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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  My fears stem not so much from my own concern about being excluded, or for the many other subgroups not mentioned here who also feel increasingly left out of this community. Rather, I fear that this inward, homogenizing trend represents a lost opportunity to learn from one another and to change the minds of the public at large. If we hope to correct this insular, exclusionary trend, then we must begin to (once again) think in terms of alliances rather than monolithic communities. Alliance-based activism begins with the recognition that we are all individuals, each with a limited history and experiencing a largely unique set of privileges, expectations, assumptions, and restrictions. Thus, none of us have “superior knowledge” when it comes to sexuality and gender. By calling ourselves an alliance, we explicitly acknowledge that we are working toward a common goal (how about “making the world safe and just for people of all genders and sexualities”?), while simultaneously recognizing and respecting our many differences. There can be no legitimate accusations of “divisiveness” in an alliance, as differences of opinion would be expected from the start. Thinking in terms of alliances can encourage us to move beyond the single goal of creating safe queer/trans spaces, to recognize that, in reality, there is no such thing as a “safe space.” After all, the very notion of safety is often predicated on a presumed and exclusionary sense of “sameness” and “oneness.” And unlike subversivism, which fosters a grim and belittling view of the heterosexual, gender-normative majority, alliance-based gender activism recognizes that the only way we will change society is by engaging the mainstream public and working with, rather than against, our straight allies.If we hope to build alliances that are respectful of all queer and transgender perspectives, then we must stop talking about the gender binary system, as if there is only one. As a trans woman, I deal with lots of gender binaries: male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, cissexual/transsexual, cisgender/transgender, and so on. As someone who is marginalized in queer/trans spaces for not being “subversive” or “transgressive” enough, I find that calls to “shatter the (male/female) gender binary” sound hollow.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We ride in a rickety yellow schoolbus to a location twenty minutes away from the shack, where we pick up our tubes. There are no guides on this adventure – I’ve already signed my life away on a stack of waivers – so when the bus dumps us at a spot upriver, I know that we are expected to make our way back on our own in individual tubes that look like old tires. I see people walking along the road, having emerged from the river shivering and muddy, and the guys next to us on the bus are talking about people who have died in rapids. I don’t realize that my breathing has become shallow until Hudson whispers, “Are you sure you want to do this, Mom?” “Oh yes, I’m fine, it’ll be great,” I say through gritted teeth, and he laughs because we both know that I am petrified. We collect our equipment and head toward the water, where he patiently suggests that I step to the side and let everyone else go ahead of us since it will take a long time for me to take all the baby steps I need to become immersed. Smiling, I set my tube in the water and hop right in, immediately drifting away while he stands on the river bank watching me, stunned. I am freezing, scared and uncomfortable, but I want him to see that I am strong and brave too. I am far from fearless. In fact, I have many, many fears, lists I could stay up all night writing, classifying those that are paralytic (ziplines, mice, getting water up my nose), to those that just freak me out (mayonnaise), to those I could work up the courage to face down if I was so inspired to (like this very moment). I may proceed with a whimper, not boldly like he does and like I wish I could, but I am doing it all the same. I am emboldened by the fact that I am already living through some of my worst fears and surviving, sometimes even with grace, so stepping out of my comfort zone? That’s my home now. It was easy to bow out of activities that daunted me while I was married because I felt then that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, but now, I am first and foremost proving to myself, and secondarily to my kids, that I am tougher and have a stronger backbone than it may have previously appeared. While Hudson watches me and I gloat in the glory of my lionheart, I crash into a pile of rocks. My tube tips over, my leg scrapes against the rough edge of the rocks and I flip under the icy water. It pierces me like nothing I have ever felt before – bracing and bone-chilling – but I understand immediately that that’s all it is, cold. I have bigger fish to fry, as I emerge sputtering and coughing.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I eyed his phone on the counter; I understood at that moment that I would have to scroll through it that night for a clue as to what was happening. I offered to charge it in the kitchen for him, but he grabbed the phone and closed our bedroom door behind him. If he refused to share the real reason behind his unhappiness, I would dig for it myself. I felt like I had just walked through a doorway to another planet – this was my family, my home, my marriage, my forever, my safe ground I walked on no matter what was whirling around in the world outside, and yet suddenly there was a chasm in the ground. I could sense it, but I couldn’t find its source; I was terrified that when I did, I would plunge through it. I cleaned the kitchen, then tiptoed into our bedroom and took his phone from his nightstand. My heart pounded as I walked to the chair at our desk off the hallway and sank down onto it. I easily opened his phone since he and I used the same passwords. I had no idea what I was looking for, so I read his texts, wading through hundreds of business-related texts and finding only one text of note. I didn’t recognize the sender; when I googled him, I saw that he was a therapist. Why wouldn’t Michael tell me if he was seeing a therapist? I then skimmed through hundreds of emails, still coming up empty-handed. I was starting to feel foolish about my paranoia and guilty that I was invading his privacy, but I knew something was amiss and I wasn’t going to know exactly what it was unless I found it out on my own: Michael had closed himself to me. I went into his Notes folder and in a bit of technological wizardry I didn’t know I was capable of, figured out there were notes in the virtual trash bin that could be opened. I found a letter he had written to someone to whom he had given a watch – not just any watch, but the first watch his father had ever given him. It was a loving letter but not proof of anything. It could have been a note to Hudson, though it was odd that neither of them had mentioned it to me. Stumped, I sat idly, staring at the phone screen, grimacing at my suspicious mind but also enormously relieved. I was about to turn his phone off and quietly return it to its spot on his nightstand when an app caught my eye – I had used WhatsApp to communicate with friends in other countries, but I didn’t know Michael used it. I clicked on it, but it was locked. I entered the passwords we usually used. Still locked. My stomach dropped as I instantly understood that what I was looking for was in here.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was a pair of hands. Fair hands, pale under the moon, with the nails bitten down to just slivers. Run! shrieked a voice inside me. A surge of adrenaline rang through my body like an alarm. But I couldn’t move. Then I saw a beautiful face, the wave of brown hair in an eye, and I gasped out loud. Was this the face of death? “So sorry,” the face said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just taking a break for a second from my swim.” “It’s okay,” I sputtered, still frozen in place. The swimmer leaned on the rock with his arms. They were thick and meaty—not cut like a bodybuilder’s, but you could see the muscles underneath what looked like a layer of baby chub. They reminded me of eating a piece of fish with thick skin and a small layer of fat, strong and also soft, very white. I wanted to bite them. His chest was hairless, and I noticed that the color of his nipples matched perfectly his lips, like pencil erasers. He looked like he was twenty-one, at most. If this was death then death was hot. “Doesn’t it scare you to be night-swimming? Isn’t the water freezing?” I asked. “I’ve got a wet suit on my lower half,” he said. “But no, it doesn’t scare me. I like the way the splashes look in the moonlight and I like having the ocean to myself. Well, almost to myself.” “Yeah, it’s nice out here,” I said. The wine was wearing off. I suddenly felt exhausted. His teeth were shiny white, but not like an actor’s. They didn’t look bleached or fake. They were practically iridescent, like the inside of a shell. There was something almost feminine about him, pretty, but his jaw was well defined. These surfer boys. I always forgot that they were real. I mean, I knew that they existed. I knew they were alive. But it really seemed to me that the surfing was a costume, like they were only pretending to be so enamored of it. How could anyone be that devoted to something so lacking a destination? Just wave after wave, over and over. I wished someone were that enamored of me. But their love for surfing was real. It was a fact. They really loved surfing as much as they appeared to love it. This one didn’t have a board, though. This wasn’t a surfer. This was a swimmer. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Lucy.” I felt old. “Nice to meet you, Lucy,” he said. “I’m Theo.” When he said his name, his hotness increased. He was real, there in the water, real in a way that I wasn’t. He was swimming and wet and I was—what was I doing? I thought of all my books, the ones waiting for me in piles back in my parching Phoenix apartment, collecting dust.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Fear is a great intoxicant in its own way. Anyone hooked on its adrenaline can tell you that. But in taking this risk, this angry set of words, one sentence, I had lost control of my own narrative. Now he owned the power. I was at his mercy. I thought the only way to get it back would be to continue testing him. Play it cool, don’t panic. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.” He didn’t want that, he said. But he wasn’t sure what to do. He said he felt that he had not been able to satisfy me in the relationship for a long time. “Satisfy me or satisfy yourself?” “Well, maybe a little of both,” he said. The AAA man arrived. Jamie did most of the talking. I could hear what the man was saying but I couldn’t really take it in because I was processing what had just happened. I should have kept my mouth shut, I thought. But in another way, I felt that I had been true to myself, I just wasn’t sure to which self. The self that wanted to shake things up so as to receive attention and doting? The self that needed to be shaken up, because the ache of living in a body was so fucking dull? Some higher self that said he wasn’t right for me? The 22 percent of me that was an asshole? “Let’s sleep on it,” said Jamie, after the spare had been put on my wheel. “We don’t have to decide anything right away.” “Together or separate?” I asked. Together or separate was always a big question for us. He wanted no more than two nights a week together. I pushed for four. When I was in my apartment alone, I longed to be in his fold. I hinted and alluded to having free time. I got drunk on white wine, then begged. I wanted the access, the invitation, to feel that I was always welcome. It was a need based on his absence of need. So I pushed for more togetherness. But once I was with him, the closeness was never what I wanted it to be. I suffocated in his presence. When he wasn’t pushing me away, the closeness was cloying. “Maybe separate would be better for tonight. Tomorrow and Tuesday too? Maybe for the week. I have a lot of work and it would be good to maybe just try this on, the space, see how it feels?” “Sure,” I said, though I was scared. He kissed me on the forehead. “I love you,” he said. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Oh, come on, Lucy,” he said. He opened my car door, climbed out, and slammed it shut. “I’m sorry!” I said, my voice trailing after him. 5. I had always thought of depression as having no shape.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was crazy to go into it so blind, but I felt I had no choice. Also, didn’t everyone go in blind? No one knew what was going to happen next. I hoped that it would be peaceful. I was just looking for peace. When Theo swam up to the rocks I saw there was a full moon hanging low over the ocean like a big fish egg. I didn’t notice it until he appeared, though I don’t know how I could have missed it. As he crawled up, tail slapping against the rocks, I felt that I was seeing him again for the first time. He looked like a surfer, or not a surfer, just a creature, maybe a fellow human, but more beautiful than anyone else and in that way not human like I was human. How much beauty was I projecting upon him, and how much was the moon? And if I was not projecting the beauty, and it was not the moon, how much of him was real beyond the beauty? I wondered if we were ever not projecting. We think we’ve grown or learned something, but maybe it’s always just a new projection. Were my incessant thoughts and feelings just a mechanism to escape the nothingness, or was the nothingness comprised of my thoughts and feelings themselves? Was there another way out besides out? It didn’t matter now. He smiled at me and I felt like he was looking at me at the altar. I felt like I had more control of him than I’d ever had. Even though I was the one who was surrendering her life to join him, the sacrifice seemed to give me power. It was the dead-girl thing. The dead girl was always the one with power. “I didn’t know if I would need a suitcase,” I said. “You don’t,” he said. He had a rope with him. “Will you take it with us anyway? So no one knows what happened?” “I’ll take it under, yes.” A shot of adrenaline surged through me. I felt scared. “So how does this work?” I asked. “I’ve always heard that humans can’t drown themselves—that you need to attach a rock or something. Apparently the human body, however stupidly, always fights to live. What do we do? Do you tie me up with that rope and pull me under, to the bottom?” “You will tie yourself up,” he said. “It is true that the human body does fight to the surface, sometimes even against your will.” I noticed that he said “fight to the surface.” He did not say fight to live. Never once did he explicitly mention my death in this. He still wouldn’t. But he hadn’t contradicted me either when I said drown. I dipped my hand into the icy water. My fingers went numb almost immediately. “I cannot help tie you,” he said. “I can only guide you down to the bottom.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then I texted Adam the wolf-monkey. I sent him a picture of my hospital bracelet. Look where I am…hospitalized! I needed to feel seen by someone, even someone I barely knew and did not like. I’ve always hated doctors’ offices or anything having to do with medicine, because I’m always afraid they’re going to tell me I’m dying. If I’m going to die, I would rather just die and never know about it in advance. Even at my most suicidal I feared the dying process. I was exhausted so I lay down in my cloth hospital gown on the little bed. It felt like some kind of surrender, a sweet womb or coma. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself a bit. Then I felt a little wetness between my thighs and realized I was dribbling pee. My inner thighs felt chafed and irritated, from the sex and from the urine. But everything was going to be fine. I wanted to just lie here forever. I wanted kind nurses to take care of me. Books were nothing in this world. Academia was nothing. Forget about boys swimming up to you in the ocean and graphic designers stabbing at your asshole. The doctor’s name was Dana Ward. She was blond with a severe ponytail and had definitely never made a mess in her life. I imagined that she went to Cornell and had always been self-contained. She had a nice engagement ring—not gigantic—but big enough that she could flash it and make other women feel shitty. She was a left-hand gesturer. I bet she used the word fiancée . “Let’s see here,” she said. “It looks like you think you might have a urinary tract infection?” “Yes, I know for sure that I do. I just need Cipro and Pyridium,” I said. “I’m going to have you leave a urine sample and that will take some time for us to get tested. In the meantime I can start you on those medicines. Do you get them often?” “It’s been years.” “Anything different that might have caused this?” I wanted to say, Well, I tried to have anal on the floor of a hotel bathroom. It was not a bathroom in a hotel room—just a bathroom connected to the hotel bar. Also, the guy was a stranger. Also, I’m in a group-therapy program for sex and love addiction. But clearly it’s not working. “My husband and I have been having a lot more sex. We’re trying to get pregnant. It could just be too much,” I said instead. I seriously had no idea where that came from. “Any chance that he could have been exposed to any sexually transmitted diseases?” Was she implying that my fictitious husband was unfaithful?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I was scared of it, scared of feeling the freeze rush into me, or maybe scared of the warmth rushing out of me. I had never thought of that warmth as something I would miss. And Theo was being so distant from me now too, sulking. I felt lonely. “I wonder what the experience will be like, how my life will—manifest under there. Also, how I will stay under the waves and not just bob to the surface.” I was hunting for a potential answer. “You have to trust me,” he said. “It’s going to be beautiful. I will help you go. You will have chosen, but I will assist you. Then we will have a very long time together.” “And we’ll still make love under there?” “Of course we will,” he said. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just a little scared.” “Here, let me come up and join you.” With that he pulled himself out of the water and took a seat next to me. “I love you,” he said, cupping my face with his cold, wet hand. He kissed me softly on the cheek in a way that made me feel like a sweet child, no longer horrible. I felt that I was again back in the womb he and I shared, an innocent. Was this all it took to be cleansed: one beautiful person to treat you kindly and gently, and you were exonerated? How could Dominic’s death and Theo’s love both be true at the same time? How could I have killed Dominic and still be worthy of such tender affection? I was either awful or I wasn’t. Which one was it? I didn’t think I could be both. His kisses moved from my cheek to my nose to my lips. I gently kissed and licked his beautiful mouth, one lip and then the other. He lay back on the rocks and pulled me on top of him. My thighs sandwiched his pelvis. As we kissed more, I felt him get hard under his cloth. I was excited to still have that remaining life force in me, the kind that could make his cock come alive. I began rubbing my body against him, moving up and down on his thigh and then on his pelvis. Then I moved my pussy back and forth on the length of his cock, over the cloth, as though I were anointing him. I rubbed faster and faster as we stayed in an embrace, our mouths locked on each other. A warmth spread from my pussy up through my stomach and into my heart. It radiated out through the top of my head. Everything was suddenly warm, the cold completely eliminated. Was this what the eve of one’s wedding was like? I felt that we were being held on the rock by Aphrodite herself.

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

  Avignon, which Clement chose as his residence, is 460 miles southeast of Paris and lies south of Lyons. Its proximity to the port of Marseilles made it accessible to Italy. It was purchased by Clement VI., 1348, from Naples for 80, 000 gold florins, and remained papal territory until the French Revolution. As early as 1229, the popes held territory in the vicinity, the duchy of Venaissin, which fell to them from the domain of Raymond of Toulouse. On every side this free papal home was closely confined by French territory. Clement was urged by Italian bishops to go to Rome, and Italian writers gave as one reason for his refusal fear lest he should receive meet punishment for his readiness to condemn Boniface VIII.90 Clement’s coronation was celebrated at Lyons, Philip and his brother Charles of Valois, the Duke of Bretagne and representatives of the king of England being present. Philip and the duke walked at the side of the pope’s palfrey. By the fall of an old wall during the procession, the duke, a brother of the pope, and ten other persons lost their lives. The pope himself was thrown from his horse, his tiara rolled in the dust, and a large carbuncle, which adorned it, was lost. Scarcely ever was a papal ruler put in a more compromising position than the new pontiff. His subjection to a sovereign who had defied the papacy was a strange spectacle. He owed his tiara indirectly, if not immediately, to Philip the Fair. He was the man Philip wanted.91 It was his task to appease the king’s anger against the memory of Boniface, and to meet his brutal demands concerning the Knights Templars. These, with the Council of Vienne, which he called, were the chief historic concerns of his pontificate. The terms on which the new pope received the tiara were imposed by Philip himself, and, according to Villani, the price he made the Gascon pay included six promises. Five of them concerned the total undoing of what Boniface had done in his conflict with Philip. The sixth article, which was kept secret, was supposed to be the destruction of the order of the Templars. It is true that the authenticity of these six articles has been disputed, but there can be no doubt that from the very outset of Clement’s pontificate, the French king pressed their execution upon the pope’s attention.92 Clement, in poor position to resist, confirmed what Benedict had done and went farther. He absolved the king; recalled, Feb. 1, 1306, the offensive bulls Clericis laicos and Unam sanctam, so far as they implied anything offensive to France or any subjection on the part of the king to the papal chair, not customary before their issue, and fully restored the cardinals of the Colonna family to the dignities of their office.

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

  John Huss struck at the foundations of the hierarchical system. He interpreted our Lord’s words to Peter in a way that was fatal to the papal theory of Leo, Hildebrand and Innocent III.690 His conception of the Church, which he drew from Wyclif, contains the kernel of an entirely new system of religious authority. He made the Scriptures the final source of appeal, and exalted the authority of the conscience above pope, council and canon law as an interpreter of truth. He carried out these views in practice by continuing to preach in spite of repeated sentences of excommunication, and attacking the pope’s right to call a crusade. If the Church be the company of the elect, as Huss maintained, then God rules in His people and they are sovereign. With such assertions, the teachings of Thomas Aquinas were set aside. The enlightened group of men who shared the spirit of Gerson and D’Ailly did not comprehend Wycliffism, for Wycliffism was a revolt against an alleged divine institution, the visible Church. Gerson denied that the appeal to conscience was an excuse for refusing to submit to ecclesiastical authority. Faith, with him, was agreement with the Church’s system. The chancellor not only voted for Huss’ condemnation, but declared he had busily worked to bring the sentence about. Nineteen articles he drew from Huss’ work on the Church, he pronounced "notoriously heretical." However, at a later time, in a huff over the leniency shown to Jean Petit, he stated that if Huss had been given an advocate, he would never have been convicted.691 In starting out for Constance, Huss knew well the punishment appointed for heretics. The amazing thing is that he should ever have thought it possible to clear himself by a public address before the council. In view of the procedure of the Inquisition, the council showed him unheard-of consideration in allowing him to appear in the cathedral. This was done out of regard for Sigismund, who was on the eve of his journey to Spain to induce Benedict of Luna to abdicate.692 As for the safe-conduct—salvo-conductus — issued by Sigismund, all that can be said is that a king did not keep his word. He was more concerned to be regarded as the patron of a great council than to protect a Bohemian preacher, his future subject. Writing with reference to the solemn pledge, Huss said, "Christ deceives no man by a safe-conduct. What he pledges he fulfils. Sigismund has acted deceitfully throughout."693 The plea, often made, that the king had no intention of giving Huss an unconditional pledge of protection, is in the face of the documentary evidence. In September, 1415, the Council of Constance took formal notice of the criticisms floating about that in Huss’ execution a solemn promise had been broken, and announced that no brief of safe-conduct in the case of a heretic is binding. No pledge is to be observed which is prejudicial to the Catholic faith and ecclesiastical jurisdiction.694

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I stood frozen by the door until they had settled Hudson onto the examining table, and then cautiously approached the doctor who seemed to be in charge, asking her to please check his legs right away, that I hadn’t seen him move them yet. I held my breath waiting, and when his toes started moving, I collapsed in the chair next to Georgia. Hours later, after a series of X-rays and MRIs, a brain bleed was ruled out and we were reassured it was just a concussion. Shakily but gratefully, we left the hospital. It was 9pm and I wanted to start the drive back home. I mapped out two hours on local roads and saw we could stop at a motel for the night at that point. The skies and roads had cleared and we set off. Within an hour, both kids were sound asleep and thus could not hear the stream of curses emerge from my mouth as a sudden blizzard blew snow in every direction. The roads were pitch-black and curvy, snow coming down in white twisting sheets. I drove 25mph, leaning forward in my seat as far as I could. Georgia woke up and started asking a litany of questions: where are we, is this safe, can we stop for the night, are there any snacks in here? “Georgia!” I yelled. “Stop talking. I have to focus.” I saw a sign indicating that in ten miles there was a gas station and a motel. Hallelujah , I thought, and crept along the road, counting down every mile. When we at last pulled off the highway, the gas station was closed and the only difference I could see between this motel and the one in Psycho was that this one was called Lee’s. There was no sign of life, just a few dim lightbulbs over weathered doors and broken screens. “Mommy, do you want to stay here?” Georgia asked with trepidation. “No, we can’t stay here. It’s creepy and it looks deserted anyway.” Back on the road, slipping along in a blaze of white, it was now 1am and my eyes were fluttering. I was exhausted, terrified, and saw no end to this journey from hell. Every twenty minutes my mother would call, demanding an update on our whereabouts, and I would calm her down only to panic myself. On and on we went this way as I searched my GPS for the nearest motel and reassured Georgia with a false cheerfulness that we would be at a warm, clean motel very soon. When we pulled off the highway thirty minutes later into the motel parking lot, I laughed bitterly when I saw that it was not just closed but actually boarded up. I put my head down on the steering wheel and started pounding it with my fists. “Mommy, do you wish now that we had stayed at Lee’s Motel?” Georgia asked so sincerely that I started laughing, possibly a tad maniacally.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Only one of Paul’s authentic letters is addressed to an individual person rather than a collective assembly. But that letter to Philemon concerns precisely our present subject. It concerns Philemon’s slave Onesimus, who fled to Paul for refuge, and Paul’s advice to Philemon on what to do in that situation. It is not, therefore, an abstract treatise on slavery in general, but a practical response to one slave in particular. Paul himself is in prison, but he is still able to write to his convert Philemon about the slave Onesimus. What is absolutely important, here and hereafter, is the Christian principle presumed by Paul in asking for or even demanding the slave’s freedom. ONESIMUS. What exactly was Onesimus’s status? Was he a fugitive seeking freedom or a supplicant seeking asylum? If he were a runaway slave intending never to return, a terrible punishment would have followed his capture—flogging or branding, the mines or the galleys, the arena or the cross. If he were such a fugitive, it would have been suicidally dangerous to have gone anywhere near official Roman authority, let alone a Roman prisoner like Paul. Such an act would have endangered them both. It is much more likely that he was a supplicant seeking not permanent escape, but temporary asylum. There were two accepted options within that rubric, and in both cases the slave’s intention was crucial under Roman law. One option was flight to a god’s temple. Writing On Mercy in the mid-50s C.E. to the new emperor Nero at around the same time that Paul was writing to Philemon on love, Seneca the Younger noted that “slaves have the right to seek refuge at a god’s statue.” They could be seeking a temporary cooling-off period from an angry owner or absolute repossession from a clearly unjust one. It is in that context that he mentioned the notorious Vedius Pollio “for fattening his lampreys with human blood and ordering those who offended him to be cast into his fishpond—or should I say, his snake pit?” (1.18.2). Another option was flight to an owner’s friend. The classical example here is the anecdote about Augustus and his friend, that just-mentioned Vedius Pollio. The story is clearly an extreme case of mercy against cruelty, moral authority against physical power, might and right against might and wrong. It was told by that same Seneca the Younger in the late 40s and repeated by the historian Cassius Dio in the early 200s. Here is the incident from Seneca’s On Anger, an essay dedicated to his elder brother Novatus, better known to us as the Gallio of Acts 18:12–17, where Luke claims that Paul was tried before him. Later, of course, Seneca, Gallio, and Paul would all die at Nero’s command. The anecdote concerns what “our deified Augustus did when dining with Vedius Pollio.”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Until Thursday maybe?” He was silent. I kissed him on the forehead. “You can’t tell anyone you’re going,” he said, pulling away from me. “They will think you’re crazy and lock you up.” “I know. I won’t tell them anything,” I said. “Good,” he said. “In the meantime, how about you come stay at the house with me for a little while? As I’m preparing. The dog is asleep. I’ve been making him sleep every day now just in case you were here so I could bring you home with me.” “No,” he said. “I’m finished with the land.” “Oh,” I said. “This is as far as I can go. I hope you understand why.” I didn’t want to understand, but I did. He had sacrificed for me. The thought of him dragging himself back across the beach that night, the danger he put himself in, was scary. Now he wanted me to sacrifice for him. But hadn’t I done that? What had this whole week been? “I’ll meet you here each night until Thursday,” he said. “And you can tell me whether you are still coming.” He looked different to me now, more bloated in the face and jaded. His eyes looked darker. I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that he needed me as much as I needed him. It scared me to be needed. “I’m coming,” I said. “Good.” We brought our faces together and kissed gently on the mouth. He put one of his hands at the base of my neck, under my chin, and tightened it—not enough to cut off my air supply, but just so I could feel him pressing a bit into my larynx. My throat felt full of pleasure and emotion. I opened my mouth wider on his and made an “ohhh” sound. We kissed wetly. “I wish we could live the rest of our lives on these rocks,” I said. “Why isn’t it possible to just live at the edge of both, the ocean and the land?” Of course I knew why. The edge was an uncomfortable and dangerous place for both of us. The rocks were nowhere to live. I had wanted him to come to my world for that same reason. “One day these rocks won’t be here,” he said. “The ocean will waste them away.” “Then we could find new rocks,” I said. “Eventually you have to choose,” he said. “That’s how the story has always been and that’s the way it will be forever.” “But why?” I asked. “Well,” he said, thinking, “I guess because the choice is always there.” 54. When I got back to the house, Dominic didn’t bark. This was odd, because he always smelled Theo on me. I went into the pantry to check on him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Why was he pacing backwards and forwards, and why was she always afraid to ask him? Why was the hand she stretched out to the door always fearful when it came to turning the handle? Oh, but it was strong, this thing that stood between them, strong with the strength of their united bodies. It had drawn its own life from their youth, their passion, from the splendid and purposeful meaning of their passion—that was how it had leapt full of power into life, and now it had thrust in between them. They were ageing, they had little left but their loving—that gentler loving, perhaps the more perfect—and their faith in each other, which was part of that loving, and their peace, which was part of the peace of Morton. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards! Those incessant and desolate sounding footsteps. Peace? There was surely no peace in that study, but rather some affliction, menacing, prophetic! Yet prophetic of what? She dared not ask him, she dared not so much as turn the door-handle, a haunting premonition of disaster would make her creep away with her question unasked. Then something would draw her, not back to her bedroom, but on up the stairs to the room of their daughter. She would open that door very gently—by inches. She would hold her hand so that it shaded the candle, and would stand looking down at the sleeping Stephen as she and her husband had done long ago. But now there would be no little child to look down on, no small helplessness to arouse mother-pity. Stephen would be lying very straight, very large, very long, underneath the neatly drawn covers. Quite often an arm would be outside the bedspread, the sleeve having fallen away as it lay there, and that arm would look firm and strong and possessive, and so would the face by the light of the candle. She slept deeply. Her breathing would be even and placid. Her body would be drinking in its fill of refreshment. It would rise up clean and refreshed in the morning; it would eat, speak, move—it would move about Morton. In the stables, in the gardens, in the neighbouring paddocks, in the study—it would move about Morton. Intolerable dispensation of nature, Anna would stare at that splendid young body, and would feel, as she did so, that she looked on a stranger. She would scourge her heart and her anxious spirit with memories drawn from this stranger’s beginnings: ‘Little—you were so very little!’ she would whisper, ‘and you sucked from my breast because you were hungry—little and always so terribly hungry—a good baby though, a contented little baby—’ And Stephen would sometimes stir in her sleep as though she were vaguely conscious of Anna.

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

  Several critics refer the seventh head to Nero, and ascribe to the seer the silly expectation of the return of Nero as Antichrist.1261 In this way they understand the passage 17:11: "The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth and is of the seven." But John makes a clear distinction between the heads of the beast, of whom Nero was one, and the beast itself, which is the Roman empire. I consider it simply impossible that John could have shared in the heathen delusion of Nero redivivus, which would deprive him of all credit as an inspired prophet. He may have regarded Nero as a fit type and forerunner of Antichrist, but only in the figurative sense in which Babylon of old was the type of heathen Rome. 3. The early date is best suited for the nature and object of the Apocalypse, and facilitates its historical understanding. Christ pointed in his eschatological discourses to the destruction of Jerusalem and the preceding tribulation as the great crisis in the history of the theocracy and the type of the judgment of the world. And there never was a more alarming state of society. The horrors of the French Revolution were confined to one country, but the tribulation of the six years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem extended over the whole Roman empire and embraced wars and rebellions, frequent and unusual conflagrations, earthquakes and famines and plagues, and all sorts of public calamities and miseries untold. It seemed, indeed, that the world, shaken to its very centre, was coming to a close, and every Christian must have felt that the prophecies of Christ were being fulfilled before his eyes.1262 It was at this unique juncture in the history of mankind that St. John, with the consuming fire in Rome and the infernal spectacle of the Neronian persecution behind him, the terrors of the Jewish war and the Roman interregnum around him, and the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Jewish theocracy before him, received those wonderful visions of the impending conflicts and final triumphs of the Christian church. His was truly a book of the times and for the times, and administered to the persecuted brethren the one but all-sufficient consolation: Maran atha! Maran atha! Interpretation. The different interpretations are reduced by English writers to three systems according as the fulfilment of the prophecy is found in the past, present, or future.1263 1. The Preterist system applies the Revelation to the destruction of Jerusalem and heathen Rome. So among Roman Catholics: Alcasar (1614), Bossuet (1690). Among Protestants: Hugo Grotius (1644), Hammond (1653), Clericus (1698), Wetstein (1752), Abauzit, Herder, Eichhorn, Ewald, Lücke, Bleek, DeWette, Reuss, Renan, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Davidson, Moses Stuart Cowles, Desprez, etc. Some1264 refer it chiefly to the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy, others chiefly to the conflict with the Roman empire, still others to both.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The strain of the sudden complete rupture with Morton had told on the faithful little grey woman. She would scarcely have known how to counsel Stephen had the girl come to her and asked for her counsel. Sometimes she would lie awake now at nights thinking of that ageing and unhappy mother in the great silent house, and then would come pity, the old pity that had come in the past for Anna—she would pity until she remembered Stephen. Then Puddle would try to think very calmly, to keep the brave heart that had never failed her, to keep her strong faith in Stephen’s future—only now there were days when she felt almost old, when she realized that indeed she was ageing. When Anna would write her a calm, friendly letter, but with never so much as a mention of Stephen, she would feel afraid, yes, afraid of this woman, and at moments almost afraid of Stephen. For none might know from those guarded letters what emotions lay in the heart of their writer; and none might know from Stephen’s set face when she recognized the writing, what lay in her heart. She would turn away, asking no questions about Morton. Oh, yes, Puddle felt old and actually frightened, both of which sensations she deeply resented; so being what she was, an indomitable fighter, she thrust out her chin and ordered a tonic. She struggled along through the labyrinths of Paris beside the untiring Stephen and Brockett; through the galleries of the Luxembourg and the Louvre; up the Eiffel Tower—in a lift, thank heaven; down the Rue de la Paix, up the hill to Montmartre—sometimes in the car but quite often on foot, for Brockett wished Stephen to learn her Paris—and as likely as not, ending up with rich food that disagreed badly with the tired Puddle. In the restaurants people would stare at Stephen, and although the girl would pretend not to notice, Puddle would know that in spite of her calm, Stephen was inwardly feeling resentful, was inwardly feeling embarrassed and awkward. And then because she was tired, Puddle too would feel awkward when she noticed those people staring. Sometimes Puddle must really give up and rest, in spite of the aggressive chin and the tonic. Then all alone in the Paris hotel, she would suddenly grow very homesick for England—absurd of course and yet there it was, she would feel the sharp tug of England. At such moments she would long for ridiculous things; a penny bun in the train at Dover; the good red faces of English porters—the old ones with little stubby side-whiskers; Harrods Stores; a properly upholstered arm-chair; bacon and eggs; the sea front at Brighton. All alone and via these ridiculous things, Puddle would feel the sharp tug of England.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  The kind of behavior that was alarming to Rome is what we usually associate with a shaman, an ecstatic or charismatic holy individual. It subverted the proper Roman control of civic religion. It negated the absolute integration of politics and religion. It threatened Caesar both as ruler, or imperator, and as chief priest, or pontifex maximus (not to speak of both as divine). Remember that in addition to the many gods and goddesses, the Romans believed very strongly in the paranormal, the mystical, the magical. They used Etruscan haruspices to divine the future, read the livers of sacrifices, and explain the flights of birds. They consulted the oral prophecies of Apollo’s priestesses and the written prophecies of the Sibylline Oracles. Horoscopes and astrology were an integral part of their scientific world. But the ambiguity of those forms made them each malleable to political control, and there was an almost theatrical procedure in incorporating them ceremonially in senatorial debates or imperial political decisions. Mary Beard, in “The Roman and the Foreign” in Shamanism, History, and the State, notes that what was perhaps most disturbing to Romans about these two preceding cases was that they threatened the “sole guardians of access to the gods” and “were effectively challenging the wider authority of that elite and the social and cultural norms they [had] long guaranteed” (178). Another set of stories narrated by both the Jewish historian Josephus and various pagan writers relates Rome’s interest in patrolling unacceptable religious behavior and particularly in controlling meetings that were or could be in some ways subversive. We allow, once again, considerable literary license on the historical details as authors tell their tales, but emphasize the very absolute reality of that underlying imperial distrust for meetings and practices hidden from the open civic arena and therefore beyond Caesar’s ordinary control. The incidents each show an underlying fear of meetings and a certain amount of xenophobia.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Physical fires could threaten property and life, of course, but could not threaten imperial rule’s integration of politics and religion into a single smoothly operating power. But there were other fires that could threaten or even subvert that collaboration, and those should not even be risked. Better no firefighters than ones who might get ideas, ask questions, and imagine remedies. The control of fire could be negotiated; the control of empire could not. Violent Pornography in Sex and War The emperor controlled the empire’s religio-politics first on the supreme level of imperial theology, next on the intermediate level of foreign religions, local cults, and all groups meeting privately for whatever reason, and finally on the individual level of marital morality and sexual privacy. Remember from Chapter 2 how Augustus tried to restore piety and morality in the most private realm of family life, and to extend his control into areas like procreation and sex with the Julian Law on Marriage and the Julian Law on Adultery. Those family values were drawn from Rome’s traditionally conservative farmer-warrior society and were later idealized as the mos maiorum, “the way of our ancestors.” Augustus’s legislation was part of the religio-political theology in which success and control abroad depended upon piety and morality at home, in which martial victory depended on sexual purity. Our present discussion, however, is not about Augustus’s moral rearmament on sex and marriage, or about agreement on its potential virtues, or even about agreement on its absolute failure. We leave aside, for here and now, the arguable good or arguable bad points of those Julian Laws to probe instead two much deeper and more deadly levels. Those laws were grounded in the standard presuppositions of broader Mediterranean or even generally universal patriarchy, in which women, as the possession of men, were to be held under male control. In Chapter 2 we spoke of Pauline equality for Christian females and Christian males in family, assembly, and apostolate. We also saw there how the post-Pauline or even anti-Pauline tradition muted that radicality back inside the normalcy of Roman patriarchy. We now look at the implications of that patriarchy in the less public and more private realm of sexuality and family. We emphatically stress that, then as now, patriarchal sexuality had and has less to do with bodily views or divine imperatives and much more to do with male manipulation, paternal control, and imperial power.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Focusing on sympathizers would not only provoke full Jews against him; it would also annoy pure pagans. Pagans might have disliked the idea of pagan sympathizers with Judaism, but they would have disliked even more the idea of pagan converts to Christianity. Judaism as “superstitious atheistic misanthropy” with an ancient country was bad enough, but Christianity as “superstitious atheistic misanthropy” without any country was surely worse. No wonder, therefore, that Paul was attacked on both sides, by both Jews and pagans, and that, as he himself admits, he was officially punished by both Jewish and pagan authorities: “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten [by the Romans] with rods…[in] danger from my own people, [in] danger from Gentiles” (2 Cor. 11:24–26). PAUL’S CONVERTS. The emphasis on God-worshipers as Paul’s primary converts makes it unnecessary to postulate opponents following Paul from Galatia to Macedonia as a Christian-Jewish countermovement. In any given city, God-worshipers converted to Christianity would be told correctly by both other God-fearers and Jewish friends that it was theologically wiser and socially safer to convert fully, if such were their wish, but to Judaism rather than to Christianity. It was far better, God-worshiping males would have been told, to be full Jews than full Christians. As Jews they would be recognized, accepted, and protected by Rome, but as Christians they were followers of a leader executed by those same Romans. It is not necessary to have Paul followed by a countermission. His God-worshiping converts would have been inevitably pulled by their newer Pauline community in one direction and by their older synagogal contacts in another. Minor Hypothesis The second and minor working hypothesis concerns Luke and how to read Luke’s Acts on Paul. Luke’s emphasis on that sympathizer class may well explain why he himself was at the same time so familiar with Judaism, and yet opposed to it, as well as so conversant with Romanism, and yet reconciled with it. He was, most likely, originally a God-worshiper himself, and that is why he spends almost equal time insisting that Christianity is, on the one hand, the only valid heir and continuation of Judaism and, on the other, in no way a threat to Roman law and order. Luke and his family were typical wealthy sympathizers ripe for conversion from semi-Judaism to full Christianity.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Is there any chance the ground will open and swallow me whole right now, teleporting me from the faux pas I seem to have committed? “Is this too much?” I finally break the silence and ask more timidly than I intend to, eyes wide, eyebrows raised – and, I realize, somewhat ridiculously for a woman who has just brazenly undressed for a man she met an hour ago. He matches my look with eyes just as wide and eyebrows equally raised and says, to my great relief, “Definitely not too much,” while picking me up like a newlywed and half placing, half tossing me on the bed. To say this moment feels dreamlike is an understatement of epic proportion. For 27 years, since I was little more than a teenager, I have had sex with only one man and expected that I would continue to have sex with this one man for the rest of my life. Since that first night with Michael, I have given birth three times, nursed three babies, fought gravity with only middling success and just – frankly – aged. I am terrified of what Jack – who has clearly been living a full life with his Cadillac Margaritas and his motorcycle and condoms in his wallet – will find when he gets closer to my body, but I’m expecting nothing less than horror, perhaps even some pity. Within seconds he has worked his way down my body and it is no small surprise when he whispers up to me, “You have a really nice pussy.” A sound bursts out of me that I pray is more laugh than cackle, prompting him to ask what’s funny. For starters, I hadn’t known this was a word men actually used outside of lewd conversations with their friends. Second, I can’t believe he thinks this line will work on me – am I supposed to believe that one so-called middle-aged “pussy” looks qualitatively different from another? But the well-mannered girl in me rushes to apologize, “No, it’s not funny, I’m sorry, it’s so nice, thank you, it just surprised me as no one has ever told me that before.” “Really?” he asks. “Come on. No one? I don’t believe that.” “I swear,” I insist. “Don’t they all kind of look the same? I mean, more or less?” “No, not at all. They all look different, smell different, taste different. Don’t you ever take a close look at your own to know how good it looks?” “Um no, I never have,” I say, thinking the last time I got a good look was probably when I caught an accidental, horrified glimpse in a mirror when I gave birth to Georgia seven years ago. “But now I’m intrigued.” And I truly am, making a mental note to take a look later and try to see what he’s seeing – I have so much to learn. “Please be gentle,” I say, hesitating to admit the truth of this situation.