Embarrassment

Passages

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

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• From Educated (2018)

  He said Jewish bankers in Europe had signed secret agreements to start World War II, and that they had colluded with Jews in America to pay for it. They had engineered the Holocaust, he said, because they would benefit financially from worldwide disorder. They had sent their own people to the gas chambers for money. These ideas were familiar to me, but it took me a moment to remember where I’d heard them: in a lecture Dr. Kerry had given on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . The Protocols, published in 1903, purported to be a record of a secret meeting of powerful Jews planning world domination. The document was discredited as a fabrication but still it spread, fueling anti-Semitism in the decades before World War II. Adolf Hitler had written about the Protocols in Mein Kampf, claiming they were authentic, that they revealed the true nature of the Jewish people. Dad was talking loudly, at a volume that would have suited a mountainside but was thunderous in the small restaurant. People at nearby tables had halted their own conversations and were sitting in silence, listening to ours. I regretted having chosen a restaurant so near my apartment. Dad moved on from World War II to the United Nations, the European Union, and the imminent destruction of the world. He spoke as if the three were synonyms. The curry arrived and I focused my attention on it. Mother had grown tired of the lecture, and asked Dad to talk about something else. “But the world is about to end!” he said. He was shouting now. “Of course it is,” Mother said. “But let’s not discuss it over dinner.” I put down my fork and stared at them. Of all the strange statements from the past half hour, for some reason this was the one that shocked me. The mere fact of them had never shocked me before. Everything they did had always made sense to me, adhering to a logic I understood. Perhaps it was the backdrop: Buck’s Peak was theirs and it camouflaged them, so that when I saw them there, surrounded by the loud, sharp relics of my childhood, the setting seemed to absorb them. At least it absorbed the noise. But here, so near the university, they seemed so unreal as to be almost mythic. Dad looked at me, waiting for me to give an opinion, but I felt alienated from myself. I didn’t know who to be. On the mountain I slipped thoughtlessly into the voice of their daughter and acolyte. But here, I couldn’t seem to find the voice that, in the shadow of Buck’s Peak, came easily. We walked to my apartment and I showed them my room. Mother shut the door, revealing a poster of Martin Luther King Jr. that I’d put up four years before, when I’d learned of the civil rights movement. “Is that Martin Luther King?” Dad said.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He was perturbed, he said, by all he was reading about this case in the local newspapers. He was damned if he was going to preside over a media circus. He ordered us to cease and desist discussing the case outside the courthouse. We nodded. Yes, Your Honor. Johnson sat behind our table, often sending notes to Cousin Houser, and always reading a novel during sidebars and breaks. After court adjourned each day, he’d unwind by taking a stroll around downtown, visiting different sporting goods stores, checking on our sales. (He also did this every time he found himself in a new city.) Early on he reported back that Nikes were selling like crazy, thanks to Bowerman’s waffle trainer. The shoe had just hit the market, and it was sold out everywhere, meaning we were outpacing Onitsuka, even Puma. The shoe was such a hit that we could envision, for the first time, one day approaching Adidas’s sales numbers. Johnson got to talking with one store manager, an old friend, who knew the trial was under way. “How’s it going?” the store manager said. “Going well,” Johnson said. “So well, in fact, we withdrew our settlement offer.” First thing the next morning, as we gathered in the courtroom, each of us sipping our coffee, we noticed an unfamiliar face at the defense table. There were the five lawyers… and one new guy? Johnson turned, saw, and went white. “Oh… shit,” he said. In a frantic whisper he told us that the new guy was the store manager… with whom he’d inadvertently discussed the trial. Now Cousin Houser and Strasser went white. The three of us looked at each other, and looked at Johnson, and in unison we turned and looked at James the Just. He was banging his gavel and clearly about to explode. He stopped banging. Silence filled the courtroom. Now he started yelling. He spent a full twenty minutes tearing into us. One day after his gag order, he said, one day , someone on Team Blue Ribbon had walked into a local store and run his mouth. We stared straight ahead, like naughty children, wondering if we were about to be a mistrial. But as the judge wound down his tirade, I thought I detected the tiniest twinkle in his eye. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, James the Just is more performer than ogre. Johnson redeemed himself with his testimony. Articulate, dazzlingly anal about the tiniest details, he described the Boston and the Cortez better than anyone else in the world could, including me. Hilliard tried and tried to break him, and couldn’t. What a pleasure it was to watch Hilliard bang his head against that cement-like Johnson unflappability. Stretch versus the crab was less of a mismatch. Next we called Bowerman to the stand. I had high hopes for my old coach, but he just wasn’t himself that day.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  That first night we gave the same presentation at a formal dinner, in Midtown, before twice as many bankers. Cocktails were served beforehand. Hayes had one too many. This time, when he stood to speak, he decided to improvise, to free-style. “I’ve been around these guys a long time,” he said, laughing, “the core of the company, you might say, and I’m here to tell you, haha, they’re all chronic unemployables.” Dry coughs. A throat in the back was cleared. A lone cricket chirped. Then died. Somewhere, far off, one person laughed like a loon. To this day I think it was Johnson. Money was no laughing matter to these people, and a public offering of this size was not the occasion for jokes. I sighed, looked down at my note card. If Hayes had driven a bulldozer through the room, it could hardly have been worse. Later that night I took him aside and told him I thought it was best if he didn’t speak anymore. Johnson and I would handle the formal presentations. But we’d still need him for the Q and A sessions. Hayes looked at me, blinked once. He understood. “I thought you were going to send me home,” he said. “No,” I said, “you need to be part of this.” We continued to Chicago, then Dallas, then Houston, then San Francisco. We went on to Los Angeles, then Seattle. At each stop we grew more tired, almost weepy with fatigue. Johnson and I especially. A strange sentimentality was stealing over us. On the airplanes, in the hotel bars, we talked about our salad days. His endless letters. Please send encouraging words. My silence. We talked about the name Nike coming to him in a dream. We talked about Stretch, and Giampietro, and the Marlboro Man, and all the different times I’d jerked him back and forth across the country. We talked about the day he was almost strung up by his Exeter employees, when their paychecks had bounced. “After all that,” Johnson said one day in the back of a town car, headed to the next meeting, “and now we’re the toasts of Wall Street.” I looked at him. Things do change. But he hadn’t. He now reached into his bag, took out a book, and began to read. The road show ended the day before Thanksgiving. I vaguely remember a turkey, some cranberries, my family around me. I vaguely remember being aware that it was an anniversary of sorts. I’d first flown to Japan on Thanksgiving Day, 1962. Over dinner my father had a thousand questions about the public offering. My mother had none. She said she’d always known it would happen, ever since the day she bought a pair of seven-dollar Limber Ups. They were understandably feeling reflective, congratulatory, but I quickly hushed them, begged them not to be premature. The game was still on. The race was afoot.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And the initial embarrassment I had felt was completely gone: It was always the same scene, the man never touched either of us, he merely sat staring. Once he even took a picture of us at the table. By now Pete had learned how to play checkers. And one afternoon, strangely—as Pete and I sat on the bed playing checkers for much longer than we ever had before, as if there had been no third party, no “performance,” actually enjoying it—with startling suddenness “Mom” abandoned his role as watcher, as doting mother, and nervously, claiming A Huge Headache, he asked us to leave. He folded the board hurriedly and abruptly dumped the checkers into their box. As we left, he almost slammed the door. “What bugged him?” Pete asked; then, shrugging, dismissing it, “I guess he did have a bad headache—shes kinda weird, anyway.... Fuck-im.” We didnt go back. 3 I also learned not always to trust Pete. One sharply cold windy Sunday afternoon—the clouds sweeping the newyork sky like sheets—I saw him coming toward me where I was standing. “You wanna score?” he says. “See that old cat over there?” He pointed to a small mousy man a few feet away. “He wants us both to come over to his house. Hes only good for five,” he explained, adding quickly when he saw me hesitating: “but most of the time hell lay more if he digs you.... Cummon, man,” he coaxed me. “Lets go with him. It’s a draggy day anyhow. And anyway, we get to eat there real good.” He adds, smiling secretly. “And we dont have to do much. Oh, hes Special!” Remembering the man I had walked around Times Square with, wearing a jacket and cap, I began to laugh. “Not that,” Pete says, “we wont be walking around Times Square in leather.” Without going to him, Pete motions yes to the man, who goes down the steps, into the subway. Pete and I follow. I was walking fast, to catch up with the man. “Cool it,” Pete explains. “I know where we get off.” Without glancing back, the man gets in one of the cars, and we got in another. “He doesnt want anyone to see him leaving with guys,” Pete said. I had been through this before: Unlike the black-dressed Al, who walked you around for an hour through Times Square, some scores dont want to be seen leaving the street with a younger man. “He lives in—hold on— Queens!” Pete laughed. “And dig this, spote: I think he teaches at Queens College. They even got a school now,” he says, shaking his head. We got off at Queens Plaza, and followed the man to a large apartment house. We waited at the corner for a few minutes, and then we walked into the lobby.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I am very pleased to have another girl about the place - two girls, I should say - flashy or otherwise.’ As she spoke she gave me a quick, satisfied glance that showed plain enough which kind she thought I was; then - as Kitty took. the seat beside her, leaving me with Percy for a neighbour - she went on: ‘Walter says you will be very big, Miss Butler. I hear you’re to start at the Star tomorrow night. I remember that as a very fine hall.’ ‘So I’ve heard. Do call me Kitty...’ ‘And what about you, Miss Astley?’ asked Percy as they chatted. ‘Have you been a dresser for long? You seem awful young for it.’ ‘I’m not really a dresser at all, yet. Kitty is still training me up-’ ‘Training you up?’ This was Tootsie again. ‘Take my advice and don’t train her too well, Kitty, or some other artiste’ll take her from you. I’ve seen that happen.’ ‘Take her from me?’ said Kitty with a smile. ‘Oh, I couldn’t have that. It is Nan that brings me my good luck...’ I looked at my plate, and felt myself redden, until Mrs Dendy, still busy with her platter, held a piece of quivering meat my way and coughed: ‘A bit of tongue, Miss Astley dear?’ The supper-talk was all, of course, theatrical tittle-tattle, and terribly dense and strange to my ears. There was no one in that house, it seemed, who had not some link with the profession. Even plain little Minnie - the eighth member of our party, the girl who had brought us tea on our arrival and had returned now to help Mrs Dendy dish and serve and clear the plates - even she belonged to a ballet troupe, and had a contract at a concert hall in Lambeth. Why, even the dog, Bransby, which soon nosed its way into the parlour to beg for scraps, and to lean his slavering jaw against Professor Emery’s knee - even he was an old artiste, and had once toured the South Coast in a dancing dog act, and had a stage name: ‘Archie’. It was a Sunday night, and nobody had a hall to rush to after supper; no one seemed to have anything to do, indeed, except sit and smoke and gossip.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Besides, as accountants went, Nelson was a standout. He’d become a manager in just five years, which was ridiculously fast. And he’d been valedictorian at his high school. (Alas, we didn’t find out until later that he went to high school in eastern Montana; his class had five people.) On the minus side of the ledger, because he’d become an accountant so fast, Nelson was young. Maybe too young to handle something as big as the launch of an apparel line. But I told myself that his youth wouldn’t be a critical factor, because starting an apparel line was relatively easy. After all, there wasn’t any technology or physics involved. As Strasser had once quipped, “There’s no such thing as air shorts.” Then, during one of my first meetings with Nelson, right after I’d hired him, I noticed… he had absolutely no sense of style. The more I looked him over, up and down, side to side, the more I realized that he might have been the worst dresser I’d ever met. Worse than Strasser. Even Nelson’s car, I noticed one day in the parking lot, was a hideous shade of brown. When I mentioned this to Nelson, he laughed. He had the nerve to brag that every car he’d ever owned had been the same brown. “I might have made a mistake with Nelson,” I confided to Hayes. I WAS NO fashion plate. But I knew how to wear a decent suit. And because my company was launching an apparel line, I now started paying closer attention to what I wore, and what those around me wore. On the second front I was appalled. Bankers and investors, reps from Nissho, all kinds of people we needed to impress, were passing through our new halls, and whenever they saw Strasser in his Hawaiian shirts, or Hayes in his bulldozer-driving outfits, they did triple-takes. Sometimes our eccentricity was funny. (A top executive at Foot Locker said, “We think of you guys as gods—until we see your cars.”) But most times it was embarrassing. And potentially damaging. Thus, around Thanksgiving, 1978, I instituted a strict company dress code. The reaction wasn’t terribly enthusiastic. Corporate bullshit, many grumbled. I was mocked. Mostly I was ignored. To even a casual observer, it became clear that Strasser started dressing worse. When he showed up to work one day in baggy-seated Bermuda shorts, as if he were walking a Geiger counter down the beach, I couldn’t stand by. This was rank insubordination. I intercepted him in the halls and called him out. “You need to wear a coat and tie!” I said. “We’re not a coat-and-tie company!” he shot back. “We are now.” He walked away from me. In the coming days Strasser continued to dress with a studied, confrontational casualness. So I fined him. I instructed the bookkeeper to deduct seventy-five dollars from Strasser’s next paycheck.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Just then, at that exact moment, I turned. Coming toward me was Nelson, dressed worse than the lot of them. Polyester bell-bottoms, a pink silk shirt open to his navel. Strasser and Hayes were one thing, but where the heck did this new guy get off protesting my dress code? After I’d just hired him? I pointed at the door and sent him home, too. From the confused, horrified look on his face I realized he wasn’t protesting. He was just naturally unstylish. My new head of apparel. I retreated that day to my baseball-mitt chair and stared out the window for a long, long time. Sports things. I knew what was coming. And, oh, it came. A few weeks later Nelson stood before us and made his formal presentation of the first-ever line of Nike apparel. Beaming with pride, grinning with excitement, he laid all the new clothes on the conference table. Soiled workout shorts, ragged T-shirts, wrinkled hoodies—each putrid item looked as if it had been donated to, or pilfered from, a Dumpster. The topper: Nelson pulled each item from a dirty brown paper bag, which looked as if it also contained his lunch. At first we were in shock. None of us knew what to say. Finally, someone chuckled. Strasser, probably. Then someone haw-hawed. Woodell, maybe. Then the dam burst. Everyone was laughing, rocking back and forth, falling out of their chairs. Nelson saw that he’d goofed, and in a panic he started stuffing the clothes back into the paper bag, which ripped apart, which made everyone laugh harder. I was laughing, too, harder than anyone, but at any moment I felt as if I might start sobbing. Shortly after that day I transferred Nelson to the newly formed production department, where his considerable accounting talents helped him do a great job. Then I quietly shifted Woodell to apparel. He did his typically flawless job, assembling a line that gained immediate attention and respect in the industry. I asked myself why I didn’t just let Woodell do everything. Including my job. Maybe he could fly back east and get the Feds off my back. AMID ALL THIS turmoil, amid all this uncertainty about the future, we needed a morale booster, and we got it at the tail end of 1978, when we finally brought out the Tailwind. Developed in Exeter, made in Japan, the brainchild of M. Frank Rudy was more than a shoe. It was a work of postmodern art. Big, shiny, bright silver, filled with Rudy’s patented air soles, it featured twelve different product innovations. We hyped it to the heavens, with a splashy ad campaign, and tied the launch to the Honolulu Marathon, where many runners would be wearing it. Everyone flew out to Hawaii for the launch, which turned into a drunken bacchanal, and a mock coronation of Strasser.

• From City of Night (1963)

  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. “Now a nice rest,” the man said. His voice shook slightly, as when he asked us to get “Comfortable.” We went into the bedroom, where there were twin beds. Pete lay in one, I lay in the other. The man came in with a chair, which he stations between the two beds. “Now take a long rest,” he said. Pete is looking at me steadily, as if to remind me to play along; winks—then pretends to fall asleep immediately. He even snored a couple of times. I lay in bed, my eyes supposedly closed, but I was glancing at the man: He sat on the chair, his chin propped on his hands: staring fixedly from one to the other; occasionally his face would brighten up benevolently like a mother watching over her adored children.... After about 15 minutes, he “woke” us, and we sat in the bedroom, on one bed, Pete and I, and played checkers, while the man watched us with the fascinated attention of a child enjoying a cartoon. Pete couldnt play checkers, and we sat there merely moving them back and forth. “We’ll have to go now, Mom,” Pete said finally. I looked at him startled. Had he called him “Mom”? Pete nods at me, indicating I must do the same. I couldnt bring myself to call him “Mom.” The old man looked at me with a hurt look. “Well have to go now, Mom,” Pete repeated. He gives me an exasperated look. “Oh, must you?” the man said. “Im so sorry you cant stay longer.” He removed the apron, rubbed his hands on it, folded it neatly, and he went into the kitchen. Pete follows, him. I can hear voices. Then Pete returns, hands me $5.00. “You fucked up, spote,” he told me, shaking his head. “You didnt call him Mom. Just five bucks.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I wanted to raise it to my own face - and was about to, I think, when the clatter of the hall pierced my brain at last, and made me look about me and see the inquisitive, indulgent looks that were turned my way, and the nods and the chuckles and the winks that met my up-turned gaze. I reddened, and shrank back into the shadows of the box. With my back turned to the bank of prying eyes I slipped the rose into the belt of my dress, and pulled on my gloves. My heart, which had begun to pound when Miss Butler had stepped towards me across the stage, was still beating painfully hard; but as I left my box and made my way towards the crowded foyer and the street beyond, it began to feel light, and glad, and I began to want to smile. I had to place a hand before my lips so as not to appear an idiot, smiling to myself as if at nothing. Just as I was about to step into the street, I heard my name called. I turned, and saw Tony, crossing the lobby with his arm raised to catch my eye. It was a relief to have a friend, at last, to smile at. I took the hand away, and grinned like a monkey. ‘Hey, hey,’ he said breathlessly when he reached my side, ‘someone’s merry, and I know why! How come girls never look so gay as that, when I give them roses?’ I blushed again, and returned my fingers to my lips, but said nothing. Tony smirked. ‘I’ve got a message for you,’ he said then. ‘Someone to see you.’ I raised my eyebrows; I thought perhaps Alice or Freddy were here, come to meet me. Tony’s smirk broadened. ‘Miss Butler,’ he said, ‘would like a word.’ My own grin faded at once. ‘A word?’ I said. ‘Miss Butler? With me?’ ‘That’s right. She asked Ike, the fly-man, who was the girl that sat in the box every night, on her own, and Ike said you was a pal of mine, and to ask me. So she did. And I told her. And now she wants to see you.’ ‘What for? Oh, Tony, what on earth for? What did you tell her?’ I caught hold of his arm and gripped it hard. ‘Nothing, except the truth -’ I gave his arm a twist. The truth was terrible. I didn’t want her to know about the shivering and the whispering, the flame and the streaming light. Tony prised my fingers from his sleeve, and held my hand. ‘Just that you like her,’ he said simply. ‘Now will you come along, or what?’ I did not know what to say.

• From City of Night (1963)

  When he presents me to myself in the mirror (again: “You as you would like to be!”), Im an exaggerated cowboy, with spurs, chaps. Looking at myself, I feel slightly silly; but soon the seducing attention obliterates the feeling of absurdity: I feed hungrily on his glorified adulation, as Neil, speaking this time in a Western drawl, prepares to take the pictures. We move into the other room. The cowboy first. A Prussian officer. A pirate. He poses each scene at the point of arrested violence. A whip in my hand as if about to unfurl at him behind the camera. Boots always prominently displayed. Fists clenched. Body lunging. Now he brings in one of the manikins—heterogeneously “dressed up”—studs, straps, chains.... Neil executes—crouched, contorted, sweating—“to get the feel of it,” he explained—the cringing positions that the dummy will ultimately assume, menaced, for the pictures. The camera keeps clicking as Neil vacillates from acolyte to High Priest. “Now I’ll improvise!” he exclaimed joyously. When he was ready to take the picture, he announced triumphantly: “An Executioner!” And Im standing before the camera in black tights, boots to the hips, a leather vest, a black braided whip in a swirl about the boots. Im surrounded by the shield, the lance, the metal sun, and a long medieval axe propped against the wall. The shutter closes.... Neil rushed toward me, his eyes begging, and in a terrifying, shaken voice he pleaded with me to execute with the whip the movement which the camera had just frozen. But I didnt. He was disappointed and nervous. Sulkingly, he went about preparing lunch. Then something strange happened: As he stood over the stove, dressed as he was in the Western clothes—and an apron over all of that—he turned to me (dressed now in my own clothes—although he had insisted I leave the “Executioner’s” costume on), and he asked me this: “Tell me truthfully: Do you find me effeminate?” I studied him as he stood by the stove. That apron over the costume—... He was holding the spoon limply in the air. Realizing that, he grasped it tightly. Seeing the look he was throwing at me, exhorting me to say what he wanted to hear, I said: “Of course not, Neil.” “Thank you very much,” he said almost humbly. Shrugging his shoulders, dipping vigorously into whatever he was cooking, he laughed goodhumoredly, looking very much like that ebullient, beer-drinking Bavarian. “One time,” he said, “I was walking along Market Street—oh, I was really Dressed Up—a cowboy! And a carload of teenage boys drove by and shouted: ‘Hi Tex!’” I realized the telling of this story amounted to presenting his credentials for “realness.” Yes, having seen him in the extreme clothes, I cant help thinking that what hes just presented as proof of his Realness had been, instead, more of a derisively hurled insult.... He was waiting for me to comment on the story.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  It’s covered in germs, I know, but I must stop the bleeding. Must. Stop. The. Blood. And blood pours from me all the long way back to the car, and all the way to Stuart’s house. I can never go back there, I think. Never, ever again. In March 1949, the publisher Wren Howard of Jonathan Cape travelled to the Channel Islands to stay at White’s new home. White had moved to the island of Alderney: it was a perfect refuge from the taxman and the world. He’d bought a white three-storeyed house in St Anne’s with magnolia wainscoted walls. He’d filled it with new things: his own surrealist paintings, a boudoir grand piano, silver candlesticks and a statuette of the Emperor Hadrian. There were dark curtains printed with bouquets of ghostly silver roses, jazz records, Jacobean chairs, and a sofa, towards which White ushered Howard to sit. Howard sat. It was wildly uncomfortable. He got up and examined the seat. There was something beneath the cushion. He reached under it and pulled out a thick pile of papers. He asked White what it was. White looked worried. It was the manuscript to a book he had written about hawks, he explained. He did not want it published because after it was written he became a good falconer, an authority on the subject, and there were things in it that were embarrassing to remember. Besides, the hawk had been lost. Howard leafed through the first few pages and was intrigued. He took it upstairs and read it overnight. In the morning he insisted on taking it back to London, for he was sure it should be published. White balked at the idea, but as the weeks went by, Howard and his friends persuaded him, and he consented to its publication on one condition: that he could write a postscript explaining how he ought to have trained the hawk, in the light of his later experience. When The Goshawk was published in 1951 it was not a bestseller, but it brought an extraordinary number of letters from readers. Some were congratulatory, others strange: one offered White an eagle. Some disliked the book greatly. And one of these letters White never forgot. It touched a very raw nerve.

• From Educated (2018)

  We’d been given CDs with music to listen to, and a book with pictures of art to look at. It hadn’t occurred to me to read the art book any more than it had to read the CDs. “I thought we were just supposed to look at the pictures.” This sounded stupid when said aloud. “So when the syllabus assigned pages fifty through eighty-five, you didn’t think you had to read anything?” “I looked at the pictures,” I said again. It sounded worse the second time. Vanessa began thumbing through the book, which suddenly looked very much like a textbook. “That’s your problem then,” she said. “You have to read the textbook.” As she said this, her voice lilted with sarcasm, as if this blunder, after everything else—after joking about the Holocaust and glancing at her test —was too much and she was done with me. She said it was time for me to go; she had to study for another class. I picked up my notebook and left. “Read the textbook” turned out to be excellent advice. On the next exam I scored a B, and by the end of the semester I was pulling A’s. It was a miracle and I interpreted it as such. I continued to study until two or three A.M. each night, believing it was the price I had to pay to earn God’s support. I did well in my history class, better in English, and best of all in music theory. A full-tuition scholarship was unlikely, but I could maybe get half. During the final lecture in Western Civ, the professor announced that so many students had failed the first exam, he’d decided to drop it altogether. And poof. My failing grade was gone. I wanted to punch the air, give Vanessa a high five. Then I remembered that she didn’t sit with me anymore.

• From City of Night (1963)

  It’s a moderate-priced apartment house, very quiet, softly lighted. We reached the second floor, and along the hallway, a door was open slightly. There stood the little man beaming at us sweetly. He had taken off his coat, and he was wearing a gayly colored apron now. “Hello, hello, hello!” he chirped merrily. “Im so glad you boys could come. I was hardly expecting—” Pete whispered to me (I couldnt see how the man could help but hear him, but possibly neither cared): “Play it Cool and go along with it.” At times Pete seemed to have an enormous tolerance for the quirks of the people he knew: a tolerance which could instantly turn into intolerance when he felt he’d been had. “Itll be just a few minutes, boys,” the old man announced, “and then we’ll have a Lovely dinner. You boys must be famished, and I just happen to have some Very Nice Steaks. Now,” he says, and his voice trembles slightly, “you boys get—uh—Comfortable.” He stood watching us intently. I glanced at Pete, and he had begun to unbutton his shirt. “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.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I remembered very clearly the weight and scent of that suit, the feel of Kitty’s shoulder beneath my hand. Even so, it was like gazing into someone else’s past, and it made me shiver. The postcard was seized from me, then, first by Florence - who bent her head to it and studied it almost as intently as I had - then by Ruth and Nora, and Annie and Miss Raymond, and finally by Jenny, who passed it on to her friends. ‘Fancy us still having that pinned up,’ she said. ‘I remember the gal what put it there: she was rather keen on you - indeed, you was always something of a favourite, at the Boy. She got it from a lady in the Burlington Arcade. Did you know there was a lady there, selling pictures such as yours, to interested gals?’ I shook my head - in wonder, to think of all the times that I had trolled up and down the Burlington Arcade for interested gents, and never noticed that particular lady. ‘What a treat, Miss King,’ cried someone else then, ‘to find you here...’ There was a general murmuring as the implications of this comment were digested; ‘I cannot say I never wondered,’ I heard someone say. Then Jenny leaned near to me again, and cocked her head. ‘What about Miss Butler, if you don’t mind my asking? I heard she was a bit of a tom, herself.’ ‘That’s right,’ said another girl, ‘I heard that too.’ I hesitated. Then: ‘You heard wrong,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t.’ ‘Not just a bit... ?’ ‘Not at all.’ Jenny shrugged. ‘Well, that’s too bad.’ I looked at my lap, suddenly upset; worse, however, was to follow, for at that moment one of the gay girls thrust her way between Ruth and Nora to call, ‘Oh, Miss King, won’t you give us a song?’ Her cry was taken up by a dozen throats - ‘Oh yes, Miss King, do!’ - and, as in a terrible dream, a broken-down old piano was suddenly produced, it seemed, from nowhere, and wheeled over the gritty floorboards. At once, a woman sat down before it, cracked her knuckles, and played a staggering scale. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘I can’t!’ I looked wildly at Florence - she was studying me as if she had never seen my face before. Jenny cried carelessly: ‘Oh, go on, Nan, be a sport, for the gals at the Boy. What was that one you used to sing - about winking at the pretty ladies, with your hand hanging on to your sovereign ... ?’ One voice, and then another and another, picked it up. Annie had taken a swig of her beer, and now almost choked on it. ‘Lord!’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘Did you sing that?

• From Educated (2018)

  same as when we were seventeen.” — MY PARENTS ARRIVED AS the leaves began to turn, when campus was at its most beautiful, the reds and yellows of autumn mingling with the burgundy of colonial brick. With his hayseed grammar, denim shirt and lifetime-member NRA cap, Dad would have always been out of place at Harvard, but his scarring intensified the effect. I had seen him many times in the years since the explosion, but it wasn’t until he came to Harvard, and I saw him set against my life there, that I realized how severely he’d disfigured himself. That awareness reached me through the eyes of others—strangers whose faces changed when he passed them in the street, who turned to get a second look. Then I would look at him, too, and notice how the skin on his chin was taut and plastic; how his lips lacked natural roundness; how his cheeks sucked inward at an angle that was almost skeletal. His right hand, which he often raised to point at some feature or other, was knotted and twisted, and when I gazed at it, set against Harvard’s antediluvian steeples and columns, it seemed to me the claw of some mythical creature. * Dad had little interest in the university, so I took him into the city. I taught him how to take the T—how to feed his card through the slot and push through the rotating gate. He laughed out loud, as if it were a fabulous technology. A homeless man passed through our subway car and asked for a dollar. Dad gave him a crisp fifty. “You keep that up in Boston, you won’t have any money left,” I said. “Doubt it,” Dad said with a wink. “The business is rolling. We got more than we can spend!” Because his health was fragile, my father took the bed. I had purchased an air mattress, which I gave to Mother. I slept on the tile floor. Both my parents snored loudly, and I lay awake all night. When the sun finally rose I stayed on the floor, eyes closed, breathing slow, deep breaths, while my parents ransacked my mini fridge and discussed me in hushed tones. “The Lord has commanded me to testify,” Dad said. “She may yet be brought to the Lord.” While they plotted how to reconvert me, I plotted how to let them. I

• From Educated (2018)

  could join.” That Wednesday, I left Randy’s early and pedaled to the gas station. I wore jeans, a large gray T-shirt, and steel-toed boots; the other girls wore black leotards and sheer, shimmering skirts, white tights and tiny ballet shoes the color of taffy. Caroline was younger than Mary. Her makeup was flawless and gold hoops flashed through chestnut curls. She arranged us in rows, then showed us a short routine. A song played from a boom box in the corner. I’d never heard it before but the other girls knew it. I looked in the mirror at our reflection, at the twelve girls, sleek and shiny, pirouetting blurs of black, white and pink. Then at myself, large and gray. When the lesson finished, Caroline told me to buy a leotard and dance shoes. “I can’t,” I said. “Oh.” She looked uncomfortable. “Maybe one of the girls can lend you one.” She’d misunderstood. She thought I didn’t have money. “It isn’t modest,” I said. Her lips parted in surprise. These Californian Moyles, I thought. “Well, you can’t dance in boots,” she said. “I’ll talk to your mother.” A few days later, Mother drove me forty miles to a small shop whose shelves were lined with exotic shoes and strange acrylic costumes. Not one was modest. Mother went straight to the counter and told the attendant we needed a black leotard, white tights and jazz shoes. “Keep those in your room,” Mother said as we left the store. She didn’t need to say anything else. I already understood that I should not show the leotard to Dad. That Wednesday, I wore the leotard and tights with my gray T-shirt over the top. The T-shirt reached almost to my knees, but even so I was ashamed to see so much of my legs. Dad said a righteous woman never shows anything above her ankle. The other girls rarely spoke to me, but I loved being there with them. I loved the sensation of conformity. Learning to dance felt like learning to belong. I could memorize the movements and, in doing so, step into their minds, lunging when they lunged, reaching my arms upward in time with

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had put on a pair of my own plain black boots and piled my hair up inside a hat. I had placed a cigarette behind my ear - I had even taken off my stays, to make my flat chest flatter. I looked a little like my brother Davy - only, perhaps, rather handsomer. I shook my head. Four nights before I had stood in the same spot, marvelling to see myself dressed as a grown-up woman. Now, there had been one quiet visit to a tailor’s shop and here I was, a boy - a boy with buttons and a belt. The thought, once again, was a saucy one; I felt I ought not to encourage it. I went down at once to the parlour, put my hands in my pockets and posed before them all, and made ready to receive their praises. When I stood turning upon the rug, however, Walter was rather subdued, and Mrs Dendy thoughtful. When, at their request, I took Kitty’s arm and we sang a quick chorus, Walter stood back, frowned, and shook his head. ‘It’s not quite right,’ he said. ‘It grieves me to say it, but - it just won’t do.’ I turned, in dismay, to Kitty. She was fiddling with her necklace, sucking at the chain and tapping with the pearl upon a tooth. She, too, looked grave. She said, ‘There is something queer about it; but I can’t say what...’ I gazed down at myself. I took my hands from my pockets and folded my arms, and Walter shook his head again. ‘It’s a perfect fit,’ he said. ‘The colour is good. And yet there’s something - unpleasing - about it. What is it?’ Mrs Dendy gave a cough. ‘Take a step,’ she said to me. I did so. ‘Now a turn - that’s right. Now be a dear and light me a fag.’ I did this for her too, then waited while she drew on her cigarette and coughed again. ‘She’s too real,’ she said at last, to Walter. ‘Too real?’ ‘Too real. She looks like a boy. Which I know she is supposed to - but, if you follow me, she looks like a real boy. Her face and her figure and her bearing on her feet. And that ain’t quite the idea now, is it?’ Now I felt more awkward than ever. I looked at Kitty and she gave a nervous kind of laugh.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Outside, I put on my sunglasses and walked past a group of older men who had set out their lawn chairs on the sidewalk for a game of bid whist. It was a gorgeous day, seventy-five in late September. Instead of driving straight to my next appointment, I decided to linger, letting my legs hang out the open car door, watching the old men play their game. They didn’t talk much, these men. They reminded me of the men Gramps used to play bridge with—the same thick, stiff hands; the same thin, natty socks and improbably slender shoes; the same beads of sweat along the folds of their necks, just beneath their flat caps. I tried to remember the names of those men back in Hawaii, what they had done for a living, wondering what residue of themselves they’d left in me. They had been mysteries to me then, those old black men; that mystery was part of what had brought me to Chicago. And now, now that I was leaving Chicago, I wondered if I understood them any better than before. I hadn’t told anyone except Johnnie about my decision. I figured there would be time for an announcement later; I wouldn’t even hear back from the law schools until January. Our new youth program would be up and running by then; I would have raised next year’s budget, hopefully brought in a few more churches. I had told Johnnie only because I needed to know whether he’d be willing to stay on and take my place as lead organizer—and maybe, too, because he was my friend and I needed to explain myself. Except Johnnie hadn’t seen the need for explanations. The minute I told him the schools to which I’d applied—Harvard, Yale, Stanford—he had grinned and slapped me on the back. “I knew it!” he shouted. “Knew what?” “That it was just a matter of time, Barack. Before you were outta here.” “Why’d you think that?” Johnnie shook his head and laughed. “Damn, Barack …’cause you got options, that’s why. ’Cause you can leave. I mean, I know you’re a conscientious brother and all that, but when somebody’s got a choice between Harvard and Roseland, it’s only so long somebody’s gonna keep choosing Roseland.” Again he shook his head. “Harvard! Goddamn. I just hope you remember your friends when you up in that fancy office downtown.” For some reason, Johnnie’s laughter had made me defensive. I insisted that I would be coming back to the neighborhood. I told him that I didn’t plan on being dazzled by the wealth and power that Harvard represented, and that he shouldn’t be either. Johnnie put his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, you don’t need to be telling me all this. I ain’t the one going nowhere.” I grew quiet, embarrassed by my outburst. “Yeah, well … I’m just saying that I’ll be back, that’s all. I don’t want you or the leaders to get the wrong idea.”

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  The other kids looked at me as my father stood up, and I held my head stiffly, trying to focus on a vacant point on the blackboard behind him. He had been speaking for some time before I could finally bring myself back to the moment. He was leaning against Miss Hefty’s thick oak desk and describing the deep gash in the earth where mankind had first appeared. He spoke of the wild animals that still roamed the plains, the tribes that still required a young boy to kill a lion to prove his manhood. He spoke of the customs of the Luo, how elders received the utmost respect and made laws for all to follow under great-trunked trees. And he told us of Kenya’s struggle to be free, how the British had wanted to stay and unjustly rule the people, just as they had in America; how many had been enslaved only because of the color of their skin, just as they had in America; but that Kenyans, like all of us in the room, longed to be free and develop themselves through hard work and sacrifice. When he finished, Miss Hefty was absolutely beaming with pride. All my classmates applauded heartily, and a few struck up the courage to ask questions, each of which my father appeared to consider carefully before answering. The bell rang for lunch, and Mr. Eldredge came up to me. “You’ve got a pretty impressive father.” The ruddy-faced boy who had asked about cannibalism said, “Your dad is pretty cool.” And off to one side, I saw Coretta watch my father say good-bye to some of the children. She seemed too intent to smile; her face showed only a look of simple satisfaction. Two weeks later he was gone. In that time, we stand together in front of the Christmas tree and pose for pictures, the only ones I have of us together, me holding an orange basketball, his gift to me, him showing off the tie I’ve bought him (“Ah, people will know that I am very important wearing such a tie”). At a Dave Brubeck concert, I struggle to sit quietly in the dark auditorium beside him, unable to follow the spare equations of sound that the performers make, careful to clap whenever he claps. For brief spells in the day I will lie beside him, the two of us alone in the apartment sublet from a retired old woman whose name I forget, the place full of quilts and doilies and knitted seat covers, and I read my book while he reads his. He remains opaque to me, a present mass; when I mimic his gestures or turns of phrase, I know neither their origins nor their consequences, can’t see how they play out over time. But I grow accustomed to his company. The day of his departure, as my mother and I helped him pack his bags, he unearthed two records, forty-fives, in dull brown dust jackets.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  The world keeps on spinning and you just proved your humanness. And believe it or not, when you’re not perfect, people like you more. It’s called the pratfall effect, and the idea is that people who are considered competent are actually more likable when they also demonstrate fallibility, whether it’s falling down, dropping something, or flubbing. 98 Even if things don’t go according to plan, people are connecting more to you when you show that you’re just like the rest of us: imperfect. So take your power back. Own your humanness. Embrace the weird. Once you realize that we’re all our own brand of strange and embarrassing, you won’t feel so singled out anymore. And remember—those who judge you have their own internalized pain that is getting projected onto you. Perfectionists often critique other perfectionists and it’s because they view the world with the same harsh eye with which they view themselves. Once you break the cycle and realize that you don’t need to live for that unhealthy gaze, you’ve set yourself free. Commence the happy dance—and please don’t judge me for my moves. A NEW WAVE TO RIDE: Do you notice your appearance, and the potential judgment from others, impact your experience of anxiety? What steps can you take to practice embracing who you are, integrating both acceptance and empowerment with how you see yourself? NO LONGER WEIGHT-ING TO FEEL BETTER Casey came a long way in our work together, and I started to see her give herself permission to unwind from her tightly balled coil of anxiety. However, as with all parts of the therapy process, sometimes the detangling gets too overwhelming. As I warned her, it takes time to develop the skills that come along with confidence building. It’s a practice. I could see that she would get frustrated with herself if she felt that she wasn’t making progress fast enough. I could also see her annoyance with me if I didn’t help her improve at the pace she desired. When I didn’t wave the magic wand that she wanted, she was disappointed. Our patterns of growth are never linear. It comes with a slow and steady pace. Sometimes when anxiety is surging, we want our pain to be resolved once and for all. We get fed up when it doesn’t work that way. Part of Casey’s process was learning how to be patient with herself as she stepped into the person she wanted to become. She redefined her priorities. It was no longer about sculpting an exterior image so that people would hopefully love her. Instead, it was about deeply understanding the person underneath the hair, the makeup, the clothes. Just as her boyfriend knew how much he loved her, she was learning how much she deserved to love herself—regardless of her appearance or her accomplishments. That’s a win in my book. But there was something else that I hoped Casey would get out of our work together.