Embarrassment

Passages

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

Page 64 of 79 · 20 per page

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I durst not look at her, much less follow her about as I was wont to do. "There were several other girls at the pension , and she soon got to be on friendly terms with them, for she was in fact an universal favourite. I, on the contrary, kept aloof from everyone, feeling sure that my mishap was not only known but had become a general topic of conversation. "One afternoon, a few days afterwards, I was in the vast garden of the pension , hidden behind some ilex shrubs, brooding over my ill luck, when all at once I saw Rita—for her name was Marguerite—walking in a neighbouring alley, together with several other girls. "I had no sooner perceived her when she told her friends to go on, whilst she began to lag behind. "She stopped, turned her back upon her companions, lifted up her dress far above her knee, and displayed a very pretty though rather thin leg incased in a close-fitting, black silk stocking. The string which attached the stocking to her unmentionables had got undone, and she began to tie it. "By bending low I might quietly have peeped between her legs, and seen what the slit of her pantaloons afforded to the view; but it never came into my head to do so. The fact is, I had really never cared for her or for any other woman. I only thought now is my time to find her alone and to bow to her, without having all the other girls to giggle at me. So I quietly got out of my hiding-place, and advanced towards the next alley. "As I turned the corner, what a sight did I see! There was the object of my sentimental admiration, squatted on the ground, her legs widely opened apart, her skirts all carefully tucked up." "So at last you saw —— " "A faint glimpse of pinkish flesh, and a stream of yellow liquid pouring down and flowing on the gravel, bubbling with much froth, accompanied by the rushing sound of many waters, whilst, as if to greet my appearance, a rumbling noise like that of an unctuous cannonade came from behind." "And what did you do?" "Don't you know we always do the things which ought not to be done, and leave undone the things which ought to be done, as I think the Prayer Book says? So, instead of slipping away unperceived, and hiding behind a bush to try and have a glimpse at the mouth from which the rill escaped, I foolishly remained stock still—speechless, dumbfoundered. It was only when she lifted up her eyes that I recovered the use of my tongue. "' Oh, mademoiselle! pardon! ' said I; 'but really I did not know that you were here—that is to say that —— ' "' Sot—stupide—imbecile—bête—animal!

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  great clarity. The differentiation between “religion” and “Christian faith” was an important ingredient in the argument of The Precarious Vision, which took a neo-orthodox approach at least at that point (something, incidentally, that was perceived more clearly by some critics than by myself at the time). This differentiation, and the consequences drawn from it, now seem quite inadmissible to me. The same analytical tools (of historical scholarship, of sociology, and so on) can be applied to “religion” and to “faith.” Indeed, in any empirical discipline the “Christian faith” is simply another case of the phenomenon “religion.” Empirically, the differentiation makes no sense. It can only be postulated as a theological a priori. If one can manage this, the problem disappears. One can then deal with Feuerbach in the manner of Barth (a procedure, incidentally, that is very handy in any Christian “dialogue” with Marxism—as long as the Marxists are agreeable to this theoretical legerdemain). But I, for one, cannot get myself into a position from which I can launch theological a prioris. I am forced, therefore, to abandon a differentiation that is senseless from any a posteriori vantage point. If one shares this inability to hoist oneself onto an epistemologically safe platform, then no privileged status with regard to relativizing analyses can be accorded to Christianity or to any other historical manifestation of religion. The contents of Christianity, like those of any other religious tradition, will have to be analyzed as human projections, and the Christian theologian will have to come to terms with the obvious discomforts caused thereby. Christianity and its various historical forms will be understood as projections similar in kind to other religious projections, grounded in specific infrastructures and maintained as subjectively real by 212

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  So now, if you wish to be my good friend—as you say you want—push it in—with your fingers, if you can't otherwise; but pay attention and don't finish in me, because you may make me a child.' "Thereupon I peeped in, and I saw our gardener's youngest daughter—a girl of ten or twelve—stretched on her back, whilst a little vagrant of about seven was sprawling over her, trying his best to put her instructions into practice. "That was my first lesson, and I had thereby a faint inkling of what men and women do when they are lovers." "And you were not curious to know more about the matter?" "Oh, yes! Many a time I should have yielded to the temptation, and have accompanied my friends in their visit to some wenches—whose charms they always extolled in a peculiar low, nasal, goatish voice, and with an unexplainable shivering of the whole body—had I not been kept back by the fear of being laughed at by them and by the girls themselves; for I should still have been as inexperienced in knowing what to do with a woman as Daphnis himself, before Lycenion had slipped under him, and thus initiated him into the mysteries of love; and yet hardly more initiation is required in the matter than for the new-born babe to take to the breast." "But when did your first visit to a brothel take place?" "Upon leaving college, when the mystic laurel and bays had wreathed our brows. According to tradition we were to partake of a farewell supper and make jolly together, before separating in our divers paths in life." "Yes, I remember those merry suppers of the Quartier Latin." "When the supper was over—" "And everyone more or less tipsy—" "Precisely; it was agreed that we should pass the evening in visiting some of the houses of nightly entertainment. Although I was myself rather merry, and usually up to any kind of joke, still I felt somewhat shy, and would willingly have given my friends the slip, rather than expose myself to their ridicule and to all the horrors of syphilis; but do what I could it was impossible to get rid of them. "They called me a sneak, they imagined that I wanted to spend the evening with some mistress, a pretty grisette , or a fashionable cocotte , for the term horizontale had not yet come into fashion. Another hinted that I was tied to my mammy's apron-strings, that my dad had not allowed me to take the latch-key. A third said that I wanted to go and ' menarmi la rilla ' as Aretino crudely expresses it. "Seeing that it was impossible to escape, I consented with a good grace to accompany them.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I could tell they didn’t want to put me in the hospital or anything. Mostly they just wanted to remind me that I was a traitor. And they wanted to steal my candy and the money. It wasn’t much. Maybe ten bucks in coins and dollar bills. But that money, and the idea of giving it to poor people, had made me feel pretty good about myself. I was a poor kid raising money for other poor people. It made me feel almost honorable. But I just felt stupid and naïve after those guys took off. I lay there in the dirt and remembered how Rowdy and I used to trick-or-treat together. We’d always wear the same costume. And I knew that if I’d been with him, I never would have gotten assaulted. And then I wondered if Rowdy was one of the guys who just beat me up. Damn, that would be awful. But I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. No matter how much he hated me, Rowdy would never hurt me that way. Never. At least, I hope he’d never hurt me. The next morning, at school, I walked up to Penelope and showed her my empty hands. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry for what?” she asked. “I raised money last night, but then some guys attacked me and stole it.” “Oh, my God, are you okay?” “Yeah, they just kicked me a few times.” “Oh, my God, where did they kick you?” I lifted up my shirt and showed her the bruises on my belly and ribs and back. “That’s terrible. Did you see a doctor?” “Oh, they’re not so bad,” I said. “That one looks like it really hurts,” she said and touched a fingertip to the huge purple bruise on my back. I almost fainted. Her touch felt so good. “I’m sorry they did that to you,” she said. “I’ll still put your name on the money when I send it.” “Wow,” I said. “That’s really cool. Thank you.” “You’re welcome,” she said and walked away. I was just going to let her go. But I had to say something memorable, something huge. “Hey!” I called after her. “What?” she asked. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” “What feels good?” “It feels good to help people, doesn’t it?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does.” She smiled. Of course, after that little moment, I thought that Penelope and I would become closer. I thought that she’d start paying more attention to me and that everybody else would notice and then I’d become the most popular dude in the place. But nothing much changed. I was still a stranger in a strange land. And Penelope still treated me pretty much the same. She didn’t really say much to me.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "I suppose she meant 'seules,' but at that moment, confused as I was, I took her at her word. "'Dames soules!'—'drunken ladies!' said I, terrified, looking around at all the ladies. "My neighbours began to titter. "'Madame says that this carriage is reserved for ladies,' added the mother of my girl, 'of course a young man is not—well, not expected to smoke here, but —' "'Oh! if that is the only objection I certainly shall not allow myself to smoke.' "'No, no!' said the old maid evidently much shocked, 'vous exit, go out, ou moi crier!' 'Garde,' she shouted out of the window, 'faites go out cette monseer!' "The guard appeared at the door, and not only ordered, but ignominously turned me out of that carriage, just as if I had been a second Col. Baker. "I was so ashamed of myself, so mortified, that my stomach—which had always been delicate—was actually quite upset by the shock I had received, therefore no sooner had the train started than I began to be, first uncomfortable, then to feel a rumbling pain, and at last a pressing want, so much so that I could hardly sit down on my seat, squeeze as much as I could, and I dared not move for fear of the consequences. "After some time the train stopped for a few minutes, no guard came to open the carriage door, I managed to get up, no guard was to be seen, no place where I could ease myself. I was debating what to do when the train started off. "The only occupant of the carriage was an old gentleman, who—having told me to make myself comfortable, or rather to put myself at my ease—went off to sleep and snored like a top; I might as well have been alone. "I formed several plans for unburdening my stomach, which was growing more unruly every moment, but only one or two seemed to answer; and yet I could not put them into execution, for my lady-love only a few carriages off was every now and then looking out of the window, so it would never have done if, instead of my face, she all at once saw—my full moon. I could not for the same reason use my hat as what the Italians call—a comodina, especially as the wind was blowing strongly towards her. "The train stopped again, but only for three minutes. What could one do in three minutes, especially with a stomach-ache like mine? Another stoppage; two minutes. By dint of squeezing I now felt that I could wait a little longer. The train moved and then once more came to a standstill. Six minutes. Now was my chance, or never. I jumped out. "It was a kind of country station, apparently a junction, and everybody was getting out. "The guard bawled out: 'Les voyageurs pour——en voiture.'

• From Between Us

  Rather than “writing” the episode of shame, people may use the more favorable endings that concepts such as “awkward” or “funny” suggest; neither concept requires any action at all. Lacking a Concept So, what if your own language does not have a word for an emotion concept? Would a Polish person not be able to understand disgust, if you told them it is what you feel when you smell rotten food or when you encounter rotten behavior? Although the relationship between words and experience is complex, and much debated, the availability of a word clearly makes a difference in the encoding of emotions. The Luganda-English interpreters who translated “to get sad” as okusunguwala (the word for “to get angry”) did not think they had made a mistake, even if they were “corrected”; they simply did not encode the difference between angry and sad. Not having a separate concept available masks any distinction. Similarly, not having a word for sadness in Tahitian, French-Tahitian bilingual speakers did not understand that the French word triste (in its sense of “sorrowful, mournful, sad, melancholic, dejected”) was anything else than “fatigued” or “gentle.” They lacked the concept, not only the word, for “sad.” Finally, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett and her team have clearly shown that without a word available, it is also harder to perceive emotions in the face. Emotion lexicons organize our experiences; it is a fair hypothesis that culturally different lexicons constitute your emotional experience differently. This is not to say that it is impossible to imagine having a feeling for which another culture, but not yours, has a word. My American friends seem to relate pretty well to the Dutch word gezellig. They like it, even. Similarly, native speakers of English resonate with amae, fago, and hasham. In one study, despite not having a word for amae, American college students recognized amae situations, and interpreted them in similar ways as Japanese students. American respondents considered amae situations such as “a good friend calling late at night to ask for help with computer problems” as inconsiderate, yet acceptable—in line with the Japanese definition of amae. And similar to their Japanese counterparts, American college students also thought the inconsiderate request would make them feel closer to their friend. Yet, learning about gezellig or amae as a native speaker of English may be a bit like a toddler’s first encounter with an emotion concept: You do not know about all the different ways which the emotion can feel or look; you only have a skeleton. You have an outline of an emotion, and most likely only one facet. In the amae study American college students were only asked about the role of the caretaker, amayakasu, and there were differences in the way they perceived this role from how the Japanese perceived it.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  But there were no other people named Junior in Reardan, so I was being laughed at because I was the only one who had that silly name. And then I felt smaller because the teacher was taking roll and he called out my name name. “Arnold Spirit,” the teacher said. No, he yelled it. He was so big and muscular that his whisper was probably a scream. “Here,” I said as quietly as possible. My whisper was only a whisper. “Speak up,” the teacher said. “Here,” I said. “My name is Mr. Grant,” he said. “I’m here, Mr. Grant.” He moved on to other students, but Penelope leaned over toward me again, but she wasn’t laughing at all. She was mad now. “I thought you said your name was Junior,” Penelope said. She accused me of telling her my real name. Well, okay, it wasn’t completely my real name. My full name is Arnold Spirit Jr. But nobody calls me that. Everybody calls me Junior. Well, every other Indian calls me Junior. “My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. I’m both.” I felt like two different people inside of one body. No, I felt like a magician slicing myself in half, with Junior living on the north side of the Spokane River and Arnold living on the south. “Where are you from?” she asked. She was so pretty and her eyes were so blue. I was suddenly aware that she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen up close. She was movie star pretty. “Hey,” she said. “I asked you where you’re from.” Wow, she was tough. “Wellpinit,” I said. “Up on the rez, I mean, the reservation.” “Oh,” she said. “That’s why you talk so funny.” And yes, I had that stutter and lisp, but I also had that singsong reservation accent that made everything I said sound like a bad poem. Man, I was freaked. I didn’t say another word for six days. And on the seventh day, I got into the weirdest fistfight of my life. But before I tell you about the weirdest fistfight of my life, I have to tell you: THE UNOFFICIAL AND UNWRITTEN (but you better follow them or you’re going to get beaten twice as hard) SPOKANE INDIAN RULES OF FISTICUFFS: IF SOMEBODY INSULTS YOU, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT HIM. IF YOU THINK SOMEBODY IS GOING TO INSULT YOU, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT HIM. IF YOU THINK SOMEBODY IS THINKING ABOUT INSULTING YOU, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT HIM. IF SOMEBODY INSULTS ANY OF YOUR FAMILY OR FRIENDS, OR IF YOU THINK THEY’RE GOING TO INSULT YOUR FAMILY OR FRIENDS, OR IF YOU THINK THEY’RE THINKING ABOUT INSULTING YOUR FAMILY OR FRIENDS, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT HIM. YOU SHOULD NEVER FIGHT A GIRL, UNLESS SHE INSULTS YOU, YOUR FAMILY, OR YOUR FRIENDS, THEN YOU HAVE TO FIGHT HER.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I couldn’t tell if she thought the reservation was a good or bad thing. “My name is Melinda,” she said. “Welcome to Reardan High School. Here’s your schedule, a copy of the school constitution and moral code, and a temporary student ID. We’ve got you assigned to Mr. Grant for homeroom. You better hustle on down there. You’re late.” “Ah, where is that?” I asked. “We’ve only got one hallway here,” she said and smiled. She had red hair and green eyes and was kind of sexy for an old woman. “It’s all the way down on the left.” I shoved the paperwork into my backpack and hustled down to my homeroom. I paused a second at the door and then walked inside. Everybody, all of the students and the teacher, stopped to stare at me. They stared hard. Like I was bad weather. “Take your seat,” the teacher said. He was a muscular guy. He had to be a football coach. I walked down the aisle and sat in the back row and tried to ignore all the stares and whispers, until a blond girl leaned over toward me. Penelope! Yes, there are places left in the world where people are named Penelope! I was emotionally erect. “What’s your name?” Penelope asked. “Junior,” I said. She laughed and told her girlfriend at the next desk that my name was Junior. They both laughed. Word spread around the room and pretty soon everybody was laughing. They were laughing at my name. I had no idea that Junior was a weird name. It’s a common name on my rez, on any rez. You walk into any trading post on any rez in the United States and shout, “Hey, Junior!” and seventeen guys will turn around. And three women. But there were no other people named Junior in Reardan, so I was being laughed at because I was the only one who had that silly name. And then I felt smaller because the teacher was taking roll and he called out my name name. “Arnold Spirit,” the teacher said. No, he yelled it. He was so big and muscular that his whisper was probably a scream. “Here,” I said as quietly as possible. My whisper was only a whisper. “Speak up,” the teacher said. “Here,” I said. “My name is Mr. Grant,” he said. “I’m here, Mr. Grant.” He moved on to other students, but Penelope leaned over toward me again, but she wasn’t laughing at all. She was mad now. “I thought you said your name was Junior,” Penelope said. She accused me of telling her my real name. Well, okay, it wasn’t completely my real name. My full name is Arnold Spirit Jr. But nobody calls me that. Everybody calls me Junior. Well, every other Indian calls me Junior. “My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Until Lyon, everything went along very smoothly, but during the three days this woman needed for her business dealings, I fell upon someone I was far from expecting to encounter in that city. Together with girls from the hotel whom I had got to accompany me, I would take walks on the Rhone quay; one day I all of a sudden espied the Reverend Father Antonin formerly of Saint Mary-in-the-Wood, now superior in charge of his order's establishment located in that city. That monk accosted me and after rebuking me in a very low and still sharper tone for my flight, and having given me to understand I would be running great risks of recapture were he to relay information to the Burgundian monastery, he added, softening his manner, that he would not breathe a word if I should be willing that very instant to come to visit him in his new quarters and to bring with me the girl I was with, who struck him as worth having; then repeating his proposal aloud, and to this other creature: "We shall reward you handsomely, both of you," quoth the monster; "there are ten of us in our house, and I promise you a minimum of one louis from each if your complacency is unlimited." I flush crimson upon hearing these words; I spend a moment trying to convince the monk he has made a mistake; failing at that, I attempt to use signs to induce him to be silent, but nothing prevails with this insolent fellow, and his solicitations become only the more heated; at last having received repeated refusals, he demands to know our address; in order to get rid of him, I immediately give a fictitious one, he writes it down, and leaves us with the assurance we will soon meet again.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost childlike laughter. I stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do on such an occasion. Thus our acquaintance began. The divinity asks for my name, and mentions her own. Her name is Wanda von Dunajew. And she is actually my Venus. “But madame, what put the idea into your head?” “The little picture in one of your books—” “I had forgotten about it.” “The curious notes on its back—” “Why curious?” She looked at me. “I have always wanted to know a real dreamer some time—for the sake of the change—and you seem one of the maddest of the tribe.” “Dear lady—in fact—” Again I fell victim to an odious, asinine stammering, and in addition blushed in a way that might have been appropriate for a youngster of sixteen, but not for me, who was almost a full ten years older— “You were afraid of me last night.” “Really—of course—but won’t you sit down?” She sat down, and enjoyed my embarrassment—for actually I was even more afraid of her now in the full light of day. A delightful expression of contempt hovered about her upper lip. “You look at love, and especially woman,” she began, “as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a genuinely modern point of view.” “You don’t share it?” “I do not share it,” she said quickly and decisively, shaking her head, so that her curls flew up like red flames. “The ideal which I strive to realize in my life is the serene sensuousness of the Greeks—pleasure without pain. I do not believe in the kind of love which is preached by Christianity, by the moderns, by the knights of the spirit. Yes, look at me, I am worse than a heretic, I am a pagan. ‘Doest thou imagine long the goddess of love took counsel When in Ida’s grove she was pleased with the hero Anchises?’ “These lines from Goethe’s Roman Elegy have always delighted me. “In nature there is only the love of the heroic age, ‘when gods and goddesses loved.’ At that time ‘desire followed the glance, enjoyment desire.’ All else is factitious, affected, a lie. Christianity, whose cruel emblem, the cross, has always had for me an element of the monstrous, brought something alien and hostile into nature and its innocent instincts. “The battle of the spirit with the senses is the gospel of modern man.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  recognize as such or suffer the consequences. Its rules are objectively given. They must be learned by the individual, whether as his first or as a foreign language, and he cannot change them at will. There are objective standards for correct and incorrect English, and although there may be differences of opinion about minor details, the existence of such standards is a precondition for the use of the language in the first place. There are, of course, penalties for offending against these standards, from failing in school to social embarrassment in later life, but the objective reality of the English language is not primarily constituted by these penalties. Rather, the English language is real objectively by virtue of the simple fact that it is there, a ready-made and collectively recognized universe of discourse within which individuals may understand each other and themselves (16). Society, as objective reality, provides a world for man to inhabit. This world encompasses the biography of the individual, which unfolds as a series of events within that world. Indeed, the individual’s own biography is objectively real only insofar as it may be comprehended within the significant structures of the social world. To be sure, the individual may have any number of highly subjective self- interpretations, which will strike others as bizarre or as downright incomprehensible. Whatever these self- interpretations may be, there will remain the objective interpretation of the individual’s biography that locates the latter in a collectively recognized frame of reference. The objective facts of this biography may be minimally ascertained by consulting the relevant personal documents. Name, legal descent, citizenship, civil status, occupation—these are but some of the “official” interpretations of individual existence, objectively valid not only by force of law but by the fundamental reality-bestowing potency of society. What is 20

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Scobee and Karen Hollander set a briefcase with the spokesperson’s auditing files in the backseat of the car that Hollander was borrowing at the time—actually, Tommy Davis’s BMW—intending to take the files to Gold Base the next day for senior managers to review. Because the car was in a highly secure parking lot, they thought nothing of it. Davis returned late that night, however. He found his car and decided to take it back to the Sea Org dormitory. When he parked the car on Wilcox Street, he happened to notice the briefcase, so he locked it in the trunk and went to bed. The next day, Scobee got a call from a sheepish Davis. He said that someone had broken into his car and stolen the briefcase out of the trunk. “ When we told Tommy what was in the briefcase, he freaked,” Scobee recalled. “He went around for a week, searching through Dumpsters.” Finally, someone approached Davis about the reward he had offered and led him to the thief, a homeless man who was trying to sell the briefcase; the contents, which were still in it, meant nothing to him. Davis gave the man twenty dollars.2 Davis was disappointed because the search forced him to miss the ceremony where John Travolta was awarded a Scientology medal. Davis went through a period of doubt and actually considered dropping out of the Sea Org, according to Scobee, but then he recommitted and became so enthusiastic that he had the Sea Org logo—a laurel wreath with twenty-six leaves representing the stars in the Galactic Confederacy—tattooed on his arm. When Miscavige found out, he berated Davis, saying that he had violated the church’s copyright. Davis began working with Marty Rathbun during his intensive auditing of Cruise. When Rathbun was thrown in the Hole, Davis became something more than a gofer for the star. He provided a line to Cruise at a time when the actor’s relationship with the church was not yet solidified, and his constant presence beside the superstar boosted the image of Scientology as a hip, insider network. Although Cruise is ten years older, the two men physically resemble each other, with long faces and strong jaws, a likeness that is enhanced by similar spiky haircuts. Their relationship evolved into a friendship, but one that reflected the immense power imbalance between them, as well as Davis’s position as a deputy of the church in the service of its most precious asset. Until his association with Cruise, Davis had been called Tom, but he became Tommy to distinguish him from the star. In other ways, he became more like him—his clothes, his hair, his intensity. At the age of nineteen, Davis married a dreamy Belgian woman, Nadine van Hootegem, who was also in the Sea Org. “ I made the decision to forward the aims of Scientology,” she told the ABC News program 20/20 in 1998.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Ten minutes later we are sitting across from each other at the table. It is so large in circumference that there is plenty of room for both of us to spread out with our respective thousand pieces. Isaac sets two mugs of coffee between us before we start. “We need some rules,” he announces. I slide my mug over and hook a finger in the handle. “Like what kind?” “Don’t use that tone with me.” My face actually feels stiff when I smile. Other than my manic laughing the first day we woke up here, it’s probably the first time my face has moved in the upward direction. “Those there are the laziest muscles on your body,” Isaac announces when he sees it. He slides into his chair. “I think I’ve seen you smile one other time. Ever.” It feels awkward to even have it on my face, so I let it drop to sip the coffee. “That’s not true.” But I know it is. “Okay, the rules,” he says. “We take a shot every half hour.” “A shot of liquor?” He nods. “NO!” I protest. “We’ll never be able to do this if we are drunk!” “It levels the playing field,” he says. “Don’t think I don’t know about your puzzle love.” “What are you talking about?” I drag a piece of my puzzle around the table with my fingertip. I make figure eights with it—big ones then small ones. How could he possibly know something like that? I try to remember if I had puzzles in my house when… “I read your book,” he says. I flush. Oh yeah . “That was just a character...” “No,” he says, watching the path my puzzle piece is making. “That was you.” I glance at him from beneath my lashes. I don’t have the energy to argue, and I’m not sure I can make a compelling argument anyway. Guilty, I think. Of telling too much truth. I think about the last time we took shots and my stomach rolls. If I get a hangover I’ll sleep through most of the following day and be too sick to eat. That saves food and kills at least twelve boring hours. “I’m in,” I say. “Let’s do this.” I pick up the piece underneath my fingertip. I can make out colorful pant legs and a tiny bulldog on a red leash. I set it back down, pick up another, roll it between my fingertips. I’m bothered by what he said, but I also just found Waldo. I set him underneath my coffee mug for safekeeping. “I’m an artist, Senna. I know what it is to put yourself into what you create.” “What are you talking about?” I fake confusion. Isaac already has a small corner put together. I watch his hand travel over the pieces until he plucks up another. He’s getting a good head start on me. He has at least twenty pieces.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  After saluting her, he led her to a coach that fronted us, where they both sat down, and the young Genoes helped her to a glass of wine, with some Naples biscuits on a salver. Presently, when they had exchanged a few kisses, and questions in broken English on one side, he began to unbutton, and, in fine, stript unto his shirt. As if this had been the signal agreed on for pulling off all their clothes, a scheme which the heat of the season perfectly favoured, Polly began to draw her pins, and as she had no stays to unlace, she was in a trice, with her gallant’s officious assistance, undressed to all but her shift. When he saw this, his breeches were immediately loosened, waist and knee bands, and slipped over his ankles, clean off; his shirt collar was unbottoned too: then, first giving Polly an encouraging kiss, he stole, as it were, the shift off the girl, who being, I suppose, broke and familiarized to this humour, blushed indeed, but less than I did at the apparition of her, now standing stark naked, just as she came ont of the hands of pure nature, with her black hair loose and a-float down her dazzling white neck and shoulders, whilst the deepened carnation of her cheeks went off gradually into the hue of glazed snow: for such were the blended tints polish of her skin.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Madam heard me out, with all the gravity and brow of a petty minister of State, and seeing at one glance over my figure what I was, made me no answer, but to ask me the preliminary shilling, on receipt of which she told me places for women too slight built for hard work: but that she would look over her book, and see what was to be done for me, desiring me to stay a little, till she had dispatched some other customers. On this I drew back a little, most heartily mortified at a declaration which carried with it a killing uncertainly, that my circumstances could not well endure. Presently, assuming more courage, and seeking some diversion from my uneasy thoughts, I ventured to lift up my head a little, and sent my eyes on a course round the room, where they met full tilt with those of a lady (for such my extreme innocence pronounced her) sitting in a corner of the room, dressed in a velvet mantle (in the midst of summer), with her bonnet off; squat, fat, red-faced, and at least fifty. She looked as if she would devour me with her eyes, staring at me from head to foot, without the least regard to the confusion and blushes her eyeing me so fixedly put me to, and which were to her, no doubt, the strongest recommendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.

• From Between Us

  Neither of us knew at the time that Markus was to become my American mentor, but right away I felt we meshed. When we ran into each other in the women’s restroom, I showed my empathy, or so I thought: she had so much on her mind being one of the organizers—I had seen her really busy. So I looked at her warmly, and said: “You look a little tired.” Upon which Hazel looked startled, turned to the mirror and confirmed that, yes, she needed to refresh her lipstick. I stumbled, and added that I did not mean to suggest she looked bad. Research by psychologist Birgit Koopmann-Holm, herself of German descent and living in the United States, suggests that I was projecting the understanding of the situation that would have applied in my (then Dutch) cultural environment onto Hazel. In nicely controlled experiments, Koopman- Holm shows that Germans (and by extension Dutch) see more suffering in ambiguous materials than do their American counterparts. She finds Germans imagine that receiving sympathy focused on negative feelings would be more comforting after a bereavement than receiving sympathy that emphasizes the silver lining. Americans preferred to receive “sympathy” that focuses attention on positive aspects of the situation—cherishing the memories of the deceased. While none of Koopmann-Holm’s studies focuses on conference organizers in a bathroom, it is a safe assumption that my empathizing with Hazel by projecting my own feelings (she must be tired), and focusing on her pain (or fatigue), was of limited value in making connection. I might have been more successful, had I emphasized the silver lining of her fatigue: “Wow, so much work, but the conference is going great!” Mere empathy does not work, because it does not overcome the cultural gap. Yet there are ways of achieving more kindness, and growing closer, which do close the cultural or positional gap. The good news is that you can learn to bridge the cultural differences by unpacking the emotional episode. As a researcher of emotions and as an immigrant myself, I have made my share of mistakes: disbelieving what others told me about their emotions, misinterpreting their behaviors, and projecting my own feelings or interpretations on them. In the end, keeping an open (enough) mind, talking with friends, collaborating with valuable colleagues and informants, reading ethnographies of fieldwork, and living in other places have all helped me better appreciate —perhaps even predict and anticipate—how emotions in other cultural contexts are done.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “What are you talking about?” I drag a piece of my puzzle around the table with my fingertip. I make figure eights with it—big ones then small ones. How could he possibly know something like that? I try to remember if I had puzzles in my house when… “I read your book,” he says. I flush. Oh yeah. “That was just a character...” “No,” he says, watching the path my puzzle piece is making. “That was you.” I glance at him from beneath my lashes. I don’t have the energy to argue, and I’m not sure I can make a compelling argument anyway. Guilty, I think. Of telling too much truth. I think about the last time we took shots and my stomach rolls. If I get a hangover I’ll sleep through most of the following day and be too sick to eat. That saves food and kills at least twelve boring hours. “I’m in,” I say. “Let’s do this.” I pick up the piece underneath my fingertip. I can make out colorful pant legs and a tiny bulldog on a red leash. I set it back down, pick up another, roll it between my fingertips. I’m bothered by what he said, but I also just found Waldo. I set him underneath my coffee mug for safekeeping. “I’m an artist, Senna. I know what it is to put yourself into what you create.” “What are you talking about?” I fake confusion. Isaac already has a small corner put together. I watch his hand travel over the pieces until he plucks up another. He’s getting a good head start on me. He has at least twenty pieces. I’ll wait. “Stop it,” he says. “We’re being fun and open tonight.” I sigh. “It’s not fun to be open.” And then, “I was more honest in that book than I was in any of the others.” Isaac hooks another piece onto his growing continent. “I know.” I let spit pool in my mouth until I have enough of it to hang a really good lugie, then swallow it all at once. He’d read my books. I should have known. He’s at thirty pieces now. I tap my fingers on the table. “I don’t know that side of you,” I say. “The artist.” I collect more spit. Swirl it, push it between my teeth. Swallow. He smirks. “Doctor Asterholder. That’s who you know.” This conversation is pricking where it hurts. I am remembering things; the night he took off his shirt and showed me what was painted on his skin. The strange way his eyes burned. That was my peek down the rabbit hole. The other Isaac, like the other mother in Coraline. He’s at thirty- three pieces. He’s pretty good. “Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he says, without looking up. “Because you were honest.” I wait awhile before I say-”What do you mean?” Fifty

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Clear out the medicine cabinet before guests arrive for dinner or new lovers stay the night. Remember to put the lithium back into the cabinet the next day. Don’t be too embarrassed by your lack of coordination or your inability to do well the sports you once did with ease. Learn to laugh about spilling coffee, having the palsied signature of an eighty-year-old, and being unable to put on cuff links in less than ten minutes. Smile when people joke about how they think they “need to be on lithium.” Nod intelligently, and with conviction, when your physician explains to you the many advantages of lithium in leveling out the chaos in your life. Be patient when waiting for this leveling off. Very patient. Reread the Book of Job. Continue being patient. Contemplate the similarity between the phrases “being patient” and “being a patient.” Try not to let the fact that you can’t read without effort annoy you. Be philosophical. Even if you could read, you probably wouldn’t remember most of it anyway. Accommodate to a certain lack of enthusiasm and bounce that you once had. Try not to think about all the wild nights you once had. Probably best not to have had those nights anyway. Always keep in perspective how much better you are. Everyone else certainly points it out often enough, and, annoyingly enough, it’s probably true. Be appreciative. Don’t even consider stopping your lithium. When you do stop, get manic, get depressed, expect to hear two basic themes from your family, friends, and healers: But you were doing so much better, I just don’t understand it. I told you this would happen. Restock your medicine cabinet. Psychological issues ultimately proved far more important than side effects in my prolonged resistance to lithium. I simply did not want to believe that I needed to take medication. I had become addicted to my high moods; I had become dependent upon their intensity, euphoria, assuredness, and their infectious ability to induce high moods and enthusiasms in other people. Like gamblers who sacrifice everything for the fleeting but ecstatic moments of winning, or cocaine addicts who risk their families, careers, and lives for brief interludes of high energy and mood, I found my milder manic states powerfully inebriating and very conducive to productivity. I couldn’t give them up. More fundamentally, I genuinely believed—courtesy of strong-willed parents, my own stubbornness, and a WASP military upbringing—that I ought to be able to handle whatever difficulties came my way without having to rely upon crutches such as medication.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Whilst I was chaffering for the fruit I wanted, I observed myself followed by a young gentleman, whose rich dress first attracted my notice; for the rest, he had nothing remarkable in his person, except that he was pale, thin-made, and ventured himself upon legs rather of the slenderest. Easy was it to perceive, without seeming to perceive it, that it was me he wanted to be at; and keeping his eyes fixed on me, till he came to the same basket that I stood at, and cheapening, or rather giving the first price asked for the fruit, began his approaches. Now most certainly I was not at all out of figure to pass for a modest girl. I had neither the feathers, nor fumet of a taudry town-miss: a straw hat, a white gown, clean linen, and above all, a certain natural and easy air of modesty (which the appearances of never forsook me, even on those occasions that I most broke in upon it, in practice) were all signs that gave him no opening to conjecture my condition. He spoke to me; and this address from a stranger throwing a blush into my cheeks, that still set him wider of the truth, I answered him, with an awkwardness and confusion the more apt to impose, as there really was a mixture of the genuine in them. But when proceeding, on the foot of having broken the ice, to join discourse, he went into other leading questions, I put so much innocence, simplicity, and even childishness, into my answers, that on no better foundation, liking my person as he did, I will not answer for it, he would have been sworn for my modesty. There is, in short, in the men, when once they are caught, by the eye especially, a fund of cullibility that their lordly wisdom little dreams of, and in virtue of which the most sagacious of them are seen so often our dupes. Amongst other queries he put to me, one was, whether I was married? I replied, that I was too young to think of that this many a year. To that of my age, I answered, and sunk a year upon him, passing myself for not above seventeen. As to my way of life, I told him I had served an apprenticeship to a milliner in Preston, and was come to town after a relation, that I had found, on my arrival, was dead, and now lived journey-woman to a milliner in town. That last article, indeed, was not much of the side of what I pretended to pass for; but it did pass, under favour of the growing passion I had inspired him with.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "'Oh, mademoiselle! pardon!' said I; 'but really I did not know that you were here—that is to say that——' "'Sot—stupide—imbecile—bête—animal!" quoth she, with quite a French volubility, rising and getting as red as a peony. Then she turned her back upon me, but only to face the wandering old maid, who appeared at the other end of the avenue, and who greeted her with a prolonged 'Oh!' that sounded like the blast of a fog-trumpet." "And——" "And the only love I ever had for a woman thus came to an end." CHAPTER III "THEN you had never loved before you made Teleny's acquaintance?" "Never; that is the reason why—for some time—I did not quite understand what I felt. Thinking it over, however, I afterwards came to the conclusion that I had felt the first faint stimulus of love already long before, but as it had always been with my own sex, I was unconscious that this was love." "Was it for some boy of your age?" "No, always for grown up men, for strong muscular specimens of manhood. I had from childhood a hankering for males of the prizefighter's type, with huge limbs, rippling muscles, mighty thews; for brutal strength in fact. "My first infatuation was for a young Hercules of a butcher, who came a-courting our maid—a pretty girl, as far as I can remember. He was a stout athletic fellow with sinewy arms, who looked as if he could have felled an ox with a blow of his fist. "I often used to sit and watch him unawares, noting every expression of his face whilst he was making love, almost feeling the lust he felt himself. "How I did wish he would speak to me instead of joking with my stupid maid. I felt jealous of her although I liked her very much. Sometimes he used to take me up and fondle me, but that was very seldom; one day, however, when—apparently excited—he had tried hard to kiss her, and had not succeeded, he took me up and greedily pressed his lips against mine, kissing me as if he were parched with thirst. "Although I was but a very little child, still I think this act must have brought about an erection, for I remember every pulse of mine was fluttering. I still remember the pleasure I felt when—like a cat—I could rub myself against his legs, nestle between his thighs, sniff him like a dog, or pat and paddle him; but, alas! he seldom heeded me. "My greatest delight in my boyhood was to see men bathing. I could hardly keep myself from rushing up to them; I should have liked to handle and kiss them all over. I was quite beyond myself when I saw one of them naked.