Embarrassment

Passages

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

Page 74 of 79 · 20 per page

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  clerk of the Assembly, which in turn led to his official entrance onto the local political stage. 18 The Friends did not rule uncontested. There was a rising non-Quaker elite faction, with ties to both the proprietors and the Anglican Church. Their political influence derived from strong commercial ties with England and to the essential Scottish countinghouses. Their power was enhanced upon the purchase of thousands of acres of the most lucrative tracts of real estate, which was made possible because the land office was overseen by the powerful proprietors. They became known as the Proprietary Party—a rival group to the wealthy Quakers. Though Franklin began his rise by becoming a master tradesman and a printer, he could not ignore the colonial merchants of either party. Merchants dealt in world markets; they were wholesalers, a distinctly different class from shopkeepers or tradesmen like Franklin, and many were extremely wealthy. Sound paper money helped with overseas trade, and Franklin’s contract from the Assembly to print money drew him closer to the commercial elite. 19 Class status was still based on family name in Pennsylvania, for the top tier was dominated by the Penn, Pemberton, and Logan families—the proprietors and Quaker elites. Below them was a growing transatlantic merchant class that set itself apart by engaging in a conspicuous display of wealth. These families owned slaves and servants, and silver tea sets; they wore rich fabrics, had grand homes, and drove carriages. At the time Franklin retired from his printing operations in 1748, he was in the top tenth percentile in wealth, owning a horse and chaise and having invested in a large tract of land. Even among the plain Quakers, known for their simple dress, carriages were a status symbol. In 1774, in a city of fifteen thousand, only eighty-four Philadelphians owned a carriage. 20 Class was about more than wealth and family name; it was conveyed through appearances and reputation. Franklin understood this. The first portrait of him, painted in 1746, did not show him in his leather apron setting print type; nor was he pushing a wheelbarrow along the street, as he described himself—a dutiful tradesman—in his Autobiography . He was wearing a respectable wig and a fine ruffled shirt, and assumed all the airs of the “Better Sort.” 21 If material appearances defined the proprietors and wealthy classes as the “Better Sort,” then the same rule applied at the other end of the social spectrum among the “Meaner Sort.” A legal distinction existed between the free and the unfree, the latter including not only slaves but also indentured servants, convict laborers, and apprentices. As dependents, they were all classified as mean, servile, and ill-bred. Thousands of unfree laborers flooded Philadelphia, so that

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  It read: »The prosecutor - !' Then when director Hugo Weinschenk, late as always, because he was overwhelmed with business, entered the room and, balancing his fists, unusually lively swaying in the waist of his frock coat, walked to his seat, his lower lip under his narrow mustache with a cheeky expression down, the conversation fell silent, and an embarrassing, sultry silence settled over the table, until the senator helped everyone out of their embarrassment by casually and as if it were a matter of some kind of business asking the director about the state of the matter inquired. And Hugo Weinschenk replied that things were going very well, they were, as it couldn't be otherwise, excellent... whereupon he spoke lightly and happily of something else. He was much tidier than before let his eyes wander with a certain wild impartiality and asked many times, without receiving an answer, how Gerda Buddenbrook's violin was doing. In general he chatted The only thing that was lively and lively, and unpleasant was the fact that in his frankness he did not always check his words enough and, being in an excessively good mood, now and then brought up stories that were not quite appropriate. For example, one anecdote he related concerned a wet nurse who had damaged the health of the child entrusted to her by suffering from flatulence; in a manner which he no doubt considered humorous, he imitated the family doctor who had exclaimed, 'Who stinks like that! Who is it that stinks so badly in here!' and late or never he noticed that his wife was blushing violently, that the Consul, Thomas and Gerda were sitting motionless, the ladies at Buddenbrook were exchanging piercing looks, themselvessmellySeverin at the bottom of the table looked offended and at most the old Consul Kröger whispered quietly … What was it with director Weinschenk? This serious, active, and vigorous man, this man who, averse to all sociability and with a rough exterior, was devoted only to his work with tenacious loyalty to his duties—this man should not be a times, no, repeatedly found himself guilty of a serious misdemeanor, yes, he was accused, indicted in court, several times for carrying out a business maneuver that was not questionable but rather unclean and criminal, and a lawsuit whose outcome was not refraining was afoot against him! – What was he charged with? - Fires had taken place in various places, larger conflagrations which would have cost large sums to the society contracted to those affected. Director Weinschenk, however, should only have taken out reinsurance with another company and passed on the damage to them only after he had received rapid, confidential information from his agents about the accidents, i.e. deliberately fraudulently. “Thomas,” the consul said privately to her son, “please… I don't understand anything. What am I to make of it!' And he answered: 'Yes, my dear mother... what can I say! Unfortunately, one has to doubt that everything is in order.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Do you know it, Thomas, do you know it?” "Yes, yes!" said the senator with a dismissive gesture. But with the strange tactlessness that became more and more apparent in Christian over the years and didn't let him think about that This argument was felt embarrassingly by the whole table, that it was out of place in this environment and on this evening, he continued to describe the ill condition after excessive consumption of Swedish punch until he thought he had characterized it exhaustively and gradually fell silent. Before moving on to butter and cheese, the Consul once again spoke for a short speech to her family. If not everything, she said, has turned out as the years have shortsightedly and unwisely wished for, there still remains plenty of visible blessings to fill hearts with gratitude. Just the change fromhappiness and severe visitation shows that God has never withdrawn his hand from the family, but that he has guided and is directing their fate according to deep and wise intentions, which one should not dare to fathom impatiently. And now, with hearts of hope, let us toast the well-being of the family, its future, the future that will be there when the old and the elderly among those present have long been resting in the cool earth... to the children who today's festival really belongs ... And since director Weinschenk's little daughter was no longer around, little Johann had to parade around the table alone, while the older ones drank among themselves, to toast with everyone from grandmother down to Mamsell Severin. When he came to his father, the senator, bringing his glass to the child's, gently lifted Hanno's chin to look into his eyes... He did not find his eyes; because Hanno's long, golden-brown eyelashes had drooped deep, deep, down to the delicate bluish shadow around his eyes. Therese Weichbrodt, however, grasped his head with both hands, kissed him on each cheek with a soft cracking noise, and said with an emphasis so heartily that God could not resist her: "Be happy, you good Kend!" - An hour later Hanno was lying in his bed, which was now in the antechamber, which is accessible from the corridor on the second floor entered from, and which on the left was adjoined by the senator's dressing-room. He lay on his back, out of consideration for his stomach, which had by no means reconciled itself with everything he had had to receive in the course of the evening, and looked with excited eyes at good Ida, who, already in the night jacket, came out of her room and described stirring circular movements in the air with a glass of water in front of her. He drank the fizzy soda quickly, grimaced, and fell back. "I think I'm really going to throw up now, Ida." "Oh, Hannochen. Just lie still on your back... But do you see? Who waved at you multiple times?

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Kepi will show you the shortest way, the cheapest place, the biggest dish, because whatever you have to do you must pass a tabac , and whether there is a revolution or a lockout or a quarantine Kepi must be at the Moulin Rouge or the Olympia or the Ange Rouge when the music strikes up. The other day he brought a book for me to read. It was about a famous suit between a holy man and the editor of an Indian paper. The editor, it seems had openly accused the holy man of leading a scandalous life; he went further, and accused the holy man of being diseased. Kepi says it must have been the great French pox, but Nanantatee avers that it was the Japanese clap. For Nanantatee everything has to be a little exaggerated. At any rate, says Nanantatee cheerily: “You will please tell me what it says, Endree. I can’t read the book—it hurts my arm.” Then, by way of encouraging me—“it is a fine book about the fucking, Endree. Kepi has brought it for you. He thinks about nothing but the girls. So many girls he fucks—just like Krishna. We don’t believe in that business, Endree. …” A little later he takes me upstairs to the attic which is loaded down with tin cans and crap from India wrapped in burlap and firecracker paper. “Here is where I bring the girls,” he says. And then rather wistfully: “I am not a very good fucker, Endree. I don’t screw the girls any more. I hold them in my arms and I say the words. I like only to say the words now.” It isn’t necessary to listen any further: I know that he is going to tell me about his arm. I can see him lying there with that broken hinge dangling from the side of the bed. But to my surprise he adds: “I am no good for the fucking, Endree. I never was a very good fucker. My brother, he is good! Three times a day, every day! And Kepi, he is good—just like Krishna.” His mind is fixed now on the “fucking business.” Downstairs, in the little room where he kneels before the open cabinet, he explains to me how it was when he was rich and his wife and the children were here. On holidays he would take his wife to the House of All Nations and hire a room for the night. Every room was appointed in a different style. His wife liked it there very much. “A wonderful place for the fucking, Endree. I know all the rooms. …” The walls of the little room in which we are sitting are crammed with photographs. Every branch of the family is represented, it is like a cross section of the Indian empire.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  …” “No, Endree… like this… OOMAHARUMOOMA!” “OOMAMABOOMBA. …” “No, Endree… like this. …” … But what with the murky light, the botchy print, the tattered cover, the jigjagged page, the fumbling fingers, the fox-trotting fleas, the lie-a-bed lice, the scum on his tongue, the drop in his eye, the lump in his throat, the drink in his pottle, the itch in his palm, the wail of his wind, the grief from his breath, the fog of his brainfag, the tic of his conscience, the height of his rage, the gush of his fundament, the fire in his gorge, the tickle of his tail, the rats in his garret, the hullabaloo and the dust in his ears, since it took him a month to steal a march, he was hard-set to memorize more than a word a week. I suppose I would never have gotten out of Nanantatee’s clutches if fate hadn’t intervened. One night, as luck would have it, Kepi asked me if I wouldn’t take one of his clients to a whorehouse nearby. The young man had just come from India and he had not very much money to spend. He was one of Gandhi’s men, one of that little band who made the historic march to the sea during the salt trouble. A very gay disciple of Gandhi’s I must say, despite the vows of abstinence he had taken. Evidently he hadn’t looked at a woman for ages. It was all I could do to get him as far as the Rue Laferrière; he was like a dog with his tongue hanging out. And a pompous, vain little devil to boot! He had decked himself out in a corduroy suit, a beret, a cane, a Windsor tie; he had bought himself two fountain pens, a kodak, and some fancy underwear. The money he was spending was a gift from the merchants of Bombay; they were sending him to England to spread the gospel of Gandhi. Once inside Miss Hamilton’s joint he began to lose his sang-froid . When suddenly he found himself surrounded by a bevy of naked women he looked at me in consternation. “Pick one out,” I said. “You can have your choice.” He had become so rattled that he could scarcely look at them. “You do it for me,” he murmured, blushing violently. I looked them over coolly and picked out a plump young wench who seemed full of feathers. We sat down in the reception room and waited for the drinks. The madam wanted to know why I didn’t take a girl also. “Yes, you take one too,” said the young Hindu. “I don’t want to be alone with her.” So the girls were brought in again and I chose one for myself, a rather tall, thin one with melancholy eyes. We were left alone, the four of us, in the reception room. After a few moments my young Gandhi leans over and whispers something in my ear.

• 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)

  It was a great shock to the girls. They are not used to such things. And if the good gentlemen will be so kind as to remember the femme de chambre . … It is not so pretty for the femme de chambre —that mess, that ugly mess. She shrugs her shoulders and winks her eye. A lamentable incident. But an accident. If the gentlemen will wait here a few moments the maid will bring the drinks. Would the gentlemen like to have some champagne? Yes? “I’d like to get out of here,” says the Hindu boy weakly. “Don’t feel so badly about it,” says the madam. “It is all over now. Mistakes will happen sometimes. Next time you will ask for the toilet.” She goes on about the toilet—one on every floor, it seems. And a bathroom too. “I have lots of English clients,” she says. “They are all gentlemen. The gentleman is a Hindu? Charming people, the Hindus. So intelligent. So handsome.” When we get into the street the charming young gentleman is almost weeping. He is sorry now that he bought a corduroy suit and the cane and the fountain pens. He talks about the eight vows that he took, the control of the palate, etc. On the march to Dandi even a plate of ice cream it was forbidden to take. He tells me about the spinning wheel—how the little band of Satyagrahists imitated the devotion of their master. He relates with pride how he walked beside the master and conversed with him. I have the illusion of being in the presence of one of the twelve disciples. During the next few days we see a good deal of each other; there are interviews to be arranged with the newspaper men and lectures to be given to the Hindus of Paris. It is amazing to see how these spineless devils order one another about; amazing also to see how ineffectual they are in all that concerns practical affairs. And the jealousy and the intrigues, the petty, sordid rivalries. Wherever there are ten Hindus together there is India with her sects and schisms, her racial, lingual, religious, political antagonisms. In the person of Gandhi they are experiencing for a brief moment the miracle of unity, but when he goes there will be a crash, an utter relapse into that strife and chaos so characteristic of the Indian people. The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc. His ideal would be to Americanize India. He is not at all pleased with Gandhi’s retrogressive mania. Forward , he says, just like a YMCA man.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  * To a man, the LDS leadership adamantly insists that Lafferty should under no circumstances be considered a Mormon. The faith that moved Lafferty to slay his niece and sister-in-law is a brand of religion known as Mormon Fundamentalism; LDS Church authorities bristle visibly when Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are even mentioned in the same breath. As Gordon B. Hinckley, the then-eighty-eight-year-old LDS president and prophet, emphasized during a 1998 television interview on Larry King Live, “They have no connection with us whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon Fundamentalists.” Nevertheless, Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history. Both believe that Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in 1830, played a vital role in God’s plan for mankind; both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a prophet comparable in stature to Moses and Isaiah. Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are each convinced that God regards them, and them alone, as his favored children: “a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” But if both proudly refer to themselves as the Lord’s chosen, they diverge on one especially inflammatory point of religious doctrine: unlike their present-day Mormon compatriots, Mormon Fundamentalists passionately believe that Saints have a divine obligation to take multiple wives. Followers of the FLDS faith engage in polygamy, they explain, as a matter of religious duty. There are more than thirty thousand FLDS polygamists living in Canada, Mexico, and throughout the American West. Some experts estimate there may be as many as one hundred thousand. Even this larger number amounts to less than 1 percent of the membership in the LDS Church worldwide, but all the same, leaders of the mainstream church are extremely discomfited by these legions of polygamous brethren. Mormon authorities treat the fundamentalists as they would a crazy uncle—they try to keep the “polygs” hidden in the attic, safely out of sight, but the fundamentalists always seem to be sneaking out to appear in public at inopportune moments to create unsavory scenes, embarrassing the entire LDS clan. The LDS Church happens to be exceedingly prickly about its short, uncommonly rich history—and no aspect of that history makes the church more defensive than “plural marriage.” The LDS leadership has worked very hard to persuade both the modern church membership and the American public that polygamy was a quaint, long-abandoned idiosyncrasy practiced by a mere handful of nineteenth-century Mormons. The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith—still the religion’s focal personage—married at least thirty-three women, and probably as many as forty-eight. Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that she marry him or face eternal damnation.

• From Action (2014)

  • Above all else, try lying: You don’t have to be an actor of Nude-Brando proportions, but you do have to put on a little show about what it was you were doing that was very much not sex, no way, no how. No one WANTS to go through the excruciating conversation about the fact that they recently saw someone’s butt for all it truly was. Do you know how badly the interloper is probably wishing you’ll fill out the tail end of the phony statement, “We were just…” rather than having to accept the reality that they were watching you get some? Lying is the stepladder out of any potential sinkhole of embarrassment on the culprit’s end, sure, but it’s also a relief on the other end. Blaming clothing-related mishaps helps with any apparent nakedness: You were fixing a broken button on your partner’s pants! They noticed your zipper was broken, and knew they had to step in to help! You were cleaning spilled punch off of their bra with your tongue! That is all VERY believable, as long as everyone is uncomfortable enough. Premature Ejaculation I have never understood the impulse to knock a premature ejaculatore, but I do get it! From what I’ve noticed, no guy wants to be remembered as the one who couldn’t last—the loveless phrase “two-pump chump,” which was popular among my high school girlfriends, whooshes to mind. Much like dudes who aren’t hung, these people will usually put extra muscle into making sure you feel amazing with other parts of their anatomies. This is great news if you don’t get off on penetration alone—so, this is great news for many, many people. If someone is looking to reframe how you characterize them sexually, they probably know the surefire way to go about doing that: giving you life-changing head. Not Enough Lube/Not Fitting I once had sex with a person whose genitalia fit so poorly into mine that getting him in me was like trying to hammer a bent-up screw into a sugar doughnut. I had no idea why this could be, or that it could even happen! We were frustrated because we had been involved in a dire mutual crush for two years or so, and having gotten out of a relationship about five minutes (fine, five days) beforehand, I summoned him to hang (fine, nail/screw/otherwise misapply hardware euphemisms to me). Even those you foster titanic infatuations with can be subject to compatibility-based bodily oddities. We tried all kinds of different positions and spit-based lubrications to try to make it work, which, eventually, it KIND of did? Instead of the natural pulse of intercourse it felt like… scraping?

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  “How are you, Gary?” she enquires. “Fine, thank you.” This slightly clipped response produces scattered nervous laughter around the group as we wait for Limori to drill deeper to discover what Gary’s ego position is. He is being coy with her, but we know, as he does, that such skirting around whatever Limori is seeing will not last long. “How are things with your mother?” “Good,” he replies. “She and Dad just returned from a vacation in Italy.” “Really... hmmm.” Limori glances meaningfully at Alice on her left. As their eyes meet they nod and smile knowingly to one another. Now Alice is in on whatever it is that Limori is seeing. “How was your parents’ vacation?” “Good. Fine.” Gary shifts nervously in his seat. “I think.” At this point Limori might as well have yelled, “AH HA!” She has found a chink in Gary’s armour. Instead she asks, “When did you last speak to them?” “Ah, well, a couple of weeks ago, I guess.” “You guess?” “Well, let’s see, maybe three weeks ago. Well, maybe closer to a month…” He trails off. “Ah yes.” Limori smiles and settles a little deeper into her chair, her hands clasped together and resting, as ever, on her ample midsection, her ankles crossed on the floor. “When exactly did they return from vacation?” “Oh, about three weeks ago.” Gary is smoothing his mustache now and trying to appear perfectly at ease with this line of questioning. “So, you haven’t spoken to them since they got back. Is that right?” “Yeah, I guess that’s correct.” “Hmmm.” Limori rolls her eyes toward Alice again and smiles with closed lips as though she has a delicious secret that she’d just love to share. “Now, why would a son not call his parents to ask about their vacation? I wonder why that would be?” She asks this question innocuously, but the irony is not lost on any of us. Why Gary hasn’t called his mum is obviously of paramount importance. And then we’re off. For at least an hour Limori “works” with Gary to unearth the “issues” he has with his mother and what ego positions he is holding onto that are preventing him from having a clean relationship with her. During this work of Limori’s we all listen in and try to learn as much from the discussion as we can. She will poke and prod and find the root cause of any behaviour, or find and address “judgments” that the subject of her work might have. Like a magician, she can make issues appear where no one else can see them. Over the years and during the numerous workshops that are held, men and women alike shed many tears, as Limori touches old, unhealed emotional wounds and brings them to the surface to be exposed, all in the name of spirituality.

• From The Perfect Vagina: The Dangers of Extreme Plastic Surgery

  22:50 you can you know actually the most 22:51 22:51 attractive thing about somebody's being 22:53 22:53 themselves but trying to explain that to 22:56 22:56 a to a teenager when you just can't do 22:57 22:57 it you've just got to learn it but then 22:59 22:59 if during that process of learning 23:00 23:00 you've had an operation on your your 23:02 23:02 vagina to change it then it's it's 23:04 23:04 irreparable particularly if it's been a 23:05 23:05 bad operation and 23:07 23:07 it's oh God you know you've had your 23:09 23:09 labia 23:10 23:10 [Music] 23:13 23:13 removed consultant plastic surgeon Eric 23:16 23:16 Shulton has performed labia reductions 23:18 23:18 on 16-year-old girls he's the pioneer of 23:21 23:21 a new technique in labia plasties and 23:23 23:23 business is booming but I've come to 23:25 23:25 discuss my concerns with him and what 23:27 23:27 kind of women come to you um wanting 23:29 23:29 surgery on their vaginas all sorts of 23:31 23:31 women come to see me um for example 23:34 23:34 16-year-old girls who are very 23:35 23:35 embarrassed and who will never have a 23:37 23:37 boyfriend but also uh people who come to 23:39 23:39 see me after child birth do you think 23:42 23:42 there it's the embarrassment we should 23:43 23:43 be dealing with rather than the actual 23:46 23:46 physical side of it because it's it's 23:48 23:48 the embarrassment is a psychological 23:50 23:50 thing surely it is indeed but um all 23:53 23:53 these people for so long have tried to 23:56 23:56 do that and to live with it and to feel 23:58 23:58 normal but they don't when I was 16 if 24:00 24:00 there had been plastic surgery to make 24:02 24:02 me taller I would have been there like 24:03 24:03 that if I had the money I would have 24:04 24:04 been there i' have had it but now if 24:06 24:06 there was plastic surgy to make me 24:07 24:07 taller I wouldn't take it because I 24:09 24:09 realized that being as short as I am is 24:12 24:12 part of what makes me me do do you 24:13 24:13 understand what I mean I totally 24:14 24:14 understand what you say and I've got a 24:16 24:16 picture here of a 16-year-old and that 24:19 24:19 explains to you why I do this type of 24:22 24:22 surgery this 16-year-old on the left you 24:25 24:25 see her before the 24:26 24:26 surgery is very reluctant to expose 24:30 24:30 herself to a 24:32 24:32 boyfriend I can understand why you know 24:35 24:35 if you were 16 you would not have seen 24:38 24:38 somebody else's vver looking like that 24:39 24:39 because in kind of classic porn shots or 24:44 24:44 uh classic drawings in in biology books 24:46 24:46 whatever you don't see you don't see VVS 24:49

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  That was some of the most embarrassing shit in my life, pushing the car to school like the fucking Flintstones. Because the other kids were coming in on that same road to go to school. I’d take my blazer off so that no one could tell what school I went to, and I would bury my head and push the car, hoping no one would recognize me. [image file=image_rsrc2U7.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2U8.jpg] OUTSIDERAfter finishing primary school at H. A. Jack, I started grade eight at Sandringham High School. Even after apartheid, most black people still lived in the townships and the areas formerly designated as homelands, where the only available government schools were the broken remnants of the Bantu system. Wealthy white kids—along with the few black people and colored people and Indians who had money or could get scholarships—were holed up in private schools, which were super-expensive but virtually guaranteed entry into university. Sandringham was what we call a Model C school, which meant it was a mix of government and private, similar to charter schools in America. The place was huge, a thousand kids on sprawling grounds with tennis courts, sports fields, and a swimming pool. Being a Model C school and not a government school, Sandringham drew kids from all over, making it a near-perfect microcosm of post-apartheid South Africa as a whole—a perfect example of what South Africa has the potential to be. We had rich white kids, a bunch of middle-class white kids, and some working-class white kids. We had black kids who were newly rich, black kids who were middle-class, and black kids from the townships. We had colored kids and Indian kids, and even a handful of Chinese kids, too. The pupils were as integrated as they could be given that apartheid had just ended. At H. A. Jack, race was broken up into blocks. Sandringham was more like a spectrum. South African schools don’t have cafeterias. At Sandringham we’d buy our lunch at what we call the tuck shop, a little canteen, and then have free rein to go wherever we wanted on the school grounds to eat—the quad, the courtyard, the playground, wherever. Kids would break off and cluster into their cliques and groups. People were still grouped by color in most cases, but you could see how they all blended and shaded into one another. The kids who played soccer were mostly black. The kids who played tennis were mostly white. The kids who played cricket were a mix. The Chinese kids would hang out next to the prefab buildings. The matrics, what South Africans call seniors, would hang out on the quad. The popular, pretty girls would hang out over here, and computer geeks would hang out over there. To the extent that the groupings were racial, it was because of the ways race overlapped class and geography out in the real world. Suburban kids hung out with suburban kids. Township kids hung out with township kids.

• From Action (2014)

  You might not know how to slow things down gracefully, but you HAVE to, no matter if it looks peculiar, and then get the heck out of that room for a second. If you can’t bring yourself to say, “Sorry, this feels amazing, but I need a moment,” and repair to the john because you think it’ll look SO OBVIOUS that you have a body that occasionally does normal bodily things, come up with an excuse. Say, “This feels amazing, but I got an eyelash in my eye and I need to get it out,” then hit the bathroom, run some water, and come back saying, “Sorry about that—I feel way better now,” and meaning it. Period Blood All over the Bed Did you bleed on someone’s bed, or have a bloodletting on your own sheets? No big deal (unless maybe it’s coming from someplace other than a vagina, out of a wound). Like most natural fluids, period blood doesn’t have to stain your bedclothes permanently. If you know you’ll be engaging in period sex, you can avoid any trouble here by laying out a burner sheet—this can be any old bedding or towel that you’re okay with Jackson Pollock–ing with menses. If you discover that you or your partner is beginning their cycle immediately after you’ve finished in bed: Rush some seltzer onto the hemogravy in question. You know how I can’t seem to stop stanning for seltzer throughout this book, to the point that it almost reads as though I’m an infamously raunchy heiress to the Schweppes fortune? (GOD, I wish that were my life.) That’s because you can harness the powers of carbonated water not only to keep your mouth pleasantly wet during oral and seeming like the kind of “together” adult for whom even WATER can be improved upon, but also to get blood out of fabric. You don’t want your partner to think you’re grossed out, in large part because you’re not, so don’t act like you’re trying to douse a wildfire. Calmly be all, “They’re just sheets!” omitting any portion of that sentence in which you are tempted to enumerate the thread count of said bedclothes, and pour half a glass of the cold seltzer sitting on your nightstand. If this seems like an excessive amount of water: You want to keep enjoying that jacked-up number of threads, am I correct? Gently blot out the stain with paper towels. They’re just sheets—stain-free sheets on which you also got to enjoy the miracles of period sex. Condiment Attack

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  Or let’s say you receive a magical inheritance of a few thousand dollars and you can find whatever therapist you want. Even then, the process is not necessarily easy. You might find yourself rejecting a perfectly fine, competent therapist because he has a face that stresses you out. Or because he seems overly judgmental. Or because she accidentally cc’d you and all of her other clients instead of using bcc, exposing everyone’s email addresses, and now you don’t know if you can trust her again. These aren’t bad reasons to leave a therapist. You want to find someone you can trust, someone you truly vibe with. Just like with dating (except without any of the booze, sex, or fun), finding your match can take time. And just like dating, even if finding the perfect person might be life-affirming, the process itself can be so demoralizing that you wonder whether it’s even worth it. — I had a couple of bad therapists when I was in college. A man with a bow tie who tried to hit on me. A woman who sighed at every turn of my childhood as if it were a Dickensian tragedy. There was a psychiatrist who tried to put me on Prozac. I quoted Brave New World. “I want to know what passion is! I want to feel something strongly!” The psychiatrist responded, “I think that passion might be a chemical imbalance.” And then, luckily, I found Samantha. Now, I needed someone new. I felt equally equipped to find a good therapist at thirty as I did at nineteen. I googled “Complex PTSD therapist NYC” and went to the first person listed, a man who promised he could cure anyone within three months. He charged $200 an hour, but over the course of only twelve sessions, that seemed like a deal. I got through only one session with him. In that one hour, he barely listened to a word I said. He talked twice as much as I did and kept interrupting me every time I said some key trauma word, pathologizing me with all the enthusiasm of a golden retriever playing with a Frisbee: “Oh, I see! You rely on your boyfriend for stability: That means you are codependent! Overly needy! Ah, but he was in a bad place when you met him, and you helped him, too? That means you are only attracted to chaos and broken birds!” I didn’t care if it was supposed to last only three months, I didn’t want each of my therapy sessions to feel like an episode of Jeopardy! where he raced to answer all of my questions before even hearing what they were. I paid him his exorbitant sum and spent the next two months trying to recover from being lambasted by his pathologies, shouting to myself in quiet moments, CODEPENDENT! NEEDY! YOU ONLY LOVE BROKENNESS!

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Then he hugged her again. —MIRI WAS NOT HAPPY when Rusty showed up at the Osners’ party. And even less happy to see she was wearing her good black dress, her dress shoes and stockings with seams. Then there was the hair. Rita Hayworth hair. To her shoulders. Heads turned when Rusty came into the living room. She waved at Miri but Miri turned away. “What is my mother doing here?” she asked Natalie. “My mother wants to introduce her to Cousin Tewky from Birmingham.” “Tewky? What kind of a name is Tewky ?” “Some family nickname. He’s my mother’s first cousin, from the banking side of the family. You know, Purvis Brothers Bank.” Miri didn’t know. “My mother’s from the department store side.” Miri didn’t know that, either. “You should have warned me,” she told Natalie. “How was I supposed to know your mother didn’t tell you she was coming?” Corinne greeted Rusty and led her straight to a man, a man who must have been Tewky Purvis, balding, not especially handsome, but not ugly, either, with a mustache. Well, half the men in the room had mustaches, including Dr. O. She couldn’t hold that against him. They were talking now, her mother and Tewky Purvis, and laughing, maybe even flirting. Miri didn’t like it. She didn’t know how grown-ups judged each other, especially how women judged men. It never made sense to her. It’s about character, Rusty once told her. Strength, goodness. A sense of humor doesn’t hurt, either. She didn’t ask how men judged women because she already knew. It was obvious, and Rusty looked glamorous tonight. “That’s not all of it,” Rusty had once argued. “But you’re right—looks are certainly a starting point. Chemistry, too.” Miri understood chemistry now. Chemistry turned your legs to jelly and made your insides roll over. If Mason hadn’t had to work tonight Miri might not be at the Osners’ party. She hoped she’d never have to choose between her best friend and the boy she loved. Since seventh grade, New Year’s Eve had been for just the two of them, Natalie and Miri. She didn’t think Natalie would have invited Mason. Maybe someday when Natalie was also in love, they’d invite dates to the Osners’ party, but not now. Rusty must have thought that Miri would be out with Mason when she accepted Corinne’s invitation. Now she’d have to deal with her daughter keeping an eye on her. RustyShe decided to go to the party at the last minute when Irene urged her to get out and enjoy herself. Seeing the worry on Miri’s face now, she began to regret her decision. Maybe it had been a mistake to keep the men in her life a secret. Not that there had been many. But she’d never brought a date home. Not one man in fifteen years. She hadn’t done a thing to get Miri used to the idea, to the possibility.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I could not have thought any differently. Once the Betty blitz wound down, we returned to our regular routine and talk of The Magic Lady dwindled. One day, not long after Betty’s death, the other children and I were told after inspection to wait outside our dorm instead of walking to the Commons. We stood for minutes in the crisp, cold air. I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets to stay warm. The demonstrators responsible for our dorm emerged. One of the women walked behind a small boy with reddish-orange hair, her hands on his scrawny shoulders. She smiled widely in an I’m-making-a-point-here way. The boy, whose name I knew to be Santiago, looked toward the ground. “This is a very special day,” the demonstrator said. “Santiago woke up to a dry bed.” She glanced down at him, the exaggerated smile never leaving her face. “When we put our mind to it, we can overcome our bad habits. Good job, Santiago!” His pale cheeks blossomed to a ruddy red. The demonstrator wasn’t finished. “Everyone should know about and celebrate your success.” She brought her hands together, methodically clapping, the loud, hollow, echoic sound breaking the quiet of the morning. Santiago’s head drooped. I wondered why the demonstrator didn’t notice how much she was embarrassing him. “Stand up straight,” the demonstrator said, motioning for us to join her clapping. We clapped long and hard while Santiago remained in his stiff stance, his brown eyes glazed and focused on some distant object. Finally the clapping died down, and the demonstrated patted his shoulder. “Congratulations!” she said. “You’re all excused for breakfast.” As we walked to the Commons, I watched one of the boys elbow Santiago in the ribs. “Yeah, congratulations, dork,” the boy hissed. Some of the other boys overheard this remark, and a dry laughter erupted from the group as they jostled one another, grinning hard as if to prove they were better than Santiago. Several of them had the same problem and lived on a floor dedicated to habitual bedwetters. The stench of urine clotted the air of their hallway like an unwanted badge of their inability to control themselves. While most of the kids who suffered from this problem managed to wake up now and then with dry sheets, Santiago never had until that morning. Because of that he’d become the scapegoat for the other bedwetters’ pent-up humiliation. Santiago had all the strength of a limp noodle and never bothered to defend himself, though he was often physically attacked by bigger boys who grabbed his thin arms and twisted them around his back. His strategy: wait it out. Throughout breakfast and then in the classroom that morning, adults and children continuously came up to Santiago to congratulate him. The boys pumped his hand and said, “Way to go. Good job!” in loud voices. Our first grade teacher Ginny didn’t get caught up in all the hoopla of fussing over poor Santiago.

• From Action (2014)

  The most painful thing that ever happened to my vagina was when a boyfriend added “ZEST” and “SPICE” to our sex life in a tragically straightforward sense. We had been revising a new recipe for wing sauce to exactitude every few days for one whole summer, so it was a shame that I utterly lost my appetite for it when, after dinner, Chris touched me without washing his hands. We had forgotten that pepper hurts body parts other than just your tongue, and wing-based pleasure morphed instantly into intense pain. Even as I was wincing and screaming “THIS IS NOT WHAT ‘HOT SEX’ IS SUPPOSED TO MEAN, YOU JAG” at Chris, I was laughing and grateful to have a new story to tell my friends for the month, but since then, I have taken care to avoid buffalo-style sex. Handling spicy foods like peppers—or wing sauce—before handling another person’s D or V is the living worst. Wash your hands eleven times if you think you’re going to bone after dinner, and maybe decide against cooking/eating scorch-inducing foods on a date. (And not only because they often incorporate beans, putting you at risk of “letting out” my British friend’s gaseous terror.) If you still heat things up in the most regrettable possible way, get in a cold shower immediately, wing sauce be damned to burn on the stove in retribution for how it burned me. Flush out the point of contact, then take a break from sex until the next day. If you don’t feel better in two hours, call a doctor. Getting Come in Your Eye I wear lots of makeup. As such, I’m far from intimidated by the prospect of effluvia around my general eye area. As with mascara, though, the key is making sure your optic nerves aren’t suddenly clouded with alien liquids by applying them to your face with precision. Did you know that when you see the world through a filter of semen, your eyes inflate and redden until they resemble rubber grade-school kickballs? If you’re masturbating and have a curved dick, or if you’re in the mood for a 100 percent natural facial treatment, consider your or your partner’s aim. I was given this unfortunate education recently, when I found myself looking down the barrel of a partner’s loaded dick. “Wait—!” I yelp-cooed, trying to preserve both my fake eyelashes and the sensuous tone of klymaxxx, to no avail on both counts. My vision blurred with come. I brushed my tear ducts gently with the back of my hand as the dude susurrated apologies: He had never done this before! He lost control! He was so so so so sorry! I played it cool: It had come from his body, so it couldn’t hurt me too badly, right? There was no need to jet off to the bathroom and flush my eyes immediately, as far as I was concerned.

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

  claim absolute, divine authority for the cultic order, and specifically they claim that the Aaronide priesthood is divinely ordained to a higher rank than the Levites. In effect, God has created, and insists upon, a hierarchical order in the regulation of the cult, so that some people are designated as holier than others. We can hardly doubt that the authors of the Priestly source were themselves members of the Aaronide priesthood, the holiest of the holy. In fact, the relationship between the Aaronide priests and the Levites was considerably more complicated than these passages in the book of Numbers suggest. As we shall see in the book of Deuteronomy, another tradition claimed that the Levites were priests. When King Josiah forbade sacrificial worship outside Jerusalem in the Deuteronomic reform of 621 B.C.E., however, the priests who served shrines outside Jerusalem lost their livelihood. They were permitted to go up to Jerusalem, but there the Aaronide priesthood was firmly established. It was at this point that a controversy developed as to whether the Levites were legitimate priests. We shall consider the history of the Levites further in connection with Deuteronomy and in connection with the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Priestly source. For the present, it is sufficient to note that the Priestly writings assume that the Aaronide priesthood takes precedence over the Levites. The stories of Nadab and Abihu, and of Korah and his followers, bring to mind one other story of instantaneous divine judgment in the book of Numbers. This is found in Numbers 12 and concerns a challenge to the authority of Moses by Aaron and Miriam “because of the Cushite woman whom he had married.” In the postexilic period, marriage to foreign women was a controversial issue in Judah. The book of Ezra reports that Ezra forced the Jewish men who had married foreign wives to divorce them and send them away. It is not surprising then that some people would have found the marriage of Moses to a foreign woman to be an embarrassment. The story in Numbers makes the point that no one should question the authority of Moses, regardless of what he may have done. The point is made all the more forcefully by the fact that the people who are rebuked are Aaron and Miriam, sister of Moses (only Miriam is actually

• From Escape (2007)

  We took the shuttle bus to our hotel. I sat next to Merril, which sent Tammy into the stratosphere. She started badgering him. “Father, are Cathleen and I part of this trip, too?” Merril was unresponsive. Tammy continued, “Father, who are you planning on sleeping with tonight?” Her questions got more specific. “Why are you sitting by Carolyn again? Are you only going to have sex with her? Do we get to be included?” The other tourists were trying not to stare at this freak show. I was mortified. Even the other couples from Colorado City seemed to be embarrassed. My father was blushing. I knew Tammy’s bizarre talk made him uncomfortable. Merril acted as though he were somewhere else. He did not react as Tammy dredged up all of our dirty laundry and flung it in his face. When we got to the hotel, Merril said he had a bad headache. He told Cathleen and me to take one of the two rooms and kissed us both good night. Tammy felt like she’d just been crowned queen. Cathleen was in a terrible mood, still frothing mad about the way she had been treated on the plane. I tried to talk to her, but she refused. Not much time had passed before Tammy was knocking on our door. She was extremely upset and agitated. Merril had told her he had a headache and went right to sleep. He refused to have sex with her. She wanted our sympathy because we were both pregnant and she was not. But she did not get it. She was maddening, manipulative, and mean. Cathleen and I ordered dinner from room service. She refused to speak to me, so we ate in silence. Welcome to paradise. Early the next morning, Merril knocked on our door and asked if we were ready for breakfast. We followed him to an exquisite garden restaurant overlooking the ocean. I was awed by the beauty surrounding us. The air smelled salty and the breeze, silky. I wanted to drink in the intense colors, but the day’s first fiasco was already launched—who would get to sit next to Merril? Tammy had taken one seat and I the other. In the confrontation that ensued, Cathleen ended up refusing even to eat at our table. Tammy continued her rant: “You sat next to him on the plane and on the shuttle bus….” The waitress came to take our order, but she had to wait until Tammy’s tirade subsided. We finally ordered, ate, and left for our first day of sight-seeing. The other couples rented snappy convertibles to zip around Oahu. But Merril rented a van. I think he was determined that none of us would enjoy the trip. It was his way of retaliating for not being able to bring Barbara along.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  one turned up for the ceremony. By April, only six bishops were actually in Trent. The opening, postponed from month to month, finally took place in December, with four cardinals, four archbishops, and only twenty-one bishops – including not a single ruling bishop from Germany. There seems to have been no sense of urgency or historical magnitude, no reforming spirit. A papal decree, ordering bishops actually to reside in their sees, a salient reforming issue, had been almost totally ignored, notably by most of the bishops present. Thus Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Archbishop of Milan for twenty years (1520–50) never once visited the city. The ‘host’ bishop of Trent, Christoforo Madruzzo, was a symbol of the unreformed Church. He was handsome, well-born and well-connected, and always wore the red velvet dress of a secular prince – his scarlet biretta alone betrayed the fact he was a cleric. He had been given two parishes and a canonry in his teens, later three more canonries and a deanery, had been made a bishop at twenty-six and a cardinal at thirty. At the first banquet he gave to the council fathers, he served seventy-four different dishes and a famous Valtellina wine a hundred years old, while his private orchestra played. There were a good many ladies present. Madruzzo danced with them, and induced other clerics to do so; and, so few of the bishops having turned up, the ladies pushed their way into the chancel of the cathedral at the opening ceremony. Nor did the council substantially improve. No preparatory work had been done. Seripando, the Augustinian General, characterized its first session as ‘irresolution, ignorance, incredible stupidity’. Its first decision, to discuss reform and discipline simultaneously, was reversed by the Pope, who ordered it to concentrate on dogma; and he vetoed a statement on justification. The council muddled the issue of vernacular translations, and its decree enforcing episcopal residence was feeble; even while it was being debated, the Pope was issuing exemptions to cardinals, and licensed them to hold sees in plurality, one of the recipients being the notorious d’Este. An outbreak of typhus led to an angry and panicky debate in 1547, on the translation of the council to Bologna. When the motion was finally carried, some prelates had boats and horses waiting for them to get away. They barely listened to the last notes of the Te Deum, and one bishop did not even remove his vestments but galloped out of the city in full pontificals, to the jeers of the citizens. At subsequent sessions, which lasted until the 1560s, the Council of Trent improved both in attendance and decorum. But the atmosphere did not essentially alter. The objectives of Trent, as they developed, were seen to be not so much the reform of the Church as the