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 On Beauty (2005)

  In comic response, Kiki turned back to the stall guy and  On Beauty shrugged, but he only said ‘Fifteen’ loudly and stared at her. He was unsmiling and intent upon a sale. He had a brutal, foreign accent. Kiki felt foolish. Her right hand passed quickly over a number of items on the table. ‘OK . . . And these?’ ‘All earring fifteen, necklace thirty, bracelet some ten, some fifteen, different – silver, all silver – all this here silver. You should try necklace, very nice – with black skin, it is good. Do you like earrings?’ ‘I’m going to get a burrito.’ ‘Oh, Jerome, please – one minute. We can’t spend five minutes together? What do you think of those?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘Small hoop or big?’ Jerome made a desperate face. ‘OK, OK. Where will you be?’ Jerome pointed directly into the rippling day. ‘It’s called something hokey . . . like Chicken America or something.’ ‘God, Jay, I don’t know what that is. What is that? Just meet me in front of the bank in fifteen, OK? And get me one – a shrimp one if they have it, extra hot sauce and sour cream. You know I like ’em hot.’ She watched him amble away, pulling his long-sleeved Nirvana T-shirt down over that sloppy English backside, wide and charmless like the rear view of one of Howard’s aunts. She turned back to the stall and once again tried to engage the man, but he was busy fiddling with the coins in his fanny pack. Listlessly she picked up this and that and put it down, nodding at prices as they were earnestly recounted each time her finger made contact with an item. Aside from her money, the guy seemed barely concerned with her, neither as a person nor as an idea. He did not call Kiki ‘sister’, make any assumptions or take any liberties. Obscurely disappointed, as we sometimes are when the things we profess to dislike don’t happen, she looked up abruptly and smiled at him. ‘You’re from Africa?’ she asked sweetly, and picked up a charm bracelet with tiny replicas of international totems hanging from it:  kipps and belsey the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty. The man folded his arms across his narrow filleted chest, every rib as visible as it is upon a cat’s belly. ‘Where do you think I am from? You are African – no?’ ‘No, noooo, I’m from here – but of course . . .’ said Kiki. She wiped some sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, waiting for him to finish the sentence as she knew it would be finished. ‘We are all from Africa,’ said the man obligingly. He made a double outward fan of his hands over the jewellery. ‘All of this, from Africa. You know where I am from?’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  tricem simul bibimus, et in nexu germanitatis una coaluimus: nec aliud nos quam dignitas discernit, quod illa clarissimas, ego privatas nuptias fecerimus. Ego sum Byrrhaena illa, cuius forte saepicule nomen inter tuos frequentatum educatores retines. Accede itaque hospitium fiducia, immo vero iam tuum pro- prium Larem." Ad haec ego, iam sermonis ipsius mora rubore digesto, “ Absit" inquam “ Parens, ut Milonem hospitem sine ulla querela deseram ; sed plane quod officiis integris potest effici, curabo sedulo: quoties itineris huius ratio nascetur, numquam erit ut non apud te devertar." Dum hune et huiusmodi sermonem altercamur, paucis admodum confectis passibus ad domum Byr- 4rhaenae pervenimus. Atria longe pulcherrima co. lumnis quadrifariam per singulos angulos stantibus attolerabant statuas, palmaris. deae facies, quae pinnis explicitis sine gressu, pilae volubilis instabile ves- tigium plantis roscidis delibantes,! nec ut maneant inhaerent, et iam volare creduntur. Ecce lapis Parius in Dianam factus tenet libratam totius loci medietatem, signum perfecte luculentum, veste re- flatum, procursu vegetum, introeuntibus obvium et maiestate numinis venerabile: canes utrimquesecus deae latera muniunt, qui canes et ipsi lapis erant; his oculi minantur, aures rigent, nares hiant, ora saeviunt et sieunde de proximo latratus ingruerit, 1 Colvin's emendation for the MSS’ decitantes, Helm suggests detinentes. 52 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK II paps, and were brought up together as sisters in one house; and further there is no other difference between us two, but that she is married more honourably than I: I am the same Byrrhaena whom you have perhaps often heard named as one of those that reared you. Wherefore I pray you to come with all confidence to my house—nay, use it as your own.” By whose words my blushes had time to disperse, and I said: “God forbid, cousin, that I should forsake mine host Milo without any just and reasonable cause, but verily I will do as much as I may without hurt to the duties of a guest, and as often as I have occasion to pass by your house I will come and see how you do.”

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  33 Batja’s experience is not unique. Our colleague Yulia Chentsova Dutton from Russia says that her cheeks ached for an entire year after moving to the United States because she had never smiled so much. My neighbor Paul Harris, a transplanted emotion researcher from England, has observed how American academics are always excited by scientific puzzles—a high arousal, pleasant feeling—but never merely curious, perplexed, or confused, which are low arousal and fairly neutral experiences that are more familiar to him. In general, Americans prefer high arousal, pleasant states. We smile a lot. We praise, compliment, and encourage each other. We give each other awards for all levels of accomplishment, even “Certificates of Participation.” It seems like every other week there is an awards show on television. I have lost count of how many books on happiness have been published in the United States in the last ten years. We are a culture of positivity. We like to be happy and to celebrate how great we are. 34 The more time that Batja spent in America, the more her emotions became attuned to the American context. Her pleasant emotion concepts expanded and became more variable. She became more granular, experiencing the American style of happiness as distinct from satisfaction and contentment. Her brain bootstrapped new concepts for American norms and customs. This process is called emotion acculturation. From a new culture, you acquire new concepts, which translate into new predictions. Using those predictions, you become able to experience and perceive the emotions of your newly adopted home. The scientist who discovered emotion acculturation is, in fact, Batja herself. She found that people’s emotion concepts not only vary from culture to culture but also transform. For example, situations that bring about anger in Belgium, like having your goals blocked by a coworker, in Turkey will also include feelings of (what Americans experience as) guilt, shame, and respect. But for Turkish immigrants in Belgium, their emotional experiences come to look more “Belgian” the longer they live there. 35 A brain that is bathed in the situations of a new culture is probably somewhat like an infant’s brain: driven more by prediction error than prediction. Lacking the emotion concepts of the new culture, the immigrant brain soaks up sensory input and builds new concepts. The new emotional patterns don’t replace the old ones, though they may cause interference, as was the case for my research associate Alexandra from Greece whom you met in chapter 5. You can’t predict efficiently when you don’t know the local concepts. You must get by with conceptual combination, which can be effortful and yields only an approximate meaning. Or you will be awash in prediction error much of the time. The process of acculturation therefore taxes your body budget. In fact, people who are less emotionally acculturated report more physical illness. Once again, categorization gets under your skin. 36 ...

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Carl kept on trying to figure out what the deal was, but it seemed like there was no deal – some people just like to talk. Levi suggested they swap cell numbers, and they did so by an oak tree. ‘Just, you know . . . next time you hear about a show in Roxbury . . . You can call me or whatever,’ said Levi, rather too keenly. ‘You live in Roxbury?’ asked Carl doubtfully.  On Beauty ‘Not really . . . but I’m there a lot – Saturdays, especially.’ ‘What are you, fourteen?’ asked Carl. ‘No, man. I’m sixteen! How old are you?’ ‘Twenty.’ This answer immediately inhibited Levi. ‘You at college or . . . ?’ ‘Nah . . . I’m not an educated brother, although . . .’ He had a theatrical, old-fashioned way of speaking, which involved his long, pretty fingers turning circles in the air. His whole manner reminded Levi of his grandfather on his mother’s side and his tendency to speechify , as Kiki called it. ‘I guess you could say I hit my own books in my own way.’ ‘Scene.’ ‘I get my culture where I can, you know – going to free shit like tonight, for example. Anything happening that’s free in this city and might teach me something, I’m there .’ Levi’s family were waving at him. He was hoping that Carl would go in another direction before they reached the gate, but of course there was only one way out of the park. ‘ Finally ,’ said Howard, as they approached. Now it was Carl’s turn to grow inhibited. He pulled his baseball cap down low. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Oh, hey,’ said Zora, acutely embarrassed. Carl acknowledged her with a nod. ‘So I’ll call you,’ said Levi, trying to bypass the introduction he feared was moments away. He was not quick enough. ‘Hi!’ said Kiki. ‘Are you a friend of Levi?’ Carl looked distraught. ‘Er . . . this is Carl. Zora stole his Discman.’ ‘I didn’t steal any – ’ ‘Are you at Wellington? Familiar face,’ said Howard distractedly. He was looking out for a taxi. Carl laughed, a strange artificial laugh that had more anger in it than good humour. ‘Do I look like I’m at Wellington?’ ‘Not everybody goes to your stupid college,’ countered Levi, blushing. ‘People do other shit than go to college. He’s a street poet.’  kipps and belsey ‘Really?’ asked Jerome with interest. ‘That ain’t really accurate, man . . . I do some stuff, Spoken Word – that’s all.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  To really see the power of emotion concepts, my lab visited a remote culture in Africa with little or no knowledge of Western practices and norms. With the fast pace of globalization, very few such isolated cultures exist anymore. My doctoral student Maria Gendron traveled to Namibia, Africa, to study emotion perception in a tribe known as the Himba, along with the cognitive psychologist Debi Roberson. Visiting the Himba was no simple task. Maria and Debi flew to South Africa and then drove for about twelve hours to their base camp in Opuwo, northern Namibia. From there, Debi, Maria, and their translator traveled many hours to reach individual villages near the Angola border, following tracks through the bush in an all-terrain vehicle, using the mountains and sun as landmarks. At night, they slept in a tent mounted on top of the car to avoid snakes and scorpions, which were numerous. I unfortunately could not join them, so they were equipped with a satellite phone and a generator so we could speak whenever a signal was available.13 Life among the Himba is decidedly non-Western. The people live mainly outdoors and in communal compounds made from saplings, mud, and dung. The men tend cattle day and night, while the women prepare food and care for the children. The children tend goats near the compound. The Himba speak a dialect of Otji-Herero, and they use no written language. The Himba’s reaction to the research team was fairly low-key. The children were curious and would hang around in the early morning before their chores. Some of the women were initially unsure if Maria was female since she was wearing (from their perspective) boyish clothing, which led to some finger pointing and laughter. The men must have figured it out, however, because at one point, one proposed marriage. Maria’s Namibian translator took the simple approach by explaining politely, in Otji-Herero, that Maria was “already married to another man with a very big gun.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  But these boys were not of that type. Swaying and clicking and winking were just how they got warmed up . Tonight this glee club had chosen as their opener ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’ by U, which they had taken the trouble to transform into a samba. They swayed, they clicked, they winked. They did coordinated spins. They switched places with each other. They moved forward, they moved back – always retaining their formation. They smiled the kind of smile you might employ when trying to convince a lunatic to quit holding a gun to your mother’s head. One of the boys, with his lungs, began to reproduce the bass line on the record. And now Howard could hold out no longer. He began to shudder, and, making a choice between tears and noise, he chose tears. In a few seconds his face was soaked. His shoulders were rolling. The effort of not making noise was turning his face purple. One of the boys stepped out of his formation to do the moonwalk. Howard held a thick cotton serviette to his face. ‘ Stop it!’ whispered Victoria and pinched his knee. ‘Everybody’s looking .’ It surprised Howard that a girl so used to being looked at should hate so much this other kind of stare. Howard apologetically removed the handkerchief, but this had the effect of releasing the noise. A squealing laugh announced itself in the room. It drew  On Beauty the attention of Howard’s own table and the four tables beside it. It even reached Monty’s table, where all of the diners turned their heads, seeking – but not yet able to locate – the insolent disturbance. ‘What are you doing ? Are you serious? Stop it!’ Howard mimed incapacity. His squeal turned to a honk. ‘Excuse me,’ said a dour female professor on the table behind him whom he did not know, ‘but you’re being very rude.’ But Howard could not find a place to put his face. He could either turn to look at the glee club or turn to face his own dining companions, all of whom were now trying to disassociate themselves from him, leaning far back in their chairs, doggedly focusing on the stage. ‘Please,’ said Victoria urgently, ‘this isn’t funny. You’re actually embarrassing me.’ Howard turned to look at the glee club. He tried to think of unfunny things: death, divorce, taxes, his father. But something about the fat guy’s handclaps pushed Howard over the brink. He lurched from his chair, knocked it over, picked it up and escaped down the middle aisle.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Hello – I’m so sorry about all of – ’ Howard looked about him. The person he now assumed to be  kipps and belsey Victoria (though the sex was not at all clear from the scalp) was still frozen at the table. Jerome had slid all the way down the wall like a stain and now sat on the floor, looking at his feet. ‘Young people, Howard,’ said Mrs Kipps, as if beginning a Caribbean children’s story Howard had no interest in hearing, ‘they got their own way of doing things – it’s not always our way, but it’s a way.’ She smiled a purple gummy smile, and shook her head several times with what appeared to be a slight palsy. ‘These two are sensible enough, thank the Lord. Did you know Victoria just turned eighteen? Can you remember eighteen? I know I can’t, it’s like another universe. Now . . . Howard, you staying in a hotel, yes? I would offer you to stay here but – ’ Howard confirmed the existence of his hotel and his enthusiasm for leaving for it immediately. ‘That’s a good idea. And I think you should take Jerome – ’ At this point Jerome put his head in his hands; at the same moment, in a perfect inversion, the young lady at the table sprang out of that exact position, and Howard registered in his peripheral vision a gamine type with spidery-lashed wet eyes, and arms of sinew and bone like a ballet dancer’s. ‘Don’t worry, Jerome – you can get your things in the morning when Montague is at work. You can write to Victoria when you get home. Let’s not have any more scenes today, please.’ ‘Can I just – ’ offered the daughter, but stopped when Mrs Kipps closed her eyes and with unsteady fingers touched her own lips. ‘Victoria, go and see on the stew, please. Go.’ Victoria stood up and slammed her chair into the table. As she left the room, Howard watched her nimble shoulder blades from the back, shifting up and down like pistons driving the engine of her sulk. Mrs Kipps smiled again. ‘We’ve loved having him, Howard. He’s such a good, honest, upright young man. You should be very proud of him, truly.’ All this time she had been holding Howard’s hands; now she gave them a final squeeze and released him.  On Beauty ‘I should probably stay and talk to your husband?’ mumbled Howard, hearing approaching voices from the garden and praying that this would not be necessary. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’ said Mrs Kipps, turning, and, with a fugitive breeze lifting her skirt a little, she drifted down the patio steps and vanished into the gloom.  We must now jump nine months forward, and back across the Atlantic Ocean.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  G’s body. It appeared to be a routine highway accident at first. Alas, the woman’s battered body did not match up with only minor damage suffered by the car. I did better. I rolled on. It was funny to see again the slender white church and the enormous elms. Forgetting that in an American suburban street a lone pedestrian is more conspicuous than a lone motorist, I left the car in the avenue to walk unobtrusively past 342 Lawn Street. Before the great bloodshed, I was entitled to a little relief, to a cathartic spasm of mental regurgitation. Closed were the white shutters of the Junk mansion, and somebody had attached a found black velvet hair ribbon to the white FOR SALE sign which was leaning toward the sidewalk. No dog barked. No gardener telephoned. No Miss Opposite sat on the vined porch—where to the lone pedestrian’s annoyance two pony- tailed young women in identical polka-dotted pinafores stopped doing whatever they were doing to stare at him: she was long dead, no doubt, these might be her twin nieces from Philadelphia. Should I enter my old house? As in a Turgenev story, a torrent of Italian music came from an open window—that of the living room: what romantic soul was playing the piano where no piano had plunged and plashed on that bewitched Sunday with the sun on her beloved legs? All at once I noticed that from the lawn I had mown a golden-skinned, brown-haired nymphet of nine or ten, in white shorts, was looking at me with wild fascination in her large blue-black eyes. I said something pleasant to her, meaning no harm, an old-world compliment, what nice eyes you have, but she retreated in haste and the music stopped abruptly, and a violent-looking dark man, glistening with sweat, came out and glared at me. I was on the point of identifying myself when, with a pang of dream-embarrassment, I became aware of my mud-caked dungarees, my filthy and torn sweater, my bristly chin, my bum’s bloodshot eyes. Without saying a word, I turned and plodded back the way I had come. An aster-like anemic flower grew out of a remembered chink in the sidewalk. Quietly resurrected, Miss Opposite was being wheeled out by her nieces, onto her porch, as if it were a stage and I the star performer. Praying she would not call to me, I hurried to my car. What a steep little street. What a profound avenue. A red ticket showed between wiper and windshield; I carefully tore it into two, four, eight pieces.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I felt his body pounding against mine, his stiff prick was filling every inch of my womanly canal and I could have screamed with pleasure. I felt the explosions starting within me and my cunt juices began to flow down the length of my love passage, lubricating his hot pole and letting it slip more easily.... ...Why was it that the people in porno paperbacks were never bothered by any of the scruples which bothered me? They were nothing but enormous sexual organs thrusting blindly at each other in the dark. “Could you cut that stuff for a while and talk to me?” I demanded. “Isn’t this too much?” Lalah said, waving the book. “Listen, kiddies, we’ve got the real thing on our hands so you can just put your porno paperbacks aside and lend me your dirty ears....” Lalah looked at Chloe and Chloe looked at Lalah and they both began to laugh as if they knew something I didn’t know. “Well—what is it?” They kept laughing conspiratorially. “Come on you idiots—tell me!” “You’re going to say Pierre tried to seduce you...” Lalah said, still giggling. “How the fuck did you know?” “Because he tried it with me,” she said. “And me,” said Chloe. “You’re kidding.” “We are not kidding,” Lalah said. “Would that we were....” “So what happened?” “Well I laughed him out of bed, and Chloe says she did, too...but I’m not entirely sure I believe her....” “You bitch!” Chloe yelled. “OK...OK...I believe you.” “And you mean you just stuck around here after that happened?” “Well, why not?” Lalah said nonchalantly. “He’s pretty harmless.... He’s just a bit horny because Randy spends her entire life in an advanced state of pregnancy.” “A bit horny? You call that a bit horny? I call that incest.” “Oh God, Isadora, you really are too much. That’s just your fucking brother-in-law.... It isn’t really incest.” “It isn’t?” I think I was disappointed. “It scarcely counts at all,” Lalah said contemptuously, “but I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it seem more lurid on paper.” (Lalah hated my writing even then.) “I’ll work on it,” I said. On the way back from Karkabi with the new maid, Pierre was utterly cool and unruffled. He pointed out landmarks. Arabs, I thought, goddamned Arabs. What a disproportionate sense of guilt I had over all my petty sexual transgressions! Yet there were people in the world, plenty of them, who did what they felt like and never had a moment’s guilt over it—as long as they didn’t get caught. Why had I been cursed with such a hypertrophied superego? Was it just being Jewish?

• 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 How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  You’ll develop these concepts faster if you live with native speakers of the new language. The new concepts are affected by the older ones from your primary language. Native speakers of English who learn Russian, for example, must learn to distinguish between anger at a person, called serdit’sia, and anger for more abstract reasons such as the political situation, known as zlit’sia. The latter concept is more similar to the English concept of “Anger,” but Russian speakers use the former more frequently; as a result, English speakers use serdit’sia more frequently as well and wind up misapplying it. This is not an error in a biological sense, since neither concept has a biological fingerprint, but in a cultural sense. 42 New emotion concepts from a second language can also modify those of your primary language. A research scientist in my lab, Alexandra Touroutoglou, came from Greece to learn neuroscience. As she became more proficient at speaking English, her Greek and English emotion concepts began to blend. For example, Greek has two concepts for “Guilt,” one for minor infractions and another for serious transgressions. English covers both situations with the single word “guilty.” When Alex would speak with her sister who was still in Greece, Alex would use the “major” guilt word (enohi) when describing, say, that she ate too much pie at our lab’s beach party. To her sister, Alex came across as overly dramatic. In this case, Alex constructed her dessert experience using the English concept for guilt. 43 I hope by now you appreciate the drama that is going on here. Emotion words are not about emotional facts in the world that are stored like static files in your brain. They reflect the varied emotional meanings you construct from mere physical signals in the world using your emotion knowledge. You acquired that knowledge, in part, from the collective knowledge contained in the brains of those who cared for you, talked to you, and helped you to create your social world. Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world. ... Once your conceptual system is established in your brain, you need not explicitly recall or speak an emotion word to construct an instance of an emotion. In fact, you can experience and perceive an emotion even if you don’t have a word for it. Most of us who speak English were able to enjoy someone else’s misfortune long before the word schadenfreude entered our language. All you need is a concept. How do you get a concept without a word? Well, your brain’s conceptual system has a special power called conceptual combination.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Carlene, who had never considered that such indulgence might exist, hovered all the while over the girl who was doing the wrapping, and could not restrain herself from occasionally offering her own fingers to press down a bit of tape or help position a bow. ‘Ah – a Hopper,’ said Kiki, pleased at the coincidence. It was a print of Road in Maine , one of a series of poorly reproduced litho-graphs of famous American paintings meant to signal the classiness of this store in contrast to the mall they’d just been in. ‘Someone’s just walked down there,’ she murmured, her finger travelling safely along the flat, paintless surface. ‘Actually, I think it was me. I was moseying along counting those posts. With no idea where I was going. No family. No responsibilities. Wouldn’t that be fine!’ ‘Let’s go to Amherst,’ said Carlene Kipps urgently. She gripped Kiki’s hand. ‘Oh, honey, I’d love to go some time! It would be such a treat to see paintings like that, not in a museum. Wow . . . that’s such a kind offer, thank you. Something to look forward to.’ Carlene looked alarmed. ‘No, dear, now – let’s go now. I have the keys – we could get the train and be there by lunch. I want you  the anatomy lesson to see the pictures – they should be loved by somebody like you. We’ll go right away when this is wrapped. We’ll be back for tomorrow evening.’ Kiki looked out of the exit doors at another sidelong sweep of snow. She looked at the sunken, pale face of her friend, felt the wobbling hand in her own. ‘Really, Carlene, another time I’d love to go, but . . . it’s not really the weather – and it’s a little late to start out – maybe next week we could organize a trip, properly, and . . .’ Carlene Kipps let go of Kiki’s hand and turned back to her present wrapping. She was annoyed. They left the store soon after. Carlene waited under an awning, while Kiki stood out in the wet to hail a cab. ‘You’ve been very kind and helpful,’ said Carlene formally as Kiki opened the passenger door for her, as if they were not both getting in the same cab. The ride home was tense and quiet. ‘When do all your people get back?’ asked Kiki, and had to ask it twice because it was not heard, or there was a pretence of not hearing. ‘It will depend on how long Monty is needed,’ replied Carlene grandly. ‘There is a church there that he does a lot of work with. He won’t leave until they can spare him. His sense of duty is very strong.’ Now it was Kiki’s turn to be annoyed. They parted at Carlene’s house, Kiki choosing to walk the rest of the way back. Pushing through the slush, she was struck by the growing, upsetting conviction that she had made a mistake.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  A fantasy is a map of desire, mastery, escape, and obscuration; the navigational path we invent to steer ourselves between the reefs and shoals of anxiety, guilt, and inhibition. It is a work of consciousness, but in reaction to unconscious pressures. What is fascinating is not only how bizarre fantasies are, but how comprehensible; each one gives us a coherent and consistent picture of personality—the unconscious—of the person who invented it, even though he may think it the random whim of the moment. Silence, Please! The symbolic paradoxes and the irrationality of our erotic mindscape provide the most fascinating and revealing glimpse into our depths. Fantasies express truths about ourselves that are hard to get at otherwise. They reveal us at our most bare, and in their own mysterious way they convey our deepest wishes. Yet when it comes to talking about our internal musings, most of us are remarkably tight-lipped, even with our partners (perhaps especially with our partners). In an age where intimacy is organized around disclosing uncomfortable personal truths, erotic silence holds steady as the norm. Though we may be comfortable talking about what we do, few of us are keen to reveal what we’re thinking while we do it. At the most basic level, our reluctance stems from simple embarrassment. Most of us were taught at a very young age to keep our thoughts to ourselves and our hands off our bodies. Some of us were handed down a stricter message that turned our innocent curiosity into lasting shame. Schooled in silence, the inheritors of an incontrovertible distrust of sex, it is no wonder we’re filled with discomfort at the prospect of conveying our innermost thoughts. By opening ourselves to another, we risk being laughed at and judged. My patient Zoya summed it up well: “The way I grew up, there was no liking sex, let alone talking about it. People who have sex because they like it are all sluts and perverts who go blind and grow hair on their palms. You bet I kept my mouth shut.” If we’re not talking, no one else is, either. Many of us experience our sexual fantasies in isolation (despite the public ubiquitousness of sex). Since we don’t know what others are thinking and doing, we have nothing to compare ourselves with, no way to gauge whether or not we’re normal. We’re afraid of being different and therefore deviant.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  He had a passing pornographic thought, as he sat down, of slipping his fingers into Vee under this table, of bringing her in this way to climax. Reality asserted itself. She was wearing trousers. And she was busy, speaking very loudly, addressing the shy girl, the boy next to her, and the boy next to him. Their faces suggested to Howard that Victoria had not stopped speaking since he left the table. ‘But then, that’s just the kind of person I am ,’ she was saying. ‘I’m the kind of person who feels that kind of behaviour is beyond the pale, that’s just the way I am. I don’t make any apologies. I feel I deserve that respect. I’m very clear about my boundaries . . .’ Howard picked up the piece of card in front of him to find out what was to follow on the menu. Singing Corn-fed chicken wrapped in parma ham on a bed of sweet-pea risotto The company is addressed by Dr Emily Hartman Key Lime Pie Of course, Howard had known it was coming. But he had not known it would come so soon. He felt he had not had the chance to compose himself properly. It was too late now to leave again; the bell was ringing. And here they came, those boys in their gold waistcoats with their F. Scott Fitzgerald heritage haircuts and ruddy faces. They made their way to the stage amid much applause – one might say they jogged towards it. Once again they arranged themselves in staggered formation, tallest at the back, blonds in the middle and the fat guy front and centre. The fat guy opened his mouth and let out that bell-like note, alive with Old Boston money. His fellows harmonized perfectly. Howard felt the familiar trouble coming on, behind his eyes, which had instantly filled with  on beauty and being wrong water. He bit his lip and pressed his knees together. This was all going to be made much worse by the fact he had not emptied his bladder. Around his table, nine perfectly straight faces directed themselves to the stage, awaiting entertainment. The room was silent apart from the tremulous chord. Howard felt Victoria touch his knee under the table. He removed her hand. He had to concentrate all his energies now into bringing his overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous under the control of his will. How strong was his will? There are two different kinds of glee club in this world. The first type sing barbershop favourites and Gershwin tunes, they swing gently, moving from side to side and sometimes clicking their fingers and winking. Howard could basically deal with that type. He had got through occasions graced by glee clubs of that type.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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. ‘I’m sorry about your goggles, man. You still mad about that? I didn’t think nobody was using them. My man Anthony works in the locker room – he gets me in without a pass – so, you know.’ Zora did not know. The sing-song bird call of the traffic lights started up so that the blind might know when to walk. ‘I was just saying – you go to a lot of those things?’ asked Carl as they crossed the street together. ‘Like the Mozart?’ ‘Umm . . . I guess not . . . probably not as much as I should. Studying takes up a lot of my time, I guess.’ ‘You freshman?’ ‘Sophomore. First day.’ ‘Wellington?’ Zora nodded. They were approaching the main campus building. He seemed to want to slow her down, to put off the moment when she passed through the gate and out of his world. ‘ Scene .

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “Wow! Looks swank,” remarked my vulgar darling squinting at the stucco as she crept out into the audible drizzle and with a childish hand tweaked loose the frock-fold that had stuck in the peach-cleft—to quote Robert Browning. Under the arclights enlarged replicas of chestnut leaves plunged and played on white pillars. I unlocked the trunk compartment. A hunchbacked and hoary Negro in a uniform of sorts took our bags and wheeled them slowly into the lobby. It was full of old ladies and clergymen. Lolita sank down on her haunches to caress a pale-faced, blue-freckled, black-eared cocker spaniel swooning on the floral carpet under her hand—as who would not, my heart—while I cleared my throat through the throng to the desk. There a bald porcine old man—everybody was old in that old hotel—examined my features with a polite smile, then leisurely produced my (garbled) telegram, wrestled with some dark doubts, turned his head to look at the clock, and finally said he was very sorry, he had held the room with the twin beds till half past six, and now it was gone. A religious convention, he said, had clashed with a flower show in Briceland, and—“The name,” I said coldly, “is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean Humbert, and any room will do, just put in a cot for my little daughter. She is ten and very tired.” The pink old fellow peered good-naturedly at Lo—still squatting, listening in profile, lips parted, to what the dog’s mistress, an ancient lady swathed in violet veils, was telling her from the depths of a cretonne easy chair. Whatever doubts the obscene fellow had, they were dispelled by that blossom-like vision. He said, he might still have a room, had one, in fact—with a double bed. As to the cot— “Mr. Potts, do we have any cots left?” Potts, also pink and bald, with white hairs growing out of his ears and other holes, would see what could be done. He came and spoke while I unscrewed my fountain pen. Impatient Humbert! “Our double beds are really triple,” Potts cozily said tucking me and my kid in. “One crowded night we had three ladies and a child like yours sleep together. I believe one of the ladies was a disguised man [my static]. However—would there be a spare cot in 49, Mr. Swine?” “I think it went to the Swoons,” said Swine, the initial old clown. “We’ll manage somehow,” I said. “My wife may join us later—but even then, I suppose, we’ll manage.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  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. ‘God, you are so vain,’ said Victoria in a wearisome way that returned to Howard some of the reality of that afternoon in the boudoir. ‘It’s a simple question. And, you know: don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t think we were going to run off into the sunset. You’re really not that great .’ These words momentarily kicked up a little psychic dust between them, but it was inert somehow, it was just noise. They didn’t know each other at all. It wasn’t like it had been with Claire. That was a case of two old friends losing their nerve at the same time, both on the last lap of their lives. And Howard had known , even as it was happening, that they were switching lanes out of fear, just to see if it felt different, better, easier, to run in this new lane – scared as they were of carrying on for ever in the lane they were in. But this girl hadn’t even stepped into the race. She wasn’t to be  On Beauty belittled for that – God knows, Howard himself had only heard the starting gun in his late twenties. But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which only a fool would spend his time trapped in one room. ‘No,’ agreed Howard, because the concession did not mean anything. ‘I’m not that great.’ ‘No . . . but . . . well, you’re not awful ,’ she said, coming closer to him and then at the last minute, flipping her body so she was by his side and against the wall as he was. ‘You’re all right. Compared to some of the wankers round here.’ She nudged him in his gut with her elbow. ‘Anyway, if you are about to leave me for ever, thanks for the memento. It was very ‘‘courtly love’’ of you.’ Victoria held up a strip of photos. Howard took them in his hands without recognition. ‘I found them in my room,’ she whispered. ‘They must’ve fallen out of your trouser pocket. That suit you’re wearing now. Do you only have one suit or what?’ Howard brought the strip closer to his face. ‘You’re such a poseur !’ Howard peered closer.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is this demand which the American student in Paris is forced, at length, to make, for he has oth erwise no identity, no reason for being here, nothing to sus tain him here. From the vantage point of Europe he discovers his own country. And this is a discovery which not only brings to an end the alienation of the American from himself, but which also makes clear to him, tor the first time, the extent of his involvement in the life of Europe. Equal in Paris 0 N THE 19TH OF DECEMBER, in 1949 , when I had been living in Paris for a little over a year, I was arrested as a receiver of stolen goods and spent eight days in prison. My arrest came about through an American tourist whom I had met twice in New York, who had been given my name and address and told to look me up. I was then living on the top floor of a ludicrously grim hotel on the rue du Bac, one of those enormous dark, cold, and hideous establishments in which Paris abounds that seem to breathe fo rth, in their air less, humid, stone-cold halls, the weak light, scurrying cham bermaids, and creaking stairs, an odor of gentility long long dead. The place was run by an ancient Frenchman dressed in an elegant black suit which was green with age, who cannot properly be described as bewildered or even as being in a state of shock, since he had really stopped breathing around 1910. There he sat at his desk in the weirdly lit, fantastically fur nished lobby, day in and day out, greeting each one of his extremely impoverished and louche lodgers with a stately in clination of the head that he had no doubt been taught in some impossibly remote time was the proper way for a pro prietaire to greet his guests. If it had not been fo r his daugh ter, an extremely hardheaded tricotettse-the inclination of her head was chiiling and abrupt, like the downbeat of an ax the hotel would certainly have gone bankrupt long before. It was said that this old man had not gone farther than the door of his hotel for thirty years, which was not at all difficult to believe. He looked as though the daylight would have killed him. I did not, of course, spend much of my time in this palace.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In those days in Paris, though I floated, so to speak, on a sea of acquaintances, I knew almost no one. Many people were eliminated from my orbit by virtue of the fact that they had more money than I did, which placed me, in my own eyes, in the humiliating role of a free-loader; and other people were eliminated by virtue of the fact that they enjoyed their poverty, shrilly insisting that this wretched round of hotel rooms, bad food, humiliating concierges, and unpaid bills was the Great Adventure. It couldn't, however, for me, end soon enough, this Great Adventure; there was a real question in my mind as to which would end soonest, the Great Adventure or me. This meant, however, that there were many evenings when I sat in my room, knowing that I 10 + NOTES OF A NATIVE SON couldn't work there, and not knowing what to do, or whom to sec. On this particular evening I went down and knocked on the American's door. There were two Frenchmen standing in the room, who im mediately introduced themselves to me as policemen; which did not worl)' me. I had got used to policemen in Paris bob bing up at the most improbable times and places, asking to see one's carte d ) identitc. These policemen, however, showed \·el)' little interest in my papers. They were looking for some thing else. I could not imagine what this would be and, since I knew I certainly didn't have it, I scarcely followed the con versation they were having with my friend. I gathered that they were looking for some kind of gangster and since I wasn't a gangster and knew that gangsterism was not, insofar as he had one, my fr iend's style, I was sure that the two policemen would presently bow and say Merci, messieurs, and leave. For by this time, I remember very clearly, I was dying to have a drink and go to dinner. I did not have a drink or go to dinner for many days after this, and when I did my outraged stomach promptly heaved everything up again. For now one of the policemen began to exhibit the most vivid interest in me and asked, very politely, if he might see my room. To which we mounted, making, I remember, the most civilized small talk on the way and even continuing it for some moments after we were in the room in which there was certainly nothing to be seen but the familiar poverty and disorder of that precarious group of people of whatever age, race, country, calling, or intention which Paris recognizes as les ctudiants and sometimes, more ironically and precisely, as les nonconformistes. Then he moved to my bed, and in a terrible flash, not quite an instant before he lifted the bedspread, I understood what he was looking for.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  To whome I answered, As for such benefits as I have received of the famous City of Thessaly, I yeeld and render the most entire thanks, but as touching the setting up of any statues or images, I would wish that they should bee reserved for myne Auntients, and such as are more worthy than I. And when I had spoken these words somewhat gravely, and shewed my selfe more merry than I was before, the Judges and magistrates departed, and I reverently tooke my leave of them, and bid them farewell. And behold, by and by there came one running unto me in haste, and sayd, Sir, your cousin Byrrhena desireth you to take the paines according to your promise yester night, to come to supper, for it is ready. But I greatly fearing to goe any more to her house in the night, said to the messenger, My friend I pray you tell to my cousine your mistresse, that I would willingly be at her commandement, but for breaking my troth and credit. For myne host Milo enforced me to assure him, and compelled me by the feast of this present day, that I should not depart from his company, wherefore I pray you to excuse, and to defer my promise to another time. And while I was speaking these words, Milo tooke me by the hand, and led me towards the next Baine: but by the way I went couching under him, to hide my selfe from the sight of men, because I had ministred such an occasion of laughter. And when I had washed and wiped my selfe, and returned home againe, I never remembred any such thing, so greatly was I abashed at the nodding and pointing of every person. Then went I to supper with Milo, where God wot we fared but meanly. Wherefore feigning that my head did ake by reason of my sobbing and weeping all day, I desired license to depart to my Chamber, and so I went to bed. THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER How Fotis told to Apuleius, what witchcraft her mistresse did use. When I was a bed I began to call to minde all the sorrowes and griefes that I was in the day before, until such time as my love Fotis, having brought her mistresse to sleepe, came into the chamber, not as shee was wont to do, for she seemed nothing pleasant neither in countenance nor talke, but with sowre face and frowning looke, gan speak in this sort, Verily I confesse that I have been the occasion of all thy trouble this day, and therewith shee pulled out a whippe from under her apron, and delivered it unto mee saying, Revenge thyself upon mee mischievous harlot, or rather slay me.