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

  Overall, Augustine’s account of himself suggests an interesting complexity of experience, reflected in his treatises on marriage and virginity. By the time he wrote in 401, his son was dead: a promising and much-loved young man called Adeodatus (‘Given by God’), a name that suggests that the pregnancy had not been planned. Also part of Augustine’s past history was his flirtation with Manicheism. Manichee views were now among his chief objects of attack, but he remained vulnerable to unsympathetic accusations that his theology was still not totally distanced from their dismissal of the flesh. Around him was the North African diocesan flock whose care he had dutifully, though initially unenthusiastically, taken up; his sermons (of which an extraordinary and recently augmented number remain) reveal his frequent impatience not just with their inattention in church but their general sexual laxity, especially the men. Additionally, Augustine brought to his task a deep admiration for Bishop Ambrose of Milan, a great influence on him at an important moment of change, so he embraced Ambrose’s view of Mary as pure virgin as well as perfect mother. All this created a difficult balance to maintain in his paired treatises on marriage and virginity – it is noticeable that around half of Augustine’s treatment of consecrated virginity consists of a pointed commendation of humility, which is not an automatic virtue among ascetics.[13] Augustine’s exploration of marriage is a conscientious attempt to do justice to the often-contradictory elements of biblical pronouncements on the subject and to create from them a distinct pattern of ‘Christian marriage’, against the background of all marriages since the Garden of Eden. He draws on pre-Christian philosophy to maintain that there is good in marriage, both Christian and non-Christian, since marriage and the union of man and woman are the foundations of all society. Yet he must show – against ascetic extremists (Jerome is in his sights) – that marital sex is not a consequence of the Fall, but part of God’s original purpose in creating Adam and Eve. Here, and elsewhere, this leads him into speculations that are not without their comic aspect: what must their sexual congress have been like in Eden, he wondered, when their wills were not disordered, and their reproductive organs under perfect control? Every Roman paterfamilias would be aware of the prime importance of masculine self-control and would sympathize. [image file=image_rsrcC2Y.jpg] 13. In this tenth-century Spanish Beatus (commentary on the Book of Revelation), Adam and Eve look especially embarrassed by their discovery of shame in the Fall.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  SHOW THEM THAT YOU LIKE THEM The third part of crafting a friendship, besides repetition and disclosure, is showing others that you like them. People like those who like them. People also like those who take the initiative. In academic terms it’s called prosocial behavior, but more simply, it’s showing someone that you’re pleased to be around them. At its simplest, showing you like someone is being the first to say hi or lighting up with a smile when they say hi to you. Slightly more advanced is unnecessary conversation. I once had a colleague who would stop at every co-worker’s office in the morning to say hi. “Just saying hello,” she always said, or “Just checking in.” She called it doing the rounds. Her efforts were thoughtful and made me like her. Next is taking socializing out of the usual context and into another. For instance, parents from Nora’s daughter’s class, after connecting on the playground, may arrange a playdate, a change of context from schoolyard to home. After racking up those six to eight conversations hanging around after book club, Maddy may invite a book club buddy out for coffee, a change of context from the group to a duo. If you get invited to a get-together—someone from tai chi is having a birthday, a guy from your hip-hop class is having a Super Bowl party—go, even if just for a pop-in. People are touched when you show up to their events, and more important, it moves your friendship to another context and therefore another level. So approach. Be the first to say hi. Once your friendship has gelled in the original context, invite them on a hike, to a bookstore reading, to try the new ramen place in town. All these things are tough. Perfectionistic worry kicks in. We start worrying about the details. What if the hike is too hard for her? What if there’s no parking near the bookstore and he gets mad at me? Maybe the ramen place will be sketchy. Indeed, taking the initiative is hard. But a helpful tool is to turn the tables. How would you feel if they invited you? Probably delighted. How would you feel if something went wrong? Probably understanding. Assume the same for them. Next, be specific. Rather than, “Wanna do something sometime?” try, “The kids have been bugging me about trying that new rock climbing place—are you guys free this weekend?” Or, “Wanna grab coffee on Monday? I’m free after one o’clock.” Specification shows you’re sincere.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Willy-nilly, I found myself drawn into the climate of protest. Somewhat to my astonishment, I had been approached the previous term, while still a nun, and asked if I would let my name go forward as a candidate in the forthcoming elections for the Junior Common Room committee. I had been reluctant—a humiliating defeat seemed inevitable—but my supporters were insistent and it seemed churlish to refuse. For a couple of weeks I slunk past the notice board, wincing at the sight of my photograph, complete with veil and crucifix, beside those of my wild-haired rivals. What student in her right mind would vote for me? I looked like a creature from another planet. I scarcely dared to approach the notice board on the morning after the election, but, amazed, I saw the same photograph prominently displayed, informing the college that I was now the secretary of the Common Room. So now I found that whether I liked it or not, I was being drawn into student politics. I had to attend protest meetings in the JCR and take part in intense committee discussions about how to bring St. Anne’s into line with the sixties. The most pressing issue was cohabitation in the colleges. Until the early twentieth century, women had not been permitted to attend the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was assumed that the effort of studying to the same level as men would blow their inferior little brains to smithereens. But some women had refused to accept this exclusion, had set up colleges of their own, and the university had eventually accepted them. The five women’s colleges of Oxford had been a Trojan horse, smuggling the weaker sex into the male preserve of academia, but now, some believed, their day was over. All the colleges should be open to both sexes. Men should be allowed to come to St. Anne’s and women should be admitted to the prestigious male colleges of Magdalene and Balliol. The present arrangements did not penalize women educationally. All students attended exactly the same lectures and took the same examinations. Men and women competed against one another on equal terms. The college could arrange for us to study with any tutor of our choice. Fellows of St. John’s and Merton had taught me, for example, and the St. Anne’s fellows, especially in the English department, which had an exceptional reputation, tutored male students. In fact, the women’s colleges often had a higher rate of academic success; because there were fewer places for women, the standard of those selected at the entrance examinations tended to be higher. During my years at Oxford, St. Anne’s regularly came out on top of the Norrington Scale, the league table that charted the performance of undergraduates in the final examinations. By the 1960s, therefore, women had proved that they were quite capable of holding their own in the university.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  But these improvements also smuggled in some unintended consequences. Without denigrating those historically significant achievements, I do believe that the emphasis on egalitarian and respectful sex—purged of any expressions of power, aggression, and transgression—is antithetical to erotic desire for men and women alike. The Bounded Space of Eroticism Elizabeth and Vito have worked hard to have an equitable marriage, but sex takes them to another place. The power differential that would be unacceptable in her emotional relationship with Vito is precisely what excites Elizabeth erotically. At first, when she discloses her sexual predilection, she is embarrassed. It doesn’t fit her image of herself as a liberated, powerful woman. “I’ve struggled to accept what turns me on. For a long time I was disturbed by my fantasies. Submission just isn’t me. It took me years to reconcile what arouses me with my political beliefs. Somewhere in the midst of marriage, kids, and career, I realized that it was time to stop hiding, to stop pretending, and most of all to stop apologizing for who I was and what I hungered for in the world. Getting older helps. I don’t feel as if I have to justify myself. Maybe that’s the meaning of sexual liberation.” A lot of women find their desire for sexual submission hard to accept. But stepping out of ourselves is exactly what eroticism allows us to do. In eros, we trample on cultural restrictions; the prohibitions we so vigorously uphold in the light are often the ones we enjoy transgressing in the dark. It’s an alternative space where we can safely experience our taboos. The erotic imagination has the force to override reason, convention, and social barriers. The more I point to the tensions in these epiphanies of pleasure, the more relieved Elizabeth seems. I continue, “Of course nothing is scarier than a true loss of control in ‘reality.’ But the point of fantasy is that it allows you to transcend the moral and psychological constraints of your everyday life.” In the liberating expression of sexuality we give in to our unruly impulses and the disavowed, lurid parts of ourselves. Mordechai Gafni, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, explains that fantasies are like mirrors. We hold them in front of us in order to see what is behind. We spot images of ourselves that are otherwise inaccessible. If commitment requires a trade-off of freedom for security, then eroticism is the gateway back to freedom. In the broad expansiveness of our imagination we uncover the freedom that allows us to tolerate the confines of reality.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  The only note of caution is that disclosure is different from confession. In the thirty-six questions paper, the researchers define disclosure as “escalating and reciprocal,” meaning that telling someone about yourself should be a gradual give-and-take. Once, at a bridal shower, I met a friend of the bride. I introduced myself, shook her hand, and before I said another word she told me she was pregnant through a sperm donor and that to prepare for the birth her doula had told her to soak a thong in vitamin E oil and hike it up to her perineum so she wouldn’t tear. I wasn’t sure what to say to her for the rest of the shower—I kept squirming at the mental image of her oily wedgie. I’m no prude, but as a first conversation her revelations were a tad overwhelming. More seriously, I once had a client who would disclose in her first conversations that she had been abused as a child and had twice been raped. It was too heavy, too fast, and she was crushed when people steered clear afterwards. She thought she was speaking her truth, but as we collaboratively decided, other people couldn’t handle her full truth right away. There were other truths that made up who she was and she could share those first, saving the deeper truths for later. As for Maddy, she realized book clubs might be easier if she gave people more to work with besides, “Hi, I’m Maddy.” At the first meeting, she told me, after she introduced herself in the opening go-around she had remained silent and looked largely at the floor, equally hoping that someone would talk to her and that everyone would leave her alone. Turns out a woman had approached her afterwards to see how she liked the group. Maddy had said, “It was great, thanks,” with a smile but left it at that. The woman took Maddy’s cue and said, “Great, hope you’ll join us again,” and then moved on. Social anxiety makes us masters of ending conversations. It’s easy: a certain tone of finality, saying hi but not stopping to chat, or simply not saying anything more sends the message that we don’t want to talk. Ending conversation is another safety behavior—we’re trying to save ourselves from the anxiety. But we trade the anxiety of the moment for loneliness in the long run.

• From Sin: The Early History of an Idea (2012)

  When God created humanity in the garden, Augustine asserts, he created him male and female, with bodies of flesh joined ab initio to spirit or soul. From this seemingly simple reading of Genesis Augustine draws some radical conclusions. First, and in sharp contrast to Origen, Augustine insists that God’s choice to make body and soul together mean that the fleshy body was the divinely willed habitat of the soul even before the Fall. Second—even more radically, given the premium that contemporary Christianity placed on virginity and on sexual celibacy—Augustine insists that God’s creation of Adam and Eve means that even before the Fall he had intended humans to be sexually active, “to be fruitful and multiply” precisely through the sexual union of male and female. Why else would God have bothered with gender?20 Augustine speculates on what sex without sin—thus, without the disorders of lust and without the humiliations of pleasure—would have been like. “The sexual organs would have been brought into activity by the same bidding of will as controlled the other organs. Then, without feeling the allurement of passion goading him on, the husband would have relaxed on his wife’s bosom in tranquility of mind,” without the “morbid condition” of lust, symbolized in and actualized by involuntary erection. Erection, ejaculation, insemination, conception: all would have occurred at will. Nor would sexual union have compromised virginity: “The male seed could have been dispatched into the womb with no loss of his wife’s integrity, just as menstrual flux can now be produced from the womb of a virgin without loss of maidenhead” (City of God 14.26). Rational mind would have presided over sexual union. Body would have been under the complete control of the soul, which would have been in complete control of itself—the way that God had originally made Adam, the way that humanity had been supposed to be. What had happened? Even though Adam had had complete freedom of will, being fully able not to sin, he chose instead to disobey the divine commandment. God thus struck him in the offending agent, the will itself; and since soul and body are immediately and intimately connected, the penal injury to the soul manifested itself instantaneously in the flesh (13.13). “There appeared in their body a certain indecent novelty which made nakedness shameful,” Augustine writes, “and made them self-conscious and embarrassed” (14.17; cf. 13.3, on Adam’s experience of “rebellion and disobedience of desire in his body”; cf. Gen 3.7). This basic disjuncture of body and soul, enacted every time the human pair had sexual intercourse, echoed a further disjuncture with which every generation of the species would also be cursed: the soul, created by nature together with the flesh would be wrenched, unwilling, from the body at death. “Death drives the soul from the body against her will” (City of God 21.3). Death itself, a direct consequence of the Fall, is the ultimate manifestation of the will’s broken power.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  There was no other time when Augustine could have developed this close relation with his patron but the interval between his schooling in Madauros and the later studies in Carthage. Augustine was given the run of Romanian’s vast estate. It was there, and not at his own house, that he could meet Una in the initial stage of their affair. Since Romanian had intellectual aspirations, his library would have interested Augustine. Since Romanian’s plans for Augustine involved his ultimately teaching in Thagaste, and especially tutoring Romanian’s sons, Augustine may have done some elementary tutoring of the sons as young boys. When Augustine writes that he had at his command “more and better pears” than those he stole, he must be referring to Romanian’s orchards. Augustine (T 2.9) speaks only of his father’s vineyard, not an orchard. The connection with Romanian makes all the more absurd his night raid on a poor orchard. A brilliant prodigy favored by the town patron by day, he aspired to be a street tough by night. We shall see the same contradictory urges in Carthage, where he consorts with the town troublemakers (the “Subversives,” Eversores) while doing his graduate work with diligence. An observer of human contradiction, Augustine was always his own best subject of study. 4. Carthage: 371–374 AUGUSTINE’S FAMOUS OPENING to book 3 contains a pun on Carthago and sartago, the contents of a cooking pan (O’Donnell 2.146): “To Carthage I came, all that cartage [sartago] of illicit loves sizzling around me.” This is taken to be Augustine’s initiation into a career of debauchery, a very short career if he is to find Una and have her son by the time he is seventeen. But look again at the passage that is supposed to describe his sexual rampage. It applies better to the life of a confused graduate student with an unwanted baby and a sexual partner submitting reluctantly to this form of union. Augustine’s paragraph (1) is closer to Jerome’s description of married life—“The swelling womb, the torturing jealousy, the financial strain” (L 22.2, emphasis added)—than to the memory of a Don Juan: The stream of fellowship [amicitia] I polluted with the dregs of lust, clouding its clarity with dark longing—all the while taking myself for an urbane and sophisticated fellow, though I was vile and dishonest. I was reckless for love, wanting to be its captive. Yet you, merciful God, in all your kindness, dashed a bitterness through my joys. Loved as I was, and chained as I wasin enjoyment, glad to be bound by its troublesome ties, I was also beaten with burning rods of jealousy and suspicion, with fears and wraths and quarrelings. (T 3.1, emphasis added)

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Optimism still makes bearable the risks of our lives together. Los Angeles is often described as an increasingly polarized community from which people “in the middle” are being squeezed out, leaving a great many working poor and the few who are relatively wealthy. If that’s so, what is in store for the kind of homeowner Holy Land describes ? The suburb described in Holy Land depended then—and depends now—on jobs that let men and women with ordinary skills make a living. Once those jobs were riveting jets together at Douglas and cracking crude oil into gasoline at Shell and Texaco. Today, it takes two jobs in an insecure economy to make the mortgage payment, feed and clothe a family, and keep up a fifty-four-year-old tract house. Often in my town, those jobs are held by the second generation of immigrant families—like the Latino, Filipino, and Chinese families in my neighborhood. They bring a different dynamic to the suburban experience, more like the urban immigrants of the first half of the twentieth century. My neighborhood struggles economically, but I’m not sure that its struggles are worse than what they were in the past. Some families still live paycheck to paycheck. Maybe more are only a family crisis away from falling out of the not-quite-middle-class into something less secure. These anxieties affect this suburb. But the loyalty of these diverse residents remains strong enough to bring out 400 volunteer park coaches in the fall and 600 to clean up the weedy yards of the disabled on Volunteer Day and over 2,000 to sprawl on lawn chairs and blankets to listen to concerts in the park every summer. Is southern California still the “future ”? In some ways, it is. As metropolitan regions reach their limits, either geographically (like Los Angeles) or because of growth boundaries set by voters, more places will become like Los Angeles. A moderately dense assemblage of continuous suburban landscape is the future of many metropolitan regions. Los Angeles just got there first. But is that the future that anyone wants? Paradoxically, some places consciously chose the fate of Los Angeles. In the mid-1990s, the growth management agency for Portland, Oregon, set out to replicate some of the features of southern California, and they’re succeeding. Portland, by design, is becoming more like Los Angeles. Can you compare the suburban residents of the 1950s with those of today? Have we become more resentful of our neighbors than we once were ? Mass-produced suburbs were new then. No one knew what would happen when tens of thousands of working-class husbands and wives were thrown together in a suburb and expected to make a fit place to live. It’s hard for us to imagine all the demands made on them. We’re unprepared to see them as uncertain but courageous actors in the making of the places in which they chose to live.

• From What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (2013)

  At last, with a babysitter taking care of her children, they waited at his apartment for the arrival of an escort he’d chosen from row after row of thumbnail images online. Wanting to be welcoming hosts and to soften the prostitution-like aspects of hiring a prostitute, they had lit tea candles and chilled a nice bottle of wine. When the escort rang the doorbell, though, and when Rebecca and her boyfriend glanced out the living room window, the harsher qualities of the situation became more difficult to ignore. Despite her high price, the woman was homely and built along the lines of a lumpy block. Rebecca whispered to her boyfriend that maybe the homeliness was due to the glare of his porch light, that all would be okay once they opened the door and began. She felt relieved, meanwhile, that she wouldn’t have to be concerned about her own looks. But when they opened the door and the escort stepped quietly, even timidly, into the vestibule, with the manner more of a housemaid than a call girl, the trouble did not improve. The woman appeared to be around ten years older than Rebecca. And now Rebecca was calculating at rapid speed whether she should and could go through with this to spare the prostitute’s feelings, so that the problem was no longer how to soften the exploitation of a body but how to avoid letting this woman know that her body was unexploitable. Rebecca all but prayed that her boyfriend would somehow solve everything. He told the escort that Rebecca had suddenly come down with something, that she wasn’t up to it, an excuse that sounded about as convincing as her fourth-graders’ explanations for not practicing their instruments, though the woman, who smiled graciously, seemed to accept the reason or, either way, to be grateful not to have to perform. He gave her some minor cash for her time, and Rebecca said good-bye in sweet tones, and she and her boyfriend went upstairs to click on his computer and stare for a few moments in befuddlement at the immense disparity between the picture and the person and to discuss the mystery of how other customers had handled this difference and whether it was a common dilemma in securing an escort and how you were supposed to prevent this from happening. “I think you just have to spend more,” Rebecca said.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I cleared my throat and toed the carpet and said, “No, I’m a writer.” She said, “Oh, wow! I read absolutely every thing. Tell me your name.” I knew I was in trouble. I knew I was going to get nailed, but my ego had become Nelson Rockefeller, and it felt like mingling. My wiser self knew I was already too far in to stop now. I said, “No, no, you won’t have heard of me, and it’ll make me feel terrible.” She stood firm. “Honest,” she said, “I read every thing.” Part of me believed I had become so famous that when I told her my name, she’d react as if Paul McCartney had just dropped into her store. The wiser part of me knew I was a goner for sure. I started to pray at that point, only I was praying to her: please, please don’t make me tell you my name. I smiled demurely, like we’d had our fun and I’d better go get Sam, who was hiding under a rack of dresses making rude noises. “Beth, Beth,” the shop owner called out suddenly. “Come here!” A young woman stepped out from the back room with an expectant look on her face. “Beth,” the owner said, “don’t I read everything? Tell her!” Beth said yes, yes, this is true, she reads every thing. Then the owner looked at me kindly, and said, “Now come on, what’s your name?” I sighed, smiled, and finally said, “Anne Lamott.” She stared at me with great concern. The room was very quiet, except for Sam under the dress rack. Then she pursed her lips and slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “I guess not.” It took me about a week and a great deal of cheap chocolate to get over that. But then I remembered that whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don’t take it all too seriously, that you don’t fill up on junk food. All that I know about the relationship between publication and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings , which is about the first Jamaican bobsled team. The coach is a four-hundred-pound man who had won a gold in Olympic bobsledding twenty years before but has been a complete loser ever since. The men on his team are desperate to win an Olympic medal, just as half the people in my classes are desperate to get published. But the coach says, “If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.”

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

  And it must not be taken to mean more than these grounds warrant, or treated as a sort of metaphysical or absolute Unity in which all differences are overwhelmed. The past and present selves compared are the same just so far as they are the same, and no farther. A uniform feeling of 'warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally uniform feeling of pure psychic energy?) pervades them all; and this is what gives them a generic unity, and makes them the same in kind. But this generic unity coexists with generic differences just as real as the unity. And if from the one point of view they are one self, from others they are as truly not one but many selves. And similarly of the attribute of continuity; it gives its own kind of unity to the self—that of mere connectedness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite phenomenal thing—but it gives not a jot or tittle more. And this unbrokenness in the stream of selves, like the unbrokenness in an exhibition of 'dissolving views,' in no wise implies any farther unity or contradicts any amount of plurality in other respects. And accordingly we find that, where the resemblance and the continuity are no longer felt, the sense of personal identity goes too. We hear from our parents various anecdotes about our infant years, but we do not appropriate them as we do our own memories. Those breaches of decorum awaken no blush, those bright sayings no self-complacency. That child is a foreign creature with which our present self is no more identified in feeling than it is with some stranger's living child to-day. Why? Partly because great time-gaps break up all these early years—we cannot ascend to them by continuous memories; and partly because no representation of how the child felt comes up with the stories. We know what he said and did; but no sentiment of his little body, of his emotions, of his psychic strivings as they felt to him, comes up to contribute an element of warmth and intimacy to the narrative we hear, and the main bond of union with our present self thus disappears. It is the same with certain of our dimly-recollected experiences. We hardly know whether to appropriate them or to disown them as fancies, or things read or heard and not lived through.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  Betty also has only one kind of orgasm. She needs clitoral stimulation to come, although she also enjoys penetration, separately or simultaneously. She has one big one and that’s it—she doesn’t want to be touched any more. My orgasms are like an earthquake or an explosion; they explode out of me. They are a deep, pounding, clenching petit mort that radiates from my entire pelvis up and down my body in shock waves. They’re like a seizure; they pick me up and throw me around. I can’t imagine having more than one. Laura doesn’t particularly enjoy clitoral stimulation and would never seek it out. But she loves penetration and comes copiously. I wouldn’t use the words exquisite or clenching or pounding or electrical. Maybe riding a wave. I feel it all over my body, especially in my lower belly. I get goose bumps on my head and neck. I ejaculate a lot, which embarrasses me. I normally have probably five to seven, and the third and fourth are the strongest. In all these accounts, only one factor seems to be consistent: women who relate to the distinction between vaginal and clitoral say that they tend to hold their breath when they are leading up to a clitoral orgasm. Combination Orgasms An orgasm that occurs as a result of simultaneous vaginal and clitoral stimulation might be considered a combination orgasm. Wouldn’t it seem logical that this would be best of all? Surprisingly enough, not many women related to combinations, and those who did presented conflicting views about them. I have two kinds: the clitoral ones feel like the epicenter is my clitoris, whereas the focus of an orgasm when I’m being penetrated is all inside, quite different from a clitoral orgasm. When I’m being penetrated, there is a big buildup and then a release. Everything stops at the peak. I don’t like to mix the two too much. One is always more dominant. For a clitoral orgasm, I absolutely need direct clitoral stimulation. A clitoral orgasm has a slower buildup. I get more tense leading up to clitoral orgasms. I hold my breath, and it’s a very long come, but not multiple. It can last half an hour or so. It’s a bit like flying, and it’s very much a wave. I have vaginal orgasms without any clitoral stimulation. They’re localized and I’m more likely to have them when I’m feeling relaxed. They’re in my first and second chakra, and they’re multiple. Combination orgasms are not multiple—they are like one big clitoral orgasm with a vaginal orgasm at the same time. A combination orgasm is an all-encompassing experience. It builds, then goes down, then up. It doesn’t go out my feet. In fact, it doesn’t go anywhere—it comes! I don’t really want to call it energy—it’s more like power, and it feels very active, the way it surges down my legs. Surface Versus Depth

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  It's what sells. Nelson: It had already sold 200,000 copies in Kindle before it even went to paper. I mean, that's extraordinary. Most books don't sell 200,000 copies in all forms. Most books, you sell 100,000 copies of a book in its lifetime, that's a big deal. This book sold 600,000 copies in one week. That they were page-turners was more important than being particularly well-written. You know, they appealed to the audience. Gaukroger: I heard something about a Travelodge, uh... - O'Shea: Yeah. - ...that "Fifty Shades of Grey" was their most left-behind book and they collected over 7,000 copies of it just left in hotel rooms. This is still a book that you would leave behind on the bookshelf in the apartment that you rented for a week's holiday to have a bit of nooky with the husband you hate, and you'd leave it behind on the shelf 'cause you don't want to be seen with it. It's a love story, but it just happens to have something a bit different. Everyone's just so interested in romantic relationships. They love reading about them, they compare them to their own. Clearly what sets it apart is the-- (laughs) is the sex. Hodson: I think that is the licitness, the permission that women like. After all, how else to explain that this is the most successful book practically ever? (music playing) Narrator: The arrival of e-book technology allowed readers to download literature discreetly on their Kindles, launching a whole new world of sales. It was the first major book to have come out of the Kindle revolution. It came along at a really critical point in publishing. Suddenly technology was instrumental. Kite: Romantic fiction needs really voracious readers. They go through books super fast. When e-readers came around, romantic fiction readers were early adopters of those because it's a way to consume books really, really quickly and have them all piled on there for them ready to read whenever they wanted. Nelson: This was one of the first books that went from self-published on Kindle to mass-market print and Kindle. And at one point the Kindle version was outselling the print version four to one. One of the things about e-reading is that nobody can see what you're reading when you're reading it. Kite: If people wanted to read it in private, they had the opportunity to do so. It is the equivalent of the brown paper cover. Nelson: Plain brown wrapper, I call it. The Kindle is the plain brown wrapper. Narrator: "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a book that got everything right. Packaging, timing, controversy. Gaukroger: If you type "provocative fiction" into Google, you get "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Mein Kampf," which is Hitler's autobiography. - Yeah. - Two top choices not to read in the park. White: It saved the High Street book stores, but it proved that there was still a huge appetite for physical books. ♪ ...want with the key...

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  The itching caused by yeast can be intense. If you feel as if you need to scratch or that you are scratching in your sleep, then yeast has to be considered. For other women, the itch is less intense and burning is the predominant symptom. Self-diagnosis with yeast is notoriously inaccurate. The classic symptoms are also the classic symptoms of irritant reactions, allergic reactions, and some skin conditions (see chapter 35). Some women with bacterial vaginosis (BV) do not perceive any odor and may mistake their vaginal irritation and burning for yeast. In one study, women who were planning on buying an OTC medication for yeast were tested, and it turned out only 40 percent of them would have been treating themselves correctly had they bought the medication. Besides the expense, repeated exposure to yeast medication that you do not need can lead to resistance and the emergence of yeast that cannot be killed by these medications. There is also the aggravation of treating yourself, often repeatedly, without success. Many women who have tried these medications, often for years, tell me it makes them feel broken when a therapy that is supposed to work does not. How to Diagnose Yeast Yeast on the skin causes a red rash that may be itchy or tender to the touch. The rash classically has what we call satellite lesions—small islands of rash next to the larger area. This is diagnosed by looking at the skin. Unless the rash is atypical, a biopsy (a small sample of cells cut from the skin) is rarely required. Your provider might see vaginal swelling and redness, but as women can have different responses, it is possible to be very uncomfortable with very little objective evidence of inflammation on exam. Your provider should test your vaginal pH, which should be less than 4.5. Tests for yeast include the following: • LOOKING AT A SWAB UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: A test that’s very inexpensive and has immediate results. C. albicans can be identified this way, but the non-albicans species are too similar to distinguish from each other. The disadvantage is that even experienced providers can miss yeast 30–50 percent of the time. • A CULTURE: A swab is sent to the lab, and any yeast is grown and identified. This is the gold standard. A culture identifies the species of yeast, which can be helpful for women who do not respond to therapy or who have recurrent infections. A culture is more expensive than microscopy; however, microscope skills are not needed. Results take 3–5 days.

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  Pubic lice have to crawl to get where they are going, so they are spread by close genital touching (transmission to eyelashes and eyebrows happens during the close contact that occurs with oral sex). Pubic lice can also be transmitted by sharing clothing or bedding. You cannot get lice from a toilet seat—they can’t grip the smooth surface—and you can’t get it from pets. I’m not sure why people ask specifically about catching pubic lice from pets, but they do. There is also an incorrect belief that pubic lice are associated with being dirty or unclean. They are not. As a gynecologist, you get a lot of panicked emergency middle-of-the-night consult requests from friends, and the person who needed the most talking off the ledge was a friend with pubic lice. A physical parasite on the outside is more bothersome to a lot of people than a bacteria or parasite on the inside. A Really, Really Bad Itch Lice feed on blood, and the reaction to the bite causes intense itching—essentially an allergic reaction. Even reading about this might be making you feel itchy—itch is contagious that way. The first time you catch lice, the itching may be delayed for up to four weeks, as it takes a few weeks after first exposure to get sensitized and develop the reaction. Some people get a gray-blue spot where they have been bitten, which may be a reaction to the louse saliva. Tiny drops of blood from the bites may be seen on underwear. Most people seek medical care because of the itch, although occasionally people notice adult lice (about 1–2 mm in length) on their hair. The eggs (also called nits) are smaller, typically 0.5–0.8 mm in size, and are pearly like a tiny grain of rice stuck to the hair. They are harder to see unless combed out with a nit comb (a very fine-tooth comb that can snag the nits and pull them off). The One STI That Is Decreasing The incidence of pubic lice used to be around 2 percent, but the number of new infections is dropping dramatically and now less than 0.1 percent have an infection. In the past fifteen or so years, I have seen one case. Before that, I saw several cases a month, so my experience is definitely reflective of the data. One proposed explanation for the decrease is the increasing popularity of pubic hair removal. If you remove the habitat, you cannot catch or spread the infection. Getting Rid of Lice The treatment for lice involves killing the adults and removing the nits. The medications recommended by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) are a 1 percent cream rinse of permethrin (sold in the United States as Nix) or pyrethrin and piperonyl butoxide (RID). Avoid contact with your vestibule (the vaginal opening), vagina, and anus.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years — Notes & Bibliography (2009)

  58 R. L. Melammed, Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (New York, 1999), Ch. 8, and 164. On the Morisco expulsions, B. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 310. 59 W. A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-century Spain (Princeton, 1981); W. A. Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton, 1981). 60 J. Arrizabalaga, J. Henderson and R. French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven and London, 1997), Chs. 1, 2. 61 From a sermon in the Florence Duomo in 1495: J. C. Olin (ed.), The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (New York, 1992), 12. The ‘four things’ appear to be the four results which Savonarola wished his sermon to achieve, set out in its opening words (cf. ibid., 4): understanding, confirmation for the convinced, conversion of the unconvinced and confusion for the stubborn. 62 For the role of Bartolomeo Scala as mouthpiece for this innovative self- justification, see D. Wootton, ‘The True Origins of Republicanism: The Disciples of Baron and the Counter-example of Venturi’, in M. Albertone (ed.), Il repubblicanesimo moderno: l’idea di Repubblica nella riflessione storica di Franco Venturi (Naples, 2006), 271–304. 63 P. Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford, 1998), esp. 157, 272–302. 64 L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545 (Oxford, 1994). 65 J. W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 262; S. T. Strocchia, ‘Savonarolan Witnesses: The Nuns of San Jacopo and the Piagnone Movement in 16th-century Florence’, SCJ, 38 (2007), 393–417, at 414. 66 M. Reeves, Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period (Oxford, 1992), esp. essays by A. Morisi-Guera and J. M. Headley, 27–50 and 241–69. 67 There has been much modern embarrassment and obfuscation on Erasmus and Rogerus, but see sensible comment in J. Huizinga, Erasmus of Rotterdam (London, 1952), 11–12, and from Geoffrey Nuttall, JEH, 26 (1975), 403. 68 D. MacCulloch, ‘Mary and Sixteenth-century Protestants’, in R. N. Swanson (ed.), The Church and Mary (SCH, 39, 2004), 191–217. 69 L.-E. Halkin, Erasmus: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1993), 225: cf. Opera omnia Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam, 1969–), I, 146–7. For Protestant wriggles on this subject, see MacCulloch, ‘Mary and Sixteenth-century Protestants’, 211–14.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  Most women I interviewed were rather vague when I asked if they had separate vaginal and clitoral orgasms, and I had to ask several times; even then the clearest distinction I got was usually very qualified. Women on the verge of orgasm are often experiencing diffuse sensations that permeate their whole genital area and sometimes their whole body. And they may react quite differently to the same stimuli from one day to the next, depending on many variables, such as who is touching them and what with, or the time of the month, or how relaxed they were prior to being sexual. I don’t have one sensation of orgasm but many, depending on many things: whether it’s the first or the twenty-fifth, whether I relax and let the sensations just roll over me, what kind of lead-in there is, if it’s just purely a physical response, and so on. Different things cause different orgasms—an intense vibrator can cause an explosive one whereas a timid, battery-operated vibrator will make an irritatingly fluttery and less-than-complete feeling. The most common kind of orgasms I have are several little clitoral / vaginal pulsating ones in a row. With penetration I have a deep orgasm that involves uterine contractions. Multiple orgasms are like little shuddering quakes. I like to have fast, hard orgasms during my period to relieve my cramps. If I’m masturbating (which I do most every day) and I’m tired, then it usually takes a lot of buildup and I have one or two big spasms. I have long orgasms with my partner—they feel deep (even without penetration), they last a long time, and they make me shiver for several minutes afterward. Women who do not come easily are much more likely to be able to be specific about what they need, but they’re also unlikely to identify with the separation between clitoral and vaginal orgasms. None of the women I spoke with related to the value judgment that women should cease to have clitoral orgasms as they matured. Of the women I have personally been sexual with, there is one woman who came close to fitting the pattern of having truly distinct vaginal and clitoral orgasms. Judy’s orgasms are clearly defined: one comes from clitoral stimulation only and the other comes from vaginal stimulation only, and the sensations associated with each one are quite distinct. What is interesting about her sexual responses is that, because she has such distinct vaginal and clitoral orgasms, and never mixes the two kinds of stimulation, her descriptions of them are very articulate, whereas none of the other women I spoke to could separate them with such precision. Even women who did define separate kinds of orgasm were rarely able to say categorically what kind of stimulation would lead to which kind of orgasm. Judy’s unswerving clarity about this was unique among the women I interviewed:

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  to see the New Jerusalem descend on earth at Pepouza, their enthusiasm contrasted sharply with the Catholic Church’s general abandonment of Paul’s original conviction that the Lord Christ would soon be returning. Generally in the next few centuries, such beliefs were to be found in marginal Christian groups. Among the Montanists’ contemporaries in the mainstream leadership, only Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons showed positive enthusiasm for a vision of the world’s last days coming in his lifetime, and his views on this caused such embarrassment to the next generations of Christians that their original expression in Greek has entirely disappeared and even many of the manuscript copies of its Latin translation censor out its passages on this subject. The Latin translation of what Irenaeus had said turned up only in the late sixteenth century and was then equally embarrassing to the Counter-Reformation Church of Rome, which was not pleased to find one of the bastions of the Catholic faith saying the same sorts of things as contemporary radical Protestants.69 One might regard the Montanist emphasis on new revelations of the Spirit as a natural reaction to the gradual closing of the New Testament canon, but there was little that could actually be described as heretical in what they said. The problem was one of authority. The Church leadership’s strong reaction against Montanus might reflect tensions between the urban Christianity of the late first century, which was gradually evolving leadership around one man in a city congregation, and a new expansion of Christian enthusiasm out in rural backwaters.70 The Church was settling on one model of authority in monarchical episcopacy and the threefold ministry; the Montanists placed against that the random gift of prophecy. The two models have a long history of conflict in the subsequent Christian centuries: the significance of the Montanist episode is that this is the first time the clash appears. Later it would be seen in the first Protestant rebels against Rome, in the radicals beyond the Protestants, in Methodists and Millerites, in Pentecostals and African-initiated Churches; we will meet them all. And one should not forget the other conflict which has returned as an active issue in the Church after two millennia, well summed up in the dark warning of a Victorian clergyman-professor in a reference work still useful in many respects: ‘If Montanism had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed, not under the superintendence of the church teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but usually of wild and excitable women.’71 Gnosticism and Montanism thus both had a marked effect on the Church, causing it to shut doors on all sorts of possibilities for new Christian identities. The most dramatic effect of the fight against gnosticism was to halt Christianity’s march away from its Jewish roots, that process which had begun so early and had dominated its life in the first century. From the earliest days

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  After you have rinsed the medication off, try a nit comb to remove any surviving nits and eggs, although combing pubic hair can be frustrating given the nooks and crannies and the difficulty seeing all the areas you need to comb. This is why another treatment in a week is usually recommended to kill any of the newly hatched nits that were missed before they become adults and are capable of laying eggs. Depending on how long you have been infected, there can be hundreds of nits. Nix is supposed to kill the nits, but many people do a second treatment anyway. Rid does not kill nits, so a second treatment a week later is recommended. An alternative therapy is 0.5 percent malathion lotion. You have to leave it on for 8–12 hours versus ten minutes for the methods just described, so it is a lot less convenient. It also smells terrible. There is an oral medication called ivermectin. It definitely does not kill nits, so you have to repeat the treatment two weeks later. Another important aspect of therapy is getting screened for other STIs, as studies tell us if you have acquired pubic lice, you have a higher risk of also being exposed to other STIs. If you suspect you have lice on your eyelashes or eyebrows, see a doctor, and if you are pregnant or breast-feeding, talk with your doctor before starting therapy. How can I kill the pubic lice around my house? It is easy to go a little over the top. The first time my kids had hair lice, I went overboard throwing things away (culling their herd of stuffed animals proved medically unnecessary, but the one welcome side effect) and buying powders to kill lice that I imagined had fallen onto the carpet and were lying in wait, ready to reinfect us. After all, they sell those powders for a reason, right? It is so easy to be swayed by what we see on the store shelves. Turns out, none of them are necessary. To kill lice on your clothes, towels, and bedding, machine-wash everything and anything that has been worn or slept in for the past 2–3 days in hot water (50º C or 122º F) and/or machine-dry on hot. Dry cleaning is also an option. Place any clothes or bedding that cannot be washed in a sealed plastic bag for three days (European guidelines). The U.S. guidelines still recommend putting items that can’t be washed away for two weeks, but that seems excessive as pubic lice can’t live for more than two days without blood. BOTTOM LINE • Pubic lice are parasites uniquely adapted for pubic hair. • The incidence is decreasing significantly, likely due to trends in pubic hair removal. • The most common symptom is a terrible vulvar itch. It may take four weeks after infection to develop symptoms. • There are over-the-counter treatments—you have to make sure you get all the nits as well as killing the lice.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  The point is, I could ruin his life. Easily. I won’t though, not out of loyalty to him, necessarily, but because I simply have no interest in doing so. I think he had an interest in me doing so; I think it might have been his greatest fantasy. The second time we met, his wife was away, and we spent the night together. I was still feeling out how high I could set my rates and insisted on a bonus fee when he asked me beforehand, over text, to shave my pubic hair. I had never shaved all of my pubic hair off before—the most I’d done was a landing strip—and it had always seemed a bit impossible to me. The kind of thing other, more aesthetically perfect girls do, that I could never do. I did it, though, because I was paid to, and it wasn’t as difficult as it seemed. Afterward, bare, I thought I looked amphibian-like, and years younger. I was embarrassed when I fucked my boyfriend; I took my underwear off to show him but kept my shirt on, which made me look even more naked than fully nude. This client also wanted our time together to be cinematic. I suppose all clients do. The first time we met, I was struck by his impulse to narrate what was happening, as though by speaking aloud how good something is one could will it to actually be so. It’s not that it wasn’t good, or was bad—it was just mundane, the way formulaic excess often is. He loved cocaine, and he liked to inhale it off my body, and wanted me to do the same. He seemed to want to be in a party scene from The Wolf of Wall Street; a nearly prescriptive commitment to hedonism turned him on. He was also frightened by this fantasy, though that fear was blunted, a bit, by the drugs.