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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Historically, women’s sexuality and intellect have never been integrated. Women’s bodies were controlled, and their sexuality was contained, in order to avert their corrupting impact on men’s virtue. Femininity, associated with purity, sacrifice, and frailty, was a characteristic of the morally successful woman. Her evil twin, the succubus (whore, slut, concubine, witch) was the earthy, sensual, and frankly lusty woman who had traded respectability for sexual exuberance. Vigorous sexuality was the exclusive domain of men. Women have continuously sought to disentangle themselves from the patriarchal split between virtue and lust, and are still fighting this injustice. When we privilege speech and underplay the body, we collude in keeping women confined. Bilingual Intimacy When it comes to letting the body speak, Mitch and Laura are at opposite ends of the spectrum. They’ve reduced their sexual selves to stereotypes. Laura describes Mitch as the classic sex-obsessed man, demanding his rights regardless of how she feels. “The only time he really wants to get close to me is when he wants sex, and he wants it all the time,” she says resentfully. Laura, who is strong-willed and sometimes domineering in their everyday interactions, is seen by Mitch as a sexually inhibited woman who repeatedly rejects his advances from some unfathomable feelings of disgust or contempt. “She acts as if I were some sort of crude animal, and shrinks away from me every time I touch her—it makes me feel like shit,” he says, sounding bitter. For Laura, sex is the sum of all the cultural and familial restrictions she absorbed as a child; her body is a gathering place of multiple taboos and anxieties. Like many girls of her generation (she’s in her early fifties) she grew up believing that she could be smart or pretty, but not both. The only comments about her looks she remembers from her father were about her developing breasts. And her mother’s twisted caution was that she was lucky not to be too pretty, since boys want only one thing. As an adult, she wears concealing clothes—turtlenecks even in the summer—and feels demeaned by compliments about her looks. For her, sexuality evokes fear; she’s never been able to enjoy the raptures of her body. For Mitch, on the other hand, sex is a place where he feels utterly free, uninhibited, and at peace. It wasn’t always this way. He was a late bloomer, gawky and not particularly athletic. But he had two things that made his adolescence hopeful: he was a good dancer and he genuinely liked girls. At eighteen he fell in love with Hillary, a college senior with considerable expertise, and his initiation into the voluptuousness of sex was magnificent. Sadly, in his marriage he’s come to feel awful about something he’d always experienced with confidence and joy. Meanwhile, Laura has come to feel completely deficient, ungenerous, and guilty.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Everest, when the summit is within reach and you have sacrificed so much to be there, you are truly in it. That is when you will be the least fit to make a decision about whether to continue on or to quit. That is why turnaround times are set long before you are ever faced with that choice. Third, and perhaps most important, the turnaround time is a reminder that the real goal in climbing Everest is not to reach the summit. It is, understandably, the focus of enormous attention, but the ultimate goal, in the broadest, most realistic sense, is to return safely to the base of the mountain. The Invisible Men at the Top of the World Hutchison, Taske, and Kasischke were part of one of three expeditions trying to reach the summit on the same day and the top of the mountain was crowded. More crowded than it was supposed to be. The evening before, the expedition leader with the least experience announced that his group would not attempt to summit the next day. Yet, around midnight (which is when summit day begins), there they were, part of what was now an unusually large group of thirty-four, setting out from Camp 4 at the same time. Hutchison, Taske, and Kasischke had gotten stuck at the back of the pack, behind some climbers from that group. Those climbers were slow and difficult to pass because they were clumped together, which was a problem since you have to go much of the way along a single fixed rope (experienced climbers know to spread out to allow faster climbers to pass). Also stuck with them was Adventure Consultant’s expedition leader, whom Hutchison asked at one point how long it would be until they reached the summit. The reply was about three hours. At that point, the expedition leader started climbing faster, trying to get past the clump of incompetent climbers in front of them. Hutchison held Taske and Kasischke back for a talk. Looking at their watches, it was nearly 11:30 a.m. They’d been climbing for almost twelve hours. All three climbers remembered that their expedition leader said back at Base Camp that 1 p.m. would be the turnaround time on summit day.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  As girls went they were nothing special, but they were girls, and empowered by that fact to render judgment on us. They could make us cringe just by rolling their eyes. Silver and I were afraid of them, and confused by Mrs. Taylor and the funereal atmosphere of the house. The only reason we went there was to steal Mrs. Taylor’s cigarettes. We couldn’t go to my place. Phil, the man who owned the boardinghouse, had no use for kids. He rented the room to my mother only after she promised that I would be quiet and never bring other kids home with me. Phil was always there, reeking of chewing tobacco, drooling strings of it into the chipped enamel mug he carried with him everywhere. Phil had been badly burned in a warehouse fire that left his skin blister-smooth and invested with an angry glow, as if the fire still burned somewhere inside him. The fingers of one hand were welded together. He was right not to want me around. When we passed one another in the hallway or on the stairs, I couldn’t keep my eyes from him and he saw in them no sympathy or friendliness, only disgust. He responded by touching me constantly. He knew better but could not help himself. He touched me on the shoulders, on the head, on the neck, using all the gestures of fatherly affection while measuring my horror with a cold bitter gaze, giving new pain to himself as if he had no choice. My place was off-limits and Terry Taylor’s was full of trolls, so we usually ended up at Silver’s apartment. Silver was an only child, clever, skinny, malicious, a shameless coward when his big mouth brought trouble down on us. His father was a cantor who lived in Tacoma with his new wife. Silver’s mother worked all day at Boeing. That meant we had the apartment to ourselves for hours at a stretch. But first we made our rounds. As we left school we followed girls at a safe distance and offered up smart remarks. We drifted in and out of stores, palming anything that wasn’t under glass. We coasted stolen tricycles down the hills around Alkai Point, standing on the seats and jumping off at the last moment to send them crashing into parked cars. Sometimes, if we had the money, we took a bus downtown and weaved through the winos around Pioneer Square to stare at guns in the windows of pawnshops. For all three of us the Luger was the weapon of choice; our passion for this pistol was profound and about the only passion we admitted to. In the presence of a Luger we stopped our continual jostling of each other and stood wide-eyed. Television was very big on the Nazis then.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I should also apply to Deerfield, where our father had gone for a time, and to St. Paul’s. Maybe some others. They liked jocks, he said. Was I a jock? I told him I was a swimmer. “Good, they love swimmers. You swim for your school?” “The school doesn’t have a team. I swim for my Scout troop.” “You’re a Scout? Great! Better and better. What rank?” “Eagle.” He laughed. “Christ, Toby, they’ll be eating out of your hand. Anything else? Chess? Music?” “I play in the school band.” “Terrific. What instrument?” “Snare drum.” “Yes, well, let’s stick with the grades and swimming and the Scouts.” Geoffrey told me he would send a list of schools to apply to, along with addresses and deadlines. I would have to be patient, this wasn’t going to happen overnight. “I don’t like the idea of that guy hitting you,” Geoffrey said. “Think you can hang on out there?” I said I could. “I’m going to call the old man about this. He might have some ideas. We’ll get you out of there, one way or the other.” He told me to give his love to our mother, and to keep writing. He said he really liked the wolf story. THIS WAS A low time for my mother. During the campaign she had traveled up and down the valley, and gone to conventions, and spent her time with people she admired. She had met John F. Kennedy. Now that the election was over she’d gone back to waiting tables at the cookhouse. She missed the excitement, but her sadness went beyond that, beyond boredom and fatigue. She had told a man who’d worked with her on the campaign that she wanted to get out of Chinook, and he offered to pull some strings to find her a job back East. Dwight somehow got wind of it. While they were driving up from Marblemount one night, he turned off on a logging road and took her to a lonely place. She asked him to go back but he refused to say anything. He just sat there, drinking from a bottle of whiskey. When it was empty he pulled his hunting knife out from under the seat and held it to her throat. He kept her there for hours like that, making her beg for her life, making her promise that she would never leave him. If she left him, he said, he would find her and kill her. It didn’t matter where she went or how long it took him, he would kill her. She believed him. I knew something had happened, but I didn’t know what. My mother wouldn’t tell me. She was afraid I would make things worse if I knew, stir Dwight up all over again. The fact was, she had no money and no place to go. Alone, she might have bolted anyway. With me to take care of she thought she couldn’t.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  A couple of times I broke off to try to think up an excuse for my situation—Look, I know you won’t believe this, but I just kind of woke up and there I was, driving the car! —but all of these ideas led me to despair, and I went back to singing songs. I sang every song I knew, and it began to amaze me how many of them there were. And I became aware that I didn’t sound that bad out here where I could really cut loose—that I sounded pretty good. I took different parts. I did talking songs, like “Deck of Cards” and “Three Stars.” I sang falsetto. I began to enjoy myself. I WAS HALFWAY to Chinook when I heard an engine behind me. I faced the lights and flagged the driver down. He stopped his truck in the road, engine running, a man I didn’t know. “That your car back there?” he asked. I said it was. “How’d you do that, anyway?” “It’s hard to explain,” I said. He told me to get in. I started yelling for Champion. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Who’s this Champ? You didn’t say anything about any Champ.” “My dog.” The man peered into the darkness while I tried to call Champion in. He was afraid of what was out there and afraid of me, and his fear made me feel dangerous. Finally he said, “I’m going,” but just then Champion bounded out of the trees. The man looked at him. “God almighty,” he said, but he opened the door for us and drove us back to the car. He was silent during the drive and silent while he winched the car up onto the road. When I thanked him, he just nodded slightly and drove away. I made it into bed not long before my mother came to wake me. “I don’t feel so good,” I told her. She put her hand on my forehead, and at that gesture I wanted to tell her everything, the whole scrape, not by way of confession but in my exhilaration at having gotten out of it. She liked hearing stories about close calls; they confirmed her faith in luck. But I knew that I couldn’t tell her without at least promising never to take the car again, which I had every intention of doing, or at worst forcing her to betray me to Dwight. She looked down at me in the gray light of dawn. “You don’t have a fever,” she said. “But I have to admit, you look awful.” She told me I could stay home from school that day if I promised not to watch TV. I slept until lunchtime. I was sitting up in bed, eating a sandwich, when Dwight came to my room. He leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets like a mime acting out Relaxation. It made me wary. “Feeling better?” he asked. I said I was.

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

  65Lecture 7—War and Witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire õThen the devil would take the brand-new witch to meet some of her colleagues at a black Sabbath: a terrible parody of Christian ritual. Scholars have found no evidence that such black masses or devil worship actually happened. But people at the time believed that satanic orgies were real, and witches or innocent witnesses told very elaborate stories to the courts. õScholars estimate that there were about 100,000 witchcraft trials between 1450 and 1750. These led to between 40,000 and 50,000 executions (75 to 80% of those were women, usually burned at the stake). õMost of the people accused of witchcraft were older women who somehow did not conform to social expectations. Perhaps they were childless, or lived alone, or had been driven by poverty to live as beggars. Perhaps they didn’t get along with their neighbors very well. So when someone’s cow went lame, or their crop failed, it was tempting to blame that old lady who came by looking for a handout and gave weird looks to people who weren’t generous enough. õWitch hunts ran rampant in many parts of Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. But the most intense hysteria didn’t happen in the most war-ravaged areas, where it was easy to see armies were responsible for destruction. õThere was much more hysteria about witches in places that were on the margins of the war: areas that got hit by the fighting but stayed intact. Perhaps people in such areas had to turn over their homes to brutish troops, or send sons and fathers to fight far away, or heard rumors of spies in their town. These are the places where people were prone to blame the strange old lady who had lived around the corner for decades. õThe very worst witch hunts were the pet projects of strong religious leaders, like some of the prince-bishops who ran their own mini- kingdoms in various corners of the Holy Roman Empire. These guys believed that the Catholic Church could only turn back the tide of the Protestant Reformation by stamping out every trace of witchcraft and heresy.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  But jobs were hard to come by, and it was hard for me to believe that R. would find in those countries, in any country, the life he thought he wanted. Though that wasn’t the right way to put it, I thought, he didn’t have a particular life in mind, something we could work for together; he acted as though life were something that would find him, in some city he had yet to see. Still, I pretended to be sure, as much for myself as for him, we would figure it out, I said, of course we would, we belonged with each other, I was his. As we climbed the hill to the fortress after our meal I could almost feel the centuries peeling back, exposing a world whose brutality was clear in the walls raised up to resist it. The way things are now, it’s hard to imagine the country that could make this, R. said as we bought our tickets and began walking the long strip of stone leading to the fortress, pausing to stare at the huge square frame for gates that once would have barred our way. We weren’t alone on the path up the hill; there were others too, couples mostly, some of them in clothes that made me feel underdressed, the women picking their way gingerly over the stony ground in heels. Apart from the occasional sign and a few wooden staircases granting access to the ruins, there was little to distract us as we walked the uneven ground, making our way around boulders and the ruins of walls. As we turned past one of these walls we surprised three men chatting, dressed in medieval costumes, two half-naked and muscular in leather tunics and a third in a kind of peasant cloth. They snatched the cigarettes from their mouths and stood up, one of the larger men unfurling his whip; and then, seeing our lack of interest, they leaned back against the stone, entirely contemporary in their strange clothes. At first I thought they might be from the opera, members of the chorus waiting for their call, but their costumes weren’t right, and I realized they must have been performing in some tourist reenactment, Ottoman soldiers and a Bulgarian peasant. They resembled anyway the images in the books that had given me what idea I had of the history of the place, a set of slim illustrated volumes, comic books almost, a children’s history of Bulgaria filled with barbaric invaders and mothers in tears, villains and victims stark in their frames. There were multiple versions of the story, I knew; in some the Bulgarians were valiant, in some savage and cruel, holding out for months against overwhelming forces, ceding an inch of ground at a time.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He shifted his position at this, he released one of my wrists to wrap his arm around my neck, not choking me but taking hold of me, pressing the links of the chain into my skin. We don’t need that, he said, I don’t like them, he spoke close to my ear, intimately, persuasively, and it will hurt you more if I use one. He started to move again, pressing forward though I resisted him, you need a condom, I said, please, there’s one in my pocket, let me get it, and I moved my free arm as if to lift myself up, setting it as a brace at my side. Kuchko , he repeated, not quite sternly but with disapproval, and then crooned again, don’t you want to please me, don’t you want to give me what I want? I did want to please him, and not only that, I wanted him inside me, I wanted to be fucked, but there was real danger, especially in this country; many people here are sick without knowing it, I knew, and knew too that he wouldn’t be gentle, that I was likely to bleed, it’s necessary, I said, please, I have one, we have to use it. Hush, he said again, kuchko , let me in, his voice quiet but his arm tightening around my neck, my throat in the crook of his elbow, let me in, and he pressed forward with real force. For a moment I wavered, I almost did let him in; it’s what you wanted, I thought, it’s what you said you wanted, I had asked him to make me nothing. But I didn’t let him in, I said No, repeating it several times, my voice rising; no, I said, stop, prestanete , still using the polite form. Open, he said, but I didn’t open, my whole body clenched in refusal, I did try to lift myself up now, but found I could hardly move at all. I was used to being the stronger one in such encounters, being so tall and so large, I was used to feeling the safety of strength, of knowing I could gather back up that personhood I had laid aside for an evening or an hour. But he was stronger than I was, and I was frightened as he held me down and pressed against me, shoving or thrusting himself. But he couldn’t enter, I was clenched and dry and there was no forcing himself inside, and he grunted in frustration and said again Bitch, spitting the word, bitch, what are you to say no to me, and then he pulled back on my neck and bit my shoulder very hard, nearly breaking the skin, making a ring of bruises I would wear for days.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Immediately we were in it, the rush and moil of wind that dragged at us and snatched our breath; I couldn’t have called out to him now, I had to duck my chin into my coat to breathe. We leaned into the wind as we made our way to the boulevard, squinting against the grit it carried, whether African sand, or, as I imagined, the grime of the streets. We were walking against it, kicking the trash it swept toward us. It’s a filthy city, though every morning an army of red-vested women descends with brooms and metal pails to scour the streets, endlessly and to no avail. We walked side by side, but it was R. who led the way, he strode as if taking no account of me. At the Sakharov intersection I thought he might turn toward the metro, putting an end to our evening and maybe to more than our evening; it was easy to imagine him slipping away from me into that life where I had no place. Of course I had no claim on him, our entire relationship was founded on claimlessness, and I was frightened to realize how much I would care if he turned, I would be devastated, how had I let myself feel so much. But he didn’t turn, he passed Sakharov and began to cross the parking lot of the supermarket that bordered the tangle of streets in which I lived, Mladost 1A, the name a remnant of the Communist order indecipherable now in the mess of new buildings. The market was nearly empty, it was late, almost closing time, but the automatic glass doors were sliding open and shut, open and shut, though no one was coming in or out; it was something to do with the wind, I thought, the disorder it made of everything. I was glad he was coming home with me, but it meant I would have to have something to say to him, when we were out of the wind and together again in my room, in the bed where we had said so much to each other—it wasn’t true that I had no claim on him, I thought, each word was a claim, his words and mine—and now all I had wanted to say seemed false, or if not false then irrelevant. Of course it wasn’t his fault, I would say, of course he was blameless, entirely blameless; there wasn’t any invitation he could have given, even if he had wanted it there wasn’t any permission he could give. But none of this was right, I rejected the phrases even as they formed, not just because they were objectionable in themselves but because none of them answered his real fear, which was true, I thought: that we can never be sure of what we want, I mean of the authenticity of it, of its purity in relation to ourselves.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A throwback to the Scopes trial, the visceral fight against Darwinism by the American “religious right,” is about the deeply rooted negation and fear of our animal nature. Such a disavowal reflects a fundamental disconnect between “higher man” (reason and morality) and “lower (sexual) animals.” This denial of the instinctual life is also shared by strange bedfellows, many modern behavioral scientists. The rejection of our animal nature is understandable as we have become (overly) socialized. This denial and its dehumanizing consequence, however, are summarized by the physician Max Plowman in his Introduction to the Study of Blake: In all cultivation, native instinct is the most difficult force to remember and take into account. Just because our civilization is old, our distance from the primal centers is as the distance of twigs upon an oak from the farthest contributory roots. We have become so cultivated that we do not know we have drains until they smell. We have become so confident in the mechanical use of intelligence that we take for granted the functioning of our instincts, even to the point of thinking it immaterial whether they can find true and natural expression or not. In time the instincts rebel against our want of care for them … then there is consternation. It seems that as we distance ourselves farther and farther from our instinctual roots, we have grown to be a species hell-bent on becoming better and better at making life worse and worse. We have been quite “successful” in distancing ourselves from our vital core. Instinct’s role in guiding and informing that which makes us both animal and, in the finest way, most human is illustrated by the following vignette. A nature photographer stood by in abject horror as he watched a wild elephant kicking, again and again, the lifeless body of its stillborn calf. As he continued observing and photographing this gruesome scene for three hours, something truly unexpected happened. The infant stirred. Remarkably, the mother had resuscitated the calf, bringing him back to life by stimulating his heart. It was instinct and instinct alone that accomplished this miraculous task; the mind would have been quite useless. Swan Lake Even in “lower” species, we are taken by the apparent intelligence of instincts in guiding complex behaviors we associate with mammals. Sitting by the edge of the emerald Vierwaldstättersee (the clear, glacial Lake Lucerne in Switzerland), the ducks and swans “proudly” parade their young chicks past the table where I am seated eating breakfast. A slight abrupt approach on my part toward the female would evoke frightening, hissing, aggressive reactions—unexpected for these otherwise staid and regal birds.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: The past deed may be the occasion of fear of future reproach or disgrace: and in this sense shame is a species of fear. Reply to Objection 4: Not every amazement and stupor are species of fear, but that amazement which is caused by a great evil, and that stupor which arises from an unwonted evil. Or else we may say that, just as laziness shrinks from the toil of external work, so amazement and stupor shrink from the difficulty of considering a great and unwonted thing, whether good or evil: so that amazement and stupor stand in relation to the act of the intellect, as laziness does to external work. Reply to Objection 5: He who is amazed shrinks at present from forming a judgment of that which amazes him, fearing to fall short of the truth, but inquires afterwards: whereas he who is overcome by stupor fears both to judge at present, and to inquire afterwards. Wherefore amazement is a beginning of philosophical research: whereas stupor is a hindrance thereto. OF THE OBJECT OF FEAR (SIX ARTICLES)We must now consider the object of fear: under which head there are six points of inquiry: (1) Whether good or evil is the object of fear? (2) Whether evil of nature is the object of fear? (3) Whether the evil of sin is an object of fear? (4) Whether fear itself can be feared? (5) Whether sudden things are especially feared? (6) Whether those things are more feared against which there is no remedy? Whether the object of fear is good or evil?Objection 1: It would seem that good is the object of fear. For Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 83) that “we fear nothing save to lose what we love and possess, or not to obtain that which we hope for.” But that which we love is good. Therefore fear regards good as its proper object. Objection 2: Further, the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5) that “power and to be above another is a thing to be feared.” But this is a good thing. Therefore good is the object of fear. Objection 3: Further, there can be no evil in God. But we are commanded to fear God, according to Ps. 33:10: “Fear the Lord, all ye saints.” Therefore even the good is an object of fear. On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 12) that fear is of future evil. I answer that, Fear is a movement of the appetitive power. Now it belongs to the appetitive power to pursue and to avoid, as stated in Ethic. vi, 2: and pursuit is of good, while avoidance is of evil. Consequently whatever movement of the appetitive power implies pursuit, has some good for its object: and whatever movement implies avoidance, has an evil for its object. Wherefore, since fear implies an avoidance, in the first place and of its very nature it regards evil as its proper object.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  People kept singing for a block or two as we left the Party headquarters behind, turning right on the narrow street just past it, they cycled through two or three verses before the song faded away once we reached Stamboliyski Boulevard. We had returned to civilization, I thought, we were passing shops and restaurants, their lit interiors calling us back from what we had almost become, it was unimaginable now. At the intersection with Vitosha, the beautiful old church, Sveta Nedelya, sat brooding in the pool of its lights. Ostavka, people were still chanting, but it felt half-hearted now, a matter almost of form. That hasn’t happened before, M. said, meaning the moment at the Party headquarters, I was scared almost, she said, were you, and I admitted that I was, that for a minute I had thought things might get bad. But it’s good that we’re scared, she said. If we’re scared, that means they’re scared, too. She looked at me, her face bright in a streetlamp, then looked away. They need to be scared, she said, maybe that’s the whole point, they need to know they should be scared of us. We turned back onto Vitosha, where M. stopped and said goodbye, she would take the metro home. I guess I should do my homework, she said, squeezing my arm in farewell before deciding instead to give me a quick hug. I’m so happy I saw you, she said, it was so great to do this, and then she was gone. Other people were leaving too, streaming down into the metro or dispersing on foot, the march was thinning out. Those of us who stayed turned onto Tsar Osvoboditel again, beginning the last leg of the protest, bringing us back full circle. There were still people yelling cherveni boklutsi but not many, most people were walking quietly, chatting among themselves. I would follow the march to the end, I had booked a hotel room for the night, in the luxury hotel near the statue of the tsar; after the embassy warnings travelers were staying in hotels far from the protests, the rooms were cheap enough for me to afford. I would spend the night there and take the metro to campus in the morning. I glanced at my phone and saw that D. was already waiting for me to join him for a drink at the bar. He was right, D. had texted, meaning the writer I had met and the argument they had had, what’s happening is better than I thought, I can’t wait to talk to you, hurry up. We were still a few blocks away but a new chant had started up, utre pak, tomorrow again, it gave people fresh energy, everyone was chanting it, pumping their fists in the air. Even I joined in, utre pak, I wanted to see what it was like to chant with the others, but soon I felt foolish and stopped.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Immediately we were in it, the rush and moil of wind that dragged at us and snatched our breath; I couldn’t have called out to him now, I had to duck my chin into my coat to breathe. We leaned into the wind as we made our way to the boulevard, squinting against the grit it carried, whether African sand, or, as I imagined, the grime of the streets. We were walking against it, kicking the trash it swept toward us. It’s a filthy city, though every morning an army of red-vested women descends with brooms and metal pails to scour the streets, endlessly and to no avail. We walked side by side, but it was R. who led the way, he strode as if taking no account of me. At the Sakharov intersection I thought he might turn toward the metro, putting an end to our evening and maybe to more than our evening; it was easy to imagine him slipping away from me into that life where I had no place. Of course I had no claim on him, our entire relationship was founded on claimlessness, and I was frightened to realize how much I would care if he turned, I would be devastated, how had I let myself feel so much. But he didn’t turn, he passed Sakharov and began to cross the parking lot of the supermarket that bordered the tangle of streets in which I lived, Mladost 1A, the name a remnant of the Communist order indecipherable now in the mess of new buildings. The market was nearly empty, it was late, almost closing time, but the automatic glass doors were sliding open and shut, open and shut, though no one was coming in or out; it was something to do with the wind, I thought, the disorder it made of everything. I was glad he was coming home with me, but it meant I would have to have something to say to him, when we were out of the wind and together again in my room, in the bed where we had said so much to each other—it wasn’t true that I had no claim on him, I thought, each word was a claim, his words and mine—and now all I had wanted to say seemed false, or if not false then irrelevant. Of course it wasn’t his fault, I would say, of course he was blameless, entirely blameless; there wasn’t any invitation he could have given, even if he had wanted it there wasn’t any permission he could give. But none of this was right, I rejected the phrases even as they formed, not just because they were objectionable in themselves but because none of them answered his real fear, which was true, I thought: that we can never be sure of what we want, I mean of the authenticity of it, of its purity in relation to ourselves.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  We reach a unique intimacy in the erotic encounter. It transcends the civility of the emotional connection and accommodates our unruly impulses and primal appetites. The flint of rubbing bodies gives off a heat not easily achieved through tamer expressions of love. Paradoxically, ruthlessness is a way to achieve closeness. Erotic intimacy invites us into a state of unboundedness where we experience a sweet freedom. We get a temporary break from ourselves—the legacies of our childhood, the habits of our relationship, and the constraints of our respective cultures. Loving another without losing ourselves is the central dilemma of intimacy. Our ability to negotiate the dual needs for connection and autonomy stems from what we learned as children, and often takes a lifetime of practice. It affects not only how we love but also how we make love. Erotic intimacy holds the double promise of finding oneself and losing oneself. It is an experience of merging and of total self-absorption, of mutuality and selfishness. To be inside another and inside ourselves at the same time is a double stance that borders on the mystical. The momentary oneness we feel with our beloved grows out of our ability to acknowledge our indissoluble separateness. In order to be one, you must first be two. 8 Parenthood When Three Threatens Two If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home. The risks are high. The voltage crackling. —Anne Roiphe, Married SEX MAKES BABIES. SO IT is ironic that the child, the embodiment of the couple’s love, so often threatens the very romance that brought that child into being. Sex, which set the entire enterprise in motion, is often abandoned once children enter the picture. Even when children come by a different route, their impact on the sex life of the couple is no less dramatic. Many of the couples I see trace the demise of their erotic life back to the arrival of the first child. Why does parenthood so often deliver a fatal blow? The transition from two to three is one of the most profound challenges a couple will ever face. It takes time—time measured in years, not weeks—to find our bearings in this brave new world. Having a baby is a psychological revolution that changes our relation to almost everything and everyone, from our sense of self and identity to our relations with our partners, friends, parents, and in-laws. Our bodies change.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He did stop then, and in the sudden silence I could hear him breathing heavily, as I was, breathing or sobbing, I’m not sure which. I gathered myself to my hands and knees, moving slowly, it was the most I could manage; I was covered in sweat again, from exertion and from fear. It was over now, I thought, but then he spoke again, saying Dolu, down. I didn’t contradict him but I didn’t lie back down, I couldn’t bear to return to the helplessness I had thought I wanted. Dolu, he said again, and when again I didn’t obey him he lifted his foot and set it on my back, pressing as if to force me down. But I held firm, and so he reached down, not removing his foot, and grabbed the leash or chain where it hung, and as he straightened he pulled it tight, not with all his strength but enough that I felt it, and felt that he could choke me if he chose. He stepped off me then, moving behind me with the leash still in hand, and I tried to rise, lifting my chest both to slacken the chain and to rise to my feet, to stand for the first time in what seemed like hours. As I began to get up I must have shifted my knees apart, I must have moved in a way that opened myself to his foot, which struck me now hard between my legs, so it wasn’t the chain that choked me but pain as I fell forward without a sound, unable to breathe, stripped clean of the will I had been gathering back in scraps; my arms collapsed and I fell forward and curled into myself in animal response. But he didn’t let me curl into myself, he fell on top of me, he pushed or shifted me until I was available to him again, so that beneath pain and sharper than it I felt fear, a rising pitch of fear and protest and a terrible shame. He positioned himself as he had before, with his knees in my knees and his hands gripping my wrists, and in my confusion and pain I’m not sure if I struggled, or how much I struggled, though I did clench myself shut; he couldn’t enter me at first, and again I heard him make that grunt or growl of frustration. But he was wet now, he must have spat into his palm and slicked himself with it, and when he lifted just slightly and brought himself down with his whole weight he did enter me, there was a great tearing pain and I cried out in a voice I had never heard before, a shrill sound that frightened me further, that wasn’t my voice at all, and I choked it off as I twisted away from him, not thinking but in panic and pain, using all my strength. Maybe he was frightened too by my cry, maybe I had startled him; in any case I was free of him, I had thrown him or he had allowed himself to be thrown. He must have allowed it, I think, since he made no further attempt, though he could have done whatever he wanted; after my effort I lay exhausted, watching him where he lay on his back breathing hard.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  A woman, not yet thirty, clutches her daughter on the shoulder of a dirt road in a beautiful country where two men, M-16s in their hands, step up to her. She is at a checkpoint, a gate made of concertina and weaponized permission. Behind her, the fields have begun to catch. A braid of smoke through a page-blank sky. One man has black hair, the other a yellow mustache like a scar of sunlight. Stench of gasoline coming off their fatigues. The rifles sway as they walk up to her, their metal bolts winking in afternoon sun. A woman, a girl, a gun. This is an old story, one anyone can tell. A trope in a movie you can walk away from if it weren’t already here, already written down. It has started to rain; the dirt around the woman’s bare feet is flecked with red-brown quotation marks—her body a thing spoken with. Her white shirt clings against her bony shoulders as she sweats. The grass all around her is flattened, as if god had pressed his hand there, reserving a space for an eighth day. It’s a beautiful country, she’s been told, depending on who you are. — It’s not a god—of course not—but a helicopter, a Huey, another lord whose wind’s so heavy that, a few feet away, a lint-grey warbler thrashes in the high grass, unable to correct herself. The girl’s eye fills with the chopper in the sky, her face a dropped peach. Her blue shawl finally made visible with black ink, like this. Somewhere, deep inside this beautiful country, in the back of a garage lit with a row of fluorescent lights, as legend has it, five men have gathered around a table. Beneath their sandaled feet, pools of motor oil reflect nothing. On one end of the table a cluster of glass bottles. The vodka inside them shimmers in the harsh light as the men talk, their elbows shifting impatiently. They fall silent each time one of them glances toward the door. It should open anytime now. The light flickers once, stays on. The vodka poured into shot glasses, some ringed with rust from being stored in a metal bullet case from the previous war. The heavy glasses thunk on the table, the burn swallowed into a darkness invented by thirst.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In a little while, a softer trembling begins to replace the abrupt shudders. I feel alternating waves of fear and sorrow. (20. This discharge in waves allows for the natural experience of pendulation—expansions/contraction as discussed in Step 3 in Chapter 5—and softens the feelings of sorrow and fear.) It comes to me as a stark possibility that I may be seriously injured. (21. It is part of a mammalian response to injury to scan the body and to assess the nature and level of the injury.) Perhaps I will end up in a wheelchair, crippled and dependent. Again, deep waves of sorrow flood me. I’m afraid of being swallowed up by the sorrow and hold onto the woman’s eyes. (22. I am now actively engaging the woman as a resource.) A slower breath brings me the scent of her perfume. Her continued presence sustains me. As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of rage. (23. Rage is a strong defensive response—it is about the impulse to kill! Hence people become terrified by this impulse and try to suppress it. The pediatrician is helping me to contain this rage and not be overwhelmed by it.) My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. (24. This is indicative of a continued strong discharge.) A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! (25. More rage—accompanied with the human neocortical tendency to blame.) A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  But I held firm, and so he reached down, not removing his foot, and grabbed the leash or chain where it hung, and as he straightened he pulled it tight, not with all his strength but enough that I felt it, and felt that he could choke me if he chose. He stepped off me then, moving behind me with the leash still in hand, and I tried to rise, lifting my chest both to slacken the chain and to rise to my feet, to stand for the first time in what seemed like hours. As I began to get up I must have shifted my knees apart, I must have moved in a way that opened myself to his foot, which struck me now hard between my legs, so it wasn’t the chain that choked me but pain as I fell forward without a sound, unable to breathe, stripped clean of the will I had been gathering back in scraps; my arms collapsed and I fell forward and curled into myself in animal response. But he didn’t let me curl into myself, he fell on top of me, he pushed or shifted me until I was available to him again, so that beneath pain and sharper than it I felt fear, a rising pitch of fear and protest and a terrible shame. He positioned himself as he had before, with his knees in my knees and his hands gripping my wrists, and in my confusion and pain I’m not sure if I struggled, or how much I struggled, though I did clench myself shut; he couldn’t enter me at first, and again I heard him make that grunt or growl of frustration. But he was wet now, he must have spat into his palm and slicked himself with it, and when he lifted just slightly and brought himself down with his whole weight he did en ter me, there was a great tearing pain and I cried out in a voice I had never heard before, a shrill sound that frightened me further, that wasn’t my voice at all, and I choked it off as I twisted away from him, not thinking but in panic and pain, using all my strength. Maybe he was frightened too by my cry, maybe I had startled him; in any case I was free of him, I had thrown him or he had allowed himself to be thrown. He must have allowed it, I think, since he made no further attempt, though he could have done whatever he wanted; after my effort I lay exhausted, watching him where he lay on his back breathing hard.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  When we have a gain on paper, we are averse to taking on any risk that might cause us to lose that which we have already won. Now we want to ensure that we can turn that paper gain into a realized gain so we refuse the gamble. Kahneman and Tversky wanted to find out if these tendencies were strong enough that people would be willing to pay for the opportunity to lock up a sure gain, as well as to pay for the opportunity to avoid a sure loss. Imagine we changed our two propositions as follows: A. I owe you $100. I offer you the choice of taking the $100 or flipping a coin. If it lands heads, I’ll give you $220. If it lands tails, I’ll give you zero. B. You owe me $100. I offer you the choice of paying me the $100 or flipping a coin. If it lands heads, you’ll wipe the loss off the books. If it lands tails, you’ll owe me $220. Notice that now neither of these is a break-even proposition. When you are up $100, flipping the coin gets you $220 half the time and gets you $0 the other half. That means that risking the $100 you have already won by flipping the coin will net you $110 in the long run. So this new proposition is now a choice between that $110 long-run profit if you gamble and taking the sure win of $100 if you quit and walk away. If you refuse the coin flip now, you are also refusing that $10 in extra profit. Kahneman and Tversky found that, indeed, people are willing to give up this extra profit to lock in the sure win. They will pay to avoid their win evaporating with the flip of a coin, and the regret that comes along with it. In our example, they would be passing up a return on investment of 10%, ten times better than any savings account you could park that money in. Yet most people quit rather than take advantage. On the other hand, when you have that $100 loss on paper and you are offered a proposition where half the time you’re going to wipe that loss off the books but half the time you are going to have to pay $220, that now carries a negative expected value of $10. It is now a choice between taking a sure loss of $100 or taking the gamble that will lose you $110 in the long run. That means that if you choose to flip the coin, you are losing $10 more than you would if you just quit and took the sure loss.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “Wouldn’t want you to come down with anything serious,” he said. “Get some sleep, did you?” “Yes sir.” “You must’ve needed it.” I waited. “Oh, by the way, you didn’t happen to hear a funny little pinging noise in the engine, did you?” “What engine?” He smiled. Then he said he’d been at the commissary a few minutes ago with Champion, and that he’d met a man there who recognized the dog and told a pretty interesting story of how they happened to cross paths earlier that morning. What did I think about that? I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he was on me. He caught me with one hand under the covers and the other holding the sandwich, and at first, instead of protecting myself, I jerked the sandwich away as if that was what he wanted. His open hands lashed back and forth across my face. I dropped the sandwich and covered my face with my forearm, but I couldn’t keep his hands away. He was kneeling on the bed, his legs on either side of me, locking me in with the blankets. I shouted his name, but he kept hitting me in a fast convulsive rhythm and I knew he was beyond all hearing. Somehow, with no conscious intention, I pulled my other arm free and hit him in the throat. He reared back, gasping. I pushed him off the bed and kicked the covers away, but before I could get up he grabbed my hair and forced my face down hard against the mattress. Then he hit me in the back of the neck. I went rigid with the shock. He tightened his grip on my hair. I waited for him to hit me again. I could hear him panting. We stayed like that for a while. Then he pushed me away and got up. He stood over me, breathing hoarsely. “Clean up this mess,” he said. He turned at the door and said, “I hope you learned your lesson.” I learned a couple of lessons. I learned that a punch in the throat does not always stop the other fellow. And I learned that it’s a bad idea to curse when you’re in trouble, but a good idea to sing, if you can. CHAMPION HAD SEEN his last merganser. He turned out to be a cat killer. Three times he brought dead cats back to the house between those famously soft jaws of his. Dwight dropped them in the river and yelled at Pearl and me for letting him out. But Champ was under suspicion, and one day he got into someone’s back yard and tore a Persian kitten to pieces under the eyes of the little girl who owned it. The camp director knocked on the door that evening and told Dwight that Champion had to go, now.