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 Sex at Dawn (2010)

  21. The Pervert’s Lament Just Say What? Kellogg’s Guide to Child Abuse The Curse of Calvin Coolidge The Perils of Monotomy (Monogamy + Monotony) A Few More Reasons I Need Somebody New (Just Like You) 22. Confronting the Sky Together Everybody Out of the Closet The Marriage of the Sun and the Moon Authors’ Note Acknowledgments Notes References and Suggested Further Reading Searchable Terms P.S. Insights, Interviews & More… Praise Credits Copyright About the Publisher PREFACEA Primate Meets His Match (A note from one of the authors) Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above. KATHARINE HEPBURN, as Miss Rose Sayer, in The African Queen One muggy afternoon in 1988, some local men were selling peanuts at the entrance to the botanical gardens in Penang, Malaysia. I’d come with my girlfriend, Ana, to walk off a big lunch. Sensing our confusion, the men explained that the peanuts weren’t for us, but to feed irresistibly cute baby monkeys like those we hadn’t yet noticed rolling around on the grass nearby. We bought a few bags. We soon came to a little guy hanging by his tail right over the path. His oh-so-human eyes focused imploringly on the bag of nuts in Ana’s hand. We were standing there cooing like teenage girls in a kitten shop when the underbrush exploded in a sudden simian strike. A full-grown monkey flashed past me, bounced off Ana, and was gone—along with the nuts. Ana’s hand was bleeding where he’d scratched her. We were stunned, trembling, silent. There’d been no time to scream. After a few minutes, when the adrenaline had finally begun to ebb, my fear curdled into loathing. I felt betrayed in a way I never had before. Along with our nuts went precious assumptions about the purity of nature, of evil as a uniquely human affliction. A line had been crossed. I wasn’t just angry; I was philosophically offended. I felt something changing inside me. My chest seemed to swell, my shoulders to broaden. My arms felt stronger; my eyesight sharpened. I felt like Popeye after a can of spinach. I glared into the underbrush like the heavyweight primate I now knew myself to be. I’d take no more abuse from these lightweights. I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro–like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  reaccustomed to a feeling of cozy extravagance. I put on a little weight, and so when I lay down on the living room floor, my bones didn’t hurt. My face lost its mean edge. I asked for flowers. “Lilies.” “Birds of paradise.” “Daisies.” “A branch of catkins.” I jogged in place, did leg lifts, push-ups. It was easier and easier to pass the time between getting up and going down. But by the end of May, I sensed that I was going to grow restless soon. A prediction. The sound of tires on the wet pavement. A window was open so I could hear it. The sweet smell of spring crept in. The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider it all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what—some freak accident? It seemed implausible. The world could be flat just as easily as it could be round. Who could prove anything? In time, I would understand, I told myself. • • • ON MAY 28, I came to, knowing this was the last time I would perform my habitual ablutions and take the Infermiterol. There was only one pill left. I swallowed it and prayed for mercy. Light from passing cars slid through the blinds and flashed across the living room walls in yellow stripes, once, twice. I turned to face the ceiling. The floorboards gave a short screech, like the squelch of a boat turning suddenly in a storm. A hum in the air signaled the approaching wave. Sleep was coming for me. I knew the sound of it by now, the foghorn of dead space that put me on autopilot while my conscious self roamed like a goldfish. The sound got louder until it was almost deafening, and then it stopped. In that silence, I began to drift down into the darkness, descending at first so slowly and steadily, I felt I was being lowered on pulleys—by angels with gold-spun ropes around my body, I imagined, and then by the electric casket lowering device they used at both my parents’ burials, and so my heart quickened at that thought, remembering that I’d had parents once, and that I’d taken the last of the pills, that this was the end of something, and then the ropes seemed to detach and I was falling faster. My stomach turned and I was cold with sweat, and I started writhing, first grasping at the

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He wanted to show me his power. He wanted to prove he could satisfy me. He hadn’t screwed me in about six weeks, but now he wouldn’t stop. He fucked like a machine, refusing to succumb to an orgasm himself but urging me to come again and again and again. After the first three times I was sore and wanted to stop. I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t. He kept banging away at me like an ax murderer. I was crying and pleading. “Brian, please stop,” I sobbed. “You thought I couldn’t satisfy you!” he screamed. His eyes were wild. “You see!” he said, lunging into me. “You see! You see! You see!” “Brian, please stop!” “Doesn’t that prove it? Doesn’t that prove I’m God?” “Please stop,” I whimpered. When he stopped at last, he withdrew from me violently and thrust his still-hard penis into my mouth. But I was crying too hard to blow him. I lay on the bed sobbing. What was I going to do? I didn’t want to stay alone with him, but where could I go? For the first time I really began to be convinced he was dangerous. Suddenly Brian broke down and started to cry. He wanted to castrate himself, he said. He wanted our marriage to be purified of all carnality. He wanted to be like Abelard, and me to be like Héloïse. He wanted to be purified of all fleshly desires so that he could save the world. He wanted to be soft like a eunuch. He wanted to be soft like Christ. He wanted to be shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He threw his arms around me and sobbed in my lap. I stroked his hair, hoping he’d finally fall asleep. I fell asleep instead. I’m not sure what time I awakened, but Brian had been up for hours—probably the whole night. I staggered to the bathroom and the first thing I saw was a crude drawing Scotch-taped to the mirror. It depicted a short man with a halo and an enormous erect penis. Another man with a long beard was about to blow him. Behind them both was a huge eagle (resembling the American eagle) except that it had a very obvious and human-looking erection. “The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” Brian had scrawled above the picture. I went to my desk in the bedroom. Pieces of my index cards (containing all the notes for my thesis) were scattered on the floor beneath the desk like confetti.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  It wasn’t long before we came to another imploring, furry face hanging upside down from a tree in the middle of a clearing. Ana was ready to forgive and forget. Though I was fully hardened against cuteness of any kind, I agreed to give her the remaining bag of nuts. We seemed safely distant from underbrush from which an ambush could be launched. But as I pulled the bag out of my sweat-soaked pocket, its cellophane rustle must have rung through the jungle like a clanging dinner bell. In a heartbeat, a large, arrogant-looking brute appeared at the edge of the clearing, about twenty yards away. He gazed at us, considering the situation, sizing me up. His exaggerated yawn seemed calculated to dismiss and threaten me simultaneously: a long, slow display of his fangs. Determined to fill any power vacuum without delay, I picked up a small branch and tossed it casually in his direction, making the point that these nuts were definitely not for him and that I was not to be trifled with. He watched the branch land a few feet in front of him, not moving a muscle. Then his forehead briefly crinkled in eerily emotional thought, as if I’d hurt his feelings. He looked up at me, straight into my eyes. His expression held no hint of fear, respect, or humor. As if shot from a cannon, he leapt over the branch I’d tossed, long yellow dagger fangs bared, shrieking, charging straight at me. Caught between the attacking beast and my terrified girlfriend, I understood for the first time what it would really mean to have a “monkey on your back.” I felt something snap in my mind. I lost it. In movement quicker than thought, my arms flew open, my legs flexed into a wrestler’s crouch, and my own coffee-stained, orthodontia-corrected teeth were bared with a wild shriek. I was helplessly launched into a hopping-mad, saliva-spraying dominance display of my own. I was as surprised as he was. He pulled up and stared at me for a second or two before slowly backing away. This time, though, I’m pretty sure I saw a hint of laughter in his eyes. Above nature? Not a chance. Take it from Mr. Allnut. INTRODUCTIONAnother Well-Intentioned Inquisition Forget what you’ve heard about human beings having descended from the apes. We didn’t descend from apes. We are apes. Metaphorically and factually, Homo sapiens is one of the five surviving species of great apes, along with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans (gibbons are considered a “lesser ape”). We shared a common ancestor with two of these apes—bonobos and chimps—just five million years ago.1 That’s “the day before yesterday” in evolutionary terms. The fine print distinguishing humans from the other great apes is regarded as “wholly artificial” by most primatologists these days.2

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that the red convertible was following us. I do remember, however, the first time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended altogether. With a swishing sound a sunburst swept the highway, and needing a pair of new sunglasses, I pulled up at a filling station. What was happening was a sickness, a cancer, that could not be helped, so I simply ignored the fact that our quiet pursuer, in his converted state, stopped a little behind us at a café or bar bearing the idiotic sign: The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful. Having seen to the needs of my car, I walked into the office to get those glasses and pay for the gas. As I was in the act of signing a traveller’s check and wondered about my exact whereabouts, I happened to glance through a side window, and saw a terrible thing. A broad-backed man, baldish, in an oatmeal coat and dark-brown trousers, was listening to Lo who was leaning out of the car and talking to him very rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down as it did when she was very serious and emphatic. What struck me with sickening force was—how should I put it?—the voluble familiarity of her way, as if they had known each other—oh, for weeks and weeks. I saw him scratch his cheek and nod, and turn, and walk back to his convertible, a broad and thickish man of my age, somewhat resembling Gustave Trapp, a cousin of my father’s in Switzerland—same smoothly tanned face, fuller than mine, with a small dark mustache and a rosebud degenerate mouth. Lolita was studying a road map when I got back into the car. “What did that man ask you, Lo?” “Man? Oh, that man. Oh yes. Oh, I don’t know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.” We drove on, and I said: “Now listen, Lo. I do not know whether you are lying or not, and I do not know whether you are insane or not, and I do not care for the moment; but that person has been following us all day, and his car was at the motel yesterday, and I think he is a cop. You know perfectly well what will happen and where you will go if the police find out about things. Now I want to know exactly what he said to you and what you told him.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  And then there are those who want to play the martyr. Recognize them by the joy they take in complaining, in feeling righteous and wronged; then give them a reason to complain. Remember: appearances deceive. Often the strongest-looking people—the Kissingers and Don Mateos—may secretly want to be punished. In any event, follow up pain with pleasure and you will create a state of dependency that will last for a long time. Mix Pleasure with Pain • 379 Symbol: The Precipice. At the edge of a cliff, people often feel lightheaded, both fearful and dizzy. For a moment they can imagine themselves falling headlong. At the same time, a part of them is tempted. Lead your targets as close to the edge as possible, then pull them back. No thrill without fear. Reversal P eople who have recently experienced a lot of pain or a loss will flee if you try to inflict more on them. They have enough in their lives al- ready. Far better to surround these types with pleasure—that will put them under your spell. The technique of inflicting pain works best on those who have it easy, who have power and few problems. People with comfortable lives may also feel a gnawing sense of guilt, as if they had gotten away with something. They may not consciously know it, but secretly they long for some punishment, a good mental thrashing, something that will bring them back down to earth. Also, remember to not use the pleasure-through-pain tactic too early on. Some of the greatest seducers in history—Byron, Jiang Qing (Madame Mao), Picasso—had a sadistic streak, an ability to inflict mental torture. If their victims had known in advance what they were getting themselves into, they would have run for the hills. In truth, most of these seducers lured their targets into their webs by appearing to be paragons of sweetness and affection. Even Byron seemed like an angel when he first met a woman, so that she tended to doubt his devilish reputation—a seductive doubt, for it allowed her to think of herself as the only one who really understood him. His cruelty would come out later on, but by then it would be too late. The victim's emotions were engaged, and his harshness would only intensify her feelings. In the beginning, then, wear the mask of a lamb, making pleasure and attentiveness your bait. First get under their skin, then lead them on a wild ride. Phase Four Moving In for the Kill First you worked on their mind—the mental seduction. Then you confused and stirred them up—the emotional seduction.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  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…. What’s up?” It was a poor choice of words under the circumstances. “You seem so depressed,” he said, full of counterfeit tenderness. “I guess I am. All that craziness with Brian last summer and now Charlie…” “I hate to see my little sister depressed,” he said, stroking my hair. And for some reason that “little sister” sent chills through me. “You know I always think of you as my little sister, don’t you?”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  "Late in the night we enjoy a misty moon. There is nothing misty about the bond between us." Without another word, the man pulled the princess to him and picked her up, carrying her into a gallery outside her room, sliding the door closed behind him. She was terrified, and tried to call for help. In the darkness she heard him say, a little louder now, "It will do you no good. I am always allowed my way. Just be quiet, if you will, please." Now the princess recognized the voice, and the scent: it was Genji, the young son of the late emperor's concubine, whose robes bore a distinctive perfume. This calmed her somewhat, since the man was someone she knew, but on the other hand she also knew of his reputation: Genji was the court's most incorrigible seducer, a man who stopped at nothing. He was drunk, it was near dawn, and the watchmen would soon be on their rounds; she did not want to be discovered with him. But then she began to make out the outlines of his face—so pretty, his look so sincere, without a trace of malice. Then came more poems, recited in that charming voice, the words so insinuating. The images he conjured filled her mind, and distracted her from his hands. She could not resist him. As the light began to rise, Genji got to his feet. He said a few tender words, they exchanged fans, and then he quickly left. The serving women were coming through the emperor's rooms by now, and when they saw Genji scurrying away, the perfume of his robes lingering after him, they smiled, knowing he was up to his usual tricks; but they never imagined he would dare approach the sister of the emperor's wife. In the days that followed, Oborozukiyo could only think of Genji. She knew he had other mistresses, but when she tried to put him out of her mind, a letter from him would arrive, and she would be back to square one. In truth, she had started the correspondence, haunted by his midnight visit. She had to see him again. Despite the risk of discovery, and the fact that her sister Kokiden, the emperor's wife, hated Genji, she arranged for further trysts in her apartment. But one night an envious courtier found them together. Word reached Kokiden, who naturally was furious. She demanded that Genji be banished from court and the emperor had no choice but to agree.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The early-twentieth-century lesbian seductress Natalie Barney had an on-again-off-again affair with the poet Renée Vivien; to regain her affections, she took Renée on a trip to the island of Lesbos, a place Natalie had visited many times. In doing so she not only isolated Renée but disarmed and distracted her with the associations of the place, the home of the legendary lesbian poet Sappho. Vivien even began to imagine that Natalie was Sappho herself. Do not take the target just anywhere; pick the place that will have the most effective associations. The seductive power of isolation goes beyond the sexual realm. When new adherents joined Mahatma Gandhi's circle of devoted followers, they were encouraged to cut off their ties with the past—with their family and friends. This kind of renunciation has been a requirement of many religious sects over the centuries. People who isolate themselves in this way are much more vulnerable to influence and persuasion. A charismatic politician feeds off and even encourages people's feelings of alienation. John F. Kennedy did this to great effect when he subtly disparaged the Eisenhower years; the comfort of the 1950s, he implied, compromised American ideals. He invited Americans to join him in a new life, on a "New Frontier," full of danger and excitement. It was an extremely seductive lure, particularly for the young, who were Kennedy's most enthusiastic supporters. Finally, at some point in the seduction there must be a hint of danger in the mix. Your targets should feel that they are gaining a great adventure in following you, but are also losing something—a part of their past, their cherished comfort. Actively encourage these ambivalent feelings. An element of fear is the proper spice; although too much fear is debilitating, in small doses it makes us feel alive. Like diving out of an airplane, it is exciting, a thrill, at the same time that it is a little frightening. And the only person there to break the fall, or catch them, is you. 318 • The Art of Seduction Symbol: The Pied Piper. A jolly fellow in his red and yellow cloak, he lures the children from their homes with the delightful sounds of his flute. Enchanted, they do not notice how far they are walking, how they are leaving their families behind. They do not even notice the cave he eventually leads them into, and which closes upon them forever. Reversal The risks of this strategy are simple: isolate someone too quickly and you will induce a sense of panic that may end up in the target's taking flight. The isolation you bring must be gradual, and disguised as pleasure—

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  forties, and quite handsome. After supper, a bell rang—her signal to hurry disdain, he would take the unused tickets, roll them back to the convent, or she would be caught. She changed back into her up, and use them to light habit and left. his cigar. A beautiful vista now seemed to stretch before Casanova, of months — M A U D D E BELLEROCHE, spent in the villa with this delightful creature, all of it courtesy of the mys-DU DANDY AU PLAY-BOY terious master who paid for it all. He soon returned to the convent to arrange the next meeting. They would rendezvous in a square in Venice, then retire to the villa. At the appointed time and place, Casanova saw a While Shahzaman sat at man approach him. Fearing it was her mysterious friend, or some other one of the windows man sent to kill him, he recoiled. The man circled behind him, then came overlooking the king's garden, he saw a door open up close: it was Mathilde, wearing a mask and men's clothes. She laughed at in the palace, through the fright she had given him. What a devilish nun. He had to admit that which came twenty slave dressed as a man she excited him even more. girls and twenty negroes. In their midst was his Casanova began to suspect that all was not as it seemed. For one, he brother's [ King found a collection of libertine novels and pamphlets in Mathilde's house. Shahriyar's] queen, a Then she made blasphemous comments, for example about the joy they woman of surpassing beauty. They made their would have together during Lent, "mortifying their flesh." Now she re-way to the fountain, where ferred to her mysterious friend as her lover. A plan evolved in his mind to they all undressed and sat take her away from this man and from the convent, eloping with her and on the grass. The king's wife then called out: possessing her himself. "Come Mass'ood!" and A few days later he received a letter from her, in which she made a con-there promptly came to her fession: during one of their more passionate trysts at the villa, her lover a black slave, who mounted had hidden in a closet, watching the whole thing. The lover, she told him, her after smothering her with embraces and kisses. was the French ambassador to Venice, and Casanova had impressed him. So also did the negroes Casanova was not one to be fooled with like this, yet the next day he was with the slave girls, reveling back at the convent, submissively arranging for another tryst. This time she together till the approach of night. . . . • . . . And s o showed up at the hour they had named, and he embraced her—only to Keep Them in Suspense— What Comes Next? • 245

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  It wasn’t long before we came to another imploring, furry face hanging upside down from a tree in the middle of a clearing. Ana was ready to forgive and forget. Though I was fully hardened against cuteness of any kind, I agreed to give her the remaining bag of nuts. We seemed safely distant from underbrush from which an ambush could be launched. But as I pulled the bag out of my sweat-soaked pocket, its cellophane rustle must have rung through the jungle like a clanging dinner bell. In a heartbeat, a large, arrogant-looking brute appeared at the edge of the clearing, about twenty yards away. He gazed at us, considering the situation, sizing me up. His exaggerated yawn seemed calculated to dismiss and threaten me simultaneously: a long, slow display of his fangs. Determined to fill any power vacuum without delay, I picked up a small branch and tossed it casually in his direction, making the point that these nuts were definitely not for him and that I was not to be trifled with. He watched the branch land a few feet in front of him, not moving a muscle. Then his forehead briefly crinkled in eerily emotional thought, as if I’d hurt his feelings. He looked up at me, straight into my eyes. His expression held no hint of fear, respect, or humor. As if shot from a cannon, he leapt over the branch I’d tossed, long yellow dagger fangs bared, shrieking, charging straight at me. Caught between the attacking beast and my terrified girlfriend, I understood for the first time what it would really mean to have a “monkey on your back.” I felt something snap in my mind. I lost it. In movement quicker than thought, my arms flew open, my legs flexed into a wrestler’s crouch, and my own coffee-stained, orthodontia-corrected teeth were bared with a wild shriek. I was helplessly launched into a hopping-mad, saliva-spraying dominance display of my own. I was as surprised as he was. He pulled up and stared at me for a second or two before slowly backing away. This time, though, I’m pretty sure I saw a hint of laughter in his eyes. Above nature? Not a chance. Take it from Mr. Allnut. INTRODUCTION Another Well-Intentioned Inquisition Forget what you’ve heard about human beings having descended from the apes. We didn’t descend from apes. We are apes. Metaphorically and factually, Homo sapiens is one of the five surviving species of great apes, along with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans (gibbons are considered a “lesser ape”). We shared a common ancestor with two of these apes—bonobos and chimps—just five million years ago.1 That’s “the day before yesterday” in evolutionary terms. The fine print distinguishing humans from the other great apes is regarded as “wholly artificial” by most primatologists these days.2

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

  We’re at a turning point where the new science of mind and brain can begin to shape the law. By educating judges, jurors, attorneys, witnesses, police officers, and other participants in the legal process, we should be able to produce a legal system that is ultimately more fair. Perhaps we cannot move away from trial by jury anytime soon, but even simple steps, like educating jurors that emotions are constructed, can improve the current situation. For now at least, the legal system still considers you to be an emotional beast enrobed in rational thought. Throughout this book, we’ve systematically challenged this myth by evidence and observation, but there’s one remaining assumption that we haven’t questioned yet: are beasts even emotional? Are the brains of our close primate cousins, such as chimps, capable of constructing emotion? What about dogs: do they have concepts and social reality as we do? Just how unique in the animal kingdom are our emotional abilities? We’ll explore these topics in the next chapter. 12Is a Growling Dog Angry?I don’t have a dog, but several friends’ dogs are part of my extended family. One of my favorites is Rowdy, part Golden Retriever and part Bernese Mountain Dog, who is an energetic, playful mutt, always ready for action. True to his name, Rowdy is a barker and a jumper, and he’s known to growl when other dogs or strangers come near. In other words, he’s a dog. Sometimes Rowdy can barely contain himself, and once this nearly proved to be his undoing. Rowdy was out for a walk with his owner, my friend Angie, when a teenage boy approached to pet him. Rowdy did not know the boy and proceeded to bark and jump up on him. The boy was not visibly hurt, so it was a surprise when a few hours later, his mother (who had not been present) had Rowdy arrested and registered as a “potentially dangerous dog.” Poor Rowdy had to be muzzled on walks for several years afterward. And if Rowdy ever again jumps up on someone, he will be registered as vicious and maybe even put down. The boy was afraid of Rowdy and perceived him as angry and dangerous. When you encounter a dog who barks and growls, does he actually feel anger? Or is this merely territorial behavior, or an overly boisterous attempt to be friendly? In short, can dogs experience emotion?

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  In a year of normal rain, this system holds about 24 billion gallons of runoff long enough for it to sink into the sand and gravel of the current bed of the San Gabriel River. 273 That isn’t enough to recharge the aquifers. Every year, the replenishment district blends 17 billion gallons of reclaimed waste water with fresh water from the Colorado River and pumps the mixture onto the San Gabriel River spreading grounds. The reclaimed water disappears into the ground along with the winter’s runoff. This isn’t enough to maintain hydrostatic pressure in the saltwater intrusion zones. Electric pumps force fresh water through perforated steel casings driven into the depleted aquifers. Think of the pumps as reverse wells. The replenishment district maintains four barriers to saltwater intrusion. The barriers are made of twelve billion gallons of fresh water pumped back into the aquifers each year. Two of the freshwater barriers are at the borders of my city. A third barrier slows the plume under Torrance. By an accident of geology, my city’s sixteen wells pump from aquifers maintained by the replenishment district’s injection program. Much of the water that my city delivers to residents originally came from the California Aqueduct and the Colorado River, from hundreds of miles away. 274 My city acquired the right to the water under its neighborhoods when the city bought the water company Louis Boyar, Mark Taper, and Ben Weingart had formed. The three developers bought the right to the water from The Montana Land Company. The company got its rights from the Bixby family, who bought them with the land from Don Juan Temple, who married into them through his wife Rafaela Cota, who received them as an inheritance from her grandfather Manuel Nieto, who was provisionally granted them by the governor of California, who had them by right of possession of the king of Spain. Most people who live on the semiarid Los Angeles plain cannot explain precisely where their water comes from. The rivers, spreading grounds, dams, injection wells, and aqueducts are part of a landscape people rarely notice. 275 When it rains hard here, flood control channels fill quickly. In a few minutes the water can rise higher than your head, and it flows faster than you can run. I grew up when my neighborhood was crossed by unfenced flood control channels, where boys in packs of four or five played after school and on weekends. Hunting for frogs in the rain in one of the channels, boys would sometimes be caught in the suddenly rising water. Neighborhood parents, or the fire department, rescued them when they could. Once a boy drowned in one of the channels; another boy drowned in a flooded sump. Frightened and angry parents petitioned the County Board of Supervisors to improve the ditches. The county built cement walls and chain-link fences. When the channels were cemented and fenced, the frogs disappeared from them, along with the boys.

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

  For now at least, the legal system still considers you to be an emotional beast enrobed in rational thought. Throughout this book, we’ve systematically challenged this myth by evidence and observation, but there’s one remaining assumption that we haven’t questioned yet: are beasts even emotional? Are the brains of our close primate cousins, such as chimps, capable of constructing emotion? What about dogs: do they have concepts and social reality as we do? Just how unique in the animal kingdom are our emotional abilities? We’ll explore these topics in the next chapter. 12 Is a Growling Dog Angry? I don’t have a dog, but several friends’ dogs are part of my extended family. One of my favorites is Rowdy, part Golden Retriever and part Bernese Mountain Dog, who is an energetic, playful mutt, always ready for action. True to his name, Rowdy is a barker and a jumper, and he’s known to growl when other dogs or strangers come near. In other words, he’s a dog. Sometimes Rowdy can barely contain himself, and once this nearly proved to be his undoing. Rowdy was out for a walk with his owner, my friend Angie, when a teenage boy approached to pet him. Rowdy did not know the boy and proceeded to bark and jump up on him. The boy was not visibly hurt, so it was a surprise when a few hours later, his mother (who had not been present) had Rowdy arrested and registered as a “potentially dangerous dog.” Poor Rowdy had to be muzzled on walks for several years afterward. And if Rowdy ever again jumps up on someone, he will be registered as vicious and maybe even put down. The boy was afraid of Rowdy and perceived him as angry and dangerous. When you encounter a dog who barks and growls, does he actually feel anger? Or is this merely territorial behavior, or an overly boisterous attempt to be friendly? In short, can dogs experience emotion? Common sense seems to say yes, of course, Rowdy feels emotion when he growls. Numerous popular books explore the issue, like The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff, Animal Wise by Virginia Morell, and How Dogs Love Us by Gregory Berns, to name just a few. Dozens of news stories inform us of scientific discoveries in animal emotion: dogs get jealous, rats experience regret, crayfish feel anxiety, and even flies fear the incoming fly swatter. And of course, if you live with pets, you’ve certainly seen them behave in ways that seem emotional: running around in fear, jumping up in joy, whining in sadness, purring with love. It seems so obvious that animals experience emotions just the way we do. * Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, puts it succinctly: “So, do other animals have human emotions? Yes, they do. Do humans have animal emotions?

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I remember the first time, a dusty windy afternoon, I did let her go to one such rink. Cruelly she said it would be no fun if I accompanied her, since that time of day was reserved for teenagers. We wrangled out a compromise: I remained in the car, among other (empty) cars with their noses to the canvas-topped open-air rink, where some fifty young people, many in pairs, were endlessly rolling round and round to mechanical music, and the wind silvered the trees. Dolly wore blue jeans and white high shoes, as most of the other girls did. I kept counting the revolutions of the rolling crowd—and suddenly she was missing. When she rolled past again, she was together with three hoodlums whom I had heard analyze a moment before the girl skaters from the outside—and jeer at a lovely leggy young thing who had arrived clad in red shorts instead of those jeans or slacks. At inspection stations on highways entering Arizona or California, a policeman’s cousin would peer with such intensity at us that my poor heart wobbled. “Any honey?” he would inquire, and every time my sweet fool giggled. I still have, vibrating all along my optic nerve, visions of Lo on horseback, a link in the chain of a guided trip along a bridle trail: Lo bobbing at a walking pace, with an old woman rider in front and a lecherous rednecked dude-rancher behind; and I behind him, hating his fat flowery-shirted back even more fervently than a motorist does a slow truck on a mountain road. Or else, at a ski lodge, I would see her floating away from me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, to a glittering summit where laughing athletes stripped to the waist were waiting for her, for her. In whatever town we stopped I would inquire, in my polite European way, anent the whereabouts of natatoriums, museums, local schools, the number of children in the nearest school and so forth; and at school bus time, smiling and twitching a little (I discovered this tic nerveux because cruel Lo was the first to mimic it), I would park at a strategic point, with my vagrant schoolgirl beside me in the car, to watch the children leave school—always a pretty sight. This sort of thing soon began to bore my so easily bored Lolita, and, having a childish lack of sympathy for other people’s whims, she would insult me and my desire to have her caress me while blue-eyed little brunettes in blue shorts, copperheads in green boleros, and blurred boyish blondes in faded slacks passed by in the sun. As a sort of compromise, I freely advocated whenever and wherever possible the use of swimming pools with other girl-children.

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

  People employ affect as information, creating affective realism, throughout daily life. Food is “delicious” or “bland.” Paintings are “beautiful” or “ugly.” People are “nice” or “mean.” Women in certain cultures must wear scarves and wigs so as not to “tempt men” by showing a bit of hair. Sometimes affective realism is helpful, but it also shapes some of humanity’s most troubling problems. Enemies are “evil.” Women who are raped are perceived as “asking for it.” Victims of domestic violence are said to “bring it on themselves.”46 The thing is, a bad feeling doesn’t always mean something is wrong. It just means you’re taxing your body budget. When people exercise to the point of labored breathing, for example, they feel tired and crappy well before they run out of energy. When people solve math problems and perform difficult feats of memory, they can feel hopeless and miserable, even when they are performing well. Any graduate student of mine who never feels distress is clearly doing something wrong.47 Affective realism can also lead to tragic consequences. In July 2007, an American gunner aboard an Apache helicopter in Iraq mistakenly killed a group of eleven unarmed people, including several Reuters photojournalists. The soldier had misjudged a journalist’s camera to be a gun. One explanation for this incident is that affective realism caused the soldier, in the heat of the moment, to imbue a neutral object (a camera) with unpleasant valence. Every day, soldiers must make quick decisions about other people, whether they are embedded in a unit during wartime, on a peacekeeping mission, negotiating in a cross-cultural setting, or collaborating with unit members on a stateside base. These quick judgments are extremely difficult to negotiate, especially in such high-stakes, high-arousal settings where errors are often made at the expense of someone’s life.48 A little closer to home, affective realism may also play a role in police shootings of unarmed civilians. The U.S. Department of Justice analyzed shootings by Philadelphia police officers between 2007 and 2013 and found that 15 percent of the victims were unarmed. In half of these cases, an officer reportedly misidentified “a nonthreatening object (e.g., a cell phone) or movement (e.g., tugging at the waistband)” as a weapon. Many factors may contribute to these tragedies, ranging from carelessness to racial bias, but it is also possible that some of the shooters actually perceive a weapon when none is present due to affective realism in a high-pressure and dangerous context.* The human brain is wired for this sort of delusion, in part because moment-to-moment interoception infuses us with affect, which we then use as evidence about the world.49 People like to say that seeing is believing, but affective realism demonstrates that believing is seeing. The world often takes a backseat to your predictions. (It’s still in the car, so to speak, but is mostly a passenger.) And as you’re about to learn right now, this arrangement is not limited to vision. …

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A target who is strong and settled is hard to seduce. But even the strongest people can be made vulnerable if you can isolate them from their nests and safety nets. Block out their friends and family with your constant presence, alienate them from the world they are used to, and take them to places they do not know. Get them to spend time in your environment. Deliberately disturb their habits, get them to do things they have never done. They will grow emotional, making it easier to lead them astray. Disguise all this in the form of a pleasurable experience, and your targets will wake up one day distanced from everything that normally comforts them. Then they will turn to you for help, like a child crying out for its mother when the lights are turned out. In seduction, as in warfare, the isolated target is weak and vulnerable. In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, written in 1748, the rake Lovelace is 316 • The Art of Seduction attempting to seduce the novel's beautiful heroine. Clarissa is young, virtuous, and very much protected by her family. But Lovelace is a conniving seducer. First he courts Clarissa's sister, Arabella. A match between them seems likely. Then he suddenly switches attention to Clarissa, playing on sibling rivalry to make Arabella furious. Their brother, James, is angered by Lovelace's change in sentiments; he fights with Lovelace and is wounded. The whole family is in an uproar, united against Lovelace, who, however, manages to smuggle letters to Clarissa, and to visit her when she is at the house of a friend. The family finds out, and accuses her of disloyalty. Clarissa is innocent; she has not encouraged Lovelace's letters or visits. But now her parents are determined to marry her off, to a rich older man. Alone in the world, about to be married to a man she finds repulsive, she turns to Lovelace as the only one who can save her from this mess. Eventually he rescues her by getting her to London, where she can escape this dreaded marriage, but where she is also hopelessly isolated. In these circumstances her feelings toward him soften. All of this has been masterfully orchestrated by Lovelace himself—the turmoil within the family, Clarissa's eventual alienation from them, the whole scenario. Your worst enemies in a seduction are often your targets' family and friends. They are outside your circle and immune to your charms; they may provide a voice of reason to the seduced. You must work silently and subtly to alienate the target from them. Insinuate that they are jealous of your target's good fortune in finding you, or that they are parental figures who have lost a taste for adventure. The latter argument is extremely effective with young people, whose identities are in flux and who are more than ready to rebel against any authority figure, particularly their parents. You represent excitement and life; the friends and parents represent habit and boredom.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Such sudden fame represented quite a change, for just a few years earlier, Josephine had been a young girl growing up in East St. Louis, one of America's worst slums. She had gone to work at the age of eight, cleaning houses for a white woman who beat her. She had sometimes slept in a rat-infested basement; there had never been heat in the winter. (She had taught herself to dance in her wild fashion to help keep herself warm.) In 1919, Josephine had run away and become a part-time vaudeville performer, landing in New York two years later without money or connections. She had had some success as a clowning chorus girl, providing comic relief with her crossed eyes and screwed-up face, but she hadn't stood out. Then she was invited to Paris. Some other black performers had declined, fearing things might be still worse for them in France than in America, but Josephine jumped at the chance. Despite her success with the Revue Nègre, Josephine did not delude herself: Parisians were notoriously fickle. She decided to turn the relationship around. First, she refused to be aligned with any club, and developed a reputation for breaking contracts at will, making it clear that she was ready to leave in an instant. Since childhood she had been afraid of dependence on anyone; now no one could take her for granted. This only made impre-sarios chase her and the public appreciate her the more. Second, she was aware that although black culture had become the vogue, what the French had fallen in love with was a kind of caricature. If that was what it took to be successful, so be it, but Josephine made it clear that she did not take the caricature seriously; instead she reversed it, becoming the ultimate The Natural • 63 Frenchwoman of fashion, a caricature not of blackness but of whiteness. Everything was a role to play—the comedienne, the primitive dancer, the ultrastylish Parisian. And everything Josephine did, she did with such a light spirit, such a lack of pretension, that she continued to seduce the jaded French for years. Her funeral, in 1975, was nationally televised, a huge cultural event. She was buried with the kind of pomp normally reserved only for heads of state.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Symbol: The Precipice. At the edge of a cliff, people often feel lightheaded, both fearful and dizzy. For a moment they can imagine themselves falling headlong. At the same time, a part of them is tempted. Lead your targets as close to the edge as possible, then pull them back. No thrill without fear. Reversal People who have recently experienced a lot of pain or a loss will flee if you try to inflict more on them. They have enough in their lives already. Far better to surround these types with pleasure—that will put them under your spell. The technique of inflicting pain works best on those who have it easy, who have power and few problems. People with comfortable lives may also feel a gnawing sense of guilt, as if they had gotten away with something. They may not consciously know it, but secretly they long for some punishment, a good mental thrashing, something that will bring them back down to earth. Also, remember to not use the pleasure-through-pain tactic too early on. Some of the greatest seducers in history—Byron, Jiang Qing (Madame Mao), Picasso—had a sadistic streak, an ability to inflict mental torture. If their victims had known in advance what they were getting themselves into, they would have run for the hills. In truth, most of these seducers lured their targets into their webs by appearing to be paragons of sweetness and affection. Even Byron seemed like an angel when he first met a woman, so that she tended to doubt his devilish reputation—a seductive doubt, for it allowed her to think of herself as the only one who really understood him. His cruelty would come out later on, but by then it would be too late. The victim's emotions were engaged, and his harshness would only intensify her feelings. In the beginning, then, wear the mask of a lamb, making pleasure and attentiveness your bait. First get under their skin, then lead them on a wild ride. Phase Four Moving In for the Kill First you worked on their mind—the mental seduction. Then you confused and stirred them up— the emotional seduction. Now the time has come for hand-to-hand combat—the physical seduction. At this point, your victims are weak and ripe with desire: by show-. ing a little coldness or uninterest, you will spark panic— they will come after you with impatience and erotic energy (21: Give them space to fall— the pursuer is pursued). To bring them to a boil, you need to put their minds to sleep and heat up their senses. It is best to lure them into lust by sending certain loaded signals that will get under their skin and spread sexual desire like a poison (22: Use physical lures). The moment to strike and move in for the kill is when your victim is brimming with desire, but not consciously expecting the climax to come (23: Master the art of the bold move).

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  But she could not endure the thought of being held by her ankles as the boy was. She could see only his back, and the paddle flashing down again and again on his reddening buttocks. He held his hands obediently on the back of his neck, and as he was let down on his hands and knees, the young Page with the paddle drove him quickly with a series of loud blows towards the Queen, where the young culprit, his buttocks very red, bowed his head and kissed the Queen's slipper. The Queen had been in fast conversation with the Prince. She was a mature woman, very full blown but it was from her, obviously, that the Prince had gotten his beauty. She turned, almost indifferently, her eyes darting back to the Prince, and motioning for the young slave to rise a little, she brushed back his hair affectionately. But then in the same indifferent manner, never withdrawing herself from the Prince, she made a motion to the Page, with a quick frown, that the boy was again to be punished. The Lords and Ladies nearest applauded with mock scolding gestures, and then obviously enjoyed it very much as the Page put his foot on the second step of the dais before the throne, and hoisted the disobedient slave up over his knee and again, in full view of everyone, soundly spanked him. A long row of dancers obscured the view for a moment, but again and again Beauty caught glimpses of the unfortunate boy, and she could see that as the paddle came down, he was having a more and more difficult time bearing it. He struggled just a little in spite of himself, and it was also quite obvious that the Page who delivered the paddling was very much enjoying it. His young face was flushed, and he was biting his lip slightly, and he drove the paddle down unnecessarily hard it seemed, and Beauty felt she hated him. She could hear the Lord beside her laughing. There was a little loose crowd about her now, men and women drinking, talking idly. The dancers moved in a long chain, performing their fluid graceful movements. "So you see you aren't the only helpless little creature in this world," said the gray-eyed Lord, "and does it soothe you to see the Tribute that belongs to your Sovereigns? You are the first Tribute for the Prince and I think that you shall have to set a fierce example. The young slave you saw, Prince Alexi, is very much a favorite of the Queen or he wouldn't be dealt with so lightly." Beauty saw that the paddling had stopped. Once again, the slave was on his hands and knees and kissing the feet of the Queen as the Page waited in attendance. Now the slave's buttocks were very red.