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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It’s not a crime, is it, to take in sewing, for gentlemen?’She picked up the pair of underthings that I had so recently kicked off, and sniffed at them. ‘These drawers are still warm!’ she said. ‘From the heat of your needle, I suppose you’ll be telling me? From the heat of his needle, more like!’ I opened my mouth - but could find no answer to make her. While I hesitated she stepped to the window and looked out of it. ‘This, I suppose, is where they made their escape. The villains ! Well, they won’t get far, that’s for sure, in their birthday suits!’I looked again at her son. He was gazing at my ankles where they showed beneath my night-gown.‘I’m sorry, Mrs Best,’ I said. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise you!’‘You certainly shan’t do it again, in my house! I want you out of here, Miss Astley, in the morning. I’ve always found you a very peculiar tenant, I don’t mind admitting - and now, to go and try and play the hussy on me like this! I won’t have it; no, certainly I won’t! I warned you when you moved in.’I bowed my head; she turned on her heel. Behind her, her son at last gave me a sneer. ‘Tart,’ he said. Then he spat, and followed his mother into the darkness. Being not exactly overburdened with articles to pack, I was out of the house next morning just as soon as I had washed. Mrs Best curled her lip as I passed by her. Mary, however, gazed at me with a kind of admiration in her eyes, as if awed and impressed that I had proved myself so normal - so spectacularly normal - at the last. I gave her a shilling, and patted her hand. Then I took a final turn around Smithfield Market. It was a warm morning, and the reek of the carcases was terrible, the hum of flies about them as deep and steady as the buzz of a motor; but for all that, I felt a kind of bleak fondness for the place, which I had gazed at, so often, in my weeks of madness.I moved on at last, and left the flies to their breakfast. I had only the vaguest ideas about where I should make for, but I had heard that the streets around King’s Cross were full of rooming-houses, and thought perhaps that I might try my luck up there. In the end, however, I did not get even so far as that. In the window of a shop on the Gray’s Inn Road I saw a little card: Respectible Lady Seeks Fe-Male Lodger, and an address. I gazed at it for a minute or so. The Respectible was off-putting: I couldn’t face another Mrs Best.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Not been herself at all...’ She would have gone on, I think, if there had not, at that moment, come the sound of the front door opening, and then of feet upon the parlour floor.‘Oh hell!’ I said. I put my cup down, gazed wildly about me for a second, then ran past the girl to the pantry door. I didn’t stop to think; I didn’t say a word to her or even look at her. I simply hopped inside the little cupboard, and pulled the door shut behind me. Then I put my ear to it, and listened.‘Is there someone out there?’ It was Florence’s voice. I heard her stepping, cautiously, into the kitchen. Then she must have seen her friend. ‘Annie, oh, it’s you! Thank goodness. For a moment I thought - what’s the matter?’‘I’m not sure.’‘Why do you look so queer? What’s going on? What has happened to the step at the front of the house? And what’s this mess on the stove?’‘Florrie -’‘What?’‘I think I might as well tell you; indeed, I really think I’m quite obliged to tell you...’‘What? You’re frightening me.’‘There’s a girl in your pantry.’There was a silence then, during which I swiftly surveyed my options. They were, I found, very few; so I decided on the noblest. I took hold of the handle of the pantry door, and slowly pushed it open. Florence saw me, and twitched.‘I was just about to leave,’ I said. ‘I swear it.’ I looked at the girl called Annie, who nodded.‘She was,’ she said. ‘She was.’Florence gazed at me. I stepped out of the pantry and edged past her, into the parlour. She frowned.‘What on earth have you been doing?’ she asked, as I searched for my hat. ‘Why does everything look so strange?’ She picked up a box of matches, and lit the two oil-lamps and then a couple of candles. The light was taken up by a thousand polished surfaces, and she started. ‘You have cleaned the house!’‘Only the downstairs rooms. And the yard. And the front step,’ I said, in increasing tones of wretchedness. ‘And I made you supper.’She gaped at me. ‘Why!’‘Your house was dirty. The woman next door said you were famous for it ...’‘You met the woman next door?’‘She gave me some tea.’‘I leave you in my home for one day and you quite transform it. You get yourself in with my neighbours. You’re thick, I suppose, with my best friend. And what has she been telling you?’‘I haven’t told her anything, I’m sure!’ called Annie from the kitchen.I pulled at a thread that had come loose at my cuff. ‘I thought you would be pleased,’ I said quietly, ‘to have a tidy house. I thought -’ I had thought that it would make her like me. In Diana’s world, it would have.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  However, we can group sacred clowns into two major categories: the koshares of the Southwest and the heyokas of the Plains.4 The term koshare is taken from the Pueblo traditions of the American Southwest. Many Native nations in this area have a spirit figure that appears in dance ceremonies whose role could be described as outrageous or provocative. Sometimes these dancers are painted in broad horizontal stripes of white and black. They may act out during the ceremony, teasing the spectators and participants, even to the point of scatological or sexual innuendo. The second term, heyoka , refers to a Plains tradition of visionary men (to my knowledge this was a vision, like the Sun Dance, that came only to men) who became “contraries”—people who do things backwards. A contrary intentionally does the opposite of what is expected. If it is a summer day, he will wear a buffalo robe. If it is cold outside, he will appear with almost nothing on. This behavior originates during a vision quest and continues for as long as the man feels he has the calling to act in a contrary fashion. Both the Pueblo dancers and the Plains contraries can be referred to as sacred clowns because their behavior may seem outrageous, but their intention is quite serious. The Native Covenant understands their role as essential to the development of spiritual wisdom. In the case of the koshares the sudden appearance of a clown who stands out in the midst of a solemn moment breaks the barriers of convention and has the impact of fracturing the religious perceptions of the participants. This is not the kind of sacred clowning that some contemporary Christian churches include to entertain children. The koshares are far different from a Western clown in a red nose and big shoes. With the koshares there is a shock value to the spirit embodied by the clown. There is an intentional effort to draw attention through behavior that creates a disorienting presence as unsettling as it is humorous. Koshares appear around adult themes of fertility and sexuality. They exhibit our mixed attitudes toward subjects that can make us both aroused and embarrassed at the same time. They are ambivalence personified; they are also raw energy and life. The heyoka also skews the perception of the community, but in a different way. The heyoka forces people to pay attention to what is going on not in ceremonial settings but in everyday life. This kind of sacred clown represents the duality that the Native Covenant always seeks to hold in balance. The heyoka embodies duality. In other words, when the heyoka wears the buffalo robe in summer, the purpose is to remind us that we can never really appreciate what it means to be warm if we do not know what it feels like to be cold. The core spiritual teaching of the dichotomy of opposites is one of the principle functions of the heyoka .

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now I said to Ralph: ‘Who is that girl, in the little photo? She don’t half need a hairbrush.’He looked at me, but did not answer. It was Florence who spoke. ‘That’s Eleanor Marx,’ she said, with a kind of quiver to her voice.‘Eleanor Marks? Have I met her? Is she that cousin of yours, who works at the poulterers?’She gazed at me then as if I had not asked the question, but barked it. Ralph put down his fork. ‘Eleanor Marx,’ he said, ‘is a writer and a speaker and a very great socialist...’I blushed: this was worse than asking what cooperative meant. But when Ralph saw my cheeks, he looked kind: ‘You mustn’t mind it. Why should you know? I’m sure, you might mention a dozen writers you have read, and Flo and I would not know one of them.’‘That’s true,’ I said, very grateful to him; but though I had read proper books at Diana’s, I could think, at that moment, only of the improper ones - and they all had the same author: Anonymous.So I said nothing, and we finished our supper in silence. And when I looked at Florence again, her eyes were turned away from me and seemed rather dark. I thought then that, after all, she would never really want a girl like me in paradise with her, not even to stew the oysters for her tea; and the thought, just then, seemed a dreary one. But I was quite wrong about her. Whether I were in her paradise or not, she wouldn’t have noticed; and it was not her mother she hoped to see there, nor even Eleanor Marx, nor even Karl Marx. It was another person altogether that she had in mind - but it was not until a few weeks later, one evening in the autumn of that year, that I found out who.I had begun, as I have said, to accompany Florence on her visits for the Guild, and on this night I found myself in the home of a seamstress at Mile End. It was a terribly poor home: there was no furniture, hardly, in the woman’s rooms, only a couple of mattresses, a threadbare rug, and one rickety table and chair. In the chamber that passed for a parlour, a tea-chest was upturned and had the remains of a sad little supper on it: a crust of bread, a bit of dripping in a jar, and a cup half-full of bluish milk.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  I’d love to join you.” “Yes! I’d be happy to go.” “Yes! Let’s set a phone date.” If somewhere along the way you’ve become a decliner, one who declines every invitation that comes your way, then just for today, might you try on a yes for size? Be All of You, Fast Our spiraling thoughts of isolation threaten to keep us trapped in a place of self-sufficiency and shame, but vulnerability brings those to a screeching halt. So, be all of you right away, so that your friends get you—the real you. I can be obnoxious and I’m the first to admit it. I laugh at inappropriate times, like in court and at funerals and during my child’s performance of the speech she worked hard on. (Why do I do this? Can someone tell me, please?) I ask intense, intrusive questions. I’m forgetful. I interrupt serious moments to ask where you got your cute sweater. I flit around in conversation like a hummingbird, incapable of seeing a subject through to its logical end. And just like with my friend Ellen, relationally my choices are two: Either I can “class it up” when I meet new people and pretend to be something I’m not. Or I can relish my wholehearted mess of a self with a good bit of self-deprecation and laughter and be at peace, just being me with them. In such brave endeavors, we may scare off the wrong people sooner but we’ll bring in the right people more quickly too. Bother Others, and Let Others Bother You As acquaintances deepen and broaden into friendships, the asks can feel tougher. The stakes are higher now, and fear of rejection is a real thing. My counsel: go for broke. When you notice that your friend isn’t herself, bug her until she shoots straight. Invite her to tea. Invite her to lunch. Tell her you want to pray for her because you know something is drastically wrong. Bother her until she feels safe enough to vent. She’ll thank you for that bothering someday. Likewise, to experience true community, you’ve got to be botherable yourself. Take the risk to trust someone with the truth of your life today. Yes, you might get hurt. Yes, you might feel embarrassed. Yes, it might be uncomfortable. But better the discomfort of a friend holding your hand and your truth than the discomfort of thinking you’re alone. Before we move on, let me make sure you noticed the order of the two parts of this last rule: First, you take the initiative.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  You should hear her in the kitchen, Miss Butler. She’s a regular song-bird, she is, then: a regular lark. Makes your heart turn over, to hear her.’ There were murmurs of agreement throughout the room, and I saw Kitty look blinkingly my way. Then George whispered rather loudly that I must be saving my voice for serenading Freddy, and there was a fresh round of laughter that set me gazing and blushing into my lap. Kitty looked bemused.She asked then, ‘Who is Freddy?’‘Freddy is Nancy’s young feller,’ said Davy. ‘A very handsome chap. She must’ve boasted about him to you?’‘No,’ said Kitty, ‘she has not.’ She said it lightly, but I glanced up and saw that her eyes were strange, and almost sad. It was true that I had never mentioned Fred to her. The fact was, I barely thought of him as my beau these days, for since her arrival in Canterbury I had had no evenings spare to spend with him. He had recently sent me a letter to say, did I still care? - and I had put the letter in a drawer, and forgotten to reply.There was more chaff about Freddy, then; I was glad when one of Rhoda’s sisters caused a fuss, by snatching the harmonica from George and giving us a tune so horrible it made the boys all shout at her, and pull her hair, to make her stop.While they quarrelled and swore, Kitty leaned towards me and said softly, ‘Will you take me to your room, Nan, or somewhere quiet, for a bit - just you and me?’ She looked so grave suddenly I feared that she might faint. I got up, and made a path for her across the crowded room, and told my mother I was taking her upstairs; and Mother - who was gazing troubledly at Rhoda’s sister, not knowing whether to laugh at her or to scold - gave us a nod, distractedly, and we escaped.The bedroom was cooler than the parlour, and dimmer, and - although we could still hear shouts, and stamping, and blasts from the harmonica - wonderfully calm compared to the room we had just left. The window was raised, and Kitty crossed to it at once and placed her arms upon the sill. Closing her eyes against the breeze that blew in from the bay, she took a few deep, grateful breaths.‘Are you poorly?’ I said.

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

  Sarah nodded, and her eyes began to smolder. “Yes, Barry,” she said suddenly in English. “It is me who looks after your father when he is a small boy. My mother, Akumu, is also your father’s mother. Akumu is your true grandmother, not this one you call Granny. Akumu, the woman who gives your father life—you should be helping her. And me, your brother’s sister. Look how I live. Why don’t you help us, instead of these others?” Before I could answer, Zeituni and Sarah began to argue with each other in Luo. Eventually, Zeituni stood up and straightened her skirt. “We should go now, Barry.” I began to rise out of my chair, but Sarah took my hand in both of hers, her voice softening. “Will you give me something? For your grandmother?” I reached for my wallet and felt the eyes of both aunts as I counted out the money I had on me—perhaps thirty dollars’ worth of shillings. I pressed them into Sarah’s dry, chapped hands, and she quickly slipped the money down the front of her blouse before clutching my hand again. “Stay here, Barry,” Sarah said. “You must meet—” “You can come back later, Barry,” Zeituni said. “Let’s go.” Outside, a hazy yellow light bathed the road; my clothes hung limp against my body in the windless heat. Zeituni was quiet now, visibly upset. She was a proud woman, this aunt; the scene with Sarah must have embarrassed her. And then, that thirty dollars—Lord knows, she could have used it herself …. We had walked for ten minutes before I asked Zeituni what she and Sarah had been arguing about. “Ah, it’s nothing, Barry. This is what happens to old women who have no husbands.” Zeituni tried to smile, but the tension creased the corners of her mouth. “Come on, Auntie. Tell me the truth.” Zeituni shook her head. “I don’t know the truth. At least not all of it. I know that even growing up, Sarah was always closer to her real mum, Akumu. Barack, he cared only for my mum, Granny, the one who raised them after Akumu left.” “Why did Akumu leave?” “I’m not sure. You will have to ask Granny about that.” Zeituni signaled for us to cross the street, then resumed talking. “You know, your father and Sarah were actually very similar, even though they did not always get along. She was smart like him. And independent. She used to tell me, when we were children, that she wanted to get an education so that she would not have to depend on any man. That’s why she ended up married to four different husbands. None of them lasted. The first one died, but the others she left, because they were lazy, or tried to abuse her. I admire her for this. Most women in Kenya put up with anything. I did, for a long time. But Sarah also paid a price for her independence.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Everything she tells you will be designed to corrupt.’I bowed to her. I said, ‘I hope so, indeed.’ Mrs Jex gave a roar.‘But it speaks!’ she cried. ‘All this’ - she gestured to my face, my costume - ‘and the creature even speaks!’Diana smiled, and raised a brow. ‘After a fashion,’ she said.I blinked, but Mrs Jex still held my hand, and now she squeezed it. ‘Diana is brutal to you, Miss Nancy, but you must not mind it. Here at the Cavendish we have been positively panting to see you and make you our particular friend. You must call me “Maria”’ - she pronounced it the old-fashioned way - ‘and this is Evelyn, and Dickie. Dickie, you can see, likes to think of herself as the boy of the place.’I bowed to the ladies in turn. The former showed me a smile; the one named Dickie (this was the one with the monocle : I am sure it was of plain glass) only gave a toss to her head, and looked haughty.‘This is the new Callisto then, is it?’ she said.She wore a boiled shirt and a bow-tie, and her hair, though long and bound, was sleek with oil. She was about two- or three-and-thirty, and her waist was thick; but her upper lip, at least, was dark as a boy’s. They would have called her terribly handsome, I guessed, in about 1880.Maria pressed my fingers again, and rolled her eyes; then she tilted her head, and when I bent to her - for she was rather short - she said, ‘Now, my dear, you must satisfy our appetite. We want the whole sordid story of your encounter with Diana. She herself will tell us nothing - only that the night was warm; that the streets were gaudy; that the moon was reeling through the clouds like a drunken woman looking for lovers. Tell us, Miss Nancy, tell us, do! Was the moon really reeling through the clouds, like a drunken woman looking for her lovers?’ She took a puff of her cigar, and studied me. Evelyn and Dickie leaned and waited. I looked from them back to Maria; and then I swallowed.‘It was,’ I said at last, ‘if Diana said it was.’And at that, Maria gave a startling laugh, low and loud and rapid as the rattle of a road-drill; and Diana took my arm and made a space for me upon the sofa, and called for a waitress to bring us drinks.At the rest of the tables the ladies still looked on - some of them, I could not help but notice, rather fastidiously.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Father straightened, and looked me over, then gave a wide smile that seemed to pull, somewhat, at the corners of his eyes. ‘Very smart,’ he said. ‘Your mother won’t know you, hardly.’ I did indeed, I suppose, look a little dressy, but I had not thought about it until that moment. All my clothes were good ones, these days, for I had long ago got rid of those girlish hand-me-downs with which I’d first left home. I had only wanted, that morning, to look nice. Now I felt self-conscious. The self-consciousness did not diminish as I walked, on Father’s arm, the little distance to our oyster-shop. The house, I thought, was shabbier than ever. The weather-boards above the shop showed more wood, now, than blue paint; and the sign - Astley’s Oysters, the Best in Kent - hung on one hinge, and was cracked where the rainwater had soaked it. The stairs we climbed were dark and narrow, the room into which I finally emerged smaller and more cramped than I could have believed possible. Worst of all the street, the stairs, the room, the people in it, all reeked of fish! It was a stink that was as familiar to me as the scent of my own armpit; but I was startled, now, to think that I had ever lived in it and thought it ordinary. My surprise, I hope, was lost in the general bustle of my arrival. I had expected Mother and Alice to be waiting for me; they were - but so were half-a-dozen other people, each one of whom exclaimed when I appeared, and stepped forward (except for Alice) to embrace me. I had to smile and submit to being squeezed and patted until I grew quite breathless. Rhoda - still my brother’s sweetheart - was there, looking perter than ever; Aunty Ro, too, had come along to welcome me back, together with her son, my cousin George, and her daughter, Liza, and Liza’s baby - except that the baby was not a baby at all now, but a little boy in frills. Liza, I saw, was large with child again; I had been told this in a letter, I believe, but had forgotten it. I took off my hat once all the welcomes had been said, and my heavy coat with it. Mother looked me up and down. She said, ‘My goodness, Nance, how tall and fine you look! I do believe you’re taller, almost, than your Father.’ I did feel tall in that tiny, overcrowded room: but I could hardly, I thought, have really grown. It was just that I was standing rather straighter. I gazed around - a little proud, despite my awkwardness - and found a seat, and tea was brought. I still had not exchanged a word with Alice.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I imagined Billy-Boy having come to the theatre and told Kitty that he had met me, and how I was dressed. I remembered how near the crowd could seem, from a stage in a small hall, when you stepped out of the limes; and in my coat and my bow-tie, of course, I would be conspicuous. How terrible it would be, to have Kitty see me as I watched her — to have her fix her eyes on mine, as she sang to Walter!So I went up to the gallery. The stairs were narrow: when I turned a corner and found a couple there, spooning, I had to step around them, very close. Like the girl in the booth, they gazed at my suit and, as she had done, they tittered. I could hear the thumping of the orchestra through the wall. As I climbed to the door at the top of the staircase and the thumps grew louder, my own heart seemed to beat against my breast, in time to them. When I passed into the hall at last — into the lurid half-light, and the heat and the smoke and the reek of the calling crowd — I almost staggered.On the stage was a girl in a flame-coloured frock, twitching her skirts so her stockings showed. She finished one song while I stood there, clutching at a pillar to steady myself; and then she started on another. The crowd seemed to know it. There were claps, and whistles; and before these had quite died down, I made my way along the aisle to an empty seat. It turned out to be at the end of a line of boys - a bad choice, for, of course, when they saw me there in my opera suit and my flower, they nudged each other, and sniggered. One coughed into his hand - only the cough came out as Toff! I turned my face from them, and looked hard at the stage. Then, after a moment, I took out a cigarette and lit it. As I struck the match, my hand trembled.The Cockney Chanteuse finished her set at last.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  She said, “I don’t need bread. What I need is an avocado with some cottage cheese. That’s the diet food. Have you ever had avocado?” “Yes.” “Of course you have. I mean, not to imply.” “I’m not sure what that could possibly imply.” He glanced around, but no one was listening. “You know. You guys are more urbane. Wait, urban, or urbane? Urbane. But listen.” She rested two fingers on his thigh, close to the fold his khakis made near his crotch. “What I want to know is, don’t you ever have fun anymore?” Yale was baffled. The bartender, passing, winked. He supposed they made a believable couple, even if she was several years older than him. Waspy career woman and her young Jewish boyfriend. He whispered, hoping she’d follow suit. “Are you talking about me personally, or all gay men?” “See? You are gay!” Not too loudly, thank God. She didn’t move her hand; maybe it wasn’t a sexual move after all. “Yes.” “But what I was saying was, I was saying how gay men—I mean, I’m sorry for assuming, but I assumed, and I was right—how gay men used to have more fun than anyone. You used to make me jealous. And now you’re all getting so serious and staying home because of this stupid disease. Someone took me to the Baton Show once. The Baton Club? You know. And it was amazing.” There was still no one listening. A toddler pitched a fit over by the window, throwing her grilled cheese on the floor. Yale said, “I’d say there was a good ten years where we had a lot of fun. Look, if you know people who are toning things down, I’m glad. Not everyone is.” Cecily pressed with her fingers, leaned in. He worried she’d fall off her stool. “But don’t you miss having fun?” He carefully removed her hand and set it on her own lap. “I think we have different ideas of fun.” She looked hurt, but recovered quickly. She whispered. “What I’m saying is, I have some C-O-K-E in my purse.” She pointed to the pale yellow bag under her barstool. “You have what?” He couldn’t have heard right. She hadn’t even gotten the bong joke. “C-O-C-A-I-N-E. When we go upstairs, we could have a party.” Yale had quite a few simultaneous thoughts, chief among them the fact that Cecily would be horrified in the morning by how she’d acted. He was so embarrassed for her that he wanted to say yes, to snort coke right here off the bar. But lately his heart couldn’t handle more than one coffee a day. He hadn’t so much as smoked pot in a year. He looked at her as kindly as he could and said, “We’re going to get you a big glass of water, and you’re going to eat some bread.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  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. Walter, however, had lost his frown, and his eyes looked blue and wide as a child’s. ‘Damn it, Ma,’ he said, ‘but you’re right!’ He put his hand to his brow, then stepped to the door: we heard his heavy, rapid tread upon the stairs, heard footsteps in the room above our heads - Sims’s and Percy’s room - and then the slam of a door, higher up. When he returned he held a strange assortment of objects: a pair of gentleman’s shoes, a sewing-basket, a couple of ribbons, and Kitty’s make-up box. These he dumped about me on the carpet. Then, with a hasty ‘Pardon me, Nancy’, he pulled the jacket from me, and the boots. The jacket he handed to Kitty, along with the sewing-basket: ‘Put a few tucks down the inside of that waist,’ he said, pointing to the seam. The boots he cast aside, and replaced with the pair of shoes - Sims’s shoes they were, and small, low-heeled and rather dainty; and Walter made them daintier still by tying ribbons in a bow at the laces. To advertise the bows a bit - and because, without my boots, I was now a little shorter - he caught hold of the bottom of my trouser-legs, and gave them cuffs.Next he seized my head and tilted it back, and worked upon my lips and lashes with carmine and spit-black from Kitty’s box: he did this gently as a girl. Then he plucked the cigarette from behind my ear and cast it on to the mantel. Finally he turned to Kitty and snapped his fingers. She, infected by his air of haste and purpose, had begun to sew as he had shown her. Now she raised the jacket to her cheek to bite the final length of cotton from it, and when that was done he took it from her and shrugged me into it and buttoned it over my breast.Then he stood back, and cocked his head.I gazed down at myself once again.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  They don’t care that I can’t get to Alaska and I could never get this job. They care that it’s a job in the national economy. So yeah, my survival now depends on my proving I can’t top wafers.” Here came a bunch of guys in leather, a poster that read “Bound Up With Pride!” Some kind of garden club followed. “But I’m gonna get in on whatever clinical trials I can, meantime.” “And Asher’s helping,” Yale said. “Yeah. Asher. He can sort my nuts whenever he wants, am I right?” Yale felt his face catch fire. “Oh come on, you’d let him polish your bowling balls!” Yale attempted a noncommittal laugh. And here, ridiculously, before he could properly recover, was Asher’s AFC float. Here was Asher, waving like a politician. Yale waved, but he didn’t catch Asher’s eye. Three guys on unicycles came next, cutoffs and denim vests. A series of aldermen and state senators in convertibles, most looking pained. The Out Loud float. A red flatbed truck. Yale took a small step back so Katsu couldn’t see his face, so he didn’t have to worry what his eyes and mouth were doing. Posterboard signs all over it: “Fight Out Loud for Safer Sex!” and “Out Loud Says / Cover Your Head!” Six beautiful shirtless men—Yale didn’t recognize them, except for Dwight the copy editor—angling cucumbers from their crotches, slowly rolling rubbers onto them. Peeling them off, doing it again. Opening new packets with their teeth, milking the crowd for cheers. From the side of the truck, Gloria and Rafael threw rubbers from a bucket. He couldn’t see Charlie. And then suddenly he could. He had shaved his beard. He was the one holding the boom box that blasted “You Spin Me Round.” Yale tried to wrap his mind around the irony of the whole thing, but his body was busy reacting with some strange combination of high and low blood pressure. A Trojan hit Katsu on the chest and he caught it, laughing, and handed it to Yale. He said, “I’m a LifeStyles man. You want?” And although Yale could not see an occasion in which he’d want to use a rubber that had come, indirectly, from Charlie, he stuck it in the pocket of his shorts. He’d need to get used to them. Until he’d redone the test in March, until Dr. Cheng had told him that again the ELISA was negative—though this time he really had made Yale wait two weeks, as he’d vowed—Yale had barely let himself ejaculate in the same room as Roman. Lately, since the second negative, he’d been letting Roman suck him off—though what did “lately” really mean, when it was all so sporadic? Yale wished the Out Loud float would disappear, but it was still making its slow way down Clark, Trojans still flying.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The convo was fine enough; however, it was peppered with various presumptions about me based on his assumed role as male and mine as female. Retch. At the end of the meal when we both habitually pulled out our wallets to pay, or at least offer some loot, I was caught again. Brotherman looked utterly appalled and held a momentary grimace, eyes darting between my face and my outstretched credit card. Wonk wonk. My hypermasculine socialization was visible. I was stuck like a deer in headlights, and this was not kosher. What did still have the potential to be halal was that ass. We messed around a bit back at my apartment, but the reality that I just wasn’t very attracted to him started to catch up with me, coupled with growing tired of playing the part of a gender location that I no longer feel a part of. I made an excuse about needing to do something, and he left. Meh. November 2012 I met another guy on Match.com, and it was a little better. This fella is a thickums delicious. A little quirky and at times annoying but definitely sweet, and we have good chemistry. Whew lord, I hadn’t kissed a man under a streetlight like that in ages. I will give both him and Mr. Outkast another date. December 2012 Week two on Match.com, and I can’t take it anymore! I can’t deal with the gross feelings of pretending and perpetually (obviously) being misgendered.28 I changed my profile to be “man seeking man,” outed myself as trans, and changed my pictures to reflect how I currently look. In spite of these changes, I still want to give the first two guys another chance. But I couldn’t bring myself to meet up with the first guy again, at least not without telling him my truth. I texted him the confession and sent him screenshots of my new profile. He cussed me a bit and said “We are done!,” to which I internally thought, “Had we started anything for something to be ‘done.’ Boo!” Then he left me with one word: “CATFISH!” Mr. Outkast’s response made me scared to tell Mr. Streetlamp Sugar Lips my truth. Yet I still wanted to see him and his thickness. So we met up for dinner again and had an amazing time at my place afterward. He was like a tank of flesh and curves and bald head(s) and attentive and gentle and rough and thorough. Surely I can’t tell him just yet. December 2012 Date three with Thicka-than-a-Snicka, and I definitely need to tell him. Fuck! Last night when we were going at it, at the most vulnerable moment, he said “You are such a beautiful woman.”

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

  Sayid looked at his nephew with something like regret. “I did not mean to speak so freely, Bernard. You must respect your elders. They clear the way for you so that your path is easier. But if you see them falling into a pit, then you must learn to what?” “Step around,” Bernard said. “You are right. Diverge from that path and make your own.” Sayid put his arm over the younger man’s shoulders. As we approached Salina’s house, I looked back behind me. I could still see the dim light of the old man’s window, and sense his blind eyes staring out into the darkness. CHAPTER NINETEEN [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] ROY AND ABO BOTH woke up with bad headaches, and along with Kezia stayed in Kendu for another day. In slightly better shape, I decided to make the trip back to Home Squared with Sayid and Bernard by bus, a decision I soon regretted. We had to stand for most of the way, our heads forced down by the bus’s low roof. To make matters worse, I’d come down with a case of the runs. My stomach lurched with every bump. My head throbbed with each wayward turn. And so it was in a cautious trot that I first appeared to Granny and Auma upon our return, offering them a curt wave before racing across the backyard, around an errant cow, and into the outhouse. Twenty minutes later I emerged, blinking like a prisoner in the light of the early afternoon. The women were gathered on straw mats under the shade of a mango tree while Granny braided Auma’s hair and Zeituni braided the hair of a neighbor’s girl. “Did you have a nice time?” Auma said, trying not to smile. “Wonderful.” I sat down beside them and watched as a skinny old woman came out of the house and took a spot next to Granny. The old woman was in her early seventies, I guessed, but was dressed in a bright pink sweater; she folded her legs to the side like a bashful schoolgirl. She peered at me and spoke to Auma in Luo. “She says you don’t look so well.” The old woman smiled at me, revealing two missing bottom front teeth. “This is our grandfather’s sister, Dorsila,” Auma continued. “The last child of our great-grandfather Obama. She lives in another village, but when she heard—Ow! I tell you, Barack, you are lucky you don’t have braids to undo. What was I saying? Yah … Dorsila says that when she heard that we had come she walked all the way to see us. She brings greetings from all the people of her village.” Dorsila and I shook hands, and I mentioned that I’d met her older brother in Kendu Bay. She nodded and spoke again. “She says her brother is very old,” Auma translated. “When he was younger, he looked just like our grandfather. Sometimes even she couldn’t tell them apart.”

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

  With my admission notice had come a thick packet of information that Toot set aside to pore over one Saturday afternoon. “Welcome to the Punahou family,” the letter announced. A locker had been assigned to me; I was enrolled in a meal plan unless a box was checked; there was a list of things to buy—a uniform for physical education, scissors, a ruler, number two pencils, a calculator (optional). Gramps spent the evening reading the entire school catalog, a thick book that listed my expected progression through the next seven years—the college prep courses, the extracurricular activities, the traditions of well-rounded excellence. With each new item, Gramps grew more and more animated; several times he got up, with his thumb saving his place, and headed toward the room where Toot was reading, his voice full of amazement: “Madelyn, get a load of this!” So it was with a great rush of excitement that Gramps accompanied me on my first day of school. He had insisted that we arrive early, and Castle Hall, the building for the fifth and sixth graders, was not yet opened. A handful of children had already arrived, busy catching up on the summer’s news. We sat beside a slender Chinese boy who had a large dental retainer strapped around his neck. “Hi there,” Gramps said to the boy. “This here’s Barry. I’m Barry’s grandfather. You can call me Gramps.” He shook hands with the boy, whose name was Frederick. “Barry’s new.” “Me too,” Frederick said, and the two of them launched into a lively conversation. I sat, embarrassed, until the doors finally opened and we went up the stairs to our classroom. At the door, Gramps slapped both of us on the back. “Don’t do anything I would do,” he said with a grin. “Your grandfather’s funny,” Frederick said as we watched Gramps introduce himself to Miss Hefty, our homeroom teacher. “Yeah. He is.” We sat at a table with four other children, and Miss Hefty, an energetic middle-aged woman with short gray hair, took attendance. When she read my full name, I heard titters break across the room. Frederick leaned over to me. “I thought your name was Barry.” “Would you prefer if we called you Barry?” Miss Hefty asked. “Barack is such a beautiful name. Your grandfather tells me your father is Kenyan. I used to live in Kenya, you know. Teaching children just your age. It’s such a magnificent country. Do you know what tribe your father is from?” Her question brought on more giggles, and I remained speechless for a moment. When I finally said “Luo,” a sandy-haired boy behind me repeated the word in a loud hoot, like the sound of a monkey. The children could no longer contain themselves, and it took a stern reprimand from Miss Hefty before the class would settle down and we could mercifully move on to the next person on the list.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Still searching for that thing. Today I created a profile on Match.com. I made it under the “woman seeking man” category. I figure, you know, maybe if I just really connected with someone and he was cool enough, I could come out to him as trans later.26 Like after I’m pregnant. This feels like a good plan to me, since I don’t know and I am not meeting any cismen who are able or want to be my donor and/or uncle or guncle. I could just pretend like I’m a ciswoman—and of course I’m still queer and just desiring at most a friends-with-benefits arrangement, some presence in the child’s life, and no financial support for the intentional creation or rearing of the child.27 This woman-passing plan feels like my last resort within the impossible options of people who produce sperm. Such people being cismen and some transwomen. I have not yet cultivated close enough relationships with any transwomen to consider anyone as a viable sperm donor. So then the cisguys. There are cis gay men who think I’m “cute” (just like a puppy, I can only assume), who, however, claim that I don’t have the body parts that excite them for sexual activity. I’m caught between that and cis straight men who either freak out if I tell them off tops that I’m a transguy, because then rolling with me would make them gay. Which is true. Or the cis straight men who say whatever you need to hear in order to get with you. I think curating a potential donor/lover via Match.com is a good look! Also it seems like a good way to get that kind of sex. Just saying. November 2012 Padre dios, this is harder (and more humiliating) than I thought it would be. Match.com is a trip. People really love Jesus, and everyone is a “people person.” What does that even mean? I am getting a lot of messages from people but not many that I’m both interested in and attracted to. But I did go on my first date. Homeboy wasn’t quite as cute as his picture, but he was a big Outkast fan and also fancied soccer, so I don’t ask for much. But ugh. Chile, I don’t know how to play these narrow ass rules of straight engagement. We met at a restaurant, and when we were being seated at our table I friggin pulled the chair out for him. He gawked at me and said “What are you doing?,” spitting out each syllable like he had a bad taste in his mouth and an inflamed canker sore. “Oh!” I snapped to his reality and tried to make a joke out of it. I pushed the chair back to the table and awkwardly stepped back to allow him to pull the chair out for me. Pray for me.

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

  The next day, Toot sent me down to the apartment where my father was staying to see if he had any laundry to wash. I knocked, and my father opened the door, shirtless. Inside, I saw my mother ironing some of his clothes. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her eyes were soft and dark, as if she’d been crying. My father asked me to sit down beside him on the bed, but I told him that Toot needed me to help her, and left after relaying the message. Back upstairs, I had begun cleaning my room when my mother came in. “You shouldn’t be mad at your father, Bar. He loves you very much. He’s just a little stubborn sometimes.” “Okay,” I said without looking up. I could feel her eyes follow me around the room until she finally let out a slow breath and went to the door. “I know all this stuff is confusing for you,” she said. “For me, too. Just try to remember what I said, okay?” She put her hand on the doorknob. “Do you want me to close the door?” I nodded, but she had been gone for only a minute when she stuck her head back into the room. “By the way, I forgot to tell you that Miss Hefty has invited your father to come to school on Thursday. She wants him to speak to the class.” I couldn’t imagine worse news. I spent that night and all of the next day trying to suppress thoughts of the inevitable: the faces of my classmates when they heard about mud huts, all my lies exposed, the painful jokes afterward. Each time I remembered, my body squirmed as if it had received a jolt to the nerves. I was still trying to figure out how I’d explain myself when my father walked into our class the next day. Miss Hefty welcomed him eagerly, and as I took my seat I heard several children ask each other what was going on. I became more desperate when our math teacher, a big, no-nonsense Hawaiian named Mr. Eldredge, came into the room, followed by thirty confused children from his homeroom next door. “We have a special treat for you today,” Miss Hefty began. “Barry Obama’s father is here, and he’s come all the way from Kenya, in Africa, to tell us about his country.”

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Even I could figure out that you didn’t need to color them in first before counting them. The lessons seemed full of chores like that you could skip. Passing the test for one folder just led to another folder, and so on, into what seemed like an eternity of folders. There were trains traveling at sixty miles per hour toward Cincinnati; there were twelve stalks in each bundle of corn Farmer Brown was selling. The teacher can’t have actually stayed in the lounge the whole day, of course, but that’s what I recall. Once some boy stuck a paper clip up his nose and started a great gushing nosebleed. The demerits monitor tended to it. She tipped his head back and balled up his own gym sock over his nostril, an act that brought a brief scurry of ooooh ’s from the other kids because the sock was supposed to be rank. I was selected to fetch Mrs. So-and-So from the teachers’ lounge. That involved navigating some concrete stairs down into the boiler room, which was like those horror-movie basements that always got you screaming to the girl in the movie holding the candle, Don’t go down. The furnace clanked when I passed it. The twisty pipes overhead were bound here and there with rags and still dripped sweat. Beyond all that stood the lounge door with a round frosted-glass window like you’d expect to find on a submarine. I put my hand on the brass knob and pulled. Inside, the place was solid smoke. All the teachers at that time were women, and stout women at that. Their broad backs faced me, their zippers straining to hold them inside their pastel dresses. Their enormous bottoms spilled over their wooden chairs on both sides. When their faces turned my way, I could see that each lady teacher had an aluminum ashtray all her own. Each had an empty paper plate with a white plastic fork that had been licked clean. And in the table’s center sat the remains of a gargantuan chocolate sheet cake. The piece of baker’s cardboard it had been squatting on resembled a big muddy football field torn up by cleat marks or claw marks. My teacher got to her feet when she saw me, and walked me back to the classroom. I moved eighteen reading levels and twelve math levels the first week, a new school record, achieved as much from boredom as ambition. They announced it on the loudspeaker one day after the pledge. I briefly felt that old surge of pride in my chest. But looking around, I caught a lot of eye-rolling from the other kids. Maybe there was some secret class pledge about not achieving overmuch, so as not to up the ante for the other kids. At recess that day, a sixth-grade girl everybody called Big Bertha behind her back strode right up to me where I stood in line for the water fountain and slapped my face.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She took me for some insolent voyeur! The thought gave me an odd mixture of shame and embarrassment and also, I must confess, pleasure. I took hold of my boater and raised it, politely.‘G’night, sweetheart,’ I said in a low, lazy tone. It was the kind of thing rough fellows of the street - costers and roadmenders - said to passing ladies all the time. I don’t know why, just then, I thought to copy them.The girl gave another twitch, then opened her mouth as if to make me some rusty reply; at that moment, however, her friend approached the window. She had a hat fixed to her head, and was pulling on her gloves. She said, ‘We must go, Florence’ - the name sounded very romantic, in the half-light. ‘It is time for the children to be put to bed. Mr Mason says he will walk with us as far as King’s Cross.’The girl gave not a glance more my way then, but turned quickly into the room. Here she kissed the children, shook the mother’s hand, and politely took her leave; from my place on the balcony I saw her, and her friend, and their rough chaperon Mr Mason, quit the building and make their way up towards the Gray’s Inn Road. I thought she might turn to see if I still watched but she did not; and why should I mind it? With the lamplight at last turned upon her face I had seen that she was not at all handsome. I might have forgotten all about her, indeed, except that a fortnight or so after I had watched her in the darkness, I saw her again - but this time in daylight.It was another warm day, and I had woken rather early. Mrs Milne and Grace were out on a visit, and I had in consequence nothing at all in the world to do, and no one to please but myself. Before my money had all run out I had bought myself a couple of decent frocks; and it was one of those that I had put on, today. I had my old plait of false hair, too: it looked wonderfully natural under the shadow of the stiff brim of a black straw hat. I had a mind to make my way to one of the parks - Hyde Park, I thought, then on perhaps to Kensington Gardens.