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 In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  —MASON IS HOSTING a small reception for Gaby and her family in his hotel suite, at 5 p.m. He invites Miri. She’s the first to arrive and is embarrassed. She’s changed into pants and a sweater, western boots, the cashmere shawl draped over her shoulders. She feels more like herself. She’s flossed, brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash. Ever the dentist’s wife. She checks out the room, looks out the window. Anything to avoid sitting down facing him. He can tell she’s uncomfortable and says, “I’m sure the others will be here any minute.” He smiles at her, looking into her eyes. But she quickly looks away. “Do you come to Elizabeth often?” she asks. “Almost never. It’s changed, and not for the better.” “I heard Janet closed.” “In ’62, when the state eliminated orphanages. End of an era. It’s been condemned since the seventies. Kids break in at night to party. Makes me sad.” He offers her a glass of wine. “Just water,” she says. “I read your piece on Longy,” he says, handing her the water glass. She laughs. “I was a senior at college. Sold it to the Las Vegas Sun. A heady experience. They hired me based on that story.” “I like your theory that he never would have hanged himself, that it was a gangland slaying disguised as suicide.” “I still believe that.” “Jack sent other stories, too. The one about the fire at the MGM Grand.” “I don’t really specialize in disaster, but when there’s a disaster, like my uncle Henry, I’m there.” That was the disaster that led Andy into forensic dentistry, but she doesn’t tell that to Mason. “Vegas must be a good place for stories,” Mason says. “If you like weird stories, it’s great.” “Well, I’m proud of you.” Again, he looks into her eyes. Again, she looks away. Gulps down the whole glass of water. She’s saved by a knock on the door. Gaby and her family, and a few minutes later, the boys from Janet. And Phil Stein. “Oh my god,” she says. “You’re Phil Stein, aren’t you?” “I am.” “I loved your mother.” “And she loved you. Never stopped talking about you, even after you moved away.” “Is she…” It’s awkward, asking if a parent is still living. He shakes his head. “She died years ago. Complications of diabetes and a stroke.” “I’m sorry. She was so kind to me.” “She was a good person. I’m still trying to convince my sister of that.” “Mother-daughter relationships can be difficult,” Miri says. “Tell me about it. I gave Mom a dog for her sixtieth birthday. My sister almost killed me. The dog reminded Mom of Fred. Remember Fred?” “We have a dog named Fred,” Miri tells him, “and another called Goldie.” “Goldie . My mother would have loved knowing that.” They both laugh. “Do you have a family?” she asks. “Divorced,” he says. “Like half our generation.” “Sorry.” “But I have two kids.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  still need to talk to Natalie, away from her adoring fans, and I want to stop by the cemetery on the way to the airport tomorrow.” “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she tells Miri. “Never,” Miri tells her. “Is that a promise?” Miri hugs her. “Don’t worry.” But that’s a phrase that’s always worried her, even coming from Miri, her dearest friend. — CHRISTINA IS RETRIEVING her coat from the cloakroom when an attractive silver- haired man says, “Hello.” “Hello,” she answers. “I went to school with your sister...” He doesn’t have to finish. It’s the Sewing Machine Man’s son, Zak Galanos. He seems nice enough, still teaching, though not in Elizabeth. His wife is an elementary school principal. They have two children. This was the life her mother wanted for her. A decent Greek husband, a couple of kids, a house in Cranford or Westfield. She never dreamed her life would turn out so different. A life of such wealth it embarrasses her. It’s laughable how her family’s attitude toward her changed as her fortunes grew. She’s heard her nephews refer to her as their rich aunt Christina from Vegas—and sure, she helped put them through college, helped Athena open a new store at the Short Hills mall. She made sure her parents were comfortable at their retirement home, and when it was needed, she paid for round-the-clock care. She came for her mother’s funeral three years ago, and her father’s, a year later. Even her parents accepted having an Irish son-in-law. They couldn’t resist their four beautiful granddaughters, the oldest, Nia, named for her mother, born when Christina was just nineteen, the bundle of joy who kept Jack out of Korea. It wasn’t until five years later that they were ready for more children, three more girls in a row. She convinced Mama and Baba to come to Las Vegas for Nia’s eighteenth birthday. Sent the plane for them, with IRISH JACK painted on the side. They were impressed. She took them to see their favorite entertainers—Dean Martin, Liberace and the Greek chanteuse Nana Mouskouri—made sure they had ringside tables, everyone making a fuss over Irish Jack’s in-laws. And when

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  He still couldn’t believe Joe DiMaggio was retiring. After dinner Phil asked Mason if he wanted to go to Steve’s. When Mason hesitated, Mrs. Stein picked up Fred. “It’s too cold for such a sweet little fellow to be outside. He can spend the night here and you can get him tomorrow.” Fred didn’t complain, didn’t even run to the door when Mason left with Phil. NatalieThe Osners’ house was down Shelley Avenue on the left, across the street from School #21, where Natalie had gone to elementary school. “I don’t see why Steve needs to be a chaperone tonight.” She was arguing with her mother in the upstairs hallway. “I mean, really, what do you think is going to happen? You know all these kids. I’ve been going to school with them since seventh grade. They’ve been here a million times.” “Boys can get rambunctious, especially this time of year,” her mother said, her southern drawl more pronounced during an argument. “The holiday season makes them crazy. I don’t want any trouble. We have a responsibility to the other parents.” “But it’s not like you won’t be home. You’ll be in the den.” “Steve will be unobtrusive.” “I hope you know you’re ruining my get-together. I hope you know that.” “You won’t even know he’s there. He’ll be in the laundry room.” “The laundry room?” This almost made Natalie laugh. The laundry room was next to the finished basement and almost as big. “With some of his friends.” “His friends? I don’t want his friends anywhere near my get-together.” “I just told you—you won’t even know they’re there.” “I’ll know. I just hope my friends don’t find out. If Daddy were here he’d understand.” “I’m sure your father would agree with me.” “I doubt it. And keep Fern upstairs. Please! All I need is Fern walking around with her cowboy bunny. It’s hard enough to be fifteen without your family making it worse.” “You’re not fifteen yet, Natalie Grace Osner.” “But I will be soon, unless I die of humiliation first.” Just before the party began Natalie confronted Steve in the laundry room, where he was setting up a card table. “Just stay out of our way. Don’t ruin my get-together with your wisecracks.” “I’ll bet your girlfriends wouldn’t mind. They like my wisecracks.” “Stay away from my girlfriends!” Steve laughed. “As if I’m interested.” “You’re just three years older than me, big shot. Remember that. Your wife will probably be younger than I am. The girl you’re going to marry is probably Fern’s age now.” “Gee, I wonder if she has a toy rabbit.” If Natalie had had a bottle of soda in her hand she’d have shaken it and squirted it in Steve’s face. But she didn’t, so she couldn’t. RubyIn Sunnyside, Queens, Ruby Granik was giving herself a facial, massaging gray clay into her delicate skin. Her hair was wrapped in a towel.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  “I just knew we were girls and we liked boys.” Loving remembered reading Forever and then sharing it with a close middle school girlfriend, who was a grade below her. “Her parents found out,” Loving said. “And because it was a mature book, basically [her father] came up to my parents’ house and spoke about me lending the book and this and that, because it was very saucy at that time.” New York City elementary school librarian Lauren Harrison had a similar experience. “There was a copy of Forever that was passed around in fifth grade,” recalled Harrison, who was forty-six at the time that we spoke. Like Loving, her parents allowed her to read whatever she wanted; her mother is a librarian, too. But Harrison was aware that the book was tricky stuff for other kids her age. “I didn’t have to hide it,” but her friends did, she said. “I remember just sort of, we’d all whisper and certain pages would fall open,” she added, referring to her crew crowding around the novel and perusing its most descriptive sex scenes. This phenomenon was so widespread that in 1978, the novelist Joyce Maynard—who was also Judy’s friend—did a twenty-column story about it for the New York Times . Maynard went to the “pretty, mostly white, upper-middle-class community” of Bath, Ohio, where Forever was making the rounds among the girls—and making waves among their mothers. Maynard sat down with a group of kids and moms to hear about their experiences of the book. She learned that Heather Benson, then thirteen, had borrowed a friend’s copy on a choir trip, then brought it home, where her mom, Pat Benson, discovered it. Pat knew Blume’s name but hadn’t heard anything about her latest publication and was shocked by what she saw. She stopped short of forbidding Heather from reading it but put it away in a drawer while her daughter thought over their chat. Heather ended up steering clear of the novel—or at least that copy of it. “I know she didn’t [read it],” Pat, who was fifty at the time, told the Times , “because she knew which drawer I put it in and I arranged a strand of hair on the pages and it’s still there—which is the kind of trick you’ve got to know to keep on top of what’s going on.” Another mother, Jan Worrall, described buying a copy of the novel at her daughter’s request and then, after bringing it home and paging through it, returning it to the bookstore. In her interview, she told Maynard that she would have preferred for her daughter Jocelyn, then age eleven, to read “pornography… at least then she’d know that was wrong, instead of having this book about a nice, normal girl who has sex and then it ends and the book’s over.” She felt Blume had dropped the ball when it came to using her platform to mold kids.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Christina Christina bumped into Zak Galanos in the hall at school. What was the Sewing Machine Man’s son doing at Battin? She tried not to look at him but, too late. He did a double take. “I know you, don’t I?” he asked. “You went to school with my sister, Athena.” “Right. Athena Demetrious. And you’re the little sister.” “Not so little. I’m a senior, graduating in less than a month.” “And your name is...” “Christina.” “Right. Christina.” He smiled at her. She didn’t like this. It felt awkward. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I have an interview for a teaching position for next year.” Why on earth would he want to teach at the school right across the street from where his parents died, from the hole in the ground that was once his house? “What will you teach?” “History, maybe a few classes of civics. Mrs. Rinaldi is leaving.” “I didn’t know that.” “She wants to move someplace that’s sunny year-round.” “Who doesn’t?” She shouldn’t have said that, given the fact that he was here looking for a job. A job in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A job in Plane Crash City. “What about you, Christina? Are you going someplace sunny after graduation?” “I’m thinking about it.” “Can I call you this summer? Would you go out with me?” This was so embarrassing. And the second bell was ringing. She was going to be late for class. “I have a boyfriend.” “Serious?” “Yes,” she said, her voice so soft he had to lean in to hear her. What would he say if she told him she was married? “My sister just had her second baby— another boy. They named him Ajax, like the cleanser. They’re going to call him AJ. I’ll bet she tries for a girl next year.” “Send her my regards. And to your parents, too. They were very kind after the accident.” The accident. As if they’d fallen down the stairs. “I saw it, you know. I was helping Mr. Durkee after school when the airplane...when it came right at us. We thought it was coming through the window of the classroom.” “I didn’t know that.” “And after, I was there, when the fires and the explosion...” She felt dizzy. She needed to put her head down. She dropped the books she was holding and, as she fell forward, he caught her. Held her in his arms. “It must have been terrible to see that.” “Yes.” But no one she loved died. She reminded herself to breathe. Breathe deeply, like when the doctor inserted the speculum. When she recovered she said, “I’m late for class.” She collected her books and started off down the hall. He caught up to her. “Listen...in case you need someone to talk to, here’s my number.” He passed her a piece of paper. She looked at it and nodded.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  What a bunch of useless junk I had in my suitcase. I could use my poems as sanitary napkins, couldn’t I? Charming symbolism. But unfortunately not very absorbent. Ah—what’s this? One of Bennett’s T-shirts. I folded it into a sort of diaper and dug up one (only one!) safety pin to keep it on me—after a fashion. How was I going to get out of Paris wearing a diaper? I’d just have to walk knock-kneed. Everyone would think I had to pee. Oh God—crime definitely does not pay. Here I had been wondering if my penalty for running off with Adrian was going to be a whole pregnancy of not knowing what color the baby was going to be and instead I’m the one in diapers. Why can’t my suffering at least be dignified? When other writers suffer it’s epic or cosmic or avant-garde, but when I suffer it’s slapstick. I hobble out to the hall in my trench coat holding my knees together to keep my diaper in place. Then suddenly I remember that everything which stands between me and destitution is in my handbag: passport, American Express card, traveler’s checks—and I hobble back to the room. Then out into the hall again, knock-kneed, barefoot, clutching my bag, and I seize the doorknob of the toilet and begin rattling. “Un moment, s’il vous plaît,” comes an embarrassed male voice. American accent. It’s August, after all, and there probably aren’t any French people within miles of Paris. “It’s OK,” I say, holding my diaper in place with my thighs. “Pardon?” He hasn’t heard me. He’s still trying to come up with French phrases as he squeezes out the last dollop of shit. “It’s OK,” I yell, “I’m American.” “Je viens, je viens,” he mutters. “Je suis Americaine!” “Pardon?” This is getting embarrassing. At this rate neither one of us will know what to do when he finally emerges. I decide to hotfoot it down to the next floor and try that toilet. So I hobble down the winding stairs again. The toilet on the floor below isn’t locked, but there’s no paper at all, so it’s down still another flight. Actually, I’m beginning to get pretty good at this. What adaptability we show in moments of stress! Like when I had my broken leg and devised all those ingenious positions for screwing with a long leg cast.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  and toddlers. By senior year Leah was lobbying for her to stay in D.C. “There’s not one good reason for you to go back to that ridiculous town.” “There’s my family,” Miri said. “And a job offer from the Sun.” “You can do better. Go to New York. Don’t waste all that talent.” When Miri said, “I’m just going home for the summer,” Leah didn’t buy it. “There’s a boy, isn’t there? The one you met over the holidays.” Well, yes, there was someone she’d met over the holidays, a dental intern working for Dr. O. But so what? Half the girls in her graduating class were already engaged, showing off their diamond rings every chance they got. “What’s his name?” Leah said. “Andy. He’s from San Francisco. Went to Stanford.” She hoped Leah would be impressed. “Andy.” “Yes.” “You’re just twenty-two, Miri.” She knew how old she was. “Give yourself a chance.” “I’m not getting married.” “You will.” “Someday.” “Just don’t settle.” “I won’t settle.” She didn’t give a hoot about a diamond ring, and the idea of one had probably never entered Andy’s mind. When they became engaged a year later, he gave her new skis and a black pearl to wear around her neck on a chain. She still wears it, is wearing it now. He was a young dentist then and insisted on checking her teeth, like a horse dealer buying a mare. “Nice,” he’d said, once he had her in the chair. “Healthy gums.” Before she’d even closed her mouth he’d asked, “Will you marry me?” “This is a proposal?” she’d said. He’d nodded, embarrassed, and brought out a bottle of Champagne he’d hidden in the cabinet. He filled two pleated paper cups and passed one to her.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  There were the four of us sharing an inner stateroom near the din of the engines (while our parents had an outer cabin on the Boat Deck) and suddenly I reached womanhood two and a half days out of Le Havre. What to do? Lalah and Chloe (who are sharing one set of bunks) are not supposed to know—being, my mother thinks, too young—so Randy and I engage in some conspiratorial trips to the drugstore for supplies and go sneaking around the cabin looking for places to hide them. Of course I am so delighted with my new toy and my new sense of distinction in the adult world that I change my Kotex no less than twelve times a day, using them up almost faster than we can buy them. And the moment of truth arrives when the steward (a beleaguered Frenchman with a face like Fernandel and a temper like Cardinal Richelieu) finds the toilet stuffed to the top and overflowing. Until then I had not felt particularly oppressed by menstruation. It was only when the steward (who was certainly not thrilled about having to tend a cabin which resembled a girls’ dormitory) started yelling at me that I joined the ranks of potential radicals. “What ave you poot in ze commode?” he shrieked (or something to that effect). And then he made me watch while he pulled out the disintegrating Kotex glob by glob. Is it possible he really didn’t know what it was? Or was he trying to humiliate me? Was it really a language problem? (Comment dit-on Kotex en francais?) Or was it just that he was taking his frustration out on my menarche? I stood there turning red and muttering drugstore, drugstore, which (I am now given to understand) is a French word. Meanwhile, Lalah and Chloe were giggling to beat the band. (They knew it was dirty, even if they didn’t understand all the details. They certainly knew something was wrong or else why would I be running to the bathroom a dozen times a day and why would that scary man be yelling at me?) We steamed toward New York leaving a trail of bloody Kotex for the fishes. In my thirteen-year-old mind, the Ile de France was the most romantic ship in the world because it made a cameo appearance in “These Foolish Things"—that dreamily romantic song (played by my dreamily romantic father on the piano): A tinkling piano in the next apartment Those stumbling words that told you What my heart meant…

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  Library Journal augured success, with a caveat: “Adult readers will enjoy this light romance as much as their kids love Blume’s best-selling juvenile novels, though they may not remember it a week later.” The reviewer from the LA Times praised Blume’s abilities—“Blume has the enviable gift of good timing… she shares the same sense of proportion whether she’s dealing with pathos, slapstick, romance or reverie”—then veered to the philosophical in her assessment of Wifey ’s moneyed cast of characters. “Blume forces us to ask if we can only examine our ‘inner needs’ when we have material well-being and leisure,” the reviewer wrote. “Or do those two factors magnify, or alleviate, our discontent?” The New York Times was flattering, including Wifey in an article covering the “widespread trend” of feminist novels. The paper called Blume’s take “a bawdy account of a suburban wife’s rebellion against her unsatisfying marriage,” and put it on a continuum with previous groundbreaking books, including Fear of Flying and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, which didn’t come out in the US until 1971, nearly a decade after Plath’s death. But another critic, this one at the Washington Post , saw Wifey as derivative rather than innovative. Reviewer Sue Isaacs suggested, in a culturally prescient takedown, that the novel in question might as well have been penned by artificial intelligence. “Just for fun, imagine a computer which became bored with chess and war games. After a heart-to-heart with its programmer, it arranged to be fed every novel ever written about a stifled wife since the 1960s. Its lights blinked as it was fed Diary of a Mad Housewife and Fear of Flying … Then, it whirred for a microsecond or two, composing its own work which included all the ingredients of the genre.” That same reviewer took issue with Sandy’s preoccupation with sex, summoning an accusation that had followed Judy since Forever —that she was intentionally using saucy scenes to sell books. “Sandy is a woman on the prowl, searching for Deep Meaning,” Isaacs wrote. “But since even a computer knows that profundity is less marketable than sexuality, Sandy Pressman’s search is more genital than cerebral.” Ouch! In fact, even before Wifey , Judy had earned a new nickname in the press: “The Jacqueline Susann of Children’s Literature.” Newsday attributed it to a librarian in Garden City, New York, who was trying to make sense of Blume’s unmatched popularity among young book borrowers. People magazine used the phrase as part of the headline for a splashy feature on Blume, illustrated with photos of the forty-year-old author posing in a lacy camisole. “I cringe, even today, thinking of that article,” Blume wrote in 2004.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  “Come in, come in,” he said, stepping aside to usher me into the inner office, a soundproofed cube with one wall all glass looking out on a garden and a small replica of the Kamakura Buddha, gilt everywhere save for a lap full of new snow. “See that log and that hatchet?” the doctor said, pointing to a palisaded enclosure just to the right of the garden. “My patients dub the log Mom or Dad as the case may be, usually Mom, and then have a grand ol’ time hacking away at her.” His small blue eyes, veined in red, rotated dryly in their sockets to take in my reaction to the idea of murder—except his act of “observation” was so stagy it preempted the need for another response. There was nothing about this actor that couldn’t be read from the top balcony. I declined the analytic couch’s invitation to the voyage and chose an earthbound chair that faced the desk. Not that I wasn’t eager to test the couch’s splendors, which I instinctively (and I hazard astutely) equated with those of sexuality. It was just that I felt somewhat abashed by the couch’s very explicitness, as though it were someone’s beautiful mother who wouldn’t cross her legs, who had even decided to flaunt her most intimate charms. That was just how musky and startling I found the couch, which so shamelessly resembled itself in a thousand cartoons, although now I understood the cartoons had done nothing so much as to sensitize me to its heroic and decidedly unfunny actuality.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But that thou mayest know who thus seconds thee against the Sienese, sharpen thine eye towards me, that my face may give thee right response; so shalt thou see I am the shadow of Capocchio,8 who falsified the metals by alchemy; and thou must recollect, if I rightly eye thee, how good an ape I was of Nature.” 1. See note 5 of the following canto.2. It is now about one o’clock on the Saturday afternoon.3. For Geri del Bello, the cousin of Dante’s father, see the table on p. 625. According to one account, he caused discord among the Sacchetti and was slain by a member of that family in consequence, his death not being avenged till thirty years later, when his nephews killed one of the Sacchetti. Buti says that the murder of Geri’s father was the origin of the feud.4. Valdichiana and Maremma are selected as two of the most unhealthy districts of Tuscany, Sardinia being notorious for the same reason.5. The inhabitants of the island of Ægina having died of a pestilence sent by Juno, Jupiter restored the population by transforming the ants into men, who were called Myrmidons (cf. Ovid, Metam. vii).6. Griffolino of Arezzo obtained money from Albero of Siena by pretending that he could teach him the art of flying. On discovering that he had been tricked, Albero induced his father or patron, who was Bishop of Siena, to have Griffolino burned as an alchemist.7. These four men were members of the Brigata Spendereccia, a club founded in the second half of the thirteenth century by twelve wealthy Sienese youths, who vied with each other in squandering their money on riotous living. The reference is to some expensive dish prepared with cloves, as to the nature of which the old commentators are not agreed. The garden is probably Siena. The Lano mentioned in Canto xiii also belonged to this “Spendthrift Brigade.”8. Capocchio was probably a Florentine and a friend of Dante’s. The early commentators give anecdotes vouching for his skill as a draughtsman and his powers of mimicry. He was burnt at Siena in 1293, for practising alchemy.C A N T O X X XStill on the brim of the Tenth Chasm, in which new horrors await us. “Here,” says the Ottimo Com., “all the senses are assailed: the sight, by murky air; the ear, by lamentations that ‘have arrows shod with pity’; the smell, by stench of ‘putrid limbs’; the touch, by hideous scurf, and by the sinners lying on one another; and the taste, by thirst that ‘craves one little drop of water’ ” Here Gianni Schicchi of Florence, and Myrrha, who counterfeited the persons of others for wicked purposes, represent the Falsifiers “in deeds”; Sinon and Potiphar’s wife, the Falsifiers “in words.” The canto ends with a dialogue between Master Adam of Brescia and Sinon, who strike and abuse each other with a grim scorn and zeal. Dante gets a sharp and memorable reproof from Virgil, for listening too eagerly to their base conversation.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He stood there nodding and smiling as if together they had just cracked the cure for cancer.  On Beauty ‘So . . . umm, do you see Levi . . . or . . . ?’ tried Zora, awkwardly. His well-madeness as a human being made her feel her own bad design. She folded her arms across her chest and then refolded them the other way. Suddenly she couldn’t stand in a position that was even half normal. Carl looked over her shoulder towards the frizzled corridor of yew trees that led to the river. ‘You know, I ain’t even seen him since that concert – I guess we was meant to hang at one point but . . .’ His attention flipped back to her. ‘Which way you walking, you walking down there?’ ‘Actually, I’m going the other way, just into the square.’ ‘Cool, I can go that way.’ ‘Er . . . OK.’ They took a few steps, but here the sidewalk ended. They waited at the traffic lights in silence. Carl had replaced one earphone and was nodding to the beat. Zora looked at her watch, and then around herself in a self-conscious way, assuring the passers-by that she also had no idea what this guy could possibly want with her. ‘You’re on the swim team?’ said Zora when the lights refused to change. ‘Huh?’ Zora shook her head and pressed her lips together. ‘No, say again.’ He took off his earphones once more. ‘What was that?’ ‘Nothing – I just – just wondering if you were on the swim team – ’ ‘Do I look like I’m on the swim team?’ Zora’s memory of Carl refocused, sharpened. ‘Umm . . . it’s not an insult – I’m just saying you’re fast.’ Carl brought his shoulders down from where they were hitched, up around his ears, but his face held the tension. ‘I’ll be in the A-Team before I’m on the swim team, believe that. Gotta be in college before you on the swim team, as I understand it.’ Two cabs came parallel with each other now, heading in opposite directions. The drivers slowed down to a halt and yelled happily at each other from their open windows while beeping horns started up around them.  the anatomy lesson ‘Those Haitians got a lot of mouth, man. Sound like they screaming all the time. Even when they happy they sound pissed as hell,’ reflected Carl. Zora jabbed at the traffic button. ‘You go to a lot of classical – ’ asked Carl at the same time that Zora said, ‘So you just go to the pool to steal other people’s – ’ ‘Oh, shit – ’ He laughed loudly, falsely, Zora thought. She pushed her wallet deep into her tote bag and discreetly zipped it up.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  The Polynesians, especially those on the happy isle to which fortune had blown the good doctor, countered this insecurity by carrying their babies on their backs in a sling pitched so high that Baby’s eyes peered out over Mama’s head. This literally superior position insured the infant against all future anxiety and guaranteed him a life-long serenity. Eager to spread these advantages to America, O’Reilly insisted his patients emulate the Polynesian mode of transporting a baby. I saw those patients, men and women alike, all over town, sheepishly stepping over snowdrifts or gliding down supermaket aisles, their infants, petrified with fear, squawling and clutching locks of parental hair. But this practice figured as only one of the many ways in which O’Reilly reformed our lives. Unlike those tight-ass Freudians, he said, who never suggested anything, who judged silently and interpreted rarely, he quite cheerfully broadcast his wisdom by spilling handfuls into fertile minds he himself had furrowed. He believed that since I’d missed out on a loving childhood I had to feel my way backward in time, to regress in order to be raised all over again by him. “An adult,” he said, “has no right to expect unqualified love, but a child does. That’s what I’m offering you: love with no strings tied.” He invariably made that mistake—“tied” not “attached.” Sometime during each session he would repeat this extraordinary assertion of his love, and each time I felt embarrassed, for I couldn’t help noticing how poorly he remembered the names of my parents and best friends and the major facts of my life. Perhaps foolishly, I thought of knowledge as a necessary if not sufficient condition for love. When I told him of my doubts about him he chastised me for being overly cerebral. “But you see,” he said, “that’s your unconscious pushing me aside because on some level you realize how much I love you. You’re afraid of intimacy. Real love would force you to discard the mother imago you’ve introjected.” Spring approached and the gold Buddha grew more resplendent as rain washed away winter smuts. Although we were hundreds of miles inland, on some days the air smelled of salt and I half expected to see a gull perching on the statue’s topknot like Maitreya, the Bodhisattva of the future.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Here is postcard picture of statue of Lesseps, m’sieu. Is most instructive & also relaxing. Also is only ten piastres.’ I bought one of these &, since we wd not go there, one of the Pharos & one of Pompey’s Pillar. Encouraged, he rummaged inside a cloth bag, & produced a small brown bottle, taking the opportunity too to pull a chair up beside me & sit down. He had a strong, not particularly pleasant smell. ‘Here is very special drink, m’sieu. Very good for you & for your lady.’ He looked at me keenly & I felt myself colour. ‘Is the cocktail of love, m’sieu. Is the wine of Cleopatra.’ ‘No, no, no,’ I said, flustered. To my surprise he was sensitive to this & put the bottle away. He seemed prepared already to give me up, afraid to overstep the mark, & packed up his case again; some other Europeans approached an adjacent table, & I was glad to be seen successfully repulsing this mountebank, fascinating & confidential though he was. Leaning forwards as though to rise, & so hiding what he did from our neighbours, he produced, almost prestidigitated, from inside his robe, from somewhere mysterious about his person, a hand of postcards which he quickly fanned & as quickly swept together again & covered. It should not have surprised me that there was a market for such things here. He may only have been taking an inspired commercial guess in showing them to me. But I was keenly dismayed, humiliated, feeling that he had read me like a book & I, in the glimpse I caught of naked poses—all male, young boys, fantastically proportioned adults, sepia faces smiling, winking—had confusedly admitted as much. I declined him sternly, & with an amiable, philosophical bow he withdrew to pester the newly arrived party. Tonight we travel south along the Canal. I have just walked on deck under stars; it was quite bracingly cold. Beyond the sheer canal walls there are occasional lights & fires: otherwise featurelessness & a distant horizon of hills to the east, and plain to the west, just perceptible as darker than the sky. Like a child I feel far too excited to sleep through my first night in Africa. A couple of weeks later Charles rang me. As usual he was already talking when I raised the apparatus to my ear: ‘… my dear, and too appalled to hear that you’ve been vandalised.’ ‘Charles! I’m much better now. I’ve got a false tooth very cleverly sort of welded on at the front …’ ‘I’ve only just heard about it from our friend Bill.’ ‘I didn’t know he knew.’ ‘I was most dismayed. I went for a swim, you see. I hoped I might find you there. But I suppose …’ ‘I haven’t been going in while I’ve been looking so hideous, but I hope to make an appearance in the next few days.’ ‘Were you badly hurt?’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘What we’re trying to . . . interrogate here,’ he says, ‘is the mytheme of artist as autonomous individual with privileged insight into the human. What is it about these texts – these images as narration – that is implicitly applying for the quasi-mystical notion of genius?’ An awful long silence follows this. Katie bites at the skin around her cuticles. ‘To reframe: is what we see here really a rebellion , a turning away? We’re told that this constitutes a rejection of the classical nude. OK. But. Is this nude not a confirmation of the ideality of the vulgar? As it is already inscribed in the idea of a specifically gendered, class debasement?’ Another silence. Dr Belsey stands up and writes the word  very large on the blackboard behind him. ‘Both these pictures speak of illumination. Why? That is to say, can we speak of light as a neutral concept? What is the logos of this light, this spiritual light, this supposed illumination? What are we signing up to when we speak of the ‘‘beauty’’ of this ‘‘light’’?’ says Dr Belsey, employing quoting fingers. ‘What are these images really concerned with?’ Here Katie sees her opportunity and begins the slow process of thinking about possibly opening her mouth and allowing sound to come from it. Her tongue is at her teeth. But it is the incredible-looking black girl, Victoria, who speaks, and as ever she has a way of monopolizing Dr Belsey’s attention, even when  the anatomy lesson Katie is almost certain that what she is saying is not terribly interesting. ‘It’s a painting of its own interior,’ she says very slowly, looking down at her desk and then up again in that stupid, flirty way she has. ‘Its subject is painting itself. It’s a painting about painting. I mean, that’s the desiring force here.’ Dr Belsey raps on his desk in an interested way, as if to say, now we’re getting to it . ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Expand.’ But before Victoria can speak again there is an interruption. ‘Umm . . . I don’t understand how you’re using ‘‘painting’’ there? I don’t think you can simply just inscribe the history of painting, or even its logos, in that one word ‘‘painting’’.’ The professor seems interested in this point too. It is made by the young man with the T-shirt that says  on one side and  on the other, a young man Katie fears more than anybody else in this whole university, much more than she could ever fear any woman, even the beautiful black girl, because he is clearly the third most amazing person she has ever come across. His name is Mike. ‘But you’ve already privileged the term,’ says the professor’s daughter, whom Katie, who is not given easily to hatred, hates. ‘You’re already assuming the etching is merely ‘‘debased painting’’. So there’s your problematic, right there.’

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Vee . . . What . . . what are you doing here?’ He scrunched up the Rizla and tobacco and threw them in a nearby trash can. ‘Well, Dr Belsey, actually I study here.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I tried to call you.’ She thrust both hands deep into his trouser pockets. Howard grabbed her hands and removed them. He got her by the elbow and pulled her through the fire door, which led into the secret interior of the building: emergency stairs and cleaning closets and stockrooms. Below them, the sound of a photocopier huffing and shaking. Howard skipped down a few steps to look through the spiral of the stairwell to the basement, but there was no one. The photocopier was on autopilot, disgorging pages and stapling them together. He walked back slowly to meet Victoria. ‘You shouldn’t be back in school so soon.’ ‘Why not? What’s the point of staying at home? I’ve been trying to call you.’ ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to call me. It’s better if you don’t.’ Down here, in this grotty stairwell, the natural light came in through two grated windows in a manner both penal and atmos-pheric, reminding Howard, incongruously, of Venice. The light fell perfectly on the sculptural construction of lines and planes that was her face. It moved Howard to an emotional urgency he had not felt, or had not felt until this moment.  on beauty and being wrong ‘Just forget about me, all of it. Please – do that.’ ‘Howard, I – ’ ‘No – Vee, it was insane,’ he said, holding on to both her elbows. ‘And it’s over. It was insanity .’ Even in the panic and horror of this situation Howard stopped to wonder at this drama, of the sheer energizing fact of being returned to drama such as this, properly the preserve of youth, with the hiding and the low voices and the surreptitious touches. But now Victoria drew away from him and folded her arms across that drum-tight adolescent stomach. ‘Umm, I’m talking about tonight ,’ she said tartly. ‘That’s why I was calling you. Emerson Hall dinner? We’re meant to be going together? It’s not a proposal of marriage – why do all your family always think someone wants to marry you? Look . . . I just wanted to know if you’re still coming. It’s just a pain if I have to find someone else to go with now. Oh, God . . . this is embarrassing – forget it.’ ‘Emerson Hall?’ repeated Howard. The fire door opened. Howard flattened himself against the wall as Vee pressed herself against the banister. A kid in a knapsack came between them, passed by the photocopier, and then through a door that led to who knew where.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “Excuse me!” I said and slammed the door in a hurry. I raced up another flight, found my own room and bolted the door. I couldn’t get over the expression on the man’s face. Amusement, but not shock. A tranquil Buddhalike smile. He was not alarmed at all. So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse. Amazing! If someone had burst into my room and found me naked and paring my nails, I would have died of shock. Or would I? Maybe I was stronger than I thought. But I was also dirtier than I thought. Despite what Auden says about all people loving the smell of their own farts, my reek was beginning to offend my nostrils. Since I had no Tampax, a bath was out of the question, but I’d have to do something about my hair which hung in limp and greasy strings. It had begun to itch as if I had fleas. A new start. I’d wash my hair at least, douse myself with perfume like the smelly courtiers at Versailles, and set out. But where was I headed? In search of Bennett? In search of Adrian? In search of Tampax? In search of Isadora? “Just shut up and wash your hair,” I said. “First things first.” Luckily, I had plenty of shampoo, and even though the sink was small and the water cold, washing my hair gave me a sense of being in command. An hour later, I was packed, dressed, made up, and had tied a scarf over my wet hair. I put on my sunglasses to further protect me from the evil eye. I had improvised another sanitary napkin with toilet paper and pinned it to my underpants. It wasn’t the most comforable arrangement, but still, I was ready to pay my bill, lug my suitcase, and face the world. Thank God for sunlight, I thought, as I came out on the street. Former Druid that I was, I knew to thank the gods for small favors. I had survived the night! I had even slept! For one moment I allowed myself the luxury of thinking everything would be all right. No thinking, I said to myself. No thinking, no analyzing, and no worrying…. Just concentrate on getting to London and pulling yourself together. Just get through the goddamned day. I lugged my suitcase to a drugstore, bought Tampax, and then schlepped back to last night’s café on the Place St. Michel. I left the suitcase just standing by a table while I went downstairs to the bathroom to put in a Tampax. I had a momentary pang of worry about leaving the suitcase, but then I decided to say the hell with it. It would be an omen. If the suitcase was still there when I got back (appropriately plugged up with Tampax), then everything would be all right. It was.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘I was – we were staying at the Crillon – what a hotel that is, that hotel is a beautiful place – and I got a phone call from Brockes, Lord Brockes,’ added Erskine breezily. ‘But Howard, you know I’ve known our friend Monty for a very long time. Either he was the first Negro at Oxford or I was – we can never agree on that. But even if we haven’t always seen eye to eye, he is civilized and I am civilized. So here I am.’  on beauty and being wrong ‘Of course ,’ said Kiki in rather an emotional way and took hold of Erskine’s hand. ‘And of course Caroline insisted ,’ continued Erskine mischievously, nodding to his wife’s lean form across the way. She was standing in the archway of the church, engaged in conversation with a famous black British newscaster. Erskine looked mock-fondly after her. ‘She is an awesome woman, my wife. She is the only woman I know who can power-broke at a funeral.’ Here Erskine turned the volume down on his big Nigerian laugh. ‘ Anybody who’s anybody will be there ,’ he said, badly impersonating his wife’s Atlanta twang, ‘though I fear there aren’t as many somebodies here as she had hoped. Half these people I have never seen before in my life . But there we are. In Nigeria we weep at funerals – in Atlanta apparently they network. It’s marvellous! Actually, I’m rather surprised to see you here. I thought you and Sir Monty were drawing swords for January.’ Erskine’s umbrella turned into a rapier. ‘So says the college grapevine. Yes, Howard. Don’t tell me you’re not here for your own ulterior motives, eh? Eh? But have I said the wrong thing?’ asked Erskine as Kiki’s hand dropped from his own. ‘Umm . . . I guess Mom and Carlene were pretty close,’ murmured Jerome. Erskine held a hand dramatically to his breast. ‘But you should have stopped me speaking out of turn! Kiki – I had no idea you even knew the lady. Now I am very embarrassed.’ ‘Don’t be,’ said Kiki, but looked at him coldly. Erskine was paralysed by social friction of any kind. He looked now as if he were in physical pain. It was Zora who came to his rescue. ‘Hey, Dad – isn’t that Zia Malmud? Weren’t you guys at school with him?’ Zia Malmud, cultural commentator, ex-socialist, anti-war campaigner, essayist, occasional poet, thorn in the side of the present government and regular TV presence, or, as Howard succinctly put it, ‘typical rent-a-quote wanker’, was standing by the monument, smoking his trademark pipe. Howard and Erskine quickly made their way through the crowd to say hello to their fellow Oxonian. Kiki watched them go. She saw vulgar relief paint itself in broad  On Beauty

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  And I wouldn’t have babies! I would cut off my nose to spite my face. I would literally throw out the baby with the bath water. And that, of course, was another reason I was in Paris. I had cut myself off from everything—family, friends, husband—just to prove I was free. Free as a misfired satellite in outer space. Free as a hijacker parachuting down into Death Valley. I swiped the remains of the roll of toilet paper, stuffed it into my bag, and started back toward my room. But which floor was it on anyway? My mind was blank. All the doors seemed identical. I ran up two flights and blindly headed for the corner door. I flung it open. A fat middle-aged man sat naked on a chair cutting his toenails. He looked up in mild surprise. “Excuse me!” I said and slammed the door in a hurry. I raced up another flight, found my own room and bolted the door. I couldn’t get over the expression on the man’s face. Amusement, but not shock. A tranquil Buddhalike smile. He was not alarmed at all. So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse. Amazing! If someone had burst into my room and found me naked and paring my nails, I would have died of shock. Or would I? Maybe I was stronger than I thought. But I was also dirtier than I thought. Despite what Auden says about all people loving the smell of their own farts, my reek was beginning to offend my nostrils. Since I had no Tampax, a bath was out of the question, but I’d have to do something about my hair which hung in limp and greasy strings. It had begun to itch as if I had fleas. A new start. I’d wash my hair at least, douse myself with perfume like the smelly courtiers at Versailles, and set out. But where was I headed? In search of Bennett? In search of Adrian? In search of Tampax? In search of Isadora? “Just shut up and wash your hair,” I said. “First things first.” Luckily, I had plenty of shampoo, and even though the sink was small and the water cold, washing my hair gave me a sense of being in command. An hour later, I was packed, dressed, made up, and had tied a scarf over my wet hair. I put on my sunglasses to further protect me from the evil eye. I had improvised another sanitary napkin with toilet paper and pinned it to my underpants. It wasn’t the most comforable arrangement, but still, I was ready to pay my bill, lug my suitcase, and face the world. Thank God for sunlight , I thought, as I came out on the street. Former Druid that I was, I knew to thank the gods for small favors.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  But nothing. Randy had her period (or “got unwell,” as my liberated mother and grandmother said) and so did all the girls in my seventh-grade class. And my eighth-grade class. What big bosoms and C-cup Maidenform bras and curly pubic tendrils! What stirring discussions of Kotex and Modess, and (for the very, very daring) Tampax! But I had nothing to contribute. At thirteen I had only a “training bra” (training for what?) I didn’t fill, a few sparse brownish-red curls (not even blonde, for all that I was a natural blonde), and information about sex gleaned from all-night marathons with Randy and her best friend, Rita. So the prayers on the pot continued. P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T. And then, when I was thirteen and a half (ancient compared to Randy’s ten and a half), I finally “got it” on the Ile de France in Mid-Atlantic, as we returned en famille from that disastrously expensive (though tax-deductible) European jaunt. There were the four of us sharing an inner stateroom near the din of the engines (while our parents had an outer cabin on the Boat Deck) and suddenly I reached womanhood two and a half days out of Le Havre. What to do? Lalah and Chloe (who are sharing one set of bunks) are not supposed to know—being, my mother thinks, too young—so Randy and I engage in some conspiratorial trips to the drugstore for supplies and go sneaking around the cabin looking for places to hide them. Of course I am so delighted with my new toy and my new sense of distinction in the adult world that I change my Kotex no less than twelve times a day, using them up almost faster than we can buy them. And the moment of truth arrives when the steward (a beleaguered Frenchman with a face like Fernandel and a temper like Cardinal Richelieu) finds the toilet stuffed to the top and overflowing. Until then I had not felt particularly oppressed by menstruation. It was only when the steward (who was certainly not thrilled about having to tend a cabin which resembled a girls’ dormitory) started yelling at me that I joined the ranks of potential radicals. “What ave you poot in ze commode?” he shrieked (or something to that effect). And then he made me watch while he pulled out the disintegrating Kotex glob by glob. Is it possible he really didn’t know what it was? Or was he trying to humiliate me? Was it really a language problem? ( Comment dit-on Kotex en francais? ) Or was it just that he was taking his frustration out on my menarche? I stood there turning red and muttering drugstore, drugstore , which (I am now given to understand) is a French word. Meanwhile, Lalah and Chloe were giggling to beat the band.