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 57 of 79 · 20 per page

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  construidos en las ciudades circundantes. The Grand tuvo que ser creativo, con proyecciones de medianoche de películas clásicas como esta noche, pero también eventos de disfraces y fiestas privadas. No vengo aquí mucho, con mi horario escolar y de trabajo, pero es un lugar agradable y oscuro en el que te quieres perder por un tiempo. Privado y tranquilo. Al pasar por las puertas, reviso mi teléfono una vez más para ver que Cole aún no ha llamado ni enviado mensajes de texto. Silencio el tono y lo vuelvo a deslizar en mi bolsillo. Algunos anuncios se repiten en la pantalla, pero las luces de la sala todavía están encendidas, y escaneo rápidamente la habitación, viendo a unos pocos solitarios dispersos. También hay una pareja sentada en la fila de atrás a mi derecha, y un pequeño grupo de chicos está en medio; digo jóvenes por el sonido de su risa desconsiderada. De aproximadamente trescientos asientos, doscientos ochenta y cinco todavía están disponibles, y prácticamente puedo elegir. Bajo cinco o seis filas, encuentro una vacía y me deslizo, tomando asiento en la mitad. Dejo mi bolsa y saco en silencio la caja de vino púrpura, leyendo la etiqueta en la tenue luz. Merlot. Esperaba que fuera vino blanco, pero estoy segura que Shel necesita deshacerse de estas cosas. Solo lo servimos cuando hay un evento al aire libre y no queremos vidrio afuera. Descorchándola, olfateo el aroma picante, sin sentir ninguno de los aromas sofisticados que los sommeliers parecen captar del vino. No hay rastro de roble con un “audaz aroma de cerezas dulces” o algo por el estilo. Deslizando mi bandeja frente a mí, aprovecho la fila vacía que tengo delante y doblo las rodillas, colocando mis Chucks en el apoyabrazos entre los asientos vacíos. Dejando la caja, saco mi teléfono del bolsillo trasero, por si Cole llama, y lo pongo en la bandeja junto al vino. Pero, en cambio, se cae de la bandeja. Cae entre mis piernas y al suelo, subo mis rodillas para intentar atraparlo, pero golpean la bandeja y hacen que la caja de vino se derrame en el suelo. Mi boca se abre y jadeo. —¡Mierda! —suelto en un suspiro. ¿Qué demonios? Plantando de nuevo mis pies en el suelo, aparto la bandeja y me hundo en el suelo, tanteando alrededor en busca de mi teléfono. Mis dedos se hunden en el vino derramado, y hago una mueca ante el desastre. Mirando sobre los asientos, veo el grupo de tres chicos unas filas más abajo, exactamente al frente de mí y justo en la línea de la inminente cascada de vino. Gimo. Genial. Una ligera capa de sudor enfría mi frente, y me levanto, sacando la bufanda de mi bolso para secarme los dedos. Odio arruinarla, pero no tengo servilletas. Qué desastre. Hasta aquí llegó lo de escaparme por dos horas.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Tomo la revista y asiento, sin poder mirarlo a los ojos. Vuelve a su tarea, y me doy la vuelta para alejarme, pero me detengo y lo admiro. —No tienes que hacer eso, ¿sabes? —le digo, refiriéndome a los platos—. Cole dijo que lo haría. Veo temblar su cuerpo con una risa, y luego se inclina para dejar caer algunos cubiertos en el lavaplatos antes de mirarme. —También tuve diecinueve años —responde—. “En un momento” significa con el tiempo, y con el tiempo no significa esta noche. Resoplo, mis hombros se alivian un poco. Cierto. No sé cuántas veces me levanté a la mañana siguiente con un fregadero lleno de platos. Por supuesto, no me haría más feliz con Cole si su padre soportara su peso con las tareas, pero lo ignoro como diciendo “no es mi problema”. Mientras yo no tenga que hacerlo. —Gracias —contesto, rápidamente me lanzo rápidamente al refrigerador y me llevo una botella de agua. Pero luego se me ocurre un pensamiento. —¿Tienes otros hijos? —pregunto. Supongo que necesito saber si habrá otras personas que entren o salgan de la casa. Pero cuando lo miro veo su mandíbula tensa y su ceño fruncido, luciendo un poco demasiado serio. —Creo que Cole te diría si tuviera hermanos, ¿no es así? Contra mi voluntad, mi columna se endereza instantáneamente. Su tono es castigador. Por supuesto, Cole me diría si tuviera hermanos. Lo conozco desde hace tiempo. —Claro —respondo apresuradamente, sacudiendo la cabeza como si estuviera en una niebla y por eso había hecho una pregunta tan tonta. —Además, nunca he estado casado —agrega, su manzana de Adán sube y baja—. Tener varios hijos de varias mujeres no era un error que quisiera seguir cometiendo. Me quedo quieta, mirándolo y sintiéndome un poco mal. Definitivamente Cole no fue planificado e, incluso en un pequeño grado, no deseado por sus padres adolescentes. Parte del misterio de su mala relación comienza a esclarecerse. Pero también aprecio su pragmatismo. No le llevó mucho tiempo a un joven Pike Lawson aprender que, hacer bebés con cualquiera no era lo correcto para él. Esa era una consecuencia que nunca quería experimentar, ni siquiera una vez. Parece darse cuenta de lo que ha dicho y probablemente cómo se escuchó, porque se detiene y me mira, entrecerrando sus ojos en una disculpa. —No quise decirlo… así. Yo… —Sé lo que quisiste decir. Está bien. Muevo mi pulgar detrás de mí y retrocedo. —Voy a estudiar. Voy a tomar un par de crédito este verano, así que… buenas noches. Se da la vuelta, cargando el lavaplatos con jabón y encendiéndolo. —Gracias de nuevo por permitir que nos quedemos aquí —digo. Me mira. —Gracias por la cena. Y antes de irme, camino hacia la mesa donde dejé una vela aromatizada encendida. Debería haberle preguntando al respecto. Puede que no le gusten los aromas tontos en su casa. Inclinándome sobre la mesa, cierro los ojos, inhalo y pido mi deseo de siempre.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  y necesite avisarle... Este no es mi apartamento donde puedo tomar todas las decisiones. Le devuelvo el teléfono y él el mío, pero comienza a sonar música del mío, y mira la pantalla del teléfono. Mi aplicación de música debe haber estado activa y la encendió accidentalmente o algo. Mierda. Father’s Figure de George Michael comienza a sonar, y arquea las cejas cuando comienza el sugerente coro. Mi boca se seca al escuchar la letra. Le arrebato el teléfono y lo apago. Él exhala una carcajada. Increíble. Luego se endereza, aclarando su garganta. —Música de los 80, ¿eh? Me paso los dedos por el cabello, deslizando el teléfono en mi bolsillo trasero. —Sí, no estaba bromeando. Después de un momento, vuelvo a mirar y lo veo observándome, con una sonrisa en los ojos. Desvía la mirada a un lado, y se inclina, recogiendo una de las revistas de casa y jardín que no me había dado cuenta había caído de mi bolsa sobre la mesa de la cocina. —Y es Pike—señala, entregándome la revista—. No señor Lawson, ¿de acuerdo? Está tan cerca, y mi estómago da un vuelco, incapaz de mirarlo. Tomo la revista y asiento, sin poder mirarlo a los ojos. Vuelve a su tarea, y me doy la vuelta para alejarme, pero me detengo y lo admiro. —No tienes que hacer eso, ¿sabes? —le digo, refiriéndome a los platos—. Cole dijo que lo haría. Veo temblar su cuerpo con una risa, y luego se inclina para dejar caer algunos cubiertos en el lavaplatos antes de mirarme. —También tuve diecinueve años —responde—. “En un momento” significa con el tiempo, y con el tiempo no significa esta noche.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me giro para volver a mi labor, mi corazón latiéndome en los oídos. Es suficientemente malo comerse con los ojos a alguien que no es Cole, pero también tenía que ser ella quien me atrapara. —Nunca te he visto mirar a Cole de ese modo —dice. ¿Cuánto tiempo estuvo ahí parada? Decido cortarlo de raíz. —¿De qué modo? —espeto—. Deja de intentar comenzar alguna mierda. La escucho moverse mientras viene a pararse junto a mí en el fregadero. Lanzo una mirada hacia Pike para ver que todavía está trabajando, ajeno a nosotras en la casa. —Ambos se están poniendo bastante cómodos aquí —se burla, enjuagando las patatas peladas y metiéndolas en la olla—. Está haciendo trabajo de jardín. Estás cocinando. Es como si fueran una pareja. —Cállate. Soy lo suficientemente joven como para ser su hija. —Pero no eres su hija —contesta, girándose hacia mí e inclinándose—. Eres una pieza sexy y joven de coño viviendo bajo su techo y sabes que ha pensado en eso. Puede que sea el papá de Cole, pero también es un hombre. —Se gira, mirando por la ventana y observándolo—. Y también uno atractivo y saludable. —Tengo novio. Su hijo. Es cierto, Jordan. Es exactamente lo que deberías haberte dicho a ti misma cuando lo estabas mirando fijamente hace un minuto. Pero mi hermana solo se encoge de hombros. —Incluso más excitante. Dejo salir una risa amarga. —Si te gusta, ve por él. —Nuh-uh. —Sus labios se levantan juguetonamente—. Ahora estoy excitada por la fantasía. Quiero a mi propio padre de mi novio. Ugggghhhh... ms mejillas se sonrojan de nuevo. —Eres sórdida. Y no tienes novio —señalo. —Bueno, debería conseguirme uno. Uno que tenga un papá atractivo. Sacudo mi cabeza, no voy a seguir hablando sobre esto. Está convencida de que estaba comiéndomelo con la mirada y se regocija con la picardía. No voy a alentarla.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Se da vuelta, golpeándome en el estómago juguetonamente y bajando la voz a un tono profundo y ronco: —Vamos, cariño. —Se retuerce hacia mí, tratando de rodearme seductoramente con sus brazos—. Es hora de pagar la renta, cariño. —¡Cállate! —susurro, medio gritando, riendo e intentando sacarla de la cocina—. Dios, me avergüenzas. ¡Sal! —No tengas miedo —continúa, fingiendo que es un tipo viejo y espeluznante mientras se lame los labios y trata de besarme—. Las niñas cuidan de sus papás. Y empuja contra mí en broma, inflando toda la barriga cervecera que puede reunir con su cintura de cincuenta centímetros. —¡Basta! —suplico, ardiendo de vergüenza. Me toca las caderas, sonriendo mientras intento sacarla de la cocina. Pero luego se detiene de repente, su expresión cae y sus ojos se centran en algo, o alguien, detrás de mí. Cierro los ojos por un momento. Estupendo. Dándome la vuelta, veo al padre de Cole en la entrada, entre la sala de estar y la cocina, parado y mirándonos. El calor sube por mi cuello al verlo de nuevo. Escucho a mi hermana respirar profundamente, y me alejo de ella, aclarando mi garganta. No creo que haya escuchado nada. Al menos, espero que no. Mueve la mirada entre nosotras y finalmente la deja sobre mí. Su cabello corto está un poco desordenado, y puedo ver el sudor de su día de trabajo todavía humedeciendo los lados, y la sombra de barba en su mandíbula. Marcas negras manchan sus antebrazos, y los tendones de sus manos bronceadas se flexionan cuando agarra su cinturón de herramientas y el contenedor del almuerzo. Inhala profundamente y avanza, colocando sus cosas sobre la isla. —¿Ya mudaron todo? —me pregunta, pasándose una mano por el cabello. Asiento. —Ajá —dejo escapar—. Quiero decir, sí. Mi corazón está haciendo esa cosa de nuevo, donde se siente como si estuviera navegando en olas del océano dentro de mi pecho, y no puedo recordar lo que se supone que debo hacer. Así que solo asiento de nuevo, parpadeando hasta que mi hermana aparece a mi lado y finalmente recuerdo lo que estaba pasando. —Pike. Señor Lawson —me corrijo—, lo siento. Esta es mi hermana, Cam. — Apunto hacia ella—. Y ya se iba.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Sí, lo he visto —le aseguro, dejando caer mi mano—. Es solo que... no sé. Parece como algo superfluo. Pone los ojos en blanco, con su mirada en las piedras otra vez. —Son las pequeñas cosas las que añaden personalidad a una casa —me dice— . Un candelabro artístico, la alfombra correcta y la placa para salpicaduras. —Da vuelta a la hoja, mirándome y mostrándome—. Esto va contigo. Quedaría genial con lo que has hecho en la cocina. —Conmigo, ¿eh? —Dejo escapar una risita, mirándola a los ojos—. ¿Y qué soy? Su sonrisa cae y una mirada de sorpresa atraviesa sus ojos. Parpadeo. —No quise decir eso... de esa forma —le digo. No es lo que dije, sino cómo lo dije. Demasiado insinuante. Sin embargo, parece restarle importancia, girando la hoja y mirándola con aprecio nuevamente. —Me recuerda a una cueva —dice finalmente—. Eres como una cueva. No revelas todos tus secretos a la vez. Quién sabe qué tan profundo llegas, ¿cierto? Mis cejas se levantan. ¿Qué? ¿Qué tan profundo llego? ¿Acaba de...? Sus ojos repentinamente recorren el espacio y mueve su mirada rápidamente hacia mí, luciendo mortificada. —Quiero decir —dice apresuradamente—, como... en el... en el interior. Tu personalidad. —Un rubor cubre sus mejillas—. No quise decirlo como... ugh. —Sus hombros se hunden y vuelve a meter la hoja en la caja, rindiéndose—. Ahora iré a babear sobre los accesorios para el baño. Adiós. Y se aleja de mí rápidamente, desapareciendo por un pasillo. Mi boca se curva en una sonrisa y rompo en una risa silenciosa, mirándola. —Entonces, ¿qué piensa? —Un joven con un delantal naranja aparece por el rabillo de mi ojo. Sin embargo, no lo miro, sigo mirando el pasillo por el que ella acaba de desaparecer. —Comenzaremos con tres cajas de esto. —Señalo las baldosas en el estante—. Veremos cómo lucen... Se acerca y comienza a descargar las cajas. —Sabia elección. Esposa feliz, vida feliz, ¿cierto? Esposa feliz, vida... Lo miro sacar una caja y llevársela, y el pulso en mi cuello palpita repentinamente. ¿Piensa que es mi esposa? Una sonrisa tira de la esquina de mi boca y no estoy exactamente seguro de qué emoción está llenando mi pecho en este momento, pero se siente bien y hay mucho de eso.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  grupo de tres chicos unas filas más abajo, exactamente al frente de mí y justo en la línea de la inminente cascada de vino. Gimo. Genial. Una ligera capa de sudor enfría mi frente, y me levanto, sacando la bufanda de mi bolso para secarme los dedos. Odio arruinarla, pero no tengo servilletas. Qué desastre. Hasta aquí llegó lo de escaparme por dos horas. Busco alrededor un acomodador con una linterna, estando muy segura que este teatro no los contrata, en especial a esta hora de la noche, pero la única linterna que tengo está en mi teléfono, y los pisos están oscuros. Al no ver a nadie, tomo mi bufanda y mi bolso y subo a la siguiente fila, inclinándome y mirando bajo los asientos para ver si puedo ver mi teléfono. Cuando no encuentro nada. Subo a la siguiente fila y luego a la siguiente, muy segura de que lo escuché deslizarse. Ya que las filas de asientos están inclinadas, no pudo haber ido muy lejos. Maldición. Moviéndome a la siguiente fila, dejo mis cosas y me arrodillo, mirando bajo las filas a mi izquierda y derecha, tanteando con las manos. Un par de largas piernas, cubiertas por jeans están al frente, y alzo la mirada, viendo a un hombre sentado con los dedos llenos de palomitas a medio camino de su boca. Baja la mirada hacia mí con las cejas levantadas. —Lo siento —susurro, metiendo mi cabello tras mi oreja—. Dejé caer mi bebida y mi teléfono se deslizo a alguna parte. ¿Le importaría...? Duda un momento y luego parpadea, enderezándose. —Sí, claro. —Mueve su bandeja a un lado y se levanta, sacando algo de su bolsillo—. Toma. Enciende la linterna de su teléfono y se agacha, iluminando bajo los asientos. Inmediatamente, veo mi teléfono bajo el asiento a su lado y lo tomo. Gracias a los cielos. Ambos nos ponemos de pie, y mis hombros se relajan. No puedo permitirme un reemplazo ahora. Paso los dedos sobre la pantalla, asegurándome de no sentir grietas. —¿Todo bien? —pregunta. —Sí, gracias. Apaga su linterna y estira la mano, pasando sus dedos por la parte inferior de mi teléfono, los lleva a su nariz, oliendo.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Late in the afternoon, after the cake has been sliced, after the requisite pictures of bride feeding groom and groom feeding bride, the cousins carry Bru down to the pond and throw him in. When one of them picks up Caitlin and slings her over his shoulder she pounds on his back and cries, “Not in my wedding dress, asshole ... it’s an antique!” He puts her down and she steps out of it, leaving it on the grassy bank above the pond. They throw her off the dock wearing just her long ivory slip. Bru catches her in the water. They kiss. He wades out of the pond with her in his arms, as if he’s carrying her over the threshold. The photographer captures the moment. “You’re next, Victoria,” another of the cousins says, sweeping her up and tossing her in from the end of the dock. Then they all jump in, one after the other, the cousins, their wives and girlfriends, most of the young guests and some of the not so young, all in their finery. But not Sharkey, who has taken Wren out in the dinghy, and not Daniel or Gus, who wait for Vix to emerge. “You can’t stay in all day,” Gus calls, laughing. She feels awkward and self-conscious, like an unwilling contestant in a wet T-shirt contest. When she finally comes out, her arms folded across her chest, Gus wraps a beach towel around her. “You always were on the shy side, Cough Drop.” “Are you going to keep calling me Cough Drop?” “What should I call you?” “How about Vix?” “Vix ...” he says, trying it out. Upstairs, Caitlin hands her a pair of shorts and a T-shirt so she can get out of her wet clothes. Caitlin has already changed into jeans. She’s zipping up her backpack, preparing to leave for her honeymoon, a camping trip to Maine. “Thanks, Vix ... for being here with me.” She looks up at the photo of the two of them at twelve. “Who says a picture isn’t worth a hundred words?” “Thousand,” Vix says. “I think it’s a thousand words.” Caitlin laughs. “We were a great team, weren’t we?” “Yes.” Caitlin hugs her. “I’ll always love you. Promise you’ll always love me?” “You know I will.” And it’s true, Vix thinks, no matter what, she’ll always love Caitlin. Caitlin hoists on her backpack. “Did you ask Bru ... about that summer?” “Yes,” she lies. Caitlin nods. “Did he tell you the truth?” “Yes.” Another lie. She nods again. “I figured he would.”

• From St. Augustine's Confessions (2004)

  3. What starts as a seemingly innocent pastime becomes something serious: “she had fallen at length into the habit of avidly quaffing near-goblets full of wine.” 4. She is cured of the habit when another servant calls her a “wine-swiller.” 5. Augustine makes the point that this servant was trying to insult her, not cure her, but the effect was a cure. B. We learn about her relations with her husband, Patricius, Augustine’s father. 1. Patricius is not as important to the entire narrative as Monica is, but the information is valuable to fill in some background about Augustine’s father. 2. We are told that Monica put up with his “marital infidelities.” 3. Her reasons for doing so are interesting: It is clear that women had little power legally in such situations, and she believes that fidelity will come only when he accepts Christianity. 4. We are told that he had quite a temper, but that Monica’s strategies kept her from ever being beaten. 5. We are told that she gave advice to some of her friends to avoid the same fate. C. We are told of her relationship to her mother-in-law and how Monica won her over. D. In all these stories, we see the huge gap that separates domestic life in Augustine’s time from our own, in particular, the gap in the position of women. 1. It seems that women had no power at all. 2. Yet, at the same time, they had considerable authority in the domestic sphere. 3. It seems clear, for example, that Monica’s mother-in-law had a good deal of de facto power, even as Monica herself has. E. Augustine seems to be using this material to make theological points rather than sociological ones. III. At the port of Ostia, while waiting to go back to Africa, Augustine and his mother share a beautiful meditation on the joys of heaven immediately before her death. 56 ©2004 The Teaching Company.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  A psychoanalytic elaboration might contend that this impossibility is exposed in virtue of the complexity and resistance of an unconscious sexuality that is not always already heterosexual. In this sense, heterosexuality offers normative sexual positions that are intrinsically impossible to embody, and the persistent failure to identify fully and without incoherence with these positions reveals heterosexuality itself not only as a compulsory law, but as an inevitable comedy. Indeed, I would offer this insight into heterosexuality as both a compulsory system and an intrinsic comedy, a constant parody of itself, as an alternative gay/lesbian perspective. Clearly, the norm of compulsory heterosexuality does operate with the force and violence that Wittig describes, but my own position is that this is not the only way that it operates. For Wittig, the strategies for political resistance to normative heterosexuality are fairly direct. Only the array of embodied persons who are not engaged in a heterosexual relationship within the confines of the family which takes reproduction to be the end or telos of sexuality are, in effect, actively contesting the categories of sex or, at least, not in compliance with the normative presuppositions and purposes of that set of categories. To be lesbian or gay is, for Wittig, no longer to know one’s sex, to be engaged in a confusion and proliferation of categories that make sex an impossible category of identity. As emancipatory as this sounds, Wittig’s proposal overrides those discourses within gay and lesbian culture that proliferate specifically gay sexual identities by appropriating and redeploying the categories of sex. The terms queens, butches, femmes, girls, even the parodic reappropriation of dyke, queer, and fag redeploy and destabilize the categories of sex and the originally derogatory categories for homosexual identity. All of these terms might be understood as symptomatic of “the straight mind,” modes of identifying with the oppressor’s version of the identity of the oppressed. On the other hand, lesbian has surely been partially reclaimed from it historical meanings, and parodic categories serve the purposes of denaturalizing sex itself. When the neighborhood gay restaurant closes for vacation, the owners put out a sign, explaining that “she’s overworked and needs a rest.” This very gay appropriation of the feminine works to multiply possible sites of application of the term, to reveal the arbitrary relation between the signifier and the signified, and to destabilize and mobilize the sign. Is this a colonizing “appropriation” of the feminine? My sense is no. That accusation assumes that the feminine belongs to women, an assumption surely suspect. Within lesbian contexts, the “identification” with masculinity that appears as butch identity is not a simple assimilation of lesbianism back into the terms of heterosexuality. As one lesbian femme explained, she likes her boys to be girls, meaning that “being a girl” contextualizes and resignifies “masculinity” in a butch identity.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Do what I do,” he told me, but I was strangely embarrassed suddenly, because by then Pete was taking off all his clothes. “Come on, man,” he says to me, annoyed. “You wanna score or dont you?” (Again, I knew the man, his gaze nailed on us, could hear him, and I realized conclusively this didnt matter.) “This cat’s pretty swinging people if he digs you,” Pete goes on, “and we can come back and have ‘dinner.’” He laughed again. “Come on.” I finally did. Pete sat on the couch, glancing at a comic book. He was completely unembarrassed. I sat on a chair looking at a magazine. The man returned to the kitchen, humming gayly. “It’ll be just a few more minutes, now boys—” He turned at the door and looks fondly at Pete. “Petey-boy,” he said, “I do believe youve been gaining a few pounds—you should have more salads, less starches.... You boys dont know how to care for yourselves, but well fix that.... And you, my boy—” turning now to me like a doting mother “—you could stand a bit more weight—just a few more pounds, not much—and we’ll fix that too.” He disappeared into the kitchen, and I could hear dishes rattle. I glanced up abruptly, and Pete is looking at me over the comic book. He smiles broadly. Soon, the meal was served, on a small, carefully set table in the dining room. We were summoned by a tinkling little bell which the man jingled. I had never eaten like this before, and I start to put my pants on. Pete said no, emphatically, reminding me we’re in the presence of “cool people” and I should play along. We sat at the table—just Pete and myself, facing each other. The man flutters in and out of the kitchen like a butterfly, returning, serving us lovingly, rearranging the silver, the glasses—standing back to see that they were Just Right. There was no place for him. He brought a chair and set it away from the table. He sat there, staring raptly as we ate. Completely unself-consciously Pete ate his food. I dropped my fork a couple of times, and the man rushed into the kitchen to get me a clean one. Finally we had finished, and the man places a cake before us, gives us a large portion. “And there’s ice cream!” he announced joyously. “Vanilla?” he asked. Pete said, “Chocolate.” I took vanilla. “All boys love cake and ice cream,” the man said knowingly, and by then I was enjoying it. I even ate more cake.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  So we decided not even to bother with our parents’ handwriting on the outside of the brown paper lunch bag—how much it resembled a Turkish assassin’s and what that said about us. We decided to set aside the bag itself for a moment. For the time being we’d stick with the contents, and, to begin with, the sandwich. That was the one-inch picture frame we were going to look through. Your sandwich was the centerpiece, and there were strict guidelines. It almost goes without saying that store-bought white bread was the only acceptable bread. There were no exceptions. If your mother made the white bread for your sandwich, you could only hope that no one would notice. You certainly did not brag about it, any more than you would brag that she also made headcheese. And there were only a few things that your parents could put in between the two pieces of bread. Bologna was fine, salami and unaggressive cheese were fine, peanut butter and jelly were fine if your parents understood the jelly/jam issue . Grape jelly was best, by Jar, a nice slippery comforting sugary petroleum-product grape. Strawberry jam was second; everything else was iffy. Take raspberry, for instance— Now, see, I couldn’t remember, as I wrote in class, just exactly what it was about raspberry jam that was so disconcerting. So when I got home that night, I called a friend who is also a writer, very successful and maybe the most neurotic person I know. I said, Remember how in elementary school, grape jelly was best in your lunch, strawberry jam was Okay, but raspberry was real borderline? Can you talk to me about your experiences with these things? And my friend went into an impassioned, disoriented riff about how there was too much happening in raspberry jam, too many seeds per spoonful. It felt like there were all these tiny little pod people in it. It was Body-Snatcher jam. My friend then mentioned apricot jam, which was even worse than raspberry. I had not thought about this in thirty years, but now it all came back with horrible clarity. Apricot jam looked too much like glue, or mucilage. But you could count on having apricot jam when your father made the lunch. Fathers loved apricot jam; I don’t know why, but I’m sure Anna Freud could have a field day with it. I sat down that night and kept writing: In general, come to think of it, when fathers made lunches, things always turned out badly. Fathers were so oblivious back then. They were like foreigners.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Most of the people who lived there were Mexicans who kept chickens and goats in their yards, which was where they practically lived themselves, cooking on grills and dancing to the Mexican music that blared from their radios. Dogs and cats roamed the dusty streets, and irrigation canals at the edge of town carried water to the crop fields. No one looked sideways at you if you wore your big sister's hand-me-downs or your mom drove an old brown Dart. Our neighbors lived in little adobe houses, but we rented a cinder-block bungalow. It was Mom's idea to paint the cinder blocks turquoise blue and the door and windowsills tangerine orange. "Let's not even pretend we want to blend in," she said. Mom was a singer, songwriter, and actress. She had never actually been in a movie or made a record, but she hated to be called "aspiring," and truth be told, she was a little older than the people described that way in the movie magazines she was always buying. Mom's thirty-sixth birthday was coming up, and she complained that the singers who were getting all the attention, like Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell, were at least ten years younger. Even so, Mom always said her big break was right around the corner. Sometimes she got callbacks after auditions, but she usually came home shaking her head and saying the guys at the studio were just tire-kickers who wanted a second look at her cleavage. So while Mom had her career, it wasn't one that produced much in the way of income—yet. Mostly we lived on Mom's inheritance. It hadn't been a ton of money to begin with, and by the time we moved to Lost Lake, we were on a pretty tight budget. When Mom wasn't taking trips into L. A.—which were draining because the drive was nearly four hours in each direction—she tended to sleep late and spend the day writing songs, playing them on one of her four guitars. Her favorite, a 1961 Zemaitis, cost about a year's rent. She also had a Gibson Southern Jumbo, a honey-colored Martin, and a Spanish guitar made from Brazilian rosewood. If she wasn't practicing her songs, she was working on a musical play based on her life, about breaking away from her stifling old-South family, jettisoning her jerk of a husband and string of deadbeat boyfriends—together with all the tire-kickers who didn't reach the boyfriend stage—and discovering her true voice in music. She called the play "Finding the Magic." Mom always talked about how the secret to the creative process was finding the magic. That, she said, was what you needed to do in life as well. Find the magic.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “Why you want to know?” “I want to see her.” “She don’t want to see you,” he said and shut the door. I saw Dinitia around town once or twice after that, and we waved but never spoke again. Later, we all learned she’d been arrested for stabbing her mother’s boyfriend to death. • • • The other girls talked endlessly among themselves about who still had their cherry and how far they would let their boyfriend go. The world seemed divided into girls with boyfriends and girls without them. It was the distinction that mattered the most, practically the only one that did matter. But I knew that boys were dangerous. They’d say they loved you, but they were always after something. Even though I didn’t trust boys, I sure did wish one would show some interest in me. Kenny Hall, the old guy down the street who was still pining away for me, didn’t count. If any boy was interested in me, I wondered if I’d have the wherewithal to tell him, when he tried to go too far, that I was not that kind of girl. But the truth was, I didn’t need to worry much about fending off advances, seeing how—as Ernie Goad told me on every available occasion—I was pork-chop ugly. And by that he meant so ugly that if I wanted a dog to play with me, I’d have to tie a pork chop around my neck. I had what Mom called distinctive looks. That was one way of putting it. I was nearly six feet tall, pale as a frog’s underbelly, and had bright red hair. My elbows were like flying wedges and my knees like tea saucers. But my most prominent feature—my worst—was my teeth. They weren’t rotten or crooked. In fact, they were big, healthy things. But they stuck straight out. The top row thrust forward so enthusiastically that I had trouble closing my mouth completely, and I was always stretching my upper lip to try to cover them. When I laughed, I put my hand over my mouth. Lori told me I had an exaggerated view of how bad my teeth looked. “They’re just a little bucked,” she’d say. “They have a certain Pippi Longstockingish charm.” Mom told me my overbite gave my face character. Brian said they’d come in handy if I ever needed to eat an apple through the knothole in a fence. What I needed, I knew, was braces. Every time I looked in the mirror, I longed for what the other kids called a barbed-wire mouth. Mom and Dad had no money for braces, of course—none of us kids had ever even been to the dentist—but since I’d been babysitting and doing other kids’ homework for cash, I resolved to save up until I could afford braces myself.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Don’t start, Daniel ...” “If you’d let Gus come I’d get off your back.” Abby sighed. “We’ve already been through this. Two weeks without a friend won’t kill you.” “It might,” Daniel said. Vix was embarrassed for eavesdropping. She decided not to tell Caitlin what she’d overheard. It was too ... personal. That night they played mini golf. Daniel held his club like a pro, one hand over the other, thumbs locked. He checked his feet to make sure they were lined up properly. He took two practice swings on each shot. Caitlin and Vix hooted. Daniel told them to shut up. He was trying to concentrate. He took the game seriously. His father played. His father had an eight handicap, whatever that meant. They’d played mini golf to celebrate Vix’s twelfth birthday, on the last day of July. Sharkey had shot a hole in one that night, winning them a free game. Nobody won a free game this time. After, over ice cream at Mad Martha’s, Daniel started in on Abby about inviting a friend. Abby said no as if she meant it, but Daniel didn’t give up. He campaigned all the way home. Finally, Lamb said, “It’s okay with me if he wants to invite somebody.” “All right,” Abby said. “All right!” He’d finally broken her down. “You can call Gus when we get back.” Two days later Gus Kline arrived, shaggy-haired, open-faced, loud, and slovenly. He walked in like he owned the place, checking out the fridge, helping himself to the leftovers from last night’s dinner. “Hey, Baumer ...” he said, pronouncing it bomber and doing a one-two punch. “How’s it going?” “Since you got here,” Daniel said, punching him back and smiling for the first time, “things are definitely looking up.”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I had no idea how much they cost, so I approached the only girl in my class who wore braces and, after complimenting her orthodontia, casually asked how much it had set her folks back. When she said twelve hundred dollars, I almost fell over. I was getting a dollar an hour to babysit. I usually worked five or six hours a week, which meant that if I saved every penny I earned, it would take about four years to raise the money. I decided to make my own braces. • • • I went to the library and asked for a book on orthodontia. The librarian looked at me kind of funny and said she didn’t have one, so I realized I’d have to figure things out as I went along. The process involved some experimentation and several false starts. At first I simply used a rubber band. Before going to bed, I would stretch it all the way around the entire set of my upper teeth. The rubber band was small but thick and had a good, tight fit. But it pressed down uncomfortably on my tongue, and sometimes it would pop off during the night and I’d wake up choking on it. Usually, however, it stayed on all night, and in the morning my gums would be sore from the pressure on my teeth. That seemed like a promising sign, but I began to worry that instead of pushing my front teeth in, the rubber band might be pulling my back teeth forward. So I got some larger rubber bands and wore them around my whole head, pressing against my front teeth. The problem with this technique was that the rubber bands were tight—they had to be, to work—so I’d wake up with headaches and deep red marks where the rubber bands had dug into the sides of my face. I needed more advanced technology. I bent a metal coat hanger into a horseshoe shape to fit the back of my head. Then I curled the two ends outward, so when the coat hanger was around my head, the ends angled away from my face and formed hooks to hold the rubber band in place. When I tried it on, the coat hanger dug into the back of my skull, so I used a Kotex sanitary napkin for padding. The contraption worked perfectly, except that I had to sleep flat on my back, which I always had trouble doing, especially when it was cold: I liked to snuggle down into the blankets. Also, the rubber bands still popped off in the middle of the night. Another drawback was that the device took a lot of time to put on properly. I’d wait until it was dark so no one else would see it. One night I was lying in my bunk wearing my elaborate coat-hanger braces when the bedroom door opened. I could make out a dim figure in the darkness.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  pumping to her face. “I never thought of it like that,” Gus said. He elbowed Daniel, signaling that it was his turn to speak. But Daniel just turned and walked away. “He’s having his own problems,” Gus said. “Who isn’t?” She knew Daniel’s father was about to remarry, someone Gus referred to as the Babe. A real dish, not even thirty, he’d told them, making sure they got his point. “Are your parents divorced, too?” he asked. “No. Not all parents are divorced. And not all problems are about parents.” “You don’t have to be so hostile. I said we were sorry.” “Actually, you didn’t.” “Well, we are.” “Okay.” She realized then she was standing outside the bathroom in an oversize T-shirt and underpants, with a toothbrush in her hand, talking to some sixteen-year-old boy she didn’t even like. And then Gus did the strangest thing. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I really am sorry, Cough Drop,” he said. “We acted like shits. Good night.” Which left her completely speechless. Gus and Daniel gave Vix a belated birthday present, a jigsaw puzzle, “Seeing Red,” five hundred pieces all in one solid color. They bet Sharkey twenty bucks she wouldn’t be able to finish it in a week. “What’s in it for her?” Caitlin asked. “Why should she bust her ass for any of you?” “What are you, her agent?” Daniel said. “That’s right,” Caitlin told him, “I’m her agent.” “Okay ...” Daniel said. “She gets twenty if she makes it, which means we’re laying out forty. Are you and Sharkey going to match us if she doesn’t?” Caitlin nodded at Sharkey, who looked at Vix for confirmation. She gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re on,” Sharkey told the Chicago Boys. For two nights the four of them pulled chairs up to the card table and watched Vix, as if she were Bobby Fischer. But with everyone staring she

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  III [image "Images" file=Image00012.jpg] WELCH BACK IN BATTLE MOUNTAIN, we had stopped naming the Walls family cars, because they were all such heaps that Dad said they didn’t deserve names. Mom said that when she was growing up on the ranch, they never named the cattle, because they knew they would have to kill them. If we didn’t name the car, we didn’t feel as sad when we had to abandon it. So the Piggy Bank Special was just the Oldsmobile, and we never said the name with any fondness or even pity. That Oldsmobile was a clunker from the moment we bought it. The first time it conked out, we were still an hour shy of the New Mexico border. Dad stuck his head under the hood, tinkered with the engine, and got it going, but it broke down again a couple of hours later. Dad got it running—“More like limping,” he said—but it never went any faster than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Also, the hood kept popping up, so we had to tie it down with a rope. We steered clear of tollbooths by taking two-lane back roads, where we usually had a long line of drivers behind us, honking in exasperation. When one of the Oldsmobile’s windows stopped rolling up in Oklahoma, we taped garbage bags over it. We slept in the car every night, and after arriving late in Muskogee and parking on an empty downtown street, we woke up to find a bunch of people surrounding the car, little kids pressing their noses against the windows and grown-ups shaking their heads and grinning. Mom waved at the crowd. “You know you’re down and out when Okies laugh at you,” she said. With our garbage-bag-taped window, our roped-down hood, and the art supplies tied to the roof, we’d out-Okied the Okies. The thought gave her a fit of the giggles. I pulled a blanket over my head and refused to come out until we were beyond the Muskogee city limits. “Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy,” Mom told me. “You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.” • • • It took us a month to cross the country. We might as well have been traveling in a Conestoga wagon. Mom also kept insisting that we make scenic detours to broaden our horizons. We drove down to see the Alamo—“Davy Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them,” Mom said, “for stealing this land from the Mexicans”—and over to Beaumont, where the oil rigs bobbed like giant birds. In Louisiana, Mom had us climb up on the roof of the car and pull down tufts of Spanish moss hanging from the tree branches. After crossing the Mississippi, we swung north toward Kentucky, then east. Instead of the flat desert edged by craggy mountains, the land rolled and dipped like a sheet when you shook it clean.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Even within the theories that maintain a highly qualified or situated subject, the subject still encounters its discursively constituted environment in an oppositional epistemological frame. The culturally enmired subject negotiates its constructions, even when those constructions are the very predicates of its own identity. In Beauvoir, for example, there is an “I” that does its gender, that becomes its gender, but that “I,” invariably associated with its gender, is nevertheless a point of agency never fully identifiable with its gender. That cogito is never fully of the cultural world that it negotiates, no matter the narrowness of the ontological distance that separates that subject from its cultural predicates. The theories of feminist identity that elaborate predicates of color, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and able-bodiedness invariably close with an embarrassed “etc.” at the end of the list. Through this horizontal trajectory of adjectives, these positions strive to encompass a situated subject, but invariably fail to be complete. This failure, however, is instructive: what political impetus is to be derived from the exasperated “etc.” that so often occurs at the end of such lines? This is a sign of exhaustion as well as of the illimitable process of signification itself. It is the supplément, the excess that necessarily accompanies any effort to posit identity once and for all. This illimitable et cetera, however, offers itself as a new departure for feminist political theorizing. If identity is asserted through a process of signification, if identity is always already signified, and yet continues to signify as it circulates within various interlocking discourses, then the question of agency is not to be answered through recourse to an “I” that preexists signification. In other words, the enabling conditions for an assertion of “I” are provided by the structure of signification, the rules that regulate the legitimate and illegitimate invocation of that pronoun, the practices that establish the terms of intelligibility by which that pronoun can circulate. Language is not an exterior medium or instrument into which I pour a self and from which I glean a reflection of that self. The Hegelian model of self-recognition that has been appropriated by Marx, Lukacs, and a variety of contemporary liberatory discourses presupposes a potential adequation between the “I” that confronts its world, including its language, as an object, and the “I” that finds itself as an object in that world. But the subject/object dichotomy, which here belongs to the tradition of Western epistemology, conditions the very problematic of identity that it seeks to solve.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Sacudo mi cabeza. Maldito sea su descaro. Me doy la vuelta y vuelvo al almacén de licor, tomando otra caja de cerveza. Después de dejarla en la barra, me dirijo a la mesa donde los chicos todavía están congregados y saco la misma botella de Busch Light que tenía antes. —¿Te quedas? —pregunta Dutch. Me encojo de hombros, mirando a cualquier parte menos a la barra. —Por un rato, supongo. Me bebo la botella en un minuto y no es mi cerveza favorita, pero de repente estoy demasiado avergonzado para ahora ir al bar y pedirle Corona. Debí haber pedido una cuando estuve allí. Sin embargo, una mesera se acerca y estoy a punto de llamar su atención, pero noto que ya se dirige hacia mí con una bandeja de tragos. Es linda con su minifalda negra y chaleco negro, pero no luce mucho más grande que Jordan. Sonríe. —Hola, chicos. —Y luego comienza a descargar su bandeja, acomodando una ronda de tragos frente a nosotros. Tienen rosa o naranja en el fondo con algún tipo de líquido amarillo en la parte superior. —¿Qué es esto? —pregunta Jason Bryant, uno de mis chicos. —Se llama Pastel Volteado de Piña —dice—. Va por cuenta de la casa. Jordan dice que son los favoritos de Pike. Una ronda de risas explota alrededor de la mesa ante el trago “elegante” que ahora todo el mundo cree que bebo y lanzo a Jordan una mirada en la barra. Sonríe, dándome su sonrisa más grande y orgullosa. Y ahora ya no estamos enojados el uno con el otro. Tomando el trago, lo bebo, el alcohol baja como un caramelo y aunque sabe bien, no estoy seguro de cuál es el punto. No puede haber suficiente alcohol para sentir algo. Aunque estoy seguro que será un chiste muy exitoso si alguna otra vez decido unirme a los chicos para tomar una copa. Después de aproximadamente una hora y otra cerveza, la multitud se ha reducido un poco y estoy bastante animado con la música de los 80s. Jordan parece estar bien y no estoy seguro de por qué pensé que necesitaba protección. Simplemente debería irme.