be accounted for as the ship continued its journey. Defecation was even less glamorous. The astronaut started with a collection bag fitted with an adhesive collar. After stripping naked (usually in private at the other end of the command module), he pressed the collar around his hind end until it stuck, then expelled to the best of his ability. In space, clumps didn’t drop from the body. To help that along, NASA had built a narrow pouch into the bag for the astronaut’s finger, which he could use as a scooper to pull things free. Finally, a packet of blue germicide was deposited in the bag, then ruptured and kneaded together with the waste in order to neutralize odors and to kill bacteria that could, over time, generate gases that could cause the package to explode. This bathroom breaks could take as long as an hour. Cleaning was done with a small moist towelette like those handed out at barbecue restaurants. Much as the crew might have liked to fire the sealed bag into space, they could not. Ejecting such a bulky item would require the cabin to be depressurized, possible but risky to the men and the flight. Also, NASA planned to examine the feces (as well as blood and urine) on the crew’s return to Earth, eager to study the effects of deep space flight on the human body. Even as an engineer, Anders knew this fecal collection system would be difficult. Months before Apollo 8, he took home a kit to practice (one didn’t experiment on such a device in the simulators at work). He explained to Valerie that it had to be tested, at least on Earth, while lying down. To that end, he intended to try it in bed. “Not in our bed!” Valerie said. So Anders lay on the carpet and gave it his best.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  — A few days after Laika was launched, it became apparent that the Soviets hadn’t designed the satellite to return safely to Earth. Western impressions of Communist cold-heartedness only worsened as the world waited for Laika to die. Embarrassed again by a Soviet satellite, the United States pushed to launch its own. On December 6, 1957, two months after Sputnik, a Vanguard rocket, carrying its grapefruit-sized satellite, counted down on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Unlike the Soviets, who conducted space operations in secret, the United States was broadcasting this launch to the entire country on live television. On ignition, the Vanguard’s liquid-fueled engine spat orange flames and the rocket began to rise, but just a few feet up it hesitated, tilted slightly, then sank back to the pad, incinerating in a huge explosion. About all that remained of Vanguard in the aftermath was its tiny spherical satellite, somehow thrown free from the blast and lying nearby, beeping like it had made it into orbit. The humiliation began even before the cinders had cooled. Media around the world called the project “Flopnik,” “Kaputnik,” and “Stayputnik,” while the Soviets took the chance to revel in America’s embarrassment, offering the Americans a helping hand through a United Nations program designed to provide technological assistance to primitive countries. On January 31, 1958, the United States tried again. This time, the rocket climbed straight up, its whiplash of flames lighting the midnight sky, witnesses yelling “Go, baby!” as the fire grew distant and the sounds fainter. In a few minutes a 30-pound satellite called Explorer was in orbit around Earth. This was a warning shot that announced how quickly things could change when a country believed its survival to be at stake. A week later, President Eisenhower, the old general, waged his own battle on behalf of the Space Race. He created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, called ARPA, an innovation center for the military where researchers pushed the boundaries of science and technology. (In the 1960s, the agency would attempt to network computers across the United States, a project that became the Internet. In 1972, the agency would add

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  cultural property. Like Jews, they borrowed a particular method of writing down their literature from the Phoenicians, a seafaring people with whom they had much commercial contact: an alphabetic script. Throughout the world, the earliest and some of the most long-lasting writing systems have been pictogrammic: so a tree could be represented by the picture of a tree. By contrast, alphabetic scripts abandon pictograms and represent particular sounds of speech with one constant symbol, and the sound symbols can be combined to build up particular words – so instead of hundreds of picture symbols, there can be a small, easily learned set of symbols: generally twenty-two basic symbols in both Greek and Hebrew, twenty-six in modern English. It was in the Greek alphabet that the earliest known Christian texts were written, and the overwhelming majority of Christians until the Roman Catholic world missions of the sixteenth century experienced their sacred scriptures in some alphabetic form. Indeed, the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, repeatedly uses a metaphor drawn from the alphabet to describe Jesus: he is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet, the beginning and the end.4 But there the cultural similarities between Jews and Greeks end: their religious outlooks were significantly different. Like most ancient societies, Greeks inherited a collection of stories about a variety of gods which they welded into an untidy description of a divine family, headed by Zeus; the Homeric legends drew on this body of myth. The gods are constantly present in the Iliad and Odyssey, an intrusive and often disruptive force in human lives: often fickle, petty, partisan, passionate, competitive – in other words, rather like Greeks themselves. It was no accident that Greek art portrayed gods and humans in similar ways, as it moved beyond its imitation of Egyptian monumental sculpture of the human form. Without knowing something of the complex iconography of this art, one would be hard put to tell the beauty of the foppish would-be dictator Alcibiades from the beauty of the god Apollo, or distinguish the nobility of the Athenian politician Pericles from that of a bearded god. The portrayal of human beings tended away from the personal towards the abstract, which suggested that human beings could indeed embody abstract qualities like nobility, just as much as could the gods. Moreover, Greek art exhibits a fascination with the human form; it is the overwhelming subject of Greek sculpture, the form in which gods as well as humans are portrayed to the exclusion of any other representational possibility.5 The fascination extended to a cult of the living and breathing body beautiful, at least in male form, which in turn led to an insistence on athletes performing in the nude in Greek competitive games; this peculiarity baffled and horrified most other cultures, and rather embarrassed the Romans, who later tried to make themselves as much as

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  universe. It had always been a matter of perspective, and now he had to change his. Turning himself upside down, he now understood Antarctica, the hemispheres, and the shape of a world he’d seen only one way until now. While the astronauts continued to move through their checklists and monitor the spacecraft and its systems, they also had to tend to personal systems. Going to the bathroom was a challenge, largely because the command module had no dedicated facilities. Urinating was a straightforward, if inelegant, process. It began with a kind of open-ended condom for which the astronauts had been fitted during training. (The devices came in small, medium, and large sizes, but astronauts assigned a more scientific nomenclature to the fittings: “extra- large,” “immense,” and “unbelievable.”) Once out of his suit, the crewman would slip on the condom, then belly up to a valve and attach the other end to a bypass valve that, once it was opened, vented out the side of the spacecraft. If the procedure was timed properly, the astronaut could open the valve while urinating and expel the waste into space. If it was not timed properly, he risked exposing his tender parts to vacuum forces. To prevent that, Anders opened the valve too slowly on his first attempt, blowing off the personal end of his condom and sending twinkling golden droplets dancing weightless through the cabin. His timing improved after that, he made sure of it. Even when urine was expelled properly from the spacecraft, the crew couldn’t quite be done worrying about it. Just the tiny force necessary to vent the liquid—which turned to gleaming ice crystals in the sunlit cold of space—could have a profound effect on the spacecraft’s trajectory and would have to be accounted for as the ship continued its journey. Defecation was even less glamorous. The astronaut started with a collection bag fitted with an adhesive collar. After stripping naked (usually in private at the other end of the command module), he pressed the collar around his hind end until it stuck, then expelled to the best of his ability. In space, clumps didn’t drop from the body. To help that along, NASA had built a narrow pouch into the bag for the astronaut’s finger, which he could use as a scooper to pull things free. Finally, a packet of blue germicide was deposited in the bag, then ruptured and kneaded together with the waste in order to neutralize odors and to kill

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “Are you studying?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at the items on the desk. “I was attempting to, yes.” Gwen smiled. “But history is simply not holding my attention today. Where is Charlotte?” “I’m not certain.” Surely she wouldn’t still be in his room. Most likely she’d never grace it again, leastwise not while he was occupying it. “Ahhh . . . a lover’s tiff,” Gwen murmured sagely. “Surprisingly early, but inevitable, I’ve been told. And the deeper the attachment, the more hurtful the row.” “How the devil would you know of such things?” Shrugging, Gwen turned back to the desk. “There’s not much of interest out here, my lord, and few people with whom to talk. Around these parts the only true form of entertainment appears to be courtship, and I’m a curious sort. It’s rather like an opera, you see, or a play. Quite fascinating the way the sexes associate with each other, wouldn’t you agree?” Hugh shook his head. He’d never encountered a stranger group of individuals in his life. “I require liquor,” he muttered, moving with long strides to the sideboard, where several crystal decanters sat lined up with tumblers. Tossing back one drink, he savored the burning heat in his stomach, before pouring another and turning to face the young Guinevere again. “Are you related to Her Grace?” Her brows arched. “I’m her ward.” “Right.” He finished his second drink. To these people it would make perfect sense to leave a young girl in the care of a duchess not quite right in the head. “ ’Ere now!” Hugh glanced at the doorway, where Artemis stood with hands on his hips. “You shouldn’t be talking to ’im,” the servant scolded Gwen. “Beg your pardon?” Hugh stiffened. Artemis turned his bulging eye toward him. “I tole ’er Grace you’d be nothin’ but trouble. But she wouldn’t listen to me. And look what you’ve done!” “What the devil are you talking about?” “She’s cryin’ and yer in ’ere imbibin’ spirits and swearin’ in front o’ Miss Guinevere. And ’alf dressed, too! Disgraceful.” “Oh, dear.” Gwen gave a regretful shake of her head and moved to make her egress. “That must have been some row you had.” “I’ve done nothing,” Hugh cried, affronted at the unfair accusation, and a tad embarrassed. Artemis was correct. He wasn’t acting the gentleman. “I’ve yet to be introduced to Lady Glenmoore. I’m certainly not the cause of her distress. Most likely it’s you. Lord knows I’d be in tears if you worked in my household.” Artemis gasped, his hands coming to his hips. “See?” he blustered to Gwen. “I tole ye how they are!” He lifted a finger to the side of his head and spun it in a circle. “All the Quality are a bit—” “Damnation!” Hugh slammed his empty tumbler onto the sideboard. “Of all the insolent—” “Good heavens,” Gwen interrupted, wrinkling her nose. “Artemis, stand down.” Hugh crossed his arms. “He’s mad as you please.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “Eh?” Artemis snapped. “Ye can’t even recall the name o’ the lady you’ve been entertainin’ all mornin’.” “Oh, my.” Gwen blushed, her hands lifting to her cheeks. Hugh froze. His horrified gaze shifted to Gwen. When she winced, all the pieces fell into place. Stunned, he shot a glance at Artemis, who for once had the grace to look chastened. “Good God.” He leaned heavily against the sideboard. “Where is she?” “Perhaps you should wait until you’re less surly,” Gwen advised. “I am not surly!” “You’re yelling,” she pointed out. “I am not—” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was yelling. Despite the foul mood brought on by Charlotte’s lack of faith, he needed to control himself and deal with the situation rationally. “I need to speak with her.” Opening his eyes, he said, “She’ll be safe with me.” “I don’t doubt that,” Gwen said with a smile. “’Tis obvious you are both a bit soft on one another. Artemis, do you know where Her Grace is?” The butler gestured toward the hallway. “ ’Er room. Third door down on the right.” “Thank you.” Artemis blocked the doorway for a moment. He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut, moving out of the way. Halfway down the gallery, Hugh paused and took another deep breath. There was so much to comprehend at once, it was nearly impossible, and in the end, the only one who could clarify anything was Charlotte. And feeling a cad that he’d made her cry, Hugh was suitably contrite when he knocked on the closed door. He heard her bid him entry and walked inside. She sat at the escritoire, studying the map. With her bright red hair piled atop her head and dark green dressing gown, she was a vision. When she looked up, her eyes were as clear as a field of grass in spring, her nose pert and not red. She hadn’t been crying at all. It was easy to deduce that he’d been duped. Obviously the butler felt Hugh should know the truth. Her chin lifted. “Good morning, my lord.” Her voice was cool and impartial, far removed from the temptress who’d been on her hands and knees for him just a short time ago. Goaded into it by her chilly demeanor, he replied, “Good morning, Your Grace.” Charlotte flinched, a slight movement of her brows that he would have missed if he hadn’t been determinedly searching for it. “Artemis,” she muttered under her breath. “Drat him.” Hugh closed the door and waited. She sighed. “Very well, then.” Coming to her feet, she moved around the small desk and approached him head-on, just as she approached all her difficulties. “Is there anything else you discovered?”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  give by spending money usually means being unable to give in general. lodging at the inn, since it Stamp ungenerosity out. It is an impediment to power and a gross sin in was she who had sent for seduction. him and he thought it only right, therefore, that he It is best to disengage from Anti-Seducers early on, before they sink shouldn't be involved in their needy tentacles into you, so learn to read the signs. These are the any expense over the main types. journey." • At this, all the 133 134 • The Art of Seduction ladies began to laugh and The Brute. If seduction is a kind of ceremony or ritual, part of the plea-to say that the man sure is its duration—the time it takes, the waiting that increases anticipa-concerned hardly deserved tion. Brutes have no patience for such things; they are concerned only with the name of gentleman; and many of the men felt their own pleasure, never with yours. To be patient is to show that you are as ashamed as he should thinking of the other person, which never fails to impress. Impatience has have been, had he ever had the opposite effect: assuming you are so interested in them you have no reathe sense to recognize such disgraceful behavior for son to wait, Brutes offend you with their egotism. Underneath that ego-what it was. tism, too, there is often a gnawing sense of inferiority, and if you spurn —BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE, them or make them wait, they overreact. If you suspect you are dealing THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER, with a Brute, do a test—make that person wait. His or her response will tell TRANSLATED BY GEORGE BULL you everything you need to know. Let us see now how love is The Suffocator. Suffocators fall in love with you before you are even half-diminished. This happens aware of their existence. The trait is deceptive—you might think they have through the easy accessibility of its found you overwhelming—but the fact is they suffer from an inner void, a consolations, through one's deep well of need that cannot be filled. Never get involved with Suffoca-being able to see and tors; they are almost impossible to free yourself from without trauma. They converse lengthily with a lover, through a lover's cling to you until you are forced to pull back, whereupon they smother you unsuitable garb and gait, with guilt. We tend to idealize a loved one, but love takes time to develop. and by the sudden onset of Recognize Suffocators by how quickly they adore you. To be so admired poverty. . . . • Another cause of diminution of love may give a momentary boost to your ego, but deep inside you sense that is the realization of the their intense emotions are not related to anything you have done. Trust notoriety of one's lover, and these instincts. accounts of his miserliness,

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  “Come on. What’s to hide? I wish I’d known a long time ago that I was going to die. We could’ve gotten to know each other a lot better. There’s so much we don’t know.” “Okay, there have been some girls.” “Really?” She lifted her head up from the pillow. “Mother, I’m not going into details.” “Why not?” “It’s, well, embarrassing.” “I wish people wouldn’t waste their time being embarrassed. I wish I hadn’t. So tell me what it’s like.” You began to forget the way she looked then, and to see her somehow as young, younger than you had ever known her. The wasted flesh seemed illusory. You saw her as a young woman. “Do you really enjoy it,” she asked. “Sure. Yeah, I do.” “You’ve slept with girls you’re not in love with. Isn’t it different if you’re in love?” “Sure, it’s better.” “How about Sally Keegan? Did you sleep with her?” Sally Keegan was your high school prom date. “Once.” “I thought so.” This verification of her intuition pleased her. “What about Stephanie Bates?” Later, she said, “Are you happy with Amanda?” “Yes, I think so.” “For the rest of your life?” “I hope so.” “I was lucky,” Mom said. “Your dad and I have been happy. But it hasn’t always been easy. One time I thought I was leaving him.” “Really?” “We were human.” She adjusted her pillow and winced. “Foolish.” She