Exposure Dread

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 New Testament Words (1964)

  EILIKRINĒS AND EILIKRINEIATHE PERFECT PURITYEilikrinēs and eilikrineia—the first is the adjective and the second is the noun—are two most interesting words. Eilikrinēs occurs in Phil. 1.10, where the AV translates it ‘sincere’, the American RSV ‘pure’, and Moffatt ‘transparent’; it also occurs in II Pet. 3.1, where both the AV and Moffatt translate it ‘pure’, and the American RSV ‘sincere’. Eilikrineia, the noun, occurs in I Cor. 5.8, II Cor. 1.12 and II Cor. 2.17. The regular translation of all the versions is ‘sincerity’, with the one exception that Moffatt in the first example translates it ‘innocence’. Neither the noun nor the adjective is very common in classical Greek. In classical Greek eilikrinēs has two characteristic usages. First it means ‘unmixed, without alloy, pure’. For instance, fire, the purest thing of all, is said to be eilikrinēs. It is used of a ‘total’ eclipse of the sun. Second, it is used as we use the words ‘pure’ and ‘sheer’. For instance it is used of ‘pure’ intellect, or ‘sheer’, ‘unrelieved’ evil. In the papyri neither is common. A suppliant appeals to the eilikrineia of an official, where the word must mean ‘probity, fairness, justice’. The etymology and derivation of these words in Greek has always been doubtful. There are two suggestions. (i) They may be derived from a Greek word eilein which means ‘to shake to and fro in a sieve’ until the last particle of foreign matter is extracted and the substance is left absolutely pure. So then these words describe a purity which is ‘sifted’. They describe the character which has been so cleansed and purified by the grace of God that there is no evil admixture left. (ii) They may be derived from a combination of two Greek words, heilē, which means ‘the sunlight’, and krinein, which means ‘to judge’. They would, in that case, describe something which can stand the judgment of the sunlight, something which even when it is held up to the clear light of the sun reveals no faults and flaws. There is a vivid picture here. In the eastern bazaars the shops were small and dark and shadowed. An article, say a piece of pottery or glassware or cloth, might look all right in the dim recesses of the trader’s booth; but the wiser buyer would take it out into the street and hold it up and submit it to the judgment of the sunlight; and many a time the clear rays of the sun would reveal faults and flaws that would never have been noticed in the shadows of the shop. Theopylact must have been thinking of that when he spoke of ‘eilikrineia, purity of mind and guilelessness which have nothing concealed in the shadows and nothing lurking beneath the surface’.

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

  In that dark store-room, with my body bent double between two other bodies and my eyes staring vertically down, I was well hemmed in. I am convinced that when my field of vision is limited then, in some primitive way, this conjures up anything that could threaten me or simply upset me, in fact anything that I don’t want to countenance for one reason or another. The body of whoever I am with becomes an obstacle, and whatever lies beyond it that I cannot see doesn’t really exist. So, in the position I was in at the museum, only this time on the first floor of a shop selling sado-masochist gear on the boulevard de Clichy – again in a stock-room – I have one cheek pressed up against Éric’s stomach while he held me by my shoulders and the owner of the boutique rams my rear end onto his dick. Before assuming this position, I notice that the man is very small and thick-set with short arms, but as soon as he disappears from view his person disintegrates. So much so that I speak to Éric and not directly to him to ask him to put a condom on before penetrating. He is perturbed by this request and forced to rummage through some boxes; he admits quietly that he is afraid his wife might come in. Even though he has a thick organ that has to force entry, he hovers in limbo the whole time. A girl who looks like a shy employee watches the whole scene rather sullenly. From time to time, I catch her eye, as I glance sideways; her eyes are black, probably ringed with kohl. I feel as if I am on a stage, separated by some indistinct void from a gloomy spectator waiting for the action to start. When I look at her I am in some ways looking back at myself, and I end up seeing myself, but just the head, the neck hunched back into my shoulders, the cheek crushed against Éric’s jacket and scuffed by the zip, the mouth is open, whereas what is going on above the waist is part of a sort of back-drop. The midget’s pokes become as unreal to me as a thundering sound heard from the wings to imply some far-off action.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  She was in eighth grade and starting to get into trouble at school, ditching class, drinking gin that she would sneak out of the house in glass peanut butter jars, and smoking cigarettes in Gillson Park. One Saturday afternoon, Nancy was arrested for shoplifting a tube of lip gloss at the Montgomery Ward department store in Old Orchard Shopping Center. Now this. Was she really trying to die or just faking it to get out of trouble? My parents took her to see my mother’s psychiatrist up in Lake Forest. Grandma thought that was about the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. There’s nothing really wrong with that girl, Grandma declared from her breakfast room perch. It’s all in her head. I was inclined to agree. After all, I wasn’t really trying to hurt myself by cutting my eye. We all faked being sick at one time or another to get more attention or wiggle out of having to go to school. Some dupes were easy to spot. When he was in second grade, Danny declared that he needed to stay home because he had menstrual cramps. Nancy’s little pill-swallowing routine looked like nothing more than a little histrionics to me. A FUNGAL INFECTION THAT killed many of the stately elms of Europe made its way across the Atlantic Ocean in the late 1920s and began spreading west at about the time that we were growing up. By the early 1970s, Dutch elm disease had ravaged the forest cover of Chicago and would go on to claim more than forty million trees nationwide. Day after day, crews of tree cutters would rumble down our redbrick street with their chain saws. The motors growled and sawdust flew as they ripped holes in the sky. Before long, the leafy cathedral that framed Greenwood Avenue was destroyed. The sun beat down during the day, singeing our Wiffle ball field. At night, the streetlights, once filtered by branches of elms, now glared through the panes with a harshness that made me feel uneasy and exposed. I’d lie at the foot of my bed and stare out the window, squinting as though someone were shining a flashlight right at me, trying to coax some kind of confession out of me. People began disappearing, too. A teenage boy across the street ran away from home after getting into a fight with his father. I’d look out my bedroom window toward his house and wonder where he was sleeping that night. How did he find food to eat? Several weeks later, we heard he was in California trying to break into show business and that he almost got picked for the role of Robin in the TV show Batman . After a lady down the block suffered her fifth miscarriage, she checked into a mental institution somewhere on the East Coast, and we never saw her again. No explanation. She was just gone, the way my mother had sometimes disappeared years earlier.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  She thought nothing of leaving us alone in the toy department at Marshall Field’s in downtown Chicago while she and her friends did their Christmas shopping. Once, when I was about six, on a trip to the Brookfield Zoo, my mother loaded me up with so much Dramamine to keep me from getting carsick that I was too drowsy to walk. So, she draped me under a tree and left me there while she and the other kids toured the park. Today, this would be considered felony abandonment. Back then, it was the law of the herd: Do what you can for the greatest number and leave the rest. My mother couldn’t be the source of all our emotional nourishment. It wasn’t possible. There were too many of us. We’d have to look to each other or elsewhere for that. So, we roamed in packs, taking our chances, oblivious to the danger that lurked everywhere. We never wore bike helmets or seat belts. No one I knew did. We never owned a car seat. Babies rode in wicker baskets. My mother merely stuck out her right arm when she hit the brakes suddenly to keep one or more of us from crashing into the dashboard or flying through the windshield. For birthday parties, my mother and her friends would hire a man to pick us up in a rusty decommissioned fire engine and transport us to an amusement park in Skokie called Fun Fair. We’d hang over the side of the truck as it weaved its way through city traffic, and climb the ladder for a better view. Inside the park, we’d scramble on rides like the Little Dipper, the Tilt-A-Whirl, and the Wild Mouse, which proved a little too wild once and veered off the tracks. To the uninitiated, my mother appeared unflappable. She once stood smoking her cigarette and listening to her friend’s story in rapt attention at the grocery store entrance, never breaking eye contact, while five-year-old Billy toppled a tower of tin cans a few aisles away. Her friends admired her for how calm and collected she appeared, even as we made a ruckus. But, as we grew older, we became aware that her seemingly cool demeanor was really the result of medication that blunted her natural inclination to anxiety. The truth is, she was often frantic inside. We heard her pacing the hallways at night, humming to herself. We saw her rubbing her thumb nervously back and forth on her chin. The older we got, the more the responsibility for supervising all of us seemed to overwhelm her. She calculated the odds and considered that they were not in her favor. Too many opportunities for disaster: Light sockets. Sharp scissors. Swimming pools. Hyper kids darting around in busy parking lots. My mother began viewing us with increasing dread, as if sensing that something awful was heading our way and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] I ran into Nora one February morning. We hadn’t seen each other since the previous September, the day we broke up. I was standing on a street corner, waiting to cross, when I heard someone call my name. We exchanged the usual pleasantries. I had something I wanted to say and wasn’t sure if I should say it. My chest was tight. You know, I said, I don’t believe anymore a lot of the things you told me. It really confused me, that stuff you said about what queer sex is and isn’t. It really messed me up. I know, she said. I’m really sorry. I’m good in bed, I said. I figured that out: I’m actually very good. A man passed on the sidewalk behind us. Can I give you a hug? she asked. I said sure. The back of her sweater was cool and rough under my hands, like the face of a cliff. Across the street, the walk sign flashed. Gently I pulled away, waved, and went on. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] In King County, Washington, if you are divorcing with children, you must attend a fluorescent-lit seminar called “What About the Children?” It provides information that every parent divorcing should think about: what hurts and helps children during family transitions, how parental conflict affects a family, how to best communicate with co-parents, and the nuts and bolts of drafting a parenting plan. But the pointed title of the seminar made me livid. I felt scolded by it, as though I could possibly forget to think about my child. In the essay “The Bathroom,” Zadie Smith writes of her mixed feelings about her father’s deferring of his own ambitions for the sake of his family. “For the sake of the children was a phrase I especially detested; it seemed a thing people said to get out of the responsibility of actually living out their own desires and ideas.”55 The data I encounter most often—in the seminar and in the media—insists that kids of divorce will have it harder than kids whose parents stay married. This truism is obviously true for many. But a lot of us believe nowadays that divorce is no worse for kids than a prolonged unhappy marriage. Is that true? And is it denial or healthy skepticism that makes me want to ask?

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  to bear on the circumstances of his community’s here and now. When we reproduce John’s rhetoric today, after centuries of Jewish persecution and suffering, too often in the name of Christ, we are not reading our moment—and therefore not exercising wisdom. One more example from the many in John’s Gospel concerns the cleansing of the Temple. The other three Gospels place it at the beginning of Passion Week, Jesus’s first act after he enters Jerusalem the week of his crucifixion. John, however, places the Temple cleansing at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, in chapter 2. I say “places,” because John is certainly deliberately relocating this scene from the end to the beginning. Historically speaking, Jesus didn’t cleanse the Temple this early. Had he actually done so, his movement never would have gotten off the ground and John’s Gospel wouldn’t have gotten past chapter 3. Cleansing the Temple would have led to Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion, as it does in the other Gospels. It would have been like a protest movement to reform American politics that began with the torching of the Capitol. The movement would have come to an abrupt halt. But John’s relocation of this episode isn’t a “mistake.” That’s the vital point here. It is an intentional move on his part to paint his portrait of Jesus. John is quite keen on establishing Jesus’s divine authority right away, by both the signs Jesus performs (like turning water to wine, also in chapter 2) and the speeches Jesus gives. John’s Jesus is certainly the most divine portrait of Jesus in the four Gospels. It is in John’s Gospel that Jesus makes regular claims to his unique and intimate connection with God, much more so than in the other three, even appropriating the divine name “I AM ” for himself. * Similarly, John doesn’t bother with a birth story (only Matthew and Luke do). John wants to establish Jesus’s divine authority from the very beginning— he is the Word who was with God at creation and is God. John’s birth story isn’t so much missing as replaced with a story of Jesus’s divine origin. Likewise in chapter 1, Jesus appears at the Jordan River where John the Baptist (not the author of the Gospel!) is living up to his name—baptizing his fellow Jews to cleanse them of sin. Though Jesus is milling about in the story, he does not actually get baptized in John’s Gospel, even though his baptism is quite prominent in the other Gospels. Jesus does some baptizing himself (which is not mentioned by the other three Gospels), but he himself is not baptized. The reason John mutes Jesus’s baptism is perhaps easy to see: John’s divinely exalted and authoritative Jesus should not need to be forgiven of sins. The other Gospels handle this problem differently. They present the baptism as something like Jesus’s royal coronation, in which he received public approval

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  4 But when Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics wants to determine exactly which people deserve to be called “self-indulgent,” his definition is cautiously restrictive: self-indulgence— akolasia —relates only to the pleasures of the body; and among these, the pleasures of sight, hearing, and smell must be excluded. 5 It is not self-indulgent to “delight in” (charein) colors, shapes, or paintings, nor in theater or music; one can, without self-indulgence, delight in the scent of fruit, roses, or incense; and, he says in the Eudemian Ethics , 6 anyone who would become so intensely absorbed in looking at a statue or in listening to a song as to lose his appetite or taste for lovemaking could not be reproached for self-indulgence, any more than could someone who let himself be seduced by the Sirens. For there is pleasure that is liable to akolasia only where there is touch and contact: contact with the mouth, the tongue, and the throat (for the pleasures of food and drink), or contact with other parts of the body (for the pleasure of sex). Moreover, Aristotle remarks that it would be unjust to suspect self-indulgence in the case of certain pleasures experienced on the surface of the body, such as the noble pleasures that are produced by massages and heat in the gymnasium: “for the contact characteristic of the self-indulgent man does not affect the whole body but only certain parts.” 7 * It will be one of the characteristic traits of the Christian experience of the “flesh,” and later of “sexuality,” that the subject is expected to exercise suspicion often, to be able to recognize from afar the manifestations of a stealthy, resourceful, and dreadful power. Reading these signs will be all the more important as this power has the ability to cloak itself in many forms other than sexual acts. There is no similar suspicion inhabiting the experience of the aphrodisia . To be sure, in the teaching and the exercise of moderation, it is recommended to be wary of sounds, images, and scents; but this is not because attachment to them would be only the masked form of a desire whose essence is sexual: it is because there are musical forms capable of weakening the soul with their rhythms, and because there are sights capable of affecting the soul like a venom, and because a particular scent, a particular image, is apt to call up the “memory of the thing desired.”

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  “Oh. All right!” He whispered it as if reassuring her he’d keep a mutual secret. His hand slipped from my pants, and he went back to sucking. When the workman came—“Hey, thanks. Thanks. Thank you” (one had gone to the man sucking; the other had gone to me; and the third to Ana)—he buttoned his shirt, stepped over me, patted Ana’s shoulder, and was gone. Getting up from the floor (I helped him; and Ana offered a steadying hand), the older man stopped to lay a finger on Ana’s forearm. “Did that look good to you, sweetheart?” “Uh . . . yes,” she said, a little uncertain. The man turned to give my arm a squeeze, then winked at me. Stepping among three other men who had stopped to watch, he whispered, “Good!” and was gone in the other direction. Ana and I spent another hour in the theater. Once she sat on the balcony rail and watched two more guys work out in the seats beside her. For a while, on the same side of the balcony, at the end, she stood near a group of men (including one of the kids we’d passed on the stairs) and watched me trade off doing and getting done with a guy in squeaking leather, pants and jacket. Once, during a lull, as several other of the observers had been doing from time to time, she reached in to feel his erect cock—and, with his sudden frown (though he did not pull back), I and Ana both realized that, only then, had he seen she was a woman. Ana let go and stepped quickly back, though. Before we left, she told me, “I’m going to walk around by myself for five minutes.” When, three minutes and thirty-eight seconds later by my watch, she rejoined me at the back of the orchestra, I asked: “Everything okay?” “Yes.” She nodded. “Anything happen?” I was quite as curious as to what she had seen as she had been to see it. “Well, one guy made a pass at me—if you could call it a pass. In here, I mean. He asked me would I let him . . . eat me. Only, I could tell: He really thought I might say yes. And, when I said, ‘No, thank you,’ he smiled, shrugged—he did look sad—and . . . walked away.” I laughed at her surprise and we pushed through the dull gold drapes hanging across the inner door. When we were outside I said, “So. What did you think?”

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  148. Lindsey Gruson, “Two Hare Krishna Aides Accused of Child Molesting,” The New York Times (Feb 18, 1987). “Murders, Drug and Abuse Charges Shake Krishnas,” Akron Beacon Journal (June 22, 1986). Eric Harrison, “Crimes Among the Krishnas: The world wouldn’t listen to Stephen Bryant’s charges against his religion’s leaders, until he was murdered,” The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine (April 15, 1987). John Hubner and Lindsay Gruson, “Dial Om for Murder: The Hare Krishna church, once brimming with youthful idealism, has became a haven for drug traffickers, suspected child molesters—and killers,” The Rolling Stone (April 9, 1987), 53. “Krishna Killer Ordered Extradited,” CAN News (Sept-Oct 1987) from “Dreschner Ordered Extradited,” The Intelligencer (Aug 14, 1987). “Hare Krishna Leader Reported to be Linked to Murder of His Critic,” The New York Times (June 17, 1987), 9. 149. “Scientology’s ‘Campaign of Harassment,” The Cult Observer (Nov/Dec 1987) from “Scientologists In Dirty Campaign to Stop Book,” The Sunday Times (London, Oct 18, 1987). “Scientologists Try to Block Hubbard Biography,” The Cult Observer (July/Aug 1987), from “New Hassle over Scientology Book,” The New York Post (Aug 4, 1987) and “Lawsuits Surround Book on L. Ron Hubbard,” Publishers Weekly (Aug 1987). 150. Robert Lindsey, “Two Defectors from People’s Temple Slain in California,” The New York Times (Feb 28, 1980), A 16. 151. Peter Siegel, Nancy Strohl, Laura Ingram, David Roche and Jean Taylor, “Leninism as Cult: The Democratic Workers Party,” Socialist Review, 58-85. 152. “Center for Feeling Therapy Founder Fights to Keep License,” The Cult Observer (Jan/Feb 1987) from the Los Angeles Times (Sept 21, 1986). “Center for Feeling Therapy Psychologists Lose Licenses,” The Cult Observer (Nov/Dec 1987) from “Psychologists In Feeling Therapy Lose Licenses,” The Los Angeles Times (Sept 29, 1987). 153. Darrell Sifford, “Psychiatrist Probes the Effects of Transcendental Meditation,” Philadelphia Inquirer (June 19, 1988). The Various Implications Arising from the Practice of Transcendental Meditation (Bensheim, Germany: Institute for Youth and Society), 80. 154. Marc Fisher, “I Cried Enough to Fill a Glass,” The Washington Post Magazine (Oct 25 ,1987), 20. Alfrieda Slee, Administratrix to the Estate of Jack Andrew Slee, vs. Werner Erhard, et al. Civil Action #N-84-497- JAC, United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. Evangeline Bojorquez vs. Werner Erhard, et al, Civil Action #449177, Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of Santa Clara. Nancy Urgell vs. Werner Erhard and Werner Erhard Associates, Civil Action #H-85-1025 PCD, United States District Court, District of Connecticut. 155. Teresa Ramirez Boulette and Susan M. Anderson, “Mind Control and the Battering of Women,” Community Mental Health Journal (Summer 1985, Vol. 21, No. 2). Chapter 8 156. Alan MacRobert, “Uncovering the Cult Conspiracy,” Mother Jones (Feb/March 1979, Vol. 4, No. 2), 8. 157. The names of the cult member and his family have been changed to protect their identities.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I sat on the redwood picnic table and listened to music coming through the closed shutters of the house next door. They were always closed, but a jazz saxophone worked its way out from between the wood slats, music personal as a touch. I ran my fingertips over the dark carbon blade of my mother’s old knife, imagining opening my wrists. If you did it in the bathtub, they said, you didn’t even feel it. I wouldn’t have hesitated, except for my mother. But the scales were in precarious balance, everything on one side but my mother’s letters, light as good night, a hand touching my hair. I played with the knife, spread out my hand on top of the slide, and jabbed the point past my fingers. Johnny johnny johnny whoops! Johnny johnny whoops! Johnny johnny johnny johnny. I liked it just as well when it stabbed me.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  The lawsuit filed by the postal carrier’s surviving family was later dismissed.995 Landmark Education, now called Landmark Worldwide, has become a global concern with offices around the world located in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Nagoya, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Auckland, London, Nairobi, Bogata, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Mexico City.996 The company continues to maintain many offices across the United States including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, DC, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Orange County, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Boston, and Ft. Lauderdale.997 John Hanley Sr. founded Lifespring in 1974. Perhaps the most notable Lifespring graduate is Virginia Thomas, wife of US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. She became involved with the group in the early 1980s but later left and sought counseling. Thomas told the Washington Post in 1987, “I had intellectually and emotionally gotten myself so wrapped up with this group that I was moving away from my family and friends and the people I work with. My best friend came to visit me and I was preaching at her using that rough attitude they teach you.” Virginia Thomas eventually sought help from private consultant and cult-intervention specialist Kevin Garvey.998 At least thirty lawsuits were filed against the LGAT company Lifespring.999 In 1984 a jury in Virginia awarded $800,000 to a past participant who’d suffered a breakdown and was subsequently hospitalized. A Washington, DC, attorney who received Lifespring training received a $300,000 judgment for similar injuries. Lifespring reportedly settled many claims out of court. The company settled a wrongful death claim in 1982 regarding a suicide linked to its training. And in 1993 Lifespring agreed to a $750,000 settlement for a trainee who was institutionalized for two years after receiving training from Lifespring.1000 The company eventually dissolved, but many of its former trainers and associates went on to start their own LGAT companies. LGAT companies that use techniques inspired by Lifespring continue to thrive and expand. One example is AsiaWorks, which Chris Gentry founded in 1993.1001 Thousands have participated in AsiaWorks training.1002 The company now has offices in Beijing, Singapore, Jakarta, and Bangkok.1003 Kevin Garvey, who studied LGATs for decades, said many use the same influence techniques through what he identified as their “conceptual core.” He noted “patterns of information control, language control, disorientation through altering food and sleep patterns [and] the manipulation of the environment through praise and discouragement.”1004 Garvey claimed that such techniques are “designed and orchestrated to undercut any comprehensible discussion, all behind the facade of being this profound self-exploration.” He warned, “The outcome for some people is very extreme.”1005 Psychologist Margaret Singer echoed Garvey’s sentiments. Singer said that, and she included LGATs in her book Cults in Our Midst “because they represent forms of coordinated programs of intense persuasion and group pressure.”1006 The Mankind Project (MKP) is an LGAT that offers a program called the “New Warriors Training Adventure” (NWTA).

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  The recruiter wants to draw as much information as possible from the potential convert, to determine the most effective way to bring them into the group. An effective recruiter knows how to hone in on potential weak spots (called ‘finding the ruin’ in Scientology). These may involve a boyfriend or girlfriend, parents, family members, job, or school; the death of a close friend or relative; a move to a new town, and any other significant transition or dislocation. An effective recruiter knows how to make the target comfortable, so more willing to disclose highly personal and confidential information. Meanwhile, the recruiter reveals as little as possible about themselves and (especially) the group, unless it is absolutely necessary. Most of the information comes from the person being recruited. This unbalanced flow of information is always a signal that something is wrong. By far the most common impression potential recruits have is that they are making a new friend. However, in the real world, friendships take time to develop. Over time, each person shares more and more personal information in a reciprocal manner, giving and taking in a balanced way. There is also no hidden agenda. Once a potential convert is invited to a cult function, there is a great deal of pressure, both overt and subtle, to make a commitment as soon as possible.143 Cult recruiters, like good con artists, move in for the kill quickly, once they have sized up a person. It is not in their best interest to encourage thoughtful reflection. In contrast, legitimate groups do not lie to potential converts or pressure them into making a quick commitment. A destructive group will recruit new members through the use of mind control techniques. Control of the individual’s experience is essential in order to break them down, indoctrinate them, and build them up again in the cult image. During cult recruitment, the person’s identity framework makes a dramatic shift. During the indoctrination, sometimes the person doesn’t contact family and friends for days or weeks. When they eventually do, a radical personality change is evident. The individual often changes his style of clothes and speech patterns and behaves in an uncharacteristically distant manner. Often, the person’s sense of humor is blunted. Previous interests, hobbies and goals may be abandoned “because they are no longer important.” This personality change does seem to wear off a bit over time, if the individual doesn’t continue to contact the group or participate in its activities. However, when the person maintains contact, the new identity can and does grow ever stronger. To family and friends, the person seems not only more distant, but deceitful and evasive. Sometimes the person can be coaxed into revealing what he now believes. Frequently, though, the new member asks family members and friends to talk to older members or leaders, because “they can explain it better.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: The grace of prophecy consists in God enlightening the mind, on the part of which there is no difference of sex among men, according to Col. 3:10,11, “Putting on the new” man, “him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him, where there is neither male nor female [*Vulg.: ‘Neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free.’ Cf. [3709]FP, Q[93], A[6], ad 2 footnote].” Now the grace of the word pertains to the instruction of men among whom the difference of sex is found. Hence the comparison fails. Reply to Objection 3: The recipients of a divinely conferred grace administer it in different ways according to their various conditions. Hence women, if they have the grace of wisdom or of knowledge, can administer it by teaching privately but not publicly. OF THE GRACE OF MIRACLES (TWO ARTICLES)We must next consider the grace of miracles, under which head there are two points of inquiry: (1) Whether there is a gratuitous grace of working miracles? (2) To whom is it becoming? Whether there is a gratuitous grace of working miracles?Objection 1: It would seem that no gratuitous grace is directed to the working of miracles. For every grace puts something in the one to whom it is given (Cf. [3710]FS, Q[90], A[1]). Now the working of miracles puts nothing in the soul of the man who receives it since miracles are wrought at the touch even of a dead body. Thus we read (4 Kings 13:21) that “some . . . cast the body into the sepulchre of Eliseus. And when it had touched the bones of Eliseus, the man came to life, and stood upon his feet.” Therefore the working of miracles does not belong to a gratuitous grace. Objection 2: Further, the gratuitous graces are from the Holy Ghost, according to 1 Cor. 12:4, “There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit.” Now the working of miracles is effected even by the unclean spirit, according to Mat. 24:24, “There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders.” Therefore it would seem that the working of miracles does not belong to a gratuitous grace. Objection 3: Further, miracles are divided into “signs,” “wonders” or “portents,” and “virtues.” [*Cf. 2 Thess. 2:9, where the Douay version renders ‘virtus’ by ‘power.’ The use of the word ‘virtue’ in the sense of a miracle is now obsolete, and the generic term ‘miracle’ is elsewhere used in its stead: Cf. 1 Cor. 12:10, 28; Heb. 2:4; Acts 2:22]. Therefore it is unreasonable to reckon the “working of miracles” a gratuitous grace, any more than the “working of signs” and “wonders.” Objection 4: Further, the miraculous restoring to health is done by the power of God. Therefore the grace of healing should not be distinguished from the working of miracles.

• From Scarred (2019)

  This part—the tattoo—still made me nervous, but if it was the size of a dime and we were all getting it together . . . Lauren said that by the end of the initiation ritual, my life would be changed. The ceremony would take place on March 9, 2017. When I got to Albany, I couldn’t shake my unease. I didn’t want a tattoo. “I don't want anything on my body,” I told Lauren. She responded with the classic NXIVM flip. “What do you make it mean?” "My body is clean,” I told her. “I’ve never wanted to have any marks on it.” "But what if,” she said, “what if it stands for your character and your strength as symbolized on your body?” My body had always been pure. I treat it with such care: what I feed myself, my daily exercise, rarely drinking alcohol, vitamins, hot lemon water packed in a travel mug, and sufficient sleep (until motherhood and this slave-master thing began to call me out of bed at all hours). I was thankful that I’ve never been seriously injured or required surgery that would have produced any scars. For my whole life, I was healthy. But on the afternoon of March 9, 2017, I submitted my body to another force. I lay on that exam table with a professional licensed physician standing over me. Did I want to go through with it? No, not at all . . . but my collateral had a lot of power. Inside that room as we took turns lying on the table, there was never a moment when I didn’t feel self-conscious about being unclothed. I bared all of myself for this organization in both the literal and the figurative sense. The feeling in the room was not one of unconditional acceptance or female empowerment. With Lauren overseeing everything, I felt judged. I couldn’t shed it: you think of that one freckle on your butt that you sometimes catch in the mirror, the stretch marks from having lost weight or borne a child, the bikini line you wish you’d taken the time to groom. I had entered into this rite out of love for Lauren and a desire to grow, but from the beginning of this initiative with DOS, Lauren had not shown love in return. As she stood back with a smile on her face while she filmed each branding, the mood was not one of loving support, but rather watchfulness. Power. Dominance over submissives, under the guise of a supportive sisterhood. When I lay down on that table, I handed over my most important possession, my well-being, into someone else’s hands—whose, I wasn’t even totally sure.

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

  Pretty felt more comfortable than earlier. He felt the change in power. He walked around the room, his pace full of questions. He wanted to be a part of three thousand dollars. He realized Mr. Patterson didn’t make the decisions. He broke silence. “What do you want from me, Mrs. Patterson?” She popped up and offered Mr. Patterson his seat. He begrudgingly obliged. She walked around and sat on the edge of the desk, watching Pretty shuffle in his chair as she positioned herself in front of him. She offered him a peek. Her tone was stimulating. “I love black men,” she started. Mr. Patterson coughed, and nearly hacked up a lung before settling back in his seat. She looked behind, shot him a glance of pity, and returned her stare to Pretty. “And you are a beautiful black man.” Her eyes raped. Pretty knew this feeling. He’d felt this power before. He unloosened his tie, and wrestled with his shirt before a few chest hairs snuck out. “I am beautiful, bitch!” he agreed. Mr. Patterson waddled to the edge of his seat. “Bitch? What a minute!” Mrs. Patterson held her hand up, not turning around. “You wait a minute, Geronimo. I can handle this.” Mr. Patterson must didn’t know that she could handle it. He hesitantly relaxed and sat back. Mrs. Patterson looked at Pretty with confusion and closed her legs. “Did you just call me a bitch?” “Yeah!” He didn’t hesitate. His look told her that he would do it again if given the opportunity. She turned to Mr. Patterson, and then back toward Pretty. Her blank stare didn’t waver. For a second, everything went deathly still. Mrs. Patterson broke the silence when she jumped to her feet. She asked Pretty to stand. He lifted himself up and stood a foot taller than her, arms folded. She inhaled his body. “Show me why they call you Pretty.” He laughed. It wasn’t that easy. She called the shots, but he gave the bullets direction. He held out his hand for payment; his eyes never left hers. She adjusted her shirt. She showed more cleavage and her lips pouted. She imposed her sexuality on her young thug. “No disrespect, Mrs. Patterson, but I got to get paid before I release the hound.” His joke had serious intent. She immediately snapped her fingers. Her movements were mechanical, like she had done this before. Mr. Patterson reached for an envelope in his suit jacket; his movements were choppy and unsure. It appeared to be his first and last time in this arena. Mr. Patterson retrieved the envelope and slid it across the desk. Mrs. Patterson scooped it up and banged it against the palm of her hand. She offered Pretty the envelope. “Will this do?” He accepted it and pushed it deep into his back pocket. “You’re not going to check?” she asked.