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 Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  “I think we should create a really great publication, separate from the blog, where we can publish articles aimed at the kind of people you want to reach. We can’t do this on the blog. It gets in the way of the lead generation, and then the sales guys start screaming, and Wingman comes in and tells us to start writing more dumb shit to attract more Mary leads. But a new publication, separate from the blog, could do everything you want to do. We’d have great art, nice layouts, smart writing, interviews with really interesting people. We have really talented designers in our art department, and they’d love to work on something like this.” We could call the publication Inbound and tie it in with the Inbound conference, I tell them. I could coordinate with Tracy, who runs brand and buzz, and we could draw on the people who speak at the Inbound conference. We could either get them to write for us or run interviews with them. We could incorporate video. I show them a few sites like this that other companies are producing. Microsoft has one called Stories, run by a friend of mine whose official title is chief storyteller. Qualcomm has a publication called Spark , run by a former USA Today journalist, that is doing beautiful work. They love the idea. Dharmesh is particularly enthusiastic. He leaps up and goes to the whiteboard and starts sketching out ideas for a social network that he wants to develop. He thinks we could combine our ideas. We could blend content and social media, and create something that works a bit like LinkedIn. The thing Dharmesh is describing is far beyond what I imagined. I’d just been thinking of creating an online magazine to promote the HubSpot brand. But Dharmesh wants to take this to a different level. What he has in mind would be something entirely new in the world of media. With the right resources, we might do something amazing. I’m thrilled. I desperately want to work on this. “You have our blessing,” Halligan says. “Go tell Cranium that we said yes. We want you to do this.” That night I go home feeling like a conquering hero. “I did it!” I tell Sasha. “I pitched my idea to Halligan and Dharmesh, and they loved it! Not only that, but they’re making it even better than what I pitched them. They’re going to put me in charge of my own publication. It’s perfect!” From now on I won’t have to deal with Marcia, Jan, and Ashley. I will have my own staff. I’ve already talked to Atticus, the creative director. He loves the idea and already has ideas for the design. One of his guys will make up some wire frames. Finally, I will be turned loose to do what I was supposed to be doing all along. The next day, however, when I mention all this to Spinner, she doesn’t seem excited.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  This was the most egalitarian polity yet devised, and it had an electrifying effect on the Greek world. Other poleis tried similar experiments, and there was a surge of fresh energy in the region. Cleisthenes was asking a great deal of his citizens. Since the Council of Five Hundred met three times a month, ordinary farmers and merchants were expected to dedicate about a tenth of their time to politics during their year in office. They did not lose their enthusiasm, however, and they learned a great deal from the experience. By the fifth century, the middle classes were able to participate in council debates and follow the thinking of the most intelligent people in Athens. The experiment showed that if citizens were properly educated and motivated, a government did not have to rely on brute force, and that it was possible to reform ancient institutions in a rational manner. The Athenians called their new system isonomia (“equal order”). 70 The polis was now more evenly balanced, with farmers and traders on a more equal footing with the aristocrats. Truth was no longer a secret, esoteric revelation for a select few. It was now en mesoi (“in the center”) of the political domain, 71 but the Greeks still regarded their political life as sacred and the polis as the extension of divinity into human affairs. Athens remained a devoutly religious city, even though it was increasingly a city of logos. As more people participated in government, they began to apply the debating skills they had acquired on the council floor to other spheres of knowledge. Political speeches and laws were now subjected to stringent criticism, and logos, the speech of the hoplites, continued to be aggressive. Debate was characterized by conflict, antithesis, and the desire to exclude an opposing point of view. The philosophy of the period reflected the agonistic quality of political life, as well as the Greek yearning for poise and harmony. This was especially evident in the work of Heraclitus (540–480), a member of the royal family of Ephesus, who was known as the “riddler” because he presented his ideas in lapidary, baffling maxims. “Nature,” he once said, “loves to hide”; things were the opposite of what they seemed. 72 The first relativist, Heraclitus argued that everything depended upon context: seawater was good for fish, but potentially fatal for men; a blow was salutary if delivered as a punishment, but evil if inflicted by a murderer. 73 A restless, unsettling man, Heraclitus believed that even though the cosmos seemed stable, it was in fact in constant flux and a battlefield of warring elements. “Cold things grow hot, the hot cools, the wet dries, the parched moistens.” 74 He was especially fascinated by fire: a flame was never still; fire transformed wood into ash, and water into steam.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Some mysterious philanthropist has been putting hundred-dollar bills in envelopes, stashing them all over San Francisco and New York, and posting clues about how to find them. “I propose we kick it up a notch. We announce that on a certain day we will hide a bag containing five thousand dollars somewhere in San Francisco, say in Golden Gate Park. Or in Central Park, in New York. We create a frenzy. Imagine you have hundreds, or thousands, of people racing around trying to find the money. They all descend on the park at the same time. They’re blocking traffic. They’re causing accidents! It’s like that old movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World , where all the different teams are trying to find the treasure. The press would be all over this. They’d all do stories about the chaos. They’d do stories about whoever finds the money. They’ll do stories about us. We’ll be on national TV.” The thing is, this really isn’t a bad idea. It’s controversial, and maybe crazy, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Nobody likes it. “Okay,” I say, “so we could even take it one step further. We build a money cannon. It’s a big cannon that shoots dollar bills. You just need a big fan, in a box, and then a tube sticking out. We mount the cannon on the back of a Hummer, with HubSpot in huge letters on both sides, and we drive around a city blowing money into the streets. Think of the disruption! People rushing into the streets, trying to grab as many dollar bills as they can. They’d be fighting over the money, like people at Walmart on Black Friday. It would be a nightmare!” They all just sit there, looking down at their hands. Trotsky clears his throat and says, “Okay—anybody else?” We spend an hour listening to various lame ideas. One is called Uber-a-Marketer, and it’s a ripoff of a promotion that Uber did with a vaccine service, where you could have a nurse with a flu shot driven to your door. With Uber-a-Marketer, you’d pay some money, or win some kind of competition, and HubSpot would send one of its marketing people to your office and teach you how to do marketing. After all, we’re the best marketing team on the planet! People would kill to have us teach them about marketing! This idea actually generates some responses. But someone worries that Uber might not want to play ball with us. What happens then? We could go to Lyft, or some other car service. I chime in, saying that I love this idea but maybe there’s a way to kick it up a notch and make it even more dramatic: “Why not have a marketing person parachute in?” I say. “Like Google did at their I/O conference last year, when they had people wearing Google Glass skydive onto the roof of the venue.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  3. Confined spaceA variety of havensMy explorations of exclusive locations in the outskirts of Paris not only filled me with the euphoria of wide open spaces, but also as a corollary, that of a game of hide and seek. In an open street, a stone’s throw from the Soviet Embassy, I once found refuge in the back of a Ville de Paris van, because one of the group was a municipal employee. The men came in one by one. I knelt to suck them off or lay down and curled to one side the better to present my arse to facilitate their hold. Nothing had been provided in the back of the van to soften the ridged surface of the metal floor and each jolt was quite painful. But I could have hidden there all night, not stiffened so much because of my uncomfortable position but rather dulled and lulled by the atmosphere of my unlikely haven where I curled up and sunk, like in those opaque dreams, watching myself go deeper. I didn’t have to move: the rear door was raised at regular intervals, the man jumped out and a new silhouette slipped in. In that creaky little vehicle I was like a motionless idol accepting the homage of a suite of followers. I was as I had imagined myself in some of my fantasies, like – for example – the one when I’m in a concierge’s room with only my arse protruding from the curtain which hides the bed offered to a long succession of men who stamp their feet and yell abuse at each other. A 2CV van is well worth a concierge’s room. But I left my metal baldaquin before they had all done. Éric, who had been keeping watch, explained the following day: on the one hand, the men were in such a state of excitement that they were beginning to get aggressive, and on the other hand because the van was threatening to keel over…

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The fantasy may also revolve around the fact that, lying just behind the eyes, the brain has perfect and instantaneous intelligence of the thing so nearly touching it! First of all I see the actions which determine my breathing: the flexible channel of my hand, my lips folded over my teeth so as not to hurt, my tongue which quickly dabs the glans as it comes closer. I evaluate their progress visually, the whole hard moving with the lips, sometimes with a slight twisting movement, and increasing the pressure when it reaches the thicker bud at the end. Then suddenly the hand goes its own way to rub swiftly up and down, forming a pincer with just two fingers, making the silky tip bob against the cushioned surface of my lips pursed into a kiss. Jacques always lets out a brief, clear little ‘ha’ of surprised delight (even though he knows the manoeuvre perfectly well), which redoubles my own excitement, when the hand releases its grip, allowing the organ to disappear to the back of my throat. I try to keep it there for a moment and even to manoeuvre its rounded tip over the back of my palate until tears come to my eyes, until I’m suffocating. Or – but for this you need your whole body to be well balanced – I hold the hub still and gravitate my whole head round it, distributing gentle strokes from my cheeks, my chin moistened with saliva, my forehead, hair and even the end of my nose. I lick lavishly right down to the balls which you can take into your mouth whole. These movements are punctuated by longer halts on the glans where the tip of the tongue describes circles, unless it decides instead to devote itself to niggling at the edge of the foreskin. Then, bang! Without any warning I take the whole thing back into my mouth and I hear the cry which transmits its wave down to the cast iron ring forged around the entry to my cunt.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  ‘Will some of them crap on me too?’ ‘Yes, and you’ll lick their arses afterwards.’ ‘And will I refuse to at first? Will I fight?’ ‘Yes, and they’ll smack you.’ ‘It’s disgusting, but I’ll clean out the folds of their arseholes with my tongue.’ ‘We’ll get there in the evening and you’ll stay there till the following morning.’ ‘But I’ll get tired.’ ‘You will be able to sleep, they’ll carry on fucking you. And we’ll come back that evening, and the hotel manager will bring his dog, and there’ll be someone who’ll pay to see you doing it with the dog.’ ‘Will I have to suck it?’ ‘You’ll see, it’ll have a very red cock and it’ll climb on top of you like on a bitch and stay stuck to you.’ Other times, the events would unroll in the workmen’s shed on a building site and whole teams of workmen would file through, paying no more than five francs a go. As I have suggested, my body sometimes convulsed in response to these images, but not always; the real action and the fantasy scrolled in tandem and only came together sporadically. We spoke in measured tones with all the precision and attention to detail of two scrupulous witnesses helping each other reconstruct a past event. When he came close to orgasm my partner became less talkative. I don’t know whether he was concentrating on one of the images of our imaginary film. As for me, I would sometimes bring the scenario back to a more private situation. The shed on the building site would become a concierge’s loge in a building undergoing repairs. In those cramped quarters, the bed is sometimes just hidden by a curtain. Only my stomach and legs were visible in front of it, and the workmen still kept coming in droves to service me without my seeing them or their seeing me under the gaze of the concierge who regulated the traffic. CommunitiesThere are two ways of envisaging a multitude, either as a crowd in which individual identities become confused, or as a chain where conversely what distinguishes them from each other is also what links them together, as one ally compensates for another’s weaknesses, as a son resembles his father even though he rebels. The very first men I knew immediately made me an emissary of a network in which I couldn’t hope to know all the members, the unwitting link in a family joined as in the bible.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  I remember when we arrived at the little stadium at Vélizy-Villacoublay how funny it seemed. The trip there had been so long, the leader of the convoy had been so mysterious about the destination, that when we came upon the place like a great clearing in the middle of a forest it just made us burst out laughing. It was a clear night. When you go to so much trouble to find a place, it’s usually to choose somewhere less exposed, somewhere more appropriate for complicity! On top of that we all realised that we were going to be fornicating amid the ghosts of all the adolescents who came and played football there on Wednesday afternoons. Our guide responded to our questions by admitting that this had indeed been where he came for football training. He looked crestfallen, as if he had been forced to admit to a longstanding fantasy. Who hasn’t dreamed of polluting some ordinary and innocent place they know with a bit of nooky? The group took refuge under the sloping terraces, because it goes so against human nature to copulate in full view of the horizon or in too expansive a space. On the whole, we protect ourselves less from other people’s gazes which can constitute an even more definite barrier than their bodies. People who fuck on the beach on moonlit summer nights think about the intimacy of their situation, and this cuts them off from the immensity around them. Our group was too big and too spread out to create that sort of intimacy itself. I took the cocks standing up, hanging on to some of the posts under the terraces, with my dress lifted up (I didn’t want to take everything off because it was so cold, but my buttocks were still completely exposed). Because I have a very supple waist, I am well suited to this position. So this circle of joyful activity continued, forming a perimeter around my outstretched arse, while I gazed absently through the frame of floorboards to the empty pitch.

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

  going new-school. She took one last glance to make sure that her girls were safely ensconced, pasty-free, in the bustier; that wouldn’t last, but what the hell. She stretched her foot out toward the MP3 player and pressed the PLAY button with her toe, in a move she’d perfected through months of solo dance practice. “Playing something special, are we, Lacy?” “You better believe it,” she said nastily, as the music started with blaring horns and a screaming electric guitar. It was Lacy’s favorite band, the Bindlestiffs, playing “Drink, Rob, and Fuck”, a violent punk homage to corruption in 1920s-era Chicago. She figured it suited the situation. Lacy started dancing with a savagery that she usually reserved for slow nights at The Mustang. It never failed to liven things up. This particular MP3 of “Drink, Rob, and Fuck” was a live recording, so she could hear the roaring of the crowd with each crooned boneheaded obscenity: “Big Al C he rules the street/but I just wanna lick your feet/bathtub gin goes down the hatch/you got a license for that snatch?” Lacy pulled a nasty twirl and went shimmying across the stage with her body undulating viciously; at the back edge, she pulled a scis¢or-move and started climbing up the curtains like they were a stripper-pole, popping out of her bustier, nipples erect and pointing like pistols. Hap would be having a heart- attack about now if he could see her. She did an inverted twirl and came down in a flying pirouette; executing a perfect landing, she brought the filmy peignoir across her chest in a coquettish conceal; she figured fuck the peignoir, fuck the bustier; the skirt was a tearaway, so she cast it at the balcony, though it didn’t make it far. Lacy was down on her hands and knees wearing nothing but fishnet stockings and marabou-fluffed heels. She spun on to her back, scissored up and writhed her way to the chair. Never got used to the smooth look, eh? Here, pal, get a faceful. She started working the chair obscenely, pumping her body in time with the violent music; had she pulled this particular move at The Mustang, she would promptly have been buried under $5 bills and just as promptly been fired for spreading her legs without a G-string. Even with bikini bottoms she would have been pushing the envelope here; obscene pelvic thrusts were as fun to make as they were pleasing to the audience, but too many of them and you sometimes ran afoul of the local cops, so the manager Bobo kept a close eye on things. But her pelvic thrusts had nothing on what she was about to do; in each dance, she found a moment when she knew Bobo wasn’t 132 Thomas S. Roche

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

  The lights went off. Noises came forth, a soundtrack of the a spectrum of meteorological effects, frogs, Amazon rainforest: monkeys, jaguars, flowing streams, waterfalls, chirping fidgeting insects, hissing snakes, crying macaws, rackety Aracuan tree birds, crickety toucans, vampire bats and other flying creatures. Aromatherapy units plugged into electrical outlets released a rainforest smell — a pungent mixture of green, orchids, vanilla, cocoa, mango, wood, leaf and musk. The coffee oil neutralized and masked odors; the Mesdames alone cotld appreciate the heady aromas. The curtain slowly opened, its mossy fabric lightly brushing bodies on either side. The Monsieurs felt an aura of heat at crotch level, issuing from the darkness-cloaked wall. Their hands, all eight, almost simultaneously, reached towards the thermal source facing them, as if to unchill by a campfire. Warm toned round flesh stopped the fingers. The Monsieurs realized that they were standing at an altar of asses. Each signed in using his pen, marking X, centered above the proximate hindquarters, where meaty curve became hard spine. Then, the hands. They fondled, they prodded, they kneaded. The buttocks were smooth, every crevice and pussy uniformly bald. Each Monsieur sampled the sap of the trunk in front of him. Fingers entered fervent wet openings, rear wiggling encouragingly in response. Each Monsieur removed the fruit from his mouth and used it as a pulpy feather, tickling the labia before him, sliding the sweet piece in and out, sucking it for a moment and pushing it back inside, sometimes along with a thumb. Then the mouth, licking the fruit juice off the radiant aperture, teasing its bloated nub with a fingertip. Then the mouth sucking the slice, now mixed with the lubricious female secretions and returning to the pussy — kissing, tonguing, gently nibbling — each Monsieur different but the same. 140 EllaRegina On the other side of the wall eight knees quivered, mouth gags prevented voices from calling out, from squealing — blocked them from adding to the pleas of the macaws, the screams of the chimpanzees, the chittering of bats. Four cocks stiffened in the dark, helped by a firm urease + grasp or two and the drum beat, the thunder, the wind, the entire jungle hum — its acoustical display gradually building in audibility and intensity. Fingers again at each set of parted lips, or caressing the orb of a rump. One digit entered an asshole, to the delight of the identity-unknown recipient, her derriére shivering. The Monsieurs arrived at the same point concurrently, aiming their saliva-coated cockheads at the welcoming shppery pouts and slowly submerging. Four cocks, up to the hilt within four pussies, each either unexplored territory or familiar path, It did not matter — it was the thrill of the not-knowing, the maybe, the notion that they could be poking their own Madame or another with whom they've played footsie, stinkfinger, tickle-rump, and Spin-the-Bottle for years.

• From Cultish (2021)

  In Los Angeles, where I live, a new cult workout brand pops up every day, and I’ve rolled my eyes at them all. But there I was, four incantations into an intenSati class, jumping around and laugh-crying like the suckers I’ve always scorned. After our mini workout, my mom went off to perform a few solo sun salutations, while I immediately looked up Patricia Moreno’s virtual class schedule, thinking, Shit, is this what conversion feels like? iii.Fitness may be the new religion, but instructors are the new clergy. The “cult workout” empire would be nothing without its Patricia Morenos and Angela Manuel-Davises, who do so much more than guide classes. Instructors learn followers’ names, Instagram handles, and personal life details. They hand out their cell phone numbers and counsel followers on matters as grave as whether they should divorce their spouse or quit their job. They share intimate stories and hardships from their own lives and invite followers to reciprocate. Followers form deep-rooted loyalties to their favorite teachers and start referring to classes not by brand name but by instructor name. It’s not “I’m going to SoulCycle at four p.m. today and six p.m. tomorrow,” but “I’m going to Angela’s class today and Sparkie’s class tomorrow.” A workout brand is “not so much a ‘cult’ as it is a collection of ‘cults,’” remarked Crystal O’Keefe, a project manager by day and Peloton apostle by night. Crystal runs a Peloton-themed podcast and blog called The Clip Out and is known to her few thousand followers as Clip-Out Crystal. “July 15, 2016, is the day I received my Peloton. I remember it so well,” she wrote to me sentimentally, like the beginning to her memoir. “I now have completed almost 700 rides.” Launched on Kickstarter in 2013, Peloton is a subscription-based fitness app offering all kinds of online workout classes (termed “shows” in corporate Peloton-speak). There’s dance aerobics, yoga, Pilates, and, by far its most popular offering, Spin. Thousands of participants log on from their garages and basements to ride their $2,000 Peloton-brand stationary bikes, which stream the shows from built-in touchscreen monitors. Because Peloton classes are hosted online, as opposed to in limited studio spaces, thousands of riders can take the same class at once. In 2018, the app streamed a Thanksgiving “Turkey Burn,” which 19,700 users attended at the exact same time. Five years after their initial crowdfunding campaign, Peloton had raised almost a billion dollars and was deemed the first-ever “fitness unicorn.” A wellness editor I used to work with assured me that Peloton’s virtual model, which is simple and nonproprietary, is without question the future of boutique fitness (a prediction that seems even likelier post-COVID-19, when workout studios were forced to digitize overnight or die). On the Peloton app, each rider chooses a username (the cheekier, the better; there are entire subreddits dedicated to cute Peloton handle ideas: @ridesforchocolate, @will_spin_for_zin, @clever_username) and has access to everyone’s speeds, resistance levels, and ranks.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Sure, it’s kind of kooky, and it all feels a bit forced, as if everybody is working just a little too hard to convince themselves that their job is cool and they’re having fun. But who cares? It’s my first day. I’m excited to be here. I think it’s a hoot. In the past few years I’ve visited dozens of places like this, and I’ve wondered what it would be like to work at one. As we make our way around the building Zack tells me a little bit about himself. Just like me, he’s a newcomer to HubSpot. He only joined a month ago. In college he majored in English and wanted to be a sportswriter. But after graduation he decided that journalism seemed too shaky and took a job at Google instead. I tell him he did the right thing. Publications are struggling, and reporters are getting axed in droves, which is why people like me are now showing up in places like this, trying to “reinvent” ourselves by working in PR or marketing. Those jobs supposedly draw on the same set of skills that you develop as a journalist, meaning that you can write and you can work on deadline. And frankly, by the standards of corporate America, you’re cheap. Zack thinks it might be helpful if he explains how the marketing department is organized. We go to a conference room and he begins drawing an org chart on the whiteboard. Zack, I will discover, loves to write on whiteboards. At the top of the marketing department he puts Cranium, the chief marketing officer. Below Cranium are Wingman and three other people. Each of these people has a team or set of teams organized underneath them. On and on Zack goes, creating a tree structure that keeps getting bigger and soon fills the white board. There’s product marketing, web marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, customer marketing, conversion marketing. There are people who do demand generation, others who do customer advocacy. There are people who do sales enablement and lead nurturing. There’s something called the funnel team, and another group called brand and buzz, which oversees the public relations team and runs the annual customer conference. Finally, off to one side, is the content team. It comprises the people who write for the blog and another group who write e-books. That’s where I will be working. I notice something: On the chart, Zack’s name is located above the content team, right below Wingman. I’m no expert in corporate organization, but based on the arrangement of this chart, I think—or, rather, I fear—that this guy who I thought was some kind of administrative assistant might actually be my boss. “Wait a minute,” I say. “I’m confused.” I look at Zack. “Zack,” I say, “what do you do here?

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

  very essence of the universe were pulsing through her veins like liquid sunlight. No one was watching or judging — hey, man, get a load of those tits. On ordinary days, Zoe hated the way her breasts jostled when she ran, and she loathed her butt, which remained stubbornly round and full no matter how much she dieted. But this morning she’d somehow escaped the prison of her own body. She was exactly what she wanted to be: long and lean and jazzy, just like Bobby. For once what she looked like was less important than the things her body could do. As she savored each swaggering step, each powerful ripple of muscle in her legs, these words floated into her head: this must be how boys feel inside. Of course, the magic couldn’t last forever. The stairs took her straight to the door of the men’s bathroom. If she really were Bobby, she could saunter right in, but to get to the ladies’ she’d have to follow a long subterranean corridor to the next entryway. The architects who built this dorm a hundred years ago, when the college was all male, probably never dreamed their design would be such a pain in the ass to a young woman creeping down from her boyfriend’s bed to answer nature’s call. Dead white males — that was another thing about college, everywhere you turned they’d left their mark. Zoe glanced down the hallway quickly in each direction. All was quiet and cold, deserted as the Siberian tundra. Go ahead. Do it. No one will see. ‘Throwing her shoulders back, she strode into the men’s room. She half-expected a crash of thunder in divine retribution, but the only sound was a faucet dripping in the far corner and the faint buzz of fluorescent lights. Zoe paused, sniffing the air. The place reeked of boy, as if the walls had sucked in all the secretions of decades of its inhabitants for posterity: sweat and piss and rivers of milky jism swirling down the shower drains. She smiled. ‘Truth be told, this wasn’t the first time Zoe had visited the men’s room in the fourth entryway of Holder Hall. She’d been here just one month before, but with a proper escort. She and Bobby had stayed on campus for a few days of the Christmas break, supposedly to finish up term papers, but really so they could fuck all day long. One morning Bobby talked her into taking a shower with him. He said guys brought their girlfriends here all the time. He’d come down to brush his teeth or whatever, and he’d spot four feet under a shower curtain, two of them smaller, the toenails painted a tell-tale pink Being Bobby 55

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

  If not already hairless in your nether regions, a full Brazilian waxing should be undergone the day before the Montridge Eight event. Do not expose those waxed parts to the Monsieur, let him feel them, nor explain why. Note: if skin sensitivity precludes the application of hot wax a cream depilatory may be used. No perfume or scented body lotion. The Monsieurs received similar directives to eliminate any existing hair from navel to knees, by whatever means necessary, the day of 136 EllaRegina the meeting. Monsieur Black was asked to shave off his goatee and, if queried by Madame Black, to say that he just felt like a change. The playing field was to be leveled, literally mowed. Fingernails were to be neatly trimmed. All e-mails gave the same cryptic proclamatory ending: The evening will conclude with a Blind Tasting. On February 21st the Montridge Eight will travel further than they have ever gone. The Whites — the Monsieur, a film producer; the Madame an architect — lived in a house of Madame White’s design — a sprawling one-storey of stone and glass. A central hall was flanked by sixteen interconnected corridor-like rooms that could be walked through, from one to the next, with the exception of a guest bath and five sleeping chambers — rectangular beads on a string, each painted a different vivid color. Traversing their floor plan was crossing a rainbow. The Whites joked that their home simply reflected that they were people of color, but the spatial effect was more than ironic — the palette had a cumulative beguiling influence. The group ambled through the house, giddily drinking Cazpirinhas, the Monsieurs in cashmere sweaters and wool suits; the Mesdames wearing flowing crépe and clingy silk, tottering on stilettos and kitten heels — they could be quadruplets or a ballerina quartet, so similarly sized, shaped and toned from weight-lifting, tennis and Pilates. The Monsieurs also had comparable physiques — athletic well-tended bodies the result of running, swimming, and biking. Even their cocks shared a resemblance, formidable every one, this mutually and tacitly observed in the pool club locker room. custom Monsieur White’s audio mix played everywhere, emanating from speakers hidden behind walls: “The Girl from Ipanema” bossa nova charmed the ballroom; a samba romanced the conservatory; and Carmen Miranda belted out a frenetic Tico Tico from an unseen Copacabana in the lounge. Other rooms featured Brazilian jazz or indigenous music — whistles, flutes, horns, rattles and drums imitating the sounds of the Amazon rainforest. The entire house was animated. Plasma HD TVs descended from ceilings in almost every room, volume muted, looping TiVoed soccer games with Brazil always in the lead, teams on each 30” flat panel keyed by their uniform colors to the room itself. In the blue study two Donald Duck cartoons Blind Tasting 137

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  A DESCRIPTION OF THE CICLOS Our team facilitated three large-group workshops, called ciclos, in Recife, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. The impact of those very large groups was deep. We felt they were profoundly important, not only in their short-term effects, but also in their long-range possibilities. The learnings from these groups could have great significance for the future; they could help us formulate a long-range aim of what education might become. These two-day ciclos, or institutes, were not our major purpose in going to Brazil, but they provided our most exciting new learnings. In each case, they were organized by a local committee of dedicated individuals, mostly professionals, representing different organizations or interests. The aim was to recruit large numbers of people who, for a fee (often waived), signed up for the twelve hours of the two-day ciclo—two afternoon and two evening sessions. The response was excellent, and the audiences were about equal in each city. During one afternoon session there were only five hundred people, but the evening sessions were attended by six hundred to eight hundred. The meeting places varied in the number of rooms available for smaller groupings and in the formality or informality of the auditorium itself. The audiences displayed much diversity. There were many educators, from elementary school teachers to college professors. There were counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, students, housewives, and a miscellany of other occupations. Ages ranged from twenty-five to seventy. Judging from appearances, however, participants were largely middle-class. And about three- fourths were women: in Brazil, interest in the social sciences and in human problems seems still to be regarded as largely a feminine concern.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Savvy social butterfly types who know how to captivate an audience. Who thrive on that dynamic. Instructors need to cultivate a social media persona, to “live and breathe” the brand even off the clock. Even to strangers on the phone. When SoulCycle vet Sparkie and I first got on our call, I began with a customary “Hi, how are you?,” expecting your average “good” or “fine.” Silly me. Sparkie, as her name suggests, never shuts off. “I’m FABULOUS, BABE!” she exploded with such speed and buoyancy, I felt winded just listening. “Better than ever, busier than ever. I’m so busy I don’t even remember what this interview is about! Nice to meet you!! Who are you again?!” SoulCycle’s talent team holds intense, Broadway theater–esque auditions where the first round of aspiring principals is allotted thirty seconds to hop on a bike, blast a song, and show they’ve got what it takes. Finalists enter a rigorous ten-week instructor training program, where they learn to talk the talk. They pick up all the exclusive terminology—“party hills” (warm-up exercises), “tapbacks” (a signature move involving zesty backward butt thrusting), “Roosters” (5 a.m. classes and the “Type A” riders who take them), “noon on Monday” (a slogan referencing when class bookings open up each week), and how to make everything sound “soulful” with a capital S. Peloton’s exclusive recruitment process is arguably even more intense, since their online model allows them to maintain a tight roster of only twenty or so top-tier instructors. To earn initiation into the elite Peloton fam, aspirants are put through hours of interviews and callbacks with everyone from marketing experts to producers, and then months of training to guarantee they’ve got the magnetism to attract thousands to every show. Sparkie, a born-and-bred LA vegan with lilac hair and sleeves of rainbow tattoos, gained her passionate SoulCycle following with a repertoire of kitschy, old-school mottos inspired by her grandfather (“Anything worth doing is worth doing well!” “It’s not how you start, it’s how you fucking finish!”). She spent several years heading SoulCycle’s training program, helping newbies “find their voice” as instructors. “The key to creating the following is to sound authentic. When you sound like popcorn, people can hear it,” Sparkie told me. She recalled one nineteen-year-old trainee who was worried about what words of wisdom she could possibly offer riders: “And I was like, you’re not going to stand in front of the woman surviving cancer or the dad supporting a whole family and give them life wisdom. If you’re like, ‘I know times are hard!

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

  were projected on to mammoth screens posted at opposite walls: the mischievous fowl rescued from the blues by an Aracuan bird in a samba café — dancing, getting mixed into a cocktail, being kicked in all directions from between the flesh and blood legs of a woman working the pedals of a Hammond organ. Keyboards explode: flying ticker tape ribbons. At the drive-in across the room an artist’s paintbrush sketched blue Brazilian waterfalls — cascading ejaculations on an otherwise white background. In the kitchen, three varieties of Brazilian red wine stood uncorked, brought by the Greens. The hors d’oeuvres — ripened Brazilian cheeses, broa fennel corn bread and soft pao de queijo rolls (the Grays) — were set out on the soapstone-topped center island, and consumed standing up, hands grazing rears, fingers edging shoulders, calves against shins. Once the churrasco-style meat was grilled, Monsieur White carried a tray of loaded skewers to the dining room table. Madame White followed with the other foods: coxinha, chicken-thigh-shaped croquettes; fezjoada, Rio’s traditional black bean and meat stew (the Blacks); farofa—a yucca, banan&4, egg and onion mix —collard greens, rice and beans, chourico sausage, and fried plantains (the Grays). Everyone took their places — green, black, gray and white dinnerware indicating seating arrangements. Orchids lay horizontally above each Madame’s plate. Eight small white envelopes, centered on the dishes, identically stamped: ~ READ ME ~ YOUR BLIND TASTING INSTRUCTIONS The printed contents were perused with a grin and a blush, then the papers slid into pockets or tucked inside brassieres. By the time the meal commenced it was a pure bacchanal, fueled by the Blind Tasting intimations. Hands, mouths, tongues, foods — all mixed up — this one feeding that one, the sucking of dripping meats and fingers, stray morsels licked off cheeks, cashmere, wool, silk and crépe. Eating utensils were hardly touched. It was primitive, nearly pagan. Wine glasses spilling and refilling. Every cock was hard under the mahogany, every pussy ready and drooling. Dessert eventually landed, a cloud in a decadent haze — coconut flan. The coffee, brewed from dark Brazilian beans purchased on Amazon.com, was drunk slowly, not just for savoring but so everyone 138 EllaRegina could regroup. The evening was not over, the Blind Tasting still to come. Each Madame selected a bathroom and freshened up on the bidet. Then, arm in arm, they descended the basement stairs, giggling in unison, flushed from the wine and the anticipation of what awaited them.

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

  No one was about in the basement so, nervously, I entered the room Id seen earlier, an underused storeroom with drums of olive oil lined against a wall, boxes under a large wooden table and four towers of orange chairs stacked in a corner. Big Nose was sitting spread-legged on a reversed chair, arms folded on its back. Behind him on the table sat his flamenco-looking friend, one leg swinging back and forth. My heart was going nineteen to the dozen. “Who takes the money?” I asked. Big Nose held out a hand. Feigning confidence, I gave him the notes. Stretching, he passed them to Flamenco who bundled them into his jeans pocket as if he were the pimp. There was a brief exchange in Catalan and I understood only that it was about money and that Big Nose was called Jordi. “Gragias,” said Flamenco, relaxing his posture to suggest his work was done. Jordi stood and spun the chair to face me. Still standing, he said, “On your knees.” . I glanced at Flamenco who was making no moves to leave. “It’s not a floor show,” I said. On My Knees in Barcelona 15 Jordi grabbed my face with a broad hand, forcing me to meet his gaze. He squeezed my cheeks. “On your fucking knees.” His nastiness sent shards of arousal to my groin. I felt bullied and debased, even more so because of our audience, and it was everything I wanted but would never have dared ask for. I fell to my knees, the scuffed hardwood floor briefly cooling my skin. Ahead of me, the fly of Jordi’s jeans undulated over his boner, the faded denim at his crotch reminding me how much of a stranger he was, the rhythms of a life unknown imprinted on fabric concealing the cock I was about to blow. With a clink of metal, he unbuckled and unzipped, rummaging to release his erection. My heart gave a kick of joy at the sight of his hard-on raging up from the wiry thicket of his pubes. I’d forgotten how obscenely aggressive hard cocks are and his was a brutish beauty, the color suffusing the head with such intensity I fancied it might seep through his skin to stain the air with a blood violet hue. He gripped himself, fingers thick around his girth, the sea blue vein on his underside peeping as he gently jerked. | “It’s a good price, no?” he Said. Doing my best to forget about Flamenco, I opened my mouth to take Jordi but he stilled me with a hand on my forehead. “It’s a good price,” he repeated sternly. His balls were tucked up tight and they lifted as he worked his shaft.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  As I read that the nine European Common Market nations have elected a European Parliament of some four hundred members, I grow excited by the possibilities. It is reported that its function will be more symbolic than legislative. This fact opens still more opportunities, since members will not be rigidly bound to “party lines” and can express their own selves. I have little doubt that a competent international facilitative staff could initiate in this diverse congress of nations the same sort of process I have been describing—a process that was strikingly illustrated in the intercultural workshop in Spain, creating a harmonious unity out of citizens of twenty-two countries. Imagine the members of such an international parliament reaching the point where they could truly hear and understand and respect one another, where a cooperative sense of community developed, where humanness had a higher priority than power. The results could have the most profound significance. I do not mean that all problems would be resolved. Not at all. But even the most difficult tensions and demands become more soluble in a human climate of understanding and mutual respect. This is only one example of the way in which our know-how in forming community might be used to resolve and dissolve intercultural and international tensions. A plan is ready for working with Arab-Israeli relationships. Whether it will be tried is problematical. What is important is that such a plan is within the realm of possibility. If a group of individuals, no matter how antagonistic or hostile its members, are willing to gather in the same room together, we know the attitudes and skills that can move it in the direction of a communicative mutual respect, and eventually toward becoming a community. The Significance for Education Many experiments in a more person-centered mode of education are under way. I would like to paint, in broad strokes, the picture of what education in the future might be like if we utilize the knowledge we have today. It could build a climate of trust in which curiosity, the natural desire to learn, could be nourished and enhanced. It could free students, faculty, and administrators alike to engage in a participatory mode of decisionmaking about all aspects of learning. It could develop a sense of community in which the destructive competition of today would be replaced by cooperation, respect for others, and mutual helpfulness. It could be a place where students would come to prize themselves, would develop self-confidence and self-esteem. It could be a situation in which both students and faculty would increasingly discover the source of values in themselves, coming to an awareness that the good life is within, not dependent on outside sources. In such an educational community, students could find an excitement in intellectual and emotional discovery which would lead them to become lifelong learners.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Mani would say the word, and—mesmerized in that way insecure teenage girls always are by self-possessed ones—we’d do it: I would drive from Santa Monica to Studio City to pick her up in my Honda Civic, and we’d go thrift shopping, or diner hopping, or horseback riding on Tuesday afternoons in the hills ($12 for two hours). Or, on one day, against my better judgment, accepting an invitation to take a “personality test” at the colossal Church of Scientology in Hollywood. On this particular July afternoon, Mani and I were frolicking about town, on our way to procure a Jamba Juice, when two twentysomethings standing on Sunset Boulevard, dressed for a high school orchestra performance (white button-downs, black slacks), held out a pair of pamphlets and asked, “Do you want to take a personality test?” I was a self-absorbed youth who loved nothing more than flipping to the quiz sections of Seventeen and Cosmopolitan to find out who my Gilmore Girls heartthrob was or what fall fashion trend I should try according to my zodiac sign. But I had also spent two semesters in New York City, and so had Mani, so you can imagine my surprise when, instead of bullishly power walking right past this street team as if they belonged to a species below human, Mani stopped, smiled, and said, “That sounds FUN.” Once we examined the literature and discovered it was branded with Scientology insignia, I thought for certain Mani would agree to steer clear of these wackadoodles. Get the smoothies. Drive home. But no, Mani was cool and beautiful and afraid of nothing, so the Scientology thing only intrigued her more. “We have to do it,” she declared, batting her gigaparsec-length eyelashes. Trying to be as down for anything as Mani was, I consented. We put our quest for frozen fructose on pause, climbed back into my Civic, drove four blocks, and turned down L. Ron Hubbard Way. After parking in a spacious lot, we sauntered up to the 377,000-square-foot cathedral, which I’d only ever seen from afar. You might have come across photos of this place in a documentary or a Wikipedia black hole—it’s that famous building with the Grecian-looking facade embossed with a story-tall Scientology cross (featuring eight points instead of four). It’s mecca for the twenty-five thousand Scientologists living in the US,* most of whom reside (troublingly) within twelve square miles of my current home in Los Angeles. Here in LA, Scientologists hide in plain sight: They’re your baristas, your yoga teachers, your favorite CW-drama side characters, and—especially—all those twinkly-eyed transplants hoping to strike it big in Tinseltown. Wannabe film stars find ads in issues of Backstage magazine promising career-making crash courses in entertainment, or they attend artist workshops secretly backed by Scientology. Others accept street team invitations to take a personality test. Some spend an afternoon touring the impressive campus (it’s open to the public) or attend an intro course as a joke.

• From Cultish (2021)

  A portrait of CrossFit’s founder, Greg Glassman (known then to devotees as “The WoDFather,” or simply “Coach”), hung on the wall of Alyssa’s box next to one of his most famous quotes, a fitness proverb that would soon sear into her brain: “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts . . . master the basics of gymnastics . . . bike, run, swim, row . . . hard and fast. Five or six days per week.” Alyssa was taken with how CrossFit focused on shaping members’ mentalities not just inside the box, but everywhere. When driving trainees to work harder, coaches would bellow “Beast mode!” (a motivational phrase that reverberated through Alyssa’s thoughts at school and work, too). To help you internalize the CrossFit philosophy, they’d repeat “EIE,” which meant “Everything is everything.” When Alyssa noticed everyone at her box was wearing Lululemon, she went out and dropped $400 on designer workout swag. (Even Lululemon had its own distinctive vernacular. It was printed all over their shopping bag s, so customers would walk out of the store carrying mantras like, “There is little difference between addicts and fanatic athletes,” “Visualize your eventual demise,” and “Friends are more important than money”—all coined by their so-called “tribe” leader, Lululemon’s founder, Chip Wilson, an aging G.I. Joe type just like Greg Glassman whose acolytes were equally devout. Who knew fitness could inspire such religiosity?) As soon as Alyssa learned that most CrossFitters followed a Paleo diet, she cut out gluten and sugar. If she made plans to go out of town and knew she wouldn’t be able to make her normal workout time, she quickly alerted someone at the box, lest they publicly shame her in their Facebook group for no-showing. Coaches and members were all fooling around with each other, so after Alyssa and her boyfriend split, she started hooking up with a trainer named Flex (real name: Andy; he changed it after joining the box). So here’s the big question: What do Alyssa’s and Tasha’s stories have in common? The answer: They were both under cultish influence. If you’re skeptical of applying the same charged “cult” label to both 3HO and CrossFit, good. You should be. For now, let’s agree on this: Even though one of our protagonists ended up broke, friendless, and riddled with PTSD, and the other got herself a strained hamstring, a codependent friend with benefits, and a few too many pairs of overpriced leggings, what Tasha Samar and Alyssa Clarke irrefutably share is that one day, they woke up on different sides of Los Angeles and realized they were in so deep, they weren’t even speaking recognizable English anymore.