Excitement

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 11 of 182 · 20 per page

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I looked down. There was my full bush with one giant chunk missing. The area was pink and had a few tiny dots of blood. My crotch looked like a furry mouth with one pulled tooth. “Darling, lie back. That was nothing.” “No!” I said. “Don’t do it, please. I’m done. I’m done.” “I can’t leave you like this. You’re going to go to mans like this?” she asked, pointing to my torn-up vagina. “I don’t care!” “I go gentler,” she said. I didn’t know what to do. We were sort of fighting. I was pushing her hands away and she was applying the wax. With the second strip I started to cry. “This is fucking insane,” I said. But I let her do my lips, which felt like she was searing off my vulva. I couldn’t believe that other women did this. Who were these people? Then she did my asshole, which she said she had to do, because it was “carrying around stink.” I’d been carrying around stink for thirty-eight years. When I got home I lay down with Dominic and held a package of frozen edamame to my vagina. I hated everything. Now the dress, the lipstick, even my hair color seemed stupid. I realized I didn’t care about any of this stuff, even the dress, which I had loved. It wasn’t about the dress. It was in the acquisition of the dress that there had been beauty. I thought about different kinds of happiness. There was the happiness I felt in all of the adrenaline of running around, a crazed happiness. This was a different happiness from the quiet peace of just being with Dominic. I kissed his ear. “Sorry I get so distracted,” I said. He sniffed at me. Suddenly I didn’t want to go out with Adam anymore. I fell asleep with the edamame defrosting on my vagina. But the next morning, my excitement—that sense of purpose—was oddly restored. I woke up to a text from Adam that said, see you tonight gorgeous. There was something about the morning of a date that tricked me. It tricked me out of the haze of being alive. Or perhaps it tricked me out of the sadness of knowing that one day I would die. It punctured the nothingness. Now I felt passion and love for everything. 12.Back at group, the word of the day seemed to have shifted from unavailable to triggered. In the safe space of Dr. Jude’s crap-filled office, everyone, it seemed, had recently been triggered by something.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I have at long last replaced my unwieldy strapless bra with a black lace bandeau, which has laughable support but is way sexier and I don’t have to hide it away before it’s seen. He seems hesitant, so I stand motionless in my bra and black lace thong, daring him to turn away. He doesn’t. Sex with him is quick and physical, like a sprint that leaves you breathless and not totally sure what just happened but nonetheless glad you ran. We have barely caught our breath when he pats my thigh and says we should go out before it gets too late. Within minutes, we are dressed again and he hands me a baseball hat to contain my hair while we drive in his sporty little convertible. I decline it and instead take my cotton scarf and wrap it around my head, attempting a chic Audrey Hepburn look, but I guess ending up more like a Russian grandma with a babushka because he frowns, shakes his head and offers me the hat a second time. The bar he takes me to is packed, clearly the town’s hotspot. We find an open barstool on the deck overlooking the water. Scott gets me a Margarita and stands next to me, moving around as he speaks. He is a man who does not like to sit still and it’s easy to picture the athletic, energetic teenage boy he must have been. He is easy to talk to – though we have very little in common, he is curious to know what makes me tick and what my post-marriage life has been like. As we talk, his hand rests on my thigh along the hem of my dress and then his fingers slip under the hem and inch their way up further toward my inner thigh. Neither of us skips a beat in our conversation or changes expression. His index finger pulls aside the elastic edge of my panties and presses against my clit, and still we talk without interruption. When his finger slides inside me, my eyes dart to the side where a large group of millennials is gathered next to us. They are all too busy with each other to pay attention to the handsy middle-aged couple in their midst, but also I realize with surprise that I really don’t care if someone does see. Not only do I feel completely anonymous here, I care less about how I seem than how I really am, and how I am is present in this moment with a man’s eyes locked on mine and his finger warm and pulsing inside of me. Of course, later when I find out that this is the town where some of Daisy’s camp friends live and that they frequent this bar, I will feel less cavalier and more relieved that I remained anonymous, but at this moment the danger feels fresh and exciting.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  When, thinking of the exodus, we read the gospels with the fourth speaker adjusted properly, we are reminded of God’s dark and solemn victory over Pharaoh, first in the plagues and then in the Red Sea. The story of the exodus is of course an exciting, dramatic rescue operation. When you relive it at a Passover celebration, you tend to identify with the people as they dream of freedom while living under a cruel regime, as they begin to dare to hope for it when Moses confronts Pharaoh, as they start to taste it when the plagues fall on Egypt and they are allowed to leave, as they experience it vividly in the crossing of the Red Sea—and then as they find that freedom poses its own new challenges in the wilderness. But with all this we are still focusing, naturally enough, on the experience of the people. Behind this, underneath this, is the deeper and darker story that makes sense of it all. The powers of this world exalt themselves against the creator God, the God of Israel, and God will not be mocked forever. The kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of our God, and he will reign forever and ever. The story of the exodus is the story of “how God became king.” That is what Moses and the Israelites sang about after the Red Sea had returned to drown the pursuing imperial army: I will sing to YHWH, for he has triumphed gloriously; Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. YHWH is my strength and my might, And he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him, My father’s God, and I will exalt him. YHWH is a warrior; YHWH is his name…. YHWH will reign for ever and ever. (Exod. 15:1–3, 18) The four gospel writers, each in his own way, tell the story of Jesus as the story of the new and ultimate exodus. What our present fourfold exercise has done is to draw out the various dimensions of that new exodus and to highlight their significance.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Part of our difficulty, in fact, is that so many people have become used to hearing the gospels in a distorted fashion that when the speakers are adjusted properly, they are likely to object. “We never heard it this way before,” they will say. It reminds me of the time when, as a young teenager, I sat for the first time in the back row of the school orchestra (I had been drafted to learn the trombone on the quite reasonable grounds that I could sing in tune and blow hard, which are the first and principal requirements for that splendid instrument). Whereas before I had always experienced classical orchestral music through a radio or record player (this was long before any of us had stereo systems), from which the music all came out in an undifferentiated composite sound, for the first time I was able to appreciate the almost geographical as well as tonal difference between the woodwinds and the cellos, the brass and the violas, and so on. It was disconcerting to begin with, but ultimately revelatory. So, when people object that they haven’t “heard” the gospels before in the way I am now going to suggest, the best answer is to invite them to listen more closely and to see if the things they have always “heard” in the gospels might actually be enhanced, given more depth and body, in this new multilayered reading. My point here is that without these four “speakers” all properly adjusted we simply won’t hear the music the four gospels are playing. The Gospels as Biographies The tune to which we are listening, throughout all this, is of course the great tune of the life of Jesus himself. Gone are the days when scholars could confidently proclaim that the gospels are not “biographies.” (This was another Bultmannism. The great but misguided German, anxious that one might turn “faith” into a “work” by anchoring it in history, was doing his best to steer people away from looking at the gospels as “biographies”—a tendentious suggestion that subsequent research has rejected.) True, the gospels are not, as C. S. Lewis pointed out tartly many years ago, what you’d expect from a Victorian Life and Letters of Yeshua bar-Yosef in three volumes with photographs. They omit a great deal, notably of course the silent years between age twelve (and even then we just get one story) and about age thirty. But when you compare the gospels with ancient Greek or Roman “biographies,” they match up quite well.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Even before I lost the ability to maintain erections, I found that what used to excite me—that back-and-forth stroking action that males typically prefer—really wasn’t doing the trick anymore. I just felt like I needed something more. So I started experimenting with Dani’s vibrators. When I had tried them in the past, they always felt like too much stimulation, but now they suddenly felt absolutely incredible. And back when I was hormonally male, sexual stimulation would cause me to climb rather rapidly toward the peak of orgasm; if I wanted the experience to last longer, I had to keep pulling back just before I hit that precipice. But now I found that I could go way beyond what used to be the point of orgasm, writhing for fifteen minutes in a sexual state that was far more intense than I had ever experienced before. Now, my orgasms are way more in the female rather than male range: They typically take longer to achieve (but are well worth the wait), each one has a different flavor and intensity, they are less centralized and more diffuse throughout my body, and they are often multiple. Not surprisingly, changes in my senses have also greatly influenced my sexuality. Not only am I more sexually excited by the scent of my partner, but the increase in my tactile senses make my whole body feel alive—electric—during sex. Nowhere is this more obvious than in my nipples, which seem to have a direct connection to my groin. It also has become apparent to me that I am less visual with regard to my sexuality. I don’t think that I recognized this at first, probably because it is harder to notice the gradual loss of a sensation than the appearance of a new one. I only realized it about a year later, when I began taking progesterone for ten days out of the month to simulate the endogenous expression of progesterone in most women. The first thing I noticed upon taking progesterone is that my sex drive, particularly in response to visual input, sharply increased. In fact, the visual effects of progesterone very much reminded me of how I responded to visual stimuli when I was hormonally male. Upon hearing my experience, I am sure that some people—particularly those who favor social, rather than biological, explanations of gender difference—will be somewhat disappointed at the predictable nature of my transformation.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Stephen explained about ex-Sergeant Smylie. ‘I see,’ nodded Sir Philip, ‘you want to learn fencing.’ ‘And how to lift weights with my stomach,’ she said quickly. ‘Why not with your large front teeth?’ he teased her. ‘Oh, well,’ he added, ‘there’s no harm in fencing or gymnastics either—provided, of course, that you don’t try to wreck Morton Hall like a Sampson wrecking the house of the Philistines; I foresee that that might easily happen —’ Stephen grinned: ‘But it mightn’t if I cut off my hair! May I cut off my hair? Oh, do let me, Father!’ ‘Certainly not, I prefer to risk it,’ said Sir Philip, speaking quite firmly. Stephen went pounding back to the schoolroom. ‘I’m going to those classes!’ she announced in triumph. ‘I’m going to be driven over to Malvern next week; I’m going to begin on Tuesday, and I’m going to learn fencing so as I can kill your brother-in-law who’s a beast to your sister, I’m going to fight duels for wives in distress, like men do in Paris, and I’m going to learn how to lift pianos on my stomach by expanding something—the diapan muscles—and I’m going to cut my hair off!’ she mendaciously concluded, glancing sideways to observe the effect of this bombshell. ‘Bon Dieu, soyez clément!’ breathed Mademoiselle Duphot, casting her eyes to heaven. 3 It was not very long before ex-Sergeant Smylie discovered that in Stephen he had a star pupil. ‘Some day you ought to make a champion fencer, if you work really hard at it, Miss,’ he told her. Stephen did not learn to lift pianos with her stomach, but as time went on she did become quite an expert gymnast and fencer; and as Mademoiselle Duphot confided to Anna, it was after all very charming to watch her, so supple and young and quick in her movements. ‘And she fence like an angel,’ said Mademoiselle fondly, ‘she fence now almost as well as she ride.’ Anna nodded. She herself had seen Stephen fencing many times, and had thought it a fine performance for so young a child, but the fencing displeased her, so that she found it hard to praise Stephen. ‘I hate all that sort of thing for girls,’ she said slowly. ‘But she fence like a man, with such power and such grace,’ babbled Mademoiselle Duphot, the tactless.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I thank her for her words to me months earlier, telling her they gave me clarity, that Michael and I are going to get divorced and I’m dating again. “Good girl!” she says in her most encouraging pediatrician voice. “You’re a hot catch. I’m sure you’re very popular on the dating scene. Can I please set you up with someone?” “Not yet, but eventually. I just started dating this man I like. I’ll let you know when it runs its course and you can do your matchmaking then,” I say. “No way, it’s too soon for you to be invested in one person. Just have fun for now. Keep dating the guy, but date other people too. Please, I have someone great for you. My best friend’s friend. He’s a lawyer, very successful, recently separated. I’m giving him your number,” she says with the authority I so love in doctors. “Give me a few weeks. I’m not good at juggling men,” I say. “Fine. I’m checking back in with you very soon,” she says, and ushers me out the door. * A couple of weeks later, on a Friday night, I go to a cocktail party at Tina’s apartment. She is a woman who was born to throw a soirée and does so as often as possible, with free-flowing wine and tequila and oysters and her famous clam dip. The kids play downstairs so that we can almost forget that they’re there except when they run up the long elegant staircase of her duplex for snacks. Hudson texts to ask if he can stay over at his friend’s house and I realize that I am down to just Georgia for the night so could sneak a visit over to see #6 if I leave her with Tina. When I ask Tina if that’s OK, I can barely finish my sentence before she says, “Mama, absolutely leave her here with us for the night, go, enjoy.” I call #6 and ask, “Hey, what are you up to?” “Oh you know, it’s Friday night and my harem is here, wearing me out.” “Want an addition to your harem?” I ask. “If it’s you, then yes. How have you come to be free?” he asks. I tell him I am not just free for the evening but have been given a one-night reprieve. “So where will you sleep?” he asks. “What are my options?” I say. When he asks if I want to sleep over, it feels like a significant invitation, our first sleepover. As nonchalantly as possible, I say that I will stop home to get a few things and then come over. I run downstairs to give Georgia a kiss goodbye and sing out a tipsy farewell to a group of my girlfriends. Johanna asks why I’m making such a hasty retreat. “Just got a booty call,” I say. “Ohhhhh,” she says. “Fun!” “Well you know me, Saturday night, legs up!” “But it’s only Friday,” she says, laughing.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  He gestures to the row of beach chairs he and his friends park themselves on for much of the day and we settle into seats next to each other. He asks how I’m doing and I quickly tell him that I’m single now and that fact pretty much sums up my year, and I ask what he had wanted to say to me earlier but didn’t with Georgia underfoot. “I’ve been waiting for you. Every day, I wait for you to come walking down the beach,” he says. I let out a loud laugh and say, “Oh please! I wish that was true. Tell me really.” “It is true. This is the time of year you usually come. I’ve been waiting,” he says, staring at me. “I couldn’t say that in front of your daughter.” “Were you going to tell me this whether or not I told you I’m newly single?” I ask. He laughs and puts a finger on my hand, tracing my palm for a moment. My entire body feels like an electric current is running through it. “I knew you would be single,” he says. I furrow my brows in confusion, but I’m too wrapped up in the potential of my fantasy taking this amazing turn to wonder at his statement. “When can I see you?” he asks. “Alone?” I ask, stupidly, and we make a plan to meet after dinner by the bar on the private beach. He says he will wait there for me as no one comes on that beach at night. I calmly rise from my seat despite the thumping of my heart. He catches my arm as I turn to go and pulls me down toward him so that my lips meet his for a kiss as passionate as it is quick. I have been rendered speechless, so I touch my lips with my index finger, give a small smile and walk away. It takes every iota of self-restraint I have not to leap down the beach, cackling with glory and laughter. Instead, I walk slowly, attempting to sashay, knowing he is watching my every step. Back at the pool, the kids and Michael have disappeared so I dig my phone out of my bag and call Tina, who knows Blaze from her recent vacation here. I silently plead for her to pick up and when she finally does, I blurt out, “Tina, I have a date with Blaze tonight.” “Mama, what are you talking about? You just got there! Hang on, I’m at pick-up, school just let out. I have to tell Alexandra and Sarah, they’re right here,” she says, and I hear shouts of kids in the background as she excitedly tells Alexandra and Sarah that I’m calling from the Caribbean and I have a date with the object of my fantasy. There is joyous shrieking and laughter all around and then Tina comes back on the line, saying, “We are so excited for you. Tell us everything.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This God makes a covenant with Abraham containing dramatic and grandiose promises. Through Abraham, God will cause all the families of the earth to be blessed; this follows the sorry tale of folly and wickedness in Genesis 3–11, which results in the scattering and division of the human race after the building of the tower of Babel (Babylon, also in today’s Iraq). The story of God and Abraham is the starting point for the whole of the rest of the biblical narrative, and it in turn gains its meaning from what has gone before. God is now, through Abraham, going to undo the plight of the human race and will thereby enable humans to pick up again the threads of the project that had been theirs from the start (looking after God’s world, making it fruitful, and peopling it), but that had been aborted through human rebellion. There is an exciting, and often ignored, inner core to the story of God and Abraham that points all the way forward to the gospels themselves. The larger framework for the story is the narrative sweep that goes all the way from the original creation through to the end of the book of Exodus (of course, there are still larger frameworks: the whole Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and then the whole Old Testament itself; but let’s stay focused on Genesis and Exodus for the moment). The original creation story envisaged a God who was making a dwelling place for himself. The six “days,” or “stages,” of creation indicate, to those who understand the world of the ancient Near East, that creation itself, heaven and earth together, is a kind of temple, a dwelling place for God. And, as in all ancient temples (except the one in Jerusalem, for reasons that will become apparent), there was an “image” or statue of the god in question, so the creator God places into the “temple” of his heaven-and-earth creation his own “image,” human beings made to reflect him, to bring his creativity to birth in his world, and to reflect the praises of the world back to the creator. That, of course, is the heart of the story, which is then spoiled by the rebellion of God’s image-bearing creatures. One might be forgiven for supposing that this original intention had been lost sight of entirely in the story that then follows. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob find that God appears to them now here, now there, always unexpectedly, in different ways and guises. Sometimes they mark the spot with a stone, a shrine, or an altar. But then the story takes a nosedive into chaos. Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt and, though this has the effect of saving the family from a famine, the long-term result is slavery. Israel’s long servitude in Egypt is formative not only, as we have already seen, for Israel itself, but also, if one can put it this way, for God.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “Yes,” I finally say, and to be perfectly honest, I am pretty proud of that yes, as it took everything in me to choke it out. I have never talked during sex beyond a few basic and brief assessments and acknowledgements. I have never watched pornography or even read pornographic material, so I don’t know how this is supposed to be done. I, who pride myself on my literary and verbal skills, am utterly speechless. Other than the talking, he is doing a good job down there. He seems not to tire of it and uses his tongue delicately and then more urgently until finally I use my words to ask him to please make his way inside of me. He pulls himself up and reaches over to his dresser drawer, saying that he needs to get a raincoat, which gives me pause. It seems like such an old-fashioned, odd way to say condom – for all his verbal straightforwardness, this is where he’s going to use a euphemism? He pulls it on and enters me with a quick thrust. It is only a matter of seconds before I come, digging my nails into his back and letting out a cry of pleasure. My whole body loosens and he stops moving, lying against me as I catch my breath. I apologize that I couldn’t wait for him. “Don’t be sorry, you did exactly what I wanted you to do,” he says. “How generous of you,” I say with a laugh. “Seriously, do you have any idea how thrilling it is for a man to make a woman come so easily?” he asks. “Most women I’ve been with don’t come like that, it takes a more nuanced effort.” But we are not done with each other yet. He slides back inside of me and I push him to the side so that I can be on top. I still have my strapless bra on and as I sit up, he wraps his arms around me and snaps it open, then flings it to the side. “I couldn’t bear to take this off earlier. If I saw you all at once I would have come on the spot, it would have been more than I could handle. You have amazing tits,” he says and I blanch; I loathe that word, finding it crass and demeaning. He runs his hands along my nipples, gently touching them and pinching them, then runs his hands down to hold my hips as he guides the rhythm of my movements on top of him. I watch as his breathing becomes shallow and his eyes close. When I feel him pulsing inside of me, I stop moving and lean forward to lie on top of him. He runs his fingers down my back and I press my ear against his heart as I listen to it slow down. We drift off to sleep for a few minutes until he whispers that he should get me home.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But then I found one boutique that advertised everything for $20 or less. I tried on a black long-sleeved dress that showed off my slender legs and waist, but was A-line at the hip. The saleswomen all said I looked amazing, and I liked their enthusiasm. I liked the attention and it made me high. Now I didn’t even care how the date with Adam went. Just getting ready for it felt like something to live for, some net in my life that caught me and strained me out of the ooze. It was as though some wonderful future event were being extended backward in time. The future event needed only to exist so that I could have this excitement and anticipation now. Next I went to a fancy makeup shop and bought some lipstick to match my hair color, a matte crimson. The women there treated me like an interloper and gave me strange stares. I think I talked about my date too much. I kept mentioning the tech exec and Santa Barbara so they would think that I was rich enough to be there. But they never smiled. Was I not supposed to talk to them? Could you only talk to some women about imaginary dates, while others could smell your reality the moment they looked at you? The final touch was a bikini wax. I went to a dive—some shithole where they said they could take me right away. I was just going to do the sides, but when the waxer—a bosomy woman named Kristina—saw my vagina, she started yelling. “Too much hair! Too much hair!” “I know! What do you think I should do with it?” “Me? I say take it all off.” “Ha, no way,” I said. “Okay, fine. I take some off. I show you. Just lie back.” I lay back on the small pillow covered in paper. The room was cold and the ceiling was covered in what looked like big pee stains and mold. “You have boyfriend?” she asked. “What he think of hair?” “No,” I said. “No boyfriend.” “Ah, see!” she said. “I will fix that. Relax.” I felt her spread on the wax. It felt too hot, but I didn’t know how warm it was supposed to be. It felt like my right labia was burning. She blew on the wax a few times with frenetic movements. “One, two, three,” she said. Then she ripped. I felt like my vagina was a tree, its roots being torn out of the ground. It was an ache, a tearing, and a burning all at once. I wanted to kill her. “Oh my God!” I yelled. I looked down. There was my full bush with one giant chunk missing. The area was pink and had a few tiny dots of blood. My crotch looked like a furry mouth with one pulled tooth. “Darling, lie back.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  More often than not, these were people who I met via personal ads and who were aware that I was a crossdresser from the start. Over an extremely intense two-year period of my life, I sort of lived a dual life, where I was in boy-mode most of the time, but about one or two times per week I would go out and interact with others (often on dates) as a woman.Some of the people I saw during this period were men who might be described as admirers of MTF spectrum people. With them, I primarily engaged in role-playing relationships in which we would create sexually charged scenarios based on exaggerations of gender stereotypes. While many people assume that male “tranny-chasers” are closeted homosexuals who are turned on by the “guy” (or the “penis”) under the dress, all of the men who I role-played with were primarily attracted to women and, in particular, to femininity. In conversations I had with them, each said that what attracted them to MTF spectrum people was the extreme femininity that many of us (including myself at the time) sometimes displayed. For me, these role-playing experiences were important in helping me demystify the connection between femininity and sexuality. As with previous phases of my crossdressing, acting out my submissive feminine fantasies felt exciting and empowering early on. But over time, once they had become demystified, I found that they began to lose both their erotic and experiential potential.What played an even greater role in demystifying femaleness and femininity for me were the relationships I cultivated with women around this same time. Most of these women were bisexual or bi-curious, and our relationships involved me being in girl-mode some or most of the times we got together. While I was quite feminine when I was with them and crossdressed, I did not engage in the exaggerated femininity that I had during my role-playing experiences with men. In retrospect, what was most important for me about these experiences with women was that they allowed me to begin to integrate my personality (i.e., the person I was when in boy-mode) with my femme self. In a sense, this represented a merging of boy-mode and girl-mode for me, a sort of mending of the fracture in my psyche that had developed in response to the effemimania and enforced ignorance I’d experienced as a child.After about two years of being in the interactive phase, of being in relationships with other people while I was in girl-mode, something unexpected happened: I lost interest in crossdressing.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  When she called me I could hear it in her voice. Who could blame her? Somehow she had gotten another taste of sparkle. Now that she had a taste or saw its potential she was going for it again. When she looked back at the group she saw sick, miserable humans, something she would want to block out having ever been a part of. But the women in the group would see her as the sick, miserable one. They thought she would either come back or face devastation. But they’d forgotten the sensation of what it was like out there, to be in the throes of madness. I didn’t tell Diana about Theo, either. I took Dominic for a quick walk. He began pulling me in the direction of Oakwood Park, but I didn’t have the energy for it. I held the leash tightly as he yanked and skipped in place, whimpering with his head pointing in that direction. I knew that I should give him what he wanted, a little piece of that effortless happiness, but I couldn’t play wolf woman today. My mind was too much elsewhere, already on the rocks, waiting, waiting for Theo to surface and transform my perception. My mind was already in the ocean. I decided I would call Claire. “How are you doing, dearest?” I asked. “I’m better,” she said. “David called. I’m seeing him tomorrow. I told him he isn’t giving me enough of what I need. I haven’t hung myself from any silk scarves. So I guess that’s progress?” “Good,” I said. “And you?” “I’ve done it again,” I said. “I’ve fallen hard. Only this time I think it’s real.” “The surfer?” asked Claire. She sounded skeptical, and I wondered what right she had to be skeptical when she had just been in a bottomless pit. “Swimmer,” I said. “All we do is talk. Or all we did was talk until last night when he went down on me for forty-five minutes.” “Nooooo,” she said. “Yes. At least forty-five. What does it mean when a boy goes down on you for forty-five minutes? I feel like it has to be love. Like, I feel like he loves me.” “Either he loves you or he loves pussy. One of the two.” I laughed. “No, he doesn’t seem like that. He isn’t a pussy hound. Well, I can’t tell. I mean, I think he is gorgeous, but he isn’t typically gorgeous. But if I think he is gorgeous then probably a million others do too.” “Usually that’s the way it works,” she said. “Still, I’m glad you’re getting shagged properly. It’s important. I think it’s very important that you be well fucked.” “We haven’t fucked yet,” I said. “I haven’t even seen his dick.” “Oh really?” she said. “Then it could be love on his part.” “That’s what I think,” I said. “But what about you?” “I’m smitten,” I said.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  You are speeding along an empty four-lane divided highway through Greece in a little red and rented Citroen doing well over the legal 120 and more like 170 kilometers per hour. Because there was absolutely no one else on the road, no one at all, for at least an hour. That morning you started from Dodoni, Zeus’s most ancient oracular site, visited by Homer’s Odysseus and maybe not many others since, and were heading toward the northwestern corner of Greece just south of the Albanian border inland from the island of Kerkira, or Corfu. You were driving on what the map shows as little yellow squiggly lines indicating single lanes with, at best, tractors and, at worst, goats to slow your pace. Occasionally those yellow squiggly lines turned into white squiggly lines indicating all the above, but on dirt roads with potholes. Then you stumbled unexpectedly upon an on-ramp to the big pink-highlighted and black-dotted streak that your map says is still under construction. But it was clearly finished that mid-June morning in 2003, and you take it as fast as you can toward the Adriatic Sea and the modern town of Igoumenítsa, first port for the car ferries from Brindisi on the heel of the Italian mainland. From there you will turn south inland and then go along the coast to the site of Octavian and Agrippa’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra off Cape Actium on the southern promontory of the Ambracian Gulf. The motorway stops as suddenly as it began, with an end-of-freeway sign at a massive construction site for a suspension bridge over a river and a tunnel through a hill. But before you return to the little yellow and white lines on the map, you pause to read the big blue and gold sign in Greek and English, put up by the European Union, that announces the new Egnatia Odos, the new Via Egnatia. The sign emphasizes that half the cost of those cranes, bulldozers, and cement mixers in front of you is being paid by the European Union’s Community Support Framework and much of the rest is funded by the European Investment Bank. You learn later that the total cost is estimated at 1.15 trillion Greek drachmas, a currency made obsolete by the Euro but calculated in 2003 at about 300 to the dollar. You also learn later that, after the Egnatia Odos Motorway is completed and its terminal ends linked up, its 425 miles will include 1650 bridges with a combined length of 25 miles and 76 tunnels with a combined length of 30 miles.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Black bra black panties. and garters. meet me in the lobby at 1 pm All of my underwear was white and kind of threadbare. I had never been a sexy-lingerie kind of girl. It never went with my aesthetic. Also, I had a propensity for yeast infections. Whenever I wore anything other than cotton there were issues. So I called Claire. “I’m going to be having sex…at a hotel…he’s getting a room for the night…the graphic designer, not the chimpanzee one. He wants me to wear lingerie. Do you know where I should go to get something cute? Victoria’s Secret?” “Victoria’s Secret? You’re joking,” she laughed. “That’s faff. Let me take you somewhere good.” I skipped group and met her in Brentwood at a place called La Boom Boom. Immediately I could tell it was way out of my price range: a hybrid of Mercedes-keyed tight-bodied moms in yoga pants and potential porn stars. You couldn’t tell who were the moms and who were the porn stars, but they all definitely had money. Who were these women buying lingerie in the middle of the day? I guess this was what everyone did in L.A. The place reminded me of being inside a black-and-pink birthday present. The walls were pink with black velvet stripes and there were little pink chocolates on a table. I ate some. “Come on,” said Claire. “Don’t be scared.” “How much do you think this stuff is?” “Just go in there,” said Claire, pointing to one of the little pink changing rooms. “I’ll bring you stuff. What size are you?” “I’m a 32 B on the top last time I checked,” I said. “But barely. I have no idea what I am on the bottom.” I tried on bra after bra, various panties with little slips of paper in each of them to keep them fresh for whoever bought them. I imagined other women’s vaginal juices on the paper. It nauseated me a little but also made me feel like I was part of some kind of ritual, a lineage, like Sappho’s all-female cult of Aphrodite. Claire and the saleswoman were the priestesses. They made it a party. The saleswoman was named Bridget and was a GMILF, a hot grandma type. They cooed over me, telling me I had a nice ass, cute little breasts, that I looked great in everything. Claire even slapped me on the ass. I liked the way they encouraged me, babied me even. With my mother dead, and Annika away at college, I’d never had that type of tactile feminine love as a teen. I’d pretended I didn’t need or want it. I told myself that I was lucky. As a single parent, my father wasn’t home much and I was free. I had zero curfew, no rules. But my longing leaked out in other places.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t want to burst the double bubble of dopamine I now had coursing through me, first from Theo and now from Jamie. I lay around in bed for an hour, high on the potentiality of both of them, texting languidly. Jamie’s texts seemed more urgent than they had ever been, asking me questions about my return date, if I needed anything financially, if I wanted him to come pick me up and we could drive back to the desert together. I enjoyed being coy now, the elusive one for once. The independent one. That’s ok, I wrote, really, but thank you. I will see you when I get back. Then I got another text. This one from Claire. how shall I kill myself? I grabbed Dominic and got a car to her apartment in West L.A. I saw, for the first time, where she lived. It was not at all what I expected. I knew that her ex-husband had kept their home in Pacific Palisades and she had taken an apartment, but I had imagined a grand courtyard with a fountain: something small yet charming, Old World Spanish with luxe modern interiors. But this reminded me of my place in Phoenix and that I would be going back there. The complex was big, old, and musty, and there was a pool drained of water. A sign hung on the gate read CLOSED . When I went in she looked completely different, her hair greasy, unwashed, and piled high on her head in a bun, instead of the flowing curls I was used to. Under her eyes were big circles, the faint purple color of the underside of a shell. They were deep and I imagined lying down in them. She was wearing a T-shirt inside out and sweatpants, no bra. Her breasts sort of hung there, facing down. Depression is real, I thought. It’s a real disease. I don’t know why I thought that then. Like, that it just dawned on me. I’d had depression my whole life too but more of a dysthymia—a general malaise. I had never thought of it as an ailment that manifested physically. At least, it had never affected my physicality in the way that it seemed to have affected Claire’s. Or maybe it did and I simply couldn’t see it. Maybe this was what I had looked like when I broke down after Jamie. Maybe this is what people saw when they saw me. “Are your kids here?” I asked. “Arnold has them, thank God.” I was a little scared of her. Even when she said she’d been harming herself there was still a bit of Claire in her, some of the humor and charm, as though the depression was something she could slip out of when she needed to engage with the world. When she needed to protect me from seeing it.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Nobody heals. You need to replace! That’ll be the thing that makes him come back in the end, but by then you won’t want him. Men can smell it when we’ve moved on. Especially to a bigger cock. Bald Brad texted me.” “Don’t text him back!” “Oh, I won’t,” she said. “I have no need.” “Well, that’s interesting,” I said. “I’m glad you found a way to balance it all and not get attached.” “For women like us? I’m convinced this is the only way. The only way you’re going to get over him is by having a lot of sex and seeing what else is out there. You might even surprise yourself. You might see that you can do it, you can just fuck and not get attached. I guarantee I will not be getting attached to Trent.” “Ponytail man?” “Yes.” She laughed. “Also, you need to see how hot you are. To feel it.” “I am so not hot,” I laughed. “I’m gross.” “Oh, bugger off. You have the disheveled waif ingénue thing going. Like that bitch from Les Misérables .” She looked at her watch. “Fuck, I have to go pick up my kids. Never have children. They’ll ruin your life.” “Not planning on it,” I said. “You should just try Tinder,” she said. “Just try it.” 9. I’d heard it said that when you’re feeling good is sometimes when you’re the most suicidal. Maybe it’s after you decide that you’re going to do it that you suddenly seem happier. I don’t think that’s why I walked across the beach to the ocean that night. I don’t think I was planning to jump into the ocean drunk or that I wanted to get killed by a stranger. I knew it was dangerous to be out there at midnight. I rarely even walked the boardwalk after ten or eleven. I think I just felt invincible, connected to myself, like I could do anything and be totally fine. Maybe I was looking for a new high. I climbed up on one of the big black rocks that lined the ocean in a cluster. I sat there for a little while looking out at the waves, more gray and white now that I was up close. I wondered if the rocks were somehow sentient, lonely out here in the cold moonlight. “Hi,” I said to the rocks. The rocks said nothing. They had the ocean and they had one another. I wondered if they ever got annoyed by the waves’ constant lapping, the daily irritation of their own gradual erosion. Did they secretly long for a tsunami to come eclipse them into the ocean, just to be done with it all already? Or did they enjoy that slow, rhythmic tickling? From the corner of my eye I spotted something fleshy on the edge of one of the rocks.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  After eight years I forgot that lips could come in different shapes and feels. Also, the taste of cigarettes and whiskey was exciting. I was half nauseated and half turned on. I felt rebellious and young. “What?” he said. “Nothing,” I said, giggling. “You’re just cute.” Looking at him, I really didn’t think he was cute. But I didn’t know what else to say so I shut my eyes and took the back of his head in my palm and pulled him toward me. Then he introduced his tongue, much deeper into my mouth, circling it in a clockwise motion. What the fuck was he doing? He was ruining it. I started to put my tongue out as a guard, to try to stop his rotating tongue, but I guess he just took this as a sign that I was turned on—that I was into it—because he continued with the circling, only deeper in my mouth, almost to my throat, gagging me. I put my finger up between our mouths, pretending to trace his lips, but really trying to create some distance. Then I closed my lips a lot, guiding him into softer and gentler kisses. I kept my eyes sealed shut. I could have just cut it off there. I’d gotten what I said I wanted. I’m not sure why I didn’t. He rubbed my tits over my black cotton dress. I could feel his bulge against me. Then he started kissing my ear and neck, which I think is a turn-on for some women, because men do it a lot—especially when they are younger. I remembered these moves now from when I was in my early twenties: the weird breathing in my ear, the sticky trail on my neck, moves he probably read on Esquire.com. All I could think about was how my neck and ear now smelled like his breath, which had taken on a sour quality: the whiskey, tequila, and smoke forming a noxious stew. “Let’s go back to my house,” he whispered into my ear. “Uhhh, I don’t think so,” I said. “What if you’re a murderer?” “I’m not a murderer.” He laughed. “If you were a murderer you obviously wouldn’t tell me.” “I’m so not a murderer,” he said. “Well, I will just walk a little further and then I’ll decide. Maybe I can pick up some more clues in the meantime.” “Yeah, let’s just walk in the direction of my house. Or we could go to your house instead?” I imagined bringing this kid to Annika’s house. I didn’t want him knowing where I lived. Or in there to begin with. “No, that’s okay. What’s your address?”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1, 1414, lasted nearly four years, and proved to be one of the most imposing gatherings which has ever convened in Western Europe. It was a veritable parliament of nations, a convention of the leading intellects of the age, who pressed together to give vent to the spirit of free discussion which the Avignon scandals and the schism had developed, and to debate the most urgent of questions, the reunion of Christendom under one undisputed head."291 Following the advice of his cardinals, John, who set his face reluctantly towards the North, reached Constance Oct. 28, 1414. The city then contained 5500 people, and the beauty of its location, its fields, and its vineyards, were praised by Nieheim and other contemporaries. They also spoke of the salubriousness of the air and the justice of the municipal laws for strangers. It seemed to be as a field which the Lord had blessed.292 As John approached Constance, coming by way of the Tirol, he is said to have exclaimed, "Ha, this is the place where foxes are trapped." He entered the town in great style, accompanied by nine cardinals and sixteen hundred mounted horsemen. He rode a white horse, its back covered with a red rug. Its bridles were held by the count of Montferrat and an Orsini of Rome. The city council sent to the pope’s lodgings four large barrels of Elsass wine, eight of native wine, and other wines.293 The first day of November, John attended a solemn mass at the cathedral. The council met on the 5th, with fifteen cardinals present. The first public session was held Nov. 16. In all, forty-five public sessions were held, the usual hour of assembling being 7 in the morning. Gregory XII. was represented by two delegates, the titular patriarch of Constantinople and Cardinal John Dominici of Ragusa, a man of great sagacity and excellent spirit. The convention did not get into full swing until the arrival of Sigismund on Christmas Eve, fresh from his coronation, which occurred at Aachen, Nov. 8, and accompanied by his queen, Barbara, and a brilliant suite. After warming themselves, the imperial party proceeded to the cathedral and, at cock-crowing Christmas morning, were received by the pope. Services were held lasting eight, or, according to another authority, eleven hours without interruption. Sigismund, wearing his crown and a dalmatic, exercised the functions of deacon and read the Gospel, and the pope conferred upon him a sword, bidding him use it to protect the Church. Constance had become the most conspicuous locality in Europe. It attracted people of every rank, from the king to the beggar. A scene of the kind on so great a scale had never been witnessed in the West before. The reports of the number of strangers in the city vary from 50,000 to 100,000. Richental, the indefatigable Boswell of the council, himself a resident of Constance, gives an account of the arrival of every important personage, together with the number of his retainers.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Henry Jones lost his head and pinched Pat’s bony shoulder, then he rolled his eyes: ‘Oh, boy! What a gang! Say, folks, aren’t we having the hell of an evening? When any of you folk decide to come over to my little old New York, why, I’ll show you around. Some burg!’ and he gulped a large mouthful of whisky. After supper Jamie played the overture to her opera, and they loudly applauded the rather dull music—so scholarly, so dry, so painfully stiff, so utterly inexpressive of Jamie. Then Wanda produced her mandolin and insisted upon singing them Polish love songs; this she did in a heavy contralto voice which was rendered distinctly unstable by brandy. She handled the tinkling instrument with skill, evolving some quite respectable chords, but her eyes were fierce as was also her touch, so that presently a wire snapped with a ping, which appeared completely to upset her balance. She fell back and lay sprawled out upon the floor to be hauled up again by Dupont and Brockett. Barbara had one of her bad fits of coughing: ‘It’s nothing . . .’ she gasped, ‘I swallowed the wrong way; don’t fuss, Jamie . . . darling . . . I tell you it’s . . . nothing.’ Jamie, flushed already, drank more crème-de-menthe. This time she poured it into a tumbler, tossing it off with a dash of soda. But Adolphe Blanc looked at Barbara gravely. The party did not disperse until morning; not until four o’clock could they decide to go home. Everybody had stayed to the very last moment, everybody, that is, except Valérie Seymour—she had left immediately after supper. Brockett, as usual, was cynically sober, but Jamie was blinking her eyes like an owl, while Pat stumbled over her own goloshes. As for Henry Jones, he started to sing at the top of his lungs in a high falsetto: ‘Oh, my, help, help, ain’t I nobody’s baby? Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’ ‘Shut your noise, you poor mutt!’ commanded his brother, but Henry still continued to bawl: ‘Oh, my, what a shame, I ain’t nobody’s baby.’ They left Wanda asleep on a heap of cushions—she would probably not wake up before mid-day. CHAPTER 461S tephen’s book, which made its appearance that May, met with a very sensational success in England and in the United States, an even more marked success than The Furrow. Its sales were unexpectedly large considering its outstanding literary merit; the critics of two countries were loud in their praises, and old photographs of Stephen could be seen in the papers, together with very flattering captions. In a word, she woke up in Paris one morning to find herself, for the moment, quite famous.