Excitement

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 146 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Simula un ceño fruncido y revoluciona el motor, bajándonos a toda velocidad por otra zanja. Mi estómago cae a mis pies y grito de nuevo, riéndome. —¡Detente! —suplico—. ¡Vas a hacernos volcar! El frente del guardafangos choca contra el fondo, lanzando una ola de barro y agua frente a nosotros. Mi cuerpo se lanza con violencia contra el cinturón de seguridad y grito emocionada, entrecerrando mis ojos. ¡Mierda! Pero no puedo dejar de reírme. Tiene razón. ¿Cómo es que nunca he hecho esto? Me lo he estado perdiendo. La fría lluvia cae suavemente a través de la ventana, rociando mi pierna y abro mis ojos de nuevo y limpio mi mejilla, viendo manchas de barro en mi mano. Girándome hacia él, veo sus ojos encontrándose con los míos, los cuerpos de ambos se sacuden con carcajadas silenciosas. —¡Está bien, es mi turno! —suelto emocionadamente. Desabrochando mi cinturón de seguridad, jalo la manija de la puerta, moviéndome para salir. —No, solo deslízate —me dice—. Saldré y daré la vuelta. Me detengo y giro, viéndolo abrir su puerta y en vez de bajarse, se levanta y da la vuelta por la caja de la camioneta detrás de nosotros. Me deslizo rápidamente hacia el otro lado del asiento y frente al volante. La ventaja de que su camioneta sea tan vieja es que tiene un solo asiento completo al frente. Y no necesito pasar por encima de una consola. Abrocho mi cinturón de seguridad y doy un vistazo por el parabrisas, una ola de calor cubriendo mi estómago mientras sonrío. —¡Cuidado con el lodo! —le grito por la ventana. No tengo idea cuán profundo es en el exterior del lado de la puerta del pasajero. Pero espero mientras la camioneta se sacude por sus movimientos en la parte trasera y entonces la puerta del lado del pasajero se abre, su mano aparece en la manija y salta al interior, sin tocar ni una sola vez el suelo. Deslizándose en el asiento junto al mío, cierra la puerta de un golpe y pasa su mano por su ahora húmedo cabello. Mis ojos caen a su camiseta moldeada contra su pecho, definiendo su clavícula y los músculos de sus pectorales y sus hombros anchos. Se gira hacia mí. —¿Qué? Parpadeo y aclaro mi garganta, recuperándome. —Nada. Solo que todavía eres bastante ágil para tu edad, ¿eh? Sus ojos resplandecen. Pasa su mano por la parte externa de la puerta de la camioneta, la mete de regreso y la sacude hacia mí, lodo deslizándose por mi rostro. Jadeo, cerrando mis ojos por reflejo y retorciéndome para alejarme. —¡Detente! —Río, extendiendo mis manos hacia el frente mientras más lodo viene volando—. ¡Sólo estaba bromeando! —¿Desde cuándo treinta y ocho años te convierte en un maldito ciudadano anciano? —gruñe, pero puedo escuchar la diversión en su voz. Más lodo vuela hacia mí y me encojo con mi espalda girada hacia él, intentando protegerme. —¡Lo siento! ¡No fue lo que quise decir! Pero no puedo dejar de reírme.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Todavía no te has ensuciado —se burla—. Ponte el cinturón. **** Media hora después, estoy gritando y agarrando la manija encima de la puerta mientras él baja por el enlodado canal. Gira con brusquedad el volante, así que saltamos por el costado y entramos de regreso a terreno alto, y río, rebotando en mi asiento. Oh, Dios mío, esto es divertido. Siento como si fuera a morir. Mis ojos lagrimean y estoy riéndome a carcajadas. —No puedo creer que nunca hayas hecho esto —dice, mirándome como si necesitara redimir mi carnet de chica de pueblo pequeño—. En mis días, este era el lugar al que llevabas a una chica para mostrarle qué tan rudo eras en tu camioneta. Me tambaleo hacia la izquierda y luego hacia la derecha mientras la camioneta pasa por todas las pendientes enlodadas y los charcos. Me deja tener completo control del equipo de sonido y Glory Days de Bruce Springsteen suena en el casete que puse. Subo el volumen y me agarro al tablero. —Todavía lo es —le informo—. Aunque en mis días se está volviendo cada vez más difícil que los chicos con los que sales mantengan válidas sus licencias para conducir. Sonríe. —Te creo. Llueve y el lodo se levanta a nuestro alrededor y puedo ver manchas de ambas cosas golpeando las mangas de mi impermeable más cerca a la puerta y mi muslo desnudo. Pike insistió en que bajáramos las ventanas, sin importarle en absoluto que el interior pudiera ensuciarse. Dijo que eso mejoraría la experiencia. —¿Has traído a tus citas aquí? —pregunto. —De vez en cuando. Frunzo la esquina de mi boca en una sonrisa conocedora. —¿Y después las llevabas a Hammond Lock para luego besuquearse? Mueve su mirada rápidamente hacia mí, luciendo sorprendido. —¿Qué sabes tú sobre Hammond Lock? Me encojo de hombros. —Oh, escuché que es donde los viejos llevaban a sus citas hace algún tiempo, eso es todo.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Quiero que se corra dentro de mí. Quiero que se derrame y quiero sentirlo. Estoy tomando la píldora, y soy saludable. Una vez que sepa que él también está saludable, le diré que las malditas gomas pueden irse a la jodida basura. Podría volver a provocarlo por video si su frustración acumulada me excita así. Unos momentos más tarde, mi respiración ha vuelto a la normalidad, y estoy agotada. —Sabes que estoy bromeando, ¿verdad? —le digo—. Solo lo haré para ti. Su mano se desliza por mi espalda húmeda, y lo escucho inhalar como si fuera a hablar, pero entonces algo golpea la puerta. —¡Jordan! —grita una voz—. Jordan, ¿estás aquí o no? Ambos saltamos, mi corazón se salta un latido. Cam. Pike se aparta de mí y me pongo las bragas, apresurándome a buscar mi sujetador y mi camisa. Escucho que la tapa del bote de la basura se cierra de golpe, y luego Pike está a mi lado mientras se apresura a meterse en su camiseta y yo en mi ropa. Pero justo en ese momento la puerta cruje y escucho la voz de Cam. —¡Jordan! —llama desde el interior de la casa. —¿Qué diablos? —gruñe Pike en voz baja, lanzándome una mirada asustada justo cuando Cam entra a la cocina. Pike se aleja un par de pasos de mí y se pasa la mano por el cabello mientras me abrocho los pantalones cortos. Cam nos mira, sus ojos se mueven velozmente entre Pike y yo, claramente asimilando nuestro desorden. —Hola —dice, con un tono sospechoso en su voz. Me lamo los labios secos, tratando de recuperar el aliento. —Hola —le digo—. Así que, ¿ahora solo entras en las casas de las personas? —Estaba golpeando la puerta y tocando el timbre —señala, su sorpresa se ha ido y ahora ha sido reemplazada con diversión—. Vi los dos autos afuera, así que sabía que estabas en casa. Un silencio incómodo sigue mientras mira a Pike con una sonrisa en los ojos y a mí con las cejas levantadas. Pike parece que quiere escapar. Se endereza, señalando con el pulgar hacia el patio trasero.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Now at Les Petits, where, on a small crowded platform, to the blaring of a record at full blast, a few couples try to dance, twisting and squirming as if to leave even their own bodies. Among them, Sonny danced with a small blackhaired girl (while the two scores who have promised to take him to Paris wait coldly for him). The girl’s hair is long and straight to her waist. As she bent from her knees, arching her thighs toward him, her hair sweeps the floor behind. Sonny twists before her. Male and female untouching, merely going through the distant gyrations of sex, as if to see how close they can come to each other without touching: carried into that limbo where savage music becomes the expression of life. And Sonny puts his hands in his pockets and arches his back sensually like a cat’s—the hair tumbles over his eyes; and he danced with such frenzy, such abandon, that the other couples left the floor, circled him and the girl—and soon even the girl steps aside, superfluous, while Sonny dances on alone as if with an imaginary partner: the world. He seemed suddenly to be all our defiant youth—desperate to spring from the Cage, futilely defying the world in that twisting dance. In the heat of the feverish dancing, he throws open his shirt, removes it—twirls his hand in the air as if he held a rope—“Yahoo!” he shouted—and he dances shirtless, chest gleaming with sweat—and the crowd applauds as he goes through the sex-gyrations. Alone. Leaving quickly, Im carried by the rivers of people outside.... White-robed mummers from the parade. Spears, plumed helmets catch the light. Devils dance with angels. Skirts part, invite.... The dusty-yellow wintersky. Tinseled bodies. Sequined faces. “The City That Care Forgot”: New Orleans. The Parade of Comus.... The last parade of Mardi Gras—a gaudy funeral.... And then, it was as if I were imprisoned in a glass room, looking out—isolated from the world, which could see me, which I could see—which couldnt hear me. Locked inside, away from the million people. And each of those million people in turn is separated within his own glass chamber from the others.... Suddenly the Devil leapt toward me! In red, with long black horns! He opens His arms to embrace me in His batwinged cape! And I lunge toward Him anxious to be claimed, and He encloses the flapping wings about me.... Freed of his embrace, I look at the ghostly steeples of the Cathedral. I’ll climb to that nonexistent Heaven! ... Now at Cindy’s bar a man is groping me, and gropes someone else—and all around, hands are searching—while Cindy herself, globs of frantic, shaking flesh, bouncing, moves chaperonely nervously sighing: “Please, please, please , boys! Be Nice!”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  He fell empty-handed to the platform floor, and as the train pulled out, I looked through the window and gave him a big sarcastic wave. • • • That fall, Lori helped me find a public school where, instead of going to classes, the students signed up for internships all over the city. One of my internships was at The Phoenix, a weekly newspaper run out of a dingy storefront on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, near the old Ex-Lax factory. The owner, publisher, and editor in chief was Mike Armstrong. He saw himself as a muckraking gadfly and had mortgaged his brownstone five times to keep The Phoenix going. The staff all used Underwood manual typewriters with threadbare ribbons and yellowed keys. The E on mine was broken, so I used the @ in its place. We never had copy paper and instead wrote on discarded press releases we dug out of the trash. At least once a month, someone’s paycheck bounced. Reporters were always quitting in disgust. In the spring, when Mr. Armstrong was interviewing a journalism school graduate for a job opening, a mouse ran over her foot, and she screamed. After she’d left, Mr. Armstrong looked at me. The Brooklyn zoning board was meeting that afternoon and he had no one to cover it. “If you start calling me Mike instead of Mr. Armstrong,” he said, “you can have the job.” I had just turned eighteen. I quit my job at the hamburger joint the next day and became a full-time reporter for The Phoenix . I’d never been happier in my life. I worked ninety-hour weeks, my telephone rang constantly, I was always hurrying off to interviews and checking the ten-dollar Rolex I’d bought on the street to make sure I wasn’t running late, rushing back to file my copy, and staying up until four a.m. to set type when the typesetter quit. And I was bringing home $125 a week. If the check cleared. • • • I wrote Brian long letters describing the sweet life in New York City. He wrote back saying things in Welch were still going downhill. Dad was drunk all the time except when he was in jail; Mom had completely withdrawn into her own world; and Maureen was more or less living with neighbors. The ceiling in the bedroom had collapsed, and Brian had moved his bed onto the porch. He made walls by nailing boards along the railings, but it leaked pretty badly out there, too, so he still slept under the inflatable raft. I told Lori that Brian should come live with us in New York, and she agreed. But I was afraid Brian would want to stay in Welch. He seemed more of a country boy than a city kid. He was always wandering through the woods, tinkering with a discarded two-stroke engine, chopping wood, or carving a block of wood into an animal head.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  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. He fell empty-handed to the platform floor, and as the train pulled out, I looked through the window and gave him a big sarcastic wave. • • • That fall, Lori helped me find a public school where, instead of going to classes, the students signed up for internships all over the city. One of my internships was at The Phoenix, a weekly newspaper run out of a dingy storefront on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, near the old Ex-Lax factory. The owner, publisher, and editor in chief was Mike Armstrong. He saw himself as a muckraking gadfly and had mortgaged his brownstone five times to keep The Phoenix going. The staff all used Underwood manual typewriters with threadbare ribbons and yellowed keys. The E on mine was broken, so I used the @ in its place. We never had copy paper and instead wrote on discarded press releases we dug out of the trash. At least once a month, someone’s paycheck bounced. Reporters were always quitting in disgust. In the spring, when Mr. Armstrong was interviewing a journalism school graduate for a job opening, a mouse ran over her foot, and she screamed. After she’d left, Mr. Armstrong looked at me. The Brooklyn zoning board was meeting that afternoon and he had no one to cover it. “If you start calling me Mike instead of Mr. Armstrong,” he said, “you can have the job.” I had just turned eighteen. I quit my job at the hamburger joint the next day and became a full-time reporter for The Phoenix. I’d never been happier in my life. I worked ninety-hour weeks, my telephone rang constantly, I was always hurrying off to interviews and checking the ten-dollar Rolex I’d bought on the street to make sure I wasn’t running late, rushing back to file my copy, and staying up until four a.m. to set type when the typesetter quit. And I was bringing home $125 a week. If the check cleared. • • • I wrote Brian long letters describing the sweet life in New York City. He wrote back saying things in Welch were still going downhill. Dad was drunk all the time except

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “A drop of Cherokee blood means the tribe can claim you forever, but not before I claim you for the night.” He extended his hand. “C. Willard Trenholm. But my friends call me Will.” “Victoria Leonard.” “Glad to meet you, Victoria.” He guided her down the stairs and out onto the dance floor. He was tall, maybe six five, and even in heels she came up only to his chest. He knew how to fox-trot, waltz, and lindy hop, all to music played by Peter Duchin himself. If her family could see her now! She heard Bru’s voice chiding her but she pushed it away and concentrated on her feet, trying to avoid being trampled or, worse yet, stepping on Will, since she had no idea how to dance that way. Later Paisley approached to say she’d met someone and was leaving with him. “Take a cab home, Victoria … okay? I mean it, no subways tonight.” Vix nodded, then returned to the dance floor with Will. She didn’t have to worry about getting home. He took her to the Rainbow Room for a nightcap and to admire the view. In the cab on the way back to her place, they made out like teenagers. When the taxi pulled up in front of her building, Will leaned forward and told the driver to go around the block again. She saw him three times that week. And the weekend after that. He sent flowers to her at home and Godiva chocolates to her office. “A person could get used to this,” Maia sang. Vix began to flirt with the idea of being a rich girl, of never having to worry about money again. You were wrong when you told me I wouldn’t fit in … she’d say to Tawny. Money was Will’s favorite subject, sex his second. He chased her around his family’s Park Avenue duplex, playing hide-and-seek in the gallery, which was lined with suits of armor, like a museum. In the forest green library he unbuttoned her shirt and admired her breasts. “Beautiful,” he said. “Are they implants?” She assured him they were the real thing. “I thought so,” he said, “but you hardly ever get the real thing these days.” He invited her to the ballet. She’d never been and borrowed a crushed velvet suit from Paisley. The following week it was Shakespeare at the Public, followed by dinner at Chanterelle. Maia began to call her The Heiress. “She wouldn’t be inheriting,” Paisley said, setting the record straight. “She’d be acquiring.” “Either way …” Maia said. That night the three of them sat around the coffee table, eating Chinese food from the cartons, while they watched Don’t Look Now on the VCR. As Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland chased one another around Venice, Maia said, “I hope Vix will invite us to Venice … to her palazzo on the Grand Canal.” “Mmm …” Paisley shoveled in chicken with cashews.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  WE LIVED IN LAS VEGAS for about a month, in a motel room with dark red walls and two narrow beds. We three kids slept in one, Mom and Dad in the other. During the day, we went to the casinos, where Dad said he had a sure-fire system for beating the house. Brian and I played hide-and-seek among the clicking slot machines, checking the trays for overlooked quarters, while Dad was winning money at the blackjack table. I’d stare at the long-legged showgirls when they sashayed across the casino floor, with huge feathers on their heads and behinds, sequins sparkling on their bodies, and glitter around their eyes. When I tried to imitate their walk, Brian said I looked like an ostrich. At the end of the day, Dad came to get us, his pockets full of money. He bought us cowboy hats and fringed vests, and we ate chicken-fried steaks in restaurants with ice-cold air-conditioning and a miniature jukebox at each table. One night when Dad had made an especially big score, he said it was time to start living like the high rollers we had become. He took us to a restaurant with swinging doors like a saloon. Inside, the walls were decorated with real prospecting tools. A man with garters on his arms played a piano, and a woman with gloves that came up past her elbows kept hurrying over to light Dad’s cigarettes. Dad told us we were having something special for dessert—a flaming ice-cream cake. The waiter wheeled out a tray with the cake on it, and the woman with the gloves lit it with a taper. Everyone stopped eating to watch. The flames had a slow, watery movement, rolling up into the air like ribbons. Everyone started clapping, and Dad jumped up and raised the waiter’s hand above his head as if he’d won first prize. A few days later, Mom and Dad went off to the blackjack table and then almost immediately came looking for us. Dad said one of the dealers had figured out that he had a system and had put the word out on him. He told us it was time to do the skedaddle. • • • We had to get far away from Las Vegas, Dad said, because the Mafia, which owned the casinos, was after him. We headed west, through desert and then mountains.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Lori and Brian and I would use the rocks to decorate the graves of our pets that had died or of the dead animals we found and decided should get a proper burial. I also held rock sales. I didn’t have that many customers, because I charged hundreds of dollars for a piece of flint. In fact, the only person who ever bought one of my rocks was Dad. He came out behind the house one day with a pocketful of change and was startled when he saw the price tags I’d taped to each rock. “Honey, your inventory might move a little faster if you dropped your prices,” he said. I explained that all my rocks were incredibly valuable and I’d rather keep them than sell them for less than they were worth. Dad gave me his crooked smile. “Sounds like you’ve thought this through pretty well,” he said. He told me he had his heart set on buying a particular piece of rose quartz but didn’t have the six hundred dollars I was charging, so I cut the price to five hundred and let him have it on credit. Brian and I loved to go to the dump. We looked for treasures among the discarded stoves and refrigerators, the broken furniture and stacks of bald tires. We chased after the desert rats that lived in the wrecked cars, or caught tadpoles and frogs in the scum-topped pond. Buzzards circled overhead, and the air was filled with dragonflies the size of small birds. There were no trees to speak of in Battle Mountain, but one corner of the dump had huge piles of railroad ties and rotting lumber that were great for climbing and carving your initials on. We called it the Woods. Toxic and hazardous wastes were stored in another corner of the dump, where you could find old batteries, oil drums, paint cans, and bottles with skulls and crossbones. Brian and I decided some of this stuff would make for a neat scientific experiment, so we filled up a couple of boxes with different bottles and jars and took them to an abandoned shed we named our laboratory. At first we mixed things together, hoping they would explode, but nothing happened, so I decided we should conduct an experiment to see if any of the stuff was flammable. The next day after school we came back to the laboratory with a box of Dad’s matches. We unscrewed the lids of some of the jars, and I dropped in matches, but still nothing happened. So we mixed up a batch of what Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet afterburner. Brian and I were knocked to our feet. When we stood up, one of the walls was on fire.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  "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

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  When Lori heard that, she declared it was time for Maureen to move to New York, too. But Maureen was only twelve, and I worried that she might be too young to leave home. She’d been four when we moved to West Virginia, and it was all she really knew. “Who’s going to look after her?” I asked. “I will,” Lori said. “She can stay with me.” Lori called Maureen, who got squeally with excitement about the idea, and then Lori talked to Mom and Dad. Mom thought it was a great plan, but Dad accused Lori of stealing his children and declared he was disowning her. Maureen arrived in early winter. By then Brian had moved into a walk-up near the Port Authority bus terminal, and using his address, we enrolled Maureen in a good public school in Manhattan. On weekends, we all met at Lori’s apartment. We made fried pork chops or heaping plates of spaghetti and meatballs and sat around talking about Welch, laughing so hard at the idea of all that craziness that our eyes watered.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  In less than three months, I’m leaving for New York City.” “What I was thinking was you don’t have to go right away,” Dad said. I could stay and graduate from Welch High and go to Bluefield State, as Miss Katona had suggested, then get a job at The Welch Daily News . He’d help me with the articles, like he’d helped me with my piece on Chuck Yeager. “And I’ll build the Glass Castle, I swear it. We’ll all live in it together. It’ll be a hell of a lot better than any apartment you’ll ever find in New York City, I can guaran-goddamn-tee that.” “Dad,” I said, “as soon as I finish classes, I’m getting on the next bus out of here. If the buses stop running, I’ll hitchhike. I’ll walk if I have to. Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don’t do it for me.” Dad rolled up the blueprints and walked out of the room. A minute later, I heard him scrambling down the mountainside. IT HAD BEEN A mild winter, and summer came early to the mountains. By late May, the wild bleeding hearts and the rhododendrons had bloomed, and the fragrance of honeysuckle drifted down the hillside and into the house. We had our first hot days before school was out. Those last couple of weeks, I’d go from feeling excited to nervous to just plain scared back to excited in a matter of minutes. On the last day of school, I cleaned out my locker and went to say goodbye to Miss Bivens. “I’ve got a feeling about you,” she said. “I think you’ll do all right up there. But you’ve left me with a problem. Who’s going to edit the Wave next year?” “You’ll find someone, I’m sure.” “I’ve thought of trying to entice your brother into it.” “People might start thinking that the Wallses are building a dynasty.” Miss Bivens smiled. “Maybe you are.” • • • At home that night, Mom cleaned out a suitcase she’d used for her collection of dancing shoes, and I filled it with my clothes and my bound copies of The Maroon Wave . I wanted to leave everything from the past behind, even the good things, so I gave Maureen my geode. It was dusty and dull, but I told her that if she scrubbed it hard, it would sparkle like a diamond. As I cleared out the box on the wall next to my bed, Brian said, “Guess what? In one more day you’ll be in New York City.” Then he started impersonating Frank Sinatra, singing “New York, New York” off-key and doing his lounge-lizard dance. “Shut up, you big dummy!” I said and hit him hard on the shoulder. “You’re the dummy!” he said and hit me hard back. We tossed a few more punches and then looked at each other awkwardly. The one bus out of Welch left at seven-ten in the morning.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  two guys in the car, both wearing baseball caps and wraparound glasses. And the driver was him, the National Treasure. “Heading up island?” Von asked. Caitlin turned to Vix. “You can walk if you want but I’m riding.” The other one, Bru, let his seat fall forward so Caitlin could squeeze into the back of the car. “You getting in or not?” Bru asked Vix. “Because we’re holding up traffic as you can see.” She followed Caitlin into the car, thinking there had to be exceptions to every promise. Besides, if they were going to be killed it would be better to be killed together, otherwise she’d have to explain to Lamb why Caitlin was murdered and she wasn’t. Caitlin yanked Von’s ponytail. He lowered his shades and looked at them through his rearview mirror. “I knew this was my lucky day,” he said, turning on the charm. “Hey, Bru ... get a look at what we caught.” “Uh-huh,” Bru answered, about as excited as if they’d reeled in two sardines. They were heading out of town, past the Italian Scallion vegetable stand, past mini golf, past the Tashmoo Overlook, to Lambert’s Cove Road where Caitlin told Von to take a right. “How far up?” he asked. “I’ll let you know.” When she did, Von slammed on the brakes making them fall forward against the front seats, which he found funny. “Thanks for the ride,” Caitlin said. “See you at the Flying Horses.” “Not this year,” Von told her. “I’m working at the fish market this year.” “Which one?” Caitlin asked. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Von said. “Yeah ... well, save me a fish head,” Caitlin said. “I’ll save you something better than that,” Von told her. “See me in about three years to collect.” “Don’t hold your breath,” Caitlin sang, slamming the car door. They could hear the boys laughing as they pulled back onto the road and floored it. Caitlin took this as a sign that all was not lost. She threw an arm over Vix’s shoulder as they walked the mile down the dirt road leading to their house. “Aren’t you glad we hitched?”

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

  Title : Gender Trouble (Routledge Classics) Author: Butler, Judith Description: One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. Gender Trouble‘Gender Trouble is a classic in the best sense: rereading this book, as well as reading it for the first time, reshapes the categories through which we experience and perform our lives and bodies. To be troubled in this way is an intellectual pleasure and a political necessity. Butler’s lucid, witty and very smart classic is more than critique of gender-making apparatuses; it is generative of possibilities for promising monsters who may yet reconfigure what can count as natural.’ Donna Haraway ‘The most authoritative attack to date on the “naturalness” of gender. This is a brilliant and innovative book.’ Sandra Lee Bartky ‘Indispensable for feminist theory.’ Hypatia ‘At times brilliant, always groundbreaking, Gender Trouble is bound to make some trouble of its own.’ Outweek ‘A tremendously sophisticated and well-argued book, a very exciting read.’ Women and Politics [image file=image_rsrc22N.jpg] Routledge Classics contains the very best of Routledge publishing over the past century or so, books that have, by popular consent, become established as classics in their field. Drawing on a fantastic heritage of innovative writing published by Routledge and its associated imprints, this series makes available in attractive, affordable form some of the most important works of modern times. For a complete list of titles visit www.routledge.com/classics Judith Butler Gender TroubleFeminism and the Subversion of Identity With an introduction by the author [image "Logo: Published by Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business." file=image_rsrc22P.jpg] First published 1990 by Routledge Second edition published 1990 by Routledge First published in Routledge Classics 2006 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Reprinted 2007, 2008 (twice), 2010 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1990, 1999, 2006 Routledge, 2007 Gender Trouble was originally published in the Routledge book series Thinking Gender, edited by Lind J. Nicholson. Typeset in Joanna by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A van had broken down, spilling clothes and furniture all over the road and creating a big backup. The police were trying to clear the highway, but a dog had jumped out of the van and was running up and down the turnpike as a couple of officers chased after him. The announcer got a lot of mileage out of the story, going on about the rubes with their clunker of a vehicle and yapping dog who were making thousands of New York commuters late for work. That night the psychologist told me I had a phone call. “Jeannettie-kins!” It was Mom. “Guess what?” she asked in a voice brimming with excitement. “Your daddy and I have moved to New York!” The first thing I thought about was the van that had broken down on the turnpike that morning. When I asked Mom about it, she admitted that yes, she and Dad had a teensy bit of technical difficulty with the van. It had popped a belt on some big, crowded highway, and Tinkle, who was sick and tired of being cooped up, you know how that goes, had gotten loose. The police had shown up, and Dad got into an argument with them, and they threatened to arrest him, and gosh it was quite the drama. “How did you know?” she asked. “It was on the radio.” “On the radio?” Mom asked. She couldn’t believe it. “With everything going on in the world these days, an old van popping a belt is news?” But there was genuine glee in her voice. “We only just got here, and we’re already famous!” After talking to Mom, I looked around my room. It was the maid’s room off the kitchen, and it was tiny, with one narrow window and a bathroom that doubled as a closet. But it was mine. I had a room now, and I had a life, too, and there was no place in either one for Mom and Dad. Still, the next day I went up to Lori’s apartment to see them. Everyone was there. Mom and Dad hugged me. Dad pulled a pint of whiskey out of a paper bag while Mom described their various adventures on the trip. They had gone sightseeing earlier that day, and taken their first ride on the subway, which Dad called a goddamn hole in the ground. Mom said the art deco murals at Rockefeller Center were disappointing, not nearly as good as some of her own paintings. None of us kids was doing much to help carry the conversation. “So, what’s the plan?” Brian finally asked. “You’re moving here?” “We have moved,” Mom said. “For good?” I asked. “That’s right,” Dad said. “Why?” I asked. The question came out sharply. Dad looked puzzled, as if the answer should have been obvious. “So we could be a family again.” He raised his pint. “To the family,” he said.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  We had a lot of arguments over what the name should be. I wanted to call her Rosita, after the prettiest girl in my class, but Mom said that name was too Mexican. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be prejudiced,” I said. “It’s not being prejudiced,” Mom said. “It’s a matter of accuracy in labeling.” She told us that both our grandmothers were angry because neither Lori nor I had been named after them, so she decided to call the baby Lilly Ruth Maureen. Lilly was Mom’s mother’s name, and Erma Ruth was Dad’s mother’s name. But we’d call the baby Maureen, a name Mom liked because it was a diminutive of Mary, so she’d also be naming the baby after herself but pretty much no one would know it. That, Dad told us, would make everyone happy except his mom, who hated the name Ruth and wanted the baby called Erma, and Mom’s mom, who would hate sharing her namesake with Dad’s mom. A FEW MONTHS AFTER Maureen was born, a squad car tried to pull us over because the brake lights on the Green Caboose weren’t working. Dad took off. He said that if the cops stopped us, they’d find out that we had no registration or insurance and that the license plate had been taken off another car, and they’d arrest us all. After barreling down the highway, he made a screeching U-turn, with us kids feeling like the car was going to tumble over on its side, but the squad car made one, too. Dad peeled through Blythe at a hundred miles an hour, ran a red light, cut the wrong way up a one-way street, the other cars honking and pulling over. He made a few more turns, then headed down an alley and found an empty garage to hide in. We heard the sound of the siren a couple of blocks away and then it faded. Dad said that since the gestapo would have their eyes out for the Green Caboose, we’d have to leave it in the garage and walk home. The next day he announced that Blythe had become a little too hot and we were hitting the road again. This time he knew where we were going. Dad had been doing some research and settled on a town in northern Nevada called Battle Mountain. There was gold in Battle Mountain, Dad said, and he intended to go after it with the Prospector. Finally, we were going to strike it rich. Mom and Dad rented a great big U-Haul truck. Mom explained that since only she and Dad could fit in the front of the U-Haul, Lori, Brian, Maureen, and I were in for a treat: We got to ride in the back. It would be fun, she said, a real adventure, but there wouldn’t be any light, so we would have to use all our resources to entertain one another. Plus we were not allowed to talk.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  A MONTH LATER, I got a call from Mom. She was so excited she was tripping over her own words. She and Dad had found a place to live. Their new home, Mom said, was in an abandoned building on the Lower East Side. “It’s a tad run-down,” she admitted. “But all it really needs is a little TLC. And best of all, it’s free.” Other folks were also moving into abandoned buildings, she said. They were called squatters, and the buildings were called squats. “Your father and I are pioneers,” Mom said. “Just like my great-great-grandfather, who helped tame the Wild West.” Mom called in a few weeks and said that although the squat still needed a few finishing touches—a front door, for example—she and Dad were officially accepting visitors. I took the subway to Astor Place on a late spring day and headed east. Mom and Dad’s apartment was in a six-story walk-up. The mortar was crumbling and bricks had come loose. All the windows on the first floor had been boarded up. I reached to open the building’s front door, but where the lock and handle should have been, there was only a hole. Inside, a single naked lightbulb hung from a wire in the hallway. On one wall, chunks of plaster had crumbled away, revealing the wooden ribs and pipes and wiring. On the third floor, I knocked on the door to Mom and Dad’s apartment and heard Dad’s muffled voice. Instead of the door swinging inward, fingers appeared on both sides, and it was lifted out of the frame altogether. There was Dad, beaming and hugging me while he went on about how he’d yet to install door hinges. As a matter of fact, they’d only just gotten the door itself, which he’d found in the basement of another abandoned building. Mom came running up behind him, grinning so widely you could see her molars, and gave me a big hug. Dad knocked a cat off a chair—they had already taken in a few strays—and offered me a seat. The room was crammed with broken furniture, bundles of clothes, stacks of books, and Mom’s art supplies. Four or five electric space heaters blasted away. Mom explained that Dad had hooked up every squat in the building to an insulated cable he’d hot-wired off a utility pole down the block. “We’re all getting free juice, thanks to your father,” Mom said. “No one in the building could survive without him.” Dad chuckled modestly. He told me how complicated the process had been,

• From City of Night (1963)

  Sometime ago, on Main Street, I had met a man from out of town who was almost breathlessly intrigued by what he called “the lowlife”—and particularly with what for him was its ultimate manifestation: smoking marijuana. I told him I could get the weed for him and we’d get high. He was so completely square that I figured—correctly—I could get him to pay as much as two bucks for each joint—which at that time was four bits a stick but which I could score for free from a queen from San Francisco. That night, I couldnt find her anywhere. I tried to pick up at Dora’s—a junk bar—but the heat was on, and the twitching pusher who hung out there—talking to you in the sinister, evil-smelling mazelike head downstairs where he made all his transactions—told me he couldnt get anything that night—“not even a benny.” At Ji-Ji’s, Dad’o hadnt even shown up—nor the pusher with the prophet-like face.... Then we ran into Chuck in the park, and while the score stood wide-eyed digging the “low-life” scene, I told Chuck what I was looking for—and why. He conceived a plot: He would split, get some ordinary cigarettes, remove the tobacco, and re-roll them in brown paper. I’d meet him in a few minutes and he would give them to me, playing a real “lowlife” scene for the score. It worked.... Later, in a ratty rented room—which I was sure the score had chosen for “lowlife atmosphere”—the score gagged on the faked joints; said: “This is sure powerful stuff you got us, boy.” After smoking about two of the ordinary cigarettes, he was convinced he was Heavenly High.... “You sure are getting high,” I told him, “just look at your pupils, theyre about to explode!” “Is that how you can tell?” “Sure!”... “Yeah,” he said, rushing to the mirror to look at his lowlife pupils, “I Sure Am High. Powerful stuff, powerful!” Now, I told Chuck how it had turned out. “Great, man,” he said. “An dig: No one got hurt—he got his kicks, same as if he had smoked the real stuff.... An what the hell, if it hadda been the real stuff, it wouldda been his luck to get busted or something. Maybe he’dda become a real strong head, even!” And now he smiles and said: “I even used some of that there men-tho-lated tobacco.” And so, for Chuck, the scene had been the Good Deed of a Boy Scout. Enter Darling Dolly Dane! “Im positively deadass tired,” she says, rushing over to us. “Babies, there just aint no one at the 1-2-3—someone’s been spreading rumors that theres so much junk being sold there that the cops are gonna knock it over any day!” Queens usually avoid the park in the daytime, and when they do come in, they tone down their effeminateness—necessarily: they are too easily spotted by the cops. Even so, Darling Dolly is wearing a shirt that could easily have been a blouse.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  Dad got ticked off and said that if I wasn’t going to team up with him, the least I could do was stake him some pool-shooting money. I found myself forking over a twenty, and then another in a few days. Mom had told me to expect a check in early July for the lease on her Texas land. She also warned me that Dad would try to get his hands on it. Dad actually waited at the foot of the hill for the mailman and took it from him on the day it arrived, but when the mailman told me what had happened, I ran down Little Hobart Street and caught Dad before he got into town. I told him Mom had wanted me to hide the check until she returned. “Let’s hide it together,” Dad said and suggested we stash it in the 1933 World Book Encyclopedia Mom got free from the library—under “currency.” The next day when I went to rehide the check, it was gone. Dad swore he had no idea what happened to it. I knew he was lying, but I also knew if I accused him, he’d deny it and there’d be a loud yelling match that wouldn’t do me any good. For the first time, I had a clear idea of what Mom was up against. Being a strong woman was harder than I had thought. Mom still had more than a month in Charleston; we were about to run out of grocery money; and my babysitting income wasn’t making up the difference. I had seen a help-wanted sign in the window of a jewelry store on McDowell Street called Becker’s Jewel Box. I put on a lot of makeup, my best dress—it was purple, with tiny white dots and a sash that tied in the back—and a pair of Mom’s high heels, since we wore the same size. Then I walked around the mountain to apply for the job. I pushed open the door, jangling the bells hanging overhead. Becker’s Jewel Box was a fancy store, the kind of place I never had occasion to go into, with a humming air conditioner and buzzing fluorescent lights. Locked glass display cases held rings and necklaces and brooches, and a few guitars and banjos hung on the pine-board-paneled walls to diversify the merchandise. Mr. Becker was leaning on the counter with his fingers interlocked. He had a stomach so big that his thin black belt reminded me of the equator circling the globe. I was afraid that Mr. Becker wouldn’t give me the job if he knew I was only thirteen, so I told him I was seventeen. He hired me on the spot for forty dollars a week, in cash. I was thrilled. It was my first real job. Babysitting and tutoring and doing other kids’ homework and mowing lawns and redeeming bottles and selling scrap metal didn’t count. Forty dollars a week was serious money. • • • I liked the work.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  We’d live in the forest in the mountains with the squirrels and the chipmunks. We could meet our grandma and grandpa Walls, who were genuine hillbillies. Mom made living in West Virginia sound like another great adventure, and pretty soon all us kids had signed on for the trip. Dad hated the idea, however, and refused to help Mom, so she plotted on her own. Since we had never retrieved the car—or any of our stuff—from the failed Grand Canyon expedition, the first thing Mom needed was a set of wheels. She said that God works in mysterious ways, and it just so happened that she had inherited some land in Texas when Grandma died. She waited until she received a check for several hundred dollars from the company that was leasing the drilling rights. Then she went to buy a used car. A local radio station had a promotional broadcast once a week from a car lot that we passed on our way to school. Every Wednesday the DJs and used-car salesmen would rave on-air about the incredible deals and the lowest prices around; to prove their point, they’d announce the Piggy Bank Special: some car priced under a thousand dollars that they’d sell to the first lucky caller. Mom set her sights on a Piggy Bank Special. She wasn’t taking any chances on being the first caller; she went down with her cash and sat in the dealership office while we kids waited on a park bench across the street, listening to the broadcast on a transistor radio. The Piggy Bank Special that Wednesday was a 1956 Oldsmobile, which Mom bought for two hundred dollars. We listened as she took to the airwaves to tell the radio audience she knew a heck of a bargain when she saw one. Mom was not allowed to test-drive the Piggy Bank Special before buying it. The car lurched and stalled several times on the way home. It was impossible to tell whether it was Mom’s driving or whether we had bought a lemon. We kids were not all that thrilled about the idea of Mom driving us cross-country. She didn’t have a valid driver’s license, for one thing, and she’d always been a terrible driver. If Dad got too drunk, she ended up behind the wheel, but cars never seemed to run right for Mom. Once we were driving through downtown Phoenix and she couldn’t get the brakes to work and she had Brian and me stick our heads out the windows and scream, “No brakes! No brakes!” as we rolled through intersections and she looked for something relatively soft to crash into. We ended up plowing into a Dumpster behind a supermarket and walking home. Mom said that anyone critical of her driving could help with the task. Now that we had a car, she continued, we could leave the next morning.