Fear

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 My Secret Garden (1973)

  It’s one thing to be the first girl on the block to smoke pot, take a lover, etc., but for all the zest that being an adventuress can bring, it can also bring, very early on, a seemingly contradictory feeling of the need for self-control. Mountain climbers have to be more careful than earth dwellers. At least, that’s my explanation for my own late arrival to a full appreciation of sex. Anne, I am sure, has her own explanation. » Now that I think of it, I find it difficult to describe. I mean what goes on in my mind during sex. I don’t think I can… I am in the dark, but it is not just dark of night; it’s a blackness of infinite space. This is probably scientifically incorrect, because I guess the astronauts, the cosmonauts, whatever they are, find light. My own blackness is a more mythological thing… that “outer darkness”… but it’s not death. It’s being way, way, far out somewhere in infinite space. I’m somehow in my body, but also outside of it. I’m liable at any second to fall down through infinite, unimaginable darkness, sort of like Lucifer… that’s my second reference to Paradise Lost; I wonder what that means? Maybe another way to put it is that it’s like falling out of a space rocket, only in absolute darkness. It’s frightening and thrilling. I suppose that’s what I think of men. Unless they’re a little bit frightening… without a touch of the devil, I don’t find them thrilling. There… that explains all the Lucifer associations. He was supposed to be the most beautiful angel of all. I don’t know why I should have this particular fantasy… I certainly didn’t deliberately choose it… because I have that fear of heights, what’s it called? …cannot look out of a plane window or even an office window high up in Rockefeller Center, never can go near the edge of anyone’s penthouse terrace… am terrified because I want to jump. And I never had this until after I started to have really satisfactory sex relations. I suppose I never really understood that terrific loss of control, that falling down into you don’t know what, that letting go of everything that orgasm brings. Before then, as a child and as a girl, I had no fear of heights, no frightening impulse to jump. I think that’s it. The fear so many women have that they’ll leap from the heights is some kind of desire to leap into orgasm. I suppose that’s the connection… do you? [Taped interview]

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  He told me to relax, and that he wouldn’t hurt me, and not to be afraid. He then asked what I saw in my boyfriend, and whether he had really ever satisfied me sexually. I went to my boyfriend’s defense, of course, explaining that he was decent, kind, and a gentle person, in contrast to this fellow. He laughed and told me to cut out the “mushy stuff,” in his exact words, and to relax and let him show me how it should be. I let him kiss and hold me, but when he started to explore me with his hands I panicked, and started to struggle to make him stop. He became angry and said he wasn’t going to stop. We struggled for what seemed to be hours, and I was physically exhausted and by now really terrified. He kept saying that he wouldn’t make me pregnant, if that was my worry, and to just let it happen and enjoy it. But I couldn’t, and then just as it seemed that nothing would or could stop him, I started to cry uncontrollably. That did something to him, because he finally stopped, let me go, and started straightening my clothes, etc. He said he’d take me home now, but that I’d better not make trouble and tell anyone at all. I promised, of course. When we got to my home, as I was getting out of the car, he suddenly took my arm and told me that he was sorry, and couldn’t I please forgive him, and he started to cry, actually cry. I felt so strange then, actually sorry for him. I told him to forget it, and that everything was okay, that I wasn’t angry or anything. He left, after giving me a kiss on my forehead. And that was that. Since then, we’ve always acted as if nothing had happened, have remained not good friends, but friends nevertheless, as he finally married my girlfriend, the one who worshipped him so. But he is still an animal, as everyone knows. He beats her, is a very heavy drinker, and is still foulmouthed. My whole point in telling you this is that at times, even though I know it’s wrong or crazy, I have fantasies that he is trying to rape me—either in his car, my home, his home, or even in his own gas station. I become awfully excited at these thoughts. I also have fantasized that he and a couple of his rough tough friends attack me. At times, however, it’s not him at all, but anyone I happen to dream up. I don’t know why I have these sexual fantasies. At other times I envision rape scenes, and actually shudder and become nauseated at the idea or thought. So, at times I enjoy my fantasies, and at other times I become almost sick.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Ma explains that there is only one day and it lives like a body, getting up before us and falling asleep when we do, putting on the sky like a skirt. There aren’t many, or if there are, it’s the same day dressed as different countries. The paper people say no, no. Ask how we got here. There’s a man in the corner wearing a uniform, handcuffs hanging from his hip. The cuffs bared like teeth. Silver mouths that circle into smiles. Ma herds us out of the office and we take the bus out of the city, back to the chicken farm, and I still don’t know what day I’m born. Later, the missionaries assigned a birthday to me and Jie, the day we were baptized, the only time we wore white when nobody had died. In the summer we sleep in different corners of the house to keep cool. Ma in the bedroom alone. The shotgun’s shadow stalking the walls. I sleep on the porch outside, bury myself in tarps to keep mosquitos out. Jie is a dog curled behind the front door. Near morning when I hear the gun go off. Light limping down from the sky. My spit purifies to glass in my throat. I wake and think the gunshot flew out from my dreams, but I can’t remember what I’ve been aiming at, if I have hands. I check for a gun and find my fist. Jie runs barefoot onto the porch, takes me by the armpits. Ba’s got the gun, she says. We thread out of the house. A second gunshot guts the clouds. We run to the backyard and he’s there, panting and pantsless, bleeding sweat everywhere, bullets bucking the air. Backfire makes him stumble, knees grieving to the ground. Ama’s there too, her hands reining in his shoulders. Give it back, she says. Agong lowers it to the trees. I haven’t seen him stand straight in months. He lifts his left hand to the sky, pointing or saluting. We try to see what he’s pointing at, but the sky speaks nothing, not a bird. Clouds cockroaching across the sky. I anticipate holes in the blue, but there’s no wound. Ba shakes the sweat off his upper lip and says, They’re coming, they’re coming. In his hands, the shotgun is boneless. Ma bites the ball of his shoulder, tells him the war, both, are behind him. Ba looks behind him, at her. His eyes are seedless, white. He says, Where are the planes? I spot a wounded bird in the corner of the sky, shedding blood, flying in circles with one wing wrenched out. Ma says, You got them all, you got them. But Ba’s eyes are years behind, stalled on the same sky: back when warplanes had anuses that dilated open and shat dung-bombs, spraying a diarrhea that scarred your skin. Ba ba ba ba ba, I say. He turns and sees Jie and me, shoulder-to-shoulder like soldiers.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  The experience, Monica said, did not leave her so much disgusted or angry or, on the other hand, excited, as filled with fear. The book was a denial of all the pure and noble ideas she had formed about her father, and the description of the sexual acts in the book immediately made her realize that such performances must go on between her mother and father. “I felt I had nothing left to live for,” Monica said. “My father wasn’t secretly thinking about living with me some day in a world where we went to the opera, or ran a ranch together out West; he was thinking of all the things in this book. There was nothing left for me but this frightening world that Henry Miller described, filled with all these horrors. I was just a stupid kid, and I tried to commit suicide that night. I swallowed a full bottle of aspirin and all the other pills I could find in the house. Luckily or unluckily, there was nothing very lethal in the house. I just got sick and vomited all night. But even today, suicide, it’s never very far from my mind.” » I began having these ideas the very first time I had sex. I’d never thought of it before in my life, and suddenly there it was in my mind. I’d met this good-looking boy at a dance, and I was very surprised that he even looked at me twice. Boys like him never did. But we got into his car and pretty soon I knew why he had singled me out after all. I usually shied away from that kind of thing, but then I suddenly thought, Well, you have to learn about this thing for yourself sooner or later. Everybody in the world knows about it except you. Why not with him? I was also very attracted to him, and maybe I was hoping against hope that if I said Yes, I would see him again. And to tell the truth, it was very exciting. We got into the backseat of his car, and it was cozy and dark there. We were all alone. Maybe it was the first time I had ever been alone for so long with a boy in a car when he wasn’t driving. I always feel that empty places are sexy. Empty rooms, especially. I think that was the feeling that took me into my parents’ empty bedroom that time. There’s always something about an empty room. You never know what’s in there.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The international community was horrified but made no urgent demand for the killing to be stopped; rather, the prevailing feeling was that all parties were equally guilty.27 “I don’t care two cents about Bosnia. Not two cents,” said New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “The people there have brought on their own troubles. Let them keep on killing one another and the problem will be solved.”28 To their credit, the Arab-Afghans were the only people to provide military help, but the Bosnian Muslims found them intolerant, were baffled by their global jihadism, and adamantly rejected all their plans for an Islamic state. Unfortunately, the Arab-Afghans’ presence gave the impression abroad that the Bosnian Muslims were also fundamentalists, though in fact many wore their Islam very lightly. Stereotypical views about Islam and fears of an Islamic state on the threshold of Europe may well have contributed to the Western reluctance to intervene; Serbian rhetoric of defensive walls may not have seemed such a bad idea to some Europeans and Americans. Nevertheless, in August 1995, NATO did intervene with a series of air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions, which finally brought this tragic conflict to an end. A peace agreement was signed in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1995. But the world was left with a troubling memory. Once again there had been concentration camps in Europe, this time with Muslims in them. After the Holocaust, the cry had been “Never again,” but this did not seem to apply to Europe’s Muslim population. [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] Other Arab-Afghan veterans found that when they returned home, they were too radical for the local Muslims who had not shared their experience in Afghanistan. The vast majority vehemently rejected their ruthless militancy. In Algeria, Afghan veterans had high hopes of creating an Islamic state, because the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) seemed certain to gain a majority in the national elections in 1992. But at the last moment, the military staged a coup, and the liberal secularist FLN president Benjedid, who had promised democratic reforms, suppressed the FIS and imprisoned its leaders. Had a democratic process been thwarted in such an unconstitutional manner in Iran or Pakistan, there would have been worldwide outrage. Yet because it was an Islamic government that had been blocked by the coup, there was jubilation in some sectors of the Western press, which seemed to suggest that in some mysterious way this undemocratic action had made Algeria safe for democracy. The French government threw its support behind the new hard-line FLN president Liamine Zeroual and strengthened his resolve to hold no further dialogue with the FIS.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  101 When the delegates arrived at Ephesus, they were met by hordes of monks wielding clubs and attacking Eutyches’s opponents: They were carrying off men, some of them from the ships and others of them from the streets and others from the houses and others from the churches where they were praying and were pursuing others of them that fled; and with all zeal they were searching out and digging even those who were hiding in caves and in holes of the earth. 102 Hilary of Poitiers, the pope’s envoy, thought he was lucky to get out alive, and Bishop Flavian was beaten so badly that he died shortly afterward. Dioscorus refused to allow any dissenting voice to be heard, doctored the minutes, and called in the imperial troops when it came to the vote. The following year, however, Theodosius died, and the monks lost their imperial support. A new council met at Chalcedon in 451 to reverse Second Ephesus and create a neutral theological middle ground. 103 The “Tome” of Pope Leo, which declared diplomatically that Jesus was fully God and fully man, now became the touchstone of orthodoxy. 104 Dioscorus was deposed, and the roaming Syrian boskoi reined in. Henceforth all monks were required to live and remain in their monastery, forbidden to participate in both worldly and ecclesiastical affairs, and were to be financially dependent on and controlled by the local bishop. But Chalcedon, hailed as the triumph of law and order, was actually an imperial coup. At the beginning of the fourth century, Christians had denounced the presence of imperial troops in their churches as sacrilegious; but after the horror of Second Ephesus, the moderate bishops begged the emperor to take control. Consequently a committee of nineteen of the highest military and civil officials of the empire presided over Chalcedon, set the agenda, silenced dissenting voices, and enforced correct procedure. Henceforth in the Syrian-speaking world, the Chalcedonian Church was known as Melkite—“the emperor’s church.” In any previous empire the religion of the ruling class had always been distinct from the faith of the subjugated masses, so the Christian emperors’ attempt to impose their theology on their subjects was a shocking break with precedent and was experienced as an outrage. Opponents of this imperialized Christianity espoused Eutyches’s Monophysitism in protest. In fact, the theological difference between Monophysites and Nicenes was minimal, but the Monophysites could point to other Christian traditions—not least Jesus’s stance against Rome—to claim that the Melkites had made an unholy alliance with earthly power. The debates about the nature of Christ had been an attempt to build a holistic view of reality, one with no impregnable division between the physical and the spiritual realms or the divine and the human.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The rest of the soiree would have resembled all the others had it not been for the beauty and the touching age of this young maiden who more than usually inflamed those villains and caused them to multiply their infamies; it was satiety rather than commiseration that sent the unhappy child back to her room and gave her, for a few hours at least, the rest and quiet she needed. I should indeed have liked to have been able to comfort her that first night, but, obliged to spend it with Severino, it may well have been I on the contrary who stood in the greater need of help, for I had the misfortune, no, not to please, the word would not be suitable, no, but in a most lively manner to excite that sodomite's infamous passions; at this period he desired me almost every night; being exhausted on this particular one, he conducted some researches; doubtless afraid the appalling sword with which he was endowed would not cause me an adequate amount of pain, he fancied, this time, he might perforate me with one of those articles of furniture usually found in nunneries, which decency forbids me from naming and which was of an exorbitant thickness; here, one was obliged to be ready for anything. He himself made the weapon penetrate into his beloved shrine; thanks to powerful blows, it was driven very deep; I screamed; the monk was amused, after a few backward and forward passes, he suddenly snapped the instrument free and plunged his own into the gulf he had just dug open... what whimsy! Is that not positively the contrary of everything men are able to desire! But who can define the spirit of libertinage? For a long time we have realized this to be an enigma of Nature; she has not yet pronounced the magic word. In the morning, feeling somewhat renewed, he wanted to try out another torture: he produced a far more massy machine: this one was hollow and fitted with a high-pressure pump that squirted an incredibly powerful stream of water through an orifice which gave the jet a circumference of over three inches; the enormous instrument itself was nine inches around by twelve long. Severino loaded it with steaming hot water and prepared to bury it in my front end; terrified by such a project, I throw myself at his knees to ask for mercy, but he is in one of those accursed situations where pity cannot be heard, where far more eloquent passions stifle it and substitute an often exceedingly dangerous cruelty. The monk threatens me with all his rage if I do not acquiesce; I have to obey.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Narcisse," said the Count to one of them, "here is the Countess' new chambermaid; I must test her; hand me the lancets." Narcisse opens a cupboard and immediately produces all a surgeon's gear. I allow your imagination to fancy my state; my executioner spied my embarrassment, and it merely excited his mirth. "Put her in place, Zephire," Monsieur de Gernande said to another of the youths, and this boy approached me with a smile. "Don't be afraid, Mademoiselle," said he, "it can only do you the greatest good. Take your place here." It was a question of kneeling lightly upon the edge of a tabouret located in the middle of the room; one's arms were elevated and attached to two black straps which descended from the ceiling. No sooner have I assumed the posture than the Count steps up scalpel in hand: he can scarcely breathe, his eyes are alive with sparks, his face smites me with terror; he ties bands about both my arms, and in a flash he has lanced each of them. A cry bursts from between his teeth, it is accompanied by two or three blasphemies when he catches sight of my blood; he retires to a distance of six feet and sits down. The light garment covering him is soon deployed; Zephire kneels between his thighs and sucks him; Narcisse, his feet planted on his master's armchair, presents the same object to him to suckle he is himself having drained by Zephire. Gernande gets his hands upon the boy's loins, squeezes them, presses them to him, but quits them long enough to cast his inflamed eyes toward me. My blood is escaping in floods and is falling into two white basins situated underneath my arms. I soon feel myself growing faint. "Monsieur, Monsieur," I cry, "have pity on me, I am about to collapse." I sway, totter, am held up by the straps, am unable to fall; but my arms having shifted, and my head slumping upon my shoulder, my face is now washed with blood. The Count is drunk with joy... however, I see nothing like the end of his operation approaching, I swoon before he reaches his goal; he was perhaps only able to attain it upon seeing me in this state, perhaps his supreme ecstasy depended upon this morbid picture.... At any rate, when I returned to my senses I found myself in an excellent bed, with two old women standing near me; as soon as they saw me open my eyes, they brought me a cup of bouillon and, at three-hour intervals, rich broths; this continued for two days, at the end of which Monsieur de Gernande sent to have me get up and come for a conversation in the same salon where I had been received upon my arrival. I was led to him; I was still a little weak and giddy, but otherwise well; I arrived.

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

  But the better feeling of the Christian church shrank from it with horror. The bishops Ambrose of Milan,247 and Martin of Tours,248 raised a memorable protest against it, and broke off all communion with Ithacius and the other bishops who had approved the execution. Yet it should not be forgotten that these bishops, at least Ambrose, were committed against the death penalty in general, and in other respects had no indulgence for heathens and heretics.249 The whole thing, too, was irregularly done; on the one hand the bishops appeared as accusers in a criminal cause, and on the other a temporal judge admitted an appeal from the episcopal jurisdiction, and pronounced an opinion in a matter of faith. Subsequently the functions of the temporal and spiritual courts in the trial of heretics were more accurately distinguished. The execution of the Priscillianists is the only instance of the bloody punishment of heretics in this period, as it is the first in the history of Christianity. But the propriety of violent measures against heresy was thenceforth vindicated even by the best fathers of the church. Chrysostom recommends, indeed, Christian love toward heretics and heathens, and declares against their execution, but approved the prohibition of their assemblies and the confiscation of their churches; and he acted accordingly against the Novatians and the Quartodecimanians, so that many considered his own subsequent misfortunes as condign punishment.250 Jerome, appealing to Deut. xiii. 6–10, seems to justify even the penalty of death against religious errorists.251

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The ummah also had internal troubles. Three of Medina’s Jewish tribes—the Qaynuqa, Nadir, and Qurayzah—were determined to destroy Muhammad, because he had undermined their political ascendency in the oasis. They had sizable armies and preexisting alliances with Mecca so they were a security risk. When the Qaynuqa and Nadir staged revolts and threatened to assassinate him, Muhammad expelled them from Medina. But the Nadir had joined the nearby Jewish settlement of Khaybar and drummed up support for Mecca among the local Bedouin. So after the Battle of the Trench, when the Qurayzah had put the entire settlement at risk by plotting with Mecca during the siege, Muhammad showed no mercy. In accordance with Arab custom, the seven hundred men of the tribe were slaughtered and the women and children sold as slaves. The other seventeen Jewish tribes remained in Medina, and the Quran continued to instruct Muslims to behave respectfully to “the people of the book” (ahl al-kitab) and stress what they all held in common.18 Even though the Muslims sentenced the tribesmen of Qurayzah for political rather than religious reasons, this atrocity marked the lowest point in the Prophet’s career. From then on, he intensified his diplomatic efforts to build relationships with the Bedouin, who had been impressed by his military success, and established a powerful confederacy. Bedouin allies did not have to convert to Islam but swore merely to fight the ummah’s enemies: Muhammad must be one of the few leaders in history to build an empire largely by negotiation.19 In March 628, during the month of the hajj, Muhammad announced, to everybody’s astonishment, that he intended to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, which, since pilgrims were forbidden to carry weapons, meant riding unarmed into enemy territory.20 About a thousand Muslims volunteered to accompany him. The Quraysh dispatched their cavalry to attack the pilgrims, but their Bedouin allies guided them by a back route into the sanctuary of Mecca, where all violence was forbidden. Muhammad then ordered the pilgrims to sit beside the Well of Hudaybiyyah and wait for the Quraysh to negotiate. He knew that he had put them in an extremely difficult position: if the guardians of the Kabah killed pilgrims on sacred ground, they would lose all credibility in the region. Yet when the Qurayshi envoy arrived, Muhammad agreed to conditions that seemed to throw away every advantage the ummah had gained during the war. His fellow pilgrims were so horrified that they almost mutinied, yet the Quran would praise the truce of Hudaybiyyah as a “manifest victory.” While the Meccans had behaved with typical jahili belligerence when they tried to slaughter the unarmed pilgrims, God had sent down the “spirit of peace” (sakina) upon the Muslims.21 Muhammad’s first biographer declared that this nonviolent victory was the turning point for the young movement: during the next two years “double or more than double as many entered Islam as ever before,”22 and in 630 Mecca voluntarily opened its gates to the Muslim army.

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

  Gregory was early instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the rudiments of science. He soon conceived a special predilection for the study of oratory, and through the influence of his mother, strengthened by a dream,1968 he determined on the celibate life, that he might devote himself without distraction to the kingdom of God. Like the other church teachers of this period, he also gave this condition the preference, and extolled it in orations and poems, though without denying the usefulness and divine appointment of marriage. His father, and his friend Gregory of Nyssa were among the few bishops who lived in wedlock. From his native town he went for his further education to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he probably already made a preliminary acquaintance with Basil; then to Caesarea in Palestine, where there were at that time celebrated schools of eloquence; thence to Alexandria, where his revered Athanasius wore the supreme dignity of the church; and finally to Athens, which still maintained its ancient renown as the seat of Grecian science and art. Upon the voyage thither he survived a fearful storm, which threw him into the greatest mental anguish, especially because, though educated a Christian, he, according to a not unusual custom of that time, had not yet received holy baptism, which was to him the condition of salvation. His deliverance he ascribed partly to the intercession of his parents, who had intimation of his peril by presentiments and dreams, and he took it as a second consecration to the spiritual office. In Athens be formed or strengthened the bond of that beautiful Christian friendship with Basil, of which we have already spoken in the life of Basil. They were, as Gregory says, as it were only one soul animating two bodies. He became acquainted also with the prince Julian, who was at that time studying there, but felt wholly repelled by him, and said of him with prophetic foresight: "What evil is the Roman empire here educating for itself!"1969 He was afterwards a bitter antagonist of Julian, and wrote two invective discourses against him after his death, which are inspired, however, more by the fire of passion than by pure enthusiasm for Christianity, and which were intended to expose him to universal ignominy as a horrible monument of enmity to Christianity and of the retributive judgment of God.1970

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

  With the death of Theodosius the empire again fell into two parts, which were never afterward reunited. The weak sons and successors of this prince, Arcadius in the east (395–408) and Honorius in the west (395–423), and likewise Theodosius II., or the younger (son of Arcadius, 408–450), and Valentinian III. (423–455), repeated and in some cases added to the laws of the previous reign against the heathen. In the year 408, Honorius even issued an edict excluding heathens from civil and military office;100 and in 423 appeared another edict, which questioned the existence of heathens.101 But in the first place, such laws, in the then critical condition of the empire amidst the confusion of the great migration, especially in the West, could be but imperfectly enforced; and in the next place, the frequent repetition of them itself proves that heathenism still had its votaries. This fact is witnessed also by various heathen writers. Zosimus wrote his "New History," down to the year 410, under the reign and at the court of the younger Theodosius (appearing in the high office of comes and advocatus fisci, as he styles himself), in bitter prejudice against the Christian emperors. In many places the Christians, in their work of demolishing the idols, were murdered by the infuriated pagans. Meantime, however, there was cruelty also on the Christian side. One of the last instances of it was the terrible tragedy of Hypatia. This lady, a teacher of the Neo-Platonic philosophy in Alexandria, distinguished for her beauty, her intelligence, her learning, and her virtue, and esteemed both by Christians and by heathens, was seized in the open street by the Christian populace and fanatical monks, perhaps not without the connivance of the violent bishop Cyril, thrust out from her carriage, dragged to the cathedral, completely stripped, barbarously murdered with shells before the altar, and then torn to pieces and burnt, A.D. 415.102 Socrates, who relates this, adds: "It brought great censure both on Cyril and on the Alexandrian church." § 7. The Downfall of Heathenism. The final dissolution of heathenism in the eastern empire may be dated from the middle of the fifth century. In the year 435 Theodosius II. commanded the temples to be destroyed or turned into churches. There still appear some heathens in civil office and at court so late as the beginning of the reign of Justinian I. (527–567). But this despotic emperor prohibited heathenism as a form of worship in the empire on pain of death, and in 529 abolished the last intellectual seminary of it, the philosophical school of Athens, which had stood nine hundred years. At that time just seven philosophers were teaching in that school,103 the shades of the ancient seven sages of Greece,—a striking play of history, like the name of the last west-Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, or, in contemptuous diminutive, Augustulus, combining the names of the founder of the city and the founder of the empire.

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

  Caesar of Heisterbach furnishes a storehouse of tales which to him were as much realities as reports of the Dark Continent by Stanley or Speke would be to us. This genial writer represents an old monk setting at rest the doubts of a novice by assuring him that he himself had seen the devil in the forms of a Moor, an ox, a dog, a toad, an ape, a pig, and even in the garbs of a nun and a prior. Peter the Venerable likewise speaks of Satan as taking on the form of a bear.2121 He also assumed the forms of a black horse, rooks, and other creatures. French poetry and the popular imagination invested him with horns, claws, and tail.2122 The devil made his appearance at all hours of the day and night, in the time of health, and at the hour of death. The monk was no more exempt from his personal solicitations while engaged at his devotions than at other times. One of the places where the evil spirits took particular delight in playing tricks was in the choir when the monastics were met for matins and other services. Here they would vex the devout by blowing out the lights, turning to a wrong leaf, or confusing the tune.2123 On one occasion Herman of Marienstadt saw three who passed so near to him that he might easily have touched them, had he so desired. He noted that they did not touch the floor and that one of them had the face of a woman, veiled. Sometimes a troop appeared and threw one part of the choir into discord, and when the other part took up the chant, the demons hastened over to its side and threw it into the same confusion, so that the two wings of the choir shouted hoarsely and discordantly one to the other.2124 On another occasion Herman, then become abbot, a monastic whom Caesar calls a man of marked piety, saw the devil in the form of a Moor sitting on one of the windows of the church. He looked as if he had just emerged from hell-fire, but soon took his flight. When Herman was praying to be delivered from such visions, the devil seizing his last opportunity appeared to the abbot as a bright eye as big as a fist, and as if to say, "Look straight at me once more for this is the last time." Nevertheless, the abbot saw the devil again and this time at the sepulture of Countess Aleidis of Freusberg. While the lady’s body was lying in its shroud, the devil appeared, peering into all corners as if he was looking for something he had lost. It was a bad symptom of the monkish imagination that when the devil was seen in convents, it was often in the form of a woman and a naked woman at

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “There is no equality in love,” I replied solemnly. “Whenever it is a matter of choice for me of ruling or being ruled, it seems much more satisfactory to me to be the slave of a beautiful woman. But where shall I find the woman who knows how to rule, calmly, full of self-confidence, even harshly, and not seek to gain her power by means of petty nagging?” “Oh, that might not be so difficult.” “You think—” “I—for instance—” she laughed and leaned far back—“I have a real talent for despotism—I also have the necessary furs—but last night you were really seriously afraid of me!” “Quite seriously.” “And now?” “Now, I am more afraid of you than ever!” We are together every day, I and—Venus; we are together a great deal. We breakfast in my honey-suckle arbor, and have tea in her little sitting-room. I have an opportunity to unfold all my small, very small talents. Of what use would have been my study of all the various sciences, my playing at all the arts, if I were unable in the case of a pretty, little woman— But this woman is by no means little; in fact she impresses me tremendously. I made a drawing of her to-day, and felt particularly clearly, how inappropriate the modern way of dressing is for a cameo-head like hers. The configuration of her face has little of the Roman, but much of the Greek. Sometimes I should like to paint her as Psyche, and then again as Astarte. It depends upon the expression in her eyes, whether it is vaguely dreamy, or half-consuming, filled with tired desire. She, however, insists that it be a portrait-likeness. I shall make her a present of furs. How could I have any doubts? If not for her, for whom would princely furs be suitable? * * * * * I was with her yesterday evening, reading the Roman Elegies to her. Then I laid the book aside, and improvised something for her. She seemed pleased; rather more than that, she actually hung upon my words, and her bosom heaved. Or was I mistaken? The rain beat in melancholy fashion on the window-panes, the fire crackled in the fireplace in wintery comfort. I felt quite at home with her, and for a moment lost all my fear of this beautiful woman; I kissed her hand, and she permitted it. Then I sat down at her feet and read a short poem I had written for her. VENUS IN FURS. “Place thy foot upon thy slave, Oh thou, half of hell, half of dreams; Among the shadows, dark and grave, Thy extended body softly gleams.” And—so on. This time I really got beyond the first stanza. At her request I gave her the poem in the evening, keeping no copy. And now as I am writing this down in my diary I can only remember the first stanza.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I have a frequent sexual fantasy about being raped, by one or more men. These fantasies do not take place, however, while having sex with my husband. They take place when I am alone, and with time on my hands. I know it sounds weird or even crazy, but at times I feel as if I want to actually act my fantasy out, as if it were truly happening! I don’t know why this happens, or why I should even feel this way. At the age of seventeen I was almost raped by a boy who was my best friend’s boyfriend. The act was never completed… he was finally stopped by my crying. This all took place in his car, while he was supposed to be taking me home from a party after he’d had a quarrel with his girlfriend. She left the party, and he stayed and drank pretty heavily, as did the rest of us. He volunteered to take me home, after my boyfriend, who is now my husband, called me at the party from his job and told me he had to work late and couldn’t make it. I remember wondering what my girlfriend actually saw in the boy, who was nothing but a rough, tough, and more or less foulmouthed bully. He had always been nice to me, but treated her like dirt. And yet she loved him, and took any kind of abuse from him, including getting pregnant by him, and then losing the baby by miscarriage in her fourth month. Anyway, on the way home he pulled into a deserted spot in our neighborhood. I immediately sensed what was about to happen and I had mixed emotions about it. I thought to myself how awfully exciting this was in one way, and then again I was truly scared! He immediately pulled me to him and wanted to kiss me, but I automatically refused. I really wanted to, just to find out if it was his animal charm, so to speak, that my girlfriend was in love with.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Listen to me, Therese, listen, my child, you have not yet heard it all, not by any means," said Omphale. "Pregnancy, reverenced in the world, is the very certitude of reprobation amongst these villains; here, the pregnant woman is given no dispensations: brutalities, punishments, and watches continue; on the contrary, a gravid condition is the certain way to procure oneself troubles, sufferings, humiliations, sorrows; how often do they not by dint of blows cause abortions in them whose fruits they decide not to harvest, and when indeed they do allow the fruit to ripen, it is in order to sport with it: what I am telling you now should be enough to warn you to preserve yourself from this state as best you possibly can." "But is one able to ?" "Of course, there are certain devices, sponges... But if Antonin perceives what you are up to, beware of his wrath; the safest way is to smother whatever might be the natural impression by striving to unhinge the imagination, which with monsters like these is not difficult. "We have here as well," my instructress continued, "certain dependencies and alliances of which you probably know very little and of which it were well you had some idea; although this has more to do with the fourth article Ä with, that is to say, the one that treats of our recruitings, our retrenchments, and our exchanges Ä I am going to anticipate for a moment in order to insert the following details. "You are not unaware, Therese, that the four monks composing this brotherhood stand at the head of their Order; all belong to distinguished families, all four are themselves very rich: independently of the considerable funds allocated by the Benedictines for the maintenance of this bower of bliss into which everyone hopes to enter in his turn, they who do arrive here contribute a large proportion of their property and possessions to the foundation already established. These two sources combined yield more than a hundred thousand crowns annually which is devoted solely to finding recruits and meeting the house's expenses; they have a dozen discreet and reliable women whose sole task is to bring them every month a new subject, no younger than twelve nor older than thirty. The conscriptee must be free of all defects and endowed with the greatest possible number of qualities, but principally with that of eminent birth.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  I find the tablet and plop back down in my spot of sun to start explaining the initiations. But when I look up from the sloping page, to see if he’s buying it so far, the whole mood of the room has shifted. The zipper of his chinos is level with my eyes. And inside that zipper his pecker is making that bulge, the bad words for which zoom through my head—Hard-on, Boner, Stiffie. I think it is testament to my badness that I even know such words. Once I spent the night with the principal’s daughter, and when I asked her if she knew what “fuck” meant, she said no. When I explained it to her as nice as I could, she broke out crying, though I hadn’t even used a single cuss word, sticking instead to those words you find in the encyclopedia under A for Anatomy, with the sheer glassy pages of muscle and vein and bone assembling into a man body and a woman body side by side in TV-family clothes. Still, the minute I got to the end of telling the principal’s daughter about the baby being born, her face just collapsed in on itself in a big pucker. She screamed that her parents would never do something that nasty, even trying to have kids. “Then where do you think you came from, dumbass,” I said. She ran caterwauling out of the room at that point. A heartbeat later, her mother popped in all grim-faced. She led me by the hand into their dusty foyer, where she zipped up her parka right over her bathrobe and stepped barefoot into her galoshes. She hoisted me up still in my pajamas with my coat thrown across me and walked through the cold night back across the street to our house. That was the end of spending the night with the principal’s daughter. Maybe grown-ups know I know words like Hard-on from looking at me. “You got a smart mouth, little girl,” Mrs. Dillard back in Leechfield always said, narrowing her eyes at that pronouncement. And I said that a smart mouth was better than a dumb one anyday. Still, sometimes I think being smart just makes certain words go scooting through your head, leaving some bad-word vapor that a mean man can pick up on. In fact, maybe this man, now, who’s dragging down his zipper in slow motion, the little brass teeth unlocking before my eyes like the fangs of some sea monster, can hear that word Hard-on bouncing around inside my head. It invites him almost, draws him to me, actually draws on his dick like magnetism and makes it swell up inside the cloth of his pants. I think of how the vampire couldn’t cross into the girl’s window unless she herself took the crucifix off that window and opened it to him, saying come on in. And still people did it, even when they didn’t mean to.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Mother has dug a trench in the sand for the leg, and she is packing wet sand on it, trying to get the swelling down the way you would with a poultice or mustard plaster. The leg doesn’t look much like a leg anymore. The skin is too tight and inflamed. It looks to me a little like the gray blood sausage Cajuns make called boudain. There are more people standing around—all the men from the seining party and a family, and the light is fading fast behind all their heads. The sky has gone gray, and the colors from everybody’s clothes seem muted, like somebody has sprinkled us all with lime. Somebody gives Lecia a slug of Coca-Cola, and she spits it right back out. She’s going pale all over, to match the leg. In the next slide, dark finally comes. Daddy is talking off to the side with some lawman about what hospital to take Lecia to—High Island or Port Arthur: which is closer, which better. Somebody’s had the idea of turning everybody’s car headlights on us, so lights shoot at us from all kinds of crazy angles. I am kneeling right next to Lecia, holding her hand, but I don’t want to look at her face. The last time I checked it out, it was the color of the moon that’s starting up. Mother is washing that face with a little damp Wash’n Dri cloth she got out of a foil packet in her purse, and I can smell the antiseptic from that under the sea smell and the musty smell of vodka they’ve given Lecia mixed up with Coke to help with the pain. Instead of looking at Lecia, I am paying big attention to the Gulf, which has moved farther away, breaking in long, electric-white lines in the dark. Mother starts talking. She says the light in the breaking waves is caused by phosphorus. She is telling Lecia this like Lecia’s listening. Mother’s voice is very whispery and makes me want to go to sleep. There are, in salt water, she says, microscopic sea animals that get excited by the turmoil of water and so give off light when waves break. One night the three of us took off all our clothes—a phosphorus night like this—and went skinny-dipping. Daddy picked our clothes off the sand and laughed at us from his truck. “You crazy, woman,” he yelled to Mother, but there was joy in it. Then the waves ate his voice, and I dove in and watched my whole body light up. Probably I was falling asleep on somebody’s lap, because that’s what I see us doing. Mother and I are flying underwater like light-green phantoms. It reminds me of the Matisse painting that she’d razored out of one of her art books and taped up over the bathtub. In it the women dance nude in a circle. And we are like those huge women, fluid and pale, Mother and I.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  They hung up those garlic ropes at bedtime. They looped the rosary around the window handles. They full well meant to shoo that evil away when it came flapping all liquid at the glass. But by the time the vampire actually floated there in the creamy moonlight, the girl in the gauzy nightdress was so awestruck by his hunger—the sheer largeness of it—that she’d unloop all the stuff she’d fixed up to stave him off. The garlic ropes slipped from the brass handles, and the windows swung wide so the curtains billowed over them as he gathered her slender self up into his cape. This whole scene is rushing through my head when my babysitter’s zipper hits bottom. His hand fishes into that zipper and farther, into the shadow of his shorts. The seriousness of that reaching keeps me even from breathing regular. I’m also afraid to make him mad somehow, and even more afraid that any move I make or any word I speak will seem like welcome. So I sit still and pretend not to be home inside myself. I worry worry worry though about what’s about to happen. I think of that old neighbor boy laying me down on the cement sack in the Carters’ garage, him on top of me bucking. Probably I don’t even have a cherry from that. I didn’t hear it pop inside me, because I was so busy thinking for him to hurry before I got in trouble. Whether I have a cherry or not, though, I can feel how marked I am inside for being hurt that way. The high school girls always say in the bathroom that you can tell who’s been fucked by how she walks. Lecia told me that a slew-footed girl—one whose feet splay out—has been getting it for sure. I take comfort in that, for I have the worst pigeon toes in school. Really. Back in Leechfield, I got kicked out of the yoga class that Mother wanted me to take at the Theosophical Society. Here I got kicked out of the Antelope ballet school. No hip rotation at all , the teacher told Mother, then suggested tap dancing for me. But stumping through a tap routine is for fools. The other girls at the barre mirror looked so graceful. They bent their knees down in plié, their frail arms sweeping as they rose. They moved all together like flowers in some Disney cartoon. I knew in my heart I’d never look that way. The man’s dick springs forward fast to get out of those tight britches. It’s red like somebody’s mad face, swollen like it hurts. The mere fact of it makes me seize up inside. The man pushes it down a little, holding it at its base so it points right at my face. I never saw a dick this big, this close. The little pee-hole surprises me, how it’s cut longways like a vent in a pie.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  A lot of families took time to root around in their attics to rescue special photographs and papers like marriage licenses from the tidal wave that Cattleman Bill was calling inevitable. I remember Carol Sharp’s mother wrapped her baby shoes up in tissue paper to take along. We did none of these things. Daddy tended to shrug about a storm. “Shit, if it hits here, it’ll take the house,” he said. He didn’t figure there was much point in scrabbling around, since a direct hit would wipe us out anyway. Which attitude didn’t go far toward reassuring me. While other fathers were taking sick leave and folding up their lawn chairs and storing special furniture high in their attics, Daddy just kept plodding off to the plant and coming home long enough to refill his mess kit with food and plodding back. Eventually, he didn’t bother coming home at all. It’s odd to me now how easily I let him leave our lives that fall at such an ugly time. Maybe he’d been slowly backpedaling out of the daddy business since Grandma came. Things just ran smoother without him around for the old woman to carp at. Maybe his absence was inevitable as we got older. In fairness to Daddy, we at that point had plenty of time to evacuate, so it’s not like the storm threatened our lives or anything, just our property, which didn’t actually amount to much dollarwise. Plus the Gulf Oil Corporation kept those men who hadn’t run off with their families working more or less nonstop, at double overtime, trying to get the plant battened down. Daddy would have felt like a fool turning that down. Still, I wonder why we loosened our grip on him so easy. Having Mother take care of us without him meant that—with the right amount of whining—we could talk her into buying nearly any toy, article of clothing, or treat. She saw us as grossly underprivileged. We were practically urchins, by her standards. So, in her care, we did things things that Daddy, with his forty-acres-and-a-mule sense of thrift, wouldn’t have stood for: cutting up a sheet over a card table for a playhouse, say, or painting murals on the garage wall with oil paints. Daddy had an extravagance of heart. He pretty much indulged us in a way neighbors found shameful. But he drew a hard line at anything that seemed to waste money, which was where Mother started to overtake him in our hearts. The first day that he didn’t come home at all, Lecia and I called him a bunch of times. I always imagined our voices snailing through the telephone lines in an intricate pattern of stops and transfers trying to get to him. “Gulf Oil. Hep you?” was how the operator answered at the first ring. “Extension 691, please,” we’d tell her. Lecia and I would stand nearly ear to ear in the kitchen, each one trying to squeeze the other off the receiver.