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)

  Before you conclude that female copulatory vocalization is just a fancy phrase for a little excitement, think about the predators possibly alerted by this primate passion. Chimps and bonobos may be out of reach up in the branches, but baboons (like our ground-dwelling ancestors) live among leopards and other predators who would be quite interested in a two-for-one special on fresh primate—especially given a mating pair’s distracted, vulnerable state. As Hamilton and Arrowood put it: “In spite of the risk of exposure of individuals and the troop to predators these baboons habitually call during copulation, [so] the calls must have some adaptive value.” What could that be? The authors offered several hypotheses, including the notion that the calls may be a stratagem to help activate the male’s ejaculatory reflex, an analysis with which many prostitutes would presumably agree. Perhaps there is something to this idea,10 but even so, male primates are not known for needing a great deal of assistance in activating their ejaculatory reflex. If anything, the human male ejaculatory reflex tends to be too easily activated—at least from the perspective of women not being paid to activate it as quickly as possible. Especially given all the other convergent evidence, it seems far more likely that in humans, female copulatory vocalization would serve to attract males to the ovulating, sexually receptive female, thus promoting sperm competition, with all its attendant benefits—both reproductive and social. Yet despite all the loud carrying on by women the world over, “The credo of the coy female persists,” writes Natalie Angier. “It is garlanded with qualifications and is admitted to be an imperfect portrayal of female mating strategies but then, that little matter of etiquette attended to, the credo is stated once again.” Sin Tetas, No Hay Paraíso11 For better or worse, the human female’s naughty bits don’t swell up to five times their normal size and turn bright red to signal her sexual availability. But is there anatomical evidence suggesting that women evolved to be highly sexual? No question. It turns out that every bit as much as a man’s body, the woman’s body (and preconscious behavior) is replete with indications of millennia of promiscuity and sperm competition. Considering its almost total lack of muscle tissue, the female breast wields amazing power. Curvaceous women have leveraged this power to manipulate even the most accomplished, disciplined men for as long as anyone’s been around to notice. Empires have fallen, wills have been revised, millions of magazines and calendars sold, Super Bowl audiences scandalized…all in response to the mysterious force emanating from what are, after all, small bags of fat.

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

  This happens each time you hear an emotion word or are faced with an array of sensations. 5 1 All of this categorization, context, and probability may seem remarkably counterintuitive. When I’m walking through the woods and see a monstrous snake in my path, I certainly don’t say to myself, “Well, I actively predicted that snake from a population of competing concepts, which were constructed from the past and have some degree of similarity to this current set of sensations, thereby creating my perception.” I just “saw a snake.” And when I gingerly turn on my heels and run, I don’t think, “I honed my many predictions down to one winning instance of the emotion category ‘Fear,’ causing me to run away.” No, I just feel terrified with an urge to flee. The fear comes on suddenly and uncontrollably, as if a stimulus (the snake) triggered a little bomb (a neural fingerprint) causing the response (fear and running). When I relate the snake story to my friends later, over coffee, I don’t tell them, “Having constructed an instance of the concept ‘Fear’ to fit my surroundings using my past experience, my brain changed the firing of my visual neurons before the snake appeared on the path, preparing me to see the snake and to run in the other direction, and once my prediction was confirmed, my sensations were categorized, and I constructed an experience of fear that explained my sensations in terms of a goal, and I made a mental inference to perceive the snake as the cause of my feelings, and the running away as their consequence.” No, my story is much simpler: “I saw a snake. I screamed and fled.” Nothing about my encounter with the snake tells me that I was an architect of the whole experience. Nevertheless, I was that architect, whether I felt it or not, just as you were with the blobby bee. Even before I was aware of the snake, my brain was busy constructing an instance of fear. Or, if I am an eight-year-old girl hoping for a pet snake someday, I might construct an instance of excitement. If I am her parent who will allow a snake into my house over my dead body, I might construct an instance of irritation. The stimulus-response brain is a myth, brain activity is prediction and correction, and we construct emotional experiences outside of awareness. This explanation fits the architecture and operation of the brain. 5 2 Simply put: I did not see a snake and categorize it. I did not feel the urge to run and categorize it. I did not feel my heart pound ing and categorize it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  her wear something she did Eventually this becomes a habit; we are nice, even when it isn't really nec-not wish to. When she occasionally dared to do essary. We try to please other people, to not step on their toes, to avoid dis-anything, however small, agreements and conflict. without his leave, he Niceness in seduction, however, though it may at first draw someone to treated her like a servant, and she was in tears for you (it is soothing and comforting), soon loses all effect. Being too nice can several days. • . . . Before literally push the target away from you. Erotic feeling depends on the cre-assembled company he ation of tension. Without tension, without anxiety and suspense, there can would give her such be no feeling of release, of true pleasure and joy It is your task to create brusque replies that everyone lowered their eyes, that tension in the target, to stimulate feelings of anxiety, to lead them to and the Duchess would and fro, so that the culmination of the seduction has real weight and inten-blush, though her passion sity. So rid yourself of your nasty habit of avoiding conflict, which is in any Mix Pleasure with Pain • 377 case unnatural. You are most often nice not out of your own inner good- for him was in no way ness but out of fear of displeasing, out of insecurity. Go beyond that fear curtailed." • For the princess, Riom was a and you suddenly have options—the freedom to create pain, then magically sovereign remedy against dissolve it. Your seductive powers will increase tenfold. boredom. People will be less upset by your hurtful actions than you might imag- —STENDHAL, LOVE, ine. In the world today, we often feel starved for experience. We crave TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND emotion, even if it is negative. The pain you cause your targets, then, is SUZANNE SALE bracing—it makes them feel more alive. They have something to complain about, they get to play the victim. As a result, once you have turned the pain into pleasure they will readily forgive you. Stir up their jealousy, make them feel insecure, and the validation you later give their ego by preferring them over their rivals is doubly delightful. Remember: you have more to fear by boring your targets than by shaking them up. Wounding people binds them to you more deeply than kindness. Create tension so you can release it. If you need inspiration, find the part of the target that most irritates you and use it as a springboard for some therapeutic conflict. The more real your cruelty, the more effective it is. In 1818, the French writer Stendhal, then living in Milan, met the Countess Metilda Viscontini. For him, it was love at first sight. She was a proud, somewhat difficult woman, and she intimidated Stendhal, who was terribly afraid of displeasing her with a stupid comment or undignified act.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth) I vowed to give up sex, bacon, and air travel if I ever made it back to terra firma in one piece. The rest of the people on the plane were also not my idea of a fun group to die with. When things really got messy and we were being buffeted around like aphids clinging to a paper glider, some drunken idiot started yelling “Ooopsy-Daisy” every time we took a dive, and a few other fools kept laughing hysterically. The thought of dying with all these comical assholes and then arriving in the underworld with a visa marked “Unitarian” kept me praying avidly throughout the flight. There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes. Amazingly enough, the storm subsided (or we left it behind) by the time we flew over Cyprus. There was a greasy Egyptian (is there any other kind?) sitting next to me, and once he realized he was going to survive the flight, he began flirting with me. He told me that he published a magazine in Cairo and was going to Beirut on business. He also insisted that he hadn’t been scared at all because he always wore this blue bead against the evil eye. Blue bead or not, he’d looked pretty goddamned scared to me. He went on to reassure me that both he and I had “lucky noses” and therefore the plane couldn’t possibly crash while we were on it. He touched the tip of my nose and then touched his and said: “See—lucky.” “Christ—I’ve run into a nose freak,” I thought. And I wasn’t exactly flattered by the idea that our noses looked alike either. He had a huge nose, like Nasser’s (all Egyptians look like Nasser to me), while my nose, though not exactly retroussé , is at least small and straight. It may not be a plastic surgeon’s dream, but it’s not a Nasser nose either. If anything, its stubby tip betrays the genetic contribution of some pig-faced Polish thug who raped one of my great-grandmothers during some long-forgotten pogrom in the Pale. My Egyptian’s conversational interests, however, went beyond noses. He looked down at a copy of Time Magazine which had lain open (and unread) on my lap during the storm, pointed to a picture of (then) UN Ambassador Goldberg, and said historically: “He’s Jewish.” That was all he said, but his tone and look implied that that was all he had to say. I looked at him very hard (over my Polish nose), and for two cents I would have said, “Me too,” but nobody offered me two cents.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  I wondered if the last statement was true. All? Did they have for instance sidewalk grenadine? I also wondered if a hunter, enchanted or otherwise, would not need a pointer more than a pew, and with a spasm of pain I recalled a scene worthy of a great artist: petite nymphe accroupie; but that silky cocker spaniel had perhaps been a baptized one. No—I felt I could not endure the throes of revisiting that lobby. There was a much better possibility of retrievable time elsewhere in soft, richcolored, autumnal Briceland. Leaving Rita in a bar, I made for the town library. A twittering spinster was only too glad to help me disinter mid-August 1947 from the bound Briceland Gazette, and presently, in a secluded nook under a naked light, I was turning the enormous and fragile pages of a coffin-black volume almost as big as Lolita.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Given the perspective of history, it’s clear that Bennett and I owed our being in Heidelberg (and in fact our marriage) to the hoodwinking of the American public by the government, which was later revealed in the Pentagon Papers. In other words, we got married as a direct result of Bennett’s being drafted—and he was drafted as a direct result of the Vietnam troop buildup of 1965-66, which was a direct result of the hoodwinking of the American public by the government. But who knew that at the time? We suspected it, but we had no proof. We had ironic headlines promising that the buildup was to “end the war and bring a lasting peace.” We had good one-liners like: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it….” We had activists as articulate as any who came along later. But we had no proof in black and white on the front page of The Times. So Bennett, a child psychiatrist with half his analytic training done, was drafted at the age of thirty-one. We had known each other three months. We had come to each other from other unhappy love affairs—and on my part a disastrous first marriage. We were sick of being single; we were terrified of being alone; we were happy together in bed; we were frightened of the future; we were married one day before Bennett had to leave for Fort Sam Houston. From the first, the marriage was strange. We’d both expected rescue. And there we were both clawing at each other and drowning together. Things turned hostile in a matter of days. We quickly went from verbal assaults to utter silence, punctuated by lovemaking that kept on, amazingly enough, being good. Neither of us quite knew what we had gotten into, or why. Before we came to Heidelberg, the setting for the first two months of our marriage was as strange as our reason for getting married. There we were, two terrified, transplanted Manhattanites, plunked down in San Antonio, Texas. Bennett was shorn of his hair, stuffed into army greens, forced to sit through hour after hour of army propaganda on how to be an army doctor—something he detested with his whole heart. I stayed “home” in a sterile motel outside San Antonio, watched television, tinkered with my poems, felt enraged and powerless. Like most native New York girls, I had never learned to drive. I was twenty-four and stranded in a Texas motel facing a sun-parched strip of highway between San Antonio and Austin.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I had to participate in it by eliminating the possibilities. This took another twenty minutes and several nickels. Finally it turned out he was at the Gotham Bar. I dashed out and took a cab down to meet him. I learned that he had spent the day taking Puerto Rican and black kids for boat rides on Central Park Lake, buying them ice cream, giving money away to people in the park, and planning his escape from hell. He had not actually walked on the water but he had thought about it quite a lot. Now he was ready to change his life. He had discovered he was possessed of a fund of superhuman energy. Other mortals needed sleep. He did not. Other mortals needed jobs and degrees and all the paraphernalia of everyday life. He did not. He was going to embark on the destiny which had always awaited him—saving the world. I was to help him. To tell you the truth, none of this talk really displeased me very much. It rather excited me. The idea of Brian quitting market research and my quitting graduate school and our going off together to save the world was perfectly OK with me. I had always urged him to quit market research, in fact. I had tried to lure him to go off to Europe with me and just wander for a while. But Brian had always protested. He had gone into market research as if it were the last great crusade. As we walked through the city that Saturday night, it was his behavior which disturbed me far more than his wild talk. He wanted us both to close our eyes and cross streets against the lights (to prove we were gods). He would go into stores and ask the storekeepers to take down various items, then handle each one, talk elatedly about each one, and then walk out. He would go into a coffee shop and play with the sugar pourer on every table before he sat down. People kept staring at him. Sometimes the storekeepers or waiters would say, “Take it easy buddy, relax buddy” or sometimes they’d throw him out. Everyone sensed that something was wrong. His agitation jangled the air. To Brian, this was only proof of divinity. “You see,” he said, “they know I’m God and they don’t know how else to react.” It was doubly hard for me because I half believed Brian’s theory. Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world. If God did come back, he would probably wind up in the psycho ward. I was a Laingian way before Laing began publishing. But I was also scared to death. When we finally got home at 2 A.M., Brian was still frantic and wide-awake, though I was exhausted.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Each person who had handled her or punished her had in some way admired her. And when she thought of her beautiful Alexi treated this way, she felt weak with fear. "Of course I did not know this was to be my regular station. I was taken out hours later when after the evening meal was served they again chose to rape me. Only this time I was thrown down and spread out on a large wooden table. And for their pleasure they paddled me again this time with coarse wooden paddles, saying the leather paddles they had used earlier were now too good for me. They held my legs wide apart, they lamented they would not torture my private parts without risking punishment. But by this they did not mean my penis which they punished a great deal with slaps, and rough handling. "I was frantic by this time. I cannot explain it. There were so many of them, they were so crude, and my movements or sounds were nothing to them. The Queen had noticed my smallest change of expression. She had scoffed at my growls and struggles, but she had savored all of it. These crude cooks and kitchen boys rubbed my hair, lifted my face, slapped my buttocks and spanked me as if I had no sense whatsoever. "They would speak of me, 'What plump buttocks,' and 'Look at those strong legs,' and that sort of thing as if I were a mere animal. They pinched me, poking me, jabbing me as they pleased, and then they set to raping me. They greased me well with their cruel hands as they had done before, and when they had finished, they flushed me out with some crude piping attached to a wineskin filled with water. I cannot tell you the mortification of this, to be washed inside and out by them. The Queen had at least allotted to me privacy in these matters, as the needs of our bowels and bladders do not interest her. But to be emptied by this violent stream of cold water and in front of these piggish men made me weak and spiritless. "I was limp when they hung me back in the refuse. And in the morning my arms ached, and I was sickened by the stench that rose around me. Roughly they pulled me out and shackled me on my knees again and threw me down for some food on a plate. It had been a day since I had eaten; yet I did not wish to eat for their amusement, as they would not allow me the use of my hands.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She blushed darkly, biting her lip. "Are you hungry, beautiful one?" he asked. He could see she was afraid to answer. "When I ask you will say, 'Only if it pleases you, my Prince,' and I shall know the answer is yes. Or, 'Not unless it should please you, my Prince,' and I shall know the answer is no. Do you understand me?" "Yes, my Prince," she answered. "I'm hungry only if it pleases you." "Very good, very good," he said to her with genuine feeling. He lifted a small cluster of glistening purple grapes and fed them to her one by one, taking the seeds out of her mouth and casting them aside. And he watched with obvious pleasure as she drank deeply from the wine cup he held to her lips. Then he wiped her mouth and kissed her. Her eyes were glistening. But she had stopped crying. He felt the smooth flesh of her back, and her breasts again. "Superb," he whispered. "And were you terribly spoilt before and given everything that you wished?" She was confused, blushing again, and then full of shame she nodded. "Yes, my Prince, I think perhaps..." "Don't be afraid to answer me with many words," he coaxed, "as long as they are respectful. And never speak unless I speak to you first, and in all these things, be careful to note what pleases me. You were very spoilt, given everything, but were you willful?" "No, my Prince, I don't think I was that," she said. "I tried to be a joy to my parents." "And you'll be a joy to me, my dear," he said lovingly. Still holding her firmly in his left arm, he turned to his supper. He ate heartily, pork, roast fowl, some fruit, and several cups of wine. Then he told the servants to take it all away and leave them. New sheets and coverlets had been laid on the bed; there were fresh down pillows, and roses in a vase nearby, and several candelabra. "Now," he said as he rose and set her before him. "We must get to bed as we have a long journey before us tomorrow. And I have still to punish you for your earlier impertinence." Immediately the tears stood in her eyes; she looked up at him imploring. She almost reached to cover her breasts and her sex, and then remembering herself she made her hands into two little helpless fists at her sides. "I won't punish you very much," he said gently, lifting her chin. "It was just a little offense, and your first after all. But Beauty, to confess the truth, I shall love punishing you." She was biting her lip, and he could see she wanted to speak, and the effort to control her tongue and her hands was almost too much for her. "All right, lovely one, what do you want to say?" he asked. "Please, my Prince," she begged.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  And a leather strap was bound around her, securely pressing her upturned legs against her torso. But the most cruel and frightening aspect of it for Beauty was the exposure of the Princess's secret parts, for she was hung so that anyone could see her full sex with its pink lips and its dark hair even to the tiny brown orifice between her buttocks. And all this just below her scarlet face. Beauty could imagine no worse exposure and she looked down timidly, glancing up again and again to the girl whose suspended body moved slightly as with a current in the air, the leather links at her wrists and ankles creaking. But she was not alone. Beauty realized that only yards away, other doubled bodies hung from the same beam just as helplessly. Princess Lizetta's face remained colored with rage, but she had quieted somewhat and now she turned and tried to conceal her expression against her leg, but the Page nearby adjusted her face forward. Quickly Beauty looked at the others. Not very far to the right a young man was mounted in the very same fashion. He appeared very young, no more than sixteen at best, and he was blond with curly hair, and his pubic hair was slightly reddish. His organ was erect, its tip glossy, and there exposed to all the world was his scrotum and again the tiny opening of his anus. There were more of them, another young Princess and another Prince, but these first two engaged Beauty completely. The blond Prince was moaning painfully. His eyes were dry, but he appeared to struggle, to shift as he hung from the black leather manacles, and he caused his body to turn a little to the left as he did so. A young man, meantime, looking somewhat more impressive than the Pages, and differently costumed in dark blue velvet, came down the line of doubled and manacled slaves and appeared to inspect each face and each configuration of mercilessly exposed organs. He smoothed back the hair from the young Prince's forehead. The young Prince moaned. It seemed he tried to thrust himself forward, and this man in blue velvet stroked the Prince's penis causing the Prince to main all the louder and more with the sound of one imploring. Beauty bent her head but she continued to watch the man in velvet as he approached the Princess Lizetta. "Stubborn one, most difficult," he said to Lord Gregory. "A day and night of punishment will subdue her," Lord Gregory answered. And Beauty was shocked to think of being exposed for so long, and so uncomfortably. She knew at once she would do anything to prevent this punishment, yet she had the terrible fear that despite all her efforts it might befall her. She at once imagined herself hung in this position, and she let out a little gasp, though she pressed her lips together to stop it.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "I could scarcely believe my ears. She herself would not even deign to witness it. She sent for Lord Gregory, and told him I was to be taken to the Special Punishment Hall and there given to the assembled Princesses. For one hour they could do with me what they liked. And then I was to be bound in the garden and have my thighs whipped with a leather thong, and left there until morning. "This was my first great separation from the Queen. And I could not imagine myself, naked, helpless, and fit only for punishment, given over to the Princesses. I had dropped the Queen's hairbrush twice. I had spilled some wine earlier. All of this had seemed beyond my control and my finest efforts. "When Lord Gregory gave me several hard spanks I was full of shame and fear. And as we neared the Special Punishments Hall, I felt I could not move by my own power. "He had placed a leather collar around my neck. He pulled me along, spanking me only lightly as he said the Princesses must have the full enjoyment of me. "Before we entered the room, he put a sign about my neck by means of a small ribbon. He showed it to me first, and I shuddered to see it announced me as clumsy, willful and bad, and in need of correction. "He then exchanged my leather collar for another which had numerous small metal rings attached to it, each ring just large enough for a finger to be hooked in it. That way the Princesses could pull me this way or that, he said, and woe to me if I showed the slightest resistance. "Cuffs with the same rings were put on my ankles and my wrists. I felt myself scarcely able to move as I was pulled towards the door. "I did not know how to assess my emotions. As the door opened, I saw them all, some ten Princesses, a naked harem lounging about under the watchful eye of a groom, all girls being rewarded for good behavior by this hour of leisure. I learned later that if anyone is to be severely punished he or she is given to them, but on that day they had not expected anyone. "They shrieked with delight, clapping their hands and immediately conferring with one another. All around me I saw their long hair, red, golden, raven hair in deep waves and thick curls, their naked breasts and bellies, and those hands pointing to me, and shielding their own shy and shameful whispers. "They clustered about me. I crouched trying to conceal myself. But Lord Gregory lifted my head by means of the collar.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  ber, all the young girls in the prosperous house of Chia are in love with the "must be fond of practical jokes. " So he said, "It is, rakish Pao Yu. He is certainly handsome, but what makes him irresistible is sir, the whitest bread I have his uncanny ability to enter a young girl's spirit. Pao Yu has spent his youth ever seen, and I have never around girls, whose company he has always preferred. As a result, he never tasted the like in all my life. " • "This bread," said comes over as threatening and aggressive. He is granted entry to girls' the host, "was baked by a rooms, they see him everywhere, and the more they see him the more they slave girl whom I bought fall under his spell. It is not that Pao Yu is feminine; he remains a man, but for five hundred dinars." one who can be more or less masculine as the situation requires. His famil-Then he called out to one of his slaves: "Bring in the iarity with young girls allows him the flexibility to enter their spirit. meat pudding, and let there This is a great advantage. The difference between the sexes is what be plenty of fat in it!" makes love and seduction possible, but it also involves an element of fear • . . . Thereupon the host moved his fingers as though and distrust. A woman may fear male aggression and violence; a man is to pick up a morsel from an often unable to enter a woman's spirit, and so he remains strange and imaginary dish, and threatening. The greatest seducers in history, from Casanova to John F. popped the invisible delicacy into my brother's Kennedy, grew up surrounded by women and had a touch of femininity mouth. • The old man themselves. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in his novel The Seducer's continued to enlarge upon Diary, recommends spending more time with the opposite sex, getting to the excellences of the know the "enemy" and its weaknesses, so that you can turn this knowledge various dishes, while my brother became so to your advantage. ravenously hungry that he Ninon de l'Enclos, one of the greatest seductresses who ever lived, had would have willingly died definite masculine qualities. She could impress a man with her intense Enter Their Spirit • 225 philosophical keenness, and charm him by seeming to share his interest in for a crust of barley bread. politics and warfare. Many men first formed deep friendships with her, • "Have you ever tasted anything more delicious," only to later fall madly in love. The masculine in a woman is as soothing to went on the old man, men as the feminine in a man is to women. To a man, a woman's strange- "than the spices in these

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The importance of sperm competition has been debated in scientific conferences and academic journals for the past few decades as if it were a new discovery, but several centuries BCE, Aristotle and his predecessors noted that if a bitch copulated with two dogs during a single fertile period, she could produce a litter of pups fathered by one or both of them. And consider the story of Heracles and Iphicles: the night preceding Amphitryon’s marriage to Alcmene, Zeus disguised himself as Amphitryon and slept with the bride-to-be. The following night, Amphitryon consummated her marriage. Alcmene had twins: Iphicles (fathered by Amphitryon) and Heracles (fathered by Zeus). Clearly, the ancient Greeks had an inkling of sperm competition. More recently, several researchers have demonstrated that a man’s sperm production increases significantly when he has not seen his partner for a few days, regardless of whether or not he ejaculated during her absence. This finding conforms to the notion that sperm competition has played a role in human evolution and may even reflect an adaptation to monogamy. In this scenario, not knowing what his strumpet of a wife was up to at that damned conference in Orlando leads a man’s body to hyper-produce sperm to increase his chances of fertilizing her ovum when she gets home, even if his worst fears (and possibly, hottest fantasies) are true. Along these same lines, women have also reported that their partners tend to be more vigorous in bed—reporting deeper, more vigorous thrusting—after a separation or if infidelity is suspected.9 (The possibility that the men may actually be turned on by the thought of their mates’ possible transgressions appears not to have made its way into the discussion as yet, but see the discussion of porn below.) The scandalous implications of sperm competition run smack into the long-held view of sacrosanct female sexuality. It’s a vision Darwin cultivated in public consciousness, featuring coy females who surrender only to a carefully chosen mate who has proven himself worthy—and even then, she’s only doing it for England. “The sexually insatiable woman,” declared a terrified Donald Symons, “is to be found primarily, if not exclusively, in the ideology of feminism, the hopes of boys, and the fears of men.”10 Perhaps, but Marvin Harris offers a different take, writing, “Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate’s nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be.”11 Despite all the controversy, there is no question as to whether sperm competition occurs in human reproduction.12 It does—every time. A single human ejaculate contains anywhere from fifty million to half a billion applicants all trying to elbow their way into the only job available: fertilizer in chief. The relevant question is whether those applicants are competing against only each other, or billions more eager job-seekers sent by other men as well.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  You must be firmly planted on the ground," he said, "so that you can withstand the blows of the paddle." She wanted to cry out, and through her tightly pressed lips her sobs sounded very loud to her. "Beauty, Beauty," he crooned. "Do you want to please me?" "Yes, my Prince," she cried, her lip trembling uncontrollably. "Then why are you crying so when you haven't even felt the paddle yet? And your buttocks are only a little sore. Why, the Innkeeper's daughter had little strength." She cried almost bitterly, as if to say in her soft wordless way that it was all true but it was so difficult. It was an explosion of stinging pain on the hot surface of her flesh, and the second spank came much more swiftly than she had thought possible and then there was the third and the fourth, and in spite of herself she was crying aloud. He stopped and gently kissed her all over her face. "Beauty, Beauty," he said. "Now, I give you permission to speak...tell what it is you would have me know..." "I want to please you, my Prince," she struggled, "but it hurts so, and I've tried so hard to please you." "But, my darling, you please me by bearing this pain. I explained to you earlier that punishment would not always be for a transgression. Sometimes it would be for my pleasure only." "Yes, my Prince," she cried. "I shall tell you a little secret about the pain. You are as a tight bowstring. And the pain loosens you, makes you soft as I want you to be. It is worth a thousand little orders and scoldings, and you must not think of resisting it. Do you know what I am saying? You must give yourself over to it. With each crack of the paddle you must think of the next and the next and that it is you Prince doing it to you, giving you this pain." "Yes, my Prince," she said softly. He lifted her chin again without further ado and spanked her hard again and again on the buttocks. She felt her buttocks growing hotter and hotter with pain, and the cracks of the paddle sounded loud and somehow shattering to her, as if the sound itself were as dreadful as the pain. She could not understand it. When he stopped again, she was breathless and almost frantic in her tears, as if the torrent of blows had so humiliated her it was far worse than even a greater pain would have been. But the Prince folded her in his arms. And feeling his rough clothing against her, and his hard naked chest, and the strength of his shoulders, she felt such a soothing pleasure that her sobs grew soft and open mouthed and languid against him.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  How they had gaped at her, enjoyed her helplessness. She could not sleep. And she was filled with a strange new terror. It was dark when the Prince at last sent for her, and as soon as she reached the door of his private dining room, she saw that he was with Lord Stefan. It seemed in that moment her fate was decided. She smiled as she thought of all his boasting to Lord Stefan, and she wanted to enter quickly now, but Lord Gregory held her back at the threshold. Beauty let her eyes mist over. She did not see the Prince in his velvet tunic emblazoned with the coat of arms. Rather she saw those village cobblestone streets, the wives with their wicker brooms, the common lads in the tavern. But Lord Gregory was speaking to her. "Don't you think I see the change in you!" he hissed low in her ear, so that it seemed part of her imagination. Her eyebrows knit in a frown of annoyance and then she dropped her eyes. "You're infected with the same poison as Prince Alexi. I see it working on you every day. You will soon make a mockery of everything." Her pulse quickened. Lord Stefan, at the supper table, looked so forlorn. And the Prince was as proud as ever. "What you need is a severe lesson..." Lord Gregory continued in his acid whisper. "My Lord, you can't mean the village!" Beauty shuddered. "No, I don't mean the village!" He was obviously shocked. "And don't be flippant and bold with me. You know what I mean. The Hall of Punishments." "Ah, your domain, where you are Prince," Beauty whispered. But he did not hear her. And the Prince, with an air of indifference, had snapped his fingers for her to enter. She approached on her hands and knees. But she had only come a few paces into the room when she stopped. "Go on!" Lord Gregory hissed at her angrily; the Prince had not yet noticed. But when he turned and looked at her crossly, still she did not move, her head bowed, her eyes fixed on him. And when she saw the anger and outrage in his face, she turned suddenly and ran on her hands and knees past Lord Gregory and into the passage. "Stop her, stop her!" the Prince cried out before he could prevent himself. And when Beauty saw Lord Gregory's boots beside her, she rose to her full height and ran faster. He caught her by the hair and she screamed as she felt herself pulled back and thrown over his shoulder. She beat on his back with her fists, kicking, as he held her knees tight, and she wept hysterically.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "I will do as you say, my Lord," she said anxiously. "And remember, the Queen is none too pleased with her son's passion for you. A thousand slaves have surrounded him ever since he was a young boy, and in none of them has he found an object of devotion such as you. The Queen does not like it." "O, but what can I do?" Beauty cried softly. "You can show perfect obedience to all your superiors, and do nothing to make yourself seem rebellious or unusual." "Yes, my Lord," Beauty said. "You know that I saw you watching Prince Alexi last night," he said, his voice now a menacing whisper. Beauty winced. She bit her lip and tried not to cry. "I could tell this to the Queen at any moment." "Yes, my Lord," she gasped. "But you are very young and lovely. And for such an offense as that you would face the most terrible punishment; you would be sent out of the castle to the village, and that would be more than you could bear..." Beauty trembled. "The village" -- what could this mean? But Lord Gregory continued: "And no slave of the Queen or the Crown Prince should ever be condemned to such disgraceful punishment, and no favorite slave ever has." He took a deep breath as if to cool his anger. "And when you are properly trained, you shall be a splendid slave. And there is no reason finally why the Prince should not enjoy you, why everyone here should not enjoy you. I am here, therefore, to make something of you, not to see you destroyed." "You are most kind and gracious, my Lord," Beauty whispered, but the words, the village, made their indelible impression. If only she might ask... But a young Lady had come into the room, passing through the door in a great rush, her long yellow hair in thick braids, her dress a rich burgundy color trimmed in ermine. Before Beauty remembered to look down, she caught a full glimpse of the Lady with her ruddy cheeks and large brown eyes which swept the Hall of Punishments now as if searching for someone. "O, Lord Gregory, how nice to see you," she said, and as Lord Gregory bowed, she curtsied gracefully. Beauty was stunned by her loveliness, and then overcome with her own shame and vulnerability. She stared at the Lady's pretty silver slippers and the rings on the fingers of her right had which gathered her skirts easily. "And how may I serve you, Lady Juliana?" asked Lord Gregory. Beauty felt desolate. She was thankful the Lady never looked at her, and then again she felt abysmal.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Now her wrists were treated the same. She kept her face hidden as best as she could, weeping. "You will be silent," said the man icily to her, "or I shall see that you cannot be anything else. Do not misunderstand the Queen's leniency. She does not gag you only because it amuses to Court to see your mouth as it is, and to see you struggle with your own willfulness." And now, to Beauty's shame, he raised her chin and placed beneath it a long thick wooden chin rest. She could not lower her head, though she lowered her eyes. And she saw all the room about her. She saw the Lords and Ladies rising from the banquet tables. She saw the immense fire. And then she saw this man, too, with his thin angular face, and gray eyes that were not as cold as his voice, but for the moment seemed even to evince tenderness. A long shudder went through her as she contemplated herself -- spread out, yet mounted so that all could inspect even her face if they chose, and she tried to conceal her sobs by pressing her lips together. Even her hair was no covering, for it fell evenly on either side of her face and cloaked no part of her. "Young one, little one," said the gray-haired man under his breath. "You're so frightened and it's useless." There seemed a little warmth in his voice. "What is fear, after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none. Do not tense your limbs. It's wasted." Beauty bit her lip and felt the tears sliding down her face, but she was soothed by his speaking to her. He smoothed back the hair from her forehead. His hand was light and cold as if he were testing for a fever. "Now be still. Everyone is coming to see you." Beauty's eyes glazed over, but she could still see the distant thrones where the Prince and his mother were talking to one another quite naturally. But she realized all the Court had risen and was moving towards the dais. The Lords and Ladies were bowing to the Queen and the Prince, before turning and coming towards her. Beauty squirmed. It seemed the air itself touched her naked buttocks and the hair between her legs, and she struggled to lower her face demurely but the firm wooden chin rest would not yield and all she could do was drop her eyes again. The first Ladies and Lords were very near and she could hear the rustle of their clothes and see the flash of their gold bracelets. These ornaments caught the light of the fire and the distant troches, and the dim image of the Prince and the Queen appeared to flicker. She let out a moan. "Hush, my darling dear," said the gray-eyed man.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  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 towel under me to slow my fall, and then more wildly because that hadn’t worked, tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole or like Elsa Schneider disappearing down into the infinite abyss in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The gray mist obscured my vision. Had I crossed the seal? Was the world crumbling? Calm, calm, I told myself. I could feel gravity sucking me deeper, time accelerating, the darkness around me, widening until I was somewhere else, somewhere with no horizon, an area of space that awed me in its foreverness, and I felt calm for just a moment. Then I recognized that I was floating without a tether. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. I was afraid. The fear felt like desire: suddenly I wanted to go back and be in all the places I’d ever been, every street I’d walked down, every room I’d sat down in. I wanted to see it all again. I tried to remember my life, flipping through Polaroids in my mind. “It was so pretty there. It was interesting!” But I knew that even if I could go back, if such a thing were possible with exactitude, in life or in dreams, there was really no point.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Yet mingled with her fear was some sense of her helplessness which had come over her the night before and never left her. She knew how she must appear, she was afraid, but she could do nothing and she was accepting it. Maybe this was a new strength, this acceptance. And she needed all her strength, for she was alone with this woman who had no love for her. Without words, she evoked a memory of the Prince's love, of Lady Juliana's affectionate touch and warm words of praise, even of Leon's caressing hands. But this was the Queen, the great powerful Queen who ruled all and who felt nothing but coldness and fascination for her. She shivered against her will. The throbbing between her legs seemed to slacken and then to grow slightly more intense. Surely the Queen was staring at her. And the Queen could make her suffer. And there would be no Prince to witness it, no Court, no one. Only Prince Alexi. She saw him now, moving out of the shadows, a naked form exquisitely proportioned, the dark golden skin making him seem a polished statue. "Wine," said the Queen. And he was moving to pour it for her. He knelt at her side and he placed the two-handled cup in her hands, and as she drank, Beauty looked up and saw Prince Alexi smiling directly at her. She was so startled, she almost made a little gasp. His large brown eyes were full of the same gentle affection he'd shown her last night when he passed her at the banquet table. Then he made his mouth into a silent kiss before Beauty looked away in consternation. Could he feel affection for her, real affection, even desire, as she felt desire for him when she first saw him? O, how she ached suddenly to touch him, to feel just once for an instant that silken skin, that hard chest, those dark, rose-colored nipples. How exquisite they were on that flat chest, those little nodules that seemed so unmasculine, giving him a touch of feminine vulnerability. How had the Queen punished them, she wondered? Were they ever clamped and adorned as her breasts had been? They were piquant, those little nipples. But the throbbing between her legs warned her, and it took an act of will for her not to move her hips. "Undress me," the Queen said. And from beneath her half-mast lids, Beauty watched as Prince Alexi obeyed the command skillfully and deftly. How clumsy she had been two nights ago and how patient the Prince had been with her. He used his hands but seldom. His first duty was with his teeth to unsnap the hooks of the Queen's dress and this he did, quickly gathering it as if fell down around her. Beauty was astonished to see the Queen's full white breasts naked under a thin chemise of lace.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty felt her heart in her throat like a little fist knocking there faster and faster. "I would make her my wife, even..." "Ah, but you are in the grip of madness." "Yes," said the Prince, "she has done that to me. Are others blind?" "No, of course not," said Juliana, "she is lovely. But each seeks his own love, you know that. Would you have everyone else equally mad for her?" "No," he shook his head. And without looking away from the chessboard, he reached out to caress Beauty's breasts, lifting them, squeezing them, so that she winced. But suddenly everyone was rising. Chairs slid back on the stones; the assemblage stood bowing. Beauty turned. The Queen had come into the room. Beauty glimpsed her long green gown, the girdle of gold embroidery about her hips and that sheer white veil that hung down her back to her hem, only thinly concealing her black hair. Beauty went down low on her hands and knees not knowing what she must do. Her forehead touched the stones and she held her breath. Yet she could see the Queen approaching. The Queen stood right before her. "Be seated everyone," said the Queen, "and return to your games. But you, my son, how do you fare with this new passion?" The Prince was obviously at a loss for an answer. "Pick her up, display her," said the Queen. And Beauty realized she was being lifted by her wrists. She rose up quickly, her arms being twisted behind her, her back forced into a painful arc, and suddenly she was standing on her toes moaning. The clamps seemed to tear at her nipples, the jewels between her legs to pull her open. Behind the jewel in her navel, she felt her heart beat, and she felt it too in the lobes of her clamped ears and in her eyelids. She was looking at the floor but all she could see was that shimmering chain and some great indistinct form that was the Queen standing over her. Then suddenly the Queen's hand struck Beauty's breasts so hard that Beauty cried out, and at once felt the Page's fingers over her mouth tightly. She moaned in panic. She felt her tears come, the Page's fingers biting into her cheek. And without meaning to, she struggled. "There, there, Beauty," whispered the Prince. "You do not show my mother your best disposition." Beauty tried to calm herself, but the Page forced her forward more harshly. "She is not so bad," said the Queen, and Beauty could feel the iron in her voice, her cruelty. No matter what the Prince did to her, she did not sense in him such pure cruelty. "She is only afraid of me," said the Queen. "And I wish you were more afraid of me, my son." "Mother, be gentle with her, please, I beg you," said the Prince.