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 The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  223Lecture 23—Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism õ A few years later, Parham had his own healing mission and Bible college in Topeka. In 1901, he laid hands on one of his students, a woman named Agnes Ozman, and prayed for her—and she spoke in tongues. Witnesses later claimed she was speaking Chinese, which she had never studied. õ They took this to be a sign that God had restored to earth the miraculous spiritual gifts of New Testament times because Christ was about to return. God had blessed true believers with special powers like tongues and healing in order to give them one last chance to win converts for Christ. Many scholars trace the origins of the modern Pentecostal movement to this event. õ Parham and his students traveled far and wide to spread their message. While Parham was preaching in Houston, a black hotel waiter named William Seymour sat in on one of his classes. The class was segregated, so Seymour had to sit outside the door and crane his neck to listen. õ But Seymour was persuaded anyhow, and carried this Pentecostal idea that Christians need to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit to Los Angeles when he moved there in 1906. There, Seymour would become a world-class evangelist. INTERNATIONAL REVIVAL õ Within just fifteen years, this Pentecostal revival had spread to every inhabited continent. Seymour’s Azusa Street Revival, which ran for three years and had a diverse crowd of participants, planted many seeds of that global explosion. 224 The History of Christianity II õ There were revivals in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries in Sweden, Ireland, Australia, Wales, and other places which primed Christians there to be receptive when travelers returned from California with their message of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. õ Despite its diverse beginnings, not long after this revival began it divided along racial lines, especially in the United States. Today, there are Pentecostal denominations that are overwhelmingly white, like the Assemblies of God, and largely black, like the Church of God in Christ.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  We started getting booked everywhere. Successful black families were moving to the suburbs, but their kids still wanted to have block parties and stay connected to the culture of the townships, so they’d book us to play their parties. Word of mouth traveled. Pretty soon we were getting booked more and more in the suburbs, meeting white people, playing for white people. One kid we knew from the township, his mother was involved in creating cultural programs for schools. In America they’d be called “diversity programs.” They were springing up all over South Africa because we were supposed to be learning about and embracing one another in this post-apartheid era. This kid’s mom asked us if we wanted to play at a cultural day at some school in Linksfield, the wealthy suburb south of Sandringham where my pal Teddy had lived. There was going to be all sorts of different dancing and music, and everyone was going to come together and hang out and be cultural. She offered to pay, so we said sure. She sent us the information with the time and place and the name of the school: the King David School. A Jewish school. The day of the event, we booked a minibus, loaded it up with our gear, and drove over. Once we arrived we waited in the back of the school’s assembly hall and watched the acts that went onstage before us, different groups took their turns performing, flamenco dancers, Greek dancers, traditional Zulu musicians. Then we were up. We were billed as the Hip Hop Pantsula Dancers—the South African B-Boys. We set up our sound system onstage. I looked out, and the whole hall was nothing but Jewish kids in their yarmulkes, ready to party. I got on the mic. “Are you ready to rock out?!” “Yeahhhhhh!” “Make some noise!” “Yeahhhhhh!” I started playing. The bass was bumping, my crew was dancing, and everyone was having a great time. The teachers, the chaperones, the parents, hundreds of kids—they were all dancing like crazy. Our set was scheduled for fifteen minutes, and at the ten-minute mark came the moment for me to play “Let’s Get Dirty,” bring out my star dancer, and shut shit down. I started the song, the dancers fanned out in their semicircle, and I got on the mic. “Are you guys ready?!” “Yeahhhhhh!” “You guys are not ready! Are you ready?!” “Yeeeaaahhhhhhhh!” “All right! Give it up and make some noise for HIIIIIITTTTLLLLEERRRRRRRRRR!!!” Hitler jumped out to the middle of the circle and started killing it. The guys around him were all chanting, “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!” They had their arms out in front of them, bouncing to the rhythm. “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!” And I was right there on the mic leading them along. “Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler! Go Hit-ler!” The whole room stopped.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  relatively simple to reach, and within a time frame of months and not years. You will want to break this down into mini steps and goals along the way. Your objective here is to enter a state of flow, in which your mind becomes increasingly absorbed in the work, to the point at which ideas come to you at odd hours. This feeling of flow should be pleasurable and addicting. You don’t allow yourself to engage in fantasies about other projects on the horizon. You want to absorb yourself in the work as deeply as possible. If you do not enter this state of flow, you are inevitably multitasking and stopping the focus. Work on overcoming this. This could be a project you work on outside your job. It is not the number of hours you put in but the intensity and consistent effort you bring to it. Related to this, you want this project to involve skills you already have or are in the process of developing. Your goal is to see continual improvement in your skill level, which will certainly come from the depth of your focus. Your confidence will rise. That should be enough to keep you advancing. Maintain a dialogue with reality. Your project begins with an idea, and as you try to hone this idea, you let your imagination take flight, being open to various possibilities. At some point you move from the planning phase to execution. Now you must actively search for feedback and criticism from people you respect or from your natural audience. You want to hear about the flaws and inadequacies in your plan, for that is the only way to improve your skills. If the project fails to have the results you imagined, or the problem is not solved, embrace this as the best way to learn. Analyze what you did wrong in depth, being as brutal as possible. Once you have feedback and have analyzed the results, you then return to this project or start a new one, letting your imagination loose again but incorporating what you have learned from the experience. You keep cycling endlessly through this process, noticing with excitement how you are improving by doing so. If you stay too long in the imagination phase, what you create will tend to be grandiose and detached from reality. If you only listen to feedback and try to make the work a complete reflection of what others tell you or want, the work will be conventional and flat. By maintaining a continual dialogue between reality (feedback) and your imagination, you will create something practical and powerful. If you have any success with your projects, that is when you must step back from the attention you are receiving. Look at the role that luck may have played, or the help you received from others. Resist falling for the success delusion. As you now focus on the next idea, see yourself back at square one. Each new project represents a new

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  because Danton did not earn enough, he accepted the position on the council, despite his fears that he was joining a sinking ship. Two days later he married Gabrielle. Danton did his job well but found himself increasingly absorbed by the turmoil in Paris. He joined a club called the Cordeliers. Its members were an odd mix of bohemian artists and political agitators. It was located near his apartment, so he began to spend a great part of his day there, and soon he was participating in the raucous debates about the future of France that took place at the club. He felt a strange new spirit in the air, a boldness that made people suddenly say things they could never have said a few years before about the monarchy. He found it exciting and irresistible. He began to give his own fiery speeches, focusing on the brutality of the upper classes, and he basked in the attention he received. In 1788 he was offered a higher position on the King’s Council, and he turned it down. He told the king’s minister who presented the offer that the monarchy was doomed: “This is no longer about modest reforms,” he said. “We are more than ever on the brink of revolution. . . . Can’t you see the avalanche coming?” In the spring of 1789, Louis was forced to call a national assembly to deal with the looming bankruptcy. The assembly was known as the Estates General. It was an institution meant to deal with a national crisis, but always as a measure of last resort, the previous one having been held in 1614, after the death of King Henry IV. It brought together representatives of the three estates of France—the nobility, the clergy, and the tax-paying commoners. Although the vast majority of French people were to be represented by members of the Third Estate, the power of the assembly was heavily tilted in favor of the nobility and clergy. Nevertheless, the French people held great hopes for the Estates General, and Louis had been extremely reluctant to call for it. Only a month before the convening of the Estates General, riots in Paris had broken out over the price of bread, and royal troops had shot into the crowds, killing dozens. Danton had witnessed the bloodshed and he felt a turning point in the mood of the people, particularly the lower classes, and in himself. He shared their desperation and anger; they could no longer be placated with the usual rhetoric. He began to address the angry crowds on street corners, attracting followers and making a name for himself. To a friend who was surprised at this new direction in his life, he responded that it was like seeing a strong tide in the river, jumping in, and letting it carry him where it might. — As he prepared for the convening of the Estates General, King Louis could barely contain his resentment and anger. In the years since he

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Jesus, Ed, you know what I did after I registered it downtown yesterday? I mean when I actually realized it was mine? I got on that bike and I rode it two hundred miles out and two hundred miles back.” ae Everyone roared. I nodded. “Something happened to me. I finally felt really free. I’m so excited. I love that bike. I mean, I actually love it. I love that bike so fucking much I can’t even explain it.’ All the butches who rode motorcycles nodded to themselves. Jan and Edwin clapped me on my shoulders. “Things are lookin’ up for you, kid. ’m happy for you,” Jan said. “Meg, set up another one for young Marlon Brando hete.” The ring must be working! ““The Avengers’ on yet?” I asked. Meg shook her head. “Fifteen more minutes. God, I can’t wait to see what Diana Rige’s wearing this time.” I sighed. “I hope it’s that leather jumpsuit again. I think I’m falling in love with her.” Meg laughed. “Get in line.” The place was starting to fill up. A young guy we'd never seen before came in and ordered a gin and tonic. Meg had just placed the glass in front of him when an older guy came in and flipped open a badge. Uniformed cops rushed in behind him. The young guy was a plant. “You've just served a minor. Alright ladies, gentlemen, leave your drinks on the bar and take out some ID, this is a bust.” Jan and Edwin each grabbed a handful of my shirt and dragged me out the back door. “Out of here, now, get out of here,” they were yelling as I fumbled with my motorcycle. A couple of cops fanned out around the parking lot. My legs felt like jelly. I couldn’t kick-start the bike. “Get the fuck out of here,” they shouted at me. Two uniformed cops headed toward me. One reached for his gun. “Off that bike,’ he ordered. “C’mon, cmon,” I crooned to myself. One good kick and the bike roared to life. I popped the clutch and did an unintentional wheelie out of the parking lot. As soon as I got to Toni and Betty’s house I banged on their kitchen door. Betty looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?” “The bat, everybody, they’re busted.” “Calm down,” Toni put her hand on my shoulder. “Calm down and tell us what happened.” I sputtered as I described the bust. “How can we find out what happened to everybody?” I asked them. “We'll find out soon enough, when that phone rings,” Betty said. The phone rang, Betty listened quietly. “Nobody got busted except Meg,” she told us. “Butch Jan and Ed got roughed up a little.” I rubbed my forehead with my hand. “Are they hurt bad?” She shrugged. I felt guilty. “I think they Stone Butch Blues 53 got it worse because they got me out of there.”

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  In the cities most people speak at least some English and usually a bit of Afrikaans, enough to get around. You’ll be at a party with a dozen people where bits of conversation are flying by in two or three different languages. You’ll miss part of it, someone might translate on the fly to give you the gist, you pick up the rest from the context, and you just figure it out. The crazy thing is that, somehow, it works. Society functions. Except when it doesn’t. A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCASIONALLY TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLY HUMILIATING EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OF THE HEART, PART III: THE DANCE By the end of high school I’d become a mogul. My tuck-shop business had evolved into a mini-empire that included selling pirated CDs I made at home. I’d convinced my mother, as frugal as she was, that I needed a computer for school. I didn’t. I wanted it so I could surf the Internet and play Leisure Suit Larry. But I was very convincing, and she broke down and got it for me. Thanks to the computer, the Internet, and the fortunate gift of a CD writer from a friend, I was in business. I had carved out my niche, and was having a great time; life was so good as an outsider that I didn’t even think about dating. The only girls in my life were the naked ones on my computer. While I downloaded music and messed around in chat rooms, I’d dabble in porn sites here and there. No video, of course, only pictures. With online porn today you just drop straight into the madness, but with dial-up it took so long for the images to load. It was almost gentlemanly compared to now. You’d spend a good five minutes looking at her face, getting to know her as a person. Then a few minutes later you’d get some boobs. By the time you got to her vagina, you’d spent a lot of quality time together. In September of grade twelve, the matric dance was coming up. Senior prom. This was the big one. I was again faced with the dilemma of Valentine’s Day, confronting another strange ritual I did not understand. All I knew about prom was that, according to my American movies, prom is where it happens. You lose your virginity. You go and you ride in the limousine, and then you and the girl do the thing. That was literally my only reference. But I knew the rule: Cool guys get girls, and funny guys get to hang out with the cool guys with their girls. So I’d assumed I wouldn’t be going, or if I did go it wouldn’t be with a date.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In the end, what we want is to fuse the curiosity and excitement we had toward the world as children, when almost everything seemed enchanting, with our adult intelligence. The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite are as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky W 14 Resist the Downward Pull of the Group The Law of Conformity e have a side to our character that we are generally unaware of—our social personality, the different person we become when we operate in groups of people. In the group setting, we unconsciously imitate what others are saying and doing. We think differently, more concerned with fitting in and believing what others believe. We feel different emotions, infected by the group mood. We are more prone to taking risks, to acting irrationally, because everyone else is. This social personality can come to dominate who we are. Listening so much to others and conforming our behavior to them, we slowly lose a sense of our uniqueness and the ability to think for ourselves. The only solution is to develop self-awareness and a superior understanding of the changes that occur in us in groups. With such intelligence, we can become superior social actors, able to outwardly fit in and cooperate with others on a high level, while retaining our independence and rationality. An Experiment in Human Nature As a young boy growing up in communist China, Gao Jianhua (b. 1952) dreamed of becoming a great writer. He loved literature, and his teachers commended him for his essays and poems. In 1964 he gained admittance to the Yizhen Middle School (YMS), not far from where his family lived. Located in the town of Yizhen, several hundred miles north of Beijing, YMS was labeled a “key school”— over 90 percent of its students went on to college. It was difficult to get into and quite prestigious. At YMS, Jianhua was a quiet and studious boy; he had ambitions of graduating in six years with a top record, good enough to get into Beijing University, from where he would launch the writing career he dreamed about. Students at YMS lived on campus, and life there could be rather dull, since the Communist Party regulated almost every aspect of life in China, including education. There were daily military drills, propaganda classes, manual labor duty, and regular classes, which could be rigorous. At YMS, Jianhua developed a close friendship with a classmate named Fangpu, perhaps the most zealous communist at school. Pale and thin and wearing glasses, Fangpu looked the type of the intellectual revolutionary. He was four years older than Jianhua, but they had bonded over their common love of literature and their desire to become writers.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  CRISIS AND PERSECUTION õ One pattern from throughout history is that when leaders feel insecure, they often look for a religious minority to blame. From the late 18th century onward, the Ottomans found themselves on the defensive against European Christian armies. õ First, Russian soldiers marched into Crimea and the Caucasus. Then in 1798, Napoleon’s armies demolished Muslim forces in Egypt. As the 19th century rolled on, the British joined the French and other European powers in nibbling away the edges of Ottoman territory and even threatening Istanbul itself. 108 The History of Christianity II õ Christians living in the empire watched these developments with increasing excitement. They became more assertive, sometimes rebelling against Turkish control in the hopes that they could take advantage of the empire’s weakened state to seize their independence. õ When the Greeks revolted in 1821, the Turks struck back with a vengeance. They massacred Greek-speaking laypeople and clergy across the empire. They even hanged the patriarch of Constantinople himself outside his own cathedral, on Easter morning. õ These were the desperate, violent reactions of a crumbling empire. The Ottomans were hemorrhaging territory—and then they sided with Germany in World War I. That spelled the end. õ It’s in these last years that the Ottomans committed their most horrendous atrocities. Beginning in 1915, they began rounding up and massacring Armenian Christians and other Christian ethnic groups. At least 500,000 Armenians died. õ Many scholars call their deaths one of the first cases of systematic genocide in the modern era. The Turkish government denies the scholarly consensus on this, insisting that historians have inflated the numbers and that both sides did a lot of killing. õ By the end of the period this lecture covered, the dividing line was no longer theology—it was political power. Namely, Christians in the West had it, and Christians living under Muslim rule went for centuries without it. Their experience was a lot more like that of the very first Christians in ancient Rome, who sometimes got lucky under the rule of a tolerant or indifferent emperor and sometimes had to die for their faith. Lecture 11—Christians under Muslim Rule 109

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  challenge and a fresh approach. You might very well fail. You need the same level of focus as you had on the last project. Never rest on your laurels or let up in your intensity. Seek out calibrated challenges. The problem with fantastical grandiosity is that you imagine some great new goal you will achieve —that brilliant novel you will write, that lucrative start-up you will create. The challenge is so great that you may start, but you will soon peter out as you realize you are not up to it. Or if you are the ambitious, assertive type, you might try to go all the way, but you will end up in the Euro Disney syndrome, overwhelmed, failing in a large fashion, blaming others for the fiasco, and never learning from the experience. Your goal with practical grandiosity is to continually look for challenges just above your skill level. If the projects you attempt are below or at your skill level, you will become easily bored and less focused. If they are too ambitious, you will feel crushed by your failure. However, if they are calibrated to be more challenging than the last project, but to a moderate degree, you will find yourself excited and energized. You must be up to this challenge so your focus levels will rise as well. This is the optimum path toward learning. If you fail, you will not feel overwhelmed and you will learn even more. If you succeed, your confidence increases, but it is tied to your work and to having met the challenge. Your sense of accomplishment will satisfy your need for greatness. Let loose your grandiose energy. Once you have tamed this energy, made it serve your ambitions and goals, you should feel safe to let it loose upon occasion. Think of it as a wild animal that needs to roam free now and then or it will go mad from restlessness. What this means is that you occasionally allow yourself to entertain ideas or projects that represent greater challenges than you have considered in the past. You feel increasingly confident and you want to test yourself. Consider developing a new skill in an unrelated field, or writing that novel you once considered a distraction from the real work. Or simply give freer rein to your imagination when in the planning process. If you are in the public eye and must perform before others, let go of the restraint you have developed and let your grandiose energy fill you with high levels of self-belief. This will animate your gestures and give you greater charisma. If you are a leader and your group is facing difficulties or a crisis, let yourself feel unusually grandiose and confident in the success of your mission, to lift up and inspire the troops. That was the kind of grandiosity that made Winston Churchill such an effective leader during World War II. In any event, you can allow yourself to feel ever so godlike

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I got my hopes up. Then they sunk. “Oh, it probably doesn’t mean a thing,” I concluded. Jan smiled like there was something else. “Well, she did ask if you were single.” My jaw dropped. I couldn’t recover my composure. “For Christsake, be cool,” Jan patted my arm. “Jan, what’s her name?” “Theresa.” I savored her name, repeating it over in my mind. When you do that, it’s a sign something big is happening in your heart. At the end of the day I looked for Theresa at the time clock, but she was hidden in the wave of hundreds of workers leaving and hundreds more entering for the next shift. I didn’t talk much on the bus ride home. I just stared out the window. Jan laughed softly and shook her head. The next day I could hardly wait to get to work. Jan and I were assigned to load trucks. It was heavy work. I was leaning up against a pole smoking a cigarette when Theresa walked by to go to the bathroom. Actually, the bathroom was in the opposite direction. I felt embarrassed because I was dripping with sweat and my white T-shirt was filthy. Theresa smiled. “I like sweaty butches,” she said, as though she’d read my mind. Man, those boxes sailed out of my hands all day as though they were filled with feathers. For the next week I didn’t sleep much. I leaped out of bed as soon as the alarm rang and rode the long distance out to the cannery in excited Stone Butch Blues 29 anticipation. I saw Theresa at least twice a shift. I was floating a foot off the ground. Then, one day, Jan pulled me aside after a break. “Got some bad news for you, kid.” Theresa had been fired. The General Superintendent called her into his office to go over her six-month review. That’s when he grabbed her breasts. Jan said Theresa kicked him in the shin, yelled at him, and then kicked him in the other shin. Good for her. Anyway, he fired her. I crashed from the summit of euphoria. It was just a job after that. Worse, really, because it had been so much fun. I knew it was time to ask the temp agency for another assignment. The following Friday night I showered and dressed up. When I got to Abba’s, I was glad I had. There was Theresa, leaning on the bar. I had never expected to see her again. She had cajoled some friends into driving her to Buffalo to look for me. Lucky for me there was only one gay bat at a time. The hue of Theresa’s hair reminded me of the lustrous colors of a chestnut. It was well worth waiting to see. Her eyes didn’t hide how happy she was to see me. I think she would have liked to hug 130 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The world rushed past my window: streaks of vermilion, magenta, burnt umber. Silver birch and patches of snow. Crispy ocher leaves still glued to branches. Golden waves of graceful weeds reigning overt marshland. Brown ducks bobbing in still ponds. The sky filled with crows and hawks and turkey vultures. Weather-beaten houses tucked away on hills between evergreens. Fallow fields and gleaming silos. Sleepy rural towns turned their shabby backs toward the railroad tracks. Block-long main drags: five and dime, hardware, auto parts, gasoline, home- cooking. Lime, lemon, peach pastel homes. Sagging porches. Pick-up trucks and children’s swings rusting in the backyards. Trailer parks—yesterday’s dreams of mobility stripped of wheels. Abandoned factories, familiar as a lover’s sigh. Ribbons of roads, trestle, and track tied all of our lives together like a gift. I began to feel the pleasure of the weightless state between here and there. But hours later the earth began to recede under the weight of acres and acres of factories and high- rise apartment buildings. We were approaching New York City. The buildings loomed larger till they blocked the sky. I descended deeper into a forest of tenements. Some lived in, some abandoned—the differences were slight: boards or cloth tacked up over windows. Laundry snapping in the air, strung from fire escapes. Every inch of wall space seemed to be spray-painted with names. I could taste the poverty—familiar grit between my teeth. “That’s Harlem,” I heard a man say to his traveling companion. Harlem! I felt breathless with excitement. Stone Butch Blues 247 I STOOD STOCK-STILL OUTSIDE Grand Central Station looking up. I felt like a child again, standing at the bottom of a concrete canyon with sky-high walls. Crowds of people rushed like rapids. Strangers slammed me as they passed. Move it, asshole. I remembered how it felt to grow up in the adults’ world, as though everyone had met together and figured out a plan of action, and I didn’t have a clue. I worked my way to the curb and asked the guy at the newsstand, ““Where’s 42" Street?” “You're standing on it,” he snapped. “How do you find an apartment in this city?” I asked. “You want an apartment? Go find someone who’s got a rent-controlled apartment and kill them.” He wasn’t smiling as he handed me a copy of the Village Voice and took my money. I pressed my back against the facade of a building and watched the crowd flow past me. I realized this city required a strategy and I didn’t have one. I had six hundred dollars. It had to get me an apartment with enough left for food and tokens till my first paycheck.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  through a straw before I cut each wire that laced my gums shut. I pulled each segment out with a sure stroke, the way I pulled off old bandaids—not fast, not slow, just steady. After I was sure I'd gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity. When I awoke I walked up to 34" Street, maneuvering in the throng of shoppers like a warrior. I knew exactly what I was looking for. The best sewing machine you have, 1 wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to the saleswoman. And then I realized my jaw wasn’t wired shut anymore. Silence had become a habit. She led me to the display models. They all looked pretty much the same—except for one. I didn’t sew, but I knew it was the right machine when she pointed to it. It glinted in the light like a motorcycle. The saleswoman talked to me about attachments and the endless things it could do. I smiled, not understanding a word. I could already see Ruth hunched over this magnificent machine, stitching her magic into fabric. As I paid for it in cash I felt excitement, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. A light snow fell as I lugged the machine back through the crowded streets and hailed a cab. As soon as I got home I cleaned my apartment with a vengeance. When the house sparkled I realized that I was filthy. I took a long, hot shower, letting the water soften my jaw so it didn’t click each time I opened my mouth. I dried off and put on a clean white T-shirt and khaki chinos. While I combed my hair, I caught sight of myself in the kitchen mirror. My eyes looked so sad I couldn’t meet my own gaze. My face seemed much older than ’'d remembered it. I ran my fingertips over the muscles that rippled across my shoulders and chest and arms. Suddenly all those long hours at the gym seemed to be proof of my will to live. ’d sent myself a gift—a memory of body, of self. I shopped on Grand Street for handmade Chinese wrapping paper. I pointed to what I needed. I still didn’t speak. The first words I spoke were to Ruth. I knocked on her door on Christmas Eve. “Jess, where were your I was scared silly. Come on in. Tanya and Esperanza are here.” I didn’t move. “Are you OK?” She looked worried. I moved my jaw slightly. “Ruth.” Tears welled up in her eyes when she heard my voice. “Thank you,” I told her. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” We pressed our foreheads together. “T’m sorry,” I said. “I know it was an awful lot to ask.” “Hush,” she whispered. “Ruth, I love you.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As social animals we cannot avoid constantly playing the game, whether we are conscious of this or not. Most people do not want to expend the effort that goes into thinking about others and figuring out a strategic entry past their defenses. They are lazy. They want to simply be themselves, speak honestly, or do nothing, and justify this to themselves as stemming from some great moral choice. Since the game is unavoidable, better to be skillful at it than in denial or merely improvising in the moment. In the end, being good at influence is actually more socially beneficial than the moral stance. By having this power, we can influence people who have dangerous or antisocial ideas. Becoming proficient at persuasion requires that we immerse ourselves in the perspective of others, exercising our empathy. We might have to abide by the cultural prejudice and nod our heads in agreement about the need for complete honesty, but inwardly we must realize that this is nonsense and practice what is necessary for our own well-being. Five Strategies for Becoming a Master Persuader The following five strategies—distilled from the examples of the greatest influencers in history—are designed to help you focus more deeply on your targets and create the kinds of emotional effects that will help lower people’s resistance. It would be wise to put all five into practice. 1. Transform yourself into a deep listener. In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own. Or we are even daydreaming about something irrelevant. The reason for this is simple: we are more interested in our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences than in those of the other person. If this were not the case, we would find it relatively easy to listen with full attention. The usual prescription is to talk less and listen more, but this is meaningless advice as long as we prefer our own internal monologue. The only solution is to somehow be motivated to reverse this dynamic. Think of it this way: You know your own thoughts only too well. You are rarely surprised. Your mind tends to circle obsessively around the same subjects. But each person you encounter represents an undiscovered country full of surprises. Imagine for a moment that you could step inside people’s minds and what an amazing journey that could be. People who seem quiet and dull often have the strangest inner lives for you to explore. Even with boors and fools, you can educate yourself as to the origins and nature of their flaws.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I guess you could explain away that handshake by calling it bravado. But it meant more than that to me then, and it still does. It’s not just a way of measuring strength. A handshake like that is a 26 Leslie Feinberg challenge. It seeks out power through incremental encouragement. At the point of maximum strength, once equity is established, then you have really met. I had really met Butch Al. I was so excited. And scared. I needn’t have been: no one was ever kinder to me. She was gruff with me alright. But she peppered it with scruffing my hair, hugging my shoulders, and giving my face something more than a pat and less than a slap. It felt good. I liked the affection in her voice when she called me &id, which she did frequently. She took me under her wing and taught me all the things she thought were most important for a baby butch like me to know before embarking on such a dangerous and painful journey. In her own way, she was very patient about it. In those days the bars in the Tenderloin district were gay by percentage. Tifka’s was about 25 percent gay. That meant we had a quarter of the tables and dance floor. The other three-quarters were always pushing against our space. She taught me how we held our territory. I learned to fear the cops as a mortal enemy and to hate the pimps who controlled the lives of so many of the women we loved. And I learned to laugh. That summer, Friday and Saturday nights were full of laughter and mostly gentle teasing. The drag queens would sit on my lap and we’d pose for Polaroid pictures. We didn’t find out till much later that the guy who took them for us was an undercover cop. I could look at the old bulldaggers and see my own future. And I learned what I wanted from another woman by watching Butch Al and her lover Jacqueline. They let me hang with the two of them all summer long. I had told my parents I was working double shifts on Friday and Saturday nights, “to save up for college,’ and was staying overnight with a friend from school who lived near my job. They chose to believe my alibi. All week long I counted the hours till Friday night when I could punch out of work early and head for Niagara Falls. After the bar closed we’d walk down the street, pretty tipsy, one of us on each of Jacqueline’s arms. She’d throw her head up to the heavens and say, “Thank you, God, for these two good-looking butches.” Al and I would lean forward and wink at each other and we’d all laugh for the sheer joy of being who we were, and being it together.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  LIVING IN NEW YORK CITY wasn’t easy— sometimes my nerves felt like grated cheese—but it was never boring. I liked that. Something was always happening in Manhattan, good or bad. There were things to do almost any hour of the day or night. There was a bookstore on practically every corner in New York City. I read the books furtively until I realized nobody cared if I hung out for hours. I only read the poetry and fiction. I didn’t want to discover I wasn’t smart enough to understand nonfiction. But the Women’s Studies section tempted me. By leafing through the books I could eavesdrop on the discussions going on between women without being seen. It turned out to be true that I couldn’t understand a lot of the theory. But I felt as though I was rushing into a burning building to rescue the ideas I needed in my own life. At first I skimmed past all the words and pages about reproductive rights. I had no relationship to my own uterus. But I remembered how upset Theresa had been after I got busted in Rochester because she couldn’t remember when she had her last period. I never kept track of my menstrual cycle. But Theresa always knew when my period was in relation to hers. It suddenly made sense to me: she was afraid I might have gotten pregnant. The idea had never occurred to me. What would I have done if I'd gotten pregnant after a rape? I stopped skipping over the sections in books about women controlling their own bodies. Maybe all these things that were so important to other women would prove to have meaning for me, too. No matter how much I read at the bookstores, I always ended up spending a lot of my paychecks on books. I also discovered classical music. On my way to work one morning I stood and listened to a man playing the cello in the subway station. The music grabbed me by the collar and wouldn't let me go. I crouched down next to the pillar nearest him as he played. The music articulated emotions for me, the way poetry did. When the rush hour crowd thinned I realized I was late for work. The musician put down his bow and wiped his brow. “What were you playing?” I asked him. He smiled. “Mozart.” I began to haunt music stores as well. I scraped together enough money for a stereo. I also explored reggae and merengue, charanga and guaguancé, jazz and blues. One spring afternoon I found myself scrubbing my apartment. I had turned up Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” full blast. I realized I was changing on the inside as much as I was on the outside.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As the money supply ran short and the price of bread kept rising, and with millions of people facing starvation, riots began to break out throughout the countryside and even in Paris. And amid all of this turmoil, the young king was proving to be too indecisive to handle the pressure. In 1787, as the financial situation worsened, the opportunity of a lifetime came to Danton—a position as a lawyer on the King’s Council, with a rather nice bump in salary. Wanting to marry a young woman named Gabrielle, whose father opposed the marriage because Danton did not earn enough, he accepted the position on the council, despite his fears that he was joining a sinking ship. Two days later he married Gabrielle. Danton did his job well but found himself increasingly absorbed by the turmoil in Paris. He joined a club called the Cordeliers. Its members were an odd mix of bohemian artists and political agitators. It was located near his apartment, so he began to spend a great part of his day there, and soon he was participating in the raucous debates about the future of France that took place at the club. He felt a strange new spirit in the air, a boldness that made people suddenly say things they could never have said a few years before about the monarchy. He found it exciting and irresistible. He began to give his own fiery speeches, focusing on the brutality of the upper classes, and he basked in the attention he received. In 1788 he was offered a higher position on the King’s Council, and he turned it down. He told the king’s minister who presented the offer that the monarchy was doomed: “This is no longer about modest reforms,” he said. “We are more than ever on the brink of revolution. . . . Can’t you see the avalanche coming?” In the spring of 1789, Louis was forced to call a national assembly to deal with the looming bankruptcy. The assembly was known as the Estates General. It was an institution meant to deal with a national crisis, but always as a measure of last resort, the previous one having been held in 1614, after the death of King Henry IV. It brought together representatives of the three estates of France—the nobility, the clergy, and the tax-paying commoners. Although the vast majority of French people were to be represented by members of the Third Estate, the power of the assembly was heavily tilted in favor of the nobility and clergy.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Bolt patted me on the shoulder. “C’mon out here a minute. I want to talk to you.” I started to protest. “C’mon, this meeting will still be going on.” I followed Bolt out to the bar. He ordered two beers and paid for them. He lifted his bottle. ““To the union,” he said. I nodded. “Tl drink to that.” “Listen, Jesse. How well do you know this guy Duffy?” I shrugged. “He’s alright in my book. I trust him.” “Some of the guys heard something about him. Somebody said he’s a communist.” I laughed. “He’s no communist. He’s a good 9 Buy. Bolt smiled and nodded. “Alright. As long as somebody knows the guy.” “Hey, Bolt. Did you ask Duffy about whether or not you'd be eligible to join the union?” Bolt shook his head. “Il ask him later. After the meeting,” We both heard a roar from the other room. “C’mon,” I said, “let’s get back.” I was starting to feel a little excited. “Let’s sign the cards now!” Ernie shouted. Duffy raised both hands. “You got 120 people in your shop. It'll take 30 percent plus one as a bare minimum to file for an election. This is a great turnout, but we need mote.” “Where the hell is everybody?” someone yelled. Duffy shook his head. “This really is a great turnout for a first meeting. But we’ve got to get more workers from every department lined up.” Bolt yelled out, “Maintenance and set-up ate solid.” “What about assembly?” Ernie shouted. “Those girls aren’t going to be with us. They’ve got husbands to take care of them. Shit, I heard two of them still live with their parents.” Dottie stood up. “And I’m one of them. Yeah, I live with my parents. I’m trying to raise two kids without a husband. And Gladys is living with her parents because she’s supporting them and she can’t afford her own place. But we’re both here. You don’t know jack squat about our department.” Gladys stood up beside her. “That’s right. Our fingers and wrists are killing us from trimming flash all day. We’re making lousy money and we have to work weekends. A lot of the girls have husbands who also bring home a paycheck, it’s true. But a lot of them are fed up and they’ll sign—you'll see.” Duffy smiled at them. “The sisters are speaking up, guys. You better listen.” We all agreed to end the meeting and hold another one the following week. But nobody was eager to leave. We milled around talking. Stone Butch Blues 223 “Hey, Duffy,” Bolt called him over. “Am I gonna be able to get into the union? I’m lead set-up man.” I wished I could tip off Duffy about Bolt’s worth, but I could see Duffy already recognized it. “Management knows you're a leader,” he told Bolt. I saw Bolt stand a little taller. “But do you hire and fire? Do you review the guys or discipline them?”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I thought about the long road Id traveled. I had never stopped looking out at the world through my own eyes. I’d never stopped feeling like me on the inside. What 7fthe real me could emerge, changed by the journey. Who would I be? Suddenly, I needed to know. What would my life be worth if I stopped short of finding out? Fingers of excitement and fear tightened around my throat. Where was I going now? Who was I becoming? I couldn’t answer those questions, but even asking them was a sign to me that tumultuous change had been boiling just below the sutface of my consciousness. I searched the apartment for a cigarette, but as I picked up the pack I watched my hand crush it. That night I dreamt I was struggling in deep murky water. I flailed my arms and legs against its molasses resistance. My lungs ached from holding my breath. I desperately needed to inhale. I began to slowly swim toward the surface. The pressure eased on my body. I felt liquid velvet against my hands as they sliced through the water. I could see the sky, facets of light shimmering above me. My lungs were ready to explode. I broke through the skin of the water. I felt the sun and breeze against my face, warm and cool at the same time. I heard the sound of my own laughter. I think I really believed that when the hormones wore off I would discover Id traveled full circle and returned home to my own past. But the journey wasn't over yet. I realized that the day I saw Theresa shopping in K-Mart. I held my breath the moment I recognized her. Stone Butch Blues 241 She had hardly changed a bit. Would she say the same about me? I hid behind the men’s underwear display and watched her. What would she do if I called out her name? I wanted her to embrace me and take me home. After all, she’d left me because I’d begun hormones; now I’d stopped. Could she love me again? I saw someone put her arm around Theresa. I angled around the aisles to get a better look at the woman. It was the same soft butch who had opened Theresa’s door almost ten years agzo—the same lover. What could Theresa possibly see in that Saturday- night butch? It was so much harder to be me; I needed Theresa’s love a lot more than she did. I hated to admit that she must be special if Theresa loved her. I heard Theresa laugh, warm and relaxed. Her face crinkled with love. And then I knew I wasn’t going home, I wasn’t traveling backward. I was hurtling forward toward a destination I couldn’t see. And if I was ever going to lie in Theresa’s arms again, it would be in some distant future, not now.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In looking for solutions, you want to consider more possibilities, give greater time to the deliberative process, and allow for freer associations. You need to take seriously the intuitions that come to you after much deliberation, and not discount the value of emotions in thinking. Without a sense of excitement and inspiration, your thinking can become stale and lifeless. If you lean more in the feminine direction, you need to be capable of focusing and digging into specific problems, tamping down the impulse to widen your search and multitask. You have to find pleasure in boring into one aspect of a problem. Reconstructing a causal chain and continually refining it will give depth to your thinking. You tend to see structure and order as dull affairs, giving greater emphasis to expressing an idea and feeling inspired by it. Instead, you need to derive pleasure in paying deep attention to the structure of a book, argument, or project. Being creative and clear with the structure will give your material its power to influence people. Sometimes you need to gain greater emotional distance to understand a problem, and you must force yourself to do so. Masculine and feminine styles of action: When it comes to taking action, the masculine tendency is to move forward, explore the situation, attack, and vanquish. If there are obstacles in the way, it will try to push through them, this desire aptly expressed by the ancient military leader Hannibal—“I will either find a way or make a way.” It derives pleasure from staying on the offensive and taking risks. It prefers to maintain its independence and room to maneuver. When confronted with a problem or the need to take action, the feminine style often prefers to first withdraw from the immediate situation and contemplate more deeply the options. It will often look for ways to avoid the conflict, to smooth out relations, to win without having to go to battle. Sometimes the best action is nonaction—let the dynamic play itself out to understand it better; let the enemy hang itself by its aggressive actions. This was the style of Queen Elizabeth I, whose primary strategy was to wait and see: when confronted with an imminent invasion by Spain’s vast seafaring armada, she decided to not commit to a strategy until she knew exactly when the armada was launched and the weather conditions of the moment, working to slow down its advance and let the bad weather destroy it, with minimal loss of life. Instead of charging forward, the feminine style lays traps for the enemy. Independence is not an essential value in action; in fact, it is better to focus on interdependent relationships and how one move might harm an ally and cause ripple effects to an alliance.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The barber smoothed back my hair and pursed his lips. “What about a flat top?” “Yeah! That would be a change.” The electric razor buzzed across the top of my DA from back to front. Clumps of hair fell on my nose. The barber brushed them off with the soft hairs of a brush. He clipped and trimmed my hair until it formed a perfectly symmetrical flat top. He brushed me off thoroughly. I started to get up. “Not yet,” he said. He lathered my sideburns and the back of my hairline with shaving cream and scraped a clean line with a straight razor. He toweled the last bits of lather from my neck. Just when I thought he must be finished he splashed a little bay rum on his palms and rubbed it on my cheeks. He shook powder on the brush and swept it across the back of my neck. With a flourish he pulled away the red cloth that covered me and gave me a hand mirror so I could see the back of my hair. “What do you think, my friend?” This time I didn’t try to hide my excitement. I was passing. It was time for the most important test of all: the men’s room. I walked around a department store until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I paced outside the men’s room. What would happen if I walked in? I'd have to find out sooner or later. I pushed open the door. Two men stood in front of urinals. They glanced at me and looked away. Nothing happened. I found an empty stall and locked the door. They could still see my feet if they looked. Did men ever sit down to urinate? I flushed the toiled to covet the sound. I immediately felt something wet and cold against my ass and thighs. The toilet was overflowing. I jumped up but it was too late, my Levi’s were soaked. I rebuttoned my jeans and hurried out of the men’s room. I pushed my way through the crowds of shoppers and made my way back to my Triumph. All I wanted was to drive home, strip off my jeans, and shower off the feeling of stupidity. I sat down on my bike and thought about it. It hadn’t been so bad, really. Now I knew better than to flush the Stone Butch Blues 185 toilet without paying attention to the water level as it rose. But I thought back to the moment I’d walked into the men’s room. They hardly noticed me. I could go to the bathroom whenever and wherever I needed to without pressure or shame. What an enormous relief. | At first, everything was fun. The world stopped feeling like a gauntlet I had to run through. But very quickly I discovered that passing didn’t just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive.