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 The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Ad haec ille subridens ‘At tu’ inquit ‘Non sanguine sed lotio perfusus es, verum tamen et ipse per som- nium iugulari visus sum mihi. Nam et iugulum istum dolui et cor ipsum mihi avelli putavi et nunc etiam spiritu deficior et genua quatior et gradu titubo et aliquid cibatus refovendo spiritu desidero. ‘En’ inquam *Paratum tibi adest ientaculum, et cum dicto manticam meam humero exuo, caseum cum pane propere ei porrigo, et Iuxta platanum istam residamus ' aio. 19: Quo facto et ipse aliquid indidem sumo, eumque avide esitantem aspicio aliquanto intentiore macie atque pallore buxeo deficientem video. Sic denique eum vitalis color turbaverat ut mihi prae metu, nocturnas, etiam Furias illas imaginanti, frustulum panis quod primum sumpseram, quamvis admodum modicüm, mediis faucibus inhaereret, ac neque deorsum demeare neque sursum remeare posset. Nam et crebritas ipsa commeantium metum mihi cumulabat: quis enim de duobus comitum alterum sine alterius noxa peremptum crederet?. Verum ille, ut satis detruncaverat cibum, sitire impatienter coeperát; nam et optimi casei bonam partem avide devoraverat, et haud ita longe radices platani lenis fluvius in speciem placidae paludis ignavus ibat argento vel vitro aemulus in colorem, ‘En’ inquam ‘Explere latice fontis lacteo. ^ Assurgit ille et oppertus paululum planiorem ripae marginem com- plicitus in genua appronat se avidus affectans 32 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I ‘Nay, thou art not wet with the blood of men, but thou art embrued with stinking filth: and verily I myself dreamed this night that my throat was cut and that I felt the pain of the wound, and that my heart was pulled out of my belly, and the remem- brance thereof makes me now to fear, and my knees do tremble that I totter in my gait, and therefore I would fain eat somewhat to strengthen and revive my spirits.’ Then said I : * Behold, here is thy break- fast, and therewithal I opened my scrip that hanged upon my shoulder, and gave him bread and cheese, and * Let us sit down,’ quoth I, * Under that great plane-tree.'

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  By these and like lies, he provoked the shepherds earnestly to my destruction, which grieved me (God wot) full sore that I could say nothing to defend my chastity. Then one of the shepherds said: “ Why do we not make sacrifice of this common adulterous ass as his horrid doings deserve? My son," quoth he, “ Let us kill him and throw his guts to the dogs, and reserve his flesh for the labourers' supper. Then iet us cast dust upon his skin, and carry it home to our master, and easily feign that the wolves have devoured him.” The boy that was my evil accuser made no delay, but prepared himself to execute the sentence of the shepherd, rejoicing at my present danger, and thinking upon the kick which I gave him; but oh how greatly did I then repent that the stripe of my heel had not killed him! Then he drew out his sword, and made it sharp upon a whetstone to slay me, but another of the shepherds began to say : «Verily itis a great offence to kill so fair an ass, and so (by accusation of luxury and lascivious wantonness) to lack so necessary his labour and service, where otherwise if you would eut off his stones, he might : 333 . LUCIUS APULEIUS in Venerem ullo modo surgere vosque omni metu periculi liberare, insuper etiam longe crassior atque corpulentior effici. Multos ego scio non modo asinos inertes, verum etiam ferocissimos equos, nimio libi- dinis laborantes atque ob id truces vesanosque, ad- hibita tali detestatione mansuetos ac mansues exinde factos, et oneri ferundo non inhabiles et cetero minis- terio patientes. Denique, nisi vobis suadeo nolentibus, possum spatio modico interiecto, quo mercatum proxi- mum obire statui, petitis e domo ferramentis huic curae praeparatis, ad vos actutum redire trucemque amatorem istum atque insuavem dissitis femoribus emasculare et quovis vervece mitiorem efficere." 24 Tali sententia mediis Orci manibus extractus, sed extremae poenae reservatus, maerebam et in novis- sima parte corporis totum me periturum deflebam. Inedia denique continua vel praecipiti ruina memet ipse quaerebam extinguere, moriturus quidem nihilo- minus sed moriturus integer. Dumque in ista. necis meae decunctor electione, matutino me rursum puer ille peremptor meus contra montis suetum ducit vestigium. Iamque me de cuiusdam vastissimae ilicis ramo pendulo destinato, paululum viam super- gressus ipse securi lignum quod deveheret recidebat, et ecce de proximo specu vastum attollens caput funesta proserpit ursa. Quam simul conspexi, pavidus et repentina facie conterritus totum corporis pondus in postremos poplites recello, arduaque cer- vice sublimiter elevata, lorum, quo tenebar, rumpo 334 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  The Lords and Ladies who remained were very loud and swept up in the fever of the afternoon, but she was being unbound and she did not know what would now happen to her. Several other slaves had been soundly spanked during the course of the banquet, and it seemed finally that no offense was required, merely the decision of a Lord or Lady. The request was then granted by the Queen -- and the unlucky one was thrust up over the Page's knee, his head bowed, his feet dangling off the ground, and down came the golden paddle. Twice it had been young women. And one of them had broken into silent sobs. But there was in her manner something that made Beauty a little suspicious. After she was spanked, she scurried all too fast to the Queen's feet, and Beauty hoped she would be spanked again until her sobs were real, and all her scurrying was real, and she found herself vaguely delighted when the Queen ordered it. Now, as Beauty was awakened, she thought dreamily of all this, and felt sharp fear, and also some sense of drama. Would she be sent away to some place with all these slaves? Or would the Prince take her? She was stunned with confusion, when she realized the Prince had risen and given an order to the gray-eyed Lord to bring Beauty after him. She was untied; she was very stiff. But the Lord now had one of those gold paddles in his hand which he tested loudly upon his palm, and giving her no time to stretch her aching muscles, he ordered her down on her knees and forward. When she hesitated, his command came very sharp again, but he did not strike her. She rushed to catch up with the Prince who had just reached the stairway. And soon she was following him up and down a long corridor. "Beauty," he stood back. "Open the doors!" And kneeling up, she quickly opened them and forced them apart and then followed the Prince into a bed chamber. The fire was already a great blaze on the hearth and the windows were curtained, and the bed had been turned back, and Beauty was quivering with excitement. "My Prince, shall I begin her training at once?" asked the gray-eyed Lord. "No, my Lord, I shall attend to it myself the first few days, possibly longer," said the Prince, "though you may of course, whenever the occasion arises, instruct her, teach her manners, the general rules that pertain to all the slaves, and so forth. She does not drop her eyes as she should, as you can see; she is so very inquisitive." And at this he smiled, though Beauty at once looked down, much as she wanted to see it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Madame, saying he had gone way too far, ordered him to never ever appear before her again. He left her room. Only an hour later, the lady was taking her customary walk along one of those beautiful canals at Bagnolet, when Saint-Preuil leapt out from behind a hedge, totally naked, and standing before his mistress in this state, he cried out, "For the last time, Madame— Goodbye!" Thereupon, he threw himself into the canal, head first. The lady, terrified by such a sight, Prove Yourself • 325 Grammont knocked at the door, and a servant, mistaking him for the duke, let him in. He headed straight for the lady's chamber, where he found her lying on a couch, in a sheer gown. He threw off Brissac's cloak and she gasped in fright. "What is the matter, my fair one?" he asked. "Your headache, to all appearance, is gone?" She seemed put out, exclaimed she still had the headache, and insisted that he leave. It was up to her, she said, to make or break appointments. "Madam," Grammont said calmly, "I know what perplexes you: you are afraid lest Brissac should meet me here; but you may make yourself easy on that account." He then opened the window and revealed Brissac out in the square, dutifully walking back and forth with a horse, like a common stable boy. He looked ridiculous; de l'Orme burst out laughing, threw her arms around the count, and exclaimed, "My dear Chevalier, I can hold out no longer; you are too amiable and too ec- centric not to be pardoned." He told her the whole story, and she promised that the duke could exercise horses all night, but she would not let him in. They made an appointment for the following evening. Outside, the count returned the cloak, apologized for taking so long, and thanked the duke. Brissac was most gracious, even holding Grammont's horse for him to mount, and waving goodbye as he rode off. Interpretation. Count Grammont knew that most would-be seducers give up too easily, mistaking capriciousness or apparent coolness as a sign of a genuine lack of interest. In fact it can mean many things: perhaps the per- son is testing you, wondering if you are really serious. Prickly behavior is exactly this kind of test—if you give up at the first sign of difficulty, you obviously do not want them that much. Or it could be that they themselves are uncertain about you, or are trying to choose between you and someone else. In any event, it is absurd to give up.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  She and Flynn eventually engaged in a stormy marriage that lasted seven years. Interpretation. The women who became involved with Errol Flynn (and by the end of his life they numbered in the thousands) had every reason in the world to feel suspicious of him: he was real life's closest thing to a Don Juan. (In fact he had played the legendary seducer in a film.) He was con- stantly surrounded by women, who knew that no involvement with him could last. And then there were the rumors of his temper, and his love of danger and adventure. No woman had greater reason to resist him than Nora Eddington: when she met him he stood accused of rape; she was in- volved with another man; she was a God-fearing Catholic. Yet she fell un- der his spell, just like all the rest. Some seducers—D. H. Lawrence for instance—operate mostly on the mind, creating fascination, stirring up the need to possess them. Flynn operated on the body. His cool, nonchalant manner infected women, lowering their resistance. This happened almost the minute they met him, like a drug: he was at ease around women, grace- ful and confident. They fell into this spirit, drifting along on a current he created, leaving the world and its heaviness behind—it was only you and him. Then—perhaps that same day, perhaps a few weeks later—there would come a touch of his hand, a certain look, that would make them feel a tin- gling, a vibration, a dangerously physical excitement. They would betray that moment in their eyes, a blush, a nervous laugh, and he would swoop in for the kill. No one moved faster than Errol Flynn. The greatest obstacle to the physical part of the seduction is the target's education, the degree to which he or she has been civilized and socialized. Such education conspires to constrain the body, dull the senses, fill the mind with doubts and worries. Flynn had the ability to return a woman to a more natural state, in which desire, pleasure, and sex had nothing negative attached to them. He lured women into adventure not with arguments but bowls on a table. "Please take your meal," said Thubuit. "That is not what I have come to do," answered Satni, while the slaves put aromatic wood on the fire and scattered scent about. "Do that for which we have come here," Satni repeated.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I felt thirsty by then, and walked to the drinking fountain; there Red approached me and in all humility suggested a mixed double. “I am Bill Mead,” he said. “And that’s Fay Page, actress. Maffy On Say”—he added (pointing with his ridiculously hooded racket at polished Fay who was already talking to Dolly). I was about to reply “Sorry, but—” (for I hate to have my filly involved in the chops and jabs of cheap bunglers), when a remarkably melodious cry diverted my attention: a bellboy was tripping down the steps from the hotel to our court and making me signs. I was wanted, if you please, on an urgent long distance call—so urgent in fact that the line was being held for me. Certainly. I got into my coat (inside pocket heavy with pistol) and told Lo I would be back in a minute. She was picking up a ball—in the continental foot-racket way which was one of the few nice things I had taught her,—and smiled—she smiled at me! An awful calm kept my heart afloat as I followed the boy up to the hotel. This, to use an American term, in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it. I had left her in mediocre hands, but it hardly mattered now. I would fight, of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. Yes, quite a climb. At the desk, a dignified, Roman-nosed man, with, I suggest, a very obscure past that might reward investigation, handed me a message in his own hand. The line had not been held after all. The note said: “Mr. Humbert. The head of Birdsley (sic!) School called. Summer residence—Birdsley 2-8282. Please call back immediately. Highly important.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I felt thirsty by then, and walked to the drinking fountain; there Red approached me and in all humility suggested a mixed double. “I am Bill Mead,” he said. “And that’s Fay Page, actress. Maffy On Say”—he added (pointing with his ridiculously hooded racket at polished Fay who was already talking to Dolly). I was about to reply “Sorry, but—” (for I hate to have my filly involved in the chops and jabs of cheap bunglers), when a remarkably melodious cry diverted my attention: a bellboy was tripping down the steps from the hotel to our court and making me signs. I was wanted, if you please, on an urgent long distance call—so urgent in fact that the line was being held for me. Certainly. I got into my coat (inside pocket heavy with pistol) and told Lo I would be back in a minute. She was picking up a ball—in the continental foot-racket way which was one of the few nice things I had taught her,—and smiled—she smiled at me! An awful calm kept my heart afloat as I followed the boy up to the hotel. This, to use an American term, in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it . I had left her in mediocre hands, but it hardly mattered now. I would fight, of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. Yes, quite a climb. At the desk, a dignified, Roman-nosed man, with, I suggest, a very obscure past that might reward investigation, handed me a message in his own hand. The line had not been held after all. The note said: “Mr. Humbert. The head of Birdsley (sic!) School called. Summer residence—Birdsley 2-8282. Please call back immediately. Highly important.” I folded myself into a booth, took a little pill, and for about twenty minutes tussled with space-spooks. A quartet of propositions gradually became audible: soprano, there was no such number in Beardsley; alto, Miss Pratt was on her way to England; tenor, Beardsley School had not telephoned; bass, they could not have done so, since nobody knew I was, that particular day, in Champion, Colo. Upon my stinging him, the Roman took the trouble to find out if there had been a long distance call. There had been none. A fake call from some local dial was not excluded. I thanked him. He said: You bet. After a visit to the purling men’s room and a stiff drink at the bar, I started on my return march. From the very first terrace I saw, far below, on the tennis court which seemed the size of a school child’s ill-wiped slate, golden Lolita playing in a double. She moved like a fair angel among three horrible Boschian cripples.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  You have to sleep, I told myself sternly. But already I could feel myself moving into a panic which recalled my worst childhood night terrors. I felt the center of myself slipping backward in time even as my adult, rational self protested. You are not a child, I said aloud, but the insane pounding of my heart continued. I was covered with cold sweat. I sat rooted to the bed. I knew I needed a bath, but would not take one because of my fear of leaving the room. I had to pee desperately, but was afraid to go out to the toilet. I did not even dare to take off my shoes (for fear the man under the bed would grab me by the foot). I did not dare wash my face (who knew what lurked behind the curtain?). I thought I saw a figure moving on the terrace outside the window. Phantom cars of light crossed the ceiling. A toilet flushed in the hall and I jumped. There were footsteps down the hall. I began to remember scenes from Murders in the Rue Morgue. I remembered some nameless movie I had seen on television at about the age of five. It showed a vampire who could fade in and out of walls. No locks could keep him out. I visualized him pulsating in and out of the dirty, splotched wallpaper. I appealed again to my adult self for help. I tried to be critical and rational. I knew what vampires stood for. I knew the man under the bed was partly my father. I thought of Groddeck’s Book of the It. The fear of the intruder is the wish for the intruder. I thought of all my sessions with Dr. Happe in which we had spoken of my night terrors. I remembered my adolescent fantasy of being stabbed or shot by a strange man. I would be sitting at my desk writing and the man would always attack from behind. Who was he? Why was my life populated by phantom men? “Is there no way out of the mind?” Sylvia Plath asked in one of her desperate last poems. If I was trapped, I was trapped by my own fears. Motivating everything was the terror of being alone. It sometimes seemed I would make any compromise, endure any ignominy, stay with any man just so as not to face being alone. But why? What was so terrible about being alone? Try to think of the reasons, I told myself. Try. me: Why is being alone so terrible? me: Because if no man loves me I have no identity. me: But obviously that isn’t true. You write, people read your work and it matters to them. You teach and your students need you and care about you. You have friends who love you. Even your parents and sisters love you—in their own peculiar way.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  HysteriaSpinal irritationHysterical epilepsyCataleptic fitsEpileptic fitsIdiocyManiaDeathBaker Brown argued that surgical removal of the clitoris was the best way to prevent this fatal slide from pleasure to idiocy to death. After gaining considerable celebrity and performing an unknown number of clitorectomies, Baker Brown’s methods fell out of favor and he was expelled from the London Obstetrical Society in disgrace. Baker Brown subsequently went insane, and clitorectomy was discredited in British medical circles.4 Unfortunately, Baker Brown’s writing had already had a significant impact on medical practice across the Atlantic. Clitorectomies continued to be performed in the United States well into the twentieth century as a cure for hysteria, nymphomania, and female masturbation. As late as 1936, Holt’s Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, a respected medical-school text, recommended surgical removal or cauterization of the clitoris as a cure for masturbation in girls. By the middle of the twentieth century, as the procedure was finally falling into disrepute in the United States, it was revived with a new rationale. Now, rather than a way to stamp out masturbation, surgical removal of large clitorises was recommended for cosmetic purposes.5 Before becoming a target for surgery, the clitoris had been ignored by male authors of elaborate anatomical sketchbooks for centuries. It wasn’t until the mid-1500s that a Venetian professor by the name of Matteo Realdo Colombo, who had previously studied anatomy with Michelangelo, stumbled upon a mysterious protuberance between a woman’s legs. As described in Federico Andahazi’s historical novel The Anatomist, Colombo made this discovery while examining a patient named Inés de Torremolinos. Colombo noted that Inés grew tense when he manipulated this small button, and that it appeared to grow in size at his touch. Clearly, this would require further exploration. After examining scores of other women, Colombo found that all of them had this same heretofore “undiscovered” protuberance and that they all responded similarly to gentle manipulation. In March of 1558, Andahazi tells us that Colombo proudly reported his “discovery” of the clitoris to the dean of his faculty.6 As Jonathan Margolis speculates in O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, the response was probably not what Colombo had anticipated. The professor was “arrested in his classroom within days, accused of heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft and Satanism, put on trial and imprisoned. His manuscripts were confiscated, and his [discovery] was never permitted to be mentioned again until centuries after his death.”7 Beware the Devil’s Teat

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  After the war, he led a march on Fiume, on the Adriatic coast. In the negotiations to settle the war, Italians believed they should have been awarded this city, but the Allies had not agreed. D'Annunzio's forces took over the city and the poet became a leader, ruling Fiume for more than a year as an autonomous republic. By then, everyone had forgotten about his less-than-glorious past as a decadent writer. Now he could do no wrong. Interpretation. The appeal of seduction is that of being separated from our normal routines, experiencing the thrill of the unknown. Death is the ulti- mate unknown. In periods of chaos, confusion, and death—the plagues that swept Europe in the Middle Ages, the Terror of the French Revolu- tion, the air raids on London during World War II—people often let go of their usual caution and do things they never would otherwise. They expe- rience a kind of delirium. There is something immensely seductive about yet was his love so great and his hope so strong, sure as he felt of the ceaseless continuance of the love he had thus painfully won, that he preserved his patience and rose from beside her without having done anything contrary to her expressed wish. • The lady was, I think, more astonished than pleased by such virtue; and giving no heed to the honor, patience, and faithfulness her lover had shown in the keeping of his oath, she forthwith suspected that his love was not so great as she had thought, or else that he had found her less pleasing than he had expected. • She therefore resolved, before keeping her promise, to make a further trial of the love he bore her; and to this end she begged him to talk to a girl in her service, who was younger than herself and very beautiful, bidding him make love speeches to her, so that those who saw him come so often to the house might think that it was for the sake of this damsel and not of herself • The young lord, feeling sure that his own love was returned in equal measure, was wholly obedient to her commands, and for love of her compelled himself to make love to the girl; and she, finding him so handsome and well-spoken, believed his lies more than other truth, and loved him as much as though she herself were greatly loved by him. • The mistress finding that matters were thus well advanced, albeit the young lord did not cease to claim her promise, granted him permission to come and see her at one hour after midnight, saying that after Prove Yourself • 329 danger, about heading into the unknown. Show that you have a reckless streak and a daring nature, that you lack the usual fear of death, and you are instantly fascinating to the bulk of humanity.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Were I to catch her by her strong kicking foot; were I to see her amazed look, hear her awful voice; were I still to go through with the ordeal, her ghost would haunt me all my life. Perhaps if the year were 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven among an eternal alchemy of asphalt and rubber and metal and stone—but thank God, not water, not water! Nonetheless it was a very close shave, speaking quite objectively. And now comes the point of my perfect-crime parable. We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around, loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes and pines, a stone rolled, then another. “Those disgusting prying kids,” said Charlotte, holding up her big bra to her breast and turning prone again. “I shall have to speak about that to Peter Krestovski.” From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things. “You scared us,” said Charlotte. Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment, spying on nature (spies are generally shot), trying to finish a lakescape, but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was quite true)—“And have you ever tried painting, Humbert?” Charlotte, who was a little jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  They are always mys- terious to us, and it is this mystery that provides the tension so delightful in seduction; but it is also a source of unease. Freud famously wondered what women really wanted; even to this most insightful of psychological thinkers, the opposite sex was a foreign land. For both men and women, there are deep-rooted feelings of fear and anxiety in relation to the oppo- site sex. In the initial stages of a seduction, then, you must find ways to calm any sense of mistrust that the other person may experience. (A sense of danger and fear can heighten the seduction later on, but if you stir such emotions in the first stages, you will more likely scare the target away.) Es- tablish a neutral distance, seem harmless, and you give yourself room to move. Casanova cultivated a slight femininity in his character—an interest in clothes, theater, domestic matters—that young girls found comforting. The Renaissance courtesan Tullia d'Aragona, developing friendships with the great thinkers and poets of her time, talked of literature and philosophy— anything but the boudoir (and anything but the money that was also her goal). Johannes, the narrator of Søren Kierkegaard's The Seducer's Diary, fol- lows his target, Cordelia, from a distance; when their paths cross, he is po- lite and apparently shy. As Cordelia gets to know him, he doesn't frighten her. In fact he is so innocuous she begins to wish he were less so. Duke Ellington, the great jazz artist and a consummate seducer, would of simulacra of Gomorra. The seducer is nothing more than a lesbian." —FRÉDÉRIC MONNEYRON, SÉDUIRE: L'IMAGINAIRE DE LA SÉDUCTION DE DON GIOVANNI À MICK JAGGER As he [Jupiter] was hurrying busily to and fro, he stopped short at the sight of an Arcadian maiden. The fire of passion kindled the very marrow of his bones. This girl was not one who spent her time in spinning soft fibers of wool, or in arranging her hair in different styles. She was one of Diana's warriors, wearing her tunic pinned together with a brooch, her tresses carelessly caught back by a white ribbon, and carrying in her hand a light javelin or her bow. . . . • The sun on high had passed its zenith, when she entered a grove whose trees had never felt the axe. Here she took her quiver from her shoulders, unstrung her pliant bow, and lay down on the turf, resting her head on her painted quiver.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Casting aside pious thoughts, prayers, and penitential exercises, he began to concentrate his mental faculties upon the youth and beauty of the girl, and to devise suitable ways and means for approaching her in such a fashion that she should not think it lewd of him to make the sort of proposal he had in mind. By putting certain questions to her, he soon discovered that she had never been intimate with the opposite sex and was every hit as innocent as she seemed; and he therefore thought of a possible way to persuade her, with the pretext of serving God, to grant his desires. He began by delivering a long speech in which he showed her how powerful an enemy the devil was to the Lord God, and followed this up by impressing upon her that of all the ways of serving God, the one that He most appreciated consisted in putting the devil back in Hell, to which the Almighty had consigned him in the first place. • The girl asked him how this was done, and Rustico replied: • "You will soon find out, but just do whatever you see me doing for the present. "And so saying, he began to divest himself of the few clothes he was wearing, leaving himself completely naked. The girl followed his example, and he sank to his knees as though he Use Spiritual Lures • 365 eral times he takes Emma's hand, but she politely withdraws it. He talks of love, the magnetic force that draws two people together. Perhaps it has roots in some earlier existence, some previous incarnation of their souls. "Take us, for example. Why should we have met? How did it happen? It can only be that something in our particular inclinations made us come closer and closer across the distance that separated us, the way two rivers flow together." He takes her hand again and this time she lets him hold it. After the fair, he avoids her for a few weeks, then suddenly shows up, claiming that he tried to stay away but that fate, destiny, has pulled him back. He takes Emma riding. When he finally makes his move, in the woods, she seems frightened and rejects his advances. "You must have some mistaken idea," he protests. "I have you in my heart like a Madonna on a pedestal. ... I beseech you: be my friend, my sister, my angel!" Under the spell of his words, she lets him hold her and lead her deeper into the woods, where she succumbs. Rodolphe's strategy is threefold.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Purely psychological treatment for paraphilias and pedophilia have shown little success. The most effective treatments for the latter tend to be based upon biological approaches (hormone therapy, chemical castration). Once beyond the age of malleability, males seem to be stuck with whatever imprint they’ve received, latex or leather, S or M, goat or lamb.* If the influences during this “developmental window” are distorting and destructive, a boy may grow into a man with an unalterable, nearly irresistible desire to reenact the same patterns with others. The ritualized, widespread pedophilia in the Catholic Church appears to be a prime example of this process (as does the Church’s centuries-long attempt to cover up the issue). Recall Schopenhauer’s famous quote, “Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.” (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.) Desire, particularly male desire, is notoriously unresponsive to religious dictate, legal retribution, family pressure, self-preservation, or common sense. It does respond to one thing, however: testosterone. A man who suffered a hormonal disorder that left him with almost no testosterone for four months discussed his experience (anonymously) in a radio interview. Without testosterone, he said, “Everything I identified as being me [was lost]. My ambition, my interest in things, my sense of humor, the inflection of my voice…. The introduction of testosterone returned everything.” Asked whether there had been an upside to being testosterone-free, he said, “There were things that I find offensive about my own personality that were disconnected then. And it was nice to be without them…. I approached people with a humility that I had never displayed before.” But overall, he was glad to have it back, because, “When you have no testosterone, you have no desire.” Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. “The world just changes,” he said. “The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women.” Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: “She’s attractive. I’d like to meet her.” But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, “nice ankles or something,” was enough to “flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another…. Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex.” He concluded, “I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot.”2 It doesn’t take a sex-change operation to understand that many adolescent boys have a frenzied focus on sex. If you’ve ever tried to teach a class containing more than a few, or tried to raise one, or recall the turbulent desires yourself, you know the phrase testosterone poisoning is not always used ironically. For most adolescent boys, life often seems (and is) violent, hectic, and wild.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Princess Lynette is still here, of course. You'll come to know who she is in time, and though I can bear anything from my Queen, from Lord Gregory, and from Leon, I still find it difficult to bear Princess Lynette. But I should stake my life on it that no one knows this. "Now, it's almost morning. I must return you to the dressing room, and also bathe you, so no one knows we've been together. But I've told you my story so that you can understand what it means to yield, and that each of us must find his or her own path to acceptance. "There is more, however, to my story which will only reveal itself to you in time. But let it stand by you in simple ways now. If you must bear a punishment which seems to great for you, think to yourself, 'Ah, but Alexi bore this so therefore it can be borne.'" Beauty did not mean to silence him but she could not restrain her embraces. She was as hungry for him now as she had been earlier, but it was too late. And as he led her back to the dressing room, she wondered whether or not he could guess at the true effect of his words upon her. Could he know that he had enflamed and fascinated her, and amplified for her and understanding of resignation and yielding which she had already felt? As he bathed her, wiping away all evidence of his love, she remained still, caught in her thoughts. What had she felt earlier this night when the Queen had said she wanted to send her home on account of the Crown Prince's excessive devotion? Had she wanted to leave? A horrid thought obsessed her. She saw herself asleep in that dusty chamber that had been her prison for a hundred years, she heard whispers all about her. The old witch with the spindle that had pricked Beauty's finger was laughing through her toothless gums; and lifting her hand to Beauty's breasts, she exuded some lewd sensuality. Beauty shuddered. She winced and struggled as Alexi tightened the shackles. "Don't be afraid. We've had the night together undiscovered," he assured her. She stared at him as if she did not know him because she was not afraid of anyone in the castle, not of him, the Prince, the Queen. It was her mind that frightened her. The sky was paling. Alexi embraced her. She was now bound to the wall, her long hair pressed between her back and the stones behind her. And she could not get out of that dusty chamber in her homeland, and it seemed to her she was traveling up through layers and layers of sleep, and this dressing room about her in this cruel country had lost its substantiality.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  THE HALL OF PUNISHMENTS AT THE door of the new hall, Lord Gregory signaled one of the busy Pages. "Bring Princess Lizetta here," he said raising his voice slightly. "Sit back on your heels, Beauty, with your hands behind your neck and observe all that's presented for your benefit." The unfortunate Princess Lizetta was apparently just being brought in, and Beauty saw at once that she was gagged but rather simply so. A small cylinder covered with leather and shaped like a dog's bone was forced into her mouth and back so far between her teeth that it was rather like a bit, and apparently she could not have dislodged it with her tongue if she had wanted to. She was crying angrily and kicking, as the Page who held her hands behind her back gestured for yet another Page to take her about the waist and carry her to Lord Gregory. She was placed on her knees right before Beauty, her black hair falling down in front of her face, her dark breasts heaving. "Petulance, my Lord," said the Page rather wearily. "She was to be quarry in the Hunt in the Maze when she refused to give her Lords and Ladies good sport. The usual nonsense." Princess Lizetta tossed her black hair over her shoulder and let out a little contemptuous growl from behind the gag, which astonished Beauty. "Ah, and impudence as well," said Lord Gregory. He reached down and lifted her chin. Her dark eyes evinced nothing but anger as she looked up at him and she turned her head so sharply that she was soon free of him. The page gave her several hard spanks but she showed no contrition. Her little buttocks looked hard in fact. "Double her, for punishment," said Lord Gregory. "I think a real punishment is in order." Princess Lizetta gave several high-pitched groans. They seemed both anger and protest. She seemed not to have bargained for this, and as she was carried ahead of Beauty and Lord Gregory into the Hall of Punishments, the Pages quickly affixed leather cuffs to her wrists and ankles, each cuff with a heavy metal hook imbedded in it. Now she was raised, struggling, to a great low beam that spanned the room, her wrists hung from a hook above her head and then her legs brought straight up in front of her so that her ankles were fixed to the same hook. She was, in fact, bent double. Her head was then forced between her calves, so that Beauty could see her face clearly.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Because when it came time to give us presents, I got a silver rosary, a hand-knitted pink angora sweater in size 46 (it came down to my knees), and a blue bead on a chain (for the old evil eye). I wasn’t about to turn down any amulet at that point. All intercessions with all deities were gratefully accepted. When the gift-giving was over, everyone sat down to watch television—mostly reruns of ancient American programs. Lucille Ball batting her false eyelashes, Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, and the whole screen a blizzard of subtitles. You could hardly see the actors for the letters. It really made you believe in the universality of art to see all these pastoral types loving Lucille Ball and Raymond Burr. I was looking forward to the day when America extends its glorious civilization to other solar systems. There they’ll be—all those inter-galactic types—watching Lucille Ball and Raymond Burr in rapt attention. The relatives stayed and stayed. They drank coffee and wine and Arak until Aunt Françoise was wringing her pudgy hands. We were all exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, so instead of actually throwing them out, Pierre’s Uncle Gavin quietly left the room, climbed up on the roof, and began monkeying with the TV antenna until the picture turned into a mass of zigzags. Within a few minutes, the visitors departed. I was given to understand that Uncle Gavin climbs up on the roof quite frequently. Sleeping arrangements were difficult. Randy and Pierre and the kids were to be put up at Pierre’s father’s house down the hill. Lalah and Chloe were to share a double bed in another aunt’s house next door. And I drew a single in a tiny annex of Aunt Françoise’s house. I’d really have preferred to be with Lalah and Chloe than to be alone in that creepy room, sleeping under a crucifix and grubby pictures of the illustrious queen. But there was no space for three in bed, so I sacked out alone, amusing myself before sleep with thoughts of scorpions scampering up the wall, and fatal spider bites, and visions of breaking my neck during the night when I needed to find the outdoor toilet without a flashlight. Oh there was plenty to keep the most phobic mind thoroughly occupied for many busy hours of insomnia. I had been lying there in full phobic flower for about an hour and a half when the door creaked open. “Who is it?” I said, my heart thudding. “Shhhh.” A dark shadow moved toward me. The man under the bed. “For God’s sake!” I was terrified. “Shhh—it’s only me—Pierre,” Pierre said. And then he came over and sat down on the bed. “Jesus—I thought it was some rapist or something.” He laughed. “Jesus wasn’t a rapist.” “I guess not....

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Playing hide-and-seek once, just at sunset, I stood in the doorway of the darkened bedroom I shared with my older brother, knees actually knocking in fear.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  To make meaning is to go beyond the information given. A fast-beating heart has a physical function, such as getting enough oxygen to your limbs so you can run, but categorization allows it to become an emotional experience such as happiness or fear, giving it additional meaning and functions understood within your culture. When you experience affect with unpleasant valence and high arousal, you make meaning from it depending on how you categorize: Is it an emotional instance of fear? A physical instance of too much caffeine? A perception that the guy talking to you is a jerk? Categorization bestows new functions on biological signals, not by virtue of their physical nature but by virtue of your knowledge and the context around you in the world. If you categorize the sensations as fear, you are making meaning that says, “Fear is what caused these physical changes in my body.” When the concepts involved are emotion concepts, your brain constructs instances of emotion.22 When you perceived the blobby picture in chapter 2 as a bee, you made meaning from the visual sensations. Your brain accomplished this feat by predicting a bee and simulating lines to connect the blobs. Prior experience—seeing the real bee photograph—encouraged your brain to leave the prediction uncorrected. As a result, you perceived a bee in the blobs. Your prior experiences shape the meaning of momentary sensations. This same miraculous process makes emotion. Emotions are meaning. They explain your interoceptive changes and corresponding affective feelings, in relation to the situation. They are a prescription for action. The brain systems that implement concepts, such as the interoceptive network and the control network, are the biology of meaning-making. So, now you know how emotions are made in the brain. We predict and categorize. We regulate our body budgets, as any animal does, but wrap this regulation in purely mental concepts like “Happiness” and “Fear,” that we construct in the moment. We share these purely mental concepts with other adults, and we teach them to our children. We make a new kind of reality and live in it every day, mostly unaware that we are doing so. That’s the topic of the next chapter. 7Emotions as Social RealityIf a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? This clichéd question has been asked to death by philosophers and grade-school teachers, but it also reveals something critical about human experience and, in particular, how we experience and perceive emotion. The common-sense answer to this riddle is yes, of course a falling tree makes a sound. If you and I were walking in the forest at the time, we would clearly hear the cracking of the wood, the rustling of the leaves, and the monstrous thud as the trunk slammed into the forest floor. It seems obvious that this sound would be present even if you and I were not.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "Now," he said, pushing his left fingers between her legs, and drawing her close again so that she let out a little gasp before she could stop herself, "I want more of you than I've had before. Do you know what I mean, my Sleeping Beauty?" She shook her head; for this moment she was in terror. He lifted her up onto the bed and laid her down. The candles threw a warm, almost rosy light over her. Her hair fell down on either side of the bed, and she seemed on the verge of crying out, her hands struggling to keep still at her sides. "My darling, you have a dignity about you that shields you from me, much like your lovely golden hair shrouds you and shields you. Now I want you to surrender to me. You'll see, and you'll be very surprised that you wept when I first suggested it." The Prince bent over her. He parted her legs. He could see the battle she fought not to cover herself or turn away from him. He stroked her thighs. Then with his finger and thumb, he reached into the silky damp hair itself and felt those tender little lips and forced them very wide open. Beauty gave a terrible shudder. With his left hand he covered her mouth, and behind his hand she cried softly. It seemed easier for him with him covering her mouth and that was all right for now, he thought. She shall be taught everything in time. And with his right fingers, he found that tiny nodule of flesh between her tender nether lips and he worked it back and forth until she raised her hips, arching her back, in spite of herself. Her little face under his hand was the picture of distress. He smiled to himself. But even as he smiled, he felt the hot fluid between her legs for the first time, the real fluid which had not come before with her innocent blood. "That's it, that's it, my darling," he said. "And you mustn't resist your Lord and master, hmmmm?" Now he opened his clothing and took out his hard, eager sex, and mounting her he let it rest against her thigh as he continued to stroke her and work her. She was twisting from one side to the other, her hands gathering up the soft sheets at her sides into knots, and it seemed her whole body grew pink, and the nipples of her breasts looked as hard as if they were tiny stones. He could not resist them. He bit at them with his teeth, playfully, not hurting her. He licked them with his tongue, and then he licked her sex, too, and as she struggled, and blushed and moaned beneath him, he mounted her, slowly. Again she arched her back. Her breasts were suffused with red. And as he drove his organ into her, he felt her shudder violently with unwilling pleasure.