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 Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  That’s what we’re doing here. That’s what you are part of.” The truth is that we’re selling software that lets companies, most of them small businesses, sell more stuff. The world of online marketing, where HubSpot operates, has a reputation for being kind of grubby. In addition to pool installers and flower shops, our customers include people who make a living bombarding people with email offers, or gaming Google’s search algorithm, or figuring out which kind of misleading subject line is most likely to trick someone into opening a message. Online marketing is not quite as sleazy as Internet porn, but it’s not much better, either. Nevertheless, Dave is laying it on thick, and the new recruits are nodding their heads and seem to be eating it up. Most of them are right out of college, clean-cut and well scrubbed. The guys wear khakis and button-down shirts. The women wear jeans and boots, and lots of makeup, and they have paid attention to their hair. The guy next to me has a buzz cut and just graduated from some college in New Hampshire. He tells me that he lives with his parents and commutes an hour to get here, but he’s thinking about moving closer to Boston and getting his own place. I feel ridiculous. I definitely don’t belong here. When it’s my turn to tell a little something about myself, I make a joke about how I’m friends with all of their parents, who have sent me here to keep an eye on them. The joke falls flat, which it should, because it’s a shit joke. I’m nervous. I have to come up with something. What makes me a special snowflake? How am I different from everyone else here, other than the fact that my hair is gray, my cholesterol is too high, and I’m probably the only person in this room who has had a colonoscopy? I say something about being the parent of twins. The other recruits just look at me. Dave ushers in a parade of executives who give us inspiring talks about what a great company we’ve joined. I’m not only older than all of the other trainees, I’m also older than all of the executives. Assistant trainers lead various courses during the day and give us homework assignments. A woman named Patty does most of the training on how to use HubSpot’s software. What we’re selling is not one single product but actually a handful of separate programs that can be purchased individually or as a bundle. The bad news is that some of the programs aren’t especially good. I’ve already been using the content management system, or CMS, which is software for writing and editing blog posts, and it’s awful—buggy, slow, prone to crashing, incredibly limited in its functionality. HubSpot’s CMS is a tinker toy compared to WordPress, the most popular blogging software, which also costs nothing to use.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  If you’re a person who doesn’t fantasize, don’t be concerned. As you read on, try to keep an open mind. You may not be accustomed to noticing the sexy images that flash through your mind. Like many people, you may not have detailed fantasies, just fragments of erotic thoughts that easily go unnoticed. Moreover, like so many of us, you may have been taught that it’s wrong to have sexual daydreams. Be patient and self-accepting. Gradually, you’ll become more familiar and comfortable with the way your erotic imagination works. As you contemplate your fantasies, don’t be surprised if you feel embarrassed. After all, you’re zeroing in on extremely intimate material. Most of us will tell a friend details about an exciting encounter much more readily than we’ll talk about what truly arouses us in our private thoughts. If you can open the door only slightly to this line of self-exploration, in time you’ll discover how much your fantasies can teach you about your eroticism. A WORD ABOUT PEAKS AND PROBLEMSAt one time or another most of us experience problems with our sexuality. In fact, one of your motivations for reading this book may be to understand or to resolve your own sexual concerns or those of someone you love. I bring this up now because you need to be aware that in the five chapters of Part I our goal is to unravel some of the mysteries of the erotic mind. We’ll do that primarily by focusing on peak erotic experiences. This is a different approach from the one most books about sex follow. Like many of my clients, you might find it difficult to set aside your concerns for a while and see what you can learn from your own and others’ peak turn-ons. I’m certainly not suggesting that you ignore your problems or pretend you don’t have them; that would be counterproductive, not to mention impossible. It’s best if you remain aware of your problems in the back of your mind while you focus on your potentials. I can assure you that your patience will pay off. By the time you reach Part II, “Troublesome Turn-ons,” you will have developed the insights necessary for understanding and resolving a variety of prevalent erotic problems from a whole new perspective. EROTIC MEMORABILITYNow you are ready to begin examining your peak erotic experiences. Think of them using two seemingly mismatched metaphors. Peak turn-ons are precious jewels. To fully appreciate their glittering facets, it is necessary to gaze at them from different angles. Yet peak experiences are also onionlike. As each layer is peeled away you uncover additional information not visible on the surface.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  Or are the boys right? What would H. herself think of this terrible little notebook to which I come back and back? Are these jottings morbid? I once read the sentence ‘I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.’ That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. Do these notes merely aggravate that side of it? Merely confirm the monotonous, tread-mill march of the mind round one subject? But what am I to do? I must have some drug, and reading isn’t a strong enough drug now. By writing it all down (all?—no: one thought in a hundred) I believe I get a little outside it. That’s how I’d defend it to H. But ten to one she’d see a hole in the defence. It isn’t only the boys either. An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Some funk it altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week. I like best the well brought-up young men, almost boys, who walk up to me as if I were a dentist, turn very red, get it over, and then edge away to the bar as quickly as they decently can. Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel them both thinking, ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.’ At first I was very afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy—our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once—like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash. Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. I suppose that if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn’t notice it much more in any one food than in another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. It is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate.

• From Cultish (2021)

  But our personality test was “the real introduction.” I suppose for aspiring actors in Los Angeles, or dreamers anywhere, really, it’s something of an occupational hazard: Whether you’re on a quest for spiritual enlightenment, eternal salvation, or a Tom Cruise level of renown so powerful that you essentially become a god on Earth, devoting your life to something so behemoth that heaven itself is on the line requires big risks, tough commitments, and a pretty intense suspension of reality to believe it’s possible. The stakes are just that high. In some cases, you get out within a few hours, a little bit shaken; in others, you lose everything. But there is always a story. As soon as you get your language back, you can tell it. Part 4Do You Wanna Be a #BossBabe? i.Roses are red Money is green The American Dream Is a pyramid scheme Hey girl! I LOVE your posts. You have SUCH a fun energy!! Have you ever thought about turning that energy into a side hustle ? Let me ask you a question ;) If there were a business where you could work part-time from home but make a full-time living, would that interest you at all? Because that’s what I’ve been up to. Some people are super closed-minded to stuff like this which limits their opportunities, but you seem open to new things, which is exactly what it takes to be successful!! Would you be down to hear more? I could call you sometime this week? It’s way too much to type out lol. My number is xxx-xxx-xxxx, what’s yours? I look forward to hearing back, boss babe! xoxo * * * I’m ears-deep into one of those miserable Facebook benders—a stalkerish wormhole where all of a sudden, I’ve found myself terribly invested in what someone I don’t even know wore to prom in 2008—when a few rogue clicks lead me to a post I never thought I’d see: Becca Manners from middle school is trying to sell a weight loss scam to her 3,416 “friends.” I first met Becca, the most self-possessed tween girl in all of Baltimore County to my knowledge, in rehearsals for our seventh-grade musical. Becca and I bonded over some dirty joke and were tight all the way through twelfth grade. We ignored the school dress code together, scream-sang Alanis Morissette in the car together, had a million sleepovers, and now here we are, age twenty-seven and 2,700 miles apart, judging each other’s lives on social media. Becca and I haven’t spoken in almost a decade, but my periodic internet lurkings tell me that she’s married, sober, living up the road from her parents, and wants all her Facebook friends, including me—currently in LA, inhaling an overpriced cocktail and a gust of car exhaust—to ask her about her new #wellness business opportunity. It’s early summer when photos of my old pal sorority-squatting next to bags of sugar to represent the pounds she’s quickly shed start spamming my newsfeed.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The Abbess, having taken her seat in the chapter-house in the presence of all the nuns, who only had eyes for the delinquent, began to administer the most terrible scolding that any woman was ever given, telling her that by her foul and abominable conduct, if it ever leaked out, she had defiled the sanctity, the honour, and the good name of the convent; and by way of addition to this torrent of abuse, she threatened her with the direst of penalties. Knowing herself to be at fault, the girl was at a loss for an answer, so she simply stood there looking shy and embarrassed without saying a word, with the result that the others began to feel sorry for her. But as the strictures of the Abbess continued to flow thick and fast, she happened to raise her eyes and perceive what the Abbess had on her head, with the braces dangling down on either side. Realizing what the Abbess had been up to, she took heart and said: ‘By the grace of God, Mother Abbess, tie up your bonnet, and then you may say whatever you like to me.’ The Abbess, having no idea what she meant by this, said to her: ‘What bonnet, you little whore? Are you going to have the effrontery to stand there making witty remarks? Do you think it funny to have behaved in this disgraceful manner?’ And so, for the second time, the girl said: ‘I would ask you once again, Mother Abbess, to tie up your bonnet, and then you may address me in whatever way you please.’ Accordingly, several of the nuns looked up at the Abbess, and the Abbess likewise raised her hands to die sides of her head, so that they all saw what Isabetta was driving at. Whereupon the Abbess, recognizing that she was equally culpable and that there was no way of concealing the fact from all the nuns, who were gazing at her with their eyes popping out of their heads, changed her tune and began to take a completely different line, arguing that it was impossible to defend oneself against the goadings of the flesh. And she told them that provided the thing was discreetly arranged, as it had been in the past, they were all at liberty to enjoy themselves whenever they pleased. Isabetta was then set at liberty, and she and the Abbess returned to their beds, the latter with the priest and the former with her lover. She thenceforth arranged for him to visit her at frequent intervals, undeterred by the envy of those of her fellow nuns, without lovers, who consoled themselves in secret as best they could.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Managers, people like Zack, get the same training that I’m getting, but then they go to an extra class where they learn how to use DISC when they are managing people. Try to imagine the calamity of that: Zack, age twenty-eight, with no management experience, gets training from Dave, a weekend rock guitarist, on how to apply a set of fundamentally unsound psychological principles as a way to manipulate the people who report to him. If you put a room full of journalists into this situation they would immediately begin ripping on each other, taking the piss out of the instructors, asking intentionally stupid questions. If the boss wants us to waste half a day on Romper Room bullshit, we could at least have some fun. My HubSpot colleagues, however, seem to take the DISC personality assessment seriously. The scene feels like something out of Office Space, the Mike Judge movie about life as a corporate drone at a company called Initech. Dave and Deb keep asking for volunteers to engage in role-playing games. I keep my head down and avoid making eye contact. Luckily, I’m spared. We watch an unintentionally funny training video that seems like a parody of a training video. A smarmy host introduces four actors who represent the four basic personality traits. The actors are the kind of actors who get hired to appear in corporate training videos, reading scripts written by the kind of people who write scripts for corporate training videos. After the video, Deb asks us to think about which person we liked the most and which one we liked the least. Then she starts calling on us. “Who here is a D?” she says. I raise my hand, but limply. I’m at the far end of the table, hoping she won’t see me. She does. “Dan,” she says, “which of those people did you like the best?” I choose the young African-American woman who was playing the role of the S personality. Deb says that’s interesting, because D people and S people often don’t get along. “What did you like about her?” she says. The truth is, I’m not sure. “She seems pleasant,” I say. “I think we’d get along.” “Fair enough,” Deb says. “And which person would you least want to work with?” That one is easy. There’s a guy who plays the role of a corporate robot. He does exactly what he’s asked to do, but nothing more. Basically this is a version of Milton, the character in Office Space who loves his red Swingline stapler.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Once the Yadavas and Kuru- Panchalas subjugated enough villages in the Doab in this way, they had become in effect aristocratic rulers of agrarian kingdoms, though they still dispatched annual raiding parties to the east. This transition to agrarian life meant major social change. We can only speculate, of course, but up to this point it seems that Aryan society had not been rigidly stratified: the lesser clansmen fought alongside their chieftains, and priests often took part in the raiding. 23 But with agriculture came specialization. The Aryans found that they now had to integrate the dasas, the native farmers with agricultural knowhow, into their community, so the Vritra myths demonizing the dasas were becoming obsolete, since without their labor and expertise, the agrarian economy would fail. The demands of production also meant that Aryans themselves had to toil in the fields, while others became carpenters, metalsmiths, potters, tanners, and weavers. They would now stay at home, while the best warriors were dispatched to fight in the east. There were probably power struggles between the rajas, who wielded power, and the priests, who gave it legitimacy. Breaking with centuries of tradition, all these innovations had to be grafted onto the Vedic mythos. Their new wealth and leisure gave the priests more time for contemplation, and they began to refine their concept of divinity. They had always seen the gods as participating in a loftier, more encompassing reality that was Being itself, which by the tenth century they had started to call Brahman (“The All”). 24 Brahman was the power that held the cosmos together and enabled it to grow and develop. It was nameless, indefinable, and utterly transcendent. Devas were simply different manifestations of the Brahman: “They call him Indra, Mitra, Naruna, Agni, and he is heavenly noble-winged Garatman. To what is One, sages give many a title.” 25 With almost forensic determination, the new breed of rishis were intent on discovering this mysterious unifying principle; the all-too-human devas were not only a distraction but were becoming an embarrassment: they concealed rather than revealed the Brahman. Nobody, one rishi insisted, not even the highest of the gods, knows how our world came into being. 26 The old stories of Indra slaying a monster to order the cosmos now seemed positively infantile. 27 Gradually the gods’ personalities began to shrink. 28 One of these later hymns also gave sacred endorsement to the new stratification of Aryan society.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  There was stunned silence. The others looked at me with a mixture of pity and concern, like arguing parents who become aware of an upset child in the room. My nightmare had come to life. I had stopped the drama by saying the wrong thing—as if I were still a kid coming to my mother’s defense. Anaïs broke the paralysis of the moment. “Out of the mouth of babes.” As if offering me a reward, she wrapped a lock of my hair around her index finger. “Your hair is so silky. It’s the shade mine was at your age. I never appreciated it.” “Because brown hair is so boring,” I said. “Not at all. It has gold and amber highlights. Brown is the color of polished wood and mink coats, of brandy and cellos.” She must really have wanted to make me feel good, because years later I learned that she hated the color brown. Jean-Jacques jumped up. “Mambo avec Mongo, Anaïs?” He took her hand and she rose to join him, but then we all saw Hugo returning to the table. Anaïs brushed right past Jean-Jacques and coquettishly entered Hugo’s arms, calling back to us, “I promised this dance to my husband.” Jean-Jacques turned to me. “You’re it.” He took my hand to lift me out of my chair. “I can’t dance to this,” I objected. I only knew rock and roll and the formless slow dancing we did at St. Cyril’s parish mixers. “Don’t dance. Just move to the rhythm.” Jean-Jacques revealed small, even teeth in a seductive smile. Though he wasn’t tall, he gave that impression because of his erect posture. His posture changed as he danced, hunched like a hipster, slender legs in his finely tailored pants loose and easy. I tried to mirror him. Anaïs sped by with Hugo. “That’s it, Tristine!” Jean-Jacques took me in his arms. “Allow me to move you.” I followed his instructions, amazed that my body twisted and whirled under the guidance of his hands and that my feet kept the rhythm without tripping. He pulled me close so I was aware of my breasts pressed against his chest and of his leg pushing between my thighs. The thumping congas, the blasting trumpet, the squealing sax, our hearts drumming violently, harder, faster, built to a crescendo. When the music stopped, people stood apart, panting, but Jean-Jacques squeezed his body against mine so that our pounding pulses slowed together. I looked around the spinning room to find Anaïs. She and Hugo were speaking in Spanish with Mongo.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The foregoing may serve as examples of the first type illusions mentioned on page 86. I could cite of course many others, but it would be tedious to enumerate all the thaumatropes and zoetropes, dioramas, and juggler's tricks which they are embodied. In the chapter on Sensation sew that many illusions commonly ranged under this are, physiologically considered, of another sort altogether, and that associative processes, strictly so called, · nothing to do with their production. Illusions of the Second Type. We may now turn to illusions of the second of the two type discriminated on page 86. In this type we perceive a wrong object because our mind is full of the thought of it time, and any sensation which is in the least degree connected with it touches off, as it were, a train already laid and gives us a sense that the object is really before us. Here is a familiar example: "If a sportsman, while shooting woodcock in cover, sees a bird ;the size and color of a woodcock get up and fly through the foliage, not having time to see more than that it is a bird of such a size and color, he immediately supplies by inference the other qualities of a woodcock, and is afterwards disgusted to find that he has shot a thrush. I have done so myself, and could hardly believe that the thrush was the bird I had fired at, so complete was my mental supplement to my visual perception."[105] As with game, so with enemies, ghosts, and the like Anyone waiting in a dark place and expecting or fearing strongly a certain object will interpret any abrupt sensation to mean that object's presence. The boy playing 'I spy,' the criminal skulking from his pursuers, the superstitious person hurrying through the woods or past the church-yard at midnight, the man lost in the woods, the girl who tremulously has made an evening appointment with her swain, all are subject to illusions of sight and sound which make their hearts beat till they are dispelled. Twenty times a day the lover, perambulating the streets with his preoccupied fancy, will think he perceives his idol's bonnet before him. The Proof-reader's Illusion. I remember one night in Boston, whilst waiting for a, 'Mount Auburn' car to bring me to Cambridge, reading most distinctly that name upon the signboard of a car on which (as I afterwards learned) 'North Avenue' was painted. The illusion was so vivid that I could hardly believe my eyes had deceived me. All reading is more or less performed in this way.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  As I recited directions, she pondered. “Near that old furniture factory?” “Tn the old furniture factory.” One of her red eyebrows lifted high. “T forgot to ask one question. When do I get paid?” Leeny pushed away from the door jamb as I opened up. I measured my response. “Well — that’s another matter. I’m selling a piece in another week, so [ll have the money then.” “Nothing up front?” She started to turn away. Her tight jeans framed a perfectly rounded butt. “Wait, wait.” I went to the old bright blue cabinets I had found in an alley near a demolished house. I forced my stash drawer open and found my last drops of “emergency cash”: a ten and a five. “Fifteen now, the rest when I get paid? It’s going to be at least eight hours, so at the end that’ll be —” I started to calculate. “Righty-one bucks. One question. Why me?” “You’re interesting. Your skin is amazing.” As Leeny laughed her steamy breath vaporized. She shrugged, pulled her hand from the pocket of her cracked vintage leather flight jacket and took the two bills. She stuffed them in her jeans then blew in her hands. “Am I going to end up looking like something from a Picasso?” She scanned my wheat period paintings. “T do realistic works too. You won’t have both eyes on one side of your nose.” “Makes no difference to me. It’s your dime.” Leeny continued inside. She made a pretty O with her lips and blew as if to see if her breath was still visible. It wasn’t but she poked her finger in the 382 Craig F. Sorensen trailing breeze of wintergreen anyway. “If you want me in anything less than a coat, you’ll have to warm it up in here.” “This is about as warm as it gets in the winter, but you'll be sitting under the lights.” I pointed to the spot in the middle of the factory, which was illuminated like a spotlight on a dark stage. Leeny’s mouth slowly curled to a frown. She finally shrugged and took off her coat. “Shit.” I focused on her left arm. “I fuckin’ hate tattoos.” Dad’s ’88 Buick hissed and I jumped out. The bump on my head had not yet begun to rise, but I could feel it coming. That didn’t bother me. The sound softly decayed, and I looked up and down the country road. There was a house a half-mile or so back. I walked slowly toward it, and paused from time to time to kick larger rocks along the way.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Now, young man”, he said, “you’ll have many opportunities later, so give me my place”, and forthwith turned him out of his place and took his seat by the Vicereine, though she would barely speak to him. At length Tom Connolly said to her: “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, for you’re so kind. Fancy blaming a poor young girl the first time she yields to a man!” This response made the whole table roar and established Connolly’s fame for impudence throughout Ireland. Everyone was talking of him and I went about after him all through the gardens and whenever he spoke, my large ears were cocked to hear any word of wisdom that might fall from his lips. At length he noticed me and asked me why I followed him about. “Everybody says you can win any woman you like, Mr. Connolly”; I said half-ashamed: “I want to know how you do it, what you say to them.” “Faith, I don’t know”, he said, “but you’re a funny little fellow. What age are you to be asking such questions?” “I’m fourteen”, I said boldly. “I wouldn’t have given you fourteen, but even fourteen is too young; you must wait.” So I withdrew but still kept within earshot. I heard him laughing with my eldest brother over my question and so imagined that I was forgiven, and the next day or the day after, finding me as assiduous as ever, he said: “You know, your question amused me and I thought I would try to find an answer to it and here is one. When you can put a stiff penis in her hand and weep profusely the while, you’re getting near any woman’s heart. But don’t forget the tears.” I found the advice a counsel of perfection; I was unable to weep at such a moment; but I never forgot the words. There was a large barracks of Irish Constabulary in Ballybay and the Sub-Inspector was a handsome fellow of five feet nine or ten named Walter Raleigh. He used to say that he was a descendant of the famous courtier of Queen Elizabeth and he pronounced his name “Rolly” and assured us that his illustrious namesake had often spelt it in this way, which showed that he must have pronounced it as if written with an “o.” The reason I mention Raleigh here is that his sisters and mine were great friends and he came in and out of our house almost as if it were his own. Every evening when Vernon and Raleigh had nothing better to do, they cleared away the chairs in our back parlor, put on boxing gloves and had a set-to. My father used to sit in a corner and watch them: Vernon was lighter and smaller; but quicker; still I used to think that Raleigh did not put out his full strength against him.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The next thing to be noticed is this, that every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is FELT, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs. If the reader has never paid attention to this matter, he will be both interested and astonished to learn how many different local bodily feelings he can detect in himself as characteristic of his various emotional moods. It would be perhaps too much to expect him to arrest the tide of any strong gust of passion for the sake of any such curious analysis as this; but he can observe more tranquil states, and that may be assumed here to be true of the greater which is shown to be true of the less. Our whole cubic capacity is sensibly alive; and each morsel of it contributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of personality that every one of us unfailingly carries with him. It is surprising what little items give accent to these complexes of sensibility. When worried by any slight trouble, one may find that the focus of one's bodily consciousness is the contraction, often quite inconsiderable, of the eyes and brows. When momentarily embarrassed, it is something in the pharynx that compels either a swallow, a clearing of the throat, or a slight cough; and so on for as many more instances as might be named. Our concern here being with the general view rather than with the details, I will not linger to discuss these, but, assuming the point admitted that every change that occurs must be felt, I will pass on.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  through the shower hardly daring to look at the other girls, hoping for invisibility, but also realizing many of the other girls raced just as she did. Her gaze trembled and darted on the others to see if they looked at her. She felt embarrassment at being seen, like Adam and Eve ashamed of their nakedness. Now, Desi wondered if Adam and Eve had been excited as well as ashamed. Sizing herself up in her mirror, Desi thought she compared favorably to April. Her breasts were bigger, with little dark nipples instead of pink points, and her waist was tight and curved, sexily, she thought, above the swell of her hips. From the back, her bottom was high and firm, rounded and symmetrical as a perfect olive, golden where the sun had never touched her. But what held her eye and tempted her fingers was the patch of silky fur that covered her treasure —- Mom’s name for her pussy. A real girl, Desi thought, and slipped her fingers through the satiny moss, but a goddess too, sacred to men, naked and made to be worshipped. Sometimes she stopped but other days, the thoughts were too much and she reached deeper, across the rough, sweet spot into the heat of her treasure, wet, sometimes dripping, desperate for a touch, or, even better, to be seen. ; Closing her eyes, before the fire burned her alive, Desi sometimes imagined the girl in the mirror was April. Desi usually arrived at the shop before anyone else. Stu trusted her with the books — she kept them better than he did. She took calls, handled the payroll, made coffee, and chatted with customers. Some days were slow, especially in the morning. During lulls she would wander to the shelf and draw the envelope from between the two ledgers where she had hidden it, slip it open with nervous fingers and stare, growing wet under her cotton panties. One'Tuesday in late May, she had just put the envelope back between the ledgers and turned toward the doorway. Bobby Dridger stood not two feet behind her and her ragged breath lodged in her chest. “She’s really pretty, ain’t she?” Bobby looked a little like Buddy Holly with muscles. He had tawny, straight hair that he combed back in a wave and he wore black-framed glasses. His question vibrated the air between them a long time before Desi nodded. Calendar Girl ATi Bobby reached past her and took the envelope from its hiding place. Smiling, he shook April out and held her. April stared up at them, open, no secrets among the three of them. Heat rolled off Bobby like the purr of a lion in Africa. He smelled like musk and gasoline. “This is good stuff. It’s the light makes the difference.” He drew a line with his grease-stained finger, not quite touching the photo, along the curve of April’s breast and Desi saw what he meant, the light emerging under Bobby’s black, ragged nail.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  further in Chapter 2). Centuries after its composition, anxious rabbis (the religious ‘teachers’ of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE) banned public liturgical recitation of parts of Ezekiel. [14] Later Christians have faced the same embarrassment. In the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, the Church of England had the same instinct as Rabbi Eliezer in making very sparing use of Ezekiel in detailed regulations for public reading of the whole Bible over a year of its daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. In the various versions of the Church’s Book of Common Prayer between 1549 and 1604, the compilers made no bones about the parts of scripture that are ‘least edifying, and might best be spared, and therefore are left unread’. The Prayer Book’s revisers in 1662 felt that this instruction was a little too honest about the limitations of Holy Scripture, and replaced Archbishop Cranmer’s forthright Tudor phrase with the more discreet thought that the ‘most part’ of the Old Testament ‘will be read every year once’. [15] We must also be alert for modes of translation that do not reflect the concerns of the original but, instead, some contemporary preoccupation of our own, or of some previous generation. An innovation with serious consequences occurred in translations of the Bible in the mid-twentieth century which first introduced the anachronistic word ‘homosexual’ into biblical moral denunciations, not just in English but in other languages. Some translations continue to sport this distortion of the text, though others have retreated from it, such as the anglophone Revised Standard Version widely esteemed by scholars. Significantly, ‘heterosexual’ has rarely, if ever, made a similar linguistic appearance in modern Bible versions. [16] * The biblical texts, Judaistic or Christian, also share a further filter on the worlds that they portray: an overwhelmingly male gaze. Whatever the realities of the society which created them, the writing was done by men. No whole book of the Bible claims authorship by a woman, although two books of the Hebrew Scripture (Ruth and Esther) are named from women. Suggestions have been made about some books or sections of text in the Hebrew Scripture which lack an authorial attribution, particularly convincingly about the very ancient Song of Deborah (Judg. 5.1–31), but we are at an early stage in investigating such possibilities. [17] The one other likely major exception is the book now called the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon: this is a late work in the Hebrew Bible’s evolution and highly unlikely to have any real connection with King Solomon. 1. Contrasting rubrics (instructions) for the lectionary (daily cycle of Bible readings) in the Book of Common Prayer, altered between the original 1549 version and the Prayer Book’s recasting in 1662. The rabbis debated whether the Song was one of the books that ‘defile the hands’ in ritual contact, which probably meant the opposite to what we might assume about the defiling character of its erotic content. All the scrolls of the Hebrew Scripture ritually defile the hands, needing ritual attention. So to affirm the defilement was an affirmation of the Song’s sacred character, stilling worries that it is among the very few biblical books that nowhere employs the Divine Name YHWH (Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes and perhaps Esther being the others). The Song of Songs is unlikely to be a single work but gathers together love-poems or songs in which around two-thirds of the texts are presented as the voices of women, very active in their pursuit and enjoyment of

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Tom Bowling is the soul of honor, and has been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they parted at Wapping Old Stairs; but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar, and above-board in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B.? There are secrets, prevarications, fibs. if you will, between Tom and the admiral-between your crew (of servants) and their captain. I know I hire a worthy, clean, agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite at so many guineas a year to do so and so for me. Were he other than hypocrite, I would send him about his business."[408] "The insane symptom called "mysophobia," or dread of foulness, which leads a patient to wash his hands perhaps a hundred times a day, hardly seems explicable without supposing a primitive impulse to clean one's self of which it is, as it were, the convulsive exaggeration.[409] "We often find modesty coming in only in the presence of foreigners, especially of clothed Europeans. Only before these do the Indian women in Brazil cover themselves with their girdle, only before these do the women on Timor conceal their bosom. In Australia we find the same thing happening." (Th. Waltz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vol. I. p.358.) The author gives bibliographical references, which I omit.[410] To most of us it is even unpleasant to sit down in a chair still warm from occupancy by another person's body. To many, hand-shaking is disagreeable.[411] Some will, of course, find the list too large, others too small. With the boundaries of instinct finding into reflex action below, and into acquired habit or suggested activity above, it is likely that there will always be controversy about just what to include under the class-name. Shall we add the propensity to walk along a curbstone, or any other narrow path. to the list of instincts? Shall we subtract secretiveness, as due to shyness or to fear? Who knows? Meanwhile our physiological method has this inestimable advantage, that such questions of limit have neither theoretical nor practical importance. The facts once noted. it matters little how they are named. Most authors give a shorter list than that in the text. The phrenologists add adhesiveness, inhabitiveness, love of approbation, etc., etc., to their list of 'sentiments' which in the main agree with our list of instincts. Fortlage, in his System der Psychologie, classes among the Triebe all the vegetative physiological functions. Santlus (Zur Psychologie der Menschlichen Triebe, Leipsic, 1864) says there are at bottom but three instincts, that of 'Being, that of 'Function,' and that of 'Life.' The 'Instinct of Being' he subdivides into animal, embracing tile activities of all the senses; and psychical, embracing the acts of the intellect and of the 'transempiric consciousness.' The 'Instinct of Function' he divides into sexual, inclinational (friendship, attachment, honor); and moral (religion, philanthropy, faith, truth, moral freedom, etc.). The 'Instinct of Life' embraces conservation (nutrition, motion); sociability (imitation, juridical and ethical arrangements); and personal interest (love of independence and freedom, acquisitiveness, self-defence).

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  let my coveralls fall to the dirty floor in a heap. The ladies gasped audibly, and Mr Pickering looked as if he wanted to say “James” again but couldn’t summon the strength. I was wearing nothing now but a pair of paisley boxer shorts — not the most powerful effect, Pll grant — and I meant to shed those as well. So I sashayed around the room twice more, tossing my arms, tossing my head, and pranced into the restroom. Out of sight, I yanked down my shorts, chucked them back into the stripping room and hung my naked leg out the doorway. A moment passed, and Mrs Deffinbaugh said in a scattered, winded voice: “Well!” Another moment passed, and Mrs Seilhamer put in: “There you are.” I waited to hear Mr Pickering’s comment, but he never said a word. He didn’t have to. One evening a week or two later I was pushing my shopping cart through the Superfresh lost in thought. My former job was just a fading memory at this stage, and I was concentrating more on what lay ahead for me. I was venturing back to school in the fall, and not the community college either; ’'d been accepted into the state university two hours away. The chemicals had left my head — I felt natural again — and I was thinking more clearly than I had in ages. I was rolling along toward the meat section when suddenly wham! — my cart collided with one being pushed by a young woman. I said excuse me, though it was my impression that neither of us had been watching where we were headed. She had shoulder-length auburn hair and warm brown eyes that said nice things to me just in the way they blinked. She was wearing a pink tank top and tight denim shorts, and something about her hair, her golden arms, the way those shorts molded themselves to her hips . . She looked like someone I’d known years before, and she was staring at me in the same hesitant, quizzical way. . She said: “You’re one of the guys in the parking lot.” Astonished, I took a step backward to have a better look at her. She seemed shorter, more petite, from this angle. “You’re the —” I didn’t know what to call her “— the girl in the window. The dancer.” “Lisa Broadwater,” she said, and offered her hand. “Jimmy Long.” Like her eyes, her hand was warm. “I haven’t ... seen you lately.” Strippers 361 “I quit.” She shrugged. “Retired. It was fun for a while, but you can’t build a life on stripping in a window.” I nodded. It occurred to me that you couldn’t build a life on watching someone strip in a window either.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Tertullian, who was intent on combating contemporary Christians who were denying any true humanity in Jesus, as well as in his own fashion defending the value of family and marriage, viewed these as younger siblings to the Saviour, born of Mary by Joseph; and, rather startlingly to later ears, when he considered Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7.14, he commented that, in bearing Jesus, Mary was ‘a virgin as regards her husband, not a virgin as regards child-bearing’. He was not alone among his theologian contemporaries. [20] One can see why later theologians were desperate to avoid such conclusions, many finding it impossible to stomach even the saving possibility (still the official view in Orthodox Christianity) that Joseph had had a wife before Mary to produce such a substantial family. It all involved just too much sexual intercourse, even for Joseph. In the fourth century, Jerome, the Latin theologian whom we will repeatedly encounter busily decoupling sex from holiness, suggested that ‘brothers’ really meant ‘cousins’, and that these had been interchangeable terms in Hebrew and Greek. This argument is still promulgated in conservative Christian circles. In the case of Greek, as Jerome surely knew, it was nonsense: Greek was a language with a very precise and extensive set of words to describe particular degrees of cousinage, and Greek-speakers would be unlikely to confuse any of it with ‘brothers’. The Apostle Paul, who was writing plain down-to-earth Greek and not translating from some earlier Aramaic, unselfconsciously (and, in context, crossly) referred to his fellow Apostle James in Jerusalem as the brother of the Lord. [21] Altogether, the Holy Family, so apparently familiar from Christmas cards, makes an uneasy fit with the many different views of family that Christian Churches have constructed over the centuries. Irreverently to adapt a famous remark of the late Princess Diana, there were three of them in that marriage, so it was a bit theologically crowded. From the matrix of this family in Nazareth, nevertheless, Jesus embarked on his public ministry throughout Galilee and Judaea. Amid these events, we move from dealing with purposeful and resonant myth to retrieving a number of the Lord’s concrete propositions about sex, family and relationships. THE TEACHING OF JESUS Since Jesus left no writings himself, we hear his Aramaic voice through a Greek filter in texts written sixty to a hundred years after his execution sometime around 30 CE. Given such distancing, it is surprising how much a recognizable and charismatic individual emerges from the Gospels: preaching an urgent message in punchy phrases that resound with confident authority but are also full of comedy and irony. His discourses sparkle with stories that subvert normal expectations – sometimes puzzling the listeners, including the Evangelists who recorded them. Around him he gathered many disciples, messengers and admiring companions, but at the centre of them were the Twelve, a number signifying the long-dispersed Twelve Tribes of Israel: Twelveness was a sign that the tragic past and broken present were to be made perfect.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  If they were to gather as an ekklēsia, it would have to be in a generously sized house, hosted by someone with the appropriate resources. The household was female space more than it was male; and it could indeed be headed by a woman, particularly if she were a widow. All this puzzled and embarrassed later generations of Christians, who would have to face the fact that the courtesies in Paul’s letters include greetings to a great many women, some clearly in positions of authority alongside men, and even given the same titles. Phoebe is one of these: Paul refers to her as a diakonos (in the Greek male form) of the assembly in Cenchreae, a little port near Corinth. Modern translations relegating her office or function to a specialized role of ‘deaconess’ tell us more about the translator than about the original text. [9] Most notorious and cavalier is the subsequent Christian treatment of the lady Junia in Rome, whom Paul describes as ‘of note among the apostles’ (Rom. 16.7), alongside another ‘apostle’ with the male name Andronicus. In later recopying of biblical manuscripts, Junia’s name was frequently changed to a male form, or simply treated (without any justification) as a man’s name. Early biblical commentators and liturgists, led by the highly respected fourth-century preaching Bishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, were honourably prepared to acknowledge Junia’s surprising femininity, but the thirteenth century saw a sudden turn in the writings of the Western theologian Giles of Rome, which was only rectified during the twentieth century. [10] In all this we should see Paul as being descriptive rather than prescriptive; he was working within the situation he found. It is noticeable that, unlike the Gospel writers some decades later, he does not number any women among those who first bore witness to the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15.5–6). His own opinions on the place of women are revealed in 1 Cor. 11.2–16, where he creates a layered hierarchy of comparisons by gender: ‘the head of every man is Christ, the head of every woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.’ [11] One notices that Paul’s hierarchical definition is innocent of the next four centuries of furious theological battles that would determine the Church’s affirmation of co-equality of Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the Trinity, but it also bases its structure on a family model already prominent in the thought of Jesus, who so frequently referred to God as his Father (above, Chapter 4). And in traditional Jewish fashion, it also reaffirms that a woman’s nature is not fully in the image of God, unlike a man’s, and that she is dependent on her relationship to a man to define her relationship to God. Assessing this central assertion of Paul on gender hierarchy is made more difficult by the nature of the texts that survive from his correspondence with the Corinthians: they are now presented as two letters but have possibly been stitched together from more.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  Contemporary evangelical partisanship can only be understood in terms of a broader realignment that transformed partisan politics from the 1950s to the 1980s, a realignment that evangelicals themselves helped bring about. At the heart of this realignment were attitudes toward civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and “family values.” For conservatives, a defense of white patriarchy emerged as a unifying thread across this range of issues; for conservative evangelicals, a defense of white patriarchy would move to the center of their coalescing cultural and political identity. Graham’s problems with the Democratic Party started early on. Fresh off the success of his LA crusade, Graham decided to make the most of his newly acquired celebrity status by requesting a meeting with President Truman. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to secure a meeting, but in the summer of 1950 he finally had enough clout. By his own admission, he promptly made a fool of himself. Graham thought part of the problem may have been his attire. Still in his flashy-dressing phase, Graham arrived at the White House wearing a “pistachio-green” suit, rust-colored socks, white buck shoes, and a hand-painted tie. But the more serious problem was Graham’s comportment. He talked up his remarkable success in LA and at subsequent crusades, inelegantly quizzed the president on his “religious background and leanings,” and then told Truman that his Golden Rule Christianity wasn’t sufficient—what he needed was a personal faith in Christ and his death on the cross. The president informed him that his time was up. Graham insisted on closing with prayer, a prayer that extended several minutes past their allotted time. Graham’s most egregious error, however, occurred as he left the Oval Office. Encountering the White House press corps, Graham blithely recounted the entirety of his conversation with the president, before reenacting his prayer by posing on one knee on the White House lawn. Truman never invited Graham back.1 But Graham’s difficulties with Truman extended beyond this awkward encounter. Graham criticized the Truman administration’s “cowardly” refusal to heed General MacArthur’s advice in Korea and lamented that the country had settled for a “half-hearted war” when America’s full military strength was needed. With Truman’s term coming to an end, Graham began signaling to Republicans that they could woo the evangelical vote by aligning with evangelical views on morality and foreign policy. Eager to bring a new occupant to the White House, Graham took it upon himself to write a letter urging Dwight D. Eisenhower to enter the race. Eisenhower wasn’t a particularly religious figure, but Graham was convinced that the war hero possessed the “honesty, integrity, and spiritual power” necessary to lead the nation. When Eisenhower decided to throw his hat in the ring, he called on Graham to help mobilize religious support. Graham delivered.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Leo VI (reigned 886–912) laid down that, for free citizens (slaves hardly mattered), the only form of union recognized would be one blessed by a priest – anything else would be ‘illegitimate concubinage’. [29] Leo’s Novella decided the shape of marriage in the Orthodox world thereafter; from the tenth century, Orthodoxy finally developed its own wedding ritual to the full. One awkward consequence that the Church of the Mediterranean had up to now avoided was that Orthodox clergy became responsible for all marriages within their jurisdiction. The untidiness of marriage in human society, perhaps tolerable in the ‘creation ordinance’ face of marriage, was hardly the model for the believer’s eternal relationship with Christ, as set out by Paul of Tarsus and the writer to the Ephesians. Previously any discrepancy, such as divorce or remarriage, could simply be left outside the bounds of the Church in the hands of civil law. The fact that this was no longer the case was embarrassingly demonstrated by Emperor Leo VI himself when, in 906, he compelled the Church authorities to recognize his fourth marriage, way beyond anything that the Church authorities ought to have considered theologically acceptable, following the principles of Basil the Great (Chapter 9). It took the Emperor’s forceful replacement of Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos by a marginally more compliant Patriarch to bring the Church reluctantly to heel. [30] The Novella of Leo VI appeared two centuries after the Dyophysite Patriarch George had launched his bid for monopoly of marriages among his own flock at the Synod of Dayrin. Why now? Imperial politics was one factor. An earlier sensational crisis over an imperial marriage in 796 had centred on the Emperor Constantine VI’s ruthless insistence on gaining the blessing of the Church for his own eccentric marital arrangements, after he had divorced his wife and married a lady of the Court, thereby jeopardizing the imperial succession. The Patriarch Tarasios’s inept though understandable lenience in imposing a light penance led to a crisis in the Church, and eventually to a political coup in which Constantine’s own mother, Irene, removed the Emperor from power by having him blinded. This messy affair was certainly an incentive for clarity in marital legislation. The very determination of Constantine VI to get ecclesiastical approval was witness to the fact that, by the late eighth century, the Byzantine elite were coming to expect the security provided by the Church blessing marriages. [31] Yet to sum up a complicated story, it was the tenth century before this became the norm in the Byzantine East, much later in northern Orthodoxy, and, as we will see, in the West no earlier than the twelfth century (below, Chapter 12). ICONS AND THE ‘TRIUMPH OF ORTHODOXY’ Running in parallel to these momentous developments in marriage practice was the prolonged ‘Iconoclastic Controversy’ in Eastern Christianity.