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 This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Dwight sawed the wheel back and forth, seeming not to hear the scream of the tires. When I reached out for the dashboard he glanced at me and asked what I was afraid of now. I said I was a little sick to my stomach. “Sick to your stomach? A hotshot like you?” The headlights slid off the road into darkness, then back again. “I’m not a hotshot,” I said. “That’s what I hear. I hear you’re a real hotshot. Come and go where you please, when you please. Isn’t that right?” I shook my head. “That’s what I hear,” he said. “Regular man about town. Performer, too. That right? You a performer?” “No sir.” “That’s a goddamned lie.” Dwight kept looking back and forth between me and the road. “Dwight, please slow down,” I said. “If there’s one thing I can’t stomach,” Dwight said, “it’s a liar.” I pushed myself against the seat. “I’m not a liar.” “Sure you are. You or Marian. Is Marian a liar?” I didn’t answer. “She says you’re quite the little performer. Is that a lie? You tell me that’s a lie and we’ll drive back to Seattle so you can call her a liar to her face. You want me to do that?” I said no, I didn’t. “Then you must be the one that’s the liar. Right?” I nodded. “Marian says you’re quite the little performer. Is that true?” “I guess,” I said. “You guess. You guess . Well, let’s see your act. Go on. Let’s see your act.” When I didn’t do anything, he said, “I’m waiting.” “I can’t.” “Sure you can.” “No sir.” “Sure you can. Do me. I hear you do me.” I shook my head. “Do me, I hear you’re good at doing me. Do me with the lighter. Here. Do me with the lighter.” He held out the Zippo in its velvet case. “Go on.” I sat where I was, both hands on the dashboard. We were all over the road. “Take it!” I didn’t move. He put the lighter back in his pocket. “Hotshot,” he said. “You pull that hotshot stuff around me and I’ll snatch you bald-headed, you understand?” “Yes sir.” “You’re in for a change, mister. You got that? You’re in for a whole nother ball game.” I braced myself for the next curve. Citizenship in the Home____ Dwight made a study of me. He thought about me during the day while he grunted over the engines of trucks and generators, and in the evening while he watched me eat, and late at night while he sat heavylidded at the kitchen table with a pint of Old Crow and a package of Camels to support him in his deliberations. He shared his findings as they came to him. The trouble with me was, I thought I was going to get through life without doing any work. The trouble with me was, I thought I was smarter than everyone else.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  About midday the pair passed by another stream. Quite thirsty, the princess said to her maid, “Please get down from your horse and fetch me some water.” But the maid refused, saying, “You may get it for yourself.” This shocked the princess, but she felt too kindly toward the girl to take the issue up with her as she should, and so, sliding down from her horse, she went to the stream to drink. But the princess’s horse, Falada, marked all that occurred. A little farther down the road the princess once again felt thirsty and, forgetting the earlier incident, she once more entreated her maid, saying, “Please get down from your horse and fetch me some water.” Again the maid refused the princess with a rude retort, and the princess was obliged to get the water for herself. But after drinking she stood up to find that her maid had dismounted also. The look in her maid’s eyes caused the princess’s heart to grow cold with terror. It appeared as if the maid would kill her, but instead she ordered the princess to remove her royal robes and don her maid’s clothing. This seemed an odd request, but the princess obeyed silently, even as she watched her maid put on her royal robes. Next, the maid mounted Falada, leaving her own nag for the princess to ride. The princess wondered at all that occurred, but said nothing, thinking it safer to wait until they reached the safety of the kingdom before questioning the maid’s bizarre behavior. As for the maid, she kept postponing the moment when she would conclude her scheme, for she did not, in truth, take pleasure in the task ahead. They traveled on for a time in this way, with the princess too frightened to speak and the maid solemnly pondering their fate. When at last they reached the fork in the road that marked the entrance of the betrothed prince’s kingdom, the maid knew that she could delay no longer. She stopped the princess’s horse and forced her to dismount. Before the princess had time to speak the maid quickly produced a dagger. Pointing the dagger at the princess’s heart, she gave her an ultimatum: to vow never to reveal her true identity to a single soul or else be killed. The princess was too shocked to speak, but the maid pressed the dagger forward, saying, “I know you will not break a royal vow, so vow now or die!” What could the princess do? To save her own life she did as the maid demanded.

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

  353Lecture 36—The Challenge of 21 st -Century Christianity õWhen Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda collaborators murdered thousands of people in the attacks on September 11, 2001, it seemed like an all-out declaration of war on Western/Christian civilization. ENCOUNTERS IN AFRICA õHuntington’s thesis has some uses, but it also has some problems. Consider the clashes between Christians and Muslims in Africa. During the decades following World War II, nationalism became increasingly appealing to Africans. õAs they pushed for independence from the colonial powers of Europe, some people came to see Christianity as a foreign, imperialist ideology, while Islam became associated with African independence from white rule. And later on, Islam could imply a kind of tactical and ideological neutrality from the two sides of the Cold War. õYet by the mid-1990s, the Cold War was over. Most African countries had been independent for a quite a while. Christianity on the continent was thoroughly Africanized; it would be hard to walk into, for example, Daniel Olukoya’s Mountain of Fire and Miracles church in Lagos and say it was an instrument of Western imperialism. Meanwhile, African Muslims were increasingly aware of themselves as part of a global Muslim community, the Ummah. õIn a place like Sudan, the Muslim Brotherhood was now less associated with Sudanese nationalism and linked more closely with transnational networks of theologically conservative, politically radical Muslims. This ideological self-awareness informed the government of president Omar al-Bashir in the early 2000s. õWhen a largely Muslim militia, the Janjaweed, started murdering huge numbers of Sudanese Christians in the South, religion became a primary lens for outsiders trying to understand the genocide. But this was also a story of nomads who made a living herding camels and cattle (the Muslims) taking out their economic frustrations on a largely sedentary farming population (the Christians).

• 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 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  She went on, in whispered bursts, about the mortars, her hand periodically covering my lower face—the scent of garlic and Tiger Balm sharp in my nose. We must have sat for two hours like that, her heartbeat steady on my back as the room began to grey, then washed in indigo, revealing two sleeping forms swaddled in blankets and stretched across the floor before us: you and your sister, Mai. You resembled soft mountain ranges on a snowy tundra. My family, I thought, was this silent arctic landscape, placid at last after a night of artillery fire. When Lan’s chin grew heavy on my shoulder, her exhales evening out in my ear, I knew she had finally joined her daughters in sleep, and the snow in July—smooth, total, and nameless—was all I could see. — Before I was Little Dog, I had another name—the name I was born with. One October afternoon in a banana-thatched hut outside Saigon, on the same rice paddy you grew up on, I became your son. As Lan told it, a local shaman and his two assistants squatted outside the hut waiting for the first cries. After Lan and the midwives cut the umbilical cord, the shaman and his helpers rushed in, wrapped me, still sticky with birth, in a white cloth, and raced to the nearby river, where I was bathed under veils of incense smoke and sage. Screaming, ash smudged across my forehead, I was placed in my father’s arms and the shaman whispered the name he had given me. It means Patriotic Leader of the Nation, the shaman explained. Having been hired by my father, and noticing my old man’s gruff demeanor, the way he puffed out his chest to widen his 5ft-2in frame as he walked, speaking with gestures that resembled blows, the shaman picked a name, I imagine, that would satisfy the man who paid him. And he was right. My father beamed, Lan said, lifting me over his head at the hut’s threshold. “My son will be the leader of Vietnam,” he shouted. But in two years, Vietnam—which, thirteen years after the war and still in shambles—would grow so dire that we would flee the very ground he stood on, the soil where, a few feet away, your blood had made a dark red circle between your legs, turning the dirt there into fresh mud—and I was alive. — Other times, Lan seemed ambivalent to noise. Do you remember that one night, after we had gathered around Lan to hear a story after dinner, and the gunshots started firing off across the street? Although gunshots were not uncommon in Hartford, I was never prepared for the sound—piercing yet somehow more mundane than I imagined, like little league home runs cracked one after another out of the night’s park. We all screamed—you, Aunt Mai, and I—our cheeks and noses pressed to the floor. “Someone turn off the lights,” you shouted.

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

  Dwight said he’d need a few days to find him another home, but the camp director said that what he meant by now was now , as soon as he left. Dwight stayed in the utility room for some time. After a spell of silence I heard him rummaging around. Then he said, “Come on, Champ.” My mother and I were reading in the living room. We looked at each other. I went to the window and watched Dwight walking into the dusk, Champion sniffing the ground ahead of him. Dwight was carrying the 30/30. He let Champion into the car and drove away, upriver. Dwight was only gone for a little while. I knew he hadn’t buried Champion, because he came back so soon and because we didn’t own a shovel. My mother and I liked to watch The Untouchables . On one episode Al Capone confronted a man who had disappointed him. He listened to the man’s tortured explanation with a look of sympathy and understanding. Then he said, softly, “Why don’t you take a little ride with Frank?” The man’s eyes bulged. He looked at Frank Nitti, then turned back to Al Capone and cried, “No, Mr. Capone, wait, I’ll make it up to you...” But Mr. Capone was reading some papers on his desk. The next shot showed a long black car parked on a country road. After Champion, whenever I did something wrong my mother would say to me, “Why don’t you take a little ride with Dwight?” Citizenship in the School____ Concrete was a company town, home of the Lone Star Cement Company. The streets and houses and cars were gray with cement dust from the plant. On still days a pall of dust hung in the air, so thick they sometimes had to cancel football practice. Concrete High overlooked the town from a hill whose slopes had been covered with cement to keep them from washing away. By the time I started there, not long after the school was built, its cement banks had begun to crack and slide, revealing the chicken wire over which they had been poured. The school took students from up and down the valley. They were the children of farmers, waitresses, loggers, construction workers, truck drivers, itinerant laborers. Most of the boys already had jobs themselves. They worked not to save money but to spend it on their cars and girlfriends. Many of them got married while they were still in school, then dropped out to work full-time. Others joined the army or the marines—never the navy. A few became petty criminals. The boys of Concrete High tended not to see themselves as college material. The school had some good teachers, mostly older women who didn’t care if they were laughed at for reciting poetry, or for letting a tear fall while they described the Battle of Verdun. There were not many of them. Mr. Mitchell taught civics.

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

  We loitered by the outbuildings for a while, then crossed the yard to Mr. Welch’s truck. Chuck siphoned gas out of the tank while Huff and I watched the house. I had never been here before, but I knew the Welch boys from school. There were three of them, all sad, shabbily dressed, and quiet to the point of muteness. One of the boys, Jack, was in my class. He was forlorn and stale-smelling, like an old man who has lost his pride. Because we had the same first name it amused Mr. Mitchell to match us up as sparring partners during PE. Then the other boys would circle us and shout, “Go, Jack! Get him, Jack! Kill him, Jack!” But Jack Welch had no stomach for it. He held his gloves up dubiously, as if he thought they might turn on him, and gave me a look of apology whenever Mr. Mitchell goaded him into taking a swing. It was strange to think of him in that dark house, his unhappy eyes closed in sleep, while I kept watch outside. Huff grunted as he scraped at his shoes with a stick. The air smelled of gasoline. Chuck filled the cans and we started back. The going was harder than the coming. We were headed uphill now. We took turns carrying the cans, swinging them forward and stumbling after them. Their weight drove us into the mud and threw us off balance, making us flounder and fall. By the time we got back we were caked with mud. I had torn my shirt on some barbed wire. My good arm was dead from the pull of the cans, the other arm pulsing with pain where I had brushed my finger against a post. I was dead tired and so were the others. Nobody said a thing about Bellingham. While Chuck drove Huff and Psycho home, I cleaned myself off and fell into bed. Mr. Bolger woke us late the next morning. He only put his head in the door and said, “Get up,” but something in his voice snapped me upright, wide awake. Chuck too. We looked at each other and got out of bed without a word. Mr. Bolger waited by the door. Once we were dressed he said, “Come on,” and set off toward the main house. He walked in long pushing strides, head bent forward as if under a weight, and never once turned to see if we were behind him. When I glanced over at Chuck his eyes were on his father’s back. His face was blank. We followed Mr. Bolger into the kitchen. Mrs. Bolger was sitting at the breakfast table, crying into a napkin. Her eyes were red and a blue vein stood out on her pale forehead. “Sit down,” Mr. Bolger said. I sat down across from Mrs. Bolger and looked at the tablecloth. Mr. Bolger said that Mr. Welch had just been by, for reasons we would have no trouble figuring out.

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

  13Lecture 2—Luther and the Dawn of Protestantism BUILDUP õBefore the Reformation, different kinds of reformers, ranging from bishops to renegade monks, had been working within the Catholic Church for a long time. But the push for change heated up around the turn of the 16 th century because of major social, intellectual, and political changes across Europe: The hierarchical economy of feudalism was evolving into a more chaotic capitalism. Cities and universities were growing and becoming centers of theological debate. And a group of religious leaders came forward who took the criticism of Catholic doctrine and practice much further than their predecessors. õThe reformers who broke from the Catholic Church—the Protestants— said that the Catholic Church had gone wrong in four ways. These were the four major problems that pushed them over the edge: 1. The reformers feared that the Church had started to lead people to believe they could be saved just by going to church, giving money to charity, and doing good deeds. This practice was called works righteousness, and reformers found it contrary to the Bible, believing faith to be a gift of God. 2. Reformers worried that the Catholic Church had placed human authorities, like the pope and church tradition, above scripture and Christ. They were also concerned that Catholics had turned worship into idolatry by adding stuff that isn’t in the Bible, like icons, incense, and elaborate rituals. 3. Reformers believed Church officials engaged in corruption. They got involved with politics, they sold church offices to the highest bidder, and generally they ended up caring about earthly wealth instead of riches in heaven. 4. Reformers believed that the church denied the people direct access to God’s word. Catholic practice forced Christians to go through a priest speaking Latin—which almost no laypeople understood—

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

  I had discovered that my mother’s cooking oil glowed like phosphorus under the black light, the way uranium was supposed to, and one day I splashed it all over some rocks we’d brought in. Roy got pretty worked up when he looked at them. I had to tell him why I was laughing so hard, and he didn’t take it well. He gave me a hard, mean look. He stood there for a while, just holding me with this look, and finally he said, “That’s not funny,” and didn’t speak to me again the rest of the night. On our way back from the desert Roy would park near the insurance company where my mother, after learning that Kennecott really was out on strike, had found work as a secretary. He waited outside until she got off work. Then he followed her home, idling along the road, here and there pulling into a driveway to let her get ahead, then pulling out again to keep her in sight. If my mother had ever glanced behind her she would have spotted the Jeep immediately. But she didn’t. She walked along in her crisp military stride, shoulders braced, head erect, and never looked back. Roy acted as though this were a game we were all playing. I knew it wasn’t a game but I didn’t know what it was, so I kept the promises he extracted from me to say nothing to her. One afternoon near Christmas we missed her. She was not among the people who left when the building closed. Roy waited for a while, peering up at the darkened windows, watching the guard lock the doors. Then he panicked. He threw the Jeep into gear and sped around the block. He stopped in front of the building again. He turned off the engine and began whispering to himself. “Yes,” he said, “okay, okay,” and turned the engine back on. He drove around the block one more time and then tore down the neighboring streets, alternately slamming on the brakes and gunning the engine, his cheeks wet with tears, his lips moving like a supplicant’s. This had all happened before, in Sarasota, and I knew better than to say anything. I just held onto the passenger grip and tried to look normal. Finally he came to a stop. We sat there for a few minutes. When he seemed better I asked if we could go home. He nodded without looking at me, then took a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, blew his nose, and put the handkerchief away. My mother was cooking dinner and listening to carols when we came in. The windows were all steamed up. Roy watched me go over to the stove and lean against her. He kept looking at me until I looked at him. Then he winked. I knew he wanted me to wink back, and I also knew that it would somehow put me on his side if I did.

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

  When I told her I’d spoken to Geoffrey, her eyes filled with tears. This was unusual for her. We were sitting at the kitchen table, where we liked to talk when we were alone in the house. Geoffrey had recently been sending my mother letters, too, but they hadn’t spoken since we left Utah. She wanted to know what he sounded like, how he was, and all manner of things I had not thought to ask him. My mother grew somber, as she often did when we talked about Geoffrey. She was afraid she’d done the wrong thing in letting him go with my father, afraid he held it against her, that and the divorce, and taking up with Roy. I mentioned Geoffrey’s idea about Choate, about the possibility of my getting a scholarship there or maybe at some other school. I was afraid of her reaction. I thought she would be hurt by my wish to go, but she liked the idea. “He actually thinks you have a chance?” she said. “He said they’ll be eating out of my hand, quote un-quote.” “I don’t know why he thinks that.” “My grades are good,” I said. “That’s true. Your grades are good. What other schools did he mention?” “St. Paul’s.” “He’s got big plans for you.” “Deerfield.” She laughed. “They’ll recognize your name, anyway. I think your father was the only boy they ever expelled.” Then she said, “Don’t get your hopes too high.” “Geoffrey said he’d talk to Dad about it. He said maybe Dad would have some ideas.” “I’m sure he will,” she said. GEOFFREY SENT THE names and addresses of the schools he had first mentioned, and also three others—Hill, Andover, and Exeter. I went to the library at school and looked them up in Vance Packard’s The Status Seekers . This book explained how the upper class perpetuates itself. Its motive was supposedly democratic, to attack snobbery and subvert the upper class by giving away its secrets. But I didn’t read it as social criticism. To seek status seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. Everyone did it. The people who bought the book were certainly doing it. They consulted it with the same purpose I had, not to deplore the class problem but to solve it by changing classes. Whatever he meant it to be, Packard’s book was the perfect guide for social climbers. He listed the places you should live and the colleges you should go to and the clubs you should join and the faith you should confess. He named the tailors and stores you should patronize, and described with filigree exactitude the ways you could betray your origins. Wearing a blue serge suit to a yacht-club party. Saying davenport for sofa, ill for sick, wealthy for rich. Painting the walls of your house in bright colors. Mixing ginger ale with whiskey. Being too good a dancer. He showed boxes within boxes, circles within circles.

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

  Objection 3: Further, fear is of the future, as stated above ([1380]AA[1], 2). But “shame regards a disgraceful deed already done,” as Gregory of Nyssa [*Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. xx.] says. Therefore shame is not a species of fear. Objection 4: Further, fear is only of evil. But amazement and stupor regard great and unwonted things, whether good or evil. Therefore amazement and stupor are not species of fear. Objection 5: Further, Philosophers have been led by amazement to seek the truth, as stated in the beginning of Metaphysics. But fear leads to flight rather than to search. Therefore amazement is not a species of fear. On the contrary suffices the authority of Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa [*Nemesius] (Cf. OBJ 1,3). I answer that, As stated above [1381](A[2]), fear regards a future evil which surpasses the power of him that fears, so that it is irresistible. Now man’s evil, like his good, may be considered either in his action or in external things. In his action he has a twofold evil to fear. First, there is the toil that burdens his nature: and hence arises “laziness,” as when a man shrinks from work for fear of too much toil. Secondly, there is the disgrace which damages him in the opinion of others. And thus, if disgrace is feared in a deed that is yet to be done, there is “shamefacedness”; if, however, it be a deed already done, there is “shame.” On the other hand, the evil that consists in external things may surpass man’s faculty of resistance in three ways. First by reason of its magnitude; when, that is to say, a man considers some great evil the outcome of which he is unable to gauge: and then there is “amazement.” Secondly, by reason of its being unwonted; because, to wit, some unwonted evil arises before us, and on that account is great in our estimation: and then there is “stupor,” which is caused by the representation of something unwonted. Thirdly, by reason of its being unforeseen: thus future misfortunes are feared, and fear of this kind is called “anxiety.” Reply to Objection 1: Those species of sorrow given above are not derived from the diversity of objects, but from the diversity of effects, and for certain special reasons. Consequently there is no need for those species of sorrow to correspond with these species of fear, which are derived from the proper division of the object of fear itself. Reply to Objection 2: A deed considered as being actually done, is in the power of the doer. But it is possible to take into consideration something connected with the deed, and surpassing the faculty of the doer, for which reason he shrinks from the deed. It is in this sense that laziness, shamefacedness, and shame are reckoned as species of fear.

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

  When the door opens, the men put down their glasses, some after quickly draining the dregs. A macaque monkey, the size of a dog, is led, with collar and leash, by a stooped man with combed white hair. No one speaks. All ten eyes are on the mammal as it staggers into the room, its burnt-red hair reeking of alcohol and feces, having been force-fed vodka and morphine in its cage all morning. The fluorescent hums steady above them, as if the scene is a dream the light is having. A woman stands on the shoulder of a dirt road begging, in a tongue made obsolete by gunfire, to enter the village where her house sits, has sat for decades. It is a human story. Anyone can tell it. Can you tell? Can you tell the rain has grown heavy, its keystrokes peppering the blue shawl black? The force of the soldier’s voice pushes the woman back. She wavers, one arm flailing, then steadies, pressing the girl into her. A mother and a daughter. A me and a you. It’s an old story. The stooped man leads the monkey under the table, guides its head through a hole cut in the center. Another bottle is opened. The twist cap clicks as the men reach for their glasses. The monkey is tied to a beam under the table. It jostles about. With its mouth muffled behind a leather strap, its screams sound more like the reel of a fishing rod cast far across a pond. — Seeing the letters on the boy’s chest, the woman remembers her own name. The possession of a name, after all, being all they share. “Lan,” she says. “Tên tôi là Lan.” My name is Lan. Lan meaning Lily. Lan the name she gave herself, having been born nameless. Because her mother simply called her Seven, the order in which she came into the world after her siblings. It was only after she ran away, at seventeen, from her arranged marriage to a man three times her age, that Lan named herself. One night, she brewed her husband a pot of tea, dropping a pinch of lotus stems to deepen his sleep, then waited till the palm-leaf walls shivered with his snoring. Through the flat black night, she made her way, feeling one low branch after another. Hours later, she knocked on the door to her mother’s house. “Seven,” her mother said through a crack in the door, “a girl who leaves her husband is the rot of a harvest. You know this. How can you not know?” And then the door closed, but not before a hand, gnarled as wood, pressed a pair of pearl earrings into Lan’s grip. The mother’s pale face erased by the door’s swing, the lock’s click. The crickets were too loud as Lan stumbled toward the nearest streetlamp, then followed each dim post, one by one, until, by dawn, the city appeared, smeared with fog.

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

  Whenever I passed through the utility room he groveled and abased himself, hoping to keep me there, then barked and hurled himself against the door as I went outside. This caused me some trouble. For almost a year now, ever since I started high school, I’d been sneaking out of the house after midnight to take the car for joy rides. Dwight wouldn’t teach me to drive—he claimed to believe that I would kill us both—so I had taken the teaching function upon myself. After Champion attached himself to me, I had to bring him along or he would raise the household with his cries. With Champion beside me on the front seat, gazing out the window like a real passenger or snapping his chops at the wind, I cruised the empty streets of the camp. When I got bored I took the car to a stretch of road halfway to Marblemount where I could get it up to a hundred miles an hour without having to make any turns. As Champion placidly watched the white line shivering between the headlights I chattered like a gibbon and wept tears of pure terror. Then I stopped the car in the middle of the road, turned it around, and did the same thing headed the other way. I drove a little farther each time. Someday, I thought, I would just keep going. One morning I backed the car into a ditch while turning it around for my run home. I spun the wheels for a while, then got out and looked things over. I spun the wheels some more, until I was dug in good and deep. Then I gave up and started the trek back to camp. It was nearly three o’clock, and the walk home would take at least four hours. They would find me missing before I got there. The car too. I let off a string of swear words, but they seemed to be coming at me, not from me, and I soon stopped. Champion ran ahead through the forest that crowded the road on both sides. The mountains were black all around, the stars brilliant in the inky sky. My footsteps were loud on the roadway. I heard them as if they came from somebody else. The movement of my legs began to feel foreign to me, and then the rest of my body, foreign and unconvincing, as if I were only pretending to be someone. I watched this body clomp along. I was outside it, watching it without belief. Its imitation of purpose seemed absurd and frightening. I did not know what it was, or what was watching it so anxiously, from so far away. And then a voice bawled, “Oh Maybelline!” I knew that voice. It was mine, and it was loud, and I got behind it. I sang “Maybelline” and another song, and another. I kept singing at the top of my voice.

• From Branded: Brainwashed Inside NXIVM (2020)

  1275 01:02:51,834 --> 01:02:53,736 [Robin] Punishment could range anywhere 1276 01:02:53,836 --> 01:02:55,972 from taking a cold shower 1277 01:02:56,072 --> 01:02:58,608 to standing outside in the snow 1278 01:02:58,708 --> 01:03:01,410 to paddling with leather handles. 1279 01:03:01,511 --> 01:03:06,816 And Keith tried to make sure the paddling was done severely. 1280 01:03:08,518 --> 01:03:10,019 [Narrator] Other punishments restricting 1281 01:03:10,119 --> 01:03:13,322 members' food and sleep. 1282 01:03:13,422 --> 01:03:16,926 [Paige] Keith prefers very skinny women, 1283 01:03:17,026 --> 01:03:21,430 so they were regimented to 800 calories or less a day, 1284 01:03:21,531 --> 01:03:23,166 which is starvation level, 1285 01:03:23,266 --> 01:03:24,967 workouts five days a week. 1286 01:03:25,067 --> 01:03:27,804 They usually only got four to five hours of sleep. 1287 01:03:27,904 --> 01:03:30,406 These women were incredibly malnourished 1288 01:03:30,506 --> 01:03:34,143 and exhausted state, which makes you highly susceptible, 1289 01:03:34,243 --> 01:03:37,079 'cause you're hungry and tired. 1290 01:03:37,180 --> 01:03:39,482 [Rick] The idea of DOS was that 1291 01:03:39,582 --> 01:03:42,919 this was a group of totally committed women, 1292 01:03:43,019 --> 01:03:45,021 committed to each other. 1293 01:03:45,121 --> 01:03:48,157 And they were an empowerment group, 1294 01:03:48,257 --> 01:03:51,961 which is the antithesis of what they really were-- 1295 01:03:52,061 --> 01:03:56,165 the sexual slaves of Keith Raniere. 1296 01:03:56,265 --> 01:03:58,000 [Narrator] And soon, Raniere will take 1297 01:03:58,100 --> 01:04:02,371 a shocking step to ensure his slaves never leave. 1298 01:04:04,674 --> 01:04:07,610 [Narrator] For the women of NXIVM's inner sorority, DOS, 1299 01:04:07,710 --> 01:04:10,913 slavery to their masters and ultimate leader Keith Raniere 1300 01:04:11,013 --> 01:04:14,483 is about more than sex. 1301 01:04:14,584 --> 01:04:15,852 To prove their commitment, 1302 01:04:15,952 --> 01:04:18,154 each member must take part in a secret ritual 1303 01:04:18,254 --> 01:04:22,124 held at DOS leader Allison Mack's house. 1304 01:04:22,225 --> 01:04:24,093 Some of the women do not fully understand 1305 01:04:24,193 --> 01:04:27,029 what's about to take place. 1306 01:04:27,129 --> 01:04:29,098 [Dr. Lauch] A friend comes to you and says, 1307 01:04:29,198 --> 01:04:30,166 come with me tonight. 1308 01:04:30,266 --> 01:04:32,168 There's a little ritual 1309 01:04:32,268 --> 01:04:35,004 of kind of initiating you into DOS. 1310 01:04:35,104 --> 01:04:37,240 So on the surface, it seems okay. 1311 01:04:37,340 --> 01:04:39,008 You go there. 1312 01:04:39,108 --> 01:04:41,143 You're nervous. 1313 01:04:41,244 --> 01:04:44,513 Everybody's told to take their clothes off. 1314 01:04:44,614 --> 01:04:46,282 You're even more nervous. 1315 01:04:47,717 --> 01:04:50,052 But then you're all extremely vulnerable, 1316 01:04:50,152 --> 01:04:53,456 'cause you're not gonna run out the door naked. 1317 01:04:53,556 --> 01:04:56,092 And you're told that you'll get a tattoo 1318 01:04:56,192 --> 01:04:59,061 as a symbol of, you know, being part of this. 1319 01:04:59,161 --> 01:05:03,799 And it so it all sounds very...inconsequential. 1320 01:05:03,900 --> 01:05:05,801 Very harmless. 1321 01:05:05,902 --> 01:05:08,671 [Robert] The women were told it was like a little tattoo.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It’s not just that I’m afraid, he said, though I am afraid, you can say whatever you want but it’s scary, I don’t want people to change how they think of me. I know, I started to say, I didn’t mean, but he motioned with his hand to cut me off. It isn’t that, he said after a pause, I mean that’s not the main reason. He paused again, and the noise of the restaurant rose around us. I hadn’t been aware of it for some time, but now I heard the voices at the other tables, heard without understanding; they were jumbled, overlapping and indistinct, punctuated suddenly by an eruption of laughter in a far corner. When I was little, R. began, speaking more slowly than I had ever heard him speak, and almost with a different voice, muted and inward, a voice that though it addressed me didn’t welcome my company. When I was living in the Azores, he said, it was terrible, there was nothing to do, there were more cows around than people. I had maybe two friends, he said, and we lived so far away from everything I didn’t even get to see them very much, I only saw them at school. There were my sisters, but they were older, they didn’t want anything to do with me, and my parents—I don’t know, they were fine, I know you say I care too much about what they think but we’ve never been close, I’m not really sure they think about me all that much. All I did was watch TV, stupid cartoons or American shows, it was the only thing to do. There was only one person I was close to, and he wasn’t my friend, he was older, a friend of my father’s. We had known him forever, we called him uncle but he wasn’t our uncle, he was just my father’s friend. He was always nice, he would talk to me and ask me things and listen to me, he was the only person who made me feel like I was interesting. He was at our house a lot, he’d come over for dinner, and I was always happy to see him, more than happy, excited; I guess I had a crush on him, I don’t know, I didn’t think of it like that. When I was older, twelve or thirteen, we would go on walks while my mother was making dinner. It sounds weird now but it didn’t feel weird, my parents thought it was good for me, and it was for a while, I think, R. said, I mean I was happy. There was a place we used to go, near the American base, a field with a big concrete shell of a building. I don’t know what it was exactly, it was like a mall, there were three floors but only the skeleton, nothing else; it was something they started to build a long time ago and didn’t finish.

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

  If we need to renegotiate later, we’ll do that.” It’s interesting to note that although these couples bring a new meaning to the concept of fidelity, they are nonetheless susceptible to betrayal. Trust is crucial in any relationship, and this is no different for those who invite the third into their intimate space. Infidelity lies in breaches of the agreement, in violations of trust. Even though the rules themselves may look very different, they are breakable, and breaking them has equally painful consequences. In this sense, sexually open couples are no different from their monogamous counterparts. Faced with the complications of affairs, divorce, and remarriage, some of my patients attempt a different course. Nonmonogamous people value the freedom of sexual expression, and they try to reconcile the perennials of love with the surprises of desire, hoping to resist the lassitude that creeps in with time. To repeat Marguerite’s words, this is not a recipe for everyone. The presence of the third is a fact of life; how we deal with it is up to us. We can approach it with fear, avoidance, and moral outrage; or we can bring to it a robust curiosity and a sense of intrigue. In his steamy affair, Doug courts it secretly. Bill’s devastation is born of a desperate attempt to deny it. Selena and Max invite it in fantasy, but draw the line there. Joan and Hiro escort the third straight into their bedroom. Marriage has become a matter of love; love is a matter of choice; and choice implies renouncing others. But that doesn’t mean the others are dead. Nor does it mean that we need to deaden our senses so as to protect ourselves from their allure. Acknowledging the third has to do with validating the erotic separateness of our partner. It follows that our partner’s sexuality does not belong to us. It isn’t just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction. It doesn’t. Perhaps that is true in action, but certainly not in thought. The more we choke each other’s freedom, the harder it is for desire to breathe within a committed relationship. Pursue the logic, and you have the itinerary for an emotionally enlarging journey. It goes something like this: I know you look at others, but I can’t fully know what you see. I know others are looking at you, but I don’t really know who it is they’re seeing. Suddenly you’re no longer familiar. You’re no longer a known entity that I need not bother being curious about. In fact, you’re quite a mystery. And I’m a little unnerved. Who are you? I want you. Accommodating the third opens up an erotic expanse where eros needn’t worry about wilting. In that expanse, we can be deeply moved by our partner’s otherness, and soon thereafter deeply aroused. I’d like to suggest that we view monogamy not as a given but as a choice.

• 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 Cleanness (2020)

  He had given me so much, I thought, for all that he couldn’t give, and I was ashamed of the tone I had taken. I do know, I said, speaking more gently now, and you know I’m happy too, and maybe the best thing this could do, I meant our friendship, relationship, I didn’t know what word to use, is show you what it would be like if you were open, if you let yourself live in a fuller way. I could see that my speech wasn’t having the effect I wanted, that R.’s mood was turning darker; he wasn’t looking at me anymore but at the window, at his reflection or the world beyond it. I should have stopped talking but I couldn’t stop, I want you to be able to live, I said, really live, I don’t want you to just wait for things to happen to you, I want you to be happy. And what are you afraid of, I asked, do you really think your friends won’t accept you, your parents? His family wasn’t religious, I knew, he was from a small place but not a particularly conservative one. I think you should trust them more, I said, I think you should trust that they love you. Stop, he said. He was still looking at the window, not at his own reflection but at something in the far distance, though there wasn’t a far distance, there was just the garden wall invisible in the dark. Just stop, he said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and when he turned his gaze to mine I could see he was angry. You’re talking to me like a child, he said, I’m not a child, you can’t talk to me like that. I’m sorry, I said quickly, meaning it, I didn’t want you to feel that, really, I’m sorry. He was silent then, he turned back to the window, as though there were something to see there, and I thought I could see him let go of his anger, all at once, his shoulders slumped a little as it went. The wind continued its assault, its constant charge against the glass, but R. wasn’t flinching from it anymore, he seemed almost to be leaning toward the window as he gazed through it, or maybe he was just leaning away from me. It’s not just that I’m afraid, he said, though I am afraid, you can say whatever you want but it’s scary, I don’t want people to change how they think of me. I know, I started to say, I didn’t mean, but he motioned with his hand to cut me off.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He had given me so much, I thought, for all that he couldn’t give, and I was ashamed of the tone I had taken. I do know, I said, speaking more gently now, and you know I’m happy too, and maybe the best thing this could do, I meant our friendship, relationship, I didn’t know what word to use, is show you what it would be like if you were open, if you let yourself live in a fuller way. I could see that my speech wasn’t having the effect I wanted, that R.’s mood was turning darker; he wasn’t looking at me anymore but at the window, at his reflection or the world beyond it. I should have stopped talking but I couldn’t stop, I want you to be able to live, I said, really live, I don’t want you to just wait for things to happen to you, I want you to be happy. And what are you afraid of, I asked, do you really think your friends won’t accept you, your parents? His family wasn’t religious, I knew, he was from a small place but not a particularly conservative one. I think you should trust them more, I said, I think you should trust that they love you. Stop, he said. He was still looking at the window, not at his own reflection but at something in the far distance, though there wasn’t a far distance, there was just the garden wall invisible in the dark. Just stop, he said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and when he turned his gaze to mine I could see he was angry. You’re talking to me like a child, he said, I’m not a child, you can’t talk to me like that. I’m sorry, I said quickly, meaning it, I didn’t want you to feel that, really, I’m sorry. He was silent then, he turned back to the window, as though there were something to see there, and I thought I could see him let go of his anger, all at once, his shoulders slumped a little as it went. The wind continued its assault, its constant charge against the glass, but R. wasn’t flinching from it anymore, he seemed almost to be leaning toward the window as he gazed through it, or maybe he was just leaning away from me. It’s not just that I’m afraid, he said, though I am afraid, you can say whatever you want but it’s scary, I don’t want people to change how they think of me. I know, I started to say, I didn’t mean, but he motioned with his hand to cut me off.

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

  There’s a story Lan would tell, of Lady Triệu, the mythical woman warrior who led an army of men and repelled the Chinese invasion of ancient Vietnam. I think of her, seeing you. How, as legend goes, armed with two swords, she’d fling her yard-long breasts over her shoulders and cut down the invaders by the dozens. How it was a woman who saved us. “Who die now?” Lan swings around, her face, made stark by the overhead light, ripples with this new knowledge. “Who gonna die, Little Dog?” She flips her hand back and forth, as if opening a locked door, to indicate emptiness. “Somebody kill you? For what?” But I’m not listening. I’m rolling down the window, arms burning with each turn on the handle. Cool November air slips in. My stomach grabs as I watch you mount the front steps, the nine-inch machete glinting in your hand. You knock on the door, shouting. “Come out, Carl,” you say in Vietnamese. “Come out, you fucker! I’m taking her home for good. You can have the car, just give me my sister.” At the word sister your voice cracks into a short, busted sob, before regaining control. You bash the door with the machete’s wooden butt. The porch lights turn on, your pink nightgown suddenly green under the fluorescent. The door opens. You step back. A man appears. He half lunges from the doorway as you backpedal down the steps. The blade locked at your side, as if pinned in place. “He has a gun,” Lan whisper-shouts from the car, now lucid. “Rose! It’s a shotgun. It shoots two eaters at once. They eat your lungs inside out. Little Dog, tell her.” Your hands float over your head, the metal clanks on the driveway. The man, huge, his shoulders sloped under a grey Yankees sweatshirt, steps up to you, says a few words through his teeth, then kicks the machete to the side. It disappears in the grass with a flash. You mumble something, make yourself small, cup your hands under your chin, the posture you take after receiving a tip at the salon. The man lowers his gun as you back away, shaking, toward the car. “It’s not worth it, Rose,” Lan says, cupping her mouth with both hands. “You can’t beat a gun. You just can’t. Come back, come back in the helicopter.” “Ma,” I hear myself say, my voice cracking. “Ma, come on.” You edge slowly into the driver’s seat, turn to me with a nauseated stare. There’s a long silence. I think you’re about to laugh, but then your eyes fill. So I turn away, to the man carefully eyeing us, hand on his hip, the gun clamped between his armpit, pointed at the ground, protecting his family.