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 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  countdown A couple months after he’s evicted, a month before he arrives at the shelter, I see my father sleeping on a bench on the Esplanade. No more room, no more cab, all has led to this bench. The first beautiful day of spring, families out for a stroll. He staggers to the edge of the river to piss, his cock wild in his hands. A little girl points. For some reason, each time my mind returns to that day, I remember that little girl. Every week, it seems, scientists discover a new gene to explain why we act as we do, why we feel sad or why we get fat. Genes, it’s now clear, are a mark on the blood, and the mark can be read and the life plotted. Easy as reading a map. This red mark is your father, across a vast sea from you. The scientists say that one day I could stand in the exact spot my father once stood in, hold my body as he did. I could open my mouth and his words would come out. They say it is only a “tendency toward,” a warning. They say it is not the future, but a possible future. I got high not long after seeing him on the Esplanade. I had a pipe I brought back from Morocco the year before, a long painted stem, a brass bowl. I told Richard I saw my father sleeping outside and Richard said, Your father’s a nightmare. riddle One book in my grandmother’s attic was a collection of riddles, mostly kids’ stuff, lots of those black-and-white-and-red-all-over kind of riddles, but they got more complicated toward the end. It had the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus, one about albatross soup I never understood and one that I wrestled with for months— Brothers and sisters I have none, But that man’s father is my father’s son. A sketch showed a man on a sidewalk, pointing vaguely into a crowd. After a year I decided that the guy was looking into a mirror, just to put it out of my mind. Years later I realized I was wrong.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ed drove her car to the funeral home. I followed on my motorcycle. Once we arrived, I sat on my bike in the parking lot. I wanted to show my respect for Butch Ro, but I wished I didn’t have to go in. “What’s with you, Jess?” Ed asked me in exasperation. “T don’t know,” I told her. I felt a sense of dread. When we got inside, it took a minute to find the right room. Then I knew we had found it. There, around the open casket, were Butch Ro’s lifelong friends. All of them were wearing dresses. That’s how much they loved het. These were burly, big-shouldered he-shes who carried their womanhood in work-roughened hands. They could playfully slap you on the back and send you halfway across the room. Their forearms and biceps were covered with tattoos. These powerful butch women were comfortable in work chinos. Their spirit roared to life when they wore double-breasted suits. Wearing dresses was an excruciating humiliation for them. Many of their dresses were old, from another era when occasional retreats were still necessary. The dresses were outdated, white, frilly, lace, low-cut, plain. The shoes were old or borrowed: patent leather, loafers, sandals. This clothing degraded their spirit, ridiculed who they were. Yet it was in this painful drag they were forced to say their last goodbye to the friend they loved so much. Ro’s femme, Alice, greeted each one of them. You could see how much she longed to fall against their solid bodies, to feel the gentle strength of their arms. Instead she respectfully refused to acknowledge the pain they all shared together. She held in her own. Ro—the butch Alice had loved for almost thirty years—lay in the casket next to her, laid out in a pink dress and holding a bunch of pink-and-white flowers. What cruel hand controlled this scene? I saw them just as they saw Ed and me. It was Ro’s family—father, mother, and brothers. They saw us the moment we walked in, and whispered in the funeral director’s ear. In a flash, the director announced the funeral home was closing and we all had to leave. Just like that. Ed and I went to the local diner for coffee. We were sitting there when all the older butches came filing in past us. Each of them had found a place to change clothes, even if it meant crouching down in the backseat of a car. When they saw us, they all headed straight for the opposite side of the diner. Jan charged at me with murder in her eyes, but the other women restrained her. Butch Jan—the elder I wanted to turn to for advice. Butch Jan—my friend. Jan had been cool to me for a long time, ever since the night she saw me dancing with Edna. Now she really hated me. A few minutes later Alice came in, supported by a butch on each side.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I sighed deeply. “I’ve been hurt. ?m not looking to get married, I’m not looking to disrespect anyone. I guess I just need some comfort.” “That’s it?” she probed. “Like a one-nighter?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. Annie weighed my words carefully in the scales of her own need. She turned away from me, but I knew after a moment it was alright to touch her. I kissed the closest cheek. My lips brushed her ear and traveled down her neck. I could hear her breathing change. She turned and looked at me for a long moment before offering me her mouth. We kissed deeply, but still carefully. Slowly we began to move against each other. I could feel how she offered her body to a man as a test. I was gentle. I was slow. Gradually her body became aware that my tempo was slightly behind hers. Her face flushed with heat. She pressed her pelvis against mine and looked at me quizzically. We both knew I didn’t have a hard-on. “Mommy!” Kathy called from upstairs. Annie looked apologetic. I nodded toward the sound of Kathy’s voice. Annie was gone for a few minutes. She came back into the kitchen and filled a plastic Cinderella glass with water. “I'll be right back,” she said hoarsely. I remembered the bag Td left in the other room. Now was definitely the right time to get it. I grabbed the bag and raced into the bathroom. I locked the door and took off my pants and BVDs. The harness and rubber cock fit nicely in my briefs. I pulled my pants back on and checked my wallet for a condom. I heard Annie call my name from the kitchen. I flushed the toilet, ran the tap water for a moment, and came out to meet her. I was out of breath. “What were you doing in there, running?” she laughed. It would take time to get back the feeling. I ran my fingers through her hair. She closed her eyes and parted her lips. The phone rang. We both laughed. “Forget it,” she said. It kept ringing. I pulled her close to me. She pressed her pelvis against mine. This time she smiled. She pulled back and searched my face with her eyes. I leaned against the sink and waited for her to come back to me. Then she took my hand and led me to her bedroom. Annie was afraid. I knew that was true. What she couldn’t know was that I was too. I wanted so much to be in her arms that I was willing to risk exposure and humiliation.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  funeral, unattended (1963) Sunglasses in the visor, wallet in the glove compartment, satchel in the back. A sports coat on a hanger so it doesn’t wrinkle. Look the cop in the eye, nod, don’t look at the cop at all, adjust the mirror, the ashtray empty, the window down. Drive with both hands so as not to draw heat—respectable citizen, upright. The red light turns green but no one’s behind, no one honks. My father drives back to Scituate one day and everything’s been replaced. Houses have changed color and there are more of them—the bookstore’s now a knick-knack shop, the bookie’s a barber, the package store’s a bank. He digs his heel in below the gas pedal as he steers, his heel wears a hole in the carpet, beneath the carpet is steel. Sweat drips from his ankle in summer, collects in the hole, eats away at the steel. Without thinking he will end up outside the house he grew up in, he will look at the front door but he will not enter. His legs will not carry him, his hand will not work the latch, as in the dream when you come to the threshold you know you must pass but cannot. Open your mouth to scream but nothing comes out. My mother by now has a warrant out on him for nonpayment of child support. “Nonsupport” we call it around my house. I’m three, and cannot remember my father, who is thirty-three. After my mother left him he drifted, south again, eventually ending up back in Palm Beach. There he’s found the title for his book— The Little World of Pier 5. It’s all mapped out in his head, he just has to write it down. Idling outside his family home my father sits in his car, a wood-grained Ford station wagon, a “Woodie,” a car the Beach Boys sing about. The springs buried in the seat dig into his back. This is the house he lived in, off and on, until he married my mother. He looks up to his mother’s bedroom window, the shade pulled half down, how he left it when he left, his mother bedridden then. If he opens the car door the inside light will click on and he will be illuminated, he will turn from shadow to object, become solid, something you could attach handcuffs to. Two brothers he went to school with have become town cops, the Breen boys, those ignorant fucks . They know my father’s face, know about the warrant, one even stops by my grandmother’s for coffee, promises to keep a sharp eye out. If my father’s foot comes off the clutch, touches down on the tar, the sirens will sound, the Breen boys will appear with their warrant, their clubs, say, “Aha,” say, “Gotcha,” carry him away, the car left at the stoplight, the door sprung open, the interior light lighting the now-empty seat, the seat shaped like his body, the radio playing Top 40. Move your foot from the brake to the gas, keep your foot on the clutch—the house stays where it is, stays where you left it. Close your eyes and you see it—open them and it’s there. A sunspot on your eyelid, that’s home. Cover one eye and it flattens, it shifts to one side. Cover the other, it shifts to the left. Blink slowly back and forth—the house swings like a pendulum on a grandfather clock, your mother laid out in the parlor. Did he know he would never return, never walk up the front steps, never enter the kitchen again? A woman he almost recognizes carries a platter up to the door, sandwiches maybe, but what is her name? Inside there will be plenty of liquor, a sea of booze, but not enough. If he steps into the house again not even the walls will stand where he remembers. Each room will be smaller, rooms he’d forgotten will appear between them. The paint will be wrong and he will not find the hole where he kicked his foot through the plaster the night of the storm when he knew his boat was badly anchored. If he pushes open the door his mother will be dead inside and if he doesn’t, well, what will that mean? If he pushes open the door he can say goodbye to her body but what is the body? If he crosses the threshold the police will be waiting in one of two small rooms, ignorant fucks , waiting for his return, they have waited all these years. Blood from a stone. Once he could outrun them but he no longer knows the way through his own house.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  As the scene draws to a close, Esther redraws her freckles, collects herself, and returns to the set. There, in front of so many people, she picks up right where she left off—arms flung open, and singing. Dream House as the Wrong LessonWhen MGM made the Academy Award–winning version of Gaslight in 1944, they didn’t just remake it. They bought the rights to the 1940 film, “burned the negative and set out to destroy all existing prints.” They didn’t succeed, of course—the first film survived. You can still see it. But how strange, how weirdly on the nose. They didn’t just want to reimagine the film; they wanted to eliminate the evidence of the first, as though it had never existed at all. Dream House as Déjà VuShe says she loves you. She says she sees your subtle, ineffable qualities. She says you are the only one for her, in all the world. She says she trusts you. She says she wants to keep you safe. She says she wants to grow old with you. She says she thinks you’re beautiful. She says she thinks you’re sexy. Sometimes when you look at your phone, she has sent you something weirdly ambiguous, and there is a kick of anxiety between your lungs. Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like the most scrutinized person in the world. Dream House as Apartment in PhiladelphiaMany years later, I wrote part of this book in my apartment in West Philadelphia, the one I share with my wife. Before we moved here, we’d been living in a terrible, dark building nearby. There were mice and cockroaches. We had to lay traps. One morning, I walked out of my bedroom to make coffee and found a mouse sprawled on one of the glue traps, looking like an adventurer half-melted by acid in a forbidden temple. It squealed a horrible squeal. I googled “What to do about a mouse in a glue trap” and found an article with advice. In my pajamas I walked outside with the mouse and the trap in a plastic bag, and I stomped on it as hard as I could before tossing it in the dumpster. As for the cockroaches, they made me feel like I was on the verge of madness and transcendence, like G.H. and her passion. At first, I was fastidious, looking for a paper towel to cleanly smash them as they darted around the counter. Then one day they moved into the digital clock in our microwave, and I could see them silhouetted there. The nymphs shed their skins against the glow, left part of themselves behind. After that, I developed the sort of detached practicality I had imagined was reserved for professional assassins in movies. Then, I killed them with my bare hands.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  My sister can’t take her eyes off the desk, because she’s been looking for one like that at yard sales and estate sales and Saturday morning auctions for months. I, on the other hand, am captivated by the little guy sitting at the desk. He’s in a somber profession, a low-voiced talker, a sympathizer, a crooning gentleman, here to make it all less of a hassle. He shuffles papers, twists the top of his thin gold pen and the ballpoint moves gently into place. He looks like he’s been carefully dusted with talc — his head is bald and pink but it is not gleaming or garish in any way. Instead it has a matte surface, and the white hair around the bottom half of his head is straight and coarse. His shirt is white and the tips of the collar are crisp as notebook paper. Beneath his chin and above the snowy embankment of his shirtfront rides a bowtie, black with a pattern of small golden shields. It manages to be both pert and dignified, cheerful if you feel like being cheerful, or old-fashioned and somber if you’re bummed. Linda suddenly gets the hiccups and doesn’t try to hide it. Each time she hiccups he touches his ear or clicks his gold pen. His earlobes are amazingly long and thick for such a little old man. Linda hiccups loudly and begins weeping. I give her the usual sympathetic glance and pat her hand, he gently leans forward and indicates with a gesture the box of tissues on the corner of the desk. She takes one and hiccups into her hand, subdued. She is over it already, I can tell. I try to catch her eye to point out the combed tufts emerging from his ears. He smiles a dim and sincere smile, finds the floor with his tiny feet, rises. He comes out from around the kidney-shaped desk and prepares his face for the task at hand. We move in behind him and trail down the carpeted hallway of the mansion, Linda noticing the wainscoting and chandeliers, me watching the back of his neck. He opens the door with a miniature flourish and moves back demurely. We step past him and into the room full of coffins. The best ones are wood, rubbed to the sheen of the mahogany desk, lined with soft padding, intricate tucks and pleats and folds. All that effort. Linda runs her hand along the surface of one, pokes the satin pillow delicately with one finger. It has the kind of brass handles you find on an old-fashioned sideboard. “This one looks like a yacht,” she remarks. I glance at Mr. Larson but he’s looking studiously at the tips of his shoes, rocking himself gently forward and backward, waiting. Somewhere deep within the house something flushes, long tubes feed fluids into and out of stiffening lumps. “I can’t do this,” I tell them.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Proof So many cells in my body have died and regenerated since the days of the Dream House. My blood and taste buds and skin have long since re-created themselves. My fat still remembers, but just barely—within a few years, it will have turned itself over completely. My bones too. But my nervous system remembers. The lenses of my eyes. My cerebral cortex, with its memory and language and consciousness. They will last forever, or at least as long as I do. They can still climb onto the witness stand. My memory has something to say about the way trauma has altered my body’s DNA, like an ancient virus. I think a lot about what evidence, had it been measured or recorded or kept, would help make my case. Not in a court of law, exactly, because there are many things that happen to us that are beyond the purview of even a perfectly executed legal system. But the court of other people, the court of the body, the court of queer history. In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz writes, “The key to queering evidence, and by that I mean the ways in which we prove queerness and read queerness, is by suturing it to the concept of ephemera. Think of ephemera as a trace, the remains, the things that are left, hanging in the air like a rumor.” That ephemera: The recorded sound waves of her speech on one axis and a precise measurement of the flood of adrenaline and cortisol in my body on the other. Witness statements from the strangers who anxiously looked at us sideways in public places. A photograph of her grip on my arm in Florida, with measurements of the shadows to indicate depth of indentation; an equation to represent the likely pressure. A wire looped through my hair, ready to record her hiss. The rancid smell of anger. The metal tang of fear in the back of my throat. None of these things exist. You have no reason to believe me. “Ephemeral evidence is rarely obvious,” Muñoz says, “because it is needed to stand against the harsh lights of mainstream visibility and the potential tyranny of the fact.” What is the value of proof? What does it mean for something to be true? If a tree falls in the woods and pins a wood thrush to the earth, and she shrieks and shrieks but no one hears her, did she make a sound? Did she suffer? Who’s to say?

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Five Lights In the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation , Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians during a secret mission to Celtris III. Early on in the second episode of the two-episode arc, the Cardassians use a truth serum to interrogate Picard on the details of his mission. Gul Madred ostensibly wants cooperation; information about the defense strategy for the Minos Korva planetary system. When the serum does not give him the results he desires, he implants a device in Picard’s body that, when activated, produces excruciating pain. “From now on, I will refer to you only as ‘human,’” Madred tells him. “You have no other identity.” They strip Picard naked, hang him from his wrists, and leave him there overnight. In the morning, Madred is unctuous, measured, unflaggingly polite. He drinks from a thermos like a weary bureaucrat. He turns on a string of lights above him, flooding Picard with illumination. Picard flinches; holds his arm like a wounded velociraptor. Madred asks him how many lights he can see. “Four,” Picard says. “No,” Madred replies. “There are five.” “Are you quite sure?” Picard asks. Madred presses the button on the device in his hand; Picard buckles, staggers, and drops to the ground in agony. The scene is a pastiche of one from 1984 , but there are also some beats lifted, very lightly, from The Princess Bride . Madred is inordinately fond of his machine. That was the lowest possible setting . “I know nothing about Minos Korva,” Picard says. “But I’ve told you that I believe you. I didn’t ask you about Minos Korva. I asked how many lights you see. ” Picard squints upward. “There are four lights.” Gul Madred sighs like a disappointed parent. “I don’t understand how you can be so mistaken.” Picard squints against them and says, “What lights?” He spasms so hard his body leaps from the chair, strikes the floor. Lying on the floor, Picard mumble-sings a French folk song from his childhood. “Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse.” On the bridge of Avignon , we’re all dancing , we’re all dancing . “Where were you?” Madred asks. “At home. Sunday dinner. We would all sing afterward.” Madred opens the door and tells Picard he may go. But as Picard prepares to leave, Madred tells him he’ll torture Dr. Crusher instead. Picard returns to his chair. “Are you choosing to stay with me?” Madred asks. Picard is silent. “Excellent,” Madred says. “I can’t tell you how pleased this makes me.” Later, Madred feeds Picard. Boiled taspar egg, “a delicacy,” he says. When cracked open, it is an undulating, gelatinous mass with an eye at its center. Picard sucks the contents from the shell. Madred has his own meal; shares a story of his own childhood as a street urchin in Lakat, on the Cardassian homeworld.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  While we feasted on ham and grits and eggs, Mr. Bolger spread a map on the table and marked our route to Seattle. Without actually saying so, he gave us to understand that this trip was a new chance to prove ourselves. We were to drive directly to Seattle and directly home. No sidetrips. No hitchhikers. No drinking. Mr. Bolger tried to be stem as he gave us our marching orders, but it was clear that he enjoyed sending us off on what he considered to be a business of some pith and moment, which it was, if not exactly in the way he imagined. I met Mr. Howard at Ivar’s Acres of Clams down on the wharf. His wife was with him, a tall fine-boned woman with black hair just beginning to gray—a few strands that made the rest of her hair seem even blacker. She had deep-set, watchful dark eyes. Even when she smiled I felt her taking my measure, felt the force of her curiosity. It wasn’t an arrogant curiosity: she wanted to know who I was. To be looked at that way is unsettling when you feel in danger of being seen through and exposed. I kept my eyes on Mr. Howard, who, under the pretext of warning me about the pitfalls of life at Hill, was happily reminiscing about his own years there—the friends he’d had and the stunts they’d pulled, like flooding the dormitory floor with water, opening the windows so it would freeze, then playing hockey through the rooms. I could see that he considered some of his memories too hot to handle. He would smile at them, then shake his head and pass on to something else. His speech turned peppery. A silly grin stole over his face. He seemed to get younger and younger, as if talking about being a boy had changed him into one. Mrs. Howard relaxed her scrutiny. When I got lost in the menu she helped me decide what to order. We talked about Julius Caesar , which I was reading in English, and she mentioned that she did fund-raising for the Seattle Repertory Theater. She was a damned fine actress in her own right, Mr. Howard said. She made a face. “Well, it’s true,” he said. I could see that he admired her and expected me to admire her too. There was an air of partnership about them that I felt warmed by. We were sitting in a corner table overlooking the water. Gulls strutted on the railing outside, shaking their feathers and turning their heads at us. The air was rich with the smell of chowder. Sunlight gleamed on the silver, lit up the ice cubes in our glasses, made the tablecloth bright as a snowfield.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I was surprised by this, which was a risk for him as for me, for him more than for me, since he was surrounded by neighbors any of whom might open their doors. He lived on a middle floor of one of the huge apartment blocks that stand everywhere in Sofia like fortresses or keeps, ugly and imperious, though this is a false impression they give, they’re so poorly built as already to be crumbling away. I obeyed him, I took off my shoes and then my coat and began to undo the long line of buttons on my shirt, my hands fumbling in the dark and in my excitement, too. I pulled down my pants, awkward in my haste, wanting him and also wanting to end my exposure, though it was part of my excitement. It was for this excitement I had come, something to draw me out of the grief I still felt for R.; he had left months before, long enough for grief to have passed but it hadn’t passed, and I found myself resorting again to habits I thought I had escaped, though that’s the wrong word for it, escaped, given the eagerness with which I returned to them. I made a bundle of my clothes, balling my pants and shirt and underthings in my coat, and I held this in one hand and my shoes in the other and stood, still not entering, my skin bristling both from cold and from that profounder exposure I felt. Ne ne, kuchko, he said, using for the first time the word that would be his only name for me. It’s our word, bitch, an exact equivalent, but he spoke it almost tenderly, as if in fondness; no, he said, fold your clothes nicely before you come in, be a good girl. At this last something rose up in me, as at a step too far in humiliation. Most men would feel this, I think, especially men like me, who are taught that it’s the worst thing, to seem like a woman; when I was a boy my father responded to any sign of it with a viciousness out of all proportion, as though he might keep me from what I would become, a faggot, as he said, which remained his word for me when for all his efforts I found myself as I am. Something rose up in me at what he said, this man who still barred my way, and then it lay back down, and I folded my clothes neatly and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I could hardly see it. It’s as though you want to give me as little as possible. That’s what puzzles me. It seems to me that you’re primarily asking, not talking, about our relationship.” “But you said—and said it more than once—that the first stage of change was getting feedback.” “Getting and assimilating feedback. Right. But in our last few hours you’ve just been collecting feedback—more of a question-and-answer format. I mean, I give you feedback, and you then proceed to another question.” “Rather than?” “Rather than a lot of things. For example, rather than turning inward to consider and discuss and digest the meaning of the feedback. How it felt, whether or not it rang true, what it stirred up inside, how you felt about my saying it to you.” “Well, okay. To be honest, I’m really surprised to hear you say you find me attractive. You don’t act that way toward me.” “I do think you’re attractive, but here, in this office, I’m more interested in a deeper meeting with you: with your essence, with your—I know it sounds corny—but with your soul.” “Maybe I shouldn’t persist”—Myrna felt the energy going out of her question—“but my physical appearance is important to me, and I’m still curious about how you experience me—what features about my appearance are attractive to you, and that other question about what might have happened if we had met socially rather than professionally?” I’m being crucified, Ernest whimpered to himself. His worst nightmare about the here-and-now had come to pass. He had played out all his options. He had always feared that one day he would be cornered like this. The typical therapist would, of course, not answer the question but would reflect it back to her and explore all its implications: Why do you ask this question? And why now? And what were your underlying fantasies? How would you want me to respond? But this option was not available for Ernest.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Anechoic Chamber During a visit to Iowa City, you go to an anechoic chamber deep in the earth. A friend comes with you, and as you are both led down the stairs it occurs to you that this is not unlike the opening of “The Cask of Amontillado.” Your guide ushers you inside and swings the heavy door shut behind you, and the two of you lie on your backs on a metal dock that hangs in the air. Here, and only here, everything makes a sound. The thrum and rush of your blood, your liquid swallows. Even your tongue running along the upper ridge of your mouth, which sounds like a piece of furniture being dragged over a bed of gravel. Here, your body is exactly as grotesque as you know it to be. Here, you are not dead, but everything around you might as well be. There are no hallucinations, exactly, except for a strange buzzing on the edge of your hearing, like, your friend observes, cicadas at the height of summer. The buzzing isn’t there, of course; your minds are simply imbuing the silence. You could go mad if you stay here too long, you think. Your mind would fill in the gaps and the blanks and God knows what it would fill them with. What happens when there are no echoes, here in this underground crypt? You clap and clap but nothing answers back.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The yoga masters, with genuine and disarming humility, seemed as interested in my observations as I was in their vast knowledge and intrinsic knowing. “Symptoms” frequently described in Kundalini awakenings may involve any of the following: involuntary and spasmodic body movements, pain, tickling, itching, vibrations, trembling, alternations of hot and cold, changed breathing patterns, temporary paralysis, crushing pressure, insomnia, hypersensitivity to light and sound, synesthesia, unusual or extremes of emotions, intensified sex drive, sensations of physical expansion, dissociation and out-of-body experiences, as well as hearing “inner sounds,” such as roaring, whistling and chirping. These sensations associated with Kundalini awakenings are often more forceful and explosive than those I observed with my clients. As I developed my methodology, I learned to help clients gradually touch into their bodily-energy sensations so that they were rarely overwhelmed. In general, focusing inward and becoming curious about one’s inner sensations allows people to experience a subtle inner shift, a slight contraction, vibration, tingling, relaxation and sense of openness. I have named this shift from the feelings of dread, rage or whatever one likes to avoid toward “befriending” one’s internal sensations pendulation , the intrinsic rhythm pulsing between the experienced polarities of contraction and expansion/openness ( Step 3 in Chapter 5 ). Once people learn to access this rhythmic flow within, “infinite” emotional pain begins to feel manageable and finite. This allows their attitude to shift from dread and helplessness to curiosity and exploration. The mystical text Hermetic Kybalion says, “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” The application of this perennial philosophy to trauma is the very principle that allows sensations and feelings that had previously been overwhelming to be processed and transformed in present time. In this way, trauma, when transformed, parallels Kabalistic philosophy. Trauma, Death and Suffering Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. —Psalm 2 3 It would be an error to equate trauma with suffering and suffering, in turn, with transformation. At the same time, however, in virtually every spiritual tradition suffering is understood as a doorway to awakening.

• From Story of O (1954)

  I know it was at this point that they freed O’s hands, which were still tied behind her back, and told her to get undressed, they were going to bathe her and make her up. They proceeded to strip her till she hadn’t a stitch of clothing left, then put her clothes away neatly in one of the closets. She was not allowed to bathe herself, and they did her hair as at the hairdresser’s, making her sit in one of those large chairs which tilts back when they wash your hair and straightens back up after the hair has been set and you’re ready for the dryer. That always takes at least an hour. Actually it took more than an hour, but she was seated on this chair, naked, and they kept her from either crossing her legs or bringing them together. And since the wall in front of her was covered from floor to ceiling with a large mirror, which was unbroken by any shelving, she could see herself, thus open, each time her gaze strayed to the mirror. When she was properly made up and prepared—her eyelids penciled lightly; her lips bright red; the tip and halo of her breasts highlighted with pink; the edges of her nether lips rouged; her armpits and pubis generously perfumed, and perfume also applied to the furrow between her thighs, the furrow beneath her breasts, and to the hollows of her hands—she was led into a room where a three-sided mirror, and another mirror behind, enabled her to examine herself closely. She was told to sit down on the ottoman, which was set between the mirrors, and wait. The ottoman was covered with black fur, which pricked her slightly; the rug was black, the walls red. She was wearing red mules. Set in one of the walls of the small bedroom was a large window, which looked out onto a lovely, dark park. The rain had stopped, the trees were swaying in the wind, the moon raced high among the clouds.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I can’t see you.’ “What impresses me,” I continued, “is that last sentence. In the dream it is you who can’t see me. Yet this whole session we’ve been discussing it the other way around—that it is I who don’t see you. Let me ask you something: a few minutes ago when I talked about my aging, you know, my knee surgery, my eyes—” “Yes, yes, I heard all that,” Irene exclaimed, rushing me on. “You heard it—but as usual, whenever I mention something about my health, your eyes glazed over. Like those couple of weeks after my eye surgery, when I was obviously having a rough time and wore dark glasses, you never asked about the surgery or inquired about how I was doing.” “I don’t need to know about your health. I’m the patient here.” “Oh, no, it’s much more than that, more than lack of interest, more than your being the patient and me the doctor. You avoid me. You block yourself from learning anything about me. Especially anything that in some way diminishes me. From the very beginning I told you that because of our former social relationship and because of our mutual friends, Earl and Emily, I could not conceal myself from you. Yet you’ve never once expressed any interest in knowing anything about me. Don’t you think that odd?” “When I started seeing you, I was not going to take the risk of losing someone important to me again. I couldn’t go through that. So I had only two choices—” As she so often did, Irene stopped, as though I should be able to divine the rest of her statement. Although I didn’t want to prompt her, it was best, for now, to keep the flow going. “And those two choices were?” “Well, not to let you matter to me—but that was impossible. Or not to see you as a real person with a narrative.” “A narrative?” “Yes, a life narrative—proceeding from a beginning to an end. I want to keep you outside of time.” “Today, as usual, you walked into my office and straight to your chair, without looking at me. You always avoid my eyes. That what you mean by ‘outside of time’?” She nodded. “Looking at you would make you too real.” “And real people have to die.” “Now you’ve got it.” I Momma and the Meaning of Life D usk. Perhaps I am dying. Sinister shapes surround my bed: cardiac monitors, oxygen canisters, dripping intravenous bottles, coils of plastic tubing—the entrails of death. Closing my lids, I glide into darkness.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Later, much later, she must have remembered overhearing the conversation between Sir Stephen and René, but at the time she was not struck by it, as though it did not concern her and, simultaneously, as though she had already experienced it before. And it was true that she had already experienced a similar scene, since the first time that René had taken her to Sir Stephen’s, they had discussed her in the same way. But on that initial occasion she had been a stranger to Sir Stephen, and René had done most of the talking. Since then, Sir Stephen had made her submit to all his fantasies, had molded her to his own taste, had demanded and obtained from her, as something quite routine, the most outrageous and scurrilous acts. She had nothing more to give than what he already possessed. At least so she thought. He was speaking, he who generally was silent in her presence, and his remarks, as well as René’s, revealed that they were renewing a conversation they often engaged in together, with her as the subject. It was a question of how she could best be utilized, and how the things each of them had learned from his particular use of her could best be shared. Sir Stephen readily admitted that O was infinitely more moving when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if only because these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and immediately proclaimed, the moment they were seen, that anything went as far as she was concerned. For to know this was one thing, but to see the proof of it, and to see the proof constantly renewed, was quite another. René, Sir Stephen said, was perfectly right in wishing to have her whipped. They decided that she would be, irrespective of the pleasure they might derive from her screams and tears, as often as necessary so that some trace of the flogging could always be seen upon her.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Sir Stephen resumed his questioning, with a judge-like resolution and the skill of a father-confessor. O did not see him speaking, and saw herself replying. Whether she had, since she had returned from Roissy, belonged to other men besides René and himself? No. Whether she had wanted to belong to any other she might have met? No. Whether she caressed herself at night, when she was alone? No. Whether she had any girl friends she caressed or who she allowed to caress her? No (the “no” was more hesitant). Any girl friends she did desire? Well, there was Jacqueline, but “friend” was stretching the term. Acquaintance would be closer, or even chum, the way well-bred school girls refer to each other in high-class boarding schools. Whereupon Sir Stephen asked her whether she had any photographs of Jacqueline, and he helped her to her feet so she could go and get them. It was in the living room that René, entering out of breath, for he had dashed up the four flights of stairs, came upon them: O was standing in front of the big table on which there shone, black and white, like puddles of water in the night, all of the pictures of Jacqueline. Sir Stephen, half-seated on the table, was taking them one by one as O handed them to him, and putting them back on the table; his other hand was holding O’s womb. From that moment on, Sir Stephen, who had greeted René without letting go of her—in fact she felt his hand probe deeper into her—had ceased addressing her, and addressed himself to René. She thought she knew why: with René there, the accord between Sir Stephen and René concerning her was re-established, but apart from her, she was only the occasion for it or the object of it, they no longer had to question her, nor she to reply; what she had to do, and even what she had to be, was decided without her. It was almost noon. The sun, falling directly on the table, curled the edges of the photographs. O wanted to move them and flatten them out to keep them from being ruined, but her fingers fumbled, she was on the verge of yielding to the burning probe of Sir Stephen’s hand and allowing a moan to escape from her lips. She failed to hold it back, did in fact moan, and found herself sprawled flat on her back among the photographs, where Sir Stephen had rudely shoved her as he left her, with her legs spread and dangling. Her feet were not touching the floor; one of her mules slipped from her foot and dropped noiselessly onto the white rug. Her face was flooded with sunshine: she closed her eyes.

• From Story of O (1954)

  “No,” Sir Stephen said, “mine. René wants you to be answerable first of all to me.” O was fully cognizant of this, why did she pretend she was not? In a short while, and in any case prior to her return to Roissy, she would have to accept a definitive mark, which would not absolve her from the obligation of being a common-property slave but would, besides, reveal her to be a personal slave, Sir Stephen’s, and the traces of the floggings on her body, or the marks raised by the riding crop, if indeed they were inflicted again, would be discreet and futile compared to this ultimate mark. (But what would this mark be, of what would it consist, in what way would it be definitive? O, terrified and fascinated, was dying to know, she had to know immediately. But it was obvious that Sir Stephen was not yet ready to explain it. And it was true that she had to accept, to consent in the real sense of the term, for nothing would be inflicted upon her by force to which she had not already previously consented; she could refuse, nothing was keeping her enslaved except her love and her self-enslavement. What prevented her from leaving?) And yet, before this mark was imposed upon her, even before Sir Stephen became accustomed to flogging her, as had been decided by René and himself, to flogging her in such a way that the traces were constantly visible, she would be granted a reprieve—the time required for her to make Jacqueline submit to her. Stunned, O raised her head and looked at Sir Stephen. Why? Why Jacqueline? And if Jacqueline interested Sir Stephen, why was it in relation to O? “There are two reasons,” Sir Stephen said. “The first, and least important, is that I would like to see you kiss and caress a woman.” “But even assuming she gives in to me,” cried O, “how in the world do you expect me to make her consent to your being present?” “That’s the least of my worries,” Sir Stephen said. “If necessary, by betrayal, and anyway I’m counting on you for a great deal more than that, for the second reason why I want you to seduce her is that you’re to be the bait that lures her to Roissy.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  “Of course it will,” Anne-Marie said, when O pointed this out to her. “But aren’t you by now fully aware of what Sir Stephen wants? Anyone, at Roissy or anywhere else, Sir Stephen or anyone else, even you in front of the mirror, anyone who lifts your skirts will immediately see his rings on your loins and, if you turn around, his monogram on your buttocks. You may possibly file the rings off one day, but the brand on your backside will never come off.” “I thought it was possible to have tattoos removed,” Colette said. (It was she who had tattooed, on Yvonne’s white skin just above the triangle of her belly, the initials of Yvonne’s master in ornate blue letters, like the letters you find on embroidery.) “O will not be tattooed,” replied Anne-Marie. O looked at Anne-Marie. Colette and Yvonne were stunned, and said nothing. Anne-Marie was fumbling for her words. “Go ahead and say it,” O said. “My poor dear girl, I just couldn’t work up the courage to tell you: you’re to be branded. Sir Stephen sent me the branding irons two days ago.” “Branded?” Yvonne cried, “with a red-hot branding iron?” From the first day, O had shared in the life of the house. Idleness, absolute and deliberate idleness was the order of the day, interspersed with dull distractions. The girls were at liberty to walk in the garden, to read, draw, play cards, play solitaire. They could sleep in their rooms or sunbathe on the lawn. Sometimes two of them would chat, or they would talk together in pairs for hours on end, and sometimes they would sit at Anne-Marie’s feet without uttering a word. Mealtimes were always the same, dinner was by candlelight, tea was served in the garden, and there was something absurd about the matter-of-fact way in which the two servants served these naked girls seated around a festive table.

• From Story of O (1954)

  The moon provided as much light as the candles, though, and when it fell full upon O, who was being pulled forward by her black little shadow, Natalie, those who noticed her stopped dancing, and the men got to their feet. The boy near the record player, sensing that something was happening, turned around and, taken completely aback, stopped the record. O had come to a halt; Sir Stephen, motionless two steps behind her, was also waiting. The Commander dispersed those who had gathered around O and had already called for torches to examine her more closely. “Who is she,” they were saying, “who does she belong to?” “You, if you like,” he replied, and he led O and Natalie over to a corner of the terrace where a stone bench covered with cushions was set against a low wall. When O was seated, her back against the wall, her hands lying on her knees, with Natalie on the ground to the left of her feet, still holding onto the chain, he turned around to them. O’s eyes searched for Sir Stephen, and at first could not find him. Then she sensed his presence, reclining on a chaise longue at the other corner of the terrace. He was able to see her, she was reassured. The music had begun again, the dancers were dancing again. As they danced, one or two couples moved over in her direction, as though by accident at first, then one of the couples dropped the pretense and, with the woman leading the way, marched boldly over. O stared at them with eyes that, beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened wide like the eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the illusion was so extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to human language, and dumb. From midnight till dawn, which began to lighten the eastern sky at about five, as the moon waned and descended toward the west, people came up to her several times, and some even touched her, they formed a circle around her several times and several times they parted her knees and lifted the chain, bringing with them one of those two-branched candlesticks of Provençal earthenware—and she could feel the flames from the candles warming the inside of her thighs—to see how she was attached. There was even one drunken American who, laughing, grabbed her, but when he realized that he had seized a fistful of flesh and the chain which pierced her, he suddenly sobered up, and O saw his face fill with the same expression of horror and contempt that she had seen on the face of the girl who had given her a depilatory; he turned and fled.