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 Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)

  "Boogie Nights," was made in the '90s, but it's actually largely set in the 1970s at the height of the porn industry, when filmmakers were making literally hundreds of porn movies, and showing them in theaters, because this was before the internet, and before even cable TV or anything like that. - It, I think, gave a very accurate picture of what it's like to be on a porn set, and the chaos wrought of the switchover from film to video. - No no, we just keep shooting. This is video. We shoot, and shoot, and then we deal with it later. - Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed it, has this amazing cast, with Burt Reynolds playing kind of the father figure who makes all these movies. Julianne Moore is his wife, who also still appears in porn movies. And then Heather Graham plays roller girl, who dropped out of high school, and she still is on her roller skates, and is becoming a pretty big porn star. And then Mark Wahlberg, who is discovered, classic Hollywood style because he has a certain gift that you just can't fake. - He becomes the star of porn in the '70s, and then he gets embroiled in drugs and crime, and everything like that, everything that kind of was bad about the post '70s porn industry. - I want to fuck! It's my big dick! So everybody get ready fucking now! - It's also very true to the subject matter. You can't have a movie about the porn industry, and then cut away when there's going to be the sexy scene. So the first time Mark Wahlberg's character is introduced Heather Graham's roller girl, and Burt Reynolds is there with them and says you guys want to go at it? And she just whips off the clothes, and skates over, other than the skates, completely naked. - Are you ready? - Yeah, are you? - Oh yeah. ♪ Your window last night - Are you gonna take your skates off? - I don't take my skates off. And don't fucking cum in me. - Okay. -Aim it at her tits, Eddie. - Spoiler alert, this movie came out 20 years ago, if you haven't seen it. But eventually we see a lot of reaction shots to people reacting to what Mark Wahlberg looks like with his clothes off. We finally get the money shot, so to speak, at the end. - The end is, it's a gloss on the end of, "Raging Bull." - I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am. - He's ready to go on to film a scene, and just to check his confidence he unbuttons his pants. And you see for the first time what everyone has talked about in the movie. - [David] What's he supposed to have, this giant penis.

• From Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)

  - You only go around once in life, and you gotta grab for all the nookie you can get. - Well, first of all Phoebe Cates, she was my idol. She said, are you are you worried about the nudity at all? And I said, why would I be worried about the nudity? I said it's a great role, I'm not worried about it. She said oh good, I'm so happy, 'cause I was naked like 25 times in, "Paradise." And we just hit it off. - "Private School," also contains one of the best remembered shower scenes, because it goes on and on. - So there's a boy who's dressed as a girl, who's hiding in the sauna. And he's voyeuristically watching all these girls take showers. And in the movie you see me in the shower a long time. Then you see me in the locker room getting dressed. Then it cuts back, and I'm in the shower again. I did so many shower scenes, that I always thought of myself as the cleanest actress in Hollywood. - Phoebe Cates and Matthew Modine, they were excited about losing their virginity. And then my character, Jordan, was interested in Matthew Modine's character. So I tried to steal him away from her. - The scene of her horseback riding is maybe the, I don't know whether to say the high point or the low point. But it's the something point of gratuitous nudity. - [Linda] Surprise. - [Richard] Because not only does she take off her top and ride on the horse, but then they give us a slow motion replay. - I said how about if my helmet falls off? And then my hair can blow in the wind in slow motion. And they said oh we love it, that's a great idea. When am I ever gonna look this good again? Why not have it on film for the rest of time, where I can remember, oh my gosh I looked great? And I had no problem with any of it. - Okay, "Last American Virgin," is a movie that is very unexpected. What do you do if two best friends fall for the same girl? She winds up choosing to be with the guy who's more popular. Gary is the guy who's shyer, maybe he's not as confident. But he falls for her as well. And it's a very simple story, it's a story that I think happens to a lot of people. - Listen, will you count me out, Rick? - Hey, do you want to get laid or not? - Look, I'd rather screw Godzilla than them. - The love scene in, "Virgin," I think what I really loved about it, it was slow. And it was gentle, and it was beautiful. Again, guys would not come in and see this film unless they thought, I'm gonna get to see some girls naked.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  The scent of fir trees penetrated through the cracks of the high, white lacquered, still tightly closed double doors and with its sweet spice awakened the idea of the miracles in the hall, which one watched every year anew with throbbing pulses as an incomprehensible, unearthly splendor ... What would be in there for him? What he had wanted, of course, because that's what you got without question, provided you hadn't been talked out of it as an impossibility beforehand. The theater would catch his eye and show him the way to his seat, the longed-for puppet theater that had been heavily underlined at the top of Grandma's wish list. Yes, as compensation and reward for a visit to Herr Brecht, Hanno had recently gone to the theater for the first time, the Stadttheater, where he had been able to breathlessly follow the sounds and events of Fidelio in the first rank at his mother's side. From then on he dreamed of nothing but opera scenes, and he was filled with a passion for the stage that hardly let him sleep. With unspeakable envy he looked at the people on the street who, like his uncle Christian, were known as theater habitués, Consul Döhlmann, broker Gosch ... Was the luck bearable to be able to be there almost every evening like them? If only he could peek into the hall once a week before the performance begins, hear the instruments playing and take a look at the closed curtain! Because he loved everything in the theater: the smell of gas, Will his puppet theater be big? Big and wide? What will the curtain look like? You have to make a small hole as soon as possible cut into it, because there was also a peephole in the curtain of the municipal theater... Whether grandmother or Mamsell Severin - because grandmother couldn't get everything - had found the necessary decorations for "Fidelio"? Tomorrow he'll lock himself up somewhere and give a performance all by himself... And already he had his characters singing in his head; because music had immediately connected him very closely with the theater ... “Rejoice loudly, Jerusalem!” concluded the choirboys, and the voices that had been fugue-like joined together peacefully and joyfully on the last syllable. The clear chord died away, and a deep stillness fell over the portico and the landscape room. The members of the family looked down under the pressure of the pause; only Director Weinschenk's eyes darted boldly and unselfconsciously around, and Frau Permaneder let out her dry throat, which I couldn't suppress. The Consul, however, walked slowly to the table and sat down in the midst of her relatives on the sofa, which was no longer separate from the table as it had been in the old days. She adjusted the lamp and pulled out the large Bible, the gold-edged surface of which, pale with age, was enormously wide.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  And who didn't want to follow was the little boy..." "Yes, yes, maybe it'll be fine too... When are things coming, Ida?" "Tomorrow morning, my boy." 'To put them in here! That I'll have her soon!' "It's okay, Hannochen, but sleep in first." And she kissed him, put out the light and left. He was alone, and while he lay still and indulged in the beneficial effects of the baking soda, the splendor of the gift-giving hall lit up anew before his closed eyes. He saw his theatre, his harmonium, his book of mythology, and somewhere in the distance heard the choirboys shouting, "Jerusalem, shout out loud. Everything flickered. A faint fever hummed in his head, and his heart, a little constricted and distressed by the revolting stomach, beat slowly, strongly, and irregularly. In a state of malaise, agitation, trepidation, tiredness and happiness, he lay for a long time and could not sleep. Tomorrow it was the turn of the third Christmas Eve, giving presents to Therese Weichbrodt, and he looked forward to it like a little burlesque game. Therese Weichbrodt had completely given up her boarding school last year, so that Madame Kethelsen now lived alone on the first floor and she herself on the ground floor of the little house on the Mühlenbrink. The complaints namely, which her ill-fated and frail little body caused her had increased with the years, and with all gentleness and Christian alacrity Sesemi Weichbrodt assumed that her recall was imminent. For this reason, for several years now, she has considered every Christmas to be her last and tried to give the celebration, which she organized in her small, terribly overheated room, as much splendor as was within her feeble strength. Not being able to buy much, she gave away a new part of her modest belongings every year and built up under the tree whatever she could spare: bric-a-brac, paperweights, pincushions, glass vases and fragments of her library, old books in funny formats and bindings, the »Secret Diary of an Observer of Himself«,Pensées de Blaise Pascal ', which was so tiny that it could not be read without a magnifying glass. "Bishop" was in insurmountable quantities, and the brown cakes of sesemi, made with ginger, were immensely tasty. But never, thanks to the trembling devotion, with Fraulein Weichbrodt every time her lastChristmas partyThe evening never went by without a surprise, a mishap, some small catastrophe that made the guests laugh and increased the silent passion of the landlady. A pot with a bishop fell and flooded everything with the red, sweet, spicy liquid... Or the cleaned tree fell from its wooden feet, exactly at the moment when you solemnly entered the gift-giving room... As he fell asleep, Hanno foresaw the misfortune of the previous year Eyes: It was right before the gift giving.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  … Light as a bird I flit about from one quarter to another. It’s as though I had been released from prison. I look at the world with new eyes. Everything interests me profoundly. Even trifles. On the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière I stop before the window of a physical culture establishment. There are photographs showing specimens of manhood “before and after.” All frogs. Some of them are nude, except for a pince-nez or a beard. Can’t understand how these birds fall for parallel bars and dumbbells. A frog should have just a wee bit of a paunch, like the Baron de Charlus. He should wear a beard and a pince-nez, but he should never be photographed in the nude. He should wear twinkling patent-leather boots and in the breast pocket of his sack coat there should be a white handkerchief protruding about three-quarters of an inch above the vent. If possible, he should have a red ribbon in his lapel, through the buttonhole. He should wear pajamas on going to bed. Approaching the Place Clichy toward evening I pass the little whore with the wooden stump who stands opposite the Gaumont Palace day in and day out. She doesn’t look a day over eighteen. Has her regular customers, I suppose. After midnight she stands there in her black rig rooted to the spot. Back of her is the little alleyway that blazes like an inferno. Passing her now with a light heart she reminds me somehow of a goose tied to a stake, a goose with a diseased liver, so that the world may have its pâté de foie gras . Must be strange taking that wooden stump to bed with you. One imagines all sorts of things—splinters, etc. However, every man to his taste! Going down the Rue des Dames I bump into Peck-over, another poor devil who works on the paper. He complains of getting only three or four hours’ sleep a night—has to get up at eight in the morning to work at a dentist’s office. It isn’t for the money he’s doing it, so he explains—it’s for to buy himself a set of false teeth. “It’s hard to read proof when you’re dropping with sleep,” he says. “The wife, she thinks I’ve got a cinch of it. What would we do if you lost your job? she says.” But Peckover doesn’t give a damn about the job; it doesn’t even allow him spending money. He has to save his cigarette butts and use them for pipe tobacco. His coat is held together with pins. He has halitosis and his hands sweat. And only three hours’ sleep a night. “It’s no way to treat a man,” he says. “And that boss of mine, he bawls the piss out of me if I miss a semicolon.” Speaking of his wife he adds: “That woman of mine, she’s got no fucking gratitude, I tell you!” In parting I manage to worm a franc fifty out of him.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I try to squeeze another fifty centimes out of him but it’s impossible. Anyway I’ve got enough for a coffee and croissants . Near the Gare St. Lazare there’s a bar with reduced prices. As luck would have it I find a ticket in the lavabo for a concert. Light as a feather now I go there to the Salle Gaveau. The usher looks ravaged because I overlook giving him his little tip. Every time he passes me he looks at me inquiringly, as if perhaps I will suddenly remember. It’s so long since I’ve sat in the company of well-dressed people that I feel a bit panic-stricken. I can still smell the formaldehyde. Perhaps Serge makes deliveries here too. But nobody is scratching himself, thank God. A faint odor of perfume… very faint. Even before the music begins there is that bored look on people’s faces. A polite form of self-imposed torture, the concert. For a moment, when the conductor raps with his little wand, there is a tense spasm of concentration followed almost immediately by a general slump, a quiet vegetable sort of repose induced by the steady, uninterrupted drizzle from the orchestra. My mind is curiously alert; it’s as though my skull had a thousand mirrors inside it. My nerves are taut, vibrant! the notes are like glass balls dancing on a million jets of water. I’ve never been to a concert before on such an empty belly. Nothing escapes me, not even the tiniest pin falling. It’s as though I had no clothes on and every pore of my body was a window and all the windows open and the light flooding my gizzards. I can feel the light curving under the vault of my ribs and my ribs hang there over a hollow nave trembling with reverberations. How long this lasts I have no idea; I have lost all sense of time and place. After what seems like an eternity there follows an interval of semiconsciousness balanced by such a calm that I feel a great lake inside me, a lake of iridescent sheen, cool as jelly; and over this lake, rising in great swooping spirals, there emerge flocks of birds of passage with long slim legs and brilliant plumage. Flock after flock surge up from the cool, still surface of the lake and, passing under my clavicles, lose themselves in the white sea of space. And then slowly, very slowly, as if an old woman in a white cap were going the rounds of my body, slowly the windows are closed and my organs drop back into place. Suddenly the lights flare up and the man in the white box whom I had taken for a Turkish officer turns out to be a woman with a flowerpot on her head. There is a buzz now and all those who want to cough, cough to their heart’s content.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Just as our hated opponent stopped dribbling and prepared for his shot, the Colonel stood up and screamed something. Like: “For the love of God, please shave your back hair!” Or: “I need to be saved. Can you minister to me after your shot?!” — Toward the end of the third quarter, the Christian-school coach called a time-out and complained to the ref about the Colonel, pointing at him angrily. We were down 56–13. The Colonel stood up. “What?! You have a problem with me!?” The coach screamed, “You’re bothering my players!” “THAT’S THE POINT, SHERLOCK!” the Colonel screamed back. The ref came over and kicked him out of the gym. I followed him. “I’ve gotten thrown out of thirty-seven straight games,” he said. “Damn.” “Yeah. Once or twice, I’ve had to go really crazy. I ran onto the court with eleven seconds left once and stole the ball from the other team. It wasn’t pretty. But, you know. I have a streak to maintain.” The Colonel ran ahead of me, gleeful at his ejection, and I jogged after him, trailing in his wake. I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails. one hundred eight days before THE NEXT DAY, Dr. Hyde asked me to stay after class. Standing before him, I realized for the first time how hunched his shoulders were, and he seemed suddenly sad and kind of old. “You like this class, don’t you?” he asked. “Yessir.” “You’ve got a lifetime to mull over the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness.” He spoke every sentence as if he’d written it down, memorized it, and was now reciting it. “But while you were looking out the window, you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it’s over, be present out there,” he said, nodding toward the lake and beyond. “Yessir.” one hundred one days before ON THE FIRST MORNING of October, I knew something was wrong as soon as I woke up enough to turn off the alarm clock. The bed didn’t smell right. And I didn’t feel right. It took me a groggy minute before I realized: I felt cold . Well, at the very least, the small fan clipped to my bunk seemed suddenly unnecessary. “It’s cold!” I shouted. “Oh God, what time is it?” I heard above me. “Eight-oh-four,” I said. The Colonel, who didn’t have an alarm clock but almost always woke up to take a shower before mine went off, swung his short legs over the side of the bed, jumped down, and dashed to his dresser.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  After a year of Wednesday nights, I knew the Pear Tree Story off by heart and had added many new words to my vocabulary such as ego , spirit , chakra , and negative energy and learned their group-specific definitions via discussions each week. With a little trepidation but more excitement, I began participating as well in the weekend workshops that Limori held locally. The first one I attended was in her home in Port Moody. There were perhaps twenty of us there, seated around her living room in a circle of chairs, with the other living room furniture moved to other parts of the house. There was never a formal agenda or structure to these workshops; Limori was not teaching a methodology that could be replicated or a paradigm that could be memorized. She was acting at the behest of God, we believed, and therefore we were willing to let her lead us wherever she said God wanted us to go. We spent some of the time during the workshops meditating, and would report afterwards on what we’d “seen” or felt or experienced during the mediation. Limori would then, from her seat at the top of the circle, comment on our experience and explain what her spirit guides said it signified. The meditations themselves were often guided; that is, someone in the group would lead us through a visualization (in the early days it was usually Limori but later others of us were granted permission to do this) and then we might spend some time in silence. The meditations could last up to an hour, but were more often thirty or forty minutes long. We were there to learn at the feet of someone we believed was a spiritual master and had God’s ear. To that end, during these workshops, God was available through Limori via her spirit guide, Azeen, to provide us with guidance about changes we needed to make in our lives and personal selves in order to better serve Him and strengthen our ability to be spiritually “clear.” Unspoken was the eternal hope that we would eventually be able to receive His guidance ourselves. At some point during the first day of the workshop, either before or after a meditation, Limori would look around the room until eventually her gaze would fall on one person. She would make a few introductory enquiries about that person’s life, both inner and outer, until she discovered an “ego position” that the person was dealing with. Then the rest of us would sit back, relieved that the spotlight had momentarily fallen on someone else and, like an audience at a tennis match, our heads would swivel back and forth between Limori and her chosen subject as they talked. Or, rather, as the person confessed and Limori gave them God’s guidance about what the root cause of their particular problem was and what they should do about it. During the Saturday afternoon of my first workshop, Limori’s eyes land on Gary.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I drove to the workshop with three other women from the group. It took all day: east on Highway 1 out of Vancouver, then north up the Fraser Canyon, trail of the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s and ‘70s. When we hit Williams Lake we turned northwest and followed Highway 20 as it angles toward the coast again. Wolf’s Den sits midway between Williams Lake and Bella Coola on the coast. Throughout the drive all four of us chattered away as only women can. We took turns driving, ate junk food, stopped frequently for bio breaks and, of course, discussed spirituality. The sun shone as mile after mile of quiet, single-lane highway spooled away in our wake. I’d never seen this part of BC before and was fascinated as we squeezed between the walls of the Fraser Canyon and then were spat out onto rolling grassland at the canyon’s top end a few hours later. I was nervous about attending my first spiritual workshop. And excited. I’d never participated in anything like this before. There was the familiar sense of spiritual purposefulness that sang quietly in the background of my mind. Like the Blues Brothers, my fellow travellers and I were on a mission from God, and it felt so good to be certain of something. Beyond Williams Lake, there were several hundred miles of the highway, still unpaved at that time, and the journey slowed down as we allowed for potholes and the corduroy effect that large transport trucks leave in their wake. Finally, road-weary and cramped, we pulled off the highway and bounced down a long gravel driveway that eventually terminated at the lodge. This was Limori’s unofficial ashram, the seat of her growing empire, although I didn’t think of it as such as the time. She and her ever-present sidekick Alice greeted us warmly with hugs and inquiries about our journey. We were shown around the lodge, then later the property. It was the first time any of us had been here. Limori was the warm, genial hostess, clearly enjoying her role as matriarch of the brood that was gathering under her wings. She was also obviously proud of the work that those who lived at Wolf’s Den had done under her tutelage and direction, to rescue the lodge and its outlying cabins from the neglect and wear they had suffered in recent years. She proudly showed us through all the buildings, pointing out all that had been done and mentioning the numerous changes that were to come. The lodge and all the cabins were rustic split-log design, perfectly befitting the surrounding wilderness landscape. The lodge had a fair-sized kitchen, which opened to the main living room via a pass-through window and a set of swinging doors. This room, with red carpet salvaged form Limori’s home in Port Moody, would serve as the main workshop space and the place we would eat our meals, buffet style.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Fitted with huge picture windows, it offered a spectacular view of the lake and its far shores. The lodge was furnished gracefully but without flash. Limori had a way of creating physical beauty wherever she went, even in these somewhat primitive circumstances. Limori and Matthew’s bedroom was on the far side of the living room. Alice and her then-husband John slept in a cabin nearby that, before the arrival of electricity, had been an icehouse. We were each assigned a cabin to share with two or three others. There were about twenty of us; the five men stayed in one cabin and the women in the others. The cabins were without running water or electricity, and each had a woodstove for heat and a nearby outhouse. During that first workshop, all twenty of us shared the one bathroom in the lodge. We were each given a five-minute window every other day to shower so that we would not overwhelm the septic system. In later years, as the business of the lodge expanded, a shower house would be built to service the cabins. Throughout the late afternoon and early evening, cars bearing fellow group members arrived. The passengers would disembark and receive the same welcome and tour that we’d had. Some of Limori’s followers lived in BC’s interior, and those of us from Vancouver saw them only at workshops such as this. It was a bit like a reunion as everyone slowly gathered in the living room, even though some of us had seen each other just a few days earlier. As the crowd grew, a feeling of anticipation began to permeate the atmosphere, and I became conscious of my curiosity about what would occur this week. Once everyone had arrived, we were all seated in the living room and without instruction we grew quiet, ready to listen to whatever Limori and her “spirit guides” had to offer us. She was there in regal splendour as usual, dressed in a custom-made silk skirt and matching top, while the rest of us were mostly in jeans. As the chatter in the room slowly petered out, she clasped her hands around her belly, closed her eyes and made the small nodding motions and quiet, private murmurs of assent to the spirit voices she was listening to that we had come to learn meant she was “tuning in.” She would often laugh at something Spirit had said and then open her eyes, still chuckling, and let us in on the joke she and Azeen were sharing. A few guidelines were outlined for the week, such as the instruction that no one was to leave the property. Limori emphasized that she had drawn in good spirits to protect us while we were here but if we strayed past the property boundaries we could break the protective seal at the property line and endanger ourselves and everyone else.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  propagandist Thomas Paine presented a variation of Franklin’s American breed to a receptive audience. Like Franklin, Paine imagined a people forged from unique conditions of its land and resources. The American breed was endowed with an instinctive, youthful, and forward-directed spirit. Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense (1776) is heralded for having captured the spirit of the Revolution, replete with a potent language of natural rights and an economic justification for independence. For Paine, the unique character of America’s empowered white inhabitants, supported by the unquestioned majesty of an extensive continent, was evidence of the irresistible sway of nature’s law. He emphasized free trade and America’s potential as a commercial empire. He celebrated the power of a burgeoning continent over the reach of distant kings, as he employed the rhetorical device of unnatural breeding to disavow monarchy. He forecast that independence would end the waste and idleness that prevailed under the colonial regime. Paine is actually an odd choice for modern Americans to celebrate as a Revolutionary symbol. He was an Englishman born and bred; better put, an Englishman in exile. When Common Sense was published in January 1776, he had been in Philadelphia for little more than a year. He had arrived with a letter of introduction from Franklin, which landed him a job editing the Pennsylvania Magazine; or American Monthly Museum, a venture committed to everything American, despite its unmistakable London design and English editor. Adding to the irony of the situation, he had been an exciseman in England, and tax collectors did not fare well in the protests leading up to the Revolution. Though his pamphlet did not sell the 150,000 copies he claimed, it did win over George Washington, and it did reach audiences in New England, New York, Baltimore, and Charleston. Like his sponsor Franklin, Paine was fascinated by facts and figures, the stuff of political arithmetic and useful knowledge, yet at the same time he was not above quoting Aesop’s fables. His pamphlet spoke a familiar language, a distinctly British language of commerce, employing a simple and direct style capable of reaching readers beyond the educated elite. 35 Paine’s writing is equally as revealing for what he does and doesn’t say about class. He would not tackle the monopoly of land and wealth until 1797, after watching the French Revolution unfold, when he declared in Agrarian Justice that everyone had an equal and divine right to the ownership of the earth. In Common Sense, he pushed class, poverty, and other social divisions aside. Though he acknowledged the “distinctions of rich, of poor,” he directly dismissed the “harsh ill-sounding names” that exacerbated class conflict. In two

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Society, or at least the respectable chunk of it, saw the tent and those of us who traveled with it as a freak show, a rolling asylum that hit town and stirred the local Holy Rollers, along with a few Baptists, Methodists, and even a Presbyterian or two, into a frenzy. Brother Terrell reveled in that characterization.“I know they’s people call me David Nut Terrell. I’m not ashamed of it.” He bounced up and down the forty-foot-long platform with the pop and spring of a pogo stick. “I’m crazy for Jesus, crazy for the Lord.” The crowd was on its feet, pogoing with him.The tent went up in all kinds of weather, but in my memory it’s always the hottest day of summer when the canvas rises. A cloud of dust hangs over the grounds, stirred by the coming and going of the twenty to thirty people it took to raise the canvas. Local churches sent out volunteers, but most of the work was done by families who followed Brother Terrell from town to town, happy to do the Lord’s work for little more than a blessing and whatever Brother Terrell could afford to pass along to them. When he had extra money, they shared in it. He had a reputation as a generous man who “pinched the buffalo off every nickel” that passed through his hands. He employed only two to four “professional” tent men, a fraction of the number employed by organizations of a similar size. The number of employees remained the same over the years even as the size of the tents grew larger. “World’s largest tent. World smallest tent crew,” was the joke.The air smelled of grease and sweat. Men dressed in long pants and long-sleeved shirts (the Lord’s dress code) ran back and forth, calling to one another over the gear grind of the eighteen-wheeler as it pulled one of seven thirty-foot center poles into the air. I held my breath as the men wrestled the poles into place, praying that a pole didn’t fall and knock a couple of men straight to glory, but making sure I didn’t miss it if it did. With a couple of center poles secured, the men broke for lunch, mopping their faces with red or blue bandanas or an already soaked shirtsleeve. Pam and I brought out the trays of bologna sandwiches our mothers had made and walked among them passing out the food. I tried not to wrinkle my nose at the greasy imprints their fingers made in the white bread or the sour hugs that accompanied their thank-yous.It took three to four days to put the tent up, and the site looked different each time we visited. Some days I picked my way through red and blue poles that lay on the ground in seemingly careless arrangements, imagining them as tall slender ladies who had fainted in the heat or young girls waiting to be asked to dance.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  My stomach went queasy.“You got spit on you.”My words came out in a whisper loud enough that people turned and stared. Pam giggled, and her mother yanked her hair. Pam shot me a look that meant I would get it after church. At five, she was two years older than I was and capable of making me pay for every sin I committed against her. I placed my hands on either side of my seat and pushed my weight away from the wooden slats to relieve the pressure on my bony butt. I leaned forward slightly and the chair tossed me headfirst into one of the metal tentpoles. Two adults jumped up to see if I was okay. One of them helped me up and dusted the sawdust off my dress. The other said too bad there was no ice around. I put my hand to my head and felt a bump rise under the skin. Pam looked at me with suspicion.“You did that to get attention.”“Did not.”“Did too.”Betty Ann shushed us.“Donna, sit down. Now. Pamela Eloise, shut up and pay attention.”Pam pointed her finger at me. “She’s not paying attention.”Betty Ann pinched her full lips into a hard little knot, raised her eyebrows, and inclined her head toward the platform and my mother. I sighed and sat down. Brother Terrell preached on.“Faith changes things. When I was a boy doctors diagnosed me with cancer of the bone. They operated nine times and removed all the bone in my leg. I spent so much time in hospitals, I had to drop out of school in third grade.”I sat up and listened. This was the story of the scar. Brother Terrell clipped the microphone around his neck, bent over, and rolled up his right pant leg to just below his knee. He spoke off microphone, and his voice sounded small and distant. “They wanted to amputate, but my mother wouldn’t let them. She believed God would heal me.” He gripped the white rail of the prayer ramp behind him, balanced on his left leg, and held his right in the air, crooked at the knee. His calf gleamed white under the spotlights, exposed between the dark fabric of his pant leg and sock like some subterranean creature seeing light for the first time. Only it wasn’t the first time. Brother Terrell revealed the scar at almost every revival.“Come on up here, you that wants to see.”People rose across the tent and made their way to the front. Men, women, children, even the scoffers crowded ’round.“Go ahead, touch it. Jesus told Thomas to put his finger in the nail holes. See for yourself what faith will do.”He lost his balance for a moment and one of the ministers on the platform brought him a chair. He took a seat and stretched out his leg. The scar ran along the inside of his right leg, from knee to ankle. One by one, people laid their fingers in the long trough of purple tissue.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Bless him, Jesus. Tell it, brother.”“When Jesus tells you stand up and walk, you better get on your feet. Get up!”People all over the tent rose from their seats, hands in the air. Pam and I stood in our chairs, trying to see over or around the grown-ups. My mother began to play “God Don’t Never Change,” a fast-paced song that turned up the energy.Brother Terrell stood at the top of the prayer ramp and the crowd moved toward him. The sick, the blind, the deaf, the deformed in body and spirit. By the time the prayer line formed, his right hand was red and hot and jerking like a downed power line.My mother was deep into the music, a gap-toothed double-wide smile parked across her face. Betty Ann left my brother in the care of a friend and moved to the front to help with the prayer line. Pam and I climbed down from our chairs and made our way to the side of the platform at the end of the prayer ramp. Brother Terrell was someplace else entirely. Randall came and stood beside us, his cowlick standing straight up.“Look at that.”A woman with a stomach so large she looked two years pregnant labored up the ramp, pulling herself forward by the rails, breathing through her mouth. With each step, her face turned a little redder. Randall put his hand over his mouth.“Her stomach will be there three days before the rest of her. Daddy’ll be lucky if she don’t die before she gets to him.”We giggled. Brother Terrell leaned over and whispered something to the woman. She nodded and raised her hands. The people who stood in line behind her on the ramp backed up. Betty Ann and the preachers who waited in front of her on the ramp moved away. If this woman went down in the spirit, no one wanted to go with her. Randall, Pam, and I edged beyond the corner of the platform for a better view. No one was left on the ramp but the woman and Brother Terrell. The music and the clapping stopped. He raised his hand to place it on her forehead, but before he could touch her, the woman’s skirt dropped around her ankles. Her big stomach was gone. Randall let out a whoop. Brother Terrell looked over his shoulder at the men on the platform, and they all doubled over laughing. He whirled back toward the audience and jumped up and down, just above the ramp where the woman still stood with her hands raised and her eyes closed.“She’s healed, praise God. The spirit of God has filled this place like a mighty wind, just like in the Bible, hallelujah! The healing power of God destroyed the tumor. It’s gone.”Anyone still in their seats rushed to the front.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  The questions spilled out as the seven of us Walshes huddled together in the front room. What were the names of our grandparents? Laura and Bill McKinley. I thought of the president by the same name—were we related? No. Where did they live? In Cambridge. Did Sister Elizabeth Ann ever speak to them? Not in a long time. Did she have any brothers and sisters? A much younger sister who had two children. What was not divulged was that my aunt was twice divorced. Such information was considered scandalous. How many cousins did I have? The meeting came to an end leaving not enough time to have all my questions answered. But at least the Center could now craft a rebuttal to the claim that we children knew nothing about our families. The court case was drawing near as I entered my sophomore year, at age fifteen. To my surprise, Sister Mary Clare, who normally was one of the cooks for the guests and who also played the organ, was now assigned to be our English tutor. During the first week of tutoring, she introduced us to Shakespeare—Julius Caesar , The Merchant of Venice , Macbeth , and Hamlet . As she paced back and forth at the head of the classroom, her vibrant African American black eyes gleamed with energy. Holding the script at arm’s length, she impersonated, with gesture and voice, each of the characters in the play, as though she were on stage. Her passion was intoxicating. In a matter of days, English became my favorite subject. I delighted in exploring the world of literature, a world that included Keats and Shelley, Wordsworth and Masefield, George Eliot and Mark Twain. A few weeks later, when the authorities in the local school district came to observe us in the classroom, Sister Catherine introduced Sister Mary Clare as a “brilliant graduate of Radcliffe with her master’s in education.” At that moment, I understood the ploy. Sister Catherine had assigned Sister Mary Clare as one of our tutors to prove that our teachers were as good as the teachers out in the world. That was a savvy move on her part—upgrading the credentials of the tutors—but Sister Catherine chose to keep one step back from truly capitalizing on the intellectual prowess of the adults within the community. Not a single one of the Big Brothers was allowed to be a tutor, despite their array of extraordinary credentials—physicists, mathematicians, writers, geologists, poets. She kept those brilliant men relegated to menial tasks, where they posed less of a threat to her power. Our history tutoring room now had a newly installed corkboard wall that was crammed with newspaper clippings and articles from Time and Life , two magazines that Father had long told us were “of the devil.” I devoured the information they shed on the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and President John Kennedy.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  As is common in such situations, the threat of evil was projected onto others. . . . Hence, at Nauvoo the innocent children of God realized their identity through their struggle against the evil followers of Satan, who dominated American society everywhere except in the city of the Saints. The problem, of course, with this kind of dichotomous myth is that, for the people who hold it, guilt and innocence become matters of belief, not evidence. JOHN E. HALLWAS AND ROGER D. LAUNIUS, CULTURES IN CONFLICT When the Utah businessman and Dream Mine supporter Bernard Brady brought Prophet Onias and the Lafferty brothers (minus Allen) together one crisp fall evening near the end of 1983, it seemed to all who were present to be an especially auspicious union. There was an instant feeling of kinship and shared values, and the men talked excitedly until “the wee hours of the morning,” according to Onias. Giddy with their sense of divinely empowered mission, everyone at the gathering was convinced that, collectively, they were destined to alter the course of human history. “Five of the six brothers,” Onias said, “became extremely enthusiastic when they realized that we had just been given a commandment by the Lord to send three sections of The Book of Onias to all the stake and ward authorities.” * He was referring to a revelation he’d received on November 26 of that year, in which God had commanded Onias to “prepare pamphlets to send out to the presidents of stakes and bishops of wards of My church”—the LDS Church—so that those who had committed fornication against Him would “be warned.” The pamphlet consisted of excerpts from Onias’s collected revelations, cautioning the entire LDS leadership—from the president and putative prophet in Salt Lake City down to the bishop of every ward across North America—that God was extremely unhappy with the way they’d been running His One True Church. God was especially steamed, Onias explained, that modern Mormon leaders were blatantly defying some of the most sacred doctrines He had revealed to Joseph Smith in the nineteenth century. Most egregiously, the men at the helm of the church continued to sanction and zealously enforce the government’s criminalization of plural marriage. And only slightly less disturbing, from Onias’s perspective, was the blasphemy perpetrated by LDS President Spencer W. Kimball in 1978 when he decreed that black-skinned men should be admitted into the Mormon priesthood—a historic, earth-shaking turnabout in church policy widely applauded by those outside the church. God had revealed to Onias, however, that blacks were subhuman “beasts of the field, which were the most intelligent of all animals that were created, for they did walk upright as a man doeth and had the power of speech.” † According to the pamphlet, God had given Onias an earful about blacks being ordained as LDS priests: Behold I say unto you, at no time have I given a commandment unto My church, nor shall I . . .

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I’d never heard of either of them, I told Pilar. Her slim, pale fingers traced the stern-looking man’s face. “Frederick Douglass was a very important man in history. A long time ago, black people were slaves in this country and were owned by white people. Slaves had to work all the time and weren’t allowed to learn to read or write. They had a very hard life. Frederick was born a slave, but he secretly learned to read and write and he escaped. When he was older he wrote about his experiences to help abolish slavery in America.” “What’s ‘abolish’?” I asked. “To put an end to.” She pointed to the other book. “This is the life story of Harriet Tubman, who also was born a slave and escaped.” Escape. The word always caught my attention. The children in Hansel and Gretel escaped the wicked witch’s house after their father and stepmother abandoned them in a forest. The Little Match Girl escaped poverty through death and joined her grandmother in heaven. “But Harriet did something different,” Pilar said. “She returned to the plantations to help her friends and family escape from slavery, too. She also had others who worked with her. Some of them were white people who wanted slavery to end. They helped Harriet by hiding runaways in their homes as they traveled toward the Northern states, where black people were legally free.” Pilar stretched out her hands. “The route they took, including the string of homes used as hiding places, was known by the slaves as ‘The Underground Railroad.’” I was enthralled and a little terrified. No one had ever told me about this history. I wanted to read the books right away. Questions raced through my mind: When did all this take place? Was I in danger of becoming a slave at some point? “It is important to know your history,” Pilar said, “and where you come from. When you understand history, you gain a better understanding of the world we currently live in and the people in it. A lot of us are fighting for justice in our own way.” When she finished talking, Pilar removed her black clothes, then put on a long, white cotton nightgown, knit cap and woolen socks. We climbed into her bed and I opened the first page of Harriet Tubman’s story. I became absorbed in a world where people were owned like objects or ranch animals and were treated far worse. I read The Underground Railroad several times that night, as well as Frederick Douglass’s story before I finally succumbed to the drowsiness that tugged at my eyes. Cuddling next to Pilar’s warm body, I drifted off to sleep. On our next trip to the Petaluma Public Library, I asked the librarian where I could find more books about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. I came away with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Navy blue was as close as it got. Still, who knew what they’d find inside? Miri had clipped an ad from the Daily Post : THIS SEASON GIVE HER NYLON TRICOT BY VANITY FAIR. She wasn’t sure about nylon tricot but the ad from Nia’s showed a half-slip for $3.99, something her mother might appreciate since she’d been complaining about the worn-out elastic waistbands of hers. A single chime announced the opening of the door as Miri and Suzanne entered the shop. Inside, it was busy with holiday shoppers but not overwhelming the way it would be at Levy’s or Goerke’s, the other downtown department store. The shoppers, all women, talked in hushed voices. A small white Christmas tree with silver ribbons threaded through its branches, topped by a silver angel, sat on the display table. Satin bedroom slippers and delicate bed jackets in pale colors were arranged around the tree. Who wore bed jackets? Rusty had a woolly robe and two flannel nightgowns for winter, and a seersucker robe and a few cotton nightgowns for summer. Maybe movie stars who were served breakfast in bed wore bed jackets. But there were no movie stars in Elizabeth, New Jersey. None that Miri knew of, anyway. Even Mrs. Osner didn’t have a bed jacket. If she did it wasn’t hanging in her closet, because Miri had been through that closet a hundred times, ever since she and Natalie had become best friends two years ago. Miri and Suzanne were still babysitting partners and ate lunch at the same cafeteria table every day—they just weren’t bests. “Can I help you?” a pretty young woman asked Miri. “Are you Nia?” Miri hadn’t planned to say that. It just slipped out. “I’m Athena, her daughter. What can I show you today?” Athena —Miri didn’t know anyone named Athena. Such an exotic name. Wasn’t Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom, arts and something else, maybe war? She’d loved her book of Greek mythology in fifth grade. Uncle Henry had given it to her. Every night they’d taken turns reading myths to each other. “Are you looking for something special?” Athena asked. When Miri didn’t answer, Suzanne nudged her. “It’s my mother’s birthday,” Miri said, coming back to the moment, “and I was thinking of a half-slip, maybe a nylon tricot half-slip.” Before Miri had the chance to dig the ad from her purse, Athena said, “I have just what you’re looking for. What size does your mother wear?” “She’s either a small or a medium, depending.” “Really, a small?” Athena said, as if a mother couldn’t possibly be a small. “She’s five-five, a hundred and fifteen pounds.” Miri knew everything about her mother, every detail of her life, except for one, and she wasn’t going to waste her time thinking of that today. Athena brought out a few half-slips. “Double slits,” she said, holding up one. By Vanity Fair, $3.99. “This is the nylon tricot. Feel how soft it is.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Christina had never heard of this one, Love Without Fear. Daisy’s note said, Dearest Christina, I wish someone had given me this book when I was your age. I had so many questions but I was too afraid to ask them. Merry Christmas to a special young woman. It’s a pleasure to work with you. Daisy There was also a small separate package with a key to the office in a purple leather key holder. Her own key to the office. That meant they trusted her. It meant they thought she was mature enough to handle emergencies and to lock up after hours if she was last to leave. The key meant more than the book. Until she looked at the book. The book shocked her. And it made her wet down there. She’d have to keep it hidden under her mattress and read it only at night before she went to sleep. She would write a friendly thank-you note to Daisy, making a big deal out of the key and a smaller deal out of the book. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00010.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00010.jpg] LITTLE THINGS SAY A LOTBy Henry AmmermanDEC. 21 — When Elizabeth firemen hacked their way through the underbelly of the wrecked C-46, they piled the shoes, gloves, eyeglasses and other salvage into boxes that were carried into the Elizabethtown Water Company’s garage. The items revealed stories that for a moment made the victims seem alive. A set of medical records told of a soldier who had survived the Korean battlefield, only to perish here. A pile of press clippings and photographs of a man described as a “212-pound Brooklyn wrestler” reminded us that the strong fall with the weak. Other pieces of salvage, though anonymous, told their own stories. A pair of high-powered binoculars, the carrying case burned off, would never be used at a Florida racetrack. A child’s twisted bicycle would never be ridden in the warm afternoons. An anticipated Merry Christmas was evidenced by the gay holiday wrapping on a set of men’s pajamas. “Handle with care” was the admonition scrawled on the remains of a photo album. If only it could have been. 6 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriWas it wrong to go to a holiday dance just a week after something horrible had happened in their town? None of her friends thought so. They hardly talked about the crash anymore. They wanted to dress up and dance and have a good time. There might be boys from the Weequahic section of Newark at the Y, older boys who wouldn’t necessarily know they were just ninth graders. Miri wore her favorite dress, red wool with a full skirt and metallic buttons down the front that either were or weren’t made of old coins. Rusty thought they were. Her boss’s wife saved their daughter’s best things for Miri. Miri used to think Rusty bought them at a snazzy shop, Bonwit Teller, because that’s what the labels inside said.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  “An exciting book…. Whether people agree with it or not: these are issues that will need debating over and over before we will arrive at a resolution.” —Frans de Waal, Ph.D., author of The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society “Turns everything you thought you knew about sex on its head. Funny, engaging, and superbly written, this book explores the science behind what many of us suspected all along: human beings are not naturally monogamous.” —Julie Holland, M.D., author of Weekends at Bellevue “Sex at Dawn manages to be both enormously erudite and wildly entertaining—even, frequently, hilarious. Ryan and Jethá slip effortlessly across millions of years, from the savanna of prehistoric Africa to the contemporary bedroom, presenting cutting-edge research with clarity and wit.” —Tony Perrottet, author of The Sinner’s Grand Tour “This is a provocative, entertaining, and pioneering book. I learned a lot from it and recommend it highly.” —Andrew Weil, MD, Program Director, Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine “Sex at Dawn is not a tome on why people should cheat on their partners. Think of it as a new, wide-ranging sampling of research and ideas to get us to rethink our notion of human beings as sexual beings…. It helps put the ‘human’ back in ‘human sexuality.’ As suitable for an open-minded book club as the veteran sex therapist seeking new ways to rethink common challenges faced in clinical practice.” —Eric Marlowe Garrison, Contemporary Sexuality CreditsCover design by Andrea Cardenas Copyright [image file=image_rsrc68P.jpg] SEX AT DAWN. Copyright © 2010 by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2011. The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Ryan, Christopher Sex at dawn: the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality / Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: “A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society.”—Provided by publisher Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-06-170780-3 (hardback) 1. Sex. 2. Sex—History. 3. Sex customs. 4. Marriage. I. Jethá, Cacilda. II. Title. HQ12.R93 2010 306.7—dc22 2009045457 ISBN 978-0-06-170781-0 (pbk.) 11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062207944 Version 02112020 About the PublisherAustralia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia http://www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower 22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor Toronto, ON M5H 4E3, Canada www.harpercollins.co.in">www.harpercollins.co.in India HarperCollins India A 75, Sector 57 Noida Uttar Pradesh 201 301 http://www.harpercollins.ca