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 Bad Behavior (1988)

  In one of those things where you put your head through a hole and people pay to throw garbage at you!” “No circus has that anymore,” said my mother. “Stop it, Shep.” By the time I went down to eat dinner, everything was as usual. I looked at my father and felt a sickening sensation of love nailed to contempt and panic. The last time I made a typing error and the lawyer summoned me to his office, two unusual things occurred. The first was that after he finished spanking me he told me to pull up my skirt. Fear hooked my stomach and pulled it toward my chest. I turned my head and tried to look at him. “You’re not worried that I’m going to rape you, are you?” he said. “Don’t. I’m not interested in that, not in the least. Pull up your skirt.” I turned my head away from him. I thought, I don’t have to do this. I can stop right now. I can straighten up and walk out. But I didn’t. I pulled up my skirt. “Pull down your panty hose and underwear.” A finger of nausea poked my stomach. “I told you I’m not going to fuck you. Do what I say.” The skin on my face and throat was hot, but my fingertips were cold on my legs as I pulled down my underwear and pantyhose. The letter before me became distorted beyond recognition. I thought I might faint or vomit, but I didn’t. I was held up by a feeling of dizzying suspension, like the one I have in dreams where I can fly, but only if I get into some weird position. At first he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Then I became aware of a small frenzy of expended energy behind me. I had an impression of a vicious little animal frantically burrowing dirt with its tiny claws and teeth. My hips were sprayed with hot sticky muck. “Go clean yourself off,” he said. “And do that letter again.” I stood slowly, and felt my skirt fall over the sticky gunk. He briskly swung open the door and I left the room, not even pulling up my panty hose and underwear, since I was going to use the bathroom anyway. He closed the door behind me, and the second unusual thing occurred. Susan, the paralegal, was standing in the waiting room with a funny look on her face. She was a blonde who wore short, fuzzy sweaters, and fake gold jewelry around her neck. At her friendliest, she had a whining, abrasive quality that clung to her voice. Now, she could barely say hello. Her stupidly full lips were parted speculatively. “Hi,” I said. “Just a minute.” She noted the awkwardness of my walk, because of the lowered panty hose. I got to the bathroom and wiped myself off. I didn’t feel embarrassed.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It was in the early days of sexual intercourse and there were no Marquis of Queensbury rules to hinder. It was fuck and be fucked —and the devil take the hindmost. It has been that way ever since the Greeks—a blind fuck in the mud and then a quick spawn and then death. People are fucking on different levels but it’s always in a swamp and the litter is always destined for the same end. When the house is torn down the bed is left standing: the cosmosexual altar. I was polluting the bed with dreams. Stretched out taut on the ferroconcrete my soul would leave its body and roam from place to place on a little trolley such as is used in department stores for making change. I made ideological changes and excursions; I was a vagabond in the country of the brain. Everything was absolutely clear to me because done in rock crystal; at every egress there was written in big letters ANNIHILATION. The fright of extinction solidified me; the body became itself a piece of ferroconcrete. It was ornamented by a permanent erection in the best taste. I had achieved that state of vacuity so earnestly desired by certain devout members of esoteric cults. I was no more. I was not even a personal hard on. It was about this time, adopting the pseudonym Samson Lackawanna, that I began my depredations. The criminal instinct in me had gotten the upper hand. Whereas heretofore I had been only an errant soul, a sort of Gentile Dybbuk, now I became a flesh-filled ghost. I had taken the name which pleased me and I had only to act instinctively. In Hong Kong, for instance, I made my entry as a book agent. I carried a leather purse filled with Mexican dollars and I visited religiously all those Chinese who were in need of further education. At the hotel I rang for women like you would ring for whisky and soda. Mornings I studied Tibetan in order to prepare for the journey to Lhasa. I already spoke Yiddish fluently, and Hebrew too. I could count two rows of figures at once. It was so easy to swindle the Chinese that I went back to Manila in disgust. There I took a Mr. Rico in hand and taught him the art of selling books with no handling charges. All the profit came from ocean freight rates, but it was sufficient to keep me in luxury while it lasted. The breath had become as much a trick as breathing. Things were not dual merely, but multiple. I had became a cage of mirrors reflecting vacuity. But vacuity once stoutly posited I was at home and what is called creation was merely a job of filling up holes.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The ark is so full of bric-à-brac that it has become a stationary building above a subway in which the smell of linoleum prevails and predominates. Gather together all the significance hidden away in the interstitial miscellany of Bloomingdale’s and put it on the head of a pin and you will have left a universe in which the grand constellations move without the slightest danger of collision. It is this microscopic chaos which brings on my morganatic ailments. In the street I began to stab horses at random, or I lift a skirt here and there looking for a letter box, or I put a postage stamp across a mouth, an eye, a vagina. Or I suddenly decide to climb a tall building, like a fly, and once having reached the roof I do fly with real wings and I fly and fly and fly, covering towns like Weehawken, Hoboken, Hackensack, Canarsie, Bergen Beach in the twinkling of an eye. Once you become a real schizerino flying is the easiest thing in the world; the trick is to fly with the etheric body, to leave behind in Bloomingdale’s your sack of bones, guts, blood and cartilage; to fly only with your immutable self which, if you stop a moment to reflect, is always equipped with wings. Flying this way, in full daylight, has advantages over the ordinary night-flying which everybody indulges in. You can leave off from moment to moment, as quick and decisive as stepping on a brake; there is no difficulty in finding your other self, because the moment you leave off you are your other self, which is to say, the so-called whole self. Only, as the Bloomingdale experience goes to prove, this whole self, about which so much boasting has been done, falls apart very easily. The smell of linoleum, for some strange reason, will always make me fall apart and collapse on the floor. It is the smell of all the unnatural things which were glued together in me, which were assembled, so to say, by negative consent. It is only after the third meal that the morning gifts, bequeathed by the phony alliance of the ancestors, begin to drop away and the true rock of the self, the happy rock sheers up out of the muck of the soul. With nightfall the pinhead universe begins to expand. It expands organically, from an infinitesimal nuclear speck, in the way that minerals or star clusters form. It eats into the surrounding chaos like a rat boring through store cheese. All chaos could be gathered together on a pinhead, but the self, microscopical at the start, works up to a universe from any point in space.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  The hood was strangely comforting, but comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling. In our crew, our friend G was like the rest of us, unemployed, hanging out. Then he got a job at a nice clothing store. Every morning he went to work, and the guys would tease him about going to work. We’d see him headed out all dressed up, and everyone would be laughing at him. “Oh, G, look at you in your fancy clothes!” “Oh, G, going to go see the white man today, huh?” “Oh, G, don’t forget to bring some books back from the library!” One morning, after a month of G working at the place, we were hanging out on the wall, and G came out in his slippers and his socks. He wasn’t dressed for work. “Yo, G, what’s going on? What’s up with the job?” “Oh, I don’t work there anymore.” “Why?” “They accused me of stealing something and I got fired.” And I’ll never forget thinking to myself that it felt like he did it on purpose. He sabotaged himself so that he’d get accepted back into the group again. The hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind, but it also never lets you leave. Because by making the choice to leave, you’re insulting the place that raised you and made you and never turned you away. And that place fights you back. As soon as things start going well for you in the hood, it’s time to go. Because the hood will drag you back in. It will find a way. There will be a guy who steals a thing and puts it in your car and the cops find it— something. You can’t stay. You think you can. You’ll start doing better and you’ll bring your hood friends out to a nice club, and the next thing you know somebody starts a fight and one of your friends pulls a gun and somebody’s getting shot and you’re left standing around going, “What just happened?” The hood happened. — One night I was DJ’ing a party, not in Alex but right outside Alex in Lombardy East, a nicer, middle-class black neighborhood. The police were called about the noise. They came busting in wearing riot gear and pointing machine guns. That’s how our police roll. We don’t have small and then big. What Americans call SWAT is just our regular police. They came looking for the source of the music, and the music was coming from me. This one cop came over to where I was with my computer and pulled this massive assault rifle on me. “You gotta shut this down right now.” “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m shutting it down.”

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  346The History of Christianity II JAPANESE DOMINATION õFrom 1910 to 1945, Korea was under Japanese domination. The Japanese wanted Korean subjects to sever all relations with missionary groups and other foreign organizations, and to take part in the rituals of Japanese traditional religion, Shinto. õIn the Shinto worldview, Japan was a paradise created by the gods, and participating in Shinto rites at public shrines was a required demonstration of political loyalty. The Vatican saw that Korean Catholics were in a tight spot and signed a concordat with the Japanese government in 1936, basically saying that Catholics can do that; their activity at the shrines is not idol-worship but an act of patriotism. õProtestants got into more tangles with the Japanese government: They pushed back against Japanese efforts to turn Korean schools into secular, Japanese-language operations. Christians were accused of trying to assassinate the governor general, and when some Korean activists got together in 1919 to sign a declaration of independence, nearly half of them were Protestant. õIn the government’s eyes, Christianity in general, and Protestantism in particular, seemed like a cult devoted to overthrowing the regime (even though most Korean Christians advocated for nonviolent resistance). Japanese troops burned churches, arrested and executed Christian leaders, and at least once herded Christians into their church and set it on fire. AFTER DIVISION õWith the end of World War II, the Allied powers ended Japanese rule in Korea. American forces occupied the south, and the Soviets held the north. This situation led to the establishment of two rival regimes: the Republic of Korea in the South, and the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North. Under the leadership of

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  She didn’t touch me. Later that night my mother came home from work. She found my cousin with a bandage over her ear and my gran crying at the kitchen table. “What’s going on?” my mom said. “Oh, Nombuyiselo,” she said. “Trevor is so naughty. He’s the naughtiest child I’ve ever come across in my life.” “Then you should hit him.” “I can’t hit him.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,” she said. “A black child, I understand. A black child, you hit them and they stay black. Trevor, when you hit him he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colors before. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’m so afraid. I’m not going to touch him.” And she never did. My grandmother treated me like I was white. My grandfather did, too, only he was even more extreme. He called me “Mastah.” In the car, he insisted on driving me as if he were my chauffeur. “Mastah must always sit in the backseat.” I never challenged him on it. What was I going to say? “I believe your perception of race is flawed, Grandfather.” No. I was five. I sat in the back. There were so many perks to being “white” in a black family, I can’t even front. I was having a great time. My own family basically did what the American justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids. Misbehavior that my cousins would have been punished for, I was given a warning and let off. And I was way naughtier than either of my cousins. It wasn’t even close. If something got broken or if someone was stealing granny’s cookies, it was me. I was trouble. My mom was the only force I truly feared. She believed if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. But everyone else said, “No, he’s different,” and they gave me a pass. Growing up the way I did, I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks. I knew my cousins were getting beaten for things that I’d done, but I wasn’t interested in changing my grandmother’s perspective, because that would mean I’d get beaten, too. Why would I do that? So that I’d feel better? Being beaten didn’t make me feel better. I had a choice. I could champion racial justice in our home, or I could enjoy granny’s cookies. I went with the cookies. — At that point I didn’t think of the special treatment as having to do with color. I thought of it as having to do with Trevor. It wasn’t, “Trevor doesn’t get beaten because Trevor is white.” It was, “Trevor doesn’t get beaten because Trevor is Trevor.” Trevor can’t go outside.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When we first met Abel, he smoked a lot of weed. He drank, too, but it was mostly weed. Looking back, I almost miss his pothead days because the weed mellowed him out. He’d smoke, chill, watch TV, and fall asleep. I think subconsciously it was something he knew he needed to do to take the edge off his anger. He stopped smoking after he and my mom got married. She made him stop for religious reasons—the body is a temple and so on. But what none of us saw coming was that when he stopped smoking weed he just replaced it with alcohol. He started drinking more and more. He never came home from work sober. An average day was a six-pack of beer after work. Weeknights he’d have a buzz on. Some Fridays and Saturdays he just didn’t come home. When Abel drank, his eyes would go red, bloodshot. That was the clue I learned to read. I always thought of Abel as a cobra: calm, perfectly still, then explosive. There was no ranting and raving, no clenched fists. He’d be very quiet, and then out of nowhere the violence would come. The eyes were my only clue to stay away. His eyes were everything. They were the eyes of the Devil. Late one night we woke up to a house filled with smoke. Abel hadn’t come home by the time we’d gone to bed, and I’d fallen asleep in my mother’s room with her and Andrew, who was still a baby. I jerked awake to her shaking me and screaming. “Trevor! Trevor!” There was smoke everywhere. We thought the house was burning down. My mom ran down the hallway to the kitchen, where she discovered the kitchen on fire. Abel had driven home drunk, blind drunk, drunker than we’d ever seen him before. He’d been hungry, tried to heat up some food on the stove, and passed out on the couch while it was cooking. The pot had burned itself out and burned up the kitchen wall behind the stove, and smoke was billowing everywhere. She turned off the stove and opened the doors and the windows to try to air the place out. Then she went over to the couch and woke him up and started berating him for nearly burning the house down. He was too drunk to care. She came back into the bedroom, picked up the phone, and called my grandmother. She started going on and on about Abel and his drinking. “This man, he’s going to kill us one day. He almost burnt the house down…” Abel walked into the bedroom, very calm, very quiet. His eyes were blood red, his eyelids heavy. He put his finger on the cradle and hung up the call. My mom lost it. “How dare you! Don’t you hang up my phone call! What do you think you’re doing?!” “You don’t tell people what’s happening in this house,” he said.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  79 LECTURE 9 RELIGIOUS DISSENT AND THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR T his lecture continues the story of the British Reformation in the 17 th century. The first generation of Puritans set sail to the New World with the hope that they, or at least their ideas, would find their way back to England one day. They thought Massachusetts Bay would provide a blueprint for the perfect Zion that Puritans back home would build as soon as a reasonable king or queen gave them the chance. This lecture is all about how that did not happen. While Puritan leader John Winthrop and his colleagues were toiling away in New England, the original England was barreling toward civil war. 80 The History of Christianity II CHARLES AND HIS CHALLENGERS õ In 1625, Charles I took the throne, which made him monarch of three kingdoms: England, Scotland, and Ireland. From the beginning, the staunch Protestants in the House of Commons, particularly the Puritans, worried that Charles would be too kind toward Catholics and was perhaps even a crypto-Catholic: After all, he had married a Catholic French princess, Henrietta Maria. 81Lecture 9—Religious Dissent and the English Civil War õ They feared that he would liberalize England’s penal laws, which since the time of Queen Elizabeth had made life miserable for Catholics by banning their worship, restricting property ownership, and forcing all public servants to swear allegiance to the monarch as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. õ Charles favored the men in Parliament and in the church who hated the Puritans and liked vestments, pageantry, and incense in their worship. This was group known as the Arminian party. He gave the office of archbishop of Canterbury—the most powerful position in the church—to an Arminian named William Laud. õ Laud ramped persecution of the Puritans. He banned ministers from preaching predestination, said they had to use the official Church of England prayer book, and preach wearing fancy clerical dress—all things the Puritans hated. Laud had some leading Puritans pilloried in the stocks and their ears cut off. õ King Charles and Laud managed to infuriate the Scottish as well. Recall that leaders of the Scottish Church, or Kirk, preferred a more Calvinist, Presbyterian form of worship and polity. So when Charles ordered them to use a prayer book that was almost identical to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, riots broke out. The Church of Scotland decided to antagonize Charles and Laud by abolishing bishops from their church entirely. õ Meanwhile, Charles was making it a habit to work around Parliament whenever he could. He raised taxes without consulting Parliament and appointed his best friend, the duke of Buckingham, to lead a few disastrous military expeditions in Europe. Buckingham was an incompetent leader and almost universally loathed by the king’s subjects. When he was assassinated in 1628, Charles spent days in bed crying while people celebrated in the streets.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When I walked into that holding pen, I was a smooth-skinned, fresh-faced young man. At the time, I had a giant Afro, and the only way to control it was to have it tied back in this ponytail thing that looked really girly. I looked like Maxwell. The guards closed the door behind me, and this creepy old dude yelled out in Zulu from the back, “Ha, ha, ha! Hhe madoda! Angikaze ngibone indoda enhle kangaka! Sizoba nobusuku obuhle!” “Yo, yo, yo! Damn, guys. I’ve never seen a man this beautiful before. It’s gonna be a good night tonight!” Fuuuuuuuuuck. Right next to me as I walked in was a young man having a complete meltdown, talking to himself, bawling his eyes out. He looked up and locked eyes with me, and I guess he thought I looked like a kindred soul he could talk to. He came straight at me and started crying about how he’d been arrested and thrown in jail and the gangs had stolen his clothes and his shoes and raped him and beat him every day. He wasn’t some ruffian. He was well-spoken, educated. He’d been waiting for a year for his case to be heard; he wanted to kill himself. That guy put the fear of God in me. I looked around the holding cell. There were easily a hundred guys in there, all of them spread out and huddled into their clearly and unmistakably defined racial groups: a whole bunch of black people in one corner, the colored people in a different corner, a couple of Indians off to themselves, and a handful of white guys off to one side. The guys who’d been with me in the police van, the second we walked in, they instinctively, automatically, walked off to join the groups they belonged to. I froze. I didn’t know where to go. I looked over at the colored corner. I was staring at the most notorious, most violent prison gang in South Africa. I looked like them, but I wasn’t them. I couldn’t go over there doing my fake gangster shit and have them discover I was a fraud. No, no, no. That game was over, my friend. The last thing I needed was colored gangsters up against me. But then what if I went to the black corner? I know that I’m black and I identify as black, but I’m not a black person on the face of it, so would the black guys understand why I was walking over? And what kind of shit would I start by going there? Because going to the black corner as a perceived colored person might piss off the colored gangs even more than going to the colored corner as a fake colored person. Because that’s what had happened to me my entire life. Colored people would see me hanging out with blacks, and they’d confront me, want to fight me. I saw myself starting a race war in the holding cell.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds. Perhaps the starkest of these divisions was between South Africa’s two dominant groups, the Zulu and the Xhosa. The Zulu man is known as the warrior. He is proud. He puts his head down and fights. When the colonial armies invaded, the Zulu charged into battle with nothing but spears and shields against men with guns. The Zulu were slaughtered by the thousands, but they never stopped fighting. The Xhosa, on the other hand, pride themselves on being the thinkers. My mother is Xhosa. Nelson Mandela was Xhosa. The Xhosa waged a long war against the white man as well, but after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach. “These white people are here whether we like it or not,” they said. “Let’s see what tools they possess that can be useful to us. Instead of being resistant to English, let’s learn English. We’ll understand what the white man is saying, and we can force him to negotiate with us.” The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Xhosa played chess with the white man. For a long time neither was particularly successful, and each blamed the other for a problem neither had created. Bitterness festered. For decades those feelings were held in check by a common enemy. Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to war with itself. RUN Sometimes in big Hollywood movies they’ll have these crazy chase scenes where somebody jumps or gets thrown from a moving car. The person hits the ground and rolls for a bit. Then they come to a stop and pop up and dust themselves off, like it was no big deal. Whenever I see that I think, That’s rubbish. Getting thrown out of a moving car hurts way worse than that. I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car. It happened on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because we were coming home from church, and every Sunday in my childhood meant church. We never missed church. My mother was—and still is—a deeply religious woman. Very Christian. Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I turned and ran into the dead end. Teddy broke the other way. Half the mall cops followed him, half followed me. I got to the fence and knew exactly how to squirm through. Head, then shoulder, one leg, then twist, then the other leg—done. I was through. The guards hit the fence behind me and couldn’t follow. I ran across the field to a fence on the far side, popped through there, and then I was right on the road, three blocks from my house. I slipped my hands into my pockets and casually walked home, another harmless pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I got back to my house I waited for Teddy. He didn’t show up. I waited thirty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. No Teddy. Fuck. I ran to Teddy’s house in Linksfield. No Teddy. Monday morning I went to school. Still no Teddy. Fuck. Now I was worried. After school I went home and checked at my house again, nothing. Teddy’s house again, nothing. Then I ran back home. An hour later Teddy’s parents showed up. My mom greeted them at the door. “Teddy’s been arrested for shoplifting,” they said. Fuuuck. I eavesdropped on their whole conversation from the other room. From the start my mom was certain I was involved. “Well, where was Trevor?” she asked. “Teddy said he wasn’t with Trevor,” they said. My mom was skeptical. “Hmm. Are you sure Trevor wasn’t involved?” “No, apparently not. The cops said there was another kid, but he got away.” “So it was Trevor.” “No, we asked Teddy, and he said it wasn’t Trevor. He said it was some other kid.” “Huh...okay.” My mom called me in. “Do you know about this thing?” “What thing?” “Teddy was caught shoplifting.” “Whhaaat?” I played dumb. “Noooo. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Teddy? No.” “Where were you?” my mom asked. “I was at home.” “But you’re always with Teddy.” I shrugged. “Not on this occasion, I suppose.” For a moment my mom thought she’d caught me red-handed, but Teddy’d given me a solid alibi. I went back to my room, thinking I was in the clear. — The next day I was in class and my name was called over the PA system. “Trevor Noah, report to the principal’s office.” All the kids were like, “Ooooohhh.” The announcements could be heard in every classroom, so now, collectively, the whole school knew I was in trouble. I got up and walked to the office and waited anxiously on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the door. Finally the principal, Mr. Friedman, walked out. “Trevor, come in.” Waiting inside his office was the head of mall security, two uniformed police officers, and my and Teddy’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Vorster.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  It’s somebody’s gun.” “Officer, we really don’t know,” Bongani said. He slapped Bongani hard across the face. “You’re bullshitting me!” Then he went down the line, slapping each of us across the face, berating us about the gun. We couldn’t do anything but stand there and take it. “You guys are trash,” the cop said. “Where are you from?” “Alex.” “Ohhhhh, okay, I see. Dogs from Alex. You come here and you rob people and you rape women and you hijack cars. Bunch of fucking hoodlums.” “No, we’re dancers. We don’t know—” “I don’t care. You’re all going to jail until we figure out whose gun this is.” At a certain point we realized what was going on. This cop was shaking us down for a bribe. “Spot fine” is the euphemism everyone uses. You go through this elaborate dance with the cop where you say the thing without saying the thing. “Can’t we do something?” you ask the officer. “What do you want me to do?” “We’re really sorry, Officer. What can we do?” “You tell me.” Then you’re supposed to make up a story whereby you indicate to the cop how much money you have on you. Which we couldn’t do because we didn’t have any money. So he took us to jail. It was a public bus. It could have been anyone’s gun, but the guys from Alex were the only ones who got arrested. Everyone else in the car was free to go. The cops took us to the police station and threw us in a cell and pulled us out one by one for questioning. When they pulled me aside I had to give my home address: Highlands North. The cop gave me the most confused look. “You’re not from Alex,” he said. “What are you doing with these crooks?” I didn’t know what to say. He glared at me hard. “Listen here, rich boy. You think it’s fun running around with these guys? This isn’t play-play anymore. Just tell me the truth about your friends and the gun, and I’ll let you go.” I told him no, and he threw me back in the cell. We spent the night, and the next day I called a friend, who said he could borrow the money from his dad to get us out. Later that day the dad came down and paid the money. The cops kept calling it “bail,” but it was a bribe. We were never formally arrested or processed. There was no paperwork. We got out and everything was fine, but it rattled us. Every day we were out in the streets, hustling, trying to act as if we were in some way down with the gangs, but the truth was we were always more cheese than hood. We had created this idea of ourselves as a defense mechanism to survive in the world we were living in.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  There were easily a hundred guys in there, all of them spread out and huddled into their clearly and unmistakably defined racial groups: a whole bunch of black people in one corner, the colored people in a different corner, a couple of Indians off to themselves, and a handful of white guys off to one side. The guys who’d been with me in the police van, the second we walked in, they instinctively, automatically, walked off to join the groups they belonged to. I froze. I didn’t know where to go. I looked over at the colored corner. I was staring at the most notorious, most violent prison gang in South Africa. I looked like them, but I wasn’t them. I couldn’t go over there doing my fake gangster shit and have them discover I was a fraud. No, no, no. That game was over, my friend. The last thing I needed was colored gangsters up against me. But then what if I went to the black corner? I know that I’m black and I identify as black, but I’m not a black person on the face of it, so would the black guys understand why I was walking over? And what kind of shit would I start by going there? Because going to the black corner as a perceived colored person might piss off the colored gangs even more than going to the colored corner as a fake colored person. Because that’s what had happened to me my entire life. Colored people would see me hanging out with blacks, and they’d confront me, want to fight me. I saw myself starting a race war in the holding cell. “Hey! Why are you hanging out with the blacks?” “Because I am black.” “No, you’re not. You’re colored.” “Ah, yes. I know it looks that way, friend, but let me explain. It’s a funny story, actually. My father is white and my mother is black and race is a social construct, so...” That wasn’t going to work. Not here. All of this was happening in my head in an instant, on the fly. I was doing crazy calculations, looking at people, scanning the room, assessing the variables. If I go here, then this. If I go there, then that. My whole life was flashing before me—the playground at school, the spaza shops in Soweto, the streets of Eden Park—every time and every place I ever had to be a chameleon, navigate between groups, explain who I was. It was like the high school cafeteria, only it was the high school cafeteria from hell because if I picked the wrong table I might get beaten or stabbed or raped. I’d never been more scared in my life. But I still had to pick. Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side. That day I picked white.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Myths are archetypal stories that simply and directly touch the core of our being. They remind us about our deepest longings, and reveal to us our hidden strengths and resources. They are also maps of our essential nature, pathways that connect us to each other, to nature and to the cosmos. The Greek myth of Medusa captures the very essence of trauma and describes its pathway to transformation. In the Greek myth, those who looked directly into Medusa’s eyes were promptly turned into stone ... frozen in time. Before setting out to vanquish this snake-haired demon, Perseus sought counsel from Athena, the goddess of knowledge and strategy. Her advice to him was simple: under no circumstances should he look directly at the Gorgon. Taking Athena’s advice to heart, Perseus used the protective shield fastened on his arm to reflect the image of Medusa. This way he was able to cut off her head without looking directly at her, and thus avoided being turned into stone. If trauma is to be transformed, we must learn not to confront it directly. If we make the mistake of confronting trauma head on, then Medusa will, true to her nature, turn us to stone. Like the Chinese finger traps we all played with as kids, the more we struggle with trauma, the greater will be its grip upon us. When it comes to trauma, I believe that the “equivalent” of Perseus’s reflecting shield is how our body responds to trauma and how the “living body” personifies resilience and feelings of goodness. There is more to this myth: Out of Medusa’s wound, two mythical entities emerged: Pegasus the winged horse and the one-eyed giant Chrysaor, the warrior with the golden sword. The golden sword represents penetrating truth and clarity. The horse is a symbol of the body and instinctual knowledge; the wings symbolize transcendence. Together, they suggest transformation through the “living body.” ‡ Together, these aspects form the archetypal qualities and resources that a human being must mobilize in order to heal the Medusa (fright paralysis) called trauma. The ability to perceive and respond to the reflection of Medusa is mirrored in our instinctual natures. In another version of this same myth, Perseus collects a drop of blood from Medusa’s wound in two vials. The drop from one vial has the power to kill; the drop in the other vial has the power to raise the dead and restore life. What is revealed here is the dual nature of trauma: first, its destructive ability to rob victims of their capacity to live and enjoy life. The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect. Whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Gorgon, or a vehicle for soaring to the heights of transformation and mastery, depends upon how we approach it. Trauma is a fact of life.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: All sorrow is an evil of punishment; but it is not always an evil of fault, except only when it proceeds from an inordinate affection. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9): “Whenever these affections follow reason, and are caused when and where needed, who will dare to call them diseases or vicious passions?” Reply to Objection 4: There is no reason why a thing may not of itself be contrary to the will, and yet be willed by reason of the end, to which it is ordained, as bitter medicine is not of itself desired, but only as it is ordained to health. And thus Christ’s death and passion were of themselves involuntary, and caused sorrow, although they were voluntary as ordained to the end, which is the redemption of the human race. Whether there was fear in Christ?Objection 1: It would seem that there was no fear in Christ. For it is written (Prov. 28:1): “The just, bold as a lion, shall be without dread.” But Christ was most just. Therefore there was no fear in Christ. Objection 2: Further, Hilary says (De Trin. x): “I ask those who think thus, does it stand to reason that He should dread to die, Who by expelling all dread of death from the Apostles, encouraged them to the glory of martyrdom?” Therefore it is unreasonable that there should be fear in Christ. Objection 3: Further, fear seems only to regard what a man cannot avoid. Now Christ could have avoided both the evil of punishment which He endured, and the evil of fault which befell others. Therefore there was no fear in Christ. On the contrary, It is written (Mk. 4:33): Jesus “began to fear and to be heavy.” I answer that, As sorrow is caused by the apprehension of a present evil, so also is fear caused by the apprehension of a future evil. Now the apprehension of a future evil, if the evil be quite certain, does not arouse fear. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5) that we do not fear a thing unless there is some hope of avoiding it. For when there is no hope of avoiding it the evil is considered present, and thus it causes sorrow rather than fear. Hence fear may be considered in two ways. First, inasmuch as the sensitive appetite naturally shrinks from bodily hurt, by sorrow if it is present, and by fear if it is future; and thus fear was in Christ, even as sorrow. Secondly, fear may be considered in the uncertainty of the future event, as when at night we are frightened at a sound, not knowing what it is; and in this way there was no fear in Christ, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 23).

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  That’s when I made a mistake. I moved further back into the station, away from them. In doing so, I moved further from the exit or any possibility of help. Some mistakes in life are not punishable, others teach you a lesson you never forget. When I heard their footsteps growing closer, I knew better than to hide behind the pillar. It’s far worse to be caught cowering, I reached inside the bag and pulled out a small handful of elderberties. Their tart taste heightened my senses. They stained my hands with the color of battles won and lost. I set the rest of the berries down on the platform, wishing Ruth could have known I had found her elderberties in the winter in this paved city. I wanted more time with Ruth. I wished I had thanked her for breathing a little life back into me. I positioned my house keys between my fingers so that my fist bristled with coppery spikes. I was trapped between the end of the station and the three faces getting closer. They are the hunters; I am the prey. For just a moment, before it began, I cursed Ruth for making me hope again. Then I let go of everything except the moment confronting me. The leader of the pack emerged. He reached for my face. “What have we here?” he asked, almost gently. I blocked his hand with my own. He smiled. Now it had begun. My spiked fist was out of their sight. I didn’t reveal my readiness. His buddies leered and sneered. But his smile was harder to stand up to. It reminded me of a cop’s smirk, meant to force me to admit powerlessness. “What the fuck are your” he asked quietly. “T cart tell what you are. Maybe we should just find out, huh, guys?” His taunts and threats rolled off me, not because I was impervious to them, but because I was filled to overflowing. I tried not to listen. It didn’t matter what he said. It didn’t matter what I answered. All that was important was the action, the positioning of their bodies and mine, the juxtaposition of matter and space, open throats and unguarded kneecaps. At the instant the action exploded I would have a moment to strike, to change the relationship of forces. When one of their punches connected with my body, when 282 = Leslie Feinberg blood filled my eyes, when I could no longer catch a breath—I would be theirs. I braced myself against the leftover grit of elderberries between my teeth. Any moment it would erupt. Any moment.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I couldn’t wait till we left the reception. Annie rode with her arms around my neck and her face Stone Butch Blues 211 against my back. By the time we got to her home both her shoes were gone and the exhaust pipe had burned a hole in the hem of her dress. “Pay it no mind,” Annie said. She was drunk. When we got to the porch she threw her arms around me. “You comin’ in, darlin’?” “Naw,” I said. “I gotta get ready for work in the morning,” She looked down at her stocking feet and back up to my face. “I ain’t gonna see you again, am I?” she asked. I looked down at my shoes. “I don’t think so.” She nodded. “Why not?” It hurt my heart the way she asked it. “Tm afraid I’d fall in love with you,’ I said. It was partly true, but it sure didn’t tell the whole story. It’s one thing for the magician to reveal the art of illusion. It’s another thing to tell a straight woman that the man she slept with is a woman. That’s not what Annie agreed to get into. Sooner or later it was going to blow up. And after this afternoon, I had even more reason to fear the explosion. “What’s wrong with falling in love? What’s the matter with you guys, anyway?” she slurred. “Tve been hurt, Annie. I need time.” “Shit, I thought you were different. You ain’t any 212 = Leslie Feinberg different from any other guy who stands to pee.” “Well,” I shrugged, “maybe just a little different.” “You tell that woman who hurt you ’'m gonna come after her and rip her to shreds. She spoiled it for the rest of us.” Annie’s smile faded. “Ain’t no use us standing out here talkin’, is itP You best be goin’.” I nodded. We looked at each other for a long moment. I took the keys from her hand and unlocked the front door. I kissed her lightly on the mouth. “Hey, thanks for what you said to Wilma back there.” “T meant every word of it.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “Thanks for everything, darlin’.” I smiled and turned to go. She stood on the porch and watched me kick-start my bike. “Hey,” she yelled over the roar of the engine. “What?” I cupped my hand near my ear to hear. “The wabbit.” “What?” “Kathy’s wabbit.” I nodded and strained to hear what she was repeating. “Kathy’s wabbit isn’t a girl, it’s a boy!” I FELT LIGHT-HEADED AND DIZZY. My stomach clenched. I was about to heave my guts up. The worst part of it was I knew I couldn’t leave the injection-mold machine I was working on. If I switched it off, the plastic would harden throughout the machine. The machines ran continuously—the repetitive sounds were the music we worked to in the molding department.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  It turned out to be true that 42" Street was filled with all-night theaters. Admission was three dollars for kung fu movies endlessly strung together. I chose a theater and entered an all-male world. The theater smelled like stale cigarettes and reefer. Many of the seats wete broken, something I didn’t discover until I sat down and landed on the sticky floor. The men nearest me checked me out and went back to staring at the screen. I loved the movies. They seemed to share a theme. A young man is faced with a powerful enemy. He’s forced to find a teacher who can train him in monkey style, praying mantis, tiger, eagle claw, scorpion. The twist is that the teacher is not powerful enough on his own or dies before the young man is ready. It always takes some special combination of skills and insights to defeat the foe. The hero was honorable—marked by humility and discipline and was very respectful, if not chaste, with his girlfriend. But every time a woman appeared on the screen, the men around me shouted, “Eat that pussy! Puck that bitch!” At first it scared me. Then I realized, with the exception of me, this was an all-male audience. Who were they talking to if not each other? Was each man who shouted from his stoned stupor trying to convince the men nearby that a woman could still make his dick hard? That no matter how the weight of the streets had crushed him he was still a real man? I kept putting off going to the bathroom, but after a while I just had to. The stench hit me as I opened the men’s room door. An older man was sitting on one toilet, a needle stuck in his arm, nodding. The tile was gummy with crud. There were no doors on the stalls. Most of the toilets were overflowing with shit and toilet paper. I snuck into the women’s bathroom. It was musty from lack of use. Just as I was zipping my pants back up, the door opened. “What are you doing in here?” a man in a red blazer asked me. I let my voice settle into rough. “Taking a shit. Do ya mind?” I pushed past him and went back to my seat. By the time I’d seen each film twice I began to doze. The next morning I walked, asking directions of nearly everyone I passed, till I was on the doorstep of the first rental agency I’d found in the Voice. “Do you have anything cheaper?” I asked the woman agent. “You want an apartment or a dump? Two hundred-fifty—that’s a bargain.” I thought about it. “When can I move in?” “Here’s the keys,” she said. I reached for the keys, she pulled them back. “That’s one month rent, one month security, and a finder’s fee: $750, payable now.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: As the Philosopher says (Phys. viii, 4) the movement of an animal, whereby at times an animal is moved against the natural inclination of the body, although it is not natural to the body, is nevertheless somewhat natural to the animal, to which it is natural to be moved according to its appetite. Accordingly this is violent, not simply but in a certain respect. The same remark applies in the case of one who contorts his limbs in a way that is contrary to their natural disposition. For this is violent in a certain respect, i.e. as to that particular limb; but not simply, i.e. as to the man himself. Whether fear causes involuntariness simply?Objection 1: It would seem that fear causes involuntariness simply. For just as violence regards that which is contrary to the will at the time, so fear regards a future evil which is repugnant to the will. But violence causes involuntariness simply. Therefore fear too causes involuntariness simply. Objection 2: Further, that which is such of itself, remains such, whatever be added to it: thus what is hot of itself, as long as it remains, is still hot, whatever be added to it. But that which is done through fear, is involuntary in itself. Therefore, even with the addition of fear, it is involuntary. Objection 3: Further, that which is such, subject to a condition, is such in a certain respect; whereas what is such, without any condition, is such simply: thus what is necessary, subject to a condition, is necessary in some respect: but what is necessary absolutely, is necessary simply. But that which is done through fear, is absolutely involuntary; and is not voluntary, save under a condition, namely, in order that the evil feared may be avoided. Therefore that which is done through fear, is involuntary simply. On the contrary, Gregory of Nyssa [*Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. xxx.] and the Philosopher (Ethic. iii, 1) say that such things as are done through fear are “voluntary rather than involuntary.” I answer that, As the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii) and likewise Gregory of Nyssa in his book on Man (Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. xxx), such things are done through fear “are of a mixed character,” being partly voluntary and partly involuntary. For that which is done through fear, considered in itself, is not voluntary; but it becomes voluntary in this particular case, in order, namely, to avoid the evil feared.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  184The History of Christianity II ✳It’s impossible to know for sure how much African religious tradition slaves retained from pre-slavery days. But slave owners complained about their slaves’ “devil worship.” ✳Rebecca and Martin summoned slaves to church and asked them to repent for listening to the devil. Therefore, historians can guess that at least some slave communities had preserved pre- slavery traditions. õThe third theme is that from the perspective of 18 th -century slave owners, Christianity was a dangerous message. Early on in the history of the Western colonies, the planters were ambivalent at best about about their slaves hearing the gospel. The Church of England had a presence in the West Indies, but it was perceived as the church for white plantation owners, not for black people. ✳In the early years of the American republic, the evangelical missionaries who were most eager to preach to slaves—Baptists, Methodists, and other evangelicals like Rebecca—were very critical of slavery. They were the last people that plantation owners wanted around. ✳But successful missionaries are usually pragmatists. They make compromises with the sinful world in order to get a chance to spread their message. This marks a shift that goes beyond the remarkable story of Rebecca. ✳She died in 1780, but had she lived to see how evangelical missionaries would adjust their message just a couple generations later, she likely would have been horrified. Most missionaries reversed their criticisms of slavery. They started to emphasize that Christianity did not mean overturning social order, and preached that a good Christian slave would accept his lot in life.