Excitement

Passages

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

Page 177 of 182 · 20 per page

• From American Swing (2008)

  YOU MUST BE UNDRESSED TO COME IN HERE. IT'S A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT. Veronica Vera: IT WAS LOCATED DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM McDONALD'S. AND PEOPLE USED TO SAY IT HAD BECOME THE McDONALD'S OF SEX. Nina: I WAS THIS NORMAL HOUSEWIFE PERSON. MY HUSBAND LEFT, HIS GIRLFRIEND WAS HAVING A BABY. AND YOU MEET DIFFERENT PEOPLE. I WAS WORKING AT THE MOVIE THEATER IN THE VILLAGE. I WAS SELLING THE TICKETS TO "ROCKY HORROR." AND THE FIRST TIME I WENT TO PLATO'S, IT SEEMED PEOPLE-- LIKE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING IN THE OPEN, YOU JUST-- YOU DON'T BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAW. BECAUSE IT WAS LIKE TURNING A PAGE IN A MAGAZINE AND YOU'RE SITTING THERE AND THEN YOU MAKE UP YOUR MIND. YOU KNOW, YOU'RE EITHER INTO IT OR YOU'RE NOT. AND I WAS INTO IT. ONE TIME I WAS STANDING THERE BY THE LADIES' ROOM IN THE BACK AND A YOUNG GIRL CAME UP TO ME, AND SHE SAID TO ME, "ARE YOU OUTRAGEOUS?" AND I SAID, "YES, I AM." AND WITH THAT I PUT MY HAND ON HER BREAST. SHE SAID, "PERHAPS YOU'D LIKE TO JOIN US?" I SAID, "OH, THANK YOU VERY MUCH" AND I WAS INVITED TO GO IN THIS ROOM WITH SEVEN OTHER LADIES. ANOTHER TIME I WAS THERE WITH A YOUNG GENTLEMAN AND HE KNEW THIS COUPLE: THE LADY WAS CHINESE, THE HUSBAND WAS A WHITE GENTLEMAN. AND HE SAID TO ME, "YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING WITH THEM? THE HUSBAND DOESN'T DO ANYTHING. HE JUST SITS IN THE CORNER. WE COULD BE WITH THE LADY, THE THREE OF US." AND I SAID OKAY. AND THE HUSBAND JUST SAT THERE IN THE CORNER. LIKE TOUCHING HIS WIFE'S SHOULDER, BUT NOT JOINING IN. ( camera clicks ) I WAS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE P.T.A. WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU'RE NOT GETTING FROM MARY? THAT I AM NOT GETTING FROM MARY? THERE IS NO MAN IN THE WORLD THAT CAN SAY THAT HIS WOMAN GIVES HIM EVERY NEED THAT HE HAS-- THAT THERE IS TO HAVE. I WANT AS MUCH AS I CAN POSSIBLY HAVE IN THIS LIFETIME. AND THAT'S WHAT I'M DOING. I'M ENJOYING MYSELF, I'M HAPPY AND THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE. Smith: ONE OF HIS CONSTANT REFRAINS WHENEVER HE WAS INTERVIEWED OR TALKED TO ANYBODY WAS SWINGING AND PLATO'S WILL NOT SAVE A BAD MARRIAGE. IT'S SOMETHING EXTRA YOU DO IN A GREAT MARRIAGE FOR FUN. AS SWINGING WAS EXPLAINED TO ME BY HIM WHEN I WAS A KID WAS: THERE IS NO JEALOUSY. YOU KNOW? SWINGING IS A THING WHERE COUPLES ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH EACH OTHER. OKAY? THEY HAVE FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER AS IF NON-SWINGERS DO. BUT THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT WHEN THEY'RE WITH SOMEONE ELSE, IT'S JUST SEX. THERE'S NO FEELINGS. Ferrato: I NEVER SAW HIM GOING AROUND WITH MARY. I NEVER SAW THEM HAVING SEX WITH OTHER COUPLES. IT WAS ALWAYS LARRY. DO YOU HAVE RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER MEN THERE? - OCCASIONALLY, YES.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  1. There was a clear correlation between the facilitative conditions provided by the teacher and the academic achievement of students. This finding has been repeatedly confirmed. Students of “high-level” teachers (those high in the facilitative conditions) tended to show the greatest gains in learning. A sobering finding was that students of “lo›v-level” teachers may actually be retarded in their learning by their teachers’ deficiencies. 2. The situation most conducive to learning was one in which teachers who exhibited high levels of the facilitative attitudes were backed up and supervised by principals with similarly high levels. Under these conditions, students showed greater gains not only in school subjects but also in other important areas. They became more adept at using their higher cognitive processes such as problem-solving. (This was especially noteworthy when the teacher showed a high degree of positive regard and respect. Creative problem-solving evidently requires a nurturant climate.) They had more positive self-concepts than students in the other groups. They initiated more behavior in the classroom. They exhibited fewer discipline problems. They had a lower rate of absence from school. In one exciting study, they even showed an increase in IQ. In this study, twenty-five black first-graders with “high-level” teachers and twenty-five with “low-level” teachers were given individual intelligence tests nine months apart. The first group showed an average IQ increase from 85 to 94. The figures for the second group were 84 and 84—no change whatsoever. 3. Teachers can improve in their levels of facilitative conditions with as little as 15 hours of carefully planned intensive training, involving both cognitive and experiential learning. Considering the demonstrated influence of these attitudinal conditions, it is highly important to know that they can be increased. 4. Of significance for all areas of education is the finding that teachers improve in these attitudes only when their trainers exhibit a high level of these facilitative conditions. In other words, this means that such attitudes are “caught,” experientially, from another person. They are not simply intellectual learnings. 5. Teachers exhibiting high levels of facilitative conditions tend to have other characteristics: They have more positive self-concepts than low-level teachers. They are more self-disclosing to their students. They respond more to students’ feelings. They give more praise. They are more responsive to students’ ideas. They lecture less often. 6. Neither the geographical location of the classes nor the race of the teacher or racial composition of the students altered these findings. Whether we are speaking of black, white, or Chicano teachers; black, white, or Chicano students; or classes in the North, the South, the Virgin Islands, England, Canada, or Israel, the findings are essentially the same. Aspy and Roebuck (1974a) conclude as follows after analyzing their mountains of data:

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  EPILOGUE Since I have already given examples from our experience with the Immaculate Heart school system in Los Angeles, I will present an extremely abbreviated account of the project, and then some excerpts from a follow-up study at the end of three years and another personal follow-up report after seven years. In 1967, I wrote a paper entitled “A Plan for Self Directed Change in an Educational System.” (This can be found in Rogers, 1969, pp. 303–323.) Some of the administrators and faculty of Immaculate Heart wished their system to be the target system for the experiment, and so the project was started as a joint enterprise with the Center for Studies of the Person. The heart of the program consisted of a series of encounter groups offered to all of the faculty and administrators, and later to a number of student groups, with faculty included. Participation was voluntary, and a number of people did not wish to join. Although many mistakes were made in the planning and implementation of the project, the response of the participants was almost entirely enthusiastic. Faculty began to change their methods of teaching, and some important administrative policy changes were made. The nonparticipants were often shocked by the degree of chaos involved in the changes, and they became, in some instances, violently critical. But there is no doubt that some of the changes were significant and far-reaching. The statement by the professor of education about the totally innovative program of teacher education (see page 285) is evidence of one of these changes. Three years later, two outside evaluators who had been observing the program from the beginning made their final study. In summary, the assessment team observed a number of positive changes that had been predicted, some that had not been predicted, and a number of turbulent and polarizing attitudes that definitely exceeded expectations. The positive changes were greatest among the students and younger faculty. The least amount of change was in the administrative staff and structure and in older members of the faculty and administration. Seven years after the eighteen-month experiment, the faculty member who headed the teacher-training program that had been started as a result of the experiment wrote me a lengthy letter of her personal perceptions. I will quote only three statements. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn’t have volunteered for the faculty seminar [which led to the new program of teacher education] if I had not had the opportunity in the encounter groups to go a bit beyond my paralyzing fears of inadequacy. . . . The new self-initiated and self-directed teacher-education program is now in its fourth successful year. . . . My guess is that there are any number of system changes on campus that wouldn’t have happened without the project.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  These, then, would be some of the steps necessary to initiate changes in teacher training. Taken together, what is the essence of their meaning? By the end of one year, there would be many people in the teacher-training institutions who would themselves have learned in a total way, and who would be enthusiastic and eager to have their students learn in the same fashion. This is like an infusion of yeast into a lump of dough. The numbers of people initially involved might be small, but the pervasive effect would be enormous. You may well ask, “How can you be so sure of all this?” I feel assurance because I have, with my own eyes, seen it happen twice. The first was in the Immaculate Heart school system in Los Angeles, where self-directed change is going on apace years after our brief interventive efforts ceased. The second case concerns such a program with better financing and better planning, which introduced an incredible ferment into the innercity school system of Louisville, Kentucky (Dickenson, et al., 1970; Department of Research and Evaluation, 1973). Can you imagine intensive communication workshops and human-relations labs for 1600 school personnel coming into being within only six months? Taking part in these programs were the Board of Education, central-office staff, principals, and teachers. In both school systems the polarization seemed most unfortunate for a time, but out of it grew a new and confident sense of direction, with new and more vital individuals in charge of those new directions. The change in teacher education at Immaculate Heart College was unbelievable. A professor of education in the college wrote: We are working on a self-initiated and self-directed program in teacher education. We had a fantastically exciting weekend workshop here recently. Students, faculty, and administration, seventy-five in all, brainstormed in a most creative and productive way. The outcome is that students will immerse themselves in schools all over the city observing classes, sitting in on faculty meetings, interviewing teachers, students and administrators. Our students will then describe what they need to know, to experience, to do, in order to teach. They will then gather faculty and other students around them to assist in accomplishing their own goals. (Personal communication, 1969) The lessons from this experience are several. The professor was very deeply affected by the encounter group experience, which led her to take further training in group leadership and group dynamics, and to facilitate groups on her own. She became not only much more open to her students, but also a much more confident person, able to initiate and implement new ideas. She had learned as a whole person. She became so much more influential in the college

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  One exciting aspect of this research was uncovered by Aspy (1971). He has shown that it is possible to select, quite accurately, teaching personnel who possess those interpersonal qualities that have been shown to be specifically facilitative of whole-person learning. This has many implications. Adding to his earlier research, Aspy (1972) has not only presented in convincing form these and other investigations, but has shown that the attitudinal qualities we have discussed can be assessed by the teacher for himself or herself, or by others. He also has demonstrated that a school can use such measures to increase the effectiveness of the learning climate in its classrooms. The conclusion to be drawn from these many studies is that it pays to be personal and human in the classroom. A humane atmosphere is not only more pleasant for all concerned; it also promotes more—and more significant— learning. When attitudes of realness, respect for the individual, understanding of the student’s private world are present, exciting things happen. The payoff is not only in such things as grades and reading achievement, but also in more elusive qualities such as greater self-confidence, increased creativity, and more liking for others. In short, such a classroom leads to a positive, unified learning by the whole person.

• From American Swing (2008)

  WHY EVEN PRETEND THAT YOU DIDN'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE A GOOD TIME WHEN YOU WERE SEXUALLY INVOLVED? Dodson: THE WHOLE THING WITH PLATO'S IS THAT YOU WOULD WALK INTO THIS SPACE, AND WHETHER OR NOT YOU HAD SEX WITH ANYONE WAS REALLY NOT THE POINT. THE POINT WAS IS THAT EVERYBODY THERE WAS WILLING TO BE NUDE, AVAILABLE MAYBE FOR SEX AND OPEN. SEX WITH ANOTHER MAN IS A FANTASY OF MINE. I'M SOMEONE ELSE. IT'S AN EGO TRIP. I THINK THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. IT'S AN EGO TRIP HAVING SOME OTHER MAN, OTHER THAN MY HUSBAND, TELLING ME "YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL. YOU'RE GOOD IN BED." ALL THIS, YOU KNOW? IT'S REALLY A FANTASY FOR ME. AND IT ALSO FELT LIKE YOU HAD A SECRET, THAT YOU HAD A SECRET WORLD THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE EITHER GOING TO WORK OR JUST GOING ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS IN THE CITY THAT THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAD EXPERIENCED. AGAIN, IT'S NOT JUST SEX. IT'S NOT GOING IN THERE AND SAY, "I'M GOING IN THERE 'CAUSE I JUST WANT TO GRAB SOMEBODY AND I WANNA..." CAN I SAY CERTAIN WORDS? OKAY. "...GET LAID." I WAS A SOCIAL WORKER IN 1978. BUT I HAD GOOD EVENINGS AFTER MY SOCIAL WORK. ♪ OH, HOW HAPPY ♪ ♪ YOU HAVE MADE ME ♪ ♪ OH, HOW HAPPY ♪ ♪ YOU HAVE MADE ME ♪ ♪ I HAVE KISSED YOUR LIPS ♪ ♪ A THOUSAND TIMES... ♪ Van Peebles: I REMEMBER ONCE, THIS COUPLE-- I'M SURE THEY'VE BEEN THROWN OUT OF EVERY SWINGERS CLUB IN THE WORLD BECAUSE THEY WERE SO LARGE. THEY HAD TO WEIGH 300 LBS EACH. AND THEY WERE JITTERBUGGING. THEY WERE DANCING. THEY HAD ON THEIR TOWELS. THEY HAD TO HAVE DOUBLE TOWELS AROUND THEM. AND THE TOWELS, OF COURSE, FELL OFF. AND THEN NOBODY GAVE A DOO-DOO-CACA. BUT WHAT HAPPENED WAS-- IT WAS WHEN THEY STOMPED, THEY WERE SHAKING THE-- THE-- THE-- THE PLATTERS FOR THE DJ BECAUSE THEY WEIGHED SO MUCH. I MEAN, THEY WERE SHAKING THE WHOLE DAMN FLOOR. BUT IT WAS-- NOBODY CARED. IT WAS REALLY VERY VERY NICE. THIS WAS LARRY LEVENSON'S CASTLE. PLATO'S RETREAT WAS THE WAY THAT LARRY COULD EMBRACE EVERYBODY AND-- AND-- EXUDE HIS GENEROSITY, HIS BOUNTY. FAMILY TOGETHERNESS TODAY AT A PLACE CALLED PLATO'S RETREAT. THIS AFTERNOON THE OWNER HELD AN OPEN HOUSE THERE FOR CHILDREN. IN MOST CASES IT WAS A FAMILY AFFAIR AT PLATO'S TODAY... Michael Levenson: THE FIRST TIME I ACTUALLY WENT TO THE CLUB, THE CLUB WAS CLOSED. MY FATHER USED TO RUN, LIKE, HOLIDAY PARTIES-- MEMORIAL DAY, LABOR DAY. HE WOULD ACTUALLY RENT THE BIG BUS, HAVE IT PARKED AT MY HIGH SCHOOL. I WOULD INVITE 40 OF MY BEST FRIENDS. - Woman: DO YOU MIND THAT YOUR MOTHER COMES HERE? - NO, I DON'T CARE. HE HAD A DISCO AND THERE WAS A GAME ROOM THERE.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  You can buy or make a sling, which you can hang from hooks in the ceiling or from a frame. See the resources chapter for vendors of S/M gear. Make sure the room you intend to use as your dungeon has adequate lighting and is clean—particularly if you plan to engage in play piercing. You can install soundproofing insulation if you’re worried about neighbors—or invest in a gag. How Do You Know What You Want?“Mostly, what I want to know is how do you know what you would like if you’ve never done it?” wrote one woman who expressed a fascination with BDSM—but had little actual experience. “How do you know whether to ask for a fiberglass cane, say, or a riding crop? Obviously, my perverted bottom child-self has had many fantasies about being hit—but I don’t know that I pictured precisely with what. So, does one just say, ‘I’ll let you know if I don’t like it’?” Faced with an endless list of possibilities, how do you know what you’ll like? Or what you even want to try? Here are some suggestions: • Begin with fantasy. What produces the most heat for you? What do you imagine when you close your eyes? “I fantasize having my hands bound—not so that I will be hurt, but so that I can’t touch my lover. I love feeling desired and knowing that everything she does, she does completely of her own free will.” • Experiment with sensations on yourself. From wooden spoons to clothespins, you’ve probably got an arsenal of implements of torture in your home. • Go shopping. You can visit a leather S/M store and handle the toys. Which ones feel good in your hands? Or turn you on right there in the aisle? You can shop online as well. While you won’t get a tactile sense of the potential of various toys, you’ll get some impressive visuals. Some websites selling S/M gear show beautifully designed whips, crops, hoods, and other bondage devices. • Experiment with a friend—outside of any scene or sexual context. Take turns paddling each other with that wooden spoon or swinging a belt against bare flesh.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  that she was placed in charge of a teacher-training program. Her letter gives evidence of the way in which she is encouraging these young teachers-to-be to incorporate both the cognitive and the affective-experiential into learning how to teach. As usual, when given the chance to be self-directing, when trusted to learn, students work harder than anyone would have a right to demand of them. There can be little doubt that they, in turn, will provide a similar opportunity to their students, and conditions whereby these students can also learn to feel as well as to think. This is the exciting, pervasive ferment occasioned when an individual has a chance to learn as a whole person. CONCLUSIONS I cannot help but conclude by saying that we have the theoretical knowledge, the practical methods, and the day-to-day skills with which to radically change our whole educational system. We know how to bring together, in one experience, the intellectual learning, the range of personal emotions, and the basic physiological impact that constitute significant learning by the whole person. We know how to develop student teachers into agents for this sort of change. Do we have the will, the determination, to utilize this know-how to humanize our educational institutions? That is the question we all must answer.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER TRAINING If, then, we can choose to have learning that combines the cognitive and the affective-experiential—the intellectual and the gut-level—and if we know, with a modest degree of accuracy, the interpersonal conditions that produce such learning, what is the next step? It seems obvious to me that we need a change, amounting almost to a revolution, in the training of our teachers. Unfortunately, most teacher-training institutions are highly traditional, stressing only cognitive learning and the methods by which it can be achieved. They are past masters at providing an atmosphere that says, “Don’t do as I do. Do as I say.” Is it possible to effect change in such institutions? First, we must ask this question: Is it possible to help develop these interpersonal qualities in student teachers or others preparing for the teaching field? I believe the answer is definitely yes, on two counts. First, as I have mentioned, it would be entirely possible now to select candidates who showed a high potentiality for realness, prizing, and empathic understanding in their relationships. Thus, we could select teacher candidates on different bases from those now used. And second, there is increasingly ample evidence that such attitudes can be developed. I have seen them develop in counselors-in-training. Aspy (1972) has shown that teachers can improve through in-service training. I am sure that we do not yet know all the available means, but some variant of the intensive group experience seems to be of great assistance, providing there is a follow-up of such a task-oriented or encounter group. Another avenue would be to provide student teachers with ample opportunity for independent study. This would encourage teachers to rely on choice, rather than passivity, in their future teaching careers. Let me give one example of how such changes can come about. A school principal, in his thirties, had been exposed during the course of a seminar to much independent study and also to two weekend encounter group experiences. For his final report he begins, As I sit at my desk to begin this paper, I have a real feeling of inner excitement. This is an experience that I have never had. For as I write I have no format to follow and I will put my thoughts down as they occur. It’s almost a feeling of floating, for to me it doesn’t seem to really matter how you, or anyone for that matter, will react to my thoughts. Nevertheless, at the same time I feel

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  speaker of English recognizes, although less than 20% of a sample of students found it within 15 seconds. The answer is sky . Of course, not every triad of words has a solution. For example, the words dream , ball , book do not have a shared association that everyone will recognize as valid. Several teams of German psychologists that have studied the RAT in recent years have come up with remarkable discoveries about cognitive ease. One of the teams raised two questions: Can people feel that a triad of words has a solution before they know what the solution is? How does mood influence performance in this task? To find out, they first made some of their subjects happy and others sad, by asking them to think for several minutes about happy or sad episodes in their lives. Then they presented these subjects with a series of triads, half of them linked (such as dive , light , rocket ) and half unlinked (such as dream , ball , book ), and instructed them to press one of two keys very quickly to indicate their guess about whether the triad was linked. The time allowed for this guess, 2 seconds, was much too short for the actual solution to come to anyone’s mind. The first surprise is that people’s guesses are much more accurate than they would be by chance. I find this astonishing. A sense of cognitive ease is apparently generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine, which “knows” that the three words are coherent (share an association) long before the association is retrieved. The role of cognitive ease in the judgment was confirmed experimentally by another German team: manipulations that increase cognitive ease (priming, a clear font, pre-exposing words) all increase the tendency to see the words as linked. Another remarkable discovery is the powerful effect of mood on this intuitive performance. The experimenters computed an “intuition index” to measure accuracy. They found that putting the participants in a good mood before the test by having them think happy thoughts more than doubled accuracy. An even more striking result is that unhappy subjects were completely incapable of performing the intuitive task accurately; their guesses were no better than random. Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. Here again, as in the mere exposure effect, the connection makes biological sense. A good mood

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  The anus opens into the anal canal, which is only an inch or two long. If you reach a lubed finger a bit deeper inside your anus, you can feel the tight anal canal opening into the roomier rectum. The rectum is 4 to 6 inches long and curves in a gentle S shape. The rectum ends in the rectosigmoidal junction (the top of the S), which leads to the colon. When you feel the need to defecate, you are feeling feces pressing on the rectosigmoidal junction. (Unlike the vagina, there’s no “end” to your rectum; objects really can get lost in there. See the guidelines later in this chapter for selecting anal toys.) The lower portion of the rectum curves toward the front of your body; the upper portion curves back toward your spine. Your fingers are probably not long enough to follow these curves, but you can use a slender dildo to find the point at which your rectum curves forward. Of course, each person’s anus and rectum are unique. Like the clitoris, the tissues of the anus and rectum engorge with blood as you become aroused. Your mirror may reveal your anus opening as you get turned on. The rectum also expands—not as readily as your vagina, of course, but you can fit a finger, a dildo or penis, a butt plug, or even an entire hand inside your butt. Unlike the vagina, the rectum does not produce its own lubrication. Ten Reasons to Have Anal Sex 1. Anal penetration feels fabulous! 2. Relaxation. Many of us hold tension in the anal area. Anal penetration provides a great way to get a massage—from the inside. 3. Anal penetration can help heal and even prevent hemorrhoids.3 4. You can make friends with a part of your body you’ve been taught (at best) to ignore. 5. You can have it all. On your knees, with your partner penetrating you anally from behind, you can press a vibrator to your clit, reach your fingers inside your vagina, stimulate your G-spot, and even feel your partner’s fingers, dildo, or hand through the thin wall of tissue separating your vagina from your rectum. 6. Anal penetration can provide indirect G-spot and clitoral stimulation. 7. You can have mind-blowing orgasms. 8. Because anal penetration is associated so strongly with stereotypes about gender and power, it’s great for playing out many fantasies. You can be a submissive girl being taken by her dominant lover. With dildos and harnesses, you can pretend you’re gay boys in the backroom of a bar. 9. You can feel terribly naughty! Nothing like breaking a taboo to make you feel deliciously bold. 10. Anal penetration can create a sense of vulnerability and surrender. You can feel utterly taken. You can give it up in a big way. The lining of the anus and rectum is very delicate and will tear easily—reasons to be extremely careful in choosing insertive anal toys and to tend to your manicure.

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  Worn walks, scooped stone steps: scooped by whom: famous names? Innocence beyond innocence, having passed intact through the disintegrating forces of lust, vanity, hate, ambition: plenitude, having passed through penury. No garden before the fall: but a garden handmade after it. B.W.: distressingly pedantic, bearish: would be a critic, trying to read “When I was young and easy under the apple boughs.” Satirize him: shuffle, sinus, water blue eyes and faint whitish-yellow cast to skin: simple life: potato and steak. Heavy books by Yale professors inscribed: to B., in appreciation of his work in English … his affair with an older, ugly girl-artist who was past mistress of a loose, libertine poet and couldn’t get over it. All for the novel. Beginning Monday: try for 7 or 8 pages a day. The Girl in the Mirror Menagerie with a Red Fox July 25, Thursday .… Today: clear, flung, blue, pine-chills, orange needles underfoot. Writing weather, after three days of murking clouds, rain: silver tinselly rain, all theatrical and limpid big drops on Monday, then the deluge, cold, straight, and quite magnificent. We sat out on the dripping porch in chairs, rain pooling the green-plastic seat covers, smearing the screens with translucent panes of water, seeping into the dry fissured ground. Sunday was heaven: a mark in life, a clear line on a clean page: we were rested, writing free, tan, quite enchanted with our work, the sky, and our finding a sandbar, all smooth and shallow to bathe on between Nauset Light and Coast Guard Beach: we played: floating, my hands and feet bobbing like corks, my hair wet from my forehead, trailing to bait the fishes. A surge of glory and power. Then back to work. Writing and scrawling corrections, retyping, my story on the Trouble-Making Mother: close to my experience, slice out of a big pothering deep-dish pie.… I must say, I’m surprised at the story: it’s more gripping, I think, than anything I’ve ever done. No more burble about Platinum Summers manipulated from behind my eye with a ten-foot pole. Real, dramatic crises. A growth in the main character. Things and emblems of importance. I got depressed with the ending on Tuesday: four pages of anticlimactic question and answer between doctor and Sara, dry and chopped, logical as an adding machine: now, you’ve decided this, how do you feel about that. Bad as a rich involved poem with a bare flat two-line moral tacked on the end: this is the truth, kiddies, without any fancy stuff. Well, Tuesday night & yesterday morning I thought & found the answer: keep the audience guessing: fast, quick end, gathered up into the dramatic sheath of the story. I think I made it. Sent it off to The Sat Eve Post: start at the top. Try McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day , before getting blue.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  I emailed from Oklahoma, and the night I got back to campus, he took me to dinner. It was four days after my twentieth birthday. He kissed me, my second-ever kiss. After the next date, we went back to his apartment a few blocks from campus, and I lost my virginity in his twin bed. It hurt less than I’d heard it would—so little, actually, that I asked him: Are you in yet? Afterward, he got up to use the bathroom, and when he came back, his hands smelled like Lubriderm, like my grandmother. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Going on dates, I’d ask myself: Can I be someone who can live with this? A ruggedly handsome ecology major who consistently arrives forty-five minutes late and whose sheets are scratchy with soil and dog hair? A blond fitness trainer I met outside a gym who spent our first date talking about his ex and the dreamy daylong bike rides they took together? I wanted to be fun and low-maintenance, flexible and light on my feet. I wanted to be sleek as a dolphin, able to glide through any situation. I wanted to give everyone a chance. How else would I know what love felt like, if I didn’t try? 6The first time I ate rabbit was with Laura. The meat was shredded and served warm, sauced with olive oil and flecks of cilantro. She’d done the ordering. I’d never eaten rabbit, but I didn’t tell her. As I raised my fork to spear a piece, there was a funny beat of wings in my stomach. Next to me, Laura was already chewing, small-talking with the bartender, holding her wineglass by the stem, like someone who knew how to do things. I was twenty-one, on the cusp of twenty-two. It was the summer after my junior year of college, and I was living at my aunt Tina’s house, an hour or so north of Stanford. I worked at Whole Foods in Mill Valley, at the prepared-foods counter, making sandwiches to order and scooping deli salads. Adjacent to prepared foods was the bakery, where I had a crush on a surfer guy who worked behind the pastry case. He had a lean body and hair that fell into his eyes like a horse’s forelock. I dreamed about him once: he was in a swimming pool, and he burst through the surface of the water in slow motion, tossing his hair like Sebastian Bach in a Skid Row video.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  One afternoon not long after graduation, one of our mutual friends came to my house to hang out. It was unusual that it was just this friend and me; normally, there were a lot of us. This guy was suave in the way of the stubbled seventeen-year-old poet. He had an acoustic guitar. I had a feeling that afternoon that we were going to kiss, and we did, in the front hall. I was so excited, so thoroughly adrenalized, that my jaw quivered and I bit down hard on his lip. We laughed and kissed again, and then he had to go. Dizzy, half-blind, I reached for the doorknob and missed it by nearly a foot. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] That fall I went off to Stanford. Everybody was supposed to fool around in college. I knew this in the abstract, the way you know the earth is round, but I didn’t fool around, because I didn’t want to. I wanted a boyfriend. The summer after my freshman year, I stayed on campus and worked in a corn genetics lab in the biology building. I mixed tubes of chemicals to isolate DNA from corn kernels, pipetted liquids into plastic tubes the size of pinky fingers, and whirled them in a centrifuge. The lab had a plot of land at one end of campus where we grew corn for our research and a few other vegetables for fun. We’d have cookouts there each Friday and invite other labs to join us. At one of the cookouts toward the end of summer, I looked up from my plate and accidentally made eye contact with a guy from the visiting lab. Then, because I could feel him watching, I started looking his way on purpose. I liked catching his eyes on me. He introduced himself: he was a grad student, twenty-six, seven years older than me. The next week we met at the table on the concrete balcony outside my lab and ate our sack lunches together. I was flying to Oklahoma for a visit before classes started again, but I promised to call when I got back. He was nice-looking, but I wouldn’t normally have noticed him. That was no reason not to date him, I reasoned. I’d never “dated” anyone—just that awkward thing with Bobby, and then that kiss with the acoustic-guitar poet—but I figured uncertainty was normal in the early stages of getting to know a guy. Anyway, we can’t always be with the most gorgeous person in the room, can we? I thought of adult couples I knew when I was growing up, friends of my mother’s and father’s. The men often seemed to be sort of mildewing into middle age, while their wives remained taut and youthful. Did those women want their husbands? At some point? Now? Maybe desire was more about personality than looks? I had no idea. But this grad student liked me, and he was kind, attentive, and intelligent. I liked feeling wanted by him.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Many women enjoy sex with partners who are as queer as they are. Your preferences may run to gay and bisexual men, or to transsexuals of all genders and in all stages of transition. The sex you have with men and women may be qualitatively very different. For instance, you may enjoy strapping on a dildo to penetrate a male partner, but enjoy being penetrated by your woman lover—or vice versa. You may enjoy nearly identical sex acts with partners of either sex. The sexual activities, roles, or styles you like may vary from person to person and have nothing to do with gender at all. Perhaps you prefer to be sexual with women whose sexual orientation matches your own. What if you’re a lesbian who wants to have sex exclusively with women who also have sex exclusively with women? That’s fine. State your preferences without apology—but remember, yours is a preference, not a moral standard. Aspects of my erotic life with men get incorporated into my sex with women—I am unable to separate the two. Butch/FemmeMany lesbians and bisexual women find that the dynamics of butch/femme attraction intensifies sex. The gender contrast between two women sparks a frisson that’s very exciting. Some butches prefer “high” femmes as partners—whether they be powerful femmes fatales or cherished submissives. Some femmes prefer transgendered butches as partners, appreciating such a high degree of masculinity in someone who wasn’t born and raised male. The terms butch and femme may describe your gender identity as much as your sexuality. For you, butch/femme is not just about romance and fashion—or, for that matter, who’s on top. After all, a femme is a femme—whether or not there is a butch in the vicinity. Her gender identity is her own, requiring no validation from her complement. Similarly, a butch is a butch regardless of whether a femme takes her arm. What butch/femme sexuality means varies from person to person. Butches and femmes come in all genders and sexual orientations. You may enjoy butch-on-butch sex or femme-to-femme sex. You may find that you enjoy playing with gender signifiers—like hair, clothing, sexual apparatus, and roles—without adopting a full-time butch or femme identity. You don’t have to fit a certain body type or personality style to identify as butch or femme. You needn’t wear makeup to be femme or change the oil in your truck to be butch—or adhere to any other gender stereotypes you may have spent years trying to escape. Think of butch/femme as a way of looking at how gender shows up in your life. Butch/femme is a potent sexual dynamic. It’s yours to create. From packing and penetration to passing, lesbians have much to say about butch/femme sexual dynamics. I like it when butches pack. It shows me they’re forward-thinking and well-prepared. Good form! There is something so sexy when the female gender is mixed with that masculine finish. A butch woman makes me swoon.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  She left the door just barely ajar, so that it would seem neither open nor closed on purpose, and together they settled themselves, as if they were going to be a photo portrait of young love, on the plaid comforter in the guest room. —A drink? Wendy said. Because the vodka was still there. It was right there on the table. Sandy was shocked by the request. —You’ve never tasted this stuff? It’s not like smoking pot, that’s for sure. It’s not as cool. But it’ll do the trick, Charles. A single glass remained from the afternoon. As she filled it, Wendy took a sort of pride in her work. She remembered the thrill of her own initiation, in which her brother had played an important part. The best thing about initiation was how it was sort of like destitution. It was destitution with trust. Sandy looked frail and willing and strong and old and vulnerable all at once. His glasses slid down his nose, on a glistening sheen, and stopped at the little bulb at the end of it. The vodka filled the bottom of the glass like liquid winter. She held up the glass and Sandy held up the bottle and they clanked them together as they had seen adults do. She tossed it back in one painful swallow. Sandy tried a tiny, little sip from the bottle, and when it had touched his palate he gagged. He coughed once and choked down the rest of the swallow. Wendy told him to try again. He wanted to do as well as Mikey, he was bound to move up in this matter of growing up, so Sandy filled the glass and threw back a whole shot. Drinking his first drink, Wendy thought, involved Sandy in a thousand trying decisions. All these components. But he got it down, and she figured he would get better at it. She had gotten better at it, on holidays when her parents let her, and on school days back behind Saxe with the delinquents, the junior high and freshmen delinquents, the adopted kids, the half-dozen working-class kids, the half-dozen blacks. And then there was the occasional afternoon when she just plain stole booze from her parents. Sure, there was always the worry that they were marking the levels of the bottles with felt-tip laundry pens , but she drank when she had to drink. Sandy set her palm on the center of his chest: —It feels warm. —Your folks don’t let you have any? —Maybe a couple of times. She knew they let Mikey taste. —One more shot? she said. She could feel the ease of it in her now; she could feel that the menace of the weather was a good thing, that the woman from Please Don’t Eat the Daisies was doing fine. Any week now the woman would probably have a spot on Love, American Style . Wendy wasn’t afraid of Sandy’s naked body. —Okay, he said. And they drank again.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  Divine, and the hesitant reception of his Book of Revelation into the New Testament may reflect ecclesiastical worries about this recurrent theme of prophecy among Christians in Asia Minor. Like so many converts, Montanus passionately proclaimed his enthusiasm for his new-found faith, but that extended (at a date uncertain, but probably around 165) into announcements that he had new revelations from the Holy Spirit to add to the Christian message. It was not so much the content of these messages that worried the existing Christian leadership of the area as the challenge which they posed to their authority. By what right did this man with no commission, in no apostolic succession, speak new truths of the faith and sweep crowds along with him in his excitement?What made matters worse was that Montanus was accompanied by female prophetesses who spoke in states of ecstasy. The position of women leadership in the Church had steadily diminished over the previous century, and this combination of female assertiveness and prophecy seemed dangerously reminiscent of the female seers at ancient cultic centres: the worst possible resonance for a cult seeking to demonstrate its separation from other religions. So the Church in Asia was riven: was Montanus a blessing or a danger? Both sides appealed to other Churches around the Mediterranean, and to the great distress of the Montanists, they found themselves condemned by Eleutherius, the Bishop of Rome. As is often the case, opposition and hostility drove them into ever wilder statements about their own mission; their total and final exclusion from the Catholic Church by a council of bishops was sadly inevitable after this. Elsewhere in the Christian world, only in North Africa, which came to have a tradition of high-temperature Christianity, did their passionate commitment to the Holy Spirit find a lasting sympathy among prominent Christian activists, especially the distinguished early-third-century Christian writer Tertullian (see pp. 144–7). Yet in their Phrygian homeland, the Montanists persisted obstinately until at least the sixth century. Then in 550 the morale of the proud descendants of the ‘New Prophecy’ was finally broken when the Byzantine Emperor Justinian sent in his troops to wreck their great shrine of the founder-prophets in the now-venerable Montanist stronghold at Pepouza. Eventually even Pepouza’s whereabouts were forgotten and only recently has the enthusiasm of researchers revealed its probable site.68 Yet less than a century after the imperial vandalism at Pepouza a new ‘New Prophecy’ began tearing at the fabric of the Byzantine Empire, as Muslim armies swept north from Mecca and beat at the frontiers of Asia Minor. Maybe there were still Montanists in Asia Minor to welcome the fervour of the new arrivals. While the Montanists early on became firmly convinced that they were about

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  If food can lead to sex, and if music can lead to sex, and if the three have often been seen in each other's company . . . is there a direct connection between food and music? Does the music that chefs listen to while they cook—and in their off hours when they are free to roam like the savage, unrestrained beasts we know them to be—lead in some direct way to culinary creativity? Do chefs see music and the places and lifestyle surrounding music as inspiration, or merely as release? After years of personal introspection and research, and close questioning of some of the country's more accomplished chefs, I arrived at some conclusions. In my own career, there have always been two soundtracks for each kitchen: one for the workday and another for the late hours after work, when, pumped up with excess adrenaline, my fellow culinarians and I would head out to the clubs or the bars, where we'd drink and review the events of the day. We'd tell stories, share our pain, gripe about bosses and customers, and do what chefs and cooks do when they travel in packs: talk shop. The things I cooked, like the people I knew, I associate with certain songs, certain bands, nightclubs long gone, bars both nearly forgotten and still with us. The places and the songs changed, but certain patterns have held true over the years. During the mornings, while prep cooks roasted bones and chopped vegetables for stock and the line cooks set up their stations, portioned fish, and made sauce, it was a time for fairly melodic fare. The kitchen sound system, usually a food-encrusted boom box with considerable functional eccentricities, would play nothing too jangly or nerve-racking: Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Depeche Mode, Neil Young—sentimental, atmospheric fare likely to make us feel good about ourselves while cleaning squid or tearing the abductor muscles off scallops. The service period (when, admittedly, most chefs don't allow music, but read on) was usually given over to the large and usually omnipresent Latino contingent: salsa, soca, mariachi, and Mexican pop. When the rush was over, while last orders dribbled out and the cooks began to break down their stations, I usually stepped in with louder, more nihilistic sounds, designed to get us through the last hours of cleaning drudgery and off to the bars with hearts still pumping: mostly mid-seventies/early-eighties punk: the Clash, the New York Dolls, my beloved Ramones, and others whom I still associate with my first happy years of cooking professionally in New York. Those were the bands we went to see then, after our kitchens closed and we'd had a few freebies at the bar. Most of those places—in fact, all of them—are closed now: Max's Kansas City, CBGB's, the Mudd Club, Club 57, Hurrah, along with after-hours venues like AM/ PM, the Nursery, and the Continental. All day long, the job was about control and maintaining command of one's ingredients, environment, and personnel.

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

  Snuggling into a couchette is an experience closely identified with childhood. Jacques and I shared one in a second-class carriage on the way back from Venice during a strike, and we were trapped in a compartment with a large family. We had to get well organized. We had elected to share a couchette between the two of us, one of the ones at the top where it is the most hot and which can’t be reached without undertaking the most perilous and ridiculous contortions. The parents had taken the two bottom bunks, and the children had distributed themselves as best they could amongst the three remaining ones. We then settled into one of those lazy positions in which the human race will continue to derive certain delight for a long time yet (even if that means forgetting the entire repertoire of the Kama Sutra): that is, our bodies lay closely curled in a concave arc and I warmed my buttocks against Jacques’ lap. When all the night lights had been switched off, we took our trousers down and had a deep fuck. Without a word or so much as a moan disguised as a comfortable sigh, with no movement other than the imperceptible contraction of his buttocks which scarcely rolled his hips. Anyone who has been constrained to seize their pleasure in unwanted promiscuity (in a boarding school dormitory, a small family home…) knows what I am talking about: if you achieve your pleasure, then it will have absorbed the utter silence and the near paralysis of the bodies which were its preconditions, and it will have been the more intense for them. Understandably, people then try to recreate this form of promiscuity in more or less artificial ways, and some try to achieve it by choosing the most unexpected and public nooks and crannies.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  From 1500 to 1502 he studied in the University of Vienna, which had become a centre of classical learning by the labors of distinguished humanists, Corvinus, Celtes, and Cuspinian, under the patronage of the Emperor Maximilian I.19 He studied scholastic philosophy, astronomy, and physics, but chiefly the ancient classics. He became an enthusiast for the humanities. He also cultivated his talent for music. He played on several instruments—the lute, harp, violin, flute, dulcimer, and hunting-horn—with considerable skill. His papal opponents sneeringly called him afterwards "the evangelical lute-player, piper, and whistler." He regarded this innocent amusement as a means to refresh the mind and to soften the temper. In his poetical and musical taste he resembles Luther, without reaching his eminence. In 1502 he returned to Basle, taught Latin in the school of St. Martin, pursued his classical studies, and acquired the degree of master of arts in 1506; hence he was usually called Master Ulrich. He never became a doctor of divinity, like Luther. In Basle he made the acquaintance of Leo Jud (Judae, also called Master Leu), who was graduated with him and became his chief co-laborer in Zurich. Both attended with much benefit the lectures of Thomas Wyttenbach, professor of theology since 1505. Zwingli calls him his beloved and faithful teacher, who opened his eyes to several abuses of the Church, especially the indulgences, and taught him "not to rely on the keys of the Church, but to seek the remission of sins alone in the death of Christ, and to open access to it by the key of faith."20 § 7. Zwingli in Glarus. G. Heer: Ulrich Zwingli als Pfarrer in Glarus. Zürich, 1884.