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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Just you trot upstairs and slip that on, and then we’ll see what Mrs Dendy has to say about it.’ I did as he asked; then paused for a moment to study myself in the glass. I had put on a pair of my own plain black boots and piled my hair up inside a hat. I had placed a cigarette behind my ear - I had even taken off my stays, to make my flat chest flatter. I looked a little like my brother Davy - only, perhaps, rather handsomer. I shook my head. Four nights before I had stood in the same spot, marvelling to see myself dressed as a grown-up woman. Now, there had been one quiet visit to a tailor’s shop and here I was, a boy - a boy with buttons and a belt. The thought, once again, was a saucy one; I felt I ought not to encourage it. I went down at once to the parlour, put my hands in my pockets and posed before them all, and made ready to receive their praises. When I stood turning upon the rug, however, Walter was rather subdued, and Mrs Dendy thoughtful. When, at their request, I took Kitty’s arm and we sang a quick chorus, Walter stood back, frowned, and shook his head. ‘It’s not quite right,’ he said. ‘It grieves me to say it, but - it just won’t do.’ I turned, in dismay, to Kitty. She was fiddling with her necklace, sucking at the chain and tapping with the pearl upon a tooth. She, too, looked grave. She said, ‘There is something queer about it; but I can’t say what...’ I gazed down at myself. I took my hands from my pockets and folded my arms, and Walter shook his head again. ‘It’s a perfect fit,’ he said. ‘The colour is good. And yet there’s something - unpleasing - about it. What is it?’ Mrs Dendy gave a cough. ‘Take a step,’ she said to me. I did so. ‘Now a turn - that’s right. Now be a dear and light me a fag.’ I did this for her too, then waited while she drew on her cigarette and coughed again. ‘She’s too real,’ she said at last, to Walter. ‘Too real?’ ‘Too real. She looks like a boy. Which I know she is supposed to - but, if you follow me, she looks like a real boy. Her face and her figure and her bearing on her feet. And that ain’t quite the idea now, is it?’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now, while the ladies all assembled at the party below, I stood in my bedroom, trembling before the glass, garbing myself as Antinous himself. I had a skimpy little toga that reached to my knee, with a Roman belt around it - what they called a zone. I had put powder on my cheeks to make them languorous, and spit-black on my eyes to make them dark. My hair I had covered entirely in a sable wig that curled to my shoulders. About my neck there was a garland of lotus flowers — and I can tell you, the lotus flowers had been harder to organise, in London, in January, than anything.I had another garland to hand to Diana: this I also placed about my neck. Then I went to the door and listened and, since the moment seemed right, I ran to Diana’s closet and took out a cloak of hers and wrapped it tight about me, and raised the hood. And then I went downstairs.There, in the hall, I found Maria.‘Nancy, dear boy!’ she cried. Her lips looked very red and damp where they showed through the slit of her pasha’s whiskers. ‘Diana has sent me out to find you. The drawing-room is positively pullulating with women, all of them panting for a peek at your pose plastique!’I smiled - a pullulating audience was precisely what I wanted - then let her lead me into the room, still with the cloak about me, and hand me into the alcove behind the velvet curtain. Then, when I had bared my costume and struck my pose, I murmured to her and she pulled the tasselled cord, and the velvet twitched back and uncovered me. As I walked amongst them the guests all fell silent and looked knowing, and Diana - standing just where I could have wished her, beside the bust of Antinous on its little pedestal — raised a brow. Now, at the sight of me in my toga and belt, the ladies sighed and murmured.I gave them a moment, then stepped over to Diana, lifted the extra garland from around my neck, and wound it about hers. Then I knelt to her, took up her hand, and kissed it. She smiled; the ladies murmured again - and then began, in a delighted sort of way, to clap. Maria stepped up to me, and put a hand to the hem of my toga.‘What a little jewel you look tonight, Nancy - doesn’t she, Diana? How my husband would admire you!

• 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 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.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Rich ladies with no husbands, or absent husbands, or even (so Sweet Alice claimed) husbands at home, warming the bed, with whom they shared their startled catches. I had never known quite whether to believe in such ladies; here, however, was one before me, haughty and scented and hot for a lark.What a mistake she had made this time!I put my hand on the carriage-door and made to swing it to. But again she spoke. ‘If you won’t,’ she said, ‘let me drive you home, then won’t you, as a favour, ride with me a while? As you see, I am quite alone; and I’ve rather a yearning for company, tonight.’ Her voice seemed to tremble - though whether with melancholy, or anticipation, or even laughter, I could not tell.‘Look missis,’ I said then, into the gloom, ‘you’re on the wrong track. Let me pass, and get your driver to take you another turn around Piccadilly.’ Now I laughed: ‘Believe me, I haven’t got what you’re after.’The carriage creaked; the red end of the cigarette bobbed and brightened and illuminated, once again, a cheek, a brow, a lip. The lip curled.‘On the contrary, my dear. You have exactly what I’m after.’Still I did not guess, but only thought, Blimey, she’s keen! I glanced about me. A few carriages bowled along the Gray’s Inn Road, and two or three late pedestrians passed quickly from sight, behind them. A hansom had pulled up at the end of the mews, quite near us, and was letting its passengers dismount ; they disappeared into a doorway, and the hansom rolled by and away, and all was still again. I took a breath, and leaned into the dark interior of the coach.‘Madam,’ I hissed, ‘I ain’t a boy at all. I’m -’ I hesitated. The end of the cigarette disappeared: she had thrown it out of the window. I heard her give one impatient sigh - and all at once I understood.‘You little fool,’ she said. ‘Get in.’ Well, what should I have done? I had been weary, but I was not weary now. I had been disappointed, my expectations for the evening dashed; but with this one, unlooked-for invitation the glamour of the night seemed all restored. True, it was very late, and I was alone, and this woman was clearly a stranger of some determination, and with odd and secret tastes ... But her voice and manner were, as I have said, compelling ones. And she was rich. And my purse was empty. I hesitated for a moment; then she held out her hand and, where the lamplight fell upon her rings, I saw how large the stones were.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Like a lot of humans who get socialized in a religious context, I grew up believing in procreation as the primary purpose of sex. And I grew up thinking that the penis was the center of sex, the necessary component. Even when I began sleeping with people who didn’t have (or want to have) a penis, we would bring the penis in. We might buy one at a store and strap it to our bodies. We might just use the language—“suck my dick, lick the shaft, kiss the tip, come inside me.” Of course, I don’t mind this with transmasculine lovers, but I began to wonder why, when I was with lovers who didn’t identify with a penis in any way, we still felt the need for … a penis. I started intentionally leaving the penis out, seeing how far we could go without it. It was so far! It was further, in many cases, than I’d ever gotten with a real or fake penis. I gained a new respect for the brilliant design of my hands, how I have enough fingers for simultaneous double penetration and clitoral stimulation—and a whole other hand for nipple tweaking or hair pulling and face grabbing or ass gripping. I was also amazed at how erotic and satisfying all the variations on grinding could be, especially the holy grail of tribbing. I talked with gay cis male friends and they shared a similar experience of this phenomenon: an initial approach to the ass as if it were some alternative to a pussy, and then a recognition of the way the male body is actually structured to feel outstanding pleasure through anal stimulation. Of course, anal sex feels good to a lot of women too, even without the precious prostate. And, of course, neither fingering nor tribbing nor anal sex (nor any other kind of sex) are actually gay sex anyway.That whole limited way of thinking is evidence of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and the moralistic effort to control what happens in our bedrooms. All of this finally led to a breakthrough—“gay” sex isn’t missing anything, and it isn’t alternative, it’s just been politically attacked. For a long time. Not forever, though—there is so much evidence of gay sex in all cultures from the beginning of time. We are in an era of rejecting the rigidity and lies of authoritarian systems that aim to separate us from listening to the wisdom of our bodies in order to control us. As with so many aspects of pleasure activism, we are remembering our nature and regenerating our relationships to each other in the most natural ways. Are you there, goD? It’s me, DayHoliday Simmons Holiday Simmons is a transmasculine, two-spirit, Black and Indigenous organizer and educator based in Atlanta. Holiday is someone I've watched grow and transition, someone I've known to be open in teaching others as he learns how longing, trauma and gender have shaped him. October 2012

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  There was just one problem: The director still hadn’t arrived. Ms. Broadnax said he was caught in traffic, so we decided to go ahead with the first part of the agenda. By the time the preliminaries were over, it was almost eight. I could hear people starting to grumble, fanning themselves in the hot, airless gym. Near the door, I saw Marty trying to lead the crowd in a chant. I pulled him aside. “What are you doing?” “You’re losing people. You have to do something to keep them fired up.” “Sit down, will you please.” I was about to cut our losses and go ahead with Ms. Broadnax when a murmur rose from the back of the gym and the director walked through the door surrounded by a number of aides. He was a dapper black man of medium build, in his early forties. Straightening his tie, he grimly made his way to the front of the room. “Welcome,” Sadie said into the mike. “We’ve got a whole bunch of people who want to talk to you.” The crowd applauded; we heard a few catcalls. The TV lights switched on. “We’re here tonight,” Sadie said, “to talk about a problem that threatens the health of our children. But before we talk about asbestos, we need to deal with problems we live with every day. Linda?” Sadie handed the microphone to Linda, who turned to the director and pointed to the stack of complaint forms. “Mr. Director. All of us in Altgeld don’t expect miracles. But we do expect basic services. That’s all, just the basics. Now these people here have gone out of their way to fill out, real neat-like, all the things they keep asking the CHA to fix but don’t never get fixed. So our question is, will you agree here tonight, in front of all these residents, to work with us to make these repairs?” The next moments are blurry in my memory. As I remember it, Linda leaned over to get the director’s response, but when he reached for the microphone, Linda pulled it back. “A yes-or-no answer, please,” Linda said. The director said something about responding in his own fashion and again reached for the mike. Again, Linda pulled it back, only this time there was the slightest hint of mockery in the gesture, the movement of a child who’s goading a sibling with an ice-cream cone. I tried to wave at Linda to forget what I’d said before and give up the microphone, but I was standing too far in the rear for her to see me. Meanwhile, the director had gotten his hand on the cord, and for a moment a struggle ensued between the distinguished official and the pregnant young woman in stretch pants and blouse. Behind them, Sadie stood motionless, her face shining, her eyes wide. The crowd, not clear on what was happening, began shouting, some at the director, others at Linda.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  My stomach turns as I try to dream up justice schemes that can interrupt this. I recently visited members of a home-grown queer feminist POC business collective who imagine equity frameworks that support local business in giving back to their communities. There some typical standards for this—hiring formerly incarcerated people (especially those with drug offenses) with good pay and benefits—but what else can we do? How do we deepen and broaden that work? We thought about sending a percentage of profits into a fund that supports formerly incarcerated people’s organizations. What if dispensaries fund these organizations in the same geography of the dispensaries? That, in and of itself, people were tripping on. Especially in an economic sector so saturated with white tech bros proudly declaring they are only looking out for themselves. Folks already thought we were onto something. They looked at us like Robin Hood. After all, who would dare to think about sharing profits with ordinary people in the community? But the cannabis industry is excited and ready for it—if you approach the right people. So, I kept at it. Using my relationships to connect the progressive Left with people who are creating business models and funding projects that build up real wealth opportunities at scale. After I saw the potential for decriminalization and the opportunity to realize major wealth, I couldn’t stop talking about it. What are we going to do in this moment? Are we ready to stand in active solidarity while also trying something new? Let’s stop begging for crumbs of money and get dollars into people’s hands. We can create opportunities for communities of color, people directly impacted by criminalization, to own these companies. Of course, to become a legal investor in a cannabis company, one must have hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around available to invest. Yet, as organizers know, barriers are for overcoming. There are ways to have those with wealth enter this market and then give over ownership to those with fewer resources. There are ways to create opportunities for “micro-investors” to get in the game. These strategies are moving forward, here and now. This is some lifting-all-boats type of ish. This is the time to ask more of the private sector. Individuals of wealth must become co-conspirators. There is about to be the largest intergenerational wealth transference (to young folks with family money) in history, and wealthy, young, progressive folks are looking for ways to support projects like reparations, wealth redistribution, and other forms of self-determined community power building. They are interested in helping to build and sustain self-determination. This is the time for investment, to create regulations and rules that prioritize and steer profits toward people who are most directly impacted by criminalization.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Because it’s been eight years of planning, and conversations, and legal documents, and ovulation tracking, and fertili-teas, and inseminations, and waiting, and pregnancy tests, and frustration, and hard conversations with donors, and sadness, and steadily pushing my comfort zones, safety, and self-image as a trans person. So I’m hanging up the cleats on trying to conceive a child, and I’m going to start taking testosterone. At least for six months, and then I’ll see if I want to stop and try to return to the conception process. Also, I submitted my paperwork for top surgery!29 It will be another few weeks before I’m told if I’m even on the waiting list to choose a date for surgery. I’m feeling so excited and have really made peace with the decision to take a pause on inseminating. I’m thrilled to see the changes my body will make but scared about how my emotions may shift. I desperately fear that I’ll lose my keen intuition, my empathy skills, my ability to cry, and, in general, that my range of emotion will shrink. Yikes! I need models. I need more models of gentle men, spiritual men, vulnerable men. Praying to the planet Mars! February 2015 Man, these cats love the kid. The gay men. Literally some of the exact same ones that condescendingly tapped me on my head in response to me flirting with them are now trying to get to know a brotha. At least biblically anyway. But that’s cool, cuz that’s all I want right now anyway. April 2015 It’s remarkable that after only four months on T and just one month post-top surgery, I am already walking on the beach in just my trunks, being called “sir” and “he” more than 70 percent of the time.30 I’ve also been getting a lot of swipes on Grindr and messages on Jack’d.31 I even met a guy at a gay bar and went home with him afterward. That has never happened to me before! But … I don’t feel good about appreciating the attention from guys who applaud my masculinity but also state “no fats, no femmes” in their profile. Often I feel like I’m battling between my cock and my politics. The randiness that T instills does not always help me make a respectable decision. Then I whine about wanting a moment to just be affirmed as male by other males and especially in one of the most mammalian ways that can happen, without having to think critically about the contexts in which that human-ing is happening. I suppose it’s complicated.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Being Bobby was turning out to be a lot of fun. Except, unfortunately, it was almost over. Soon she’d have to strip off his potent armor, shrug away the heady legacy of adventure coursing through his blood, and sink down into her own boring skin again. Back in Bobby’s room, Zoe undressed slowly, a gloomy little striptease — jeans, socks, sweatshirt. Yet when it came time to take off the briefs, her hands balked once more. Again she slipped a finger through the secret entry to tickle her needy clit. The other palm cupped its sister protectively. She looked at Bobby, still sleeping innocently on his narrow bed. She’d always marveled how easily Bobby could spring a woody. Her black minidress had given him a bulge the moment he laid eyes on her, and once he even got a boner from a glimpse of her bare midriff when she reached up to get a book on a high shelf. She’d always wondered how could someone get so turned on just by looking. Suddenly she knew. And so she did exactly what Bobby would do. She crawled back into bed, spooned him from,behind and pushed her crotch against his firm ass. Reaching around té touch him, she discovered that even without his magic undies, he was already hard. Bobby mumbled and stretched. “Your hands are fucking freezing.” “T just came back from the bathroom.” He turned and opened his eyes, thick lashes fluttering. “But the rest of you is nice and warm.” His hands cupped her breasts, giving her nipples a quick good- morning tweak, then meandered lower. Zoe stiffened. She realized, too late, that she should’ve taken the underwear off before she got in bed. Would Bobby think she was a pervert, a dyke, a gay man in a woman’s body? A friend made that joke about another acquaintance and Bobby had grimaced in disgust. ' His fingers found the waistband. He paused. “Hey, are these mine?” “Yeah,” she admitted breathlessly. “I couldn’t see in the dark, and I put on the wrong ones.” He laughed softly. Zoe exhaled. Yet what Bobby did next surprised her. He pulled the covers back and gazed steadily at the extraordinary sight of his girlfriend dressed up in his underwear. 58 Donna George Storey A smile dancing on his lips, he reached out to trace her vulva through the cotton.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I have seen some of these projects grow beyond what I imagined. Already millions of dollars have moved, and cannabis can help transform communities that have been harmed by its historical criminalization. From dispensaries (which earn 60 to 80 cents on every dollar made in the industry) to legislators (writing the rules around who can play); from impact investors (who can invest, seed and turn over percentages of ownership and profits) to cannabis businesses (that can hire and direct portions of profits)—we all have a responsibility and ability to proactively vest these opportunities into communities of color, particularly Back and Brown communities. With a more than $44 billion projected net profit in the United States by 2020, this work must be a part of the foundation of this industry. These models are key to realizing the opportunities alive at this moment, which we will not see again in our lifetime. Let us be bold and brave and work across all levels of power and privilege to create the world all of our people deserve. Ecstasy Saved My LifeI want to tell you about my relationship with ecstasy. Rolling, what we call the high of ecstasy, is how I danced as close to the edge as I ever have and felt the most alive I had felt at that point in my life. It was my senior year of college when I swallowed MDMA for the first time with a friend who showed up with a bag of like one hundred pills. I took one. He took seven over the course of the evening, some of them crushed and snorted up his nose. Within an hour, it felt like the world was made of pleasure, that my bones were shivering with miracles. I understood that my beating heart shared a rhythm with the wind and the dirt—that I was not separate from anything. It was more true than anything else I’d ever felt. I remember thinking in the moment that maybe sex was supposed to feel like this, but I hadn’t met that level of lover yet. I had met a pill, though. I had met a medicine. My friendships in my early twenties were shaped in part around finding other people who were interested in rolling, going to a club or three where the low lights would keep changing, and someone would give us glow sticks, and we would dance until we couldn’t anymore, pile into cabs, come home and sit on a Brooklyn rooftop watching the sunrise, chain-smoking through the come-down.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  But then her look changed. She held the silk to her lips, and gazed at me above it. ‘All your promise has come to nothing, after all,’ she said. Then she laughed, and stepped away, and nodded to my trousers - now gaping whitely, of course, at the buttons. ‘Take them off.’ I did so at once, fumbling with my shoes and stockings in my haste. My fag showered me with ash, and I cast it into the grate. ‘And the underthings,’ she went on,‘ - but leave the jacket. That’s good.’Now I had a heap of discarded clothes at my feet. My jacket ended at my hips; beneath it, in the dim light, my legs looked very white, the triangle of hair between them very dark. The lady watched me all the while, making no move to touch me further. But when I was finished, she went to a drawer in the bureau; and when she turned back to me she held something in her hand. It was a key.‘In my bedroom,’ she said, nodding towards the second door, ‘you’ll find a trunk, which this will open.’ She handed it to me. It felt very chill upon my overheated palm, and for a moment I merely gazed stupidly at it. Then she clapped her hands: ‘Presto!’ she said again; and this time, she did not smile, and her voice was rather thick.The room next door was smaller than the parlour, but quite as rich, and just as dim and hot. On one side there was a screen, with a commode behind it; on the other stood a japanned press, its surface hard and black and glossy, like a beetle’s back. At the bottom of the bed there was, as she had promised, a trunk: a handsome, antique chest made of some desiccated, perfumed wood - rosewood, I think - with four claw feet and corners of brass, and elaborate carvings on its sides and lid which the dull glow of the fire threw into exaggerated relief. I knelt before it, placed the key in the lock; and felt the shifting, as I turned it, of some deep interior spring.A movement in the corner of the room made me turn my head. There was a cheval-glass there, big as a door, and I saw myself reflected in it: pale and wide-eyed, breathless and curious, but for all that an unlikely Pandora, with my scarlet jacket and my saucy cap, my crop and my bare bare bum. In the room next door all was hushed and still. I turned to the trunk again, and lifted its lid. Inside was a jumble of bottles and scarves, of cords and packets and yellow-bound books.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I was just recently watching the old Slick Rick “Children’s Story” music video and found it so interesting that in a moment when the lyrics were talking about the horrors of police violence, the visual story was one in which Slick Rick was outwitting the cops and getting free, and I was so grateful to watch him do that, I needed to see him win. That didn’t negate the reality he was speaking to, but, paired with the reality, [it] gave this feeling of power and comedy and slickness that the cops literally couldn’t even handle. Una. Yeah, totally! So, what current burlesque/organizing projects are you excited about that we’re working on? Michi. That feels like a leading question. Una. We spend so much time working on it, I thought we should mention it here … Michi. True, fine. COMPOST BIN! Una. COMPOST BIN!, the sexiest name we could think of for a monthly burlesque/cabaret show! Why do you think it’s important? Michi. Well, I think, as people living in a world with so much injustice, in a city where we spend so much of our energy working to afford to live, many of us compartmentalize to be able to hold the pain and contradictions, to be able to keep going. As queer people, as people of color, as activists and organizers, we face the injustice and work day after day holding the pain, anger, and stress of these realities. So, as artists, we have created COMPOST BIN! as a space for our communities to both dream and create the world we wish to live in. While in COMPOST BIN!, our minds are opened to ideas and visions of liberation, and our bodies feel what it is to live in a world where we are all loved, valued, and free. Leaving the show, our bodies have the physical memory of existing in a world that holds all the contradictions with fierce love, reminding us of the world we work for. In COMPOST BIN!, storytelling is a cathartic transformation shared between incredible artists and inspiring audience members, each working outside of that space as teachers and organizers. Una. Yes! See, that’s exactly why I wanted you to talk about it!

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I was still in that trancelike state when I mounted the stage. For I don’t know how long, I just stood there, the sun in my eyes, the crowd of a few hundred restless after lunch. A couple of students were throwing a Frisbee on the lawn; others were standing off to the side, ready to break off to the library at any moment. Without waiting for a cue, I stepped up to the microphone. “There’s a struggle going on,” I said. My voice barely carried beyond the first few rows. A few people looked up, and I waited for the crowd to quiet. “I say, there’s a struggle going on!” The Frisbee players stopped. “It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No—it’s a harder choice than that. It’s a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong …” I stopped. The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. “Go on with it, Barack,” somebody else shouted. “Tell it like it is.” Then the others started in, clapping, cheering, and I knew that I had them, that the connection had been made. I took hold of the mike, ready to plunge on, when I felt someone’s hands grabbing me from behind. It was just as we’d planned it, Andy and Jonathan looking grim-faced behind their dark glasses. They started yanking me off the stage, and I was supposed to act like I was trying to break free, except a part of me wasn’t acting, I really wanted to stay up there, to hear my voice bouncing off the crowd and returning back to me in applause. I had so much left to say.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  My ears perked up; this sounded like self-interest. Over the next few days, I had Ruby introduce me to other parents who shared her fears and felt frustrated over the lackluster police response. When I suggested that we invite the district commander to a neighborhood meeting so the community could air its concerns, everyone agreed; and as we talked about publicity one of the women mentioned that there was a Baptist church on the block where the boy had been shot, and that the pastor there, a Reverend Reynolds, might be willing to make an announcement to his congregation. It took me a week of phone calls, but when I finally reached Reverend Reynolds, his response seemed promising. He was the president of the local ministerial alliance, he said—“churches coming together to preach the social gospel.” He said that the group would be holding its regular meeting the very next day and that he would be happy to put me on the agenda. I hung up the phone full of excitement, and arrived at Reverend Reynolds’s church early the next morning. A pair of young women dressed in white gowns and gloves met me in the foyer and showed me to a large conference room where ten or twelve older black men stood talking in a loose circle. A particularly distinguished-looking gentleman came up to greet me. “You must be Brother Obama,” he said, taking my hand. “Reverend Reynolds. You’re just in time—we’re about to start.” We all sat around a long table, and Reverend Reynolds led us in prayer before offering me the floor. Suppressing my nerves, I told the ministers about the increased gang activity and the meeting we had planned, and passed out flyers for them to distribute in their congregations. “With your leadership,” I said, warming up to my subject, “this can be a first step towards cooperation on all kinds of issues. Fixing the schools. Bringing jobs back into the neighborhood …” Just as I passed out the last flyers, a tall, pecan-colored man entered the room. He wore a blue, double-breasted suit and a large gold cross against his scarlet tie. His hair was straightened and swept back in a pompadour. “Brother Smalls, you just missed an excellent presentation,” Reverend Reynolds said. “This young man, Brother Obama, has a plan to organize a meeting about the recent gang shooting.” Reverend Smalls poured himself a cup of coffee and perused the flyer. “What’s the name of your organization?” he asked me. “Developing Communities Project.” “Developing Communities …” His brow knotted. “I think I remember some white man coming around talking about some Developing something or other. Funny-looking guy. Jewish name. You connected to the Catholics?” I told him that some of the Catholic churches in the area were involved.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They are all in the drawing-room, and you can go by the back stairs. And if anyone does see you, and asks, you can say you are fetching it for me. 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!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had us stand together, with our arms linked; then he made us turn, and do again the little stiff-legged dance that he had caught us at before. And all the time he walked about us with narrowed eyes, stroking his chin and nodding.‘We shall need a suit for you, of course,’ he said to me. ‘A number of suits, indeed, to match Kitty’s. But that we can easily arrange.’ He took my hat from my head, and my plait fell down upon my shoulder. ‘Something must be done about your hair; but the colour, at least, is perfect - a wonderful contrast with Kitty’s, so the folk in the gallery will have no trouble telling you apart.’ He winked, then stood surveying me a little longer with his hands behind his head. He had removed his jacket. He wore a shirt of green with a deep white collar - he was always a fancy dresser — and the armpits of the shirt were dark with sweat. I said, ‘You really mean it, Walter?’ and he nodded: ‘Nancy, I do.’He kept us busy, that day, all through the afternoon. The outing we had planned, the Sunday stroll, was all forgotten, the driver who was waiting he paid off and sent away. The house being empty, we worked at Mrs Dendy’s piano, quite as hard as if it were a weekday morning - except that now I sang too, and not to save Kitty’s voice, as I had sometimes done before, but to try out my own alongside it. We sang again the song that Walter had caught us singing, ‘If Ever I Cease to Love’ — but, of course, we were self-conscious now, and it sounded terribly lame. Then we tried some of Kitty’s songs, that I had heard her sing at Canterbury and knew by heart; and they went a little better. And finally we tried a new song, one of the West End songs that were fashionable then — the one about strolling through Piccadilly with a pocket so full of sovereigns all the ladies look, and smile, and wink their eyes. It is sung by mashers even now; but it was Kitty and I who had it first, and when we tried it out together that afternoon - changing the author’s ‘I’ to ‘we’, linking our arms, and promenading over the parlour-rug with our voices raised in a harmony - well, it sounded sweeter and more comical than I could have thought possible. We sang it once, and then a second time, and then a third and fourth; and each time I grew a little freer, a little gayer, and a little less certain of the foolishness of Walter’s plan ...At length, when our throats were hoarse and our heads were swimming with sovereigns and winks, he closed the piano lid and let us rest. We made tea, and talked of other things.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “Hey, didn’t I promise we were gonna make something happen?” “He sure enough did,” Mona said with a wink. I told them that I’d leave them alone for at least a couple of days, and went out to my car feeling slightly light-headed. I can do this job, I said to myself. Have this whole damn town organized by the time we’re through. I lit a cigarette and, in my self-congratulatory mood, imagined taking the leadership downtown to sit down with Harold and discuss the fate of the city. Then, under a streetlight a few feet away, I saw the drunk from the meeting spinning around in slow circles, looking down at his elongated shadow. I got out of my car and asked him if he needed some help getting home. “I don’t need no help!” he shouted, trying to steady himself “Not from nobody, you understand me! Punk-ass motherfucker … try to tell me shit …” His voice trailed off. Before I could say anything more, he turned and began to wobble down the center of the road, disappearing into the darkness. CHAPTER TEN [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] WINTER CAME AND THE city turned monochrome—black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds. The work was tougher in such weather. Mounds of fine white powder blew through the cracks of my car, down my collar and into the openings in my coat. On rounds of interviews, I never spent enough time in one place to thaw properly, and parking spaces became scarce on the snow-narrowed streets—everyone, it seemed, had a cautionary tale about fights breaking out over parking spaces after a heavy snow, the resulting brawl or shooting. Attendance at evening meetings became more sporadic; people called at the last minute to say they had the flu or their car wouldn’t start; those who did come looked damp and resentful. At times, driving home from such evenings, with the northern gusts off the lake shaking my car across the lane dividers, I would momentarily forget where I was, my thoughts a numbed reflection of the silence. Marty suggested that I take more time off, build a life for myself away from the job. His concerns were professional, he explained: Without some personal support outside the work, an organizer lost perspective and could quickly burn out. There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, with a set of concerns and demands that created barriers to friendship. When I wasn’t working, the weekends would usually find me alone in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We said good-night in our usual way, but then we both lay wakeful. I could hear her creaking about in her bed upstairs, and once she went out to the privy. I thought she might have paused on her way, outside my door, to listen for my snores. I didn’t call out to her.Next morning I was too tired to study her terribly hard; but as I set the pan of bacon on the stove, she came to me. She came very close, and then she said, quite low - perhaps so that her brother, who was in the room across the passageway, might not hear: ‘Nance, will you come out with me tonight?’‘Tonight?’ I said, yawning, and frowning at the bacon, which I had put too wet into a too-hot pan, so that it hissed and steamed. ‘Where to? Not collecting subscriptions again, surely?’‘Not subscriptions, no. Not work at all, in fact, but — pleasure.’‘Pleasure!’ I had never heard her say the word before, and it seemed, all of a sudden, a terribly lewd one. Perhaps she thought the same, for now she blushed a little, and took up a spoon and began to fiddle with it.‘There’s a public-house near Cable Street,’ she went on, ‘with a ladies’ room in it. The girls call it “The Boy in the Boat ...”’‘Oh yes?’She looked once at me, and then away again. ‘Yes. Annie will be there, she says, with a new friend of hers; and perhaps Ruth and Nora.’‘Ruth and Nora too!’ I said lightly: they were the two girl-friends who had turned out sweethearts. ‘Is it to be all toms, then?’To my surprise she nodded, quite seriously: ‘Yes.’All toms! The thought sent me into a fever. It was twelve months since I had last passed an evening in a room full of woman-lovers: I was not sure I still possessed the knack. What would I wear? What attitude would I strike? All toms! What would they make of me? And what would they make of Florence?‘Will you still go,’ I asked, ‘if I don’t?’‘I rather thought I might...’‘Then I’ll certainly come,’ I said - and had to look quickly to the pan of smoking bacon, and so didn’t see whether she looked pleased, or satisfied, or indifferent.I passed a fretful day, picking through my few dull frocks and skirts in the hope of finding some forgotten tommish gem amongst them.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  So unreal and the realest thing that ever happened.... And maybe the worst thing for me now is living in peacetime without a possibility of that high again. I hate what that high was about but I loved that high. 26 “Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent,” Hedges explains. “Trivia dominates our conversation and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us a resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble.” 27 One of the many, intertwined motives driving men to the battlefield has been the tedium and pointlessness of ordinary domestic existence. The same hunger for intensity would compel others to become monks and ascetics. The warrior in battle may feel connected with the cosmos, but afterward he cannot always resolve these inner contradictions. It is fairly well established that there is a strong taboo against killing our own kind—an evolutionary stratagem that helped our species to survive. 28 Still, we fight. But to bring ourselves to do so, we envelop the effort in a mythology—often a “religious” mythology—that puts distance between us and the enemy. We exaggerate his differences, be they racial, religious, or ideological. We develop narratives to convince ourselves that he is not really human but monstrous, the antithesis of order and goodness. Today we may tell ourselves that we are fighting for God and country or that a particular war is “just” or “legal.” But this encouragement doesn’t always take hold. During the Second World War, for instance, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall of the U.S. Army and a team of historians interviewed thousands of soldiers from more than four hundred infantry companies that had seen close combat in Europe and the Pacific. Their findings were startling: only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen had been able to fire at the enemy directly; the rest tried to avoid it and had developed complex methods of misfiring or reloading their weapons so as to escape detection. 29 It is hard to overcome one’s nature. To become efficient soldiers, recruits must go through a grueling initiation, not unlike what monks or yogins undergo, to subdue their emotions. As the cultural historian Joanna Bourke explains the process: Individuals had to be broken down to be rebuilt into efficient fighting men. The basic tenets included depersonalization, uniforms, lack of privacy, forced social relationships, tight schedules, lack of sleep, disorientation followed by rites of reorganization according to military codes, arbitrary rules, and strict punishment. The methods of brutalization were similar to those carried out by regimes where men were taught to torture prisoners.