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 Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  3. If impotence in legitimate sex is an appropriate punishment, how much more so is the impotence of a lecher. Here not only does the body refuse to respond to the will, but “desire itself deserts desire” (libidini libido non servit, CG 14.17). 4. And how much more dramatic a sign of the disconnect between human body and human will is the alternation of two “malfunctionings,” the body aroused when that is not wanted, and not aroused when it is: At times, without intention, the body stirs on its own, insistent. At other times, it leaves a straining lover in the lurch, and while desire sizzles in the imagination, it is frozen in the flesh; so that, strange to say, even when procreation is not at issue, just self-indulgence, desire cannot even rally to desire’s help—the force that normally wrestles against reason’s control is pitted against itself, and an aroused imagination gets no reciprocal arousal from the flesh. (CG 14.17) This is the quandary complained of by Philip Roth’s Portnoy. When he does not want an erection (as when he is told to stand in the classroom), there it is, “like some idiot macrocephalic making his private life a misery with his simpleton’s insatiable needs.” But when a prostitute tells him “Take it out,” he can’t even find it: “Sure, if that’s what you want, here . . . here,” I say, but prematurely. “I—just—have—to—get—it—” Where is that thing? In the classroom I sometimes set myself consciously to thinking about DEATH and HOSPITALS and HORRIBLE AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS in the hope that such grave thoughts will cause my “boner” to recede before the bell rings and I have to stand. It seems that I can’t go up to the blackboard in school, or try to get off a bus without its jumping up and saying “Hi! Look at me!” to everyone in sight—and now it is nowhere to be found. Augustine dwells most often on impotence, as the extreme example of inner dividedness, where desire is rebellious not only against reason but against itself. He tells of the Stoics, those professionals of shock in late antiquity, who wanted to defy codes of decency by performing sexual intercourse in public, but who—like porn actors unable to respond on cue—had to throw a cloak over themselves and use their clubs to simulate erection (CG 14.20). The detumescing effect of public nudity is also a sign that the unembarrassed possession of sexual intent in Eden has been flawed (CG 14.07). As Portnoy puts it, “Who wins an argument with a hard-on?” The elegance of his argument about the symbolic appropriateness of impotence as a sign of man’s inner dividedness after the fall made Augustine go to the very limits of decent description, as he himself admits—but he adds that even this inhibition on frank speech is a result of the fall. Adam would have had no embarrassment using even the most graphic language about sex when he was still innocent (CG 14.23).

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “I don’t need to check. My bitches never short me.” He knew what she wanted. He used the word “bitch” like a tool to put women like her in their proper place. He figured Mr. Patterson wanted to call her quite a few “bitches,” but they had their parameters set, and it was hard to move in that direction after years of having it one way. “Now ask me again.” Pretty paused. “Nicely.” Mr. Patterson watched in awe. Pretty saw the way he scrambled with the air to get eye contact with him. Pretty looked in Mr. Patterson’s direction, but not directly. It pissed him off. Pretty would fuck with his head for all those times he called him Jarvis and meant it. Pretty figured that Mrs. Patterson would be careful not to let Mr. Patterson interfere with their situation. She was no different than the other white women that Pretty was around. They had dated white men all of their lives and wanted to see what the myth was all about. They thought that black men were hung like stallions. They thought that black men were unruly. They assumed that black men made love differently and fucked much differently than the rest of the world. Pretty put on his “black man” suit and gave the bitch what she wanted. She changed her tone and spoke quietly, “Can you show me why they call you Pretty?” They were a few feet away from each other. Pretty closed the gap. She smelled fresh, like a floral powder. Her cleavage showed freckled C’s or possible D’s trying to break free. Pretty’s demand was low-key, “Ask him to leave us first.” Now he gave Mr. Patterson eye contact. Pretty’s lips creased in victory as Mrs. Patterson spun around and ordered Mr. Patterson out. He put up no fight as he once again slowly lifted himself from his chair. He went to the bar and finished his scotch and, without uttering a word, walked out the door. “Is that better, sir?” she asked, proud of showing her authority at a split second’s notice. “Sure.” He looked toward the bar and pointed. “Now I’ll have a drink.” “What kind of drink would you like, sir?” “The same kind your husband had.” Pretty slung the word around like mud. She washed out the glass Mr. Patterson had used and filled it halfway with scotch. She brought it with her and watched him sip. He took smaller swallows. The fact that he wasn’t used to the finer liquor made him more appealing. She wanted something short of the jungle. He ushered her over with his finger. “Come here.” She followed direction. She wanted to touch his braids. She wanted to see if he had tattoos. She wanted him to rap about the hood. She wanted everything that MTV and the NBA had to offer. “Why do you want this to happen?” he asked. Her head dropped. Embarrassment crept in. She remained silent.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  And while I’m telling her she takes my hand and squeezes it between her legs. In the lavatory I stand before the bowl with a tremendous erection; it seems light and heavy at the same time, like a piece of lead with wings on it. And while I’m standing there like that two cunts sail in—Americans. I greet them cordially, prick in hand. They give me a wink and pass on. In the vestibule, as I’m buttoning my fly, I notice one of them waiting for her friend to come out of the can. The music is still playing and maybe Mona’ll be coming to fetch me, or Borowski with his gold-knobbed cane, but I’m in her arms now and she has hold of me and I don’t care who comes or what happens. We wriggle into the cabinet and there I stand her up, slap up against the wall, and I try to get it into her but it won’t work and so we sit down on the seat and try it that way but it won’t work either. No matter how we try it it won’t work. And all the while she’s got hold of my prick, she’s clutching it like a lifesaver, but it’s no use, we’re too hot, too eager. The music is still playing and so we waltz out of the cabinet into the vestibule again and as we’re dancing there in the shithouse I come all over her beautiful gown and she’s sore as hell about it. I stumble back to the table and there’s Borowski with his ruddy face and Mona with her disapproving eye. And Borowski says “Let’s all go to Brussels tomorrow,” and we agree, and when we get back to the hotel I vomit all over the place, in the bed, in the washbowl, over the suits and gowns and the galoshes and canes and the notebooks I never touched and the manuscripts cold and dead.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Of course,” I said, vaguely thrilled to have her in my house, like a visiting dignitary. I showed her the nice bathroom, by my parents’ room. Tamar peeked at the bed and wrinkled her nose. “Ugly comforter,” she said under her breath. Until then, it had just been my parents’ comforter, but abruptly I felt secondhand shame for my mother, for the tacky comforter she had picked out, had even been foolish enough to be pleased by. I sat at the dining table listening to the muffled sound of Tamar peeing, of the faucet running. She was in there a long time. When Tamar finally emerged, something was different. It took me a moment to realize she was wearing my mother’s lipstick, and when she noticed me noticing her, it was as if I’d interrupted a movie she was watching. Her face rapt with the presentiment of some other life. —My favorite fantasy was the sleep cure I had read about in Valley of the Dolls. The doctor inducing long-term sleep in a hospital room, the only answer for poor, strident Neely, gone muddy from the Demerol. It sounded perfect—my body kept alive by peaceful, reliable machines, my brain resting in watery space, as untroubled as a goldfish in a glass bowl. I’d wake up weeks later. And even though life would slot back into its disappointing place, there would still be that starched stretch of nothing. Boarding school was meant to be a corrective, the push I needed. My parents, even in their separate, absorbing worlds, were disappointed in me, distressed by my mediocre grades. I was an average girl, and that was the biggest disappointment of all—there was no shine of greatness on me. I wasn’t pretty enough to get the grades I did, the scale not tipping heartily enough in the direction of looks or smarts. Sometimes I would be overtaken with pious impulses to do better, to try harder, but of course nothing changed. Other mysterious forces seemed to be in play. The window near my desk left open so I wasted math class watching the shudder of leaves. My pen leaking so I couldn’t take notes. The things I was good at had no real application: addressing envelopes in bubble letters with smiling creatures on the flap. Making sludgy coffee I drank with grave affect. Finding a certain desired song playing on the radio, like a medium scanning for news of the dead. My mother said I looked like my grandmother, but this seemed suspicious, a wishful lie meant to give false hope. I knew my grandmother’s story, repeated like a reflexive prayer. Harriet the date farmer’s daughter, plucked from the sunburned obscurity of Indio and brought to Los Angeles. Her soft jaw and damp eyes. Small teeth, straight and slightly pointed, like a strange and beautiful cat. Coddled by the studio system, fed whipped milk and eggs, or broiled liver and five carrots, the same dinner my grandmother ate every night of my childhood.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Not in a second, true, yet not in a minute either, but in a quarter of a minute, Arkady Apollonovich, with one slipper on his left foot, in nothing but his underwear, was already at the phone, babbling into it: ‘Yes, it’s me . . . I’m listening, I’m listening . . .’ His wife, forgetting for these moments all the loathsome crimes against fidelity in which the unfortunate Arkady Apollonovich had been exposed, kept sticking herself out the door to the corridor with a frightened face, poking a slipper at the air and whispering: ‘Put the slipper on, the slipper . . . you’ll catch cold . . .’ At which Arkady Apollonovich, waving his wife away with his bare foot and making savage eyes at her, muttered into the telephone: ‘Yes, yes, yes, surely . . . I understand . . . I’ll leave at once . . .’ Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where the investigation was being conducted. It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious séance and the fight in the box, but along with that—as was indeed necessary—also about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady Apollonovich inexpressible torments. Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous séance, a sensible and qualified witness, who gave an excellent description of the mysterious masked magician himself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician’s name was indeed Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of Arkady Apollonovich’s testimony with the testimony of others—among whom were some ladies who had suffered after the séance (the one in violet underwear who had shocked Rimsky and, alas, many others), and the messenger Karpov, who had been sent to apartment no. 50 on Sadovaya Street—at once essentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures was to be sought. Apartment no.

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

  The task at hand was to set up electrophysiological recordings from the locust’s auditory nerve; the rest of the students—all of whom had been specializing in science for many years—had already, and neatly, dissected out the necessary tidbits of bug and were duly recording away. I hadn’t any idea what I was doing, my tutor knew this, and I was wondering yet again why the university had placed me at this level of science studies. I had gotten as far as picking out the locust from his cage—because it was kept warm, I prolonged my stay in the insect room for a rather lingering time—and had finally narrowed down its body regions into wings, body, and head. This was not going to get me very far. I felt my tutor’s tall presence behind me and turned to see a sardonic smile on his face. He went to the chalkboard, drew what certainly looked to be a locust, circled a region on the animal’s head, and said in his most elaborate accent, “For your edification, Miss Jamison, he-ah is the e-ah”; the class roared, so did I, and I reconciled myself to a year of being truly and hopelessly behind—I was; but I learned a lot, and had great fun as I did so. (My laboratory notes for the locust experiment reflect my early recognition that I was in over my head; after detailing the experimental method in my lab report—“The head, wings, and legs were removed from a locust. After exposing the air sacs by cutting the metathoracic sternites, the auditory nerve was located and cut centrally to exclude the possibility of responses from the cerebral ganglion,” and so on—the write-up ended with “Due to a misunderstanding of instructions, and a general lack of knowledge about what was going on, a broader range of pitch stimulation was not tested and, by the time the misunderstanding was understood, the auditory nerve was fatigued. So was I.”) There were, however, definite advantages to studying invertebrate zoology. For starters, unlike in psychology, you could eat your subjects. The lobsters—fresh from the sea and delicious—were especially popular. We cooked them in beakers over Bunsen burners until one of our lecturers, remarking that “It has not gone unnoticed that some of your subjects seem to be letting themselves out of their tanks at night,” put a halt to our attempts to supplement college meals.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  There is only one freshness—the first—and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.’ ‘I beg your pardon . . .’ the barman again tried to begin, not knowing how to shake off the cavilling artiste. ‘I cannot pardon you,’ the other said firmly. ‘I have come about something else,’ the barman said, getting quite upset. ‘About something else?’ the foreign magician was surprised. ‘And what else could have brought you to me? Unless memory deceives me, among people of a profession similar to yours, I have had dealings with only one sutler-woman, but that was long ago, when you were not yet in this world. However, I’m glad. Azazello! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!’ The one who was roasting meat turned, horrifying the barman with his fangs, and deftly offered him one of the dark oaken tabourets. There were no other seats in the room. The barman managed to say: ‘I humbly thank you,’ and lowered himself on to the stool. Its back leg broke at once with a crack, and the barman, gasping, struck his backside most painfully on the floor. As he fell, he kicked another stool in front of him with his foot, and from it spilled a full cup of red wine on his trousers. The artiste exclaimed: ‘Oh! Are you hurt?’ Azazello helped the barman up and gave him another seat. In a voice filled with grief, the barman declined his host’s suggestion that he take off his trousers and dry them before the fire, and, feeling unbearably uncomfortable in his wet underwear and clothing, cautiously sat down on the other stool. ‘I like sitting low down,’ the artiste said, ‘it’s less dangerous falling from a low height. Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon. Freshness, dear heart, freshness, freshness! That should be the motto of every barman. Here, wouldn’t you like to try . . .’ In the crimson light of the fireplace a sword flashed in front of the barman, and Azazello laid a sizzling piece of meat on the golden dish, squeezed lemon juice over it, and handed the barman a golden two-pronged fork. ‘My humble . . . I . . .’ ‘No, no, try it!’ The barman put a piece into his mouth out of politeness, and understood at once that he was chewing something very fresh indeed, and, above all, extraordinarily delicious. But as he was chewing the fragrant, juicy meat, the barman nearly choked and fell a second time. From the neighbouring room a big, dark bird flew in and gently brushed the barman’s bald head with its wing.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  6, which housed the account comptroller’s section, one powerful, slightly husky octave stood out particularly. ‘Hey, Barguzin 3 . . . make the waves rise and fall! . . .’ bawled the messenger on the stairs. Tears flowed down the girl’s face, she tried to clench her teeth, but her mouth opened of itself, as she sang an octave higher than the messenger: ‘This young lad’s ready to frisk-o!’ What struck the silent visitors to the affiliate was that the choristers, scattered in various places, sang quite harmoniously, as if the whole choir stood there with its eyes fixed on some invisible director. Passers-by in Vagankovsky Lane stopped by the fence of the yard, wondering at the gaiety that reigned in the affiliate. As soon as the first verse came to an end, the singing suddenly ceased, again as if to a director’s baton. The messenger quietly swore and disappeared. Here the front door opened, and in it appeared a citizen in a summer jacket, from under which protruded the skirts of a white coat, and with him a policeman. ‘Take measures, doctor, I implore you!’ the girl cried hysterically. The secretary of the affiliate ran out to the stairs and, obviously burning with shame and embarrassment, began falteringly: ‘You see, doctor, we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis, and so it’s necessary that . . .’ He did not finish the sentence, began to choke on his words, and suddenly sang out in a tenor: ‘Shilka and Nerchinsk . . .’ 4 ‘Fool!’ the girl had time to shout, but, without explaining who she was abusing, produced instead a forced roulade and herself began singing about Shilka and Nerchinsk. ‘Get hold of yourself! Stop singing!’ the doctor addressed the secretary. There was every indication that the secretary would himself have given anything to stop singing, but stop singing he could not, and together with the choir he brought to the hearing of passers-by in the lane the news that ‘in the wilderness he was not touched by voracious beast, nor brought down by bullet of shooters.’ The moment the verse ended, the girl was the first to receive a dose of valerian from the doctor, who then ran after the secretary to give the others theirs. ‘Excuse me, dear citizeness,’ Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl, ‘did a black cat pay you a visit?’ ‘What cat?’ the girl cried in anger. ‘An ass, it’s an ass we’ve got sitting in the affiliate!’ And adding to that: ‘Let him hear, I’ll tell everything’—she indeed told what had happened. It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, ‘who has made a perfect mess of lightened entertainment’ (the girl’s words), suffered from a mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs. ‘Blew smoke in the authorities’ eyes!’ screamed the girl. In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club of Lermontov studies, 5 of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of horseback riding.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  By God! . . .’ Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he hung his tufty head. ‘Money,’ the artiste went on, ‘must be kept in the state bank, in special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt’s cellar, where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for shame! You’re a grown-up!’ Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at the lapel of his jacket with his finger. ‘Well, all right,’ the artiste relented, ‘let bygones be . . .’ And he suddenly added unexpectedly: ‘Ah, by the way . . . so that in one . . . to save a trip . . . this same aunt also has some, eh?’ Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the theatre fell silent. ‘Ehh, Kanavkin . . .’ the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach, ‘and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no reason at all! It’s absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn’t I just talking about eyes? Can’t we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us for nothing?’ ‘She has!’ Kanavkin cried dashingly. ‘Bravo!’ cried the master of ceremonies. ‘Bravo!’ the house roared frightfully. When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask her kindly to come for the programme at the women’s theatre. ‘Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she hides hers?’ the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned somehow wistfully. ‘I believe you, I believe you,’ the artiste responded with a sigh. ‘Not just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn’t tell the devil himself! Well, so, we’ll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!’ And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered with silence. ‘Odd birds, by God!’ the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid him.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I tried to gather whatever authority I could, clutching the hem of my T- shirt to my thighs. When I said I’d call the cops, the boy snorted. “Go ahead.” He huddled the girl closer. “Call the cops. You know what?” He pulled out his cellphone. “Fuck it, I’ll call them.” The pane of fear I’d been holding in my chest suddenly dissolved. “Julian?” I wanted to laugh—I’d last seen him when he was thirteen, skinny and unformed. Dan and Allison’s only son. Fussed over, driven to cello competitions all over the western United States. A Mandarin tutor on Thursdays, the brown bread and gummy vitamins, parental hedges against failure. That had all fizzled and he’d ended up at the CSU in Long Beach or Irvine. There’d been some trouble there, I remembered. Expulsion or maybe a milder version of that, a suggestion of a year at junior college. Julian had been a shy, irritable kid, cowering at car radios, unfamiliar foods. Now he had hard edges, the creep of tattoos under his shirt. He didn’t remember me, and why should he? I was a woman outside his range of erotic attentions. “I’m staying here for a few weeks,” I said, aware of my exposed legs and embarrassed for the melodrama, the mention of police. “I’m a friend of your dad’s.” I could see the effort he made to place me, to assign meaning. “Evie,” I said. Still nothing. “I used to live in that apartment in Berkeley? By your cello teacher’s house?” Dan and Julian would come over sometimes after his lessons. Julian lustily drinking milk and scuffing my table legs with robotic kicks. “Oh, shit,” Julian said. “Yeah.” I couldn’t tell whether he actually remembered me or if I had just invoked enough calming details. The girl turned toward Julian, her face as blank as a spoon. “It’s fine, babe,” he said, kissing her forehead—his gentleness unexpected. Julian smiled at me and I realized he was drunk, or maybe just stoned. His features were smeary, an unhealthy dampness on his skin, though his upper-class upbringing kicked in like a first language. “This is Sasha,” he said, nudging the girl.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  “Sure, if you like her better, take her,” I said, and so, rather awkwardly and considerably embarrassed, I explained to the girls that we would like to switch. I saw at once that we had made a faux pas , but by now my young friend had became gay and lecherous and nothing would do but to get upstairs quickly and have it over with. We took adjoining rooms with a connecting door between. I think my companion had in mind to make another switch once he had satisfied his sharp, gnawing hunger. At any rate, no sooner had the girls left the room to prepare themselves than I hear him knocking on the door. “Where is the toilet, please?” he asks. Not thinking that it was anything serious I urge him to do in the bidet . The girls return with towels in their hands. I hear him giggling in the next room. As I’m putting on my pants suddenly I hear a commotion in the next room. The girl is bawling him out, calling him a pig, a dirty little pig. I can’t imagine what he has done to warrant such an outburst. I’m standing there with one foot in my trousers listening attentively. He’s trying to explain to her in English, raising his voice louder and louder until it becomes a shriek. I hear a door slam and in another moment the madam bursts into my room, her face as red as a beet, her arms gesticulating wildly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she screams, “bringing a man like that to my place! He’s a barbarian… he’s a pig… he’s a…!” My companion is standing behind her, in the doorway, a look of utmost discomfiture on his face “What did you do?” I ask. “What did he do?” yells the madam. “I’ll show you. … Come here!” And grabbing me by the arm she drags me into the next room. “There! There!” she screams, pointing to the bidet . “Come on, let’s get out,” says the Hindu boy. “Wait a minute, you can’t get out as easily as all that.” The madam is standing by the bidet , fuming and spitting. The girls are standing there too, with towels in their hands. The five of us are standing there looking at the bidet . There are two enormous turds floating in the water. The madam bends down and puts a towel over it. “Frightful! Frightful!” she wails. “Never have I seen anything like this! A pig! A dirty little pig!” The Hindu boy looks at me reproachfully. “You should have told me!” he says. “I didn’t know it wouldn’t go down. I asked you where to go and you told me to use that.” He is almost in tears. Finally the madam takes me to one side. She has become a little more reasonable now. After all, it was a mistake. Perhaps the gentlemen would like to come downstairs and order another drink—for the girls.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Yvette’s a dirty little slut. You see, I didn’t want to tell you, but up until the time I went to the hospital I was shelling out for Yvette too. Then when the crash came I couldn’t do any more for her. I figured out that I had done enough for the both of them. … I made up my mind to look after myself first. That made Yvette sore. She told Ginette that she was going to get even with me. … No, I wish it were true, what she said. Then I could get out of this thing more easily. Now I’m in a trap. I’ve promised to marry her and I’ll have to go through with it. After that I don’t know what’ll happen to me. They’ve got me by the balls now.” Since he had taken a room in the same hotel with me I was obliged to see them frequently, whether I wanted to or not. Almost every evening I had dinner with them, preceded, of course, by a few Pernods. All through the meal they quarreled noisily. It was embarrassing because I had sometimes to take one side and sometimes the other. One Sunday afternoon, for example, after we had had lunch together, we repaired to a café on the corner of the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet. Things had gone unusually well this time. We were sitting inside at a little table, one alongside the other, our backs to a mirror. Ginette must have been passionate or something for she had suddenly gotten into a sentimental mood and was fondling him and kissing him in front of everybody, as the French do so naturally. They had just come out of a long embrace when Fillmore said something about her parents which she interpreted as an insult. Immediately her cheeks flushed with anger. We tried to mollify her by telling her that she had misunderstood the remark and then, under his breath, Fillmore said something to me in English—something about giving her a little soft soap. That was enough to set her completely off the handle. She said we were making fun of her. I said something sharp to her which angered her still more and then Fillmore tried to put in a word. “You’re too quick-tempered,” he said, and he tried to pat her on the cheek. But she, thinking that he had raised his hand to slap her face, she gave him a sound crack in the jaw with that big peasant hand of hers. For a moment he was stunned. He hadn’t expected a wallop like that, and it stung. I saw his face go white and the next moment he raised himself from the bench and with the palm of his hand he gave her such a crack that she almost fell off her seat. “There! that’ll teach you how to behave!” he said—in his broken French. For a moment there was a dead silence.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  It was always like that, whether he had a cunt with him or not. Always a dictionary lying open on a gilt-edged volume of Faust, always a tobacco pouch, a beret, a bottle of vin rouge, letters, manuscripts, old newspapers, water colors, teapot, dirty socks, toothpicks, Kruschen Salts, condoms, etc. In the bidet were orange peels and the remnants of a ham sandwich. “There’s some food in the closet” he said. “Help yourself! I was just going to give myself an injection.” I found the sandwich he was talking about and a piece of cheese that he had nibbled at beside it. While he sat on the edge of the bed, dosing himself with his argyrol, I put away the sandwich and cheese with the aid of a little wine. “I liked that letter you sent me about Goethe,” he said, wiping his prick with a dirty pair of drawers. “I’ll show you the answer to it in a minute—I’m putting it in my book. The trouble with you is that you’re not a German. You have to be German to understand Goethe. Shit, I’m not going to explain it to you now. I’ve put it all in the book. ... By the way, I’ve got a new cunt now—not this one—this one’s a half-wit. At least, I had her until a few days ago. I’m not sure whether she’ll come back or not. She was living with me all the time you were away. The other day her parents came and took her away. They said she was only fifteen. Can you beat that? They scared the shit out of me too. ...” I began to laugh. It was like Carl to get himself into a mess like that. “What are you laughing for?” he said. “I may go to prison for it. Luckily, I didn’t knock her up. And that’s funny, too, because she never took care of herself properly. But do you know what saved me? So I think, at least. It was Faust. Yeah! Her old man happened to see it lying on the table. He asked me if I understood German. One thing led to another and before I knew it he was looking through my books. Fortunately I happened to have the Shakespeare open too. That impressed him like hell. He said I was evidently a very serious guy.” “What about the girl—what did she have to say?” “She was frightened to death. You see, she had a little watch with her when she came; in the excitement we couldn’t find the watch, and her mother insisted that the watch be found or she’d call the police. You see how things are here. I turned the whole place upside down—but I couldn’t find the goddamned watch. The mother was furious.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He used to walk up and down with one hand stuck in the tail flap of his frock coat at the Villa Borghese, or at Cronstadt’s—wherever there was deck space, as it were—and reel off this nonsense about living and dying to his heart’s content. I never understood a word of it, I must confess, but it was a good show and, being a Gentile, I was naturally interested in what went on in that menagerie of a brainpan. Sometimes he would he on his couch full length, exhausted by the surge of ideas that swept through his noodle. His feet just grazed the bookrack where he kept his Plato and Spinoza—he couldn’t understand why I had no use for them. I must say he made them sound interesting, though what it was all about I hadn’t the least idea. Sometimes I would glance at a volume furtively, to check up on these wild ideas which he imputed to them—but the connection was frail, tenuous. He had a language all his own, Boris, that is, when I had him alone; but when I listened to Cronstadt it seemed to me that Boris had plagiarized his wonderful ideas. They talked a sort of higher mathematics, these two. Nothing of flesh and blood ever crept in; it was weird, ghostly, ghoulishly abstract. When they got on to the dying business it sounded a little more concrete: after all, a cleaver or a meat ax has to have a handle. I enjoyed those sessions immensely. It was the first time in my life that death had ever seemed fascinating to me—all these abstract deaths which involved a bloodless sort of agony. Now and then they would compliment me on being alive, but in such a way that I felt embarrassed. They made me feel that I was alive in the nineteenth century, a sort of atavistic remnant, a romantic shred, a soulful Pithecanthropus erectus. Boris especially seemed to get a great kick out of touching me; he wanted me to be alive so that he could die to his heart’s content. You would think that all those millions in the street were nothing but dead cows the way he looked at me and touched me. But the letter… I’m forgetting the letter. … “The reason why I wanted you to commit suicide that evening at the Cronstadts’, when Moldorf became God, was that I was very close to you then. Perhaps closer than I shall ever be. And I was afraid, terribly afraid, that some day you’d go back on me, die on my hands. And I would be left high and dry with my idea of you simply, and nothing to sustain it. I should never forgive you for that.” Perhaps you can visualize him saying a thing like that! Myself it’s not clear what his idea of me was, or at any rate, it’s clear that I was just pure idea, an idea that kept itself alive without food.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Since he had taken a room in the same hotel with me I was obliged to see them frequently, whether I wanted to or not. Almost every evening I had dinner with them, preceded, of course, by a few Pernods. All through the meal they quarreled noisily. It was embarrassing because I had sometimes to take one side and sometimes the other. One Sunday afternoon, for example, after we had had lunch together, we repaired to a café on the corner of the Boulevard Edgar- Quinet. Things had gone unusually well this time. We were sitting inside at a little table, one alongside the other, our backs to a mirror. Ginette must have been passionate or something for she had suddenly gotten into a sentimental mood and was fondling him and kissing him in front of everybody, as the French do so naturally. They had just come out of a long embrace when Fillmore said something about her parents which she interpreted as an insult. Immediately her cheeks flushed with anger. We tried to mollify her by telling her that she had misunderstood the remark and then, under his breath, Fillmore said something to me in English—something about giving her a little soft soap. That was enough to set her completely off the handle. She said we were making fun of her. I said something sharp to her which angered her still more and then Fillmore tried to put in a word. “You’re too quick-tempered,” he said, and he tried to pat her on the cheek. But she, thinking that he had raised his hand to slap her face, she gave him a sound crack in the jaw with that big peasant hand of hers. For a moment he was stunned. He hadn’t expected a wallop like that, and it stung. I saw his face go white and the next moment he raised himself from the bench and with the palm of his hand he gave her such a crack that she almost fell off her seat. “There! that’ll teach you how to behave!” he said—in his broken French. For a moment there was a dead silence. Then, like a storm breaking, she picked up the cognac glass in front of her and hurled it at him with all her might. It smashed against the mirror behind us. Fillmore had already grabbed her by the arm, but with her free hand she grabbed the coffee glass and smashed it on the floor. She was squirming around like a maniac. It was all we could do to hold her. Meanwhile, of course, the patron had come running in and ordered us to beat it. “Loafers!” he called us. “Yes, loafers; that’s it!” screamed Ginette. “Dirty foreigners! Thugs! Gangsters! Striking a pregnant woman!” We were getting black looks all around. A poor Frenchwoman with two American toughs. Gangsters. I was wondering how the hell we’d ever get out of the place without a fight.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Big plans for today?” he asked me. Trying to pal around. I twisted the sleeve of crackers closed and wiped my hands of crumbs, suddenly fastidious. “Dunno,” I said. How quickly the veneer of patience drained away. “You just going to mope around the house?” he asked. I shrugged; that’s exactly what I’d do. A muscle in his cheek jumped. “At least go outside,” he said. “You stay in that room like you’re locked in there.” Frank wasn’t wearing his boots, just his blaring white socks. I swallowed a helpless snort; it was ridiculous to see a grown man’s socked feet. He noticed my mouth twitch and got flustered. “Everything’s funny to you, huh?” he said. “Doing whatever you want. You think your mom doesn’t notice what’s going on?” I stiffened but didn’t look up. There were so many things he could be talking about: the ranch, what I’d done with Russell. Mitch. The ways I thought about Suzanne. “She got real confused the other day,” Frank went on. “She’s missing some money. Gone right from her purse.” I knew my cheeks had flushed, but I stayed quiet. Narrowing my eyes at the table. “Give her a break,” Frank said. “Hm? She’s a nice lady.” “I’m not stealing.” My voice was high and false. “Borrowing, let’s say. I’m not gonna tell. I get it. But you should stop. She loves you a lot, you know?” No more noise from the shower, which meant my mother would appear soon. I tried to gauge whether Frank really wouldn’t say anything—he was trying to be nice, I understood, not getting me in trouble. But I didn’t want to be grateful. Imagine him trying to be fatherly with me. “The town party is still happening,” Frank said. “Today and tomorrow, too. Maybe you could go on down there, have some fun. I’m sure that would make your mother happy. You staying busy.” When my mother entered, toweling the ends of her hair, I immediately brightened, arranging my face like I was listening to Frank. “Don’t you think so, Jeanie?” Frank said, gazing at my mother.

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

  I pushed the elevator button and walked down a long corridor to a waiting room. Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed—character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire of all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life. Perhaps, had I not been so vulnerable at the time, all of this would not have mattered so much. But I was confused and frightened and terribly shattered in all of my notions of myself; my self-confidence, which had permeated every aspect of my life for as long as I could remember, had taken a very long and disquieting holiday. On the far wall of the waiting room I saw an array of lit and unlit buttons. It was clear I was supposed to push one of them; this, in turn, would let my psychiatrist-to-be know that I had arrived. I felt like a large white rat pressing paw to lever for a pellet. It was a strangely degrading, albeit practical, system. I had the sinking feeling that being on the wrong side of the desk was not going to sit very well with me. My psychiatrist opened the door and, taking one long look at me, sat me down and said something reassuring. I have completely forgotten what it was—and I am sure it was as much the manner in which it was said as the actual words—but slowly a tiny, very tiny, bit of light drifted into my dark and frightened mind. have next to no memory of what I said during that first session, but I know it was rambling, unstrung, and confused. He sat there, listening forever, it seemed, his long six-foot-four-inch frame spread out from chair to floor, legs tangling and untangling, long hands touching, fingertip to fingertip—and then he started asking questions.

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

  One evening, after a riding lesson in Malibu during which I twice fell off my horse into the poles of a jump, I was pulled over to the side of the road by the police. They put me through an impressively thorough roadside neurological exam—I walked a not very straight line; was not able to make my fingertip reach my nose; and was hopelessly bad at getting my fingertips to tap against my thumb; God only knows what the pupils of my eyes were doing when a police officer blared a light into them—and until I got out my bottles of medication, gave the officers the name and telephone number of my psychiatrist, and agreed to whatever blood tests they wanted to order, the police refused to believe that I was not on drugs or hadn’t been drinking. Not long after that incident, shortly after I learned to ski, I was on a very tall mountain somewhere in Utah and unaware that high altitude coupled with rigorous exercise can raise lithium levels. I became completely disoriented and totally incapable of navigating my way down the mountain. Fortunately, a colleague of mine who knew I was taking lithium, and who was himself an expert on its medical uses, became concerned when I didn’t catch up with him at the time we had arranged to meet. He concluded that I might have become toxic from it, sent the ski patrol after me, and I came down the mountain safely, although rather more horizontally than I would have liked. Nausea and vomiting and occasional toxicity, while upsetting and embarrassing at times, were far less important to me than lithium’s effect on my ability to read, comprehend, and remember what I read. In rare instances, lithium causes problems of visual accommodation, which can, in turn, lead to a form of blurred vision. It also can impair concentration and attention span and affect memory. Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to reading three or four books a week; now it was impossible. I did not read a serious work of literature or nonfiction, cover to cover, for more than ten years. The frustration and pain of this were immeasurable. I threw books against the wall in a blind fury and sailed medical journals across my office in a rage. I could read journal articles better than books, because they were short; but it was with great difficulty, and I had to read the same lines repeatedly and take copious notes before I could comprehend the meaning. Even so, what I read often disappeared from my mind like snow on a hot pavement. I took up needlepoint as a diversion and made countless cushions and firescreens in a futile attempt to fill the hours I had previously filled with reading.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  David was descended from Judah. It could be taken to have political overtones, since it shows Judah, ancestor of the tribe that dominated the southern kingdom and gave its name to Judaism, in a rather bad light. Mainly, however, it is a morality tale on the dangers of double standards and moral absolutes. The story begins with Judah’s marriage to a Canaanite woman. This is not condemned in the text, but it goes against the practice of the patriarchs hitherto. When their son Er dies, his brother Onan is expected to “go in” to his widow, Tamar, to raise up offspring for him. (This is known as the levirate law. It is spelled out in Deut 25:5-10.) When Onan shirks his duty in this regard, he too dies. Judah then tells Tamar to wait until his youngest son, Shelah, has grown up, but he does not give her to him in marriage. Tamar then decides to take the initiative. She dresses like a prostitute, covering her face, and waits for Judah by the roadside when he is at a sheepshearing. The conquest is easy. There is no implication that Judah does anything extraordinary when he hires a prostitute. He promises a kid from the flock as payment, but she prudently secures pledges from him. When he sends the kid, there is no prostitute there. Only at this point does Judah show embarrassment, that he may be a laughingstock. When Tamar is found to be pregnant, however, Judah suddenly becomes a pillar of rectitude: “Bring her out; let her be burned.” (In Deut 22:24 the penalty for fornication is death by stoning. Burning is demanded only in the story of Tamar.) When he sees the pledges, however, he quickly acknowledges that “she is more in the right than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” There is no suggestion that Judah should be punished for his action, but the passage is unique in Genesis for its explicit admission that a patriarch was in the wrong. There is also a recognition here of the relativity of law—Tamar’s actions are justified because she is pursuing a greater good, the continuation of her husband’s line. In fact, one of her twin sons, Perez, becomes the ancestor of King David. An act of deception and prostitution becomes a pivotal link in the transmission of the divine promise. Such is the irony of history.

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

  The task at hand was to set up electrophysiological recordings from the locust’s auditory nerve; the rest of the students—all of whom had been specializing in science for many years—had already, and neatly, dissected out the necessary tidbits of bug and were duly recording away. I hadn’t any idea what I was doing, my tutor knew this, and I was wondering yet again why the university had placed me at this level of science studies. I had gotten as far as picking out the locust from his cage—because it was kept warm, I prolonged my stay in the insect room for a rather lingering time—and had finally narrowed down its body regions into wings, body, and head. This was not going to get me very far. I felt my tutor’s tall presence behind me and turned to see a sardonic smile on his face. He went to the chalkboard, drew what certainly looked to be a locust, circled a region on the animal’s head, and said in his most elaborate accent, “For your edification, Miss Jamison, he-ah is the e-ah”; the class roared, so did I, and I reconciled myself to a year of being truly and hopelessly behind—I was; but I learned a lot, and had great fun as I did so. (My laboratory notes for the locust experiment reflect my early recognition that I was in over my head; after detailing the experimental method in my lab report—“The head, wings, and legs were removed from a locust. After exposing the air sacs by cutting the metathoracic sternites, the auditory nerve was located and cut centrally to exclude the possibility of responses from the cerebral ganglion,” and so on—the write-up ended with “Due to a misunderstanding of instructions, and a general lack of knowledge about what was going on, a broader range of pitch stimulation was not tested and, by the time the misunderstanding was understood, the auditory nerve was fatigued. So was I.”) There were, however, definite advantages to studying invertebrate zoology. For starters, unlike in psychology, you could eat your subjects. The lobsters—fresh from the sea and delicious—were especially popular. We cooked them in beakers over Bunsen burners until one of our lecturers, remarking that “It has not gone unnoticed that some of your subjects seem to be letting themselves out of their tanks at night,” put a halt to our attempts to supplement college meals.