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 From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Chastity went into the kitchen to get a drink then called out, “Nah, girl, this drink ain’t hardly too strong. It’s just right. I’m trying to get a little tipsy tonight. Turn on the stereo. I wanna hear some music.” Mikala went over to the CD player and popped in a DJ Whoo Kid mix tape to get the party started. She threw in two other rap mix CDs that were put out by a couple of local DJs. She planned to end the night off with the soulful sounds of a Slow Jams mix tape that included songs from R. Kelly, Ginuwine, and Gerald Levert, amongst a host of others. Relaxing on the couch Mikala heard the doorbell ring. It was the delivery man and as she paid him for their food she glanced behind him and laid her eyes on the finest Black man she had ever seen in her life. There was a tall light-skinned brother standing right next to him. She dropped every dime of her money as she tried to hand it to the delivery guy. “Damn, Ma, are you okay? My name is Kareem. This is my friend, Pierre. You must be Mikala. Am I correct?” he asked. “That’s right. I’m Mikala. It’s nice to meet both of you. Come on in,” she said. Mikala’s heart raced as she looked at Kareem’s pretty white teeth. He had on a pair of baggy jean shorts and a G-Unit wife-beater. His head was bald, and his lips looked so tasty she wanted to take him in the bedroom and have her way with him right then and there. Pierre and Kareem walked into the apartment and she followed behind them. Her nose was blessed by a whiff of the Onyx cologne by Azzaro. Damn, he’s a fine specimen, she thought. Chastity zeroed in on Pierre. “What’s up, sexy? I see everybody has met. Pierre, come help me out with something in the bedroom for a minute while these two get acquainted,” “So, Mikala,” Kareem said after they left. “My man Pierre tells me you’re an engineer—is that right?” Kareem asked. “Yes, I am. I like what I do and my job pays me well,” she replied. “I can feel you on that. I got several contracts across the city to clean up a few big office buildings. The money is good and the work ain’t that hard,” he said. “Do you want something to drink?” Mikala asked quickly. She had a low tolerance for alcohol, so the one drink she had downed had her buzzing. “Yeah, I’ll have a glass of whatever you’re drinking,” he replied. She went into the kitchen to get him a daiquiri and fixed another one for herself.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  That made him laugh. His hands was running all over my body again. He asked if I had some lotion. I quickly dug a tube out of the side pocket of my silver and lime green camouflage handbag. He gently scooped his hand between my legs and gathered the juice from my pussy and thighs. He mixed it with a big blob of lotion. He started stroking his dick until it stood out so stiff that it looked like a lethal weapon. It glistened in the amber glow spilling from a streetlight. “Work the tip for me. That’s where I can really feel it,” he said, climbing to a stand and leaning against the wall with his pants around his ankles. I grabbed him a little too tight at first. He scolded playfully, “Hold up, Killa!” At first I was embarrassed but we started laughin’ again and then he started showing me exactly how he liked it rubbed and stroked. I caught on quick. I could tell he liked my touch by the look in his pretty dark brown eyes—all sexy and dreamy-like. “You ready to ride Big Black?” “Been ready,” I said with much attitude. I crouched down into a squat right over his long thick dick. He was definitely ready to fuck. His dick was hard as a baseball bat, but he looked so cocky I promised myself that once I swallowed that big muthafucka up inside, I was gonna give him some’m to think about . . . with his cocky ass. After I got used to bouncin’ his tip in and out of me, I started takin’ it deeper and deeper. It felt like too much at first, but after I slid up and down awhile, my pussy was like, “Thank! You! Laaawd! This what a dick is spoze to feel like!” Not only did Dushawn keep a hard dick, he knew how to r-r-r-rock that muthafucka! When I’d go down, he’d come up to meet me! Then he’d grind his coarse dick hair back and forth across my clit. I had never even made my own self cum twice, but round two was ’bout to jump off with Dushawn. As good as it felt, I didn’t want that to happen yet. I wanted to make his cocky-ass lose control. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doin’, but I had watched enough of my uncle Ray Ray’s pornos to fake it. I stopped for a few seconds, came back down, and commenced to workin’ my tight pussy up and down Dushawn’s dick like a wood chipper. My braids were flappin’, my hips were snappin’, and my back was crackin’ like a whip. I’d take it up to the tip and then spiral down, like a merry-go-round. As soon as I started talkin’ shit—tellin’ him how much I liked the way he tossed back that big black dick—his eyes rolled back and his body started to buck.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “Is that a fact? I got some more tricks for you then. Didn’t know I was dealing with a closet freak. But a brotha came prepared,” I told her, reaching back into my bag and pulling out my anal starter kit. Rasheeda was an anal virgin and had run scared every time my dick got anywhere near her ass. “What’s that!” Rasheeda blurted. Ignoring her, I applied a liberal amount of oil to the four-inch anal vibrator, then turned it on low. Slowly, I rubbed the tip of it up and down her asshole. “Don’t . . .” she began, then contradicted herself. Wiggling her ass and warming up to the probe, she moaned and nodded. “Ready?” I gently inserted the toy in her ass and worked it all the way in. Rasheeda buried her face into the pillow, and gripped its edges. Moving her delicious chocolate in rhythm with the vibrator, she loosened up. “This tight ass of yours is getting something it never had before. Didn’t know you would like it, did you?” I asked, as I slowly stroked her with the toy. Rasheeda didn’t respond, just continued to muffle her pleasurable cries with the pillow. Reaching back into my bag of tricks I pulled out a seven-inch vibrator and turned it on. She was oblivious to the new toy until I pushed the tip of it against her engorged clit. “Euftis!” Rasheeda blurted out, lifting her head up as far as she could. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” I coaxed, slowly inserting the vibrator inside of her pussy. No lube was required. She was dripping wet. “Daddy is just gonna fuck both your holes real good,” I said, soothing her again as I began fucking her with both toys. “Ooooohhhhhhh . . .” she moaned. “Yes, baby. Give it to Daddy.” “Oooohhhhh,” she yelled out as her body began to shake. She was cumming. “Yessssssssssssssss . . . that’s it. That’s it!” I said as I tossed the toys on the floor, and buried my face between her legs. I flicked the tip of my tongue across her vagina. “What are you doing to me!” she exclaimed, gripping my head. “Spelling . . . my . . . name,” I told her innocently. “Oh shit!” “See . . . watch,” I told her as my tongue drew an E on her pussy. Rasheeda trembled when I tongued a U. Twitched after the F. Bucked when I crossed the T. Shivered from the I. Came when I snaked an S between her slit. Suddenly Rasheeda turned the tables on me. “Whose dick is this?” she asked, grasping and holding my dick. It ain’t yours! I thought. “You don’t know her,” I replied coolly.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. […] Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. […] You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Then Margarita understood where the sound of the ball was coming from. The roar of trumpets crashed down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused her body as if with blood. The orchestra of about a hundred and fifty men was playing a polonaise. The tailcoated man hovering over the orchestra paled on seeing Margarita, smiled, and suddenly, with a sweep of his arms, got the whole orchestra to its feet. Not interrupting the music for a moment, the orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sound. The man over the orchestra turned from it and bowed deeply, spreading his arms wide, and Margarita, smiling, waved her hand to him. ‘No, not enough, not enough,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘he won’t sleep all night. Call out to him: “Greetings to you, waltz king!” ’ 1 Margarita cried it out, and marvelled that her voice, full as a bell, was heard over the howling of the orchestra. The man started with happiness and put his left hand to his chest, while the right went on brandishing a white baton at the orchestra. ‘Not enough, not enough,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘look to the left, to the first violins, and nod so that each one thinks you’ve recognized him individually. There are only world celebrities here. Nod to that one . . . at the first stand, that’s Vieuxtemps! 2 . . . There, very good . . . Now, onward!’ ‘Who is the conductor?’ Margarita asked, flying off. ‘Johann Strauss!’ cried the cat. ‘And they can hang me from a liana in a tropical forest if such an orchestra ever played at any ball! I invited them! And, note, not one got sick or declined!’ In the next room there were no columns. Instead there stood walls of red, pink and milk-white roses on one side, and on the other a wall of Japanese double camellias. Between these walls fountains spurted up, hissing, and bubbly champagne seethed in three pools, the first of which was transparent violet, the second ruby, the third crystal. Next to them negroes in scarlet headbands dashed about, filling flat cups from the pools with silver dippers. The pink wall had a gap in it, where a man in a red swallowtail coat was flailing away on a platform. Before him thundered an unbearably loud jazz band. As soon as the conductor saw Margarita, he bent before her so that his hands touched the floor, then straightened up and cried piercingly: ‘Hallelujah!’ He slapped himself on the knee—one!—then criss-cross on the other knee—two!—then snatched a cymbal from the hands of the end musician and banged it on a column.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Whatever they were going to do—steal, probably. I didn’t know. “Hurry up,” Suzanne said. She was getting annoyed, I could tell, though she was still smiling. “We can’t just stand here.” Afternoon shadows were starting to slant through the trees. Donna reemerged from the wooden side gate. “The back door’s open,” she said. My stomach sank—there was no way to stop whatever was about to happen. And then there was Tiki, scrambling in our direction, barking in wretched alarm. Yips shook his whole body, his skinny shoulders twitching. “Fuck,” Suzanne muttered. Donna backed off, too. The dog could have been enough of an excuse, I suppose, and we could’ve piled back into the car and gone back to the ranch. A part of me wanted that. But another part wanted to fulfill the sick momentum in my chest. The Dutton family seemed like perpetrators, too, just like Connie and May and my parents. All quarantined by their selfishness, their stupidity. “Wait,” I said. “He knows me.” I squatted, holding out my hand. Keeping my eyes on the dog. Tiki approached, sniffing my palm. “Good Tiki,” I said, petting him, scratching under his jaw, and then the barking stopped and we went inside. —I couldn’t believe nothing happened. That no cop cars were whining after us. Even after shifting so easily into the Dutton domain, crossing the invisible boundaries. And why had we done that? Jarred the inviolate grid of a home for no reason? Just to prove we could? The calm mask of Suzanne’s face as she touched the Duttons’ things confused me, her odd remove, even as I fluoresced with a strange, unreadable thrill. Donna was looking over some treasure from the house, a bauble of milky ceramic. I peered closer and saw it was a little figure of a Dutch girl. How bizarre, the detritus of people’s lives removed from their context. It made even things that were precious seem like junk. The lurch in me made me think of an afternoon when I was younger, my father and I hunched over the shoreline at Clear Lake. My father squinting in the harshness of midday, the fish white of his thighs in his swimming shorts. How he pointed out a leech in the water, quivering and tight with blood. He was pleased, poking at the leech with a stick to make it move, but I was frightened. The inky leech caused some drag on my insides that I sensed again, there, in the Dutton house, Suzanne’s eyes meeting mine across the living room. “You like?” Suzanne said. Smiling a little. “Wild, right?” Donna came out into the entryway. Her forearms shone with sticky juice, and she held a triangle of watermelon in her hand, the spongy pink of an organ. “Greetings and salutations,” she said, chewing wetly.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I think he’d be upset if I told him we weren’t being hospitable.” I didn’t read any threat in Donna’s voice, only teasing. Suzanne’s mouth was tight; she finally smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Put the bike in the back.” —I saw that the bus had been emptied and rebuilt, the interior cruddy and overworked in the way things were back then—the floor gridded with Oriental carpets, grayed with dust, the drained tufts of thrift store cushions. The stink of a joss stick in the air, prisms ticking against the windows. Cardboard scrawled with dopey phrases. There were three other girls in the bus, and they turned to me with eagerness, a feral attention I read as flattering. Cigarettes going in their hands while they looked me up and down, an air of festivity and timelessness. A sack of green potatoes, pasty hot dog buns. A crate of wet, overripe tomatoes. “We were on a food run,” Donna said, though I didn’t really understand what that meant. My mind was preoccupied with this sudden shift of luck, with monitoring the slow trickle of sweat under my arms. I kept waiting to be spotted, to be identified as an intruder who didn’t belong. My hair too clean. Little nods toward presentation and decorum that seemed to concern no one else. My hair cut crazily across my vision from the open windows, intensifying the dislocation, the abruptness of being in this strange bus. A feather hanging from the rearview with a cluster of beads. Some dried lavender on the dashboard, colorless from the sun. “She’s coming to the solstice,” Donna chimed, “the summer solstice.” It was early June and I knew the solstice was at the end of the month: I didn’t say anything. The first of many silences. “She’s gonna be our offering,” Donna told the others. Giggling. “We’re gonna sacrifice her.” I looked to Suzanne—even our brief history seemed to ratify my presence among them—but she was sitting off to the side, absorbed by the box of tomatoes. Applying pressure to the skins, sifting out the rot. Waving away the bees. It would occur to me later that Suzanne was the only one who didn’t seem overjoyed to come upon me, there on the road. Something formal and distant in her affect. I can only think it was protective. That Suzanne saw the weakness in me, lit up and obvious: she knew what happened to weak girls. —Donna introduced me around, and I tried to remember their names. Helen, a girl who seemed close to my age, though maybe it was just her pigtails. She was pretty in the youthful way of hometown beauties, snub-nosed, her features accessible, though with an obvious expiration date. Roos. “Short for Roosevelt,” she told me. “As in, Franklin D.” She was older than the other girls, with a face as round and rosy as a storybook character.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  My interest in medicine, however, was lasting, and my parents fully encouraged it. When I was about twelve years old, they bought me dissecting tools, a microscope, and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy; the latter turned out to be inordinately complicated, but its presence gave me a sense of what I imagined real Medicine to be. The Ping-Pong table in our basement was my laboratory, and I spent endless late afternoons dissecting frogs, fish, worms, and turtles; only when I moved up the evolutionary ladder in my choice of subjects and was given a fetal pig—whose tiny snout and perfect little whiskers finally did me in—was I repelled from the world of dissection. Doctors at the hospital at Andrews Air Force Base, where I volunteered as a candy striper, or nurse’s aide, on weekends, gave me scalpels, hemostats, and, among other things, bottles of blood for one of my many homemade experiments. Far more important, they took me and my interests very seriously. They never tried to discourage me from becoming a doctor, even though it was an era that breathed, If woman, be a nurse. They took me on rounds with them and let me observe and even assist at minor surgical procedures. I carefully watched them take out sutures, change dressings, and do lumbar punctures. I held instruments, peered into wounds, and, on one occasion, actually removed stitches from a patient’s abdominal incision. I would arrive at the hospital early, leave late, and bring books and questions with me: What was it like to be a medical student? To deliver babies? To be around death? I must have been particularly convincing about my interest on the latter point because one of the doctors allowed me to attend part of an autopsy, which was extraordinary and horrifying. I stood at the side of the steel autopsy table, trying hard not to look at the dead child’s small, naked body, but being incapable of not doing so. The smell in the room was vile and saturating, and for a long while only the sloshing of water and the quickness of the pathologist’s hands were saving distractions. Eventually, in order to keep from seeing what I was seeing, I reverted back to a more cerebral, curious self, asking question after question, following each answer with yet another question. Why did the pathologist make the cuts he did? Why did he wear gloves? Where did all the body parts go? Why were some parts weighed and others not?

• From The Girls (2016)

  Whether Suzanne was looking for me or not. A curious thrill behind my eyes. Russell handed me a bottle of Coke. The soda was tepid and flat, but I drank the whole thing. As intoxicating as champagne. —I experienced the whole night as fated, me as the center of a singular drama. But Russell had put me through a series of ritual tests. Perfected over the years that he had worked for a religious organization near Ukiah, a center that gave away food, found shelter and jobs. Attracting the thin, harried girls with partial college degrees and neglectful parents, girls with hellish bosses and dreams of nose jobs. His bread and butter. The time he spent at the center’s outpost in San Francisco in the old fire station. Collecting his followers. Already he’d become an expert in female sadness—a particular slump in the shoulders, a nervous rash. A subservient lilt at the end of sentences, eyelashes gone soggy from crying. Russell did the same thing to me that he did to those girls. Little tests, first. A touch on my back, a pulse of my hand. Little ways of breaking down boundaries. And how quickly he’d ramped it up, easing his pants to his knees. An act, I thought, calibrated to comfort young girls who were glad, at least, that it wasn’t sex. Who could stay fully dressed the whole time, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. But maybe the strangest part—I liked it, too. —I floated through the party in a stunned hush. The air on my skin insistent, my armpits sliding with sweat. It had happened—I had to keep telling myself so. I assumed everyone would see it on me. An obvious aura of sex. I wasn’t anxious anymore, wasn’t roaming the party squeezed by nervous need, the certainty that there was a hidden room I wasn’t allowed access to—that worry had been satisfied, and I took dreamy steps, looked back into passing faces with a smile that asked nothing. When I saw Guy, tapping a pack of cigarettes, I stopped without hesitation. “Can I have one?” He grinned at me. “The girl wants a cigarette, she shall have her cigarette.” He held it to my mouth and I hoped people were watching. I finally found Suzanne in a group near the fire. When she caught my eye, she gave me an odd, airless smile. I’m sure she recognized the inward shift you sometimes see in young girls, newly sexed. It’s that pride, I think, a solemnity. I wanted her to know. Suzanne was giddy from something, I could tell. Not alcohol. Something else, her pupils seeming to eat the iris, a flush lacing up her neck like a trippy Victorian collar. Maybe Suzanne felt some hidden disappointment when the game fulfilled itself, when she saw that I’d gone with Russell, after all. But maybe she’d expected it. The car was still smoldering, the noise of the party cutting up the darkness.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I pulled off my panties, keeping them in my hand, and hiked up my skirt as I walked up to the dick. I straddled him little by little; gradually bringing my pussy down on his dick. I groaned as I felt him penetrate me. I gripped the handicap railing near the toilet and started to ride him. Raheem grasped my ass and brought me down harder on the dick, I let out a loud scream as he pushed damn near the whole thing into me. “You better stop,” I whispered in his ear. “This is my job you fuckin’ with.” He gave me that same sinful grin, and continued to thrust in me, pulling at my hair and fuckin’ the shit out of me. I let go of the railing and wrapped my arms around him, clutching his body tight, feeling myself about to cum. “I’m cumming,” I whispered in his ear, rocking back and forth, up and down on his lap. I felt that dick in my chest again. “I’m cumming too, Ayeesha,” he cried out, but suddenly we heard the bathroom door creak open and my eyes widened. We both remained completely still. I listened carefully. We heard someone peeing by the urinals. Raheem smiled at me, and grabbed my ass and tried to continue fuckin’ me as he sucked on my nipples. “You better stop,” I whispered to him. I heard the urinal flush and then water running in the sink. And then I heard the guy fart as he washed his hands. Raheem and I laughed silently as the man walked out of the bathroom. We continued to fuck. Raheem sucked on my hard nipples and repeatedly pounded some good fuckin’ dick up in me. “I’m cumming,” I cried out again. I felt my legs quivering, so I gripped the railing with my left hand and continued to ride. I felt his dick get harder inside me as he grabbed my butt tightly, and his fingers gripped my butt cheeks as I felt him shuddering and exploding in me. Moments later, he made me explode too. I remained seated on his lap, panting and trying to catch my breath. I glanced at the time and saw that I only had two minutes left of my break. “Damn, you always do this to me,” I told Raheem as I dismounted him, wiped myself, and put my panties back on. He smiled and said, “But you know it’s worth it.” We quickly got decent again, and Raheem stepped out of the stall before me to check if all was clear. He signaled for me that it was okay to leave, and I strutted out of the bathroom running my hands through my hair.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  There is a wonderful kind of excitement in modern neuroscience, a romantic, moon-walk sense of exploring and setting out for new frontiers. The science is elegant, the scientists dismayingly young, and the pace of discovery absolutely staggering. Like the molecular biologists, the brain-scanners are generally well aware of the extraordinary frontiers they are crossing, and it would take a mind that is on empty, or a heart made of stone, to be unmoved by their collective ventures and enthusiasms. I was, in spite of myself, caught up by the science, wondering whether these hyperintensities were the cause or the effect of illness, whether they became more pronounced over time, where in the brain they localized, whether they were related to the problems in spatial orientation and facial recognition that I and many other manic-depressives experience, and whether children who were at risk for manic-depressive illness, because one or both of their parents had the disease, would show these brain abnormalities even before they became ill. The clinical side of my mind began to mull about the visual advantages of these and other imaging findings in convincing some of my more literary and skeptical patients that (a) there is a brain, (b) their moods are related to their brains, and (c) there may be specific brain-damaging effects of going off their medications. These speculations kept me distracted for a while, as changing gears from the personal side of having manic-depressive illness to the professional role of studying and treating it often does. But, invariably, the personal interest and concerns returned. When I got back to Johns Hopkins, where I was now teaching, I buttonholed neurology colleagues and grilled my associates who were doing the MRI studies. I scurried off to the library to read up on what was known; it is, after all, one thing to believe intellectually that this disease is in your brain; it is quite another thing to actually see it. Even the titles of some of the articles were a bit ungluing: “Basal Ganglia Volumes and White Matter Hyperintensities in Patients with Bipolar Disorder,” “Structural Brain Abnormalities in Bipolar Affective Disorder: Ventricular Enlargement and Focal Signal Hyperintensities,” “Subcortical Abnormalities Detected in Bipolar Affective Disorders, Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging”; on and on they went. I sat down to read. One study found that “Of the 32 scans of the patients with bipolar disorder, 11 (34.4%) showed hyperintensities, while only one scan (3.2%) from the normal comparison group contained such abnormalities.”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  He gave me an assuring look and returned with, “Don’t worry about the house rules; they know me up in here, luv . . . I got you. This is my treat.” I was nervous and reluctant. What the fuck he meant, I got you, I thought. But Tears was persistent and continued to tug at my thong. I was on my back when he pulled it off and dropped it next to me. I was now butt-ass naked onstage in nothing but some stilettos, and I heard the crowd of men around me go stir crazy. Tears ran his hand down my thighs and then pushed his middle and index finger deep into my pussy. I moaned as I glanced around nervously for the manager, and surprisingly I saw him looking on without barking or screaming on me. I guess Tears really did have connections in here, because usually if a girl flashed one pubic hair she got her ass chewed out later by Neo, the club manager. Men started to crowd around the stage, as all eyes were fixated on me and him, and they watched Tears lean forward between my thighs and sink his full beautiful lips and tongue into my wet and throbbing pussy. I cried out with passion as he consumed my pussy like crazy. I was sprawled out on my back, had my legs straddled around him with my arms outstretched behind me, clutching the pole tightly and forgetting about who was watching. “Ummmm . . . aaaaaahhh . . . ummm . . . ummm . . . shit, mutha-fucka . . . aaaaaahhh, eat that pussy, Tears,” I cried out. The DJ had turned the music off, and everyone heard my loud cries. Niggahs started to chant, “Tears. Tears. Tears. Tears. Tears. Tears. Tears.” That niggah went buck-wild between my legs, not missing a beat. He tore my ass up as he ate my pussy. He gripped both my thighs and pushed my legs back, and dug his tongue deeper into me. I felt his wet tongue swimming around in me, and I continued to clutch the pole. I just couldn’t let go. Money was raining down on me like crazy, but that was the last thing I was worried about. I think I fell in love with Tears that night. He was raw and just didn’t give a fuck. And I loved that about a niggah. After five minutes of putting a sistah in bliss, he finally stopped. He looked down at me with this content grin, and said, “Yo get dressed. We outta here.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I collected my things and walked offstage butt naked. I didn’t bother to put my thong back on. I just strutted through the crowd not giving a fuck, clutching countless big bills in my hand.

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

  On the news of Saladin’s victories, Urban III. is alleged to have died of grief.407 An official summons was hardly necessary to stir the crusading ardor of Europe from one end to the other. Danes, Swedes, and Frisians joined with Welshmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans in readiness for a new expedition. A hundred years had elapsed since the First Crusade, and its leaders were already invested with a halo of romance and glory. The aged Gregory VIII., whose reign lasted less than two months, 1187, spent his expiring breath in an appeal to the princes to desist from their feuds. Under the influence of William, archbishop of Tyre, and the archbishop of Rouen, Philip Augustus of France and Henry II. of England laid aside their quarrels and took the cross. At Henry’s death his son Richard, then thirty-two years of age, set about with impassioned zeal to make preparations for the Crusade. The treasure which Henry had left, Richard augmented by sums secured from the sale of castles and bishoprics.408 For ten thousand marks he released William of Scotland from homage, and he would have sold London itself, so he said, if a purchaser rich enough had offered himself.409 Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, supported his sovereign, preaching the Crusade in England and Wales, and accompanied the expedition.410 The famous Saladin tax was levied in England, and perhaps also in France, requiring the payment of a tithe by all not joining the Crusade. Richard and Philip met at Vézelai. Among the great lords who joined them were Hugh, duke of Burgundy, Henry II., count of Champagne, and Philip of Flanders. As a badge for himself and his men, the French king chose a red cross, Richard a white cross, and the duke of Flanders a green cross. In the meantime Frederick Barbarossa, who was on the verge of seventy, had reached the Bosphorus. Mindful of his experiences with Konrad III., whom he accompanied on the Second Crusade, he avoided the mixed character of Konrad’s army by admitting to the ranks only those who were physically strong and had at least three marks. The army numbered one hundred thousand, of whom fifty thousand sat in the saddle. Frederick of Swabia accompanied his father, the emperor.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  He was splendid, first of all, for his unvarying continence. After his wife’s death [when Julian was twenty-five], all agree that he experienced no taint of sex, taking to heart what was said in Plato of the tragedian Sophocles, who, asked if he was still capable of intercourse in old age, said no, and added that it relieved him to escape that kind of love, as one flees from a crazed and ruthless despot. Another sage, the emperor Marcus Aurelius, renounced sex (Meditations 2.15) as the mere “release of slime by rubbing a woman’s innards.” Augustine’s attitude had, at this stage, as much to do with the purification of the mind in Neoplatonic terms as with anything specifically Christian. Since Augustine and Alypius and Godsend all had to be back in Milan to begin their baptismal instruction by February of 387, they spent the early winter at Verecundus’ villa—probably modern Cassago (A-L, “Cassiciacum,” cols. 773–74). It was cold. We know this from a poem one of Augustine’s students later wrote about the stay there (L 26.4): Could Dawn, with happy chariot, Wheel back to me the past, When we prolonged our wise retreat ’Neath Alpine shadows cast, No frost would now repel my feet With firmness planted fast, No storms or winds beat off return Of friendships meant to last. The villa was clearly a fine establishment, housing Augustine’s company of ten, with its servants and stenographers. Augustine had not formally given up his court position, and the copyists would be kept very busy. No ancient author could be without his stenographers—Jerome (L 5.2) even took them with him into his desert hermitage. Augustine was explosively productive during these months while he waited for induction into the Christian mysteries. This man, who had written only one book in his first thirty-two years, now wrote four dialogues in as many months, and planned an ambitious series on the whole circle of learning. It is as if he had been paralyzed by lack of an ordinating principle, the answer to previous philosophical doubts on the nature of mind and body, wisdom and God. He thought, now, that he had all the answers—he would soon learn better. His model as a Christian author was the Neoplatonist Mallius Theodore, who had retired to Milan to escape political distractions from his philosophical work. Theodore wrote in the dialogue form, as we learn from Claudian’s poetic tribute to Theodore’s consulship (84–86): Crabb’d Greek to Latin you transform, With skill at shaping urbane interchanges, A tapestry of truth from crossing strands.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I was a senior in high school when I had my first attack of manic-depressive illness; once the siege began, I lost my mind rather rapidly. At first, everything seemed so easy. I raced about like a crazed weasel, bubbling with plans and enthusiasms, immersed in sports, and staying up all night, night after night, out with friends, reading everything that wasn’t nailed down, filling manuscript books with poems and fragments of plays, and making expansive, completely unrealistic, plans for my future. The world was filled with pleasure and promise; I felt great. Not just great, I felt really great. I felt I could do anything, that no task was too difficult. My mind seemed clear, fabulously focused, and able to make intuitive mathematical leaps that had up to that point entirely eluded me. Indeed, they elude me still. At the time, however, not only did everything make perfect sense, but it all began to fit into a marvelous kind of cosmic relatedness. My sense of enchantment with the laws of the natural world caused me to fizz over, and I found myself buttonholing my friends to tell them how beautiful it all was. They were less than transfixed by my insights into the webbings and beauties of the universe, although considerably impressed by how exhausting it was to be around my enthusiastic ramblings: You’re talking too fast, Kay. Slow down, Kay. You’re wearing me out, Kay. Slow down, Kay. And those times when they didn’t actually come out and say it, I still could see it in their eyes: For God’s sake, Kay, slow down. I did, finally, slow down. In fact, I came to a grinding halt. Unlike the very severe manic episodes that came a few years later and escalated wildly and psychotically out of control, this first sustained wave of mild mania was a light, lovely tincture of true mania; like hundreds of subsequent periods of high enthusiasms it was short-lived and quickly burned itself out: tiresome to my friends, perhaps; exhausting and exhilarating to me, definitely; but not disturbingly over the top. Then the bottom began to fall out of my life and mind. My thinking, far from being clearer than a crystal, was tortuous. I would read the same passage over and over again only to realize that I had no memory at all for what I just had read. Each book or poem I picked up was the same way. Incomprehensible. Nothing made sense. I could not begin to follow the material presented in my classes, and I would find myself staring out the window with no idea of what was going on around me. It was very frightening.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Shattering the mirror on the wardrobe, she took out the critic’s dress suit and drowned it in the tub. A large bottle of ink, picked up in the study, she poured over the luxuriously plumped-up double bed. The devastation she wrought afforded her a burning pleasure, and yet it seemed to her all the while that the results came out somehow meagre. Therefore she started doing whatever came along. She smashed pots of ficus in the room with the grand piano. Before finishing that, she went back to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass on the framed photographs. She felt no fatigue, only the sweat poured from her in streams. Just then, in apartment no. 82, below Latunsky’s apartment, the housekeeper of the dramatist Quant was having tea in the kitchen, perplexed by the clatter, running and jangling coming from above. Raising her head towards the ceiling, she suddenly saw it changing colour before her eyes from white to some deathly blue. The spot was widening right in front of her and drops suddenly swelled out on it. For about two minutes the housekeeper sat marvelling at this phenomenon, until finally a real rain began to fall from the ceiling, drumming on the floor. Here she jumped up, put a bowl under the stream, which did not help at all, because the rain expanded and began pouring down on the gas stove and the table with dishes. Then, crying out, Quant’s housekeeper ran from the apartment to the stairs and at once the bell started ringing in Latunsky’s apartment. ‘Well, they’re ringing . . . Time to be off,’ said Margarita. She sat on the broom, listening to the female voice shouting through the keyhole: ‘Open up, open up! Dusya, open the door! Is your water overflowing, or what? We’re being flooded!’ Margarita rose up about a metre and hit the chandelier. Two bulbs popped and pendants flew in all directions. The shouting through the keyhole stopped, stomping was heard on the stairs. Margarita floated through the window, found herself outside it, swung lightly and hit the glass with the hammer. The pane sobbed, and splinters went cascading down the marble-faced wall. Margarita flew to the next window. Far below, people began running about on the sidewalk, one of the two cars parked by the entrance honked and drove off. Having finished with Latunsky’s windows, Margarita floated to the neighbour’s apartment. The blows became more frequent, the lane was filled with crashing and jingling.

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

  The crusading epidemic broke out among the children of France and Germany in 1212. Begotten in enthusiasm, which was fanned by priestly zeal, the movement ended in pitiful disaster. The French expedition was led by Stephen, a shepherd lad of twelve, living at Cloyes near Chartres. He had a vision, so the rumor went, in which Christ appeared to him as a pilgrim and made an appeal for the rescue of the holy places. Journeying to St. Denis, the boy retailed the account of what he had seen. Other children gathered around him. The enthusiasm spread from Brittany to the Pyrenees. In vain did the king of France attempt to check the movement. The army increased to thirty thousand, girls as well as boys, adults as well as children.428 Questioned as to where they were going, they replied, "We go to God, and seek for the holy cross beyond the sea." They reached Marseilles, but the waves did not part and let them go through dryshod as they expected.429 The centres of the movement in Germany were Nicholas, a child of ten, and a second leader whose name has been lost. Cologne was the rallying point. Children of noble families enlisted. Along with the boys and girls went men and women, good and bad. The army under the anonymous leader passed through Eastern Switzerland and across the Alps to Brindisi, whence some of the children sailed, never to be heard from again. The army of Nicholas reached Genoa in August, 1212. The children sang songs on the way, and with them has been wrongly associated the tender old German hymn: "Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, O Thou of man and God, the son, Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown." The numbers had been reduced by hardship, death, and moral shipwreck from twenty to seven thousand. At Genoa the waters were as pitiless as they were at Marseilles. Some of the children remained in the city and became, it is said, the ancestors of distinguished families.430 The rest marched on through Italy to Brindisi, where the bishop of Brindisi refused to let them proceed farther. An uncertain report declares Innocent III. declined to grant their appeal to be released from their vow. The fate of the French children was, if possible, still more pitiable. At Marseilles they fell a prey to two slave dealers, who for "the sake of God and without price" offered to convey them across the Mediterranean. Their names are preserved,—Hugo Ferreus and William Porcus. Seven vessels set sail. Two were shipwrecked on the little island of San Pietro off the northwestern coast of Sardinia. The rest reached the African shore, where the children were sold into slavery.

• From The Girls (2016)

  night’s dinner, but I turned off the faucet, watching Suzanne with my whole body. “And Russell said, Let’s just talk for a minute. Just let me tell you what I’m about.” Suzanne spit a shell back into the bag. “We had some tea with the guy, in his weird log cabin house. For an hour or something. Russell gave him the whole vision, laid it all out. And the guy was real interested in what we were doing out here. Showed Russell his old army pictures. Then he said we could just have the truck.” I wiped my hands on my shorts, her giddiness making me so shy I had to turn away. I finished the dishes to the sound of her snapping open peanut after peanut from her perch on the counter, amassing an unruly pile of damp shells until the bag was gone and she went looking for someone else to tell her story to. — The girls would hang out near the creek because it was cooler, the breeze carrying a chill, though the flies were bad. The rocks capped with algae, the sleepy shade. Russell had come back from town in the new truck, bearing candy bars, comic books whose pages grew limp from our hands. Helen ate her candy immediately and looked around at the rest of us with a seethe of jealousy. Though she’d also come from a wealthy family, we weren’t close. I found her dull except around Russell, when her brattiness took on a directed aim. Preening under his touch like a cat, she acted younger, even than me, stunted in a way that would later seem pathological. “Jesus. Stop staring at me,” Suzanne said, hunching her candy away from Helen. “You already ate yours.” Her shape on the bank next to me, her toes curling into the dirt. Jerking when a mosquito swarmed by her ear. “Just a bite,” Helen whined. “Just the corner.” Roos glanced up from the chambray mess of cloth in her lap. She was mending a work shirt for Guy, her tiny stitches made with absent precision. “You can have some of mine,” Donna said, “if you be quiet.” She picked her way to Helen, her chocolate bar craggy with peanuts.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Picking up a book in the red bedroom and the cane chair uncomfortable; tired of sitting on my ass all day long, tired of red wallpaper, tired of seeing so many people jabbering away about nothing. The red bedroom and the trunk always open; her gowns lying about in a delirium of disorder. The red bedroom with my galoshes and canes, the notebooks I never touched, the manuscripts lying cold and dead. Paris! Meaning the Café Select, the Dôme, the Flea Market, the American Express. Paris! Meaning Borowski’s canes, Borowski’s hats, Borowski’s gouaches , Borowski’s prehistoric fish—and prehistoric jokes. In that Paris of ‘28 only one night stands out in my memory—the night before sailing for America. A rare night, with Borowski slightly pickled and a little disgusted with me because I’m dancing with every slut in the place. But we’re leaving in the morning! That’s what I tell every cunt I grab hold of —leaving in the morning! That’s what I’m telling the blonde with agate-colored eyes. And while I’m telling her she takes my hand and squeezes it between her legs. In the lavatory I stand before the bowl with a tremendous erection; it seems light and heavy at the same time, like a piece of lead with wings on it. And while I’m standing there like that two cunts sail in—Americans. I greet them cordially, prick in hand. They give me a wink and pass on. In the vestibule, as I’m buttoning my fly, I notice one of them waiting for her friend to come out of the can. The music is still playing and maybe Mona’ll be coming to fetch me, or Borowski with his gold-knobbed cane, but I’m in her arms now and she has hold of me and I don’t care who comes or what happens. We wriggle into the cabinet and there I stand her up, slap up against the wall, and I try to get it into her but it won’t work and so we sit down on the seat and try it that way but it won’t work either. No matter how we try it it won’t work. And all the while she’s got hold of my prick, she’s clutching it like a lifesaver, but it’s no use, we’re too hot, too eager. The music is still playing and so we waltz out of the cabinet into the vestibule again and as we’re dancing there in the shithouse I come all over her beautiful gown and she’s sore as hell about it. I stumble back to the table and there’s Borowski with his ruddy face and Mona with her disapproving eye. And Borowski says “Let’s all go to Brussels tomorrow,” and we agree, and when we get back to the hotel I vomit all over the place, in the bed, in the washbowl, over the suits and gowns and the galoshes and canes and the notebooks I never touched and the manuscripts cold and dead. A few months later.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  It was spring before I managed to escape from the penitentiary, and then only by a stroke of fortune. A telegram from Carl informed me one day that there was a vacancy “upstairs”; he said he would send me the fare back if I decided to accept. I telegraphed back at once and as soon as the dough arrived I beat it to the station. Not a word to M. le Proviseur or anyone. French leave, as they say. I went immediately to the hotel at 1 bis , where Carl was staying. He came to the door stark naked. It was his night off and there was a cunt in the bed as usual. “Don’t mind her,” he says, “she’s asleep. If you need a lay you can take her on. She’s not bad.” He pulls the covers back to show me what she looks like. However, I wasn’t thinking about a lay right away. I was too excited. I was like a man who has just escaped from jail. I just wanted to see and hear things. Coming from the station it was like a long dream. I felt as though I had been away for years. It was not until I had sat down and taken a good look at the room that I realized I was back again in Paris. It was Carl’s room and no mistake about it. Like a squirrel cage and shithouse combined. There was hardly room on the table for the portable machine he used. It was always like that, whether he had a cunt with him or not. Always a dictionary lying open on a gilt-edged volume of Faust , always a tobacco pouch, a beret, a bottle of vin rouge , letters, manuscripts, old newspapers, water colors, teapot, dirty socks, toothpicks, Kruschen Salts, condoms, etc. In the bidet were orange peels and the remnants of a ham sandwich. “There’s some food in the closet” he said. “Help yourself! I was just going to give myself an injection.” I found the sandwich he was talking about and a piece of cheese that he had nibbled at beside it. While he sat on the edge of the bed, dosing himself with his argyrol, I put away the sandwich and cheese with the aid of a little wine. “I liked that letter you sent me about Goethe,” he said, wiping his prick with a dirty pair of drawers. “I’ll show you the answer to it in a minute—I’m putting it in my book. The trouble with you is that you’re not a German. You have to be German to understand Goethe. Shit, I’m not going to explain it to you now. I’ve put it all in the book. … By the way, I’ve got a new cunt now—not this one—this one’s a half-wit. At least, I had her until a few days ago. I’m not sure whether she’ll come back or not.