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 115 of 182 · 20 per page

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Orowitz-Rudman, after a pause. “Sometimes. I once wrote a story on the hood of a car for twelve straight hours.” “Masturbating intermittently the entire time? I take it you were in a secluded spot.” “It’s a spot that’s accessible only to me.” “Good.” I gave her an inquiring look. “Is this an area that you would be interested in studying?” I asked her. She looked skeptical at first, and then more interested. “Well, you know, I have to admit that in the past I’ve had some fleeting suspicions in that direction. I mean, why shouldn’t frequent or prolonged masturbational episodes aggravate, or even cause, CTS? But until now, no patient has spontaneously suggested it as a cause, and I’ve been reluctant to mention it. It’s definitely worth looking into. Perhaps we could scan you as you …” “Really?” I said. “You’d have me pleasure myself in one of those gigantic magnets? The ones like iron lungs, that take pictures of brain tumors?” “Well, why not?” she said. “And you’d use our dummy keyboard, too. We’re trying to simulate real-life conditions. We unfortunately can’t use real keyboards, because we can’t have any ferrous metal within the magnet.… Now, you don’t habitually masturbate wearing a studded cock ring or ball separator, do you?” “God no.” “Fine, because that might create real problems in a magnetic field of thirty thousand times earth gravity. So—I don’t want to put you on the spot, but are you sincerely interested? I’m thinking out loud now, which I don’t normally do, but my sense is that this could be an important new line of research. Who knows—you might make The New England Journal of Medicine . Anonymously, of course.” “Well,” I said, pleased, “I suppose if I can be of some small help to others …” A week later, I showed up at the MR wing of Common-health’s hospital at a quarter to six in the evening, after an untaxing day at an accounting firm. My arm hurt, which pleased me, because I felt that I wasn’t wasting anyone’s time. In a conference room, Dr. Orowitz-Rudman explained in her friendly, faintly ironic way what was going to happen to me: some reference dots were going to be painted on my arm and penis, so that the imaging system could keep a fix on these two elements as I moved. She said she wanted me to type and masturbate just as I would in real life. She got up, and then remembered something. “One thing I do have to ask,” she said. She looked through some drawers in the back of the room. “I’m looking for something with a particular shape,” she explained. She held up a tongue depressor, but rejected it: “A little unromantic. I should have thought to bring in a prosthetic penis-form of some kind.” “I could just show you mine,” I suggested. “No—no—then we have to get observers in here and worry about all sorts of things. Thanks for offering, though. Ah!

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  YEAR ONE WE DRINK GUINNESS MOSTLY ALL THE TIME and we ride Mountain bikes around Eugene at night and we go to the Vet’s Club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the Vet’s club we go to the High Street Café hey I’ll give you my student loan wad of $700 if you kiss the guy who joined us for a drink he does we laugh we drink we fuck. We rent a house together near the traintracks we drink Guinness we paint each other’s bodies we paint the walls we paint an entire room we fuck. We go crazy loving we go crazy fucking we go crazy drinking we do performance art in Eugene him naked on stage with a bloody pig’s head me naked on stage wrapped in Saran Wrap we perform on stage we perform at school we perform a life his long black hair my long blond hair attractive dramatic people dramatically drinking we have our first yell fight me on one side of the bathroom door with a Swiss Army Knife him on the other side of the bathroom door with a kitchen knife we carve each other’s names into our arms we do I fall and break open the body of the toilet water spewing everywhere he breaks down the bathroom door we bleed we fuck septic water. Year Two we drink Bushmills we ride our bikes in summer at night to the rose garden we steal all the heads of roses we strip and ride the current down the McKenzie river we road trip from Oregon to Florida we drink mushroom tea and hallucinate in the redwoods we see a guy die on the road some terrible wreck blood everywhere stretchers with corpse side of the road gorgeous ocean cliff view blood and road flares and ambulances and bodies how you loved looking just like you loved moving deathward so Jim Morrison I wanted to be in your fire we eat ecstasy and ride our bikes on the freeway we drive and drive all the southern states redneck fuckwads laughing snakeskin boots and cowboy hats all the way to Alabama his home to Florida my parents then turn around as fast as possible back to the west to Oregon where we can be who we are the west we get married in Tahoe at the top of Harvey’s Casino with my best friends lovers Mike and Dean and my sister and my parents Oedipal fakers and his parents southern Baptist fascists and we drink with the gay boys and a casino preacher with giant hair groomed black as a record album marries us says a Native American prayer there on top of Harvey’s Casino overlooking Lake Tahoe we laugh all the way down the elevators all the way through the year all the way to rings on our fingers and bells on our toes.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Limes-men, if you will.’ He struck the table with his gavel - clack! - so that the candle-flame dipped. ‘I give you, the marvellous, the musical, the very, very merry, Merry’ - he struck the table again - ‘Randalls!’The curtain quivered, then rose. There was a seaside backdrop to the stage and, upon the boards themselves, real sand; and over this strolled four gay figures in holiday gear: two ladies - one dark, one fair - with parasols; and two tall gents, one with a ukulele on a strap. They sang ‘All the Girls are Lovely by the Seaside’, very nicely; then the ukulele player did a solo, and the ladies lifted their skirts for a spot of soft-shoe dancing on the sand. For a first turn, they were good. We cheered them; and Tricky thanked us very graciously for our appreciation.The next act was a comedian, the next a mentalist - a lady in evening dress and gloves, who stood blindfolded upon the stage while her husband moved among the audience with a slate, inviting people to write numbers and names upon it with a piece of chalk, for her to guess.‘Imagine the number floating through the air in flames of scarlet,’ said the man impressively, ‘and searing its way into my wife’s brain, through her brow.’ We frowned and squinted at the stage, and the lady staggered a little, and raised her hands to her temples.‘The Power,’ she said, ‘it is very strong tonight. Ah, I feel it burning!’After this there was an acrobatic troupe - three men in spangles who turned somersaults through hoops, and stood on one another’s shoulders. At the climax of their act they formed a kind of human loop, and rolled about the stage to a tune from the orchestra. We clapped at that; but it was too hot for acrobatics, and there was a general shuffling and whispering throughout this act, as boys were sent with orders to the bar, and returned with bottles and glasses and mugs that had to be handed, noisily, down the rows, past heads and laps and grasping fingers. I glanced at Alice: she had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it, and her cheeks were very red. I pushed my own little bonnet to the back of my head, leaned upon the rail before me with my chin upon my knuckles, and closed my eyes. I heard Tricky rise and call for silence with his gavel.‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘a little treat for you now. A little bit of helegance and top-drawer style. If you’ve champagne in your glasses’ - there was an ironical cheering at this - ‘raise them now. If you’ve beer - why, beer’s got bubbles, don’t it?

• From The Fermata (1994)

  One of the associates was sitting at the other large monitor, which showed a long glowing thing that was apparently the nerve in my wrist done up in the usual intense greens and blues and oranges. The other woman, the Chinese woman, was standing behind Dr. Orowitz-Rudman, looking on. I knelt and opened Dr. Orowitz-Rudman’s lab coat and pulled her ribbed green turtleneck out of her pants. I bunched it up at her collarbone and pulled the cups of her bra down so her nipples popped out. They were erect, I was pleased to notice, and surprisingly dark, like two Raisinets. “I can’t help it—I need to suck your tits,” I said to her, and I did, tactfully, untheatrically. I wrote, “Thanks,” on a white Post-It note and stuck it on her left breast. Then I put her clothes back in order and went back in the scan room and climbed into the magnet and resumed my former position. I snapped my fingers again. The noise of the coolant started back up. Immediately I heard Dr. Orowitz-Rudman exclaim, “Whoops! Lost our fix. Arno, we lost our fix on you. What happened in there?” “I snapped my fingers.” “Okay, look, please don’t do that. There are limits to our tracking system. Just keep stroking your penis if you can.” “How much longer do you want me to continue?” I asked. I was jubilant at having my powers back. “How much pain are you in?” she asked. “Mmm, this is about as painful as it gets—tingling up my whole forearm,” I reported. “I think you should go ahead and climax soon. I think we’ve got enough now to generate quite a thorough neural conductivity profile.” “You want me to come for you?” The foul-patter urge was rising in me. “Yes,” she said neutrally. “You want it? You want to see it? Oh, God, I want to give it to you. This guy, this guy who’s in the MRI machine, he snaps his fingers and time stops. He understands what’s going on, he’s not freaked, because it happened once before when somebody put a sample of his blood in a centrifuge and spun it very fast and time was interrupted. So time is stopped, and he crawls out of the machine, naked, jerking on his big swollen dick-knob, and he scampers into the control room and he throws back the doctor’s lab coat and pulls up her shirt and brings her tits out and he laps at them. That’s what he’s wanted from the moment he saw her, he’s wanted to suckle. those hard little nipples with his mouth—oh, man, ma-ha-ha-ha-han—” “A little slower if you can, Arno,” said Dr.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  At that, there was a cheering at the other tables; and a woman began to sing, amidst much laughter and applause, that she wouldn’t call for sherry, and she wouldn’t call for beer, and she wouldn’t call for cham because she knew ’twould make her queer ...I thought of the postcard I would write when I got home: ‘I have had supper in a theatrical restaurant. Kitty made her debut at the Star and they are calling it a triumph...’Meanwhile, Mr Bliss and Kitty chatted; and when next I concentrated on their talk I realised that it was rather serious.‘Now,’ Mr Bliss was saying, ‘I am going to ask you to do something which, if I were any other kind of gentleman than a theatrical agent, I should be quite ashamed to. I am going to ask you to go about the city - and you must assist her, Miss Astley,’ he added when he saw me looking - ‘you must both of you go about the city and study the men!’I gazed at Kitty and blinked, and she smiled back uncertainly. ‘Study the men?’ she said.‘Scrutinise ’em!’ said Mr Bliss, sawing at a piece of cutlet. ‘Catch their characters, their little habits, their mannerisms and gaits. What are their histories? What are their secrets? Have they ambitions? Have they hopes and dreams? Have they sweethearts they have lost? Or have they only aching feet, and empty bellies?’ He waved his fork. ‘You must know it; and you must copy them, and make your audience know it in their turn.’‘Do you mean, then,’ I asked, not understanding, ‘to change Kitty’s act?’‘I mean, Miss Astley, to broaden Kitty’s repertoire. Her masher is a very fine fellow; but she cannot walk the Burlington Arcade, in lavender gloves, for ever.’ He gazed at Kitty again, then wiped his mouth with a napkin and spoke in a more confiding tone. ‘What think you of a policeman’s jacket? Or a sailor’s blouse? What think you of peg-top trousers or a pearly coat?’ He turned to me. ‘Only imagine, Miss Astley, all the handsome gentlemen’s toggery that languishes, at this very minute, at the bottom of some costumier’s hamper, waiting, simply waiting, for Kitty Butler to step inside it and lend it life! Only think of all those more than handsome fabrics - those ivory worsteds, those rippling silks, those crimson velvets and scarlet shalloons; only hear the snip of the tailor’s scissors, the prick of the sempstress’s needle; only imagine her success, decked as a soldier, or a coster, or a prince ...’He paused at last, and Kitty smiled. ‘Mr Bliss,’ she said, ‘I do believe you could persuade a one-armed man into a juggling turn, the way you talk.’He laughed, and struck the table with his hand so that the cutlery rattled: it turned out that he had a one-armed juggler for a client, and was billing him - with great success - as ‘The Second Cinquevalli: Half the Capacity, Double the Skill!’

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Again she pointed the showerhead up between her legs, now turning it to PULSE . Big dick-shaped bullets of water thumped against the skin surrounding her clit-pearl, against her vadge, and, as she rocked her hips, tickled against the poor-relation sensitivities of her asshole. “Oh man,” she said, loving it. “Listen you, if you liked that Bambi-tongue, you’re going to love my hot little box.” The dildo was unresponsive. She walked closer, confronting it. “Oh? So you’re not sure? You’re not even sure you want to be in my hot little ass ? You’re shy? Well, I’m sorry, you have no choice now—you’re going to have to fuck me in the ass.” She took the bottle of Astroglide from her jumper-pocket and slid it between her cheeks and squirted herself with it until it trickled down her leg. Then she put her feet on either side of the brass tray and slowly squatted down until she felt the Klockhammer brushing against her butt-muscle. She directed the showerhead back on her clit. She didn’t care if her dress got soaked or not. Her thighs began to tremble with the effort of supporting herself over the dildismic pressure without sliding down on it. Finally she couldn’t help herself, and she opened her asshole to its big head and sat all the way down on it, until her cheeks touched the cold ornate metal of the tray. She rocked on the feeling of a hefty dickful of pleasure up her ass, adjusting to it. Her drenched dress hung over her thighs. She was fucking Armande Klockhammer’s autograph! God, it felt good. “Hello?” came a voice. Marian looked up to see young Kevin and a girl standing hand in hand a little way off. She supposed the girl was Sylvie, Kevin’s new girlfriend. Kevin was looking recently showered, spruced up and proud of himself, though momentarily puzzled. Marian saw his eyes skip down over her exposed, wet legs. The two of them were wearing matching red-and-white-striped polo shirts. Marian made a quick attempt to pull her dress down and over some of the sex toys next to her. She began watering the tulips with little flips of the showerhead, as if she were conducting a Sousa march. “Hi,” she said. “Pardon me, I was just doing a little watering. Come over. Let me turn this off. I had a plumber rig it up for me. Are you Sylvie?” “Yes, hi,” said Sylvie. Sylvie leaned and shook Marian’s hand. She was a petite, perky, small-breasted girl with long light-brown hair and a pleasant sly sharp-nosed face. Marian liked her immediately.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  That made sense. She was probably in graduate school there. (The University of Chicago sticker on her rear windshield was above the Smith sticker, arguing for Smith’s temporal priority.) I wasn’t sure that I wanted to drive all the way to Chicago with her, but presumably she would have to stop somewhere for the night. And even if she hated my tape, she was still driving, and driving allows for a great deal of idle thought, and idle thought is the perfect medium for the accelerated transmutation of remembered distastefulness. By the time she turned into a motel that evening, some image off my cassette might be soaring through her sensibility, robed in urgency and fire. And regardless of how she felt about my tape, she would almost certainly come in her motel room, since what else is there to do in motel rooms? As I drove, I worked out an elaborate plan of how I would proceed if she did check into a motel. As soon as she entered the parking lot, I would stop time and pull in ahead of her and park in an out-of-the-way spot. I would restart time. She would park and go into the office for five minutes and then reappear and walk to a room, say room 23. As she was pointing her key at the doorknob, with a semi-blank set-mouthed face that no actress could duplicate because it was so wholly a product of the certainty of her unobseivedness, I would pause her, go back to the office and get the spare key for room 23 from the key drawer, and enter ahead of her. It wouldn’t be a bad room, a little on the brown side, but there would probably be no good place for me to hide to watch her undress. I would be deeply sleepy by this time. My yawns would be coming every thirty seconds. It would be about seven in the morning Strine-time, counting my lengthy on-the-road Foldout, but I would still be needing some moment of closeness with this total stranger, who had become my chosen traveling companion. I would notice that in her room there was a locked door that led to the adjacent room. This would suggest some possibilities to me. Still fully fermational, I would leave her standing at the door with her key out and I would walk out and “buy” (in the usual informal manner) fourteen dirty magazines from a newsstand a quarter of a mile down the road. I like wandering around newsstands in the Fold and looking at people looking at magazines. Sometimes it’s just as you would expect: the thirteen-year-old kid with a fine little mustache looking at a shelf-ful of gory horror-film mags, etc.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  That sort of X-ray vision sounds like science fiction. Yet turning science fiction into science fact is what scientists and engineers love most. Breakthrough work by neuroscientist Uri Hasson, of Princeton University, has done just that. He and his team have found ways to measure multiple brains connecting through conversation. The obstacles they faced to do this were large. First, brain scanners are loud machines—no place to carry on actual conversations. Second, they’re also extraordinarily expensive, both to buy and to use. Almost all brain imaging studies thus scan just one person’s brain at a time. Yet with clever engineering and clever experimental logistics, Hasson’s team cleared both obstacles. They created a custom optic microphone that canceled out the noise of the scanner without distorting the delicate brain signals his team sought to capture. The logistics feat was to mimic a natural conversation by pulling it apart in time. Suppose, for a moment, you were stranded at the airport last week. Your plane to Miami was delayed for hours. Bored with your reading and web- browsing, you got to talking to another stranded passenger, a lively young college student on her way home for break. You’d been chatting back and forth for a while, every so often, meeting eyes and sharing smiles. The conversation was very natural, like you were friends already. Somehow or another, she got to telling you about her crazy high school prom experience. In great detail, she launched into how she happened to have two dates to the same prom; how she ended up having only five minutes to get dressed and ready for the prom after a full day of scuba diving; how, on her way to after-prom festivities, she crashed her boyfriend’s car in the wee hours of the morning; and then how she completely lucked out of getting ticketed (or arrested!) by the officer who witnessed her accident. She’s a good storyteller: You hung on her every word. Fifteen minutes melted away as she shared all the twists and turns of her hapless prom night. It’s clear, too, that you both enjoyed the chance to connect, rather than read, while you waited for your plane together. Okay, now it’s time for a set change: Instead of in an airport terminal, this conversation actually unfolded in a brain imaging lab at Princeton University. And instead of you sitting side by side with your impromptu friend, Hasson’s team actually invited her to visit the lab weeks ago, and they audio-recorded her entire prom story while scanning her brain’s activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). You’re here lying in the scanner today, listening to her story over fancy headphones, while Hasson’s team records your own brain activity.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Little things and big things, necessary things and less-than-necessary things, things for us and things for others. Even though some of our prayers won’t be answered in the way we imagined, we will see God’s hand at work. What a crazy thought: Our prayers can move the hand of God! When God responds to our requests in a tangible way, it is a wonderful, thrilling boost to our faith. It becomes one more proof of God’s love for us, yet another testimony in a lifetime of walking with Him. If you need a faith boost, the Bible contains dozens of specific examples of answered prayer. For example: Abraham prayed for a son. (Genesis 15) Hagar prayed for deliverance in the desert. (Genesis 16:7–13) Moses prayed for help at the Red Sea. (Exodus 14:15–16) The Israelites prayed for deliverance from Egypt. (Exodus 2:23–25; 3:7–10; Acts 7:34) Gideon prayed for a sign. (Judges 6:36–40) Samson prayed for strength. (Judges 16:28–30) Hannah prayed for a child. (1 Samuel 1:10–17, 19–20) David prayed for forgiveness and restoration after he sinned. (Psalm 51) Solomon prayed for wisdom. (1 Kings 3:1–13; 9:2–3) Elijah prayed for a widow’s son to come back to life. (1 Kings 17:22) Jabez prayed for prosperity. (1 Chronicles 4:10) The priests and Levites prayed blessing over the people. (2 Chronicles 30:27) Daniel prayed for the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. (Daniel 2:19–23) A leper prayed for healing. (Matthew 8:2–3; Mark 1:40–43; Luke 5:12–13) A centurion prayed for his servant. (Matthew 8:5–13; Luke 7:3–10; John 4:50–51) Peter prayed for Tabitha to be brought back to life. (Acts 9:40) The disciples prayed for Peter’s deliverance from prison. (Acts 12:5–17) These are just a handful of the times God answered the prayers of an individual or group of people. There are many more, plus countless promises and invitations to take our needs before the Lord in prayer. PRAYER IS A VEHICLE Prayer, as I said in the first chapter, is the vehicle, not the destination. Prayer’s power is found in its ability to carry us into God’s intimate presence, to open our hearts to His, and to bring heaven to earth. Do you remember your first car? I remember mine. I got it when I was sixteen years old. It was a puke-green-colored 1978 Plymouth Volare. The thing was an absolute clunker. I nicknamed it The Hoopty. While she wasn’t much to look at, she got me to school and basketball practice and back, and that was all that mattered. Really, though, the point of a car is not to look pretty. I mean, we’d all prefer a Lambo over a jalopy, but what matters most is that the thing gets us from Point A to Point B.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Now solitaries begin to pass, one, two, three. The light grows and waxes, turning now from red to green. The clouds themselves are moving to reveal enormous cavities of sky. They peel the morning like a fruit. Four separate arrowheads of duck rise and form two hundred yards away. They cross me trimly at an angle and I open up with a tentative right barrel for distance. As usual they are faster and higher than they seem. The minutes are ticking away in the heart. Guns open up nearer to hand, and by now the lake is in a general state of alert. The duck are coming fairly frequently now in groups, three, five, nine: very low and fast. Their wings purr, as they feather the sky, their necks reach. Higher again in mid-heaven there travel the clear formations of mallard, grouped like aircraft against the light, ploughing a soft slow flight. The guns squash the air and harry them as they pass, moving with a slow curling bias towards the open sea. Even higher and quite out of reach come chains of wild geese, their plaintive honking sounding clearly across the now sunny waters of Mareotis. There is hardly time to think now: for teal and wigeon like flung darts whistle over me and I begin to shoot slowly and methodically. Targets are so plentiful that it is often difficult to choose one in the split second during which it presents itself to the gun. Once or twice I catch myself taking a snap shot into a formation. If hit squarely a bird staggers and spins, pauses for a moment, and then sinks gracefully like a handkerchief from a lady’s hand. Reeds close over the brown bodies, but now the tireless Faraj is out poling about like mad to retrieve the birds. At times he leaps into the water with his galabeah tucked up to his midriff. His features blaze with excitement. From time to time he gives a shrill whoop.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I got animated, because I love talking about sex, and I impulsively decided that this was the right moment to begin to confess my Fold history to her, couching it first as a hypothetical case. All right then, I said to her, what did she think of the idea of some sort of chord on the piano that whenever you played it, stopped time? Say back when she was at Tufts, her piano teacher (someone on whom she’d told me she’d had a crush) had been working on a conclusive edition of a piece called Map , by a once forgotten but now increasingly respected twentieth-century composer named Mascon Albedo. Say that, in comparing the microfilmed manuscripts with the 1903 Yates and Boling edition of the work, Rhody’s piano teacher, Alan Sparkling, discovered a surprising number of significant errors and righted them. As his corrections accumulated, he began to feel not only that Map was a much greater work than anyone could have known, but also that he, Alan Sparkling, was developing a sure instinct for Albedo’s style. And his instinct told him that there was one chord which, even though it checked out as correct against several of the relevant manuscripts, still sounded quite wrong, or at least incomplete. It didn’t sound at all like the chord Albedo would have written at that moment in the piece. And it was a chord of crucial importance to the meaning of the work—a very soft chiming that arrived after a long stretch of murkier pianism that should have come off as strange and triumphant, but as it stood did not. The chord was surmounted by a fermata. Sensing a major discovery that would crown his new edition, Sparkling went back to Sewanee University, where Albedo’s manuscripts were kept, and looked again through some of the notebooks that the Master had kept during the time he was composing that particular movement of Map . Albedo’s later life had been decorated with odd incidents and minor scandals—there had been actual rumors of insanity. In the notebooks there were tantalizing annotations over certain motivic scraps—things like “Oh God, yes!” and “And here the Field develops greater potency.” Alan began to have the sense that Map had been more than a piece of piano music to Albedo; that it had constituted some sort of magic sonic recipe or spell for him. He also began strongly to suspect that the errors in the Yates and Boling edition had not been the fault of the publisher but had been intentional last-minute alterations on Albedo’s part, meant to disable whatever powers Map gave its performer, so that he, Albedo, could remain in sole possession of them. Finally, in one of the notebooks he came across a heavily erased part of a page under a large fermata and, with the help of a magnifying glass, was able to read the chord written there. It was an incomparably finer variant of the wrong-sounding fermata chord in Map .

• From The Fermata (1994)

  The high small round chrome lock on the curve of her trunk looked a little like what I imagined her asshole might look like. I decided that I would survive whatever happened. I waited a polite interval and then pulled over into the fast lane and sped up to pass her. We were on a slight downgrade. As I came closer to her, the same swooning feeling as before swept over me, except that now I and not she was bringing about this unspoken thrill; when our profiles were even I didn’t look over, knowing that she knew that I was passing her and wouldn’t look at me, because the rule in highway flirtation was not to look on the second pass. Instead I hit the clutch pedal and glided freely for a second or two right next to her, setting myself up mentally for the disengagement of the temporal drive-train, and then very slowly I pushed my glasses up on the bridge of my nose; when I let go of them the Smith woman and I were still side by side on the Mass Pike, but we weren’t moving forward. My radio was silent. My door was not easy to get open. I had to push with my shoulder to displace the jellied wind-flow. And the road surface around my car presented a strange sight: though motionless, it looked slightly foggy and indeterminate, as if photographed through a Vaselined lens; you couldn’t focus on it properly. When I gingerly got out, leaving my door open, and tiptoed around the back of my car, I found that the asphalt was in fact somewhat resilient underfoot; its speed relative to the soles of my shoes apparently made it impossible for the two physical surfaces to interact normally, and gave the road the characteristics of some sort of dense, even spongy ground-cover, like moss. The other oddity was that I heard hooting and roaring noises in my ears when I walked into or away from the direction that I had been driving: I supposed it was something to do with vectors and frozen sound waves and the Doppler effect, but I didn’t trouble myself over it.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Indeed, I seemed to want her more and more, the further into boyishness I ventured.Kitty herself, however, though she also smiled when the barber displayed me, smiled more broadly when the plait was re-affixed. ‘That’s more like it,’ she said, when I stood and brushed my skirts down. ‘What a fright you looked in short hair and a frock!’Back at Ginevra Road we found Walter waiting for us, and Mrs Dendy dishing up lunch; and it was here that I was given a new name, to match my bold new crop.For our debut at Camberwell we had thought that our ordinary names would do as well as any, and had been billed by the chairman as ‘Kitty Butler and Nancy Astley’. Now, however, we were a hit: Walter’s manager friend had offered us a four-week contract, and needed to know the names he should have printed on the posters. We knew we must keep Kitty‘s, for the sake of her successes of the past half-year; but Walter said ‘Astley’ was rather too common, and could we think of a better one? I didn’t mind, only said I should like to keep ‘Nan’ - since Kitty herself had re-christened me that; and we took our lunch, in consequence, with everybody volunteering names they thought would match it. Tootsie said ‘Nan Love’, Sims ‘Nan Sergeant’. Percy said, ‘Nan Scarlet - no, Nan Silver - no, Nan Gold ...’ Every name seemed to offer me some new and marvellous version of myself; it was like standing at the costumier’s rail and shrugging on the jackets.None, however, seemed to fit - till the Professor tapped the table, cleared his throat, and said: ‘Nan King’. And although I should like to be able to say - as other artistes do - that there was some terribly clever or romantic story behind the choosing of my stage-name - that we had opened a special book at a certain place, and found it there; that I had heard the word ‘King’ said in a dream, and quivered at it - I can give no better account of the matter than the truth: which was only that we needed a name, and the Professor said ‘Nan King’, and I liked it.It was as ‘Kitty Butler and Nan King’, therefore, that we returned to Camberwell that evening - to renew, and improve upon our success of the night before.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When this was done, and we had made our choices, he beckoned the man a little closer and murmured something to him; the waiter withdrew, and returned a minute later with a champagne bottle, which Mr Bliss proceeded ostentatiously to uncork. At that, there was a cheering at the other tables; and a woman began to sing, amidst much laughter and applause, that she wouldn’t call for sherry, and she wouldn’t call for beer, and she wouldn’t call for cham because she knew ’twould make her queer ... I thought of the postcard I would write when I got home: ‘I have had supper in a theatrical restaurant. Kitty made her debut at the Star and they are calling it a triumph...’ Meanwhile, Mr Bliss and Kitty chatted; and when next I concentrated on their talk I realised that it was rather serious. ‘Now,’ Mr Bliss was saying, ‘I am going to ask you to do something which, if I were any other kind of gentleman than a theatrical agent, I should be quite ashamed to. I am going to ask you to go about the city - and you must assist her, Miss Astley,’ he added when he saw me looking - ‘you must both of you go about the city and study the men!’ I gazed at Kitty and blinked, and she smiled back uncertainly. ‘Study the men?’ she said. ‘Scrutinise ’em!’ said Mr Bliss, sawing at a piece of cutlet. ‘Catch their characters, their little habits, their mannerisms and gaits. What are their histories? What are their secrets? Have they ambitions? Have they hopes and dreams? Have they sweethearts they have lost? Or have they only aching feet, and empty bellies?’ He waved his fork. ‘You must know it; and you must copy them, and make your audience know it in their turn.’ ‘Do you mean, then,’ I asked, not understanding, ‘to change Kitty’s act?’ ‘I mean, Miss Astley, to broaden Kitty’s repertoire. Her masher is a very fine fellow; but she cannot walk the Burlington Arcade, in lavender gloves, for ever.’ He gazed at Kitty again, then wiped his mouth with a napkin and spoke in a more confiding tone. ‘What think you of a policeman’s jacket? Or a sailor’s blouse? What think you of peg-top trousers or a pearly coat?’ He turned to me. ‘Only imagine, Miss Astley, all the handsome gentlemen’s toggery that languishes, at this very minute, at the bottom of some costumier’s hamper, waiting, simply waiting, for Kitty Butler to step inside it and lend it life! Only think of all those more than handsome fabrics - those ivory worsteds, those rippling silks, those crimson velvets and scarlet shalloons; only hear the snip of the tailor’s scissors, the prick of the sempstress’s needle; only imagine her success, decked as a soldier, or a coster, or a prince ...’

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In one month, I did thirty interviews. I needed to tell my story, in part because I had been so silenced during my life in the cult. My next venture began when I received a call from a concerned aunt of two teenage girls. They needed help leaving the same polygamist cult in which I was raised. Helpingthem was rather time-consuming and exhausting; yet I could not turn away. Looking at them was like looking at myself at that age. I kept thinking about the fact that no one had helped me at that time in my life. These two girls dressed in the same odd clothes I used to wear, and had the same unfashionable hairdos. Their marriages were about to be arranged to men old enough to be their fathers. I wanted the nation to see the untold experiences of young girls living under polygamy in Utah and other states. I was excited when the girls agreed to be interviewed by CBS for a 48 Hours program called "A House Divided." In 1999, soon after the filming of that program, I moved out of Utah with my five children and relocated to a small town in Colorado. My media exposure and experiences caught the attention of a professor at Denver University. She contacted Donna Sullivan, an International Human Rights Law professor at New York University. Professor Sullivan sponsored me and another survivor of polygamy to speak at the United Nations in March of 2002 at the annual Women's Conference. Ourtravel expenses were paid, and we were off to New York City. It was an amazing experience to be sitting in a room surrounded by women from almost every country discussing worldwide issues that affect women. Women from around the world had no idea that these issues of sexual slavery and exploitation existed in the United States. One woman wept and hugged me as I told her my story. We spoke to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among several other worldwide representatives. We did it! We got this information outside of Utah, and outside of the United States. After ten years on my own as a single mother, I married again, only to have it end in complete disaster in fewerthan two years. He was convincing and gentle, until we married. He soon became controlling and emotionally abusive to my daughters and me. I was blindsided by this, and even more distraught with myself for not recognizing these characteristics in him. Once I left the marriage, there wasn't a part of my life he didn't turn upside down, even with a restraining order in place. This quite painful experience forced me to look deeper at my core issues. I began counseling sessions again with a cult expert who also works with the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). She assisted me in confronting some lingering issues that were causing problems in my life. We discovered the parallels between my last marriage and cultlike relationships.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, ‘Tipped the velvet: what does that mean? It sounds like something you might do in a theatre...’Florence blushed. ‘You might try it,’ she said; ‘but I think the chairman would chuck you out...’ Then, while I still frowned, she parted her lips and showed me the tip of her tongue; and glanced, very quickly, at my lap. I had never known her do such a thing before, and I found myself terribly startled by it, and terribly stirred. It might just as well have been her lips that she had dipped to me: I felt my drawers grow damp, and my cheeks flush scarlet; and had to look away from her own warm gaze, to hide my confusion.I looked at Mrs Swindles at the bar, and at the pewter mugs that hung, in one long gleaming row, above her; and then I looked at the group of figures at the billiard table. And then, after a moment or two, I studied them a little harder. I said to Florence, ‘I thought you said it was to be all toms here? There are blokes over there.’‘Blokes? Are you sure?’ She turned to where I pointed, and gazed with me at the billiard players. They were rather rowdy, and half of them were clad in trousers and waistcoats, and sported prison crops. But as Florence studied them, she laughed. ‘Blokes? she said again. ‘Those are not blokes! Nancy, how could you think it?’I blinked, and looked again. I began to see... They were not men, but girls; they were girls - and they were rather like myself...I swallowed. I said, ‘Do they live as men, those girls?’Florence shrugged, not noticing the thickness in my voice. ‘Some do, I believe. Most dress as they please, and live as others care to find them.’ She caught my gaze. ‘I had rather thought, you know, that you must’ve done the same sort of thing, yourself...’‘Would you think me very foolish,’ I answered, ‘if I said that I had thought I was the only one... ?’Her gaze grew gentle, then. ‘How queer you are!’ she said mildly. ‘You have never tipped the velvet -’‘I didn’t say that I had never done it, you know; only that I never called it that.’‘Well. You use all sorts of peculiar phrases, then. You seem never to have seen a tom in a pair of trousers.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The long beautiful reception-rooms had been pierced with alcoves and unexpected corners to increase their already great seating-capacity and sometimes as many as two or three hundred guests sat down to elaborate and meaningless dinners — observing their host lost in the contemplation of a rose lying upon an empty plate before him. Yet his was not a remarkable distraction for he could offer to the nonentities of common conversation a smile — surprising as one who removes an upturned glass to show, hidden by it, some rare entomological creature whose scientific name he had not learned. What else is there to add? The small extravagances of his dress were hardly noticeable in one whose fortune had always seemed oddly matched against a taste for old flannel trousers and tweed coats. Now in his ice-smooth sharkskin with the scarlet cummerbund he seemed only what he should always have been — the richest and most handsome of the city’s bankers: those true foundlings of the gut. People felt that at last he had come into his own. This was how someone of his place and fortune should live. Only the diplomatic corps smelt in this new prodigality a run of hidden motives, a plot perhaps to capture the King, and began to haunt his drawing-room with their studied politenesses. Under the slothful or foppish faces one was conscious of curiosity stirring, a desire to study Nessim’s motives and designs, for nowadays the King was a frequent visitor to the great house. Meanwhile all this advanced the central situation not at all. It was as if the action which Nessim had been contemplating grew with such infinite slowness, like a stalactite, that there was time for all this to fill the interval — the rockets ploughing their furrows of sparks across the velvet sky, piercing deeper and ever deeper into the night where Justine and I lay, locked in each other’s arms and minds. In the still water of the fountains one saw the splash of human faces, ignited by these gold and scarlet stars as they rose hissing into heaven like thirsty swans. In the darkness, the warm hand on my arm, I could watch the autumn sky thrown into convulsions of coloured light with the calm of someone for whom the whole unmerited pain of the human world had receded and diffused itself — as pain does when it goes on too long, spreading from a specific member to flood a whole area of the body or the mind. The lovely grooves of the rockets upon the dark sky filled us only with the sense of a breath-taking congruence to the whole nature of the world of love which was soon to relinquish us.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  She sits on the couch with her legs crossed and sobs. “I messed up my life,” she says. “I don’t know, maybe I already destroyed it. I’m not sure what to do.” She tells me that her husband is a good man and that she has a satisfying marriage. “I actually love my husband,” she says. “We have such a sweet family, my kids are so wonderful, and they are everything I have always dreamed of. I have everything I wanted and maybe I’m just too greedy.” She then tells me about the night that made her realize that she had lost control of her life. “We usually meet in his office, but that weekend was different because both his wife and my husband were away, and we thought it was a good opportunity for us to spend the night together. We never did that before and I think both of us were excited but also anxious.” She asked her babysitter to stay the night with the kids, and Josh reserved a room in a hotel across the street from his office. Eve tells me that if her husband looks at the app where they can see each other’s location, he could easily find her. They had installed the app earlier in the year so they could keep track of their daughter, who had just turned twelve and had started walking to school on her own. “The app became a huge problem, as I was aware that my family could always see where I was. I know this doesn’t sound believable, but I really hate lying,” she says, almost apologizing. “I would rather not give any explanation than to have to lie. I decided to turn my phone off that night, so I wouldn’t have to lie about where I was.” She sighs. “Oh God. What a mess.” Eve pauses, tears in her eyes. “My night with Josh was even better than I had imagined it would be. It is hard to put into words how I felt because I didn’t know a feeling like that even existed. We were finally in a peaceful place, just the two of us, and we had what seemed like an endless amount of time. It felt like we were a real couple, completely devoted to each other, completely in each other’s bodies and minds. We had sex for hours and I kept whispering in Josh’s ear, ‘I love you. You make me so, so happy.’ “‘I know, baby, I’m happy too,’ he said. “‘Do you think we can make this place our home?’ I asked him, referring to the small hotel room that seemed so perfect in that moment.”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  So if human communication is so colorful and varied, why do we assume prayer is flat and one-dimensional? I’ve met people who think that prayer is talking to God on your knees by your bed at night. Period. Or you only talk to God during a specific thirty-second chunk of a church service when the pastor is leading the congregation. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Like any relationship, there are countless creative ways to pray. If prayer were a restaurant menu, it wouldn’t be In-N-Out. It would be the Cheesecake Factory. I’m not knocking In-N-Out. They keep it simple on purpose, and they do a good job. But Cheesecake Factory? Seriously, there are thirty-four choices just on the cheesecake portion of the menu. I didn’t even know that was possible. I’m pretty sure heaven has a Cheesecake Factory. Like cheesecake, there are more ways to pray than you might think. Different personalities, situations, or needs call for different approaches to prayer. In the following pages, we’re going to explore a few of these approaches. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s enough to get you started. Think of this like a menu for prayer. I’ve grouped the items into categories for convenience, but you can use them however you wish. Pick whatever sounds good. Mix it up. Try something new. Find your favorites, then customize them. It’s up to you. SPEAKING Speaking is the most obvious way to pray, but it includes a lot more than just saying words. Here are some ways you can pray that relate to speaking. Praying silently is easy, convenient, and probably the most common way people pray when they are praying alone. Praying out loud, even when you are alone, helps you to focus your thoughts so your mind doesn’t wander. It also helps you remember what you are praying for during the rest of the day. Reading and thinking out loud have both been shown to help cognition and memory. 1

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The Mediterranean is an absurdly small sea; the length and greatness of its history makes us dream it larger than it is. Alexandria indeed — the true no less than the imagined — lay only some hundreds of sea-miles to the south. ‘I am on my way to Smyrna’ said Balthazar, ‘from where I was going to post you this.’ He laid upon the scarred old table the immense bundle of manuscript I had sent him — papers now seared and starred by a massive interlinear of sentences, paragraphs and question-marks. Seating himself opposite with his Mephistophelean air, he said in a lower, more hesitant tone: ‘I have debated in myself very long about telling you some of the things I have put down here. At times it seemed a folly and an impertinence. After all, your concern — was it with us as real people or as “characters”? I didn’t know. I still don’t. These pages may lose me your friendship without adding anything to the sum of your knowledge. You have been painting the city, touch by touch, upon a curved surface — was your object poetry or fact? If the latter, then there are things which you have a right to know.’ He still had not explained his amazing appearance before me, so anxious was he about the central meaning of the visitation. He did so now, noticing my bewilderment at the cloud of fire-flies in the normally deserted bay. He smiled. ‘The ship is delayed for a few hours with engine trouble. It is one of Nessim’s. The captain is Hasim Kohly, an old friend: perhaps you remember him? No. Well, I guessed from your description roughly where you must be living; but to be landed on your doorstep like this, I confess!’ His laughter was wonderful to hear once more. But I hardly listened, for his words had plunged me into a ferment, a desire to study his interlinear, to revise — not my book (that has never been of the slightest importance to me for it will never even be published), but my view of the city and its inhabitants. For my own personal Alexandria had become, in all this loneliness, as dear as a philosophy of introspection, almost a monomania. I was so filled with emotion I did not know what to say to him. ‘Stay with us, Balthazar —’ I said, ‘stay awhile.…’ ‘We leave in two hours’ he said, and patting the papers before him: ‘This may give you visions and fevers’ he added doubtfully. ‘Good’ I said — ‘I ask for nothing better.’ ‘We are all still real people’ he said, ‘whatever you try and do to us — those of us who are still alive. Melissa, Pursewarden — they can’t answer back because they are dead. At least, so one thinks.’ ‘So one thinks. The best retorts always come from beyond the grave.’