Embarrassment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 35 of 79 · 20 per page

• From Querelle (1953)

  125 I QUERELLE sworn with a dagger in the other hand. Or perhaps they were about to cut each other's flesh, in order to then sew, or graft, themselves together forever. A police patrol appeared at the end of the street. "The cops! Break it up!" That was Mario, talking gruffiy and rapidly and hurling himself at Quere11e who· tried to push him aside; but Robert, after taking one look in the direction of the patrol, closed his knife and put it away. He was shaking. A little embarrassed and out of breath, he then turned to Dede-for a go-between still seemed necessary-and said: "Tell him to get outta here." But then, as time was of the essence, getting rid in one stroke of all the tragic protocol required by heroics, like an Emperor who addresses his enemy directly, ignoring the frills of warrior etiquette and the babble of generals and ministers, he spoke directly to his brother. With a matter-of-factness and authority only Querelle was capable of understanding, implying a secret familiarity that excluded all onlookers and bystanders from their conversation, he said: "Beat it. I'll get ahold of you. We'll � ettle this another time." For a moment Robert had thought of confronting the patrol on his own, but now it was approaching at ominous speed. He added: "All right. Take-off time.'' Nothing more was said, they did not even look at each other, but started walking along on the sidewalk with no cops on it. Dede followed Robert in silence. Now and again he looked at Querelle, whose right hand was smeared with blood. Talking to Robert, Nono regained his true manliness which he tended to lose a little when he was with Querelle. Not that he took on any homosexual mannerisms, but in the presence of

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Sitting between them on the backseat, I was in the midst of passing along Jack Newfield’s useful advice when Talese leaned across me—as if I were neither talking nor present—and said to Bellow, You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl. Then they began to discuss the awful traffic. My initial response was to be embarrassed. Would Bellow regret having given an interview to someone now being called an unworthy writer? But once I was out of the taxi and away from their self-assured presence, I got angry. How could Talese behave as if I weren’t even there? Why didn’t I object? Yell? Get out and slam the door? —FOUR YEARS LATER I was volunteering for Eugene McCarthy’s primary bid for the Democratic nomination—not imagining I would ever write about it—when I climbed up to a barren, third-floor campaign headquarters in Manhattan. I sat in a circle of rickety chairs with other writers and editors who were helping with press releases and position papers for a candidate we hadn’t met. McCarthy had been the third choice of the anti–Vietnam War peace movement, but he was the only one who said yes to challenging President Johnson in New Hampshire, the first primary of the 1968 campaign. Senator Robert Kennedy and then Senator George McGovern had been asked first, but both had refused. For anyone opposed to the Vietnam War, this reserved, sardonic senator from Minnesota was the only game in town. All this helped to explain why we were such a disparate group, including a Republican woman who hoped that strengthening the antiwar cause would help a dovish Nelson Rockefeller beat the hawklike Nixon in the Republican primaries, and one other apostate Democrat I knew from our effort to organize writers and editors to withhold the percentage of our tax money going to Vietnam. Though we had imagined dire consequences, it turned out to be like punching a pillow: our unpaid taxes were just collected from our bank accounts, an odd form of voting. Because McCarthy was coming to town for a benefit, four of us volunteer writers were assigned to interview him and write a Sunday newspaper supplement for his New Hampshire campaign. We met him at his suite at the St. Regis Hotel, all prepared with questions on his key issues. As it turned out, we might as well have stayed home. Whatever we asked, McCarthy just turned to an aide and instructed him to find this or that quote from the past. He was aloof and cool. Unlike Bobby Kennedy, he didn’t seem to care whether we knew the answer or not—only that he had once given it. This awkward session became more so when he cautioned us not to write about Vietnam. Why?

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When she’d been with Peter, she had felt a rigid, formal distance between her and the men. But after Peter, something had changed, as if the center of gravity had collapsed, and their orbit around her became unstable. They spoke to her more, stopped by her cubicle, and stood there, holding their reports rather than simply dropping them and going. They looked her in the eye, and she saw in their smudged faces something faint, flickering, like hope. At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “If I don’t paint them, I chew,” she said a little self-consciously. She pulled her hands away and put them behind her knees. She’d put her feet up on the chair again. “You were saying . . . the history test?” “Oh, yeah. There was this one kid who was really up my ass about security. He acted like I was spying on his data or something. They all have to write their student ID numbers down to sign in. As protocol, I guess.” Sophie nodded like it made all the sense in the world, and Lionel wasn’t sure if she was nodding because she thought the student had a point or if she agreed he’d made too much of it. “But after that, it was fine. I just had to write the words ‘French Absolutism’ on the board and wait until they were done.” “Wow. What if they have questions?” “I think that’s why they don’t have the history TAs do it? Because they might give them information they’re not supposed to have? They pick a total idiot like me.” She gave him a look. “Weren’t you, like, doing NASA research as a child or something? You’re not an idiot.” “No, that’s not me. I’d make a terrible engineer,” Lionel said too seriously. “I did go to math camp, though. Guilty by association.” “Math camp? That’s not just a movie trope?” Sophie made a show of leaning forward, putting her chin on her palms. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I went for, like, twelve years. The last as a counselor.” “Holy shit. What’s it like?” Lionel swirled the coffee in the cup, aware of the gesture as he performed it, knowing that it had little utility, that it was something performed to make him look a certain way, pensive, thoughtful.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Then he wondered if he should have waited for them to seat themselves and put away their study materials. So he erased his writing, turned to them. He pulled up the PDF with the class roster and instructions and saw that he was supposed to have them sign in. But he had not gone to the departmental office to pick up the slip for them to sign. “Does anyone have . . . ?” he motioned as if to write on air, and one of the students, tallish in some sort of gray sweatsuit, ripped a sheet of paper from his notebook and held it out between two fingers. Lionel took the sheet and then, realizing he’d forgotten to bring a pen, looked up and scribbled in the air again. The same boy rolled his eyes and offered Lionel his pen. Lionel took it, wrote the name and number of the course across the top of the sheet, then drew a line down the center and wrote two column headings: name and student id #. The boy wrote his name with a scratching swiftness and handed it over his shoulder. He wrestled himself out of his sweatshirt. His hair was oily and dirty blond, and he had greasy pit stains on the T-shirt he wore underneath. He had what looked to be four-day stubble. He stretched in his chair. The paper went back and up the next row, but then one of the boys said, “Uh, this isn’t like, secure.” “What do you mean?” Lionel asked. “Our ID numbers. Like, they’re right here. I could take a pic and use them.” The boy held the sheet up and gestured at it with his pen. “Do you plan to take a picture and use them?” “No, but I could. That’s the point. This isn’t secure. This is kind of a violation of privacy.” “I see your point,” Lionel said. “But, honor system, right? Nobody steal anyone’s identity.” There was a petty, pitying kind of amusement in the room at that joke. But the boy with the security issue wasn’t pleased. He squinted down at the sheet of paper and said, “Do you mind if I don’t? Like, I don’t feel comfortable.” “Sure,” Lionel said. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  When she’d been with Peter, she had felt a rigid, formal distance between her and the men. But after Peter, something had changed, as if the center of gravity had collapsed, and their orbit around her became unstable. They spoke to her more, stopped by her cubicle, and stood there, holding their reports rather than simply dropping them and going. They looked her in the eye, and she saw in their smudged faces something faint, flickering, like hope. At first she thought she was imagining it, that it was nothing. But one afternoon, after Peter and before Sigrid, a man named Lenny came alongside the row of cubicles and stood at the edge of her desk. He was very tall but had the sullen posture of a small boy. She looked up from her computer and waited for him to ask her what he needed. Sometimes the men did that. When they didn’t know where to go, when the directions shuttled into their cubbies made no sense, they came to her, and she would set them on the right course. But Lenny had never done that. He’d always been one of the bright ones. “Marta,” he’d said. “How’s it hanging?” “It hangs, Lenny,” Marta had said. “What can I do you for?” Lenny coughed, turned red. The nape of Marta’s neck turned hot. “Not like that. You know what I meant.” “Of course,” Lenny said. “Well, I was wondering . . .” He leaned against the cubicle wall, and it buckled under his weight. He stepped away from it. Marta felt something tighten behind her eyes. “Oh, Lenny. We maybe shouldn’t,” she said. “You know, dinner would be fine, you know, fine, dinner, we could eat dinner, you know.” “Lenny—” Marta began, but Lenny was looking at the floor, crumpling the paper in his hands. “We could go someplace in Madison, someplace real nice. We could, the two of us, go, we could.” Marta drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She glanced over the cubicle, where she could see some of her office mates looking back at them. When she looked at Lenny, she saw him staring at her, waiting for an answer. She didn’t have it in her to say no, not with the whole world watching. So she said yes, and they went to dinner in Madison that weekend. They ate fried chicken and potato salad, and on the way home Lenny put his hand on her knee while he drove. And Marta felt sick, flushed and sick and like she wanted to just fold in on herself. Lenny’s truck smelled like wet newspaper. His big toolbox rattled behind Marta’s seat. She hadn’t been in a truck like that in years.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "You sure about that?" "But of course. Sailor's bags, the real thing, with a flap and all.'' "Well, if you don't believe us, there ain't much use telling you anything." Being at last able to discuss a certain and verifiable fact, they hastened to abandon their initially timid stance, their fawning humility in front of the police. They turned quite arrogant. They knew what they were talking about. As they were in a position to furnish the police with a proven fact that the authorities had overlooked, this had to elevate t_heir standing. The police had spent a whole night interrogating Roger with merciless insistence. All they found on him was his cheap pocketknife, broken and clumsily repaired. "What's this for?" Roger blushed, but the policeman thought this was. due to a fleeting sense of shame about the poor condition of the knife. He didn't pursue the matter. He had not realized that the weapon, being practically useless, was the more dangerous for being merely symbolic. In the keen edge of a true blade, in its accuracy and true balance, lies the very beginning of the true act of killing : thus it has to appear frightening to any child already living in a state of fear ( the child who invents symbols of fear for himself, using the materials we clumsily refer to as "reality" ) . On the other hand, the symbolic knife represents no practical danger at all, but as it is employed in a multitude of imaginary inner lives, it becomes a sure sign of its owner's acceptance of crime. The cops were unable to see that the knife was an endorsement of Gil's act of murder even before he had committed it. "Where did you know him from?" The boy denied ever having slept with the murderer or with Theo, saying that the day of t�e latter's death was the first time he had ever seen him. Then he admitted that he ,had gone to see his sister one night in the bistro where she was working as a 151 I QUERELLE waitress at that time. Gil had been standing at the bar, exchanging banter with her. At midnight, she finished work, and Gil walked both sister and brother back to their house. The next day Gil was there again. Roger had found him there on five subsequent occasions, and now and again, when they happened to meet, Gil had bought him a drink. "He never tried to sleep with you?" The interrogators were quite taken aback by Roger's wide-eyed, innocent look : "\Vith me? \Vhat for?" "He never made any advances to you?" ••Advances? Oh, no." He let his limpid gaze rest on the embarrassed police officers . .. He never touched you, like, down there?" ·�ever."

• From Escape (2007)

  The children piled back into the bus for our departure to Yuma. Faunita took a roll call and made sure no one was missing. Merril and his five other wives loaded into his van. He planned to check on his construction job in Yuma, hardly a big attraction for the rest of us. The mood in the van was chilly. We didn’t talk very much. At every rest stop, Ruth would get out and run around in circles. She progressed from running to skipping, then singing, and finally dancing. Merril made her take the big bunch of purple flowers out of her hair. I was so mortified by her behavior I stayed in the van. But her acting out was less frightening than what happened inside the van. Ruth’s baby, Ruthie, was about a year old. At one point the baby became fussy and started crying when she was hungry. Ruth decided she would breast-feed her. She had no milk since she’d stopped nursing her seven months before. But that didn’t faze her. Ruth started stripping in the van and was topless in moments. Then she tried to remove the rest of her clothes, but Tammy and Barbara were trying to put her clothes back on her as soon as she took them off. When Ruth asked for her baby, Tammy started to give the child to her, but then Merril ordered her to halt. Everything was chaotic. Poor Ruthie was crying and distressed and her mother was trying to take off her clothes to nurse her with breasts that had no milk. Merril couldn’t ignore Ruth’s behavior this time. He pulled over and became extremely angry, shouting and scolding her. He insisted she put her clothes back on, and she did. Cathleen was ready to throw herself out of the van. Tammy, the late prophet’s little princess, was also taken aback. Neither of them had ever seen anything this strange before. After seven months of marriage, I was more numb than shocked. Oh, well, Ruth stripped naked today and tried to nurse the baby she hadn’t nursed for months. Whatever. We stopped at the construction site in Yuma. For Merril, this was a photo op. We took pictures of Merril with all his wives on the job site. He spent time walking around and talking to men working on the job. We waited for him in the van and drove on to California. It was late at night when we arrived. Merril announced that I would be sleeping with him. He said goodnight to Tammy and Barbara and arrived at our room with five little children in tow. There were only two beds in the room and the five kids couldn’t fit in one. He told me to make a bed on the floor and two of his children slept there.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They walked up the street together, the three of them. The sky was iridescent with cold. Out to their right, a shelf of white steam from the industrial park and the last of the academic buildings giving way to retail space and a few scraggly houses where the undergrads lived. To the left, the botanical gardens, Bascom’s high hill. Lionel hung back a little behind Sophie and Charles. They were talking about the rehearsal again. Sophie seemed kinder about it now. She listened to Charles with narrowed eyes. “It could be good for me,” Charles said. “Like, really good.” “Sure,” Sophie said. Their shoes scraped over the dry sidewalk. No trace of snow or ice here. The branches hanging over the sidewalk moved in the breeze from the cars. “I’m not being a bitch. I really mean it.” “Whatever, Sophie.” “Tell me about the piece.” “I really don’t feel like hearing you make fun of it,” he said quietly. “It’s embarrassing.” “If you’re embarrassed, it’s not because I made fun of it—not that I did. I mean, I said nothing about it, Charlie.” Charles grunted. Lionel felt a pang of sympathy for him. There were a million tiny ways to make someone feel bad about something that didn’t involve saying anything directly. “Come on,” Sophie said. She pulled on Charles’s arm, but he wouldn’t budge. They were passing into downtown proper then. Instead of going directly across East Campus Mall, Sophie wanted them go through the archways at the liberal arts building. Into its slanted catacombs. She pulled Charles, and while he continued to resist her, he shifted his hips slightly, pointing himself in her direction. Lionel followed, wondering still why he had let Sophie convince him that it was a good idea that he go back to her place for dinner. She had said to him, upon leaving the café, Don’t make it weird! It’ll be weird if you leave now. Charles had said nothing, had not looked at Lionel as they went down the stairs outside and into the snowy quad. Evening was rapidly closing in on them, and because Lionel didn’t want to make it weird, didn’t have anywhere else to be, he had walked with them without saying he’d follow them all the way. He had said yes only in action, reserving the right to change his mind and vanish while they were distracted. The liberal arts building was a pyramid of nested concrete rectangles connected by an interior set of stairs rising at steep angles, as if meant to discourage a siege by unruly masses. It posed an accessibility nightmare. In the summer, students used the steep interior walls for ramps, leaping up on the railings with their skateboards and bikes. People roamed the outside layers, setting up picnics in the shade of the buildings while they watched swallows and gulls shoot from terrace to terrace.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Don’t be. It’s fine. We all make mistakes,” he said with as much patience as scorn. “We’ll take it from the top, if that’s okay with you.” “That would be wonderful,” Charles said through a tense jaw. “From the beginning, then, Magnus,” Farnland said, nodding to the slim pianist. The music started up again, and Charles sighed. He assumed a slouched, grumpy first. He could hear his knee click. The cartilage felt hot, like a delicate, burning fiber trapped under the bone. But when Farnland’s eyes came in search of him, his body had already slipped into the stream of the combination and was, for a moment, beyond reproach. “Dismal, dismal,” he said. Charles shared his barre with Mats and Alek. Mats was light-skinned with blond and brown curls. He had a boyish face, but his body was all mean, tight lines. He could jump to Jupiter, yet his quads were humble. Alek was self-conscious about his chipped front tooth and tried to conceal it by talking as little as possible, which made him seem shy or nice. Alek was a ferocious, expressive dancer with the kind of timing that made his dancing look totally effortless. “Long night,” Mats said. “The longest,” Charles droned, drawing his body up. His knee popped as he slid his foot forward and then flexed. It didn’t hurt, exactly. It wasn’t pain in the true sense of the word. It just burned, like a low, simmering flame. And just on the one side. He could see through to the end of the pain, its temporary nature. And this was a comfort. It hurt only on certain movements. Certain configurations of tension. For example, reversing the position, sliding the leg back and flexing the other way, was totally without discomfort. He logged this information, storing it for when he would need to compensate. His body was a long tally of adjustments and allocations. He could feel, though, his feet coming to life. The muscles warming as they stretched.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “I’ll have some,” Lionel said. The host pulled a bottle of rosé from the fridge, then reached down by Lionel, right in front of his crotch, and pulled a drawer open. He extracted a pair of kitchen shears and winked at Lionel before he pushed the drawer shut, his thumb tracing the outline of Lionel’s dick. Lionel jumped at the contact though it was brief. It felt somehow like a threat. Or a promise. The host snipped the cage over the cork and pulled it free with a pop that made Lionel’s mouth water. He could almost taste the wine in the sound. Charles stood back chewing his fish and watching as the host made a big production of pouring Lionel a glass and handing it to him. “Cheers,” the host said. “Cheers.” “Are you going to congratulate me?” “Sure. Congratulations. On what?” “I’m defending right before break,” he said. “I’m a free man.” “That would explain the potluck,” Lionel said. The host nodded as he poured his wine into a mason jar. They toasted. “Congratulations. You deserve it.” The host smiled. His teeth were very white and straight in a way that suggested that they had also been very expensive. The wine was good, though there was something metallic to it. Then again, Lionel didn’t know what constituted good wine. His face felt hot, though the wine was cold and crisp. He was a little embarrassed for the host, at how deep his need was and how clearly he displayed it. Lionel felt that in that position, he wouldn’t have been so needy. If he were that lucky, if he were that fortunate, he would have played it cool. He would have worn his success easy. But when you won, you got to decide how you celebrated. And everyone else had to accept it, otherwise they were sore losers. His doctors had tried to help him get out of the habit of basing his self-image on things like success and what other people thought of him. They had tried to help him develop a robust sense of self-value. But in the host’s kitchen, he felt that old ego peek its head above the water and glare in judgment. “You hitting the job market?” Charles asked. His voice cleaved through the kitchen, and Lionel regained some sense of equilibrium. “Yeah,” the host said, “I got a couple interviews.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles made a big show of it, letting on how intently focused he was on the surface of the coffee, and the occasional off-gassing. Lionel depressed the plunger. “Cream?” Lionel asked. “No.” “That way is too bitter for me.” “Sophie too.” Charles took a long drink from his coffee, which must have been too hot. “I like Sophie,” Lionel said. “She’s really . . . nice.” Charles smiled. Lionel felt embarrassed, thinking of how they’d been a little mean to each other, and how that had bonded them in some way. He thought, too, with rising color in his face, of that moment when it had felt like he and Sophie might have kissed on the porch, when it would have been the most natural thing. He liked Sophie. He liked the idea of being her friend. But Charles was looking at him, and Lionel could feel that possibility closing off. Charles set the cup on the table. “Where do you sleep?” “I’ll show you,” Lionel said. • • • In the morning, Lionel left Charles in bed. He rinsed out their cups from last night. Then the French press, which he took apart and cleaned piece by piece and put in the rack to dry. He pushed up the window and propped it open with an old ruler. The cold would help air out the apartment, that stale smell from having left it shut up for almost two weeks. Lionel could still feel Charles’s hands all over him, the sureness of his grip and the grinding pressure of their bodies coming together. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth, to brush the taste of Charles out of his mouth. By the time he got to the front of the apartment, Charles had rolled over onto his back and was lying there naked, on full display. His body was magnificent. Edges and lines and clear definition. A thatch of pubic hair. His cock was uncut and of medium length, but very thick. Everything about him was proportional. Lionel made more coffee, waiting for Charles to get up, wondering where he’d go after he left, wondering what had brought him here. But as he stood waiting for the coffee to bloom, staring down into its brown mass, the ruler snapped in half. He had used it for years with no problem. He’d had it since he was a kid, when he’d gotten it as a gift from his math camp counselor. All the lines were worn off. Now it had snapped, and for a moment the window hung suspended, as if its mechanism had magically repaired itself or gravity had ceased to function. Then it fell, slamming shut with such force that the glass broke. In cartoonish escalation, the shards fell down into the sink, shattering further. He felt something old and powdery land on his lip, but it was only a bit of dust, a flake of paint perhaps, from the windowsill. “What are you doing over there?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Good, because I don’t have a great immune system, and, like, it’s socially irresponsible to come out if you’re not feeling well.” “Oh, ‘social responsibility,’ here we go,” the host said, rubbing his greasy fingers across Lionel’s back. “It’s not funny. I mean, not everyone has a robust immune system and—” “Maybe if you ate more vegetables and hit the gym,” the host said with a sneer. Lionel felt conflicted. The man was annoying, but the host was being unnecessarily mean, and Lionel sensed it was because the man was fat and because the host did not find him attractive. “Plant-based diets aren’t actually shown to have a significant protective effect against infections from viral vectors.” “Oh, right, yeah, totally,” the host said, beaming, looking around the room for validation, and since it was his potluck and his apartment, people did go along with him, smiling thinly and humming in assent. The man on the floor turned red, but then shrugged. “Speaking of vegetables, I should probably clean up my mess,” Lionel said. “No, stay,” the host whined. Lionel crouched near the fireplace, but his plate and the food had already been cleared away. What remained was a shiny streak on the scuffed wood flooring. Across the room, Charles had put his arms around Sophie. The two of them were looking at Lionel. Charles had leaned down to say something into her ear, and Lionel watched her eyes narrow fractionally. But then Sophie turned her head and whispered something back to Charles, and the two of them seemed to be chuckling. Lionel wished that the food was still on the floor. Then at least he’d have something to do with himself. Instead, he stood up and made his way to the kitchen. Maybe he could make himself useful, get started on the dishes. Charles followed him, and then it was the two of them at the host’s sink. More of the small fried fish lay on a plate nearby. Charles picked one up and chewed on its crispy fins. “You didn’t have to do that,” Lionel said. “I could have cleaned it up.” “Figured it was half my mess, too.” “Sophie seems nice.” Lionel ran water into a plastic cup. The sink was too full for him to want to actually help out. He’d lost his nerve or his charitable impulse or both. “She’s something else,” Charles said. Lionel was about to ask why Charles had followed him into the kitchen and why he was standing so close, when the host rounded the corner. He was a little surprised to see the two of them there, it was obvious, but he recovered like a cat shifting its weight mid-fall, and he reached around Charles to pull the fridge open. “You boys want some wine?” “None for me,” Charles said, drawing his fingers cross his neck in prohibition.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Glad to hear it,” Nolan says. “Praise the Lord.” “On high,” she says, her voice a wavering song. Then, with a glance at Milton, a failing smile, she slides between Nolan and Abe, and then she is gone. “What was that all about?” Milton asks, but Nolan has already turned away from him toward Abe. “You got it?” “Tate.” “Then I need to see Tate. Don’t go anywhere,” Nolan says directly to Milton, who nods. He, too, leaves. Abe leans against the tree and folds his arms behind his head. Milton’s digging in the ground with his shoe. “When are you going to get it over with?” Abe asks. “Get what over with?” Abe smiles. He comes away from the tree toward Milton, and Milton takes a step back, roots himself against the ground, bracing. Abe leans down and whispers, wet against Milton’s ear: “When are you going to suck his dick? It’s getting pathetic.” “Fuck you, Ahab,” Milton says, but he’s shaken by it. For a moment he worries that Abe’s voice has carried to Nolan, who is just a few feet away. “Oh, it’s not me you want to fuck,” he says, licking his lips. “I’m not the fag.” “I didn’t say you were,” Abe says, calmly, evenly. “I said you wanted to suck Nolan’s dick.” “Please shut up.” “There’s no shame,” he says. “I mean, I don’t blame you. It’s nice.” “Oh, and what do you know?” “Plenty,” he says, and then steps backward. There’s a small drop-off, where you slide down until you’re standing under the crest of the hill. Abe vanishes. Milton follows him through the veil of gray night, down the grassy hill. “What are you talking about?” “You know what I’m talking about,” Abe says, even as he’s reaching for Milton’s pants to undo them. Milton grabs Abe’s thick wrists, stills him. “What is it you think I know?” “Oh, you have to know,” Abe says. “About Nolan and those girls and me. He had to have told you.” “No,” Milton says, his mouth dry. “I don’t know anything about it.” Abe grips him through his pants, and he’s hard, against his will, he’s hard. Abe starts to pump his dick through his jeans, and he smirks. “Well, last week, he says, hey, bud, I got this girl. She and her friend are a couple of freaks, do you want to come over? I say, yes. I come over. They’re already naked, going at it, licking each other all over like a bunch of cats.” “You’re lying,” Milton says. Abe guffaws, soft and deep. He pushes open Milton’s jeans and grips his bare cock. Abe’s hand is warm and rough. “I’m not. One of the girls gets real antsy about it. Nolan’s already poking around inside of her, and she’s like, no, you gotta stop, you gotta stop. And Nolan is like, let me finish, and I’ll stop.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “For letting you have Charlie. When are you going to thank me for that?” she asked, and Lionel flushed. His mouth went dry. And he looked to Charles and then back to Sophie. He felt ill. Charles stood up, awkwardly. He winced. Lionel thought of his knee. “That seems,” Lionel started to say, “I don’t know, Sophie. That seems. Bad.” Charles put on his hat and pulled the door open. “You don’t have to,” Lionel said. “Jesus Christ. Nobody’s going to make you suck their dick. I can drive you,” Charles said. He nudged Lionel toward the door, and Sophie called after them. “Lionel, your manners,” she said. • • • He was right about the air being comforting. There was so much cold black air that he could scarcely imagine a time when it wasn’t this way, when winter wasn’t this deep. He inhaled. Charles was stomping out ahead of him. “I’m sorry,” Lionel said. “You really don’t have to drive me.” Charles stopped and turned. He wet his lips, though they dried immediately in the cold. “I don’t get you,” he said. “I don’t get you.” “What’s to get?” Charles stared at him in open amazement, and Lionel felt a little rush of pride. “Right,” he said. Back to stomping in the cold. He could be so childish. Lionel jogged a little bit to catch up to him. He playfully bumped their shoulders together. “Come on,” Lionel said. “Come on,” Charles mocked, but he was thawing. They were tracing the route back to campus, which meant that Lionel could see the mountain of warm air over the trees. It hadn’t moved despite having earlier given the impression of moving toward them. Or perhaps this was a second mountain, a second wave of warm air pushed up out of the silos in the distance. “Why do you keep looking over there?” Charles asked. “What’s over there?” “Oh, I like the way the warm air looks,” Lionel said. “Like a mountain.”

• From Escape (2007)

  Once I stopped complaining about her, neither Merril nor Barbara had reason to congratulate her. I acted as though she didn’t exist. I found some cousins who were also taking classes and they agreed to give me a ride home. I explained that Lenore and I had scheduling conflicts and they were happy to help out. That night, Lenore told Merril I refused to ride home with her. When she finished speaking to him, she pranced into the room and told me to come to the phone. Merril demanded to know what was going on. I said I’d simply made other arrangements since Lenore had been unable to pick me up. This seemed easier, and I thought everyone would be happy. Merril exploded. “You’re the only one that is happy about this! Embarrassing me like this is terrible. I want you to ride home with Lenore and nobody else.” I was perfectly acquiescent. I started having my cousins drop me off a few blocks from the apartment so Lenore would think that I had walked. I was too embarrassed to tell my cousins what was really going on. I would always wait at the arranged place and sometimes Lenore would come to pick me up. If she did not, I knew my cousins would come for me within forty-five minutes. Merril called every night. I told him that everything was fine. This drove Lenore right up the wall. How could she be rewarded for abusing me if I didn’t complain? Her grades slipped. I had cut her out of my life and found other friends. Lenore was isolated and very unhappy. One day I heard her call Barbara at Page. “Carolyn thinks she’s so much better than I am. She treats me like I am total scum and refuses to talk to me.” Listening to Lenore’s meltdown, I almost felt sorry for her. She was a pawn in Barbara and Merril’s game. They were using her to do their dirty work and betraying her in the process. A few hours after her teary call with Barbara, Merril called and talked to Lenore for several hours. The next day, several of her sisters arrived to spend the rest of the week with us. This worked to my advantage because Lenore took a break from torturing me to enjoy her sisters. But in the long run, nothing changed. Lenore complained to them that I was mistreating her and that she was all alone. Her grades were suffering because I was so mean. She was only going to school to assist Father. Poor Lenore.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “No way,” Sophie said. “You stay put.” He felt her foot then against his knee, keeping in place. She smiled at him, but it was not a joke. Then she turned to Charles and asked him if he wanted some water or a coffee. Charles said that he wanted an espresso, with a tonic back. She made an elaborate bow at him and got up. Charles took her chair, and when she was around the corner, when they could hear her tamping out the used coffee, Charles turned to Lionel. “What’s all this?” “She asked me here,” Lionel said. “I’m not trying anything.” “That is so typical of her.” Charles shook his head, leaned back in the chair. “She’s playing a game. She thinks everything is fucking hilarious.” “She said she knew already. About last night.” “Yeah, I told her earlier—sorry if that was supposed to be a secret or something,” Charles said. Lionel watched his lips shape into an amused smirk, the little dimple in his right cheek appearing, then vanishing. “She seemed fine with it.” Charles turned and gripped the back of the chair, gave his body a hard wrench. Lionel’s breath caught at the mobility of his joints. How easy it was for him to attain such a ridiculous position. The espresso machine hissed. “You all right?” “I can go if you want.” “No, don’t. She’d just make a whole case about it,” Charles said. “Better to let her have her way.” Sophie returned with the espresso and the small glass boot filled with tonic water. Charles shifted over to the empty chair closer to the window, away from Lionel, and Sophie reclaimed her seat. The small espresso cup was a deep caramel color. The crema was beautiful, perfect, and Charles sipped it to test the heat. Sophie had her chin on her palm, appraising his reaction. They had a whole routine down. One that excluded Lionel, made him feel extraneous, with his collar with the hole in it and his scarf and his anxiety. He rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them, and in the process drew Sophie’s attention. Not in any obvious way, but he could feel the tension in her gaze shift slightly in his direction. Charles had seen him naked, of course, and had touched him. But that touching and that seeing had been focused in its particulars. They hadn’t talked about their bodies, only used them. It was different in the café. He had that feeling again, the one like watching an intimate function at a friend’s house, the way two people who loved each other shared a context that had nothing to do with him. He was stupid for staying, for listening, when Charles and Sophie told him to stay put. He should have listened to himself. After all, his duty was to himself. Like that old line from his doctors: Your duty is to your health. You owe yourself that much.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  At that moment he wishes he had come in the other's mouth and had taken the other's cum in his. 12:51 A.M. Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. As he stands hitchhiking vaguely, his thumb just barely held out at his thigh, he considers going back to his car and driving to the most popular of the glitterbars. Floor sprinkled with tiny silvery lights, colored strobes pounding to disco rock, it attracts a wide spectrum of the gay, bisexual, and, increasingly, the straight worlds. Beautiful boys and youngmen primp there; handsome masculine ones often in cutoffs and tanktops cruise. And gorgeous straight women, vaguely costumed, dance alone sometimes, sometimes with men, sometimes with women—men and men, men and women, women and women gyrating in graceful, studiedly orgasmic movements. But Jim decides against going there. Saturdays it's jammed, and there is only the mildest revolution there. Perhaps he'll drive to the beach. On warm evenings, hunters gather about the area of the shadowy pier. FLASHBACK: The Beach at Night A Week Ago. Shadows fused in the double darkness under the crumbling boards of the pier. Jim walked to the edge of the ocean, sprayed with silver foam. He is always aware of the mysterious darkness beyond the water—black; locking secrets. An outlaw followed him, now another, the three a shrinking triangle moving to the sensual sighing of the ocean. At the edge of the shore, Jim removed his clothes and lay on the still-warm sand. No fog tonight, the moon naked too. One of the two other outlaws stripped wordlessly next to him. For long, they lay side by side, touching. A few feet away the third man lay clothed on the sand watching them. 12:55 A.M. Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue. But the beach is unpredictable, especially on weekends. He might drive for miles and find it deserted. A car stops to give him a ride, but he waves it away and returns to his own. VOICE OVER: The Gay Sensibility VOICE OVER: The Gay Sensibility I' M SUPPOSED TO represent the “underground voice” in a program on Sensuality in the Arts. It's gone badly—two movie stars have read and posed too long, and one man has actually been hooted; I comfort myself by telling myself that he deserved it for being an asshole. The large audience, tacky, middleclass, predominantly straight, here mainly to see the movie stars, is noisy and restive. I'll be followed by a strutting harlequin of a man, who's pissed because the program is going on too long—he's right about that—and people are going to leave without hearing him. Why I agreed to be here, I suddenly don't know. I'm embarrassed, and I consider splitting. But my friends are here, and I've already been introduced. Fuck. In the first row a woman is knitting furiously. Madame DeFarge?

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  “Engineer, somewhat specialized.” His eyes locked onto Craig’s and they swam in each other’s gaze. “I pull a few hours from a hectic Silicon Valley schedule to make it to the gym with forays to the track, especially on weekends—I enjoy long, solitary runs.” Daddy smiled and Craig threw him a thumbs-up. I scowled. Just then two girls, or should I say young ladies, sauntered by. They weren’t the Playboy Bunny type, but close enough. They wore matching orange string bikinis, covering their crotches but not their butts. Not too bad for a woman. Their halter thingies covered their nipples, but just barely. Craig watched them closely, but Daddy couldn’t care less. They were gym toned, with small but well-defined biceps, a smattering of ab development, and firm thighs, and probably entered physique contests. What was going on? A freakin’ convention? A nearby body building competition? Well, I guess the well-heeled pot-bellied, bald business execs and their overweight, bejeweled wives with beehive hairdos claimed some other portion of the beach—like unto like. The Amazons looked toward us, giggled, linked arms and ran into the water. “Are we supposed to follow?” Daddy teased. “You won’t keep up with them in those balloon pants,” I snapped. “All right, wise-ass,” Daddy said, and stood. He untied his drawstring with a fluid motion. Then he teased his long Velcro fly open, reveling in the staccato crackle he orchestrated. Finally, ever so slowly, he lowered his shorts. The top of a black Speedo appeared. Next the crotch. Then his knees. “Go haole, go!” A cluster of Hawaiian teenage boys hooted and threw Daddy a shaka. He lowered his clown pants to the ground, stepped out and tossed them onto our pile of clothes. “Satisfied?” he beamed. My “Yes, Sir!” and Craig’s “Yeah!” were an impromptu offkey duet. Daddy did a half turn and faced the boys, arms akimbo. “You’re a walking gym ad,” one shouted. “Mahalo,” Daddy answered, and turned back to us. Daddy hadn’t shaved his legs—his last “appearance” didn’t require it—and his leg fur turned me on, as usual. A tuft of black hair rose from the rear of his suit, reaching for the small of his back. He kicked my leg. “Roll over,” he ordered, “it’s your turn.” “Daddiee,” I whined. “No arguments,” he said. “Do it now.” I complied. Slowly. Craig raised himself onto his elbow. “Good goddamn, he’s wearing a thong.” My entire body blushed. “What a motherfuckin’ bubblebutt,” Craig said. “And stripes! A great caning job—well spaced and even on both sides. More surprises in this little family.” Daddy swatted both my cheeks with his palms, and none too gently. “Yeouch,” I yelled, and jumped into a crouch. “I see the outlines of a butt plug,” Craig announced. “Yep,” said Daddy. “He takes a medium thong and a large butt plug. Hard to dress.” “Jesus Christ!” I pounded my fists into the blanket. “He loves the attention,” Craig hooted. “You’ve got his number,” Daddy shot back.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Looped arms and hooked thumbs into each other’s pockets. They poured wine and spooned things onto each other’s plates. The loud whack of plastic trays and the tinkle of ice, the hiss of seltzer. As they finished and squeezed by Lionel, he saw that they were about his age, twenty-four, or a little older. They smelled like tobacco and bright, vegetal things—orchids, hydrangeas. They said hey and hi and excuse me , and he stepped back to let them pass. When the kitchen was empty and everyone had settled down to eat, Lionel made his own plate of baked asparagus, brown rice, kale salad. He leaned against the flaking yellow counter and pushed the food around until it had all been drawn across and through itself. The kitchen was humid, redolent of people and their colognes, shampoos, lotions. But the open window let in a shaft of cold, clear air. The wind whistled as it caught stray openings in the screen. “Lionel!” the host called from the other room. “Lionel, what are you doing in there? Come on!” He felt silly being summoned. When he was in the doorway, the host clapped loudly in a way that made the overhead lights flicker brighter in Lionel’s vision. His teeth hurt. “There he is, there he is!” The others did not clap, which made the host’s gesture seem both pitiful and cruel. Lionel could see the full array of people who had come to the potluck. The chubby man on the floor between two chairs kept insisting that he was fine. A blond woman sat with both feet on her chair and a plate balanced on her knees. The host shared the chaise with a couple who looked like siblings, in matching black corduroy pants and gray socks. The woman had a messy topknot, and the man wore his scraggly hair down to his shoulders under a felt baseball cap. An androgynous person, tall, striking, with a platinum buzzcut and septum piercing gestured at a black woman in overalls with pierced cheeks. Some skinny gay men in Breton sweaters, one black-white, the other white-black, were flirting with an equally skinny black man wearing sunglasses. A woman in chinos sat scowling at the space between her knees. Their faces were a wall of pleasant, bland expressions, but then they sank back into their own conversations. The chatter rose above the low music. Near the defunct fireplace, over which someone had mounted a set of steer horns, Lionel squeezed into an opening on the floor next to a man in a burgundy turtleneck. The man was densely, unnecessarily muscular and looked like someone who enjoyed being looked at and could hold eye contact.