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.

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• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She had gone to Welch High School, and it seemed not to have occurred to her to live anywhere else. To leave West Virginia, even to leave Welch, would have been unthinkably disloyal, like deserting your family. “Just because I live here now,” I said, “doesn’t mean I couldn’t move.” “That would be a terrible mistake. You live here. Think of what you’d miss. Your family and friends. And senior year is the highlight of your entire high school experience. You’d miss Senior Day. You’d miss the senior prom.” • • • I walked home slowly that evening, thinking over what Miss Katona had said. It was true that many grown-ups in Welch talked about how senior year in high school was the highlight of their lives. On Senior Day, something the school had set up to keep juniors from dropping out, the seniors wore funny clothes and got to skip classes. It was not exactly a compelling reason to stay on in Welch for one more year. As for the senior prom, I had about as much chance of getting a date as Dad did of ending corruption in the unions. I’d been speaking hypothetically about moving to New York a year early. But as I walked, I realized that if I wanted to, I could up and go. I could really do it. Maybe not right now, not this minute—it was the middle of the school year—but I could wait until I finished eleventh grade. By then I’d be seventeen. I had almost a hundred dollars saved, enough to get me started in New York. I could leave Welch in under five months. I got so excited that I started running. I ran, faster and faster, along the Old Road overhung with bare-branched trees, then on to Grand View and up Little Hobart Street, past the barking yard-dogs and the frost-covered coal piles, past the Noes’ house and the Parishes’ house, the Halls’ house and the Renkos’ house until, gasping for air, I came to a stop in front of our house. For the first time in years, I noticed my half-finished yellow paint job. I’d spent so much time in Welch trying to make things a little bit better, but nothing had worked. In fact, the house was getting worse. One of the supporting pillars was starting to buckle. The leak in the roof over Brian’s bed had gotten so bad that when it rained, he slept under an inflatable raft Mom had won in a sweepstakes by sending in Benson & Hedges 100s packages we’d dug out of trash cans. If I left, Brian could have my old bed. My mind was made up. I was going to New York City as soon as the school year was out. I clambered up the mountainside to the rear of the house—the stairs had completely rotted through—and climbed through the back window we now used as a door.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  That night I was excited because I had what I thought was an unbelievable stumper: A frog's eyeballs go into its mouth when it's swallowing; or a frog's blood is green. "That's easy," Liz said. "Green blood is the lie." "I can't believe you guessed it right away!" "We dissected frogs in biology." I was still talking about how hilarious and bizarre it was that a frog used its eyeballs to swallow when Mom walked through the door carrying a white box tied with red string. "Key lime pie for my girls!" she announced, holding up the box. Her face was glowing and she had a giddy smile. "It's a special occasion, because our lives are about to change." As Mom cut the pie and passed the slices around, she told us that while she'd been at that recording studio, she'd met a man. He was a record producer named Mark Parker, and he'd told her that the reason she wasn't landing gigs as a backup singer was that her voice was too distinctive and she was upstaging the lead singers. "Mark said I wasn't cut out to play second fiddle to anyone," Mom explained. He told her she had star quality, and that night he took her out to dinner and they talked about how to jump-start her career. "He's so smart and funny," Mom said. "You girls will adore him." "Is he serious, or is he just a tire-kicker?" I asked. "Watch it, Bean," Mom said • • • Bean's not my real name, of course, but that's what everyone calls me. Bean. It wasn't my idea. When I was born, Mom named me Jean, but the first time Liz laid eyes on me, she called me Jean the Bean because I was teeny like a bean and because it rhymed—Liz was always rhyming—and then simply Bean because it was shorter. But sometimes she would go and make it longer, calling me the Beaner or Bean Head, maybe Clean Bean when I'd taken a bath, Lean Bean because I was so skinny, Queen Bean just to make me feel good, or Mean Bean if I was in a bad mood. Once, when I got food poisoning after eating a bowl of bad chili, she called me Green Bean, and then later, when I was hugging the toilet and feeling even worse, she called me Greener Beaner. Liz couldn't resist playing with words. That was why she loved the name of our new town, Lost Lake. "Let's go look for it," she'd say, or "I wonder who lost it," or "Maybe the lake should ask for directions." We'd moved to Lost Lake from Pasadena four months ago, on New Year's Day of 1970. Mom said a change of scenery would give us a fresh start for the new decade. Lost Lake was a pretty neat place, in my opinion.

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

  So I tell them everything I’ve been thinking or talking about lately that has helped me get my work done. There are some quotes and examples from other writers that have inspired me and that I hand out every session. There are some things my friends remind me of when I call them, worried, bored, discouraged, and trying to scrounge together cab fare to the bridge. What follows in this book is what I’ve learned along the way, what I pass along to each new batch of students. This is not like other writing books, some of which are terrific. It’s more personal, more like my classes. As of today, here is almost every single thing I know about writing. Part OneWriting Getting StartedThe very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy—finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they’ve longed to do since childhood. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat. Some lose faith. Their sense of self and story shatters and crumbles to the ground. Historically they show up for the first day of the workshop looking like bright goofy ducklings who will follow me anywhere, but by the time the second class rolls around, they look at me as if the engagement is definitely off. “I don’t even know where to start,” one will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don’t worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down. Now, the amount of material may be so overwhelming that it can make your brain freeze. When I had been writing food reviews for a number of years, there were so many restaurants and individual dishes in my brainpan that when people asked for a recommendation, I couldn’t think of a single restaurant where I’d ever actually eaten.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When we left the Troc, however, it was to drive to Deacon’s Music Hall, in Islington. This was an altogether different place: small and old, with an audience drawn from the streets and courts of Clerkenwell - and inclined, in consequence, to be rather rough. We didn’t mind a rowdy crowd, as a rule, for it could be unnerving to work the prim West End theatres, where the ladies were too gentle or well-dressed to bang their hands together or to stamp, and where only the drunken swells of the promenade really whistled and shouted as a proper music-hall audience should. We had never worked Deacon’s before, but we had once done a week at Sam Collins’, up the road. There the crowd had been humble and gay - working-people, women with babies in their arms - the kind of audience I liked best of all, because it was the kind of which, until very recently, I had myself been a member. The Deacon’s crowd were noticeably shabbier than the folk at Islington Green, but no less kind; if anything, indeed, they were inclined to be kinder, jollier, more willing to be moved and thrilled and entertained. Our first week there went well - they packed the hall for us. It was on the Saturday night of the second week that the trouble came - on a Saturday night at the end of September, a night of fog - one of those grey-brown evenings, when all the streets and buildings of the city seem to waver a little at the edges. The roads are always choked on such a night, and on this particular evening the traffic between Windmill Street and Islington was horribly slow, for there had been an accident along the way. A van had overturned; a dozen boys had rushed to sit upon the horse’s head, to stop the beast from rising; and our own carriage could not pass for half an hour or more. We arrived at Deacon’s terribly late, to find the place as wild as the street we had just left. The crowd had had to wait for us, and were impatient. Some poor artiste had been sent on to sing a comic song and keep them occupied, but they had started to heckle him quite mercilessly; at last - the fellow had begun a clog dance - two roughs had jumped upon the stage and pulled the boots from him, and tossed them up to the gallery. When we arrived, breathless and flustered but ready to sing, the air was thick with shouts and bellows and screams of laughter. The two roughs had hold of the comic singer by the ankles, and were holding him so that his head dangled over the flames of the footlights, in an attempt to set fire to his hair. The conductor and a couple of stage-hands had hold of the roughs, and were trying to pull them into the wings.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A layer of yellow paint, I realized, would completely transform our dingy gray house. It would look, at least from the outside, almost like the houses other people lived in. I was so excited by the prospect of living in a perky yellow home that I could barely sleep that night. I got up early the next day and tied my hair back, ready to begin the housepainting. “If we all work together, we can get it done in a day or two,” I told everyone. But Dad said 93 Little Hobart Street was such a dump that we shouldn’t waste time or energy on it that we could be devoting to the Glass Castle. Mom said she thought bright yellow houses were tacky. Brian and Lori said we didn’t have the ladders and scaffolding we needed. Dad was making no visible progress on the Glass Castle, and I knew that the can of yellow paint would sit on the porch unless I undertook the job myself. I’d borrow a ladder or make one, I decided. I was certain that once everyone saw the amazing transformation of the house begin, they’d all join in. Out on the porch, I opened the can and stirred the paint with a stick, blending in the oil that had risen to the surface until the paint, which was the color of buttercups, had turned creamy. I dipped in a fat brush and spread the paint along the old clapboard siding in long, smooth strokes. It went on bright and glossy and looked even better than I had hoped. I started on the far side of the porch, around the door that went into the kitchen. In a few hours, I had covered everything that could be reached from the porch. Parts of the front were still unpainted, and so were the sides, but I had used less than a quarter of the paint. If everyone else helped, we could paint all the areas I couldn’t reach, and in no time we would have a cheerful yellow house. But neither Mom nor Dad nor Brian nor Lori nor Maureen was impressed. “So part of the front of the house is yellow now,” Lori said. “That’s really going to turn things around for us.” I was going to have to finish the job myself. I tried to make a ladder from bits of scrap wood, but it kept collapsing whenever I put my weight on it. I was still trying to build a sturdy ladder when, during a cold snap a few days later, my can of paint froze solid. When it got warm enough for the paint to thaw, I opened the can. During the freeze, the chemicals had separated and the once-smooth liquid was as lumpy and runny as curdled milk.

• From City of Night (1963)

  The mob frenzy is like an epidemic out of control, claiming more victims each darkening moment. I squeeze through the revelers, and I feel myself once again exploding with excitement. I move from bar to bar, from drink to drink, from person to person—pushed along by that excitement which I know is suspended precariously over a threatening chasm of despair. But if I can go on!—hectically!—if I can retain my equilibrium on this level of excitement, of liquored sobriety!—then the swallowing void, though already yawning, can be avoided. Night races toward midnight. “Let’s ball!” A woman’s arm curls tightly about my waist, whirls me around.... Someone blows a shrill whistle at me, its paper body unfurling suddenly like a rigid-spined worm, tipped with tiny fluttering feathers quivering tensely, mockingly before my face. Rattles shake like at a children’s party out of control. Noises blast their way into silence, into a blare outlasting sound. Drums, voices, laughter! A raging hurricane lashing at the city. A symphony gone mad. Stray costumes appear. A band of red-dressed men and women in black-tentacled masks dance prematurely in the maddened street—red like flashing rubies crushed together, angry flames burning insanely bright before turning into smoke. Redly.... Roses pressed against each other in screaming shapes of red, red shrieking red. And like a flock of startled red-winged bats, the group disbands in separate scarlet bodies caracoling along the streets to join other screaming groups. Confetti like colored snow pours from the balconies, quickly stirred by shifting, stamping feet.... Streamers float, curl gracefully, are carried aloft by the winter night-breeze—suspire in the air as if reluctant to be trampled on along the littered streets. Midnight! The revelers sweep into the streets like tumblers into an arena. Mardi Gras! CHI-CHI: Hey, World! 1 AS IF THE DOOR—THE ONLY DOOR—to an insane asylum had suddenly been thrust open, the crowds rocketed along the streets, flowed in currents, chose sides; howled the purple laughter; pushed, screamed, shouted, shrieked, roared—crushed against each other in a jigsaw puzzle of unfitting colored pieces. Whistles, horns! A churning, violently tossing ocean of angry cacophonous sounds. Multikeyed laughter erupting in unison like a fire-bursting sky rocket scattering a diffusion of burning sparks into the streets. Over the broken noises, momentarily the scream of a woman threatens hysteria, reaches its strident plateau, breaks, veers from its panicked course, becomes a longly sustained joyous laughing, reverting jarringly into an ear-knifing sirenshriek. Floating to the surface of that raging storm of erratic sounds, the beat of bongos underscores the streetmadness as if somewhere a spontaneous parade has begun. Having waited in their rooms for this magic witching hour to convert them into women to the full extent of drag, the queens are the first to appear in costume. Most of the others will wait until the morning. But the queens have already come out anxiously like prisoners fleeing a jail.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Which is true.’ ‘Well...’ ‘Go on! Take your candle!’ I rose, then took hold of her hands and pulled her to her feet; and she - infected at last by my new recklessness - gave another giggle, put her fingers to her lips, then tip-toed from the room. While she was gone I lit a lamp, but kept it turned very low. She had left her cap upon the bed: I picked it up and set it on my own head, and when she returned five minutes later and saw me wearing it she laughed out loud. She carried a dewy bottle and a glass. ‘Did you see any ladies?’ I asked her. ‘I saw a couple, but they never saw me. They were at the scullery door and - oh! they was kissing the guts out of each other!’ I imagined her standing in the shadows, watching them. I went to her and took the bottle, then peeled away the lead wrapper from its neck. ‘You’ve shaken it up,’ I said. ‘It’ll go off with a real bang!’ She put her hands over her ears, and shut her eyes. I felt the cork squirm in the glass for a second; then it leapt from my fingers, and I gave a yell: ‘Quick! Quick! Bring a glass!’ A creamy fountain of foam had risen from the neck of the bottle, and now drenched my fingers and soaked my legs - I was still, of course, clad in the little white toga. Zena seized the glass from the tray and held it, giggling again, beneath the spurting wine. We went and sat upon the bed, Zena with the glass in her hands, me sipping from the frothing bottle. When she drank, she coughed; but I filled her glass again and said: ‘Drink up! Just like those cows downstairs.’ And she drank, and drank again, until her cheeks were red. I felt my own head grow giddier with every sip I took, and the pulse at my swollen face grow thicker. At last I said, ‘Oh! How it hurts!’, and Zena set down her glass to put her fingers, very gently, upon my cheek. When she had held them there for a second or two, I took her hand in my own, and leaned and kissed her. She didn’t draw away until I made to lie upon the bed and pull her with me. Then she said: ‘Oh, we cannot! What if Mrs Lethaby should come?’ ‘She won’t. She is leaving me, as a kind of punishment.’

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  I know that you have different temperaments, and that as a result there is division between you, but enough of strife. I am your grandfather. I am ready, and willing, to help you. Dry your eyes.’ So spoke dread Saturn. Now I will leave the gods in heaven, and return to the events of earth. It is time for the tournament. Of arms, and the men, I sing. PART FOUR The festivities that day in Athens were glorious. The vigour of May entered every person, so that all were bold and playful. They danced and jousted all that Monday, or spent the day in the service of Venus. The night was for rest. All were eager to rise early and to witness the great fight. On that morning there was a great bustle and noise, in the inns and lodgings, as the horses and the suits of armour were prepared for the battle. The knights and the companies of nobles, mounted on stallions and fine steeds, rode out to the palace. If you had been there, you would have seen armour so ornate and so exotic that it seemed to be spun out of gold and steel. The spears, the head-armour, and the horse-armour, glittered in the morning sun while the golden mail and coats of arms glowed in the throng. In the saddle were lords wearing richly decorated robes, followed by the knights of their retinue and their squires; the squires themselves were busy fastening the heads to the shafts of the spears, buckling up the helmets and fitting the shields with leather straps. This was no time to be idle. The horses were foaming and champing on their golden bridles. The armourers were running here and there with file and hammer. There were yeomen in procession, and also many of the common people with thick staffs in their hands. All of them rode, or marched, to the notes of pipes, trumpets, bugles and kettledrums blaring out the sound of battle. In the palace there were small groups of people in excited debate, all of them discussing the merits of the Theban knights. One had an opinion, which another contradicted. One said this, another said that. Some supported the knight with the black beard, while others commended the bald fellow. Yet others gave the palm to the knight with the shaggy hair. ‘I tell you this,’ one courtier said, ‘he looks like a fighter. That axe of his must weight twenty pounds at least.’ ‘Never!’ So, long after the sun had risen, the halls rang with gossip and speculation. The noble lord, Theseus, had already been woken by the music of minstrels and by the noise of the crowd. Yet he remained in the privy chambers of his palace until Palamon and Arcite, equally honoured guests, were brought into the courtyard. Theseus appeared at a great window, where he sat in state as if he were a god enthroned.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  At first it seemed to be asleep, but then it blinked and looked up at Dad. Dad continued staring, his eyes in a fierce squint. After a minute the alligator thrashed its tail, looked away, and slid into the water. “See, you just have to communicate your position,” Dad said. “Maybe he would have gone for a swim anyway,” Brian whispered. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Didn’t you see how nervous that gator got? Dad made him do it.” We followed Dad to the lion’s den, but the lions were sleeping, so Dad said we should leave them alone. The aardvark was busy Hoovering up ants, and Dad said you shouldn’t disturb eating animals, so we passed it by and went on to the cheetah’s cage, which was about as big as our living room and surrounded by a chain fence. The lone cheetah paced back and forth, the muscles in his shoulders shifting with each step. Dad folded his arms on his chest and studied the cheetah. “He’s a good animal—fastest four-footed creature on the planet,” he declared. “Not happy about being in this damn cage, but he’s resigned to it, and he’s no longer angry. Let’s see if he’s hungry.” Dad took me to the concession stand. He told the lady running it that he had a rare medical condition and couldn’t eat cooked meat so he’d like to buy a raw hamburger. “Yeah, right,” the salesclerk said. She told Dad the zoo did not allow the sale of uncooked meat, because foolish people tried to feed it to the animals. “I’d like to feed her lard ass to the animals,” Dad muttered. He bought me a bag of popcorn, and we returned to the cheetah cage. Dad squatted outside the fence opposite the cheetah. The animal came closer to the bars and studied him curiously. Dad kept looking at him, but not in the angry-eyed way he had stared down the alligator. The cheetah looked back. Finally, he sat down. Dad stepped over the chain fence and knelt right next to the bars where the cheetah was sitting. The cheetah remained still, looking at Dad. Dad slowly raised his right hand and put it up against the cage. The cheetah looked at Dad’s hand but didn’t move. Dad calmly put his hand between the iron bars of the cage and rested it on the cheetah’s neck. The cheetah moved the side of his face against Dad’s hand, as if asking to be petted. Dad gave the cheetah the kind of hardy, vigorous petting you’d give a big dog. “Situation under control,” Dad said and beckoned us over. We climbed under the chain fence and knelt around Dad while he petted the cheetah. By then a few people had begun to gather. One man was calling to us to get back behind the chain fence. We ignored him. I knelt close to the cheetah. My heart was beating fast, but I wasn’t scared, only excited.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  He promised Brian and me that we’d be shooting that bow and arrow like a couple of full-blooded Indian kids by the time we came back. If we ever came back. Hell, we might decide to live in the Grand Canyon permanently. We started out early the next morning. Once we got north of Phoenix, past all the tract-house suburbs, the traffic thinned, and Dad started going faster and faster. “There ain’t no better feeling than being on the move,” he said. We were out in the desert now, the telephone poles snapping past. “Hey, Mountain Goat,” he hollered. “How fast do you think I can make this car go?” “Faster than the speed of light!” I said. I leaned over the front seat and watched the needle on the speedometer creep up. We were doing ninety miles an hour. “You’re gonna see that little needle go all the way off the dial,” Dad said. I could see his leg move as he stepped on the gas. We’d rolled down the windows, and maps and art paper and cigarette ashes were whipping around our heads. The speedometer needle crept past one hundred, the last number on the dial, and pushed into the empty space beyond. The car started shuddering, but Dad didn’t let up on the accelerator. Mom covered her head with her arms and told Dad to slow down, but that only made him press on the gas even harder. Suddenly, there was a clattering noise under the car. I looked back to make sure no important part had fallen off, and saw a cone of gray smoke billowing behind us. Just then white steam that smelled like iron started pouring out from the sides of the hood and blowing past the windows. The shuddering increased, and with a terrible coughing, clunking noise, the car began to slow. Soon it was going at no more than a crawl. Then the engine died altogether. We coasted for a few yards in silence before the car stopped. “Now you’ve done it,” Mom said. We kids and Dad got out and pushed the car to the side of the road while Mom steered. Dad lifted the hood. I watched while he and Brian studied the smoking, grease-encrusted engine and discussed the parts by name. Then I went to sit in the car with Mom, Lori, and Maureen. Lori gave me a disgusted look, as if she thought it was my fault that the car had broken down. “Why do you always encourage him?” she asked. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Dad will fix it.” We sat there for a long time. I could see buzzards circling high in the distance, which reminded me of that ingrate Buster. Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature. Finally, Dad shut the hood.

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Indeed, part of the pleasure, the giddiness of the performance is in the recognition of a radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender in the face of cultural configurations of causal unities that are regularly assumed to be natural and necessary. In the place of the law of heterosexual coherence, we see sex and gender denaturalized by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity. The notion of gender parody defended here does not assume that there is an original which such parodic identities imitate. Indeed, the parody is of the very notion of an original; just as the psychoanalytic notion of gender identification is constituted by a fantasy of a fantasy, the transfiguration of an Other who is always already a “figure” in that double sense, so gender parody reveals that the original identity after which gender fashions itself is an imitation without an origin. To be more precise, it is a production which, in effect—that is, in its effect—postures as an imitation. This perpetual displacement

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had some squeamishness upon me about such matters, yet. And Diana, I knew, would have been furious. This, as I have said, was sometime in the autumn of that year. I remember that time, and the two or three months that followed it, very well, for they were busy ones: it was as if my stay with Diana were acquiring a kind of hectic intensity, as some sick people are said to do, as it hurtled towards its end. Maria, for example, gave a party at her house. Dickie threw a party on a boat - hired it to sail with us from Charing Cross to Richmond, and we danced, till four in the morning, to an all-girl band. Christmas we spent at Kettner’s, eating goose in a private room; New Year was celebrated at the Cavendish Club: our table grew so loud and ribald, Miss Bruce again approached us, to complain about our manners. And then, in January, came Diana’s fortieth birthday; and she was persuaded to celebrate it, at Felicity Place itself, with a fancy-dress ball. We called it a ball, but it was not really so grand as that. For music there was only a woman with a piano; and what dancing there was - in the dining-room with the carpet rolled back - was rather tame. No one, however, came for the sake of a waltz. They came for Diana’s reputation, and for mine. They came for the wine and the food and the rose-tipped cigarettes. They came for the scandal. They came, and marvelled. The house, for a start, we made wonderful. We hung velvet from the walls and, from the ceiling, spangles; and we shut off all the lamps, and lit the rooms entirely with candles. The drawing-room we cleared of furniture, leaving only the Turkey rug, on which we placed cushions. The marble floor of the hall we scattered with roses - we placed roses, too, to smoke upon the fires: by the end of the night you felt ill with it. There was champagne to drink, and brandies, and wine with spice in: Diana had this heated in a copper bowl above a spirit-lamp. All the food she had sent over from the Solferino. They did her a cold roast after the manner of the Romans, goose stuffed with turkey stuffed with chicken stuffed with quail - the quail, I think, having a truffle in it. There were also oysters, which sat upon the table in a barrel marked Whitstable; however, one lady, unused to the trick of the shells, tried to open one with a cigar-knife. The blade slipped, and cut her finger almost to the bone; and after she had bled into the ice, no one much cared for them.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  He promised Brian and me that we’d be shooting that bow and arrow like a couple of full-blooded Indian kids by the time we came back. If we ever came back. Hell, we might decide to live in the Grand Canyon permanently. We started out early the next morning. Once we got north of Phoenix, past all the tract-house suburbs, the traffic thinned, and Dad started going faster and faster. “There ain’t no better feeling than being on the move,” he said. We were out in the desert now, the telephone poles snapping past. “Hey, Mountain Goat,” he hollered. “How fast do you think I can make this car go?” “Faster than the speed of light!” I said. I leaned over the front seat and watched the needle on the speedometer creep up. We were doing ninety miles an hour. “You’re gonna see that little needle go all the way off the dial,” Dad said. I could see his leg move as he stepped on the gas. We’d rolled down the windows, and maps and art paper and cigarette ashes were whipping around our heads. The speedometer needle crept past one hundred, the last number on the dial, and pushed into the empty space beyond. The car started shuddering, but Dad didn’t let up on the accelerator. Mom covered her head with her arms and told Dad to slow down, but that only made him press on the gas even harder. Suddenly, there was a clattering noise under the car. I looked back to make sure no important part had fallen off, and saw a cone of gray smoke billowing behind us. Just then white steam that smelled like iron started pouring out from the sides of the hood and blowing past the windows. The shuddering increased, and with a terrible coughing, clunking noise, the car began to slow. Soon it was going at no more than a crawl. Then the engine died altogether. We coasted for a few yards in silence before the car stopped. “Now you’ve done it,” Mom said. We kids and Dad got out and pushed the car to the side of the road while Mom steered. Dad lifted the hood. I watched while he and Brian studied the smoking, grease-encrusted engine and discussed the parts by name. Then I went to sit in the car with Mom, Lori, and Maureen. Lori gave me a disgusted look, as if she thought it was my fault that the car had broken down. “Why do you always encourage him?” she asked. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Dad will fix it.” We sat there for a long time. I could see buzzards circling high in the distance, which reminded me of that ingrate Buster. Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature. Finally, Dad shut the hood.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Cook’s Tale Heere bigynneth the Cookes Tale There was a London apprentice, bound to the victuallers’ trade. I am in the same guild. That’s how I heard about him. He was as merry as a goldfinch in a hedge; he was very good looking with a dark complexion and short dark curls. He was a little short, but that did not matter. He was, to put it in a phrase, well groomed. He could dance so nimbly that he was known as Peter the Performer. He was as full of love and lust as the hive is full of sweet honey. Any girl who met him was sure to have a good time. He would sing and dance at every wedding party, and he preferred the tavern to his shop. If there was any procession going down Cheapside, he would leap from behind the counter and stay in the street until he had seen everything. He would jump up and down and cheer as if his life depended on it. His fellow apprentices used to join him, and become very boisterous. You know how apprentices are. Anything for a laugh. A song and dance are better than work. They also used to make appointments to meet in a certain secret place and play at dice. Peter was easily the best dice-player in the city and, in these out- of-the-way dives, he spent his money very freely. It was not exactly his money, however, as his employer discovered. The cash box was often mysteriously empty. A master will suffer for the sins of a wayward apprentice. He may have no part in the love games, or the revelry, or the gambling, yet he will pay for them in the end. That is sure. Peter might play well on the guitar and the fiddle but, as far as I am concerned, a debauched apprentice is nothing better than a thief. In a man of low degree, honesty and high living can never come together. In any event the apprentice stayed with his master until he had finished his seven years’ indenture. His employer scolded him and shouted at him. There were even times when Peter was led off in shame to Newgate prison, with the minstrels parading before him. But nothing seemed to do any good. At the end of the seven years, when Peter asked for his certificate of release, his employer remembered the old saying: ‘It is better to get rid of a rotten apple before it infects the rest of the barrel.’ It is exactly the same with a dissolute servant. Better to dismiss him before he corrupts the others. So the master gave Peter his release, wished him bad luck, and sent him on his way. Peter went off in high spirits, ready to begin a life of freedom and debauchery wherever he could find it. There is no thief without an accomplice, someone who can help him waste and spend any money there is to be found by good or evil means. In fact Peter had already sent his bed and his belongings to a companion in sin. Now this companion had a wife. She pretended to own a shop, but in fact she was a prostitute - ‘Oh,’ exclaimed the Prioress. ‘Please. No more.’ ‘That’s enough,’ Harry Bailey said. ‘I don’t mind dirty stories. But I draw the line at whores. Whatever are you thinking of, man? There are nuns among us.’ Roger was a little abashed. ‘I didn’t mean to offend -’ ‘Well, you have offended. Sit on your saddle and stay silent. Someone else will have to tell a story.’ Heere endeth the Cookes Tale

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I had spent a lot of time imagining what New York would be like, but the one thing that had never occurred to me was that the opportunities would come so easily. Aside from having to wear those embarrassing red-and-yellow uniforms with matching floppy hats, I loved the job. The lunch and dinner rushes were always exciting, with the lines backing up at the counter, the cashiers shouting orders over the microphones, the grill guys shoveling hamburgers through the flame-broiling conveyer belt, everyone running from the fixings counter to the drinks station to the infrared fries warmer, staying on top of the orders, the manager jumping in to help whenever a crisis cropped up. We got 20 percent off on our meals, and for the first few weeks there, I had a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk shake every day for lunch. • • • In the middle of the summer, Lori found us an apartment in a neighborhood we could afford—the South Bronx. The yellow art deco building must have been pretty fancy when it opened, but now graffiti covered the outside walls, and the cracked mirrors in the lobby were held together with duct tape. Still, it had what Mom called good bones. Our apartment was bigger than the entire house on Little Hobart Street, and way fancier. It had shiny oak parquet floors, a foyer with two steps leading down into the living room—where I slept—and, off to the side, a bedroom that became Lori’s. We also had a kitchen with a working refrigerator and a gas stove that had a pilot light, so you didn’t need matches to get it going, you just turned the dial, listened to the clicking, then watched the circle of blue flame flare up through the tiny holes in the burner. My favorite room was the bathroom. It had a black-and-white tile floor, a toilet that flushed with a powerful whoosh, a tub so deep you could submerge yourself completely in it, and hot water that never ran out. It didn’t bother me that the apartment was in a rough neighborhood; we’d always lived in rough neighborhoods. Puerto Rican kids hung out on the block at all hours, playing music, dancing, sitting on abandoned cars, clustering at the entrance to the elevated subway station and in front of the bodega that sold single cigarettes called loosies. I got jumped a number of times. People were always telling me that if I was robbed, I should hand over my money rather than risk being killed. But I was darned if I was going to give some stranger my hard-earned cash, and I didn’t want to become known in the neighborhood as an easy target, so I always fought back. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. What worked best was to keep my wits about me. Once, as I was getting on the train, some guy tried to grab my purse, but I jerked it back and the strap broke.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I asked Liz. "I have no idea," Liz said. "I do. I have a good feeling about this one." Mom had been going into the city a lot ever since we had moved to Lost Lake, a little town in the Colorado Desert of southern California. Usually she was gone for only a night or two, never this long. We didn't know exactly when she'd be back, and since the telephone had been turned off—Mom was arguing with the phone company about some long-distance calls she said she didn't make—she had no way of calling us. Still, it didn't seem like a big deal. Mom's career had always taken up a sizeable chunk of her time. Even when we were younger, she'd have a sitter or a friend watch us while she flew off to some place like Nashville. Liz and I were used to being on our own. Liz was in charge, since she was fifteen and I'd just turned twelve, but I wasn't the kind of kid who needed to be babied. When Mom was away, all we ate was chicken potpies; I loved them and could eat them every night. Liz said that if you had a glass of milk with your chicken potpie, you were getting a dinner that included all four food groups—meat, vegetables, grain, and dairy—so it was the perfect diet. Plus, they were fun to eat. You each got your very own pie in the nifty little tinfoil pie plate, and you could do whatever you wanted with it. I liked to break up the crust and mush it together with the bits of carrots and peas and the yellow gunk. Liz thought mushing it all together was uncouth. It also made the crust soggy, and to her, what made the chicken potpies so appealing was the contrast between the crispy crust and the goopy filling. She preferred to leave the crust intact, cutting dainty wedges with each bite. Once the piecrusts had turned that wonderful golden brown, with the little ridged edges almost but not quite burned, I told Liz they were ready. She pulled them out of the toaster oven, and we sat down at the red Formica table. At dinnertime, when Mom was away, we liked to play games Liz made up. One she called Chew-and-Spew, where you waited until the other person had a mouthful of food or milk, then you tried to make her laugh. Liz pretty much always won, because it was sort of easy to make me laugh. Sometimes I laughed so hard the milk came shooting out of my nose. Another game she made up was called the Lying Game. One person gave two statements, one true, the second a lie, and the other person got to ask five questions about the statements, then had to guess which one was the lie.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I needed to be at the station before seven. Mom announced that since she was not by nature an early riser, she would not be getting up to see me off. “I know what you look like, and I know what the bus station looks like,” she said. “And those big farewells are so sentimental.” • • • I could hardly sleep that night. Neither could Brian. From time to time, he’d break the silence by announcing that in seven hours I’d be leaving Welch, in six hours I’d be leaving Welch, and we’d both start cracking up. I fell asleep only to be woken at first light by Brian, who, like Mom, wasn’t an early riser. He was tugging at my arm. “No more joking about it,” he said. “In two hours, you’ll be gone.” Dad hadn’t come home that night, but when I climbed through the back window with my suitcase, I saw him sitting at the bottom of the stone steps, smoking a cigarette. He insisted on carrying the suitcase for me, and we set off down Little Hobart Street and around the Old Road. The empty streets were damp. Every now and then Dad would look over at me and wink, or make a tocking sound with his tongue as if I were a horse and he was urging me on. It seemed to make him feel like he was doing what a father should, plucking up his daughter’s courage, helping her face the terrors of the unknown. When we got to the station, Dad turned to me. “Honey, life in New York may not be as easy as you think it’s going to be.” “I can handle it,” I told him. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out his favorite jackknife, the one with the horn handle and the blade of blue German steel that we’d used for Demon Hunting. “I’ll feel better knowing you have this.” He pressed the knife into my hand. The bus turned down the street and stopped with a hiss of compressed air in front of the Trailways station. The driver opened up the luggage compartment and slid my suitcase in next to the others. I hugged Dad. When our cheeks touched, and I breathed in his smell of tobacco, Vitalis, and whiskey, I realized he’d shaved for me. “If things don’t work out, you can always come home,” he said. “I’ll be here for you. You know that, don’t you?” “I know.” I knew that in his way, he would be. I also knew I’d never be coming back. Only a few passengers were on the bus, so I got a good seat next to a window. The driver closed the door, and we pulled out. At first I resolved not to turn around. I wanted to look ahead to where I was going, not back at what I was leaving, but then I turned anyway. Dad was lighting a cigarette. I waved, and he waved back.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  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!’ And it was all quite as he promised and directed. He sent us to costumiers and tailors, and had Kitty decked out in a dozen different gentlemanly guises; and when the suits were made he sent us to photographers, to have her likeness taken as she held a policeman’s whistle to her lip, or shouldered a rifle or a sailor’s rope.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  This, of course, was Tricky himself: he sat at a table between the stalls and the orchestra and introduced the acts, and called for order if the crowd became too rowdy, and led us in toasts to the Queen. He had a top-hat and a gavel - I have never seen a chairman without a gavel - and a mug of porter. On his table stood a candle: this was kept lit for as long as there were artistes upon the stage, but it was extinguished for the interval, and at the show’s close. Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice - a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. On the night of Sutherland’s first performance he welcomed us to his show and promised us an evening’s entertainment we would never forget. Had we lungs? he asked. We must be prepared to use them! Had we feet, and hands? We must make ready to stamp, and clap! Had we sides? They would be split! Tears? We would shed buckets of them! Eyes? ‘Stretch’ em, now, in wonder! Orchestra, please. 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.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "'Well, Briancourt,' said he, 'I congratulate you upon your new acquisition. Nobody's presence could have given me more pleasure than Des Grieux's.' "Hardly had these words been uttered than a nimble hand snatched off my mask. "Ten mouths at least were ready to kiss me, a score of hands were fondling me; but Briancourt put himself between them and me. "'For this evening,' said he, 'Camille is like a sugar-plum on a cake, something to be looked at and not touched. Réné and he are on their honey-moon yet, and this fête is given in their honour, and in that of my new lover Achmet effendi.' And, turning round, he introduced us to the young man whom he was to pourtray as Jesus Christ. 'And now,' said he, 'let us go in to supper.' "The room, or hall, into which we were led was furnished something like a triclinium, with beds or couches instead of chairs. "'My friends,' said the general's son, 'the supper is a scanty one, the courses are neither many nor abundant, the meal is rather to invigorate than to satiate. I hope, however, that the generous wines and stimulating drinks will enable us all to return to our pleasures with renewed eagerness.'" "Still, I suppose it was a supper worthy of Lucullus?" "I hardly remember it now. I only recollect that it was the first time I tasted bouillabaisse, and some sweet spiced rice made after the Indian receipt, and that I found both delicious. "I had Teleny on my couch beside me, and Dr. Charles was my next neighbour. He was a fine, tall, well-built, broad-shouldered man, with a fair-flowing beard, for which—as well as for his name and size—he had been nicknamed Charlemagne. I was surprised to see him wear round his neck a fine Venetian gold chain, to which was hanging—as I first thought—a locket, but which, on closer examination, proved to be a gold laurel wreath studded with brilliants. I asked him if it were a talisman or a relic? "He, thereupon, standing up,—'My friends, Des Grieux here—whose lover I fain would be—asks me what this jewel is; and as most of you have already put me the same question, I'll satisfy you all now, and hold my peace for evermore about it. "'This laurel wreath,' said he, holding it up between his fingers, 'is the reward of merit—or rather, I should say, of chastity: it is my couronne de rosière .