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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  1 Kane found that the parents she studied often encouraged gender nonconformity in their female children and few offered negative responses when they engaged in stereotypically masculine activities. On the other hand, while the parents sometimes reacted positively when their male children engaged in certain stereotypically feminine activities—specifically those related to domestic skills, nurturing, and empathy—other activities related to what Kane called “icons of femininity,” such as wearing pink or girl-specific clothing, wanting to wear nail polish, and expressing interest in dance, ballet, or Barbie dolls, were generally greeted with negative reactions by both fathers and mothers, and in parents of varying race, economic class, and sexual orientation. Many of the consequences of this society-wide effemimania are chronicled in Stephen J. Ducat’s book The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity. Ducat describes the ways in which male development and thought processes are shaped by effemimania and cites studies that show that feminine boys are viewed far more negatively, and brought in for psychotherapy far more often, than masculine girls. 2 As Ducat explains, “I don’t think that it underestimates the damage done to girls and women under the regime of patriarchal gender norms to say that males suffer certain constraints and conflicts from which females, with a few notable exceptions, are largely exempt. Specifically, boys from early on learn that cross-gender behavior is a taboo often enforced with predictable ferocity by family, peers, and the larger society. For example, unlike girls, boys who do play with toys of the other sex often try to hide it from others.” 3 This very much resonates with my own experiences as a young boy. Some of my earliest childhood memories (around the ages of five and six) are of censoring of my own thoughts, behaviors, and desires because I was worried that they would lead me to be perceived by others as feminine. I vividly remember anxiously describing anything having to do with girls as being “yucky” or “dumb,” not because of any actual strong negative feelings that I had, but because I was aware that I was expected to have such an attitude toward anything feminine. In first grade, when a female friend invited me to her birthday party, I hid the invitation because I was embarrassed to have been invited to a girl’s party.

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

  Michael and I are left alone on the chair, watching them and unsure what to talk about when we aren’t talking about them. In moments like this, I have to remind myself that we are not who we used to be to each other, that a tranquil moment like this is hard-won. “Michael,” I start. “Yes?” He swivels his head to look at me, seeming surprised and thrilled that I have initiated a conversation with him. “You know how I asked you for a laptop so that I could do some writing?” “Yes. I’m so glad you’re writing. I really think you could get copywriting work, the stuff you did for me was great.” “That’s not the kind of writing I want to do. I mean, if I can do that and make some money, I’d be thrilled, but I’m more interested in creative writing.” “OK, well do both. This could be a whole new direction for you,” he says encouragingly. “Actually, I want to tell you about a project I’m working on. Sort of a memoir about my life after marriage. It’s not about you, but you obviously play a big role in it. It’s my story, about finding myself again,” I say cautiously. “I’m writing it with the hope that it’ll be published. I’m writing carefully about you, I don’t want to trash you. You’re the father of our kids and I hope that we are moving into a new dynamic in which we can be friends, but the story of how we fell apart is included.” “Laura, I’m interested in the truth, in people speaking their truth. As long as you’re honest, it’s OK with me. I have nothing to hide,” he says. “You say that now because it’s an abstract notion. It could feel different when it’s spelled out on a page,” I say. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, if it’s making you feel good to write, do it,” he says. I nod my head and thank him. “Hey, just to lighten the mood a bit, can I tell you something funny?” he asks, and continues without awaiting my response. “The doormen still sometimes call my cell phone instead of yours when you have visitors. I gather you’re dating someone named Alan, because I get phone calls from the doorman like clockwork on Friday nights after I pick Georgia up for the weekend, asking if it’s OK to send him upstairs.” “Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing,” I say, my face reddening. “I’m telling you because I think it’s funny. I want you to be happy. I’m glad you’re dating,” he says. I realize it’s especially awkward that he’s getting these calls because it’s always within minutes of Georgia leaving, like I haven’t wasted a moment having a man up to my apartment, and I wonder aloud why he didn’t simply tell the doorman at some point to call my number instead.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  They brought me more and more items: black lace bra with pink satin underneath, black lace thong, bra with leopard straps and black cups, black mesh panties with brown satin insert, demi bra, push-up bra, sheer lace bra with no underwear, black crotchless panties. I continued to soak in all the attention, the ushering of my transition from woman to whore. But after forty-five minutes of the fashion show, I began to get overwhelmed and hungry. What were we doing? There was a nothingness we all thought we were staving off, using the bras and panties as little lace shields. But now the nothingness was creeping in again and only I could feel it. Bridget’s compliments became annoying. What a fake. She didn’t really want to mother me and she didn’t think I was sexy. She just wanted to sell lingerie. I asked her straight up what some of the items cost, then began to sweat. $120 for a pair of underpants? $250 for a bra? Now it was too late. I was in too deep. We had become family of a sort. I would feel ashamed not buying anything. “Don’t worry about it,” said Claire. “I’ll buy them for you. As a gift. A welcome-to-fucking gift?” I wondered where she got all of her money. She didn’t seem to work. I guess the ex-husband had given her a cut in the divorce. Maybe alimony. “No, I can handle it,” I said. “But thank you. I think I only need two items anyway: one bra, one pair of underpants. Oh, and garters!” Claire laughed. “What are you going to, a bachelorette party?” “I don’t know, he asked for garters specifically,” I said. “What a wanker. Does he think you’re some kind of doll?” I actually liked being a doll. I wished Garrett would just pick out the bra and underwear too. It made it easier than having to decide on my own. My decisions had never led anywhere good. But Bridget, hopped up on a potential commission, was thrilled to sell me garters. She tsk ed Claire and told her that garters were chic for a modern woman. They were a nod to the classic, but you could do them in a modern way. I settled on the black lace thong, the black lace bra with the pink underneath, a plain pair of black velvet and satin garters, and some sheer black thigh-high stockings. The total was $395. I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was being, but I knew that I liked it better than me. 20. I arrived at the Shalimar wearing the lingerie under a trench coat that I found in Steve’s closet. I’d done a lot of snooping in Annika’s house, looking for I wasn’t sure what. Something to help me know my sister better? Something to show me that the life she and Steve had together wasn’t as beautiful as it seemed to be?

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

  He doesn’t have kids of his own but he enjoyed my stories of what it’s like to be a parent who is surreptitiously dating, and since I always laugh uproariously at my own jokes and stories, I appreciate anyone who goes along with me. I arrive at the café early so have time to shed my multiple winter layers and catch my breath before he arrives. When I’m sitting and trying to perfect my open-for-business-but-not-too eager face, I hear a loud and animated voice belt out, “Laura!” I look up and there is my friend Johanna with her warm smile beaming down at me. “What are you doing here?” she asks. “Ummmm,” is all I can get out and my face immediately reddens, so she starts laughing, knowing that I am awaiting a suitor’s arrival. I pick up my collection of outerwear so I can relocate my seat away from her, warning that despite my love for her, if she so much as even glances in my direction, she will be dead to me. “Go to the back, I promise not to peek. You look beautiful by the way,” she says and returns to her friend at the next table. I settle at a table in the back of the restaurant where we will be safely tucked away. I recognize #8 right away when he comes in – he’s got a huge smile, sparkling white teeth and is substantial, tall and broad. He spots me and heads my way, his sizable frame filling the space between tables. When he reaches me, I stand and he gives me a hug. This seems to be the standard greeting with men I’ve met online and it always reminds of the ’80s TV show The Dating Game , when a couple would finally meet face to face after talking behind a screen and instantly embrace as if to claim their prizes. I glance in Johanna’s direction and see that she is very determinedly averting her eyes, but still, I feel self-conscious. Johanna and her husband are amongst our closest friends and after all the time our families have spent together, I know it must be bizarre for her to see me with another man. “You look just like your photos, but even prettier,” he says. “Why thank you,” I respond, blushing. “Has it ever happened that you meet a woman who looks nothing like her pictures?” “Oh yeah, all the time. First of all, the majority of women lie about their age,” he says. “And I’m not talking about a couple of years, I’m talking more than a decade.” “I’d be too nervous to lie,” I say. “Actually,” he says laughing, “I have a confession to make. I’m really 53 not 48 which it says on my profile.” I purse my lips together and give him a quizzical look, so he continues, “So many women won’t like your profile if you’re over 50.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The gospels speak a good deal, as we shall see, about the “kingdom of God” as, in some sense or other, a present reality in the ministry of Jesus. This, indeed, is at the heart of what we need to explore in this book. But not only do the creeds fail to mention this in connection with Jesus’s life (or indeed with his birth or his death). The Nicene Creed implies, to the contrary, that Jesus’s “kingdom” will be established only when he “comes again in glory”: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end.” It doesn’t actually say that his kingdom will only be set up at that point, but the sequence of clauses gives that clear impression. True, in both these ancient creeds it also says that Jesus, through his ascension, was “seated at the right hand of the Father.” In ancient Jewish thought, with echoes of Daniel 7, this could only mean that, from that moment, Jesus was the Father’s right-hand man, in charge of the whole world. But in our own day the “ascension” is just a way of saying that Jesus “went to heaven when he died.” To speak of him “sitting at the Father’s right hand” has become simply a fancy, perhaps even a fanciful, way of saying “he entered into a very splendid and glorious position.” We have been lured, perhaps by our embarrassment at the literalistic sense of Jesus flying up like a spaceman to a “heaven” located a few miles up within our universe, into ignoring the real meaning both of “heaven” (which is not a place within our universe at all, but God’s place, intersecting with our world in all sorts of ways) and of the ascension itself, which is about the sovereignty of Jesus as the Father’s accredited and appointed agent. We have, as a result, understood the ascension in vague terms of supernatural glory, rather than in the precise terms (as in Matt. 28:18; Acts 1:6–11) of Jesus’s authority over the world. In fact, the ascension, for many people, implies Jesus’s absence, not his universal presence and sovereign rule. And this time it isn’t only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who will raise objections; it’s Paul, Hebrews, and Revelation as well. They all think that Jesus is already in charge of the world. (Check out, for instance, 1 Cor. 15:20–28; Heb. 2:5–9; Rev. 5:6–14.) That was what they understood by “God’s kingdom.” But for the four gospels this wasn’t something that simply began at the ascension. It was true, in a sense, from the moment Jesus began his public career. This was what they were trying to tell us. And most Christians have never even thought about such a thing, let alone begun to figure out what it means for us today. This is the problem, I believe, with the great majestic creeds, full as they are of solemn truth and supple wisdom.

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

  “I just realized that I have a football field open to the right of me and you’re crammed in here with a big group, so I was giving you more room.” And that’s it. Clearly, I don’t know how this is done, but I do now know that dragging your stool away from the man you’re trying to get to pay attention to you is not effective in the long run. His back is turned again and now I’m not only alone but adrift at sea, gaping spaces to my right and left. I did not know it was possible to feel both conspicuous and invisible at the same time and I squeeze my eyes shut as if that could make me disappear altogether. Sip, breathe, sip, breathe , I instruct myself. “That’s an interesting bag,” a deep voice says, interrupting my one-woman pity party. “Sorry, what?” I ask, startled and looking around to see if this handsome stranger is speaking to me or someone near me. “Your bag. What’s it made of?” he asks, nodding his head towards my clutch purse resting on the bar. “Cork,” I say, testing out my voice, and I hand it to him to touch. “Very fancy.” “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s from one of the outlet stores over in Lee. But thanks,” I foolishly say and cringe, thinking about how I am always quick to deflect a compliment – learn how to just say thank you , I think to myself. “I passed those stores earlier today on my bike,” he says. “That’s a hilly bike ride.” “No, not a bicycle, I mean my motorcycle. I’m on a quick getaway trip, just checking out this area. I’m Jack,” he says, sticking out his hand toward me. “And this is Don,” he says of the short, balding man next to him. They continue talking, but include me in their conversation. I’m the only one from around here, so I give them tips for local restaurants and scenic highways. Jack gestures to my nearly empty glass and asks what I’m drinking. I tell him a Margarita and he asks if I’ve ever had a Cadillac. When I say no, he calls over the bartender and orders one for himself and one for me, asking the bartender to put it on his tab. The bartender’s eyes flicker over to me and he gives me a small smile and nod, as if relieved that I seem to have made a friend. I suppress a laugh. A man is buying me a drink? The last time I went on a date I was still using a fake ID, not even of legal drinking age yet. Don tells us that he traveled here from hours away to hear the singer tonight, then he drifts off to his wife and friends, leaving Jack and me alone.

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

  My regular doctor is not available so I see someone else in the practice, a young doctor with long, perfectly curled tresses. “You were just here,” she states as she glances at my chart. “I know, but I think the antibiotics I took for the UTI gave me a yeast infection, so I’m back,” I say. “OK, I’m going to prescribe a pill for you, you take it once and that’s it. The only downside is that it may take a day or two for the itching to ease up.” I ask for something that works faster and she offers a cream that some women don’t like because it’s messy. “That’s fine, I’ll use the cream,” I say. “OK, and also, no sex for a week,” she says as she starts writing out a prescription. “Oh, um, is that true with the pill too or just with the cream?” I ask. Her pen stops in mid-air and she looks up at me with a withering look. “Just don’t have sex for a week. Your body needs to recover. You have to let your pH adjust back to normal. Can you do that?” she asks. “Yes, yes, of course I can, I just wanted to clarify if the no-sex rule applied to both treatment options, it’s not like I have to have sex every five minutes,” I say, reddening. Truthfully, I did want to know if one of them didn’t have the no-sex for a week rule as suddenly a week seems like a daunting amount of time. In the past, a week of mandated abstinence from sex would have been a most welcome gift, but now, it looms. CHAPTER 25Hot PotatoI give #5 another chance, but I’m leery of him. I have never been in a relationship in which I haven’t been trusted implicitly and it makes me feel like I’m lying even when I’m not. I’ve not only been trustworthy but also apparently too trusting of other people. I mean, obviously, if your husband carries on an affair for months and your teenage daughter is suspicious but you’re not, you have to accept that you’re lacking a self-protective sheath of wariness. Also, thinking about whether or not to keep dating #5 right now is the least of my problems. One day, as he flips through the newspaper on my kitchen counter and I cobble together lunch for us out of leftovers in my fridge, my phone rings. I see, with concern, that it’s Hudson’s school. I motion to him that I am going to take the call in my bedroom. The principal tells me that Hudson was caught smoking pot near school that morning, which means that he likely has drugs in his backpack on school premises, which warrants expulsion, and further, that he does not believe it to be an isolated incident. I urgently need help with Hudson. This threat of expulsion from school, the place that feels like our one lifeline, sends me into full-blown panic.

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

  I pray none of the few passing cars contain people who know me here because I feel powerless to stop the rapture that has been set in motion, whether or not I’m seen. The hotel lobby is brightly and fluorescently lit and I can guess what I look like to the knowing eyes of the schoolmarm receptionist at the front desk as I click against the tiled floor. I want to explain myself, but right now I’m a character in a romance novel and explaining myself is not part of my role. I have always cared so much about how I appear to other people, even if I doubt they’ll ever see me again, but it occurs to me at this moment that I should start caring less and simply live my life; I should care about what I look like to myself, but maybe I don’t need to care so much about what I look like to people who don’t even know my name. Jack and I are silent and palpably tense with anticipation as we ride the elevator and approach his room. A few fumbles with the key card and then we are in this man’s room with a king-size bed and motorcycle helmet on the desk. I excuse myself to use the bathroom, where I lock the door and stare hard at myself in the mirror while giving myself a silent, rushed pep talk: It doesn’t matter what happens here, if you cry or laugh or embarrass yourself, just make sure all your parts are in working order . It’s like the first attempt at a jog after years of being sedentary, a breaking in of new sneakers, knowing you won’t last very long and you’ll still end up with blisters, and anyway, he isn’t a local guy and will never see you again. I nod along with the words in my head – Yes, yes, I can do this, just knock it out and it’ll be over and done with, a post-marriage virgin no more . With all the courage I can muster, I fling open the door of the bathroom and pass him as he takes his turn inside. This is how I come to find myself standing naked in a stranger’s hotel room, shedding my clothes as he does his own preparations for me in the privacy of the bathroom. I am not versed in the rules of this game, and since I have, in the past hour, successfully impersonated a confident single woman, I am determined that my act must go on. I am showing him that I’m ready and willing. I’m not pretending that we aren’t here for the sole purpose of having sex; this seems like the only logical next play – but why is he just staring at me now that he’s out of the bathroom and just a few feet away? Shouldn’t he be voraciously feasting on me already? Should I not have acted so boldly?

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

  He took me out to a hibachi restaurant to celebrate my 17th birthday and by the time the chef had finished flipping grilled shrimp in the air for me to catch on my plate, I knew that Rob was the one I would cede my virginity to. The first few times we had sex, I found it painful and, frankly, embarrassing. It seemed bizarre that we would be caught up in unspeakable lust one moment and then the next he would come and our bodies would simply deflate. Were we supposed to resume our conversation at that point and pretend something both magical and calamitous had not just taken place? Mostly, relieved not to have been caught by my parents, we would hurriedly pull our clothes back on, smooth our voluminous ’80s hair and part ways. When Rob returned to the city for the fall semester of school, he moved into an apartment, which was where I learned to enjoy sex, not having to worry about the potential appearance of disapproving parents. We saw each other on weekends, tumbling in and out of his narrow, unkempt bed, emerging bleary-eyed to pick up Chinese take-out. Our romps were hasty but fun, and I learned to be quick to come so that I wouldn’t be left wanting when he was done – an ability that I took in stride until decades later when I learned from friends and books this was not a God-given skill. I went away to college in the Midwest the following year and a few months into the first semester, I broke up with Rob. It didn’t take me long to settle into a relationship with Julian, who lived in a fraternity house. Minus the scent of stale beer that permeated his bedding, and the sounds of his frat brothers throwing up in the bathroom across the hall after a night of partying, I took refuge in his full-sized bed, relishing the space and privacy his room afforded us. Julian and I broke up two years later and I wasted no time, within days going out with Michael, who had been my next-door neighbor the year before. Although I had never before thought of him romantically, sitting in his white Volvo after he took me out to a Jamaican restaurant for dinner, a James Taylor cassette tape tucked into the stereo, I looked at him anew. He kissed me, but then told me that between the tennis team and architecture school, he didn’t have much time for a girlfriend. I told him I liked my independence and wouldn’t require much of his time anyway. We spent our days separately, but when bedtime came I would practically skip across the lawn separating our on-campus apartments and sleep over in his room. His roommate had left for London for the semester and by the time he returned we had broken his wooden futon frame with the copious and vigorous sex we were having every night.

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

  “Since you’re the manager, do you know when the band is going to start?” he leans over the woman between us a few minutes later to ask. “It’s going to be a while,” I say. “What?” he shouts. It’s loud in here and we are gracelessly leaning over this poor woman as we attempt to keep our conversation going. “Would you like to trade seats with me?” she asks, looking at me and then at him and then back at me when he doesn’t answer. I hesitate for a second, remembering that moment weeks ago of indecisively lingering over the “purchase tickets” button that set my newly active single life in motion and then say “Sure” and hop off my stool to switch with her. This makes me feel almost like I’ve accepted an invitation to a date, but it wasn’t his invitation so I hope I’m not misreading his cues. And now here comes another woman, much younger than me, with a sweet smile and straight, compliant hair pulled back in a ponytail. She leans in with a kiss on the cheek for my new friend and I want to die for getting this whole thing wrong. He attempts to introduce me but we don’t know each other’s names, so we clumsily exchange them and now we are stuck here together, an awkward threesome. When the band welcomes the small crowd and starts playing, I am beyond relieved that I can stop trying to participate in their conversation. Bonus: soon the woman says she’s going to find her sister and wanders away, and she doesn’t say she is coming back so I am hopeful she won’t: we are fighting for limited supplies here and I am a scrappy but determined contender. The band is fun, upbeat and quirky. We are both smiling watching them and it feels like music that it would be impossible not to feel happy listening to. The hour that they play passes quickly and soon enough, they call it a night. “Do you want another drink?” he asks as the room quiets down. “I do, but then I’ll have to stay here a while until I can drive home,” I say. “I will take responsibility for keeping you company until you’re ready to go,” he says solemnly. I am incredulous. It does not seem possible that for the second time I have found and ensnared the one single man in the room, but I gratefully accept this gift from the universe. It will occur to me later that on both these nights, there were few other single women present, so it will seem less remarkable, possibly even comic that I gave myself and the universe so much credit. It’s quiet now, so we can talk without shouting. He lives nearby and this is his regular weekend haunt. He is a freelance writer whose passion for books, podcasts and music matches my own.

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

  I fall down a deep rabbit hole, reading endless reviews of sugaring salons versus waxing salons and decide to book a sugaring appointment for complete bikini hair removal at a salon around the corner. I take a screen grab of the appointment and text it to #6, adding, “I hope you’re happy.” He sends back a happy face emoji in which if I look hard enough I’m certain I can see a drooling, oversexed teenage boy. “Ugh, the things we do for love,” I write back, and then immediately realize my mistake. “Well, not love, just for sex,” I quickly clarify. “You’re going to be a convert, you’ll see. You’ll love how smooth it is,” he texts. I tell him he will be the first to know if that turns out to be true. The next evening, I show up at the salon already in a cold sweat. I anxiously ramble to the young, bored technician that I’m newly single and I understand this is what men want now but back in the day when I was last single women wore their bushes with pride. By the time I am using one hand to hold the skin in my pubic area taut for her so she can get every last hair and the other hand to bite down on to distract myself from the pain, I am so miserable and embarrassed that I can’t imagine sinking any lower. Then, she tells me to roll over and hold open my butt cheeks and I realize this is actually a bottomless well of mortification and physical torture. She keeps promising that there’s just a little more to go, all while repeatedly pressing and ripping and asking robotically if I am doing OK. “Define OK,” I say. “Just tell me to stop if you can’t take it anymore,” she says impatiently. Finally, she adds the words I have been waiting for: “OK, all done. It won’t be as bad next time. There was just so much to remove today.” She emphasizes the words “so much” to fully drive my humiliation home, holding aloft the hairy, sticky ball of sugaring paste in her hand like it might bite her. I roll over and sit up, catching my reflection in the mirror across the room, horrified that my face is flushed and damp, my hair a messy halo around my face. I am trying to salvage what little self-respect I have and also make her see that I am not as unmanageable from the neck up as I am from the waist down, though it seems hopeless at this point. “I’m curious,” I say. “Am I the worst client you’ve ever had?” She shakes her head. “Not the worst,” she says. “Some people ask me to stop and then walk out, so you did OK.” “You know, I’ve given birth three times. Vaginally.

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

  Like the easily achieved orgasms I take for granted, I’m certain that my G-spot has gotten plenty of action, but I would be hard-pressed to describe it beyond the description I would give the intense pleasure of an orgasm. Thus it is no small surprise to me the next morning, when I recount the details of my date with #8 to my friend Ana during our weekly coffee date after Pilates class, to hear her reaction. She loves to hear about my sexcapades and I describe the awkward scene, how he was watching a movie while we ate lunch and then how physical the sex was, how hard it was to keep up with him, then how when I came it was so strong, I actually felt like I had lost control of my bladder but that I had checked the sheets and I had not, in fact, peed. I tell her that even the idea that I had peed in this strange man’s bed was so embarrassing, that I am now re-thinking ever having sex with a stranger again. “Could it have been that he hit your G-spot?” she asks, seriously pondering the situation I described. “What? No, it wasn’t like that at all,” I say. “Hmmm, because that once happened to me and it was so surprising, but it’s never happened again,” she says. “What makes you think it was your G-spot?” I ask. “I really don’t know how I knew, I just did. I guess because it was so different from anything that had ever happened during sex before,” she says. I ask if she had been actively aiming for her G-spot, if she did something specific to get to it. “No, it just happened, and I have never been able to make it happen again,” she says. “Like magic,” I say, and she agrees. “Who were you with? Was it someone very well endowed?” I ask. “It was with my husband!” she says. “It’s more about the positioning than size, I think. It felt exactly as you described, like my muscles had tightened so much that when they released, they overcorrected and everything just flooded open. I remember feeling like I had peed.” “I’m genuinely confused. I thought the G-spot was something totally different,” I say. “I thought it was on the outside, like some mythical spot on the clitoris.” She smirks at me, suggesting that she’s more of a sexpert than I am and I can’t deny it. I pull out my phone and google “G-spot”, study the images and then pout. “I’m so upset. I squandered it! I stopped it in mid-air. Now it may never happen again and I’ll never really experience the glory of it. I was scared of it, there was no joy or satisfaction, no earth-shattering thrill. I wasted my shot at the G-spot.” She suggests that the solution is to sleep with #8 again, but I admit that I don’t want to. Instead, I will put #6 to work.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Like most transsexuals, I have scores of anecdotes that highlight this tendency: During the question and answer session at a literary event, after reading a piece about the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, I was asked by an audience member if I had any electrolysis done on my face; after I did a workshop for college students on binary gender norms and the way we project our ideals about gender onto other people, a young woman asked me several questions about whether or not I’d had a “sex change operation”; after creating switchhitter.net, my coming-out-as-trans website, I received an angry email from a stranger complaining that I did not put any before-and-after pictures up on the site, as if the 3,700-word question and answer section and the 4,500-word mini-autobiography describing my experiences being trans wasn’t sufficient for that person to fully grasp my transsexuality—he needed to see the changes firsthand. Of course, it’s not just strangers who ask to see before-and-after shots of me. When friends, colleagues, or acquaintances find out that I am trans, it is not uncommon for them to ask if I have any “before” pictures they can see, as if I just so happen to keep a boy photo of myself handy, you know, just in case. I usually respond by telling them that before I transitioned I looked exactly like I do now, except that I was a boy. They never seem particularly satisfied with that answer. The thing that strikes me the most about the desire to see before-and-after pictures, or to hear all of the gory details about sex reassignment procedures, is how bold people often are about it. After all, these people have to know that I felt uncomfortable as male, that it was a difficult and often miserable part of my life. So why on earth would they ask to see pictures of me from that time period? From my perspective, it is as thoughtless as if I had told someone that I was suffering from depression a few years ago and for them to have responded, “Oh, do you have any pictures of yourself from back then?” And really, is there anything more disrespectful and inappropriate than asking someone (in public, no less!) whether they have had any medical procedures performed on their genitals? So what drives these otherwise well-meaning people to want to know about the physical aspects of my transition so badly that they are willing to disregard common courtesy and discretion? Well, I wasn’t quite sure myself until about two years ago, during the height of the reality TV plastic surgery craze, when shows like Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and I Want a Famous Face filled the airwaves.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was handsome but much too large and unyielding both in body and mind, and they liked clinging women. They were oak-trees, preferring the feminine ivy. It might cling rather close, it might finally strangle, it frequently did, and yet they preferred it, and this being so, they resented Stephen, suspecting something of the acorn about her. 3 Stephen’s worst ordeals at this time were the dinners given in turn by a hospitable county. They were long, these dinners, overloaded with courses; they were heavy, being weighted with polite conversation; they were stately, by reason of the family silver; above all they were firmly conservative in spirit, as conservative as the marriage service itself, and almost as insistent upon sex distinction. ‘Captain Ramsay, will you take Miss Gordon in to dinner?’ A politely crooked arm: ‘Delighted, Miss Gordon.’ Then the solemn and very ridiculous procession, animals marching into Noah’s Ark two by two, very sure of divine protection—male and female created He them! Stephen’s skirt would be long and her foot might get entangled, and she with but one free hand at her disposal—the procession would stop and she would have stopped it! Intolerable thought, she had stopped the procession! ‘I’m so sorry, Captain Ramsay!’ ‘I say, can I help you?’ ‘No—it’s really—all right, I think I can manage—’ But oh, the utter confusion of spirit, the humiliating feeling that some one must be laughing, the resentment at having to cling to his arm for support, while Captain Ramsay looked patient. ‘Not much damage, I think you’ve just torn the frill, but I often wonder how you women manage. Imagine a man in a dress like that, too awful to think of—imagine me in it!’ Then a laugh, not unkindly but a trifle self-conscious, and rather more than a trifle complacent. Safely steered to her seat at the long dinner-table, Stephen would struggle to smile and talk brightly, while her partner would think: ‘Lord, she’s heavy in hand; I wish I had the mother; now there’s a lovely woman!’ And Stephen would think: ‘I’m a bore, why is it?’ Then, ‘But if I were he I wouldn’t be a bore, I could just be myself, I’d feel perfectly natural.’ Her face would grow splotched with resentment and worry; she would feel her neck flush and her hands become awkward. Embarrassed, she would sit staring down at her hands, which would seem to be growing more and more awkward. No escape! No escape! Captain Ramsay was kind-hearted, he would try very hard to be complimentary; his grey eyes would try to express admiration, polite admiration as they rested on Stephen. His voice would sound softer and more confidential, the voice that nice men reserve for good women, protective, respectful, yet a little sex-conscious, a little expectant of a tentative response.

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

  Hi, my name is Laura, I live in NYC, have three kids, my favorite ice cream is Breyers vanilla, and I’m hoping to have three spectacular orgasms tonight?” I ask. “Take out the part about ice cream and add to the orgasms that you’re hoping to get fucked by two men simultaneously and you’ll get a little closer to the circle,” he says. He tells me that he confessed that this was his first time and he was looking forward to observing and participating, but that other people were very specific and graphic about fantasies and S&M, sex toys, blindfolds and whips, women on women, men on men, threesomes, foursomes and anal sex. I nod along, my eyes wide, as he continues that they split into groups depending on what they wanted, but that it was understood that he was going to be with the hostess since she invited him to be part of her fantasy of being with multiple men at the same time, while her husband went off with his girlfriend. “That kind of defeats the point of the group sex party, doesn’t it?” I say. “True, well maybe his fantasy was having sex with his girlfriend while his wife was being gang-banged in the bedroom next door,” he says and I blanch, but maintain my determination to understand the logistical set-up, asking if there were enough rooms for everyone. He explains that the apartment was pretty big and that all rooms were used, even the open living room and the kids’ bedrooms. “I wonder how the kids would feel if they knew that. My kids would drop dead on the spot, they would feel so violated,” I say, mortified. His answer, that her kids know that she and her husband have an open marriage so maybe wouldn’t be as scandalized as mine, is a reminder to me that he doesn’t have kids of his own. I prod him to keep going with the story, now that they’ve moved into a bedroom with other men. “So she wanted to have a dick in her mouth while she was being fucked from the front and back,” he says. “I didn’t know that could be done. Did someone call shotgun for the front position?” I ask. “No, she told us where to go. She had been with the other two men before, so they knew what to do. I was on the bottom and she was on top of me and then another man was on top of her. And the third guy was right behind my head so she could put him in her mouth.” “Whoa!’ I say, finally and genuinely speechless. “Yeah,” he agrees. We are quiet for a moment. “Did you like it?” I ask. “Because that’s several comfort zones away from one’s average sexual encounter.” “I felt really uncomfortable being with two other naked men. I’ve never been with men sexually before.

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

  It seems like my father is looking right at me, but he doesn’t register seeing me. Is he playing it cool? When the waitress clears the table next to ours and the hostess gestures to my mother, I know that I have no choice but to out myself. I apologize to #4 and say that I have to excuse myself, alone, and to please stay put. I am so anxious as I arise that I do not realize my flip-flop has gotten caught on the leg of my chair and I fly forward as the chair tumbles backward. #4 quickly reaches out to stop me from falling flat on my face. This date has turned into a horrendous sitcom – surely even the clumsy Phoebe from Friends would deal with this situation with more grace. Too humiliated to even thank him, I make a beeline for my parents. “Hi,” I say breathlessly, leaning toward them. “Laura, hello!” my mother says happily, leaning in to peck me on my cheek. “How funny! Who are you here with?” “Well, kind of funny actually, I’m here on a blind date,” I say with a grimace. “Already?” my mother asks in a loud, indignant voice, while my father looks on silently with a bemused smile. “That’s helpful, thanks Mom – Alex set me up with someone she insisted I meet, she said I should start getting out so I’m trying. This is super awkward and I want to die,” I blurt out in one rambling, breathy sentence. “OK, OK,” she says. “Don’t panic.” “Listen, they’re clearing off the table next to us and you cannot under any circumstances sit there or anywhere else where you can see me. And don’t come over and say hello or even look over at us. Please.” “OK, calm down, Laura. Go sit. We won’t look,” she says reassuringly. I am already playing through the conversation I know will take place from this encounter later today. I make my way back to my seat, gulp down a glass of water as delicately as possible, and return to the business of attempting charm. As soon as I see that my parents are seated on the other side of the wall, I relax. To their credit, they don’t even glance in my direction. #4 kindly asks me if I am OK. “Yes, great. This is not a conversation I’m ready to have yet with my mom, but here we are. I don’t want to have to explain myself,” I say. “Why do you have to?” he asks with genuine curiosity. “Excellent question. I always feel like I have to answer to someone. It doesn’t seem to matter how old I get, I still want my mom to feel I’m doing the right thing,” I say. “Why would your being on a date suggest to her that you’re doing something wrong?” he asks. “She thinks it’s too soon, maybe that I’m acting rashly, that I’m not thinking clearly yet.

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

  The café is crowded so we take two seats at the bar. I tell him I am really embarrassed by the scene with his daughter the night before, that no teenage girl wants to see a naked woman her dad is dating meandering around the apartment at night, but he insists she didn’t see me or he would have gotten an earful from her by now. She texts him then to say she’s hungry and he tells her to come across the street to the café so he can give her money to buy food. Before I can escape to the bathroom to avoid her, she is next to us, holding out her hand for the $20 bill he’s reaching out towards her. I smile at her and say good morning. “Are you OK?” she asks, looking intently at me. “Yes, I’m fine thanks,” I say quickly, averting my eyes. “That’s good,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to rush you out of the bathroom last night. It’s just that I heard a huge crash and then absolute silence. I thought someone had died in there. I was so relieved when I knocked and you answered.” “I’m sorry I scared you. I slipped. It sounded more dramatic than it was,” I say quietly, meeting #7’s bemused gaze with narrow, angry eyes. I am too overtired and cranky to soften my anger and I dare him to find me a hot catch after this sleepover. When I leave him with a perfunctory kiss a few minutes later, I know that I will not be seeing him again. CHAPTER 34OnwardI rally, despite my broken rib situation, lest I lose a precious Saturday night. #6 and I decide to see the Freddy Mercury biopic and I invite him to stay over at my place after, as long as he feels confident he can give my ribcage a wide berth. He enthusiastically agrees. At the theatre, he produces a clementine from each pocket for a snack, which makes me laugh. He is always eating clementines, throwing peels in small garden plots we pass on the street, claiming it’s permissible because they’re biodegradable. I fuss every time, appalled that he appears to be throwing trash in the bushes. He’s over-the-top eco-conscious, recycling even the small pieces of foil that are wrapped around Hershey’s Kisses. During the movie, he keeps his hands in his lap but occasionally reaches over to place a hand on my knee, withdrawing it after a brief moment, or placing his hand over mine and then putting it back in his own lap. His touches are fleeting but so gentle and intentional that I feel a small thrill with each one. Back at my apartment, which he likes to call The Four Seasons compared to his “Shiteau”, he asks for a clean towel and sets up a makeshift massage station on my bed.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wanted to hear that he wanted me. “What do you think of the lingerie?” “Hot, baby.” “The garters?” “So sexy.” I guess he could feel that I wasn’t super wet, because he got down on his knees in front of the sink where I was spread-eagle, pushed the undies to the side, and started to lick my clit. I moaned some more, not altogether fake, because I enjoyed hearing myself. But fake in the sense that I knew I was suddenly too self-conscious to be aroused. I slid down off the sink and got down on my knees. Then I unzipped his pants and started to suck his dick. His dick was long and skinny. I felt like it could stab me. Usually I very much enjoy dick sucking and I’m pretty intuitive at it. I like to lick it first and tease it—really prepare the dick before I suck. But he was impatient. He grabbed the back of my hair and pushed my head closer to his body, as I’ve seen people do in porn. I gagged a little on his dick, pulled back, then continued, my mouth super wet. He moaned and it was hot. Just hearing the moan come up from the depth of his belly, looking up and seeing that jaw I liked, made me feel wetter. My juices stung my irritated labia. He grabbed the back of my hair and pushed his dick into the back of my throat again, then palmed my forehead away. “Get up here,” he said. My bra and underwear were still on when he hoisted me by the waist back up onto the sink. Then he ripped open a condom wrapper with his teeth and fumbled to put it on. He pulled off my underwear and spread my legs. I gasped when he put his cock in and began to thrust. It felt good, but also too much, like he was hitting a wall in the back of my vagina. Like a muscle ache. My thighs were chafing on the counter. My back banged against the faucet and I kept getting caught on the sink bowl. Next, with his dick still inside me, pants around his ankles, he lifted me up and turned around, carrying me back down onto the floor. My back was on Steve’s coat. He thrust a few times in a missionary-type position, then commanded me to turn over. I flipped over onto my hands and knees and he began fucking me doggy-style. I could feel his dick up by my belly button. It hurt every time he thrust and now I just wanted for him to come, for it to be over. As hip as the hotel was, the music was terrible.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Fifth, in one way or another everyone Paul knows personally gets some sort of comment. Herodion, for example, is “my kinsman” (i.e., fellow Jew). But it is interesting to compare in terms of gender the first seventeen individuals known to Paul by personal contact with the last ten known only by hearsay report. Of the ten people indirectly known to Paul, only two are woman and eight are men, but of the seventeen people directly known, nine are men and eight are women. In other words, those known to Paul by direct contact are about evenly divided between women and men. Finally, there is Junia, a case that would be funny to ridiculous if it were not sad to tragic. For the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, commentators had no trouble identifying her name as female, presumably the wife of Andronicus (16:7), like Prisca is of Aquila (16:3–4). In Greek, by the way, her name appears in the accusative case as Junian. Then the name started to be identified as male—Junian was alleged to be the accusative case of the male name Junia(nu) s. Unfortunately, however, there are over 250 known cases of a female Junia in antiquity and not a single one ever discovered for the male abbreviation of Junianus to Junias. The problem, of course, was with Paul’s supreme accolade for both members of that married couple and specifically for the female Junia. It was even suggested, as a backup position, that if Junia were female, Paul’s compliment should read “prominent to the apostles” rather than “prominent among the apostles.” Clearly, then, the only reason for suggesting a masculine meaning is to avoid a major female apostle. Unequal in the Family After those three authentic Pauline texts establishing female and male equality within Christianity in family, assembly, and apostolate, we turn to three inauthentic post-Pauline ones moving in exactly the opposite direction. Greco-Roman moral thought developed codes for the ethical running of households, which were, then as now, the heart of society’s health. Those household codes concerned the proper moral relationship between all members of the extended family, husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters. We look now at two post-Pauline examples of such moral instructions, first in Colossians 3:18–4:1 and then in Ephesians 5:22–6:9, the latter a development of the former commandments. Notice that there is a hierarchy both vertically (spouses, parents, owners) and horizontally (husband/wife, parent/child, owner/slave) in these lists.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  If the Spiritual Franciscans had been capable of taking secret delight in an adversary’s misfortunes, they would have had occasion for it in the widely spread charge that John was a heretic. At any rate, he came as near being a heretic as a pope can be. His heresy concerned the nature of the beatific vision after death. In a sermon on All Souls’, 1331, he announced that the blessed dead do not see God until the general resurrection. In at least two more sermons he repeated this utterance. John, who was much given to theologizing, Ockam declared to be wholly ignorant in theology.128 This Schoolman, Cesena, and others pronounced the view heretical. John imprisoned an English Dominican who preached against him, and so certain was he of his case that he sent the Franciscan general, Gerardus Odonis, to Paris to get the opinion of the university. The King, Philip VI., took a warm interest in the subject, opposed the pope, and called a council of theologians at Vincennes to give its opinion. It decided that ever since the Lord descended into hades and released souls from that abode, the righteous have at death immediately entered upon the vision of the divine essence of the Trinity.129 Among the supporters of this decision was Nicolas of Lyra. When official announcement of the decision reached the pope, he summoned a council at Avignon and set before it passages from the Fathers for and against his view. They sat for five days, in December, 1333. John then made a public announcement, which was communicated to the king and queen of France, that he had not intended to say anything in conflict with the Fathers and the orthodox Church and, if he had done so, he retracted his utterances. The question was authoritatively settled by Benedict XII. in the bull Benedictus deus, 1336, which declared that the blessed dead—saints, the Apostles, virgins, martyrs, confessors who need no purgatorial cleansing—are, after death and before the resurrection of their bodies at the general judgment, with Christ and the angels, and that they behold the divine essence with naked vision.130 Benedict declared that John died while he was preparing a decision.