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 Querelle (1953)

  lS6 I JEAN GENET But then he went on, in an excited, broken voice: "Come on, suck mel" Querelle, too, was in a highly excited mood. Furi ously, desperately, he kissed Mario on the mouth. Then, with greater ardor than was customary and with great dedication, he tried his damnedest to really feel the detective's prick penetrat ing his mouth and throat. Mario noticed his desperate mood. To the fleeting but repeating fear that the wild sailor might chomp off his member in one feii swoop, the detective added the spices of excited lovers' hiccoughs and dangerous confessions, expres sing the latter in the form of groans or pr � yers. Certain that his lover rejoiced in cowering on his knees in front of a cop, Mario exhaled ail his own ignominy. Teeth clenched, face turned up into the fog, he murmured: "Yes, I'm a cop! Yes, I'm a dirty bastard! I've screwed a lot of guys ! And they're ali in the joint now, doing time! I love that, you know, it's my job ... " The more he described his abject desires, the harder his muscles grew and imposed on Quereiie an imperious, dominant, invincible and beneficial presence. When they were face to face again, standing, buttoning up, retransformed into men, neither one of them dared to mention their delirious state of a moment ago; in order to disperse the disquiet that separated them from one another, Quereiie smiled and said: "Weii, you stiii haven't told me if that kid's your piece of ass?" "You reaiiy want to know?" Suddenly Querelle was frightened, but he kept his voice calm: "Yes. Well, then?" "He's my informer." "No kidding!" Now they could go on, talk shop. In low voices, trying, never theless, to keep them calm and clear, so as not to show any signs of how bizarre and possibly sham�ful they felt the subject to be,

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Beyond it, small forests of brush shelter paths into the soft hills. Many cars are parked on the sides of the dirt road. Jim can see men floating in the darkening greenery. A youngman approaches him. “Wanna come home with me?” He's not that attractive, and Jim wants more than one person now. “Uh—I just got here.” “I'd go in the bushes with you,” the youngman understands. He blurts out the hateful memory: “But I'm scared. I was almost busted here a couple of weeks ago. We were in the bushes, and two vice cops yelled Freeze! I ran away, I stumbled, I thought I'd broken my ankle, I couldn't move. I just lay there hiding in the bushes for hours, till it got real dark, and then I crawled to my car.” Rage rising orgasmically, Jim walks into the dangerous area. A man sits hunched on a rock. Jim stands before him, letting the man blow him openly. Jim's rage ebbs. Nearby, pressed darkly against the trunk of a tree, hugging it tightly, pants to his ankles, a man is being fucked by another. The man against the tree invites Jim to join. But the thought of the earlier youngman's painful flight, the hiding for hours, persists. Past men cruising, Jim walks back to his car. 9:08 P.M. Downtown Los Angeles. Moodily he decides to drive to downtown Los Angeles, in search of ghosts. Wilshire. LaFayette Park. Often on late warm nights he would lie on the concrete ledge in back of the closed branch library, surrendering to a daring mouth…. West-lake. He pauses in his car, remembering. Ducks clustering coldly on a small island on the lake made strange sounds while silent outlaws gathered in alcoves or in a grotto under a gently flowing fountain, water splashing bodies lightly…. Oh, and the theater across the street—the enormous balcony where Jim was “wounded” one late night. He stood on the steps, his cock in someone's mouth. Footsteps! He pulled up his zipper, it caught the skin of his cock. Panicking, he pulled down, and the zipper bit the skin again. He bears the tiny wound of battle, an almost indiscernible scar, like the ghost of a butterfly. Hunters have long abandoned this area to the jealous cops and the senior citizens waiting sadly to die. Jim drives on. Downtown Los Angeles. Hope Street, where he lived years ago. Pershing Square. Preachers bellowed sure damnation, always for tomorrow. Malehustlers sat in the benign sun. Queens dared to appear in make-up. Torn down, the square rebuilt. The outlaws fled. To Hollywood Boulevard. Jim parks his car on Spring Street. He drinks from the thermos of protein. He puts on a brown leather vest. No shirt; his chest gleams brown. Tattered hopelessly, Main Street is a gray area smothering in grime. Afloat in dope and the odor of cheap fried chicken. Harry's Bar. Smoky yellow.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  They are playing the game as it exists. I’m trying to change it—and I’ve failed. There is little more painful than surrealism when you yourself are the only contrast. • I’ve passed by Laurel, Maryland, on trips to and from Washington, D.C., for years, but I haven’t a clue what goes on there. Then one day in 1982 when I’m enjoying being at my desk at Ms. magazine after a long stretch of road trips, I get a call from Connie Bowman, a brand-new marketing director at the Freestate Raceway in Laurel. Since harness racing is a national and global attraction for the subcultures of racing and betting—and since both subcultures are overwhelmingly male—Bowman wants to attract more women. Her idea is to invite me and Loretta Swit, star of one of the most-watched series in TV history, to race each other in an event to be called M*A*S*H vs. Ms. In return, each of us will get a percentage of the gate to give away. This captures my attention. Ms. magazine has discovered that very few advertisers will support a women’s magazine that doesn’t devote its editorial pages to praising the products it advertises: fashion, beauty, home decoration, and the like. To make up for the lack of ads in Ms. —and to meet requests for subscriptions from battered women’s shelters, prisons, welfare programs, and just readers who can’t afford them—we have to raise contributions. This is why I find myself on a warm summer evening, dressed in white pants and green and gold racing silks, standing in front of a huge, blindingly lit stadium filled with thousands of shouting strangers cheering for their favorite horses plus the novelty bet of Loretta or me. Loretta is wearing white pants plus blue and red silks, and we are both peering out from under white crash helmets emblazoned “M*A*S*H vs. Ms. ” Beyond us is a huge oval racetrack so preternaturally lit up by klieg lights that I’m told astronauts can see it from space. Both of us are about to put our lives in the hands of horses and jockeys we don’t know. This feels more surrealistic than it sounded on the phone. Officials walk us to our respective rigs. Mine is pulled by a beautiful chestnut mare and guided by a skinny, older black driver. He is unusual in this traditionally white world of southern horse racing. Loretta has a younger white driver and a dark-coated gelding. We each seat ourselves next to the driver on a plank no bigger than an ironing board that is attached to a superlight rig. The whole thing is more like a coat hanger than the Ben-Hur chariot I envisioned. As we trot out to the track where other teams are assembled, we already seem to be going very fast. After the starting signal, that speed is much faster. I realize I’m sitting only inches above a track that is whizzing underneath me in a blur.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  But I can’t think about such a moment for Wilma now. I can’t wish it for her, because then she will be gone. She shows me a statement she is making about her illness, explaining that she is “mentally and spiritually prepared for the journey.” She’s definitely more ready than I am. That night I’m bolted awake by hearing Wilma cry out in pain. I find Charlie warming blankets on a potbellied stove. As a traditional healer, he not only knows the uses of herbs but has an instinct for the untried. He has devised a system of spreading heated blankets over Wilma’s body, and it does seem to relieve the pain. This terrifying sequence is repeated several times. The next day I ask the young Dr. Grim, who could not be more different from her name, what can be done about the pain. She says Wilma knows that morphine and other opiates would help, but taking enough to cut the pain would also dull her consciousness. She wants to be fully present for as long as she can. In the next few days, relatives, friends, and colleagues come from miles around to pay their respects. They sit near her, reminisce about the past, argue politics for the future, and bring pies, cakes, and casseroles for ever-increasing numbers of visitors. Children bring flowers, or sing a song from church or school, or just watch television. Some stare at Wilma and their parents in a way that says they will never forget. As some of the older visitors leave, they say, “I’ll see you on the other side of the mountain.” I’ve never seen such honesty about dying. People closest to the family do the small and continuous tasks: laundry, bringing in firewood, feeding Wilma’s indoor dog and outdoor cats. They include our mutual friends from San Francisco, Kristina Kiehl and Bob Friedman. Kristina has been there for three weeks, helping with this final challenge as she has with so many others. She invents a way of washing Wilma’s hair in bed. Bob takes over the continual task of washing dishes for the many people who gather in the big kitchen, talking softly. At night Wilma calls out in pain. Then it begins during the day, too. I can’t bear it. I go into full research mode and phone every physician I know. I learn that there are several kinds of drastic nerve blocks that could diminish her pain and leave her mind clear. But such procedures can be done only in a hospital. Wilma’s caregiving team has a conference with Dr. Grim, who says a local ambulance could take her to and from the hospital—more than two hours or so each way. We talk to Wilma. She thinks about it. The ambulance comes and parks in the yard just in case. She decides she might die in transit, or become too hooked to tubes to leave the hospital, and she wants to be at home in Indian Country.

• From Querelle (1953)

  200 I JEAN GENET fright could well tumble him down from the flying trapeze which he was hanging onto with cut-glass claws, right above the cage full of panthers . What bizarre spirit-force, represented by a cop in a light blue jersey, tensed to spring, had emanated from Querelle's own body to confront him thus? Querelle had been able to contain this poison without danger to himself as long as it remained within him, or as long as he merely spouted it into the wall of fog. But tonight, his own venom had appeared to threaten him. Querelle was afraid, and his fear reflected the pallor of death, whose workings he knew so well, and he was doubly afraid of having been abandoned by death. Mario folded the blade back into its handle. Querelle sighed, defeated. The weapon created by intelligence had made short shrift of the nobility of the body, of the warrior's heroism. Mario straight ened himself and put both hands in his pockets. Facing him, Que relle did the same, but with a slowness he owed himself because of his recent humiliation. They took a step or two toward each other and looked at each other with some embar ras sment. "I never wanted to hurt you. It was your idea to start a fight. I don't give a shit if you're lovers with Nono. It's none of my fucking business. You can do wh at you please with your asshole, but that's no reason to fly off the handle ... " "Listen, Mario, so maybe I am buddies with Nono. And it is my business, right. So there was no call for you to give me that shit back there in the old bagnio.' ' "I wasn't giving you shit. Just kidding, asking you if w e could pretend I was Nono. So what does that mean, I ask you? And there wasn't anybody there, to hear what we were saying." - "So OK, there wasn't anybody there. But you got to realize it ain't no pleasure to listen to cracks like that. Like you said, I have the right to do wh at I please. That is nobody else's busi ness, and I am big enough to take care of rr:.yself. You better get this thing straight, Mario. If you hadn't wh ipped out that blade, there's no way you could have beaten me."

• From Querelle (1953)

  :r..1ario didn't move. He felt like a master of fear and of life, it was up to him, to allow it to go on, or to cut it. He was on top of his policeman's calling. He took no great pleasure in his power, for he never paid much attention to what went on inside him and had no desire to explore it. He didn't move because he did not know what move to make. Above all, he was spellbound by this instant of victory, which he would have to destroy for, and by, some other moment, perhaps one that would be of a lesser intensity, would provide him with less pleasure, but would be irreversible . as well. Once that came to pass, there would no longer be any choice. Within himself, Mario felt choice hanging in the balance. At last he stood in the center of freedom. He was ready to . . . except that he couldn't remain in this position for long. To shift h�s weight, to stretch this or that muscle would already be to make a choice, that is to say, to limit himself again . Therefore he had to retain his present state as long as his muscles did not tire too quickly. "I just wanted you to explain what you meant, I never wanted to . . ." The voice was beautiful. Querelle found himself in the same spot, that center of freedom, and he realized the danger in Mario's hesitation . It communicated itself to him and gave him the necessary stage fright that inspired his performance, made it look perilous and risky, but also made him invincible. The stage 200 I JEAN GENET fright could well tumble him down from the flying trapeze which he was hanging onto with cut-glass claws, right above the cage full of panthers. What bizarre spirit-force, represented by a cop in a light blue jersey, tensed to spring, had emanated from Querelle's own body to confront him thus? Querelle had been able to contain this poison without danger to himself as long as it remained within him, or as long as he merely spouted it into the wall of fog. But tonight, his own venom had appeared to threaten him. Querelle was afraid, and his fear reflected the pallor of death, whose workings he knew so well, and he was doubly afraid of having been abandoned by death. Mario folded the blade back into its handle. Querelle sighed, defeated. The weapon created by intelligence had made short shrift of the nobility of the body, of the warrior's heroism. Mario straightened himself and put both hands in his pockets. Facing him, Querelle did the same, but with a slowness he owed himself because of his recent humiliation. They took a step or two toward each other and looked at each other with some embarrassment. "I never wanted to hurt you. It was your idea to start a fight.

• From Querelle (1953)

  229 I QUERELLE stepped out of the pissoir, holding the gun pointed at the ground at his side. He caught up with the Lieutenant, stopped him. "No noise. Give me that satchel or I'll shoot." . Immediately the Lieutenant understood that he was here given the opportunity to act in a heroic manner, and he even regretted the fact that he would not have any witnesses to report back to his men, above all, to Querelle. While under standing also that such an act would be useless, he saw himself dishonored forever if he didn't accomplish it, and realized by looking at the eyes and the pale, pinched beauty, by considering his tone of voice, that there really was no way out. (Whatever happened, the sailor would get the money. ) He hoped for the intervention by some other passenger, but did not really believe, even feared that possibility. All this flashed into his mind in one piece. He said: "Don't shoot.' ' Maybe he would be able to wrap the sailor in the folds of a tight dialectic, truss him up verbally and then slowly turn him into a friend. He was excited. The boy was so young, so audacious "Don't move. And shut up. Hand it over!" In the still center of his fear Gil was calm, very calm. It was hi s fear that gave him the courage to talk in this tough and brutal fashion. It, too, had given him the insight that sticking to such short exclamations he would avoid any attempts to "talk it over." The Lieutenant did not budge. "The money-or I'll blast your guts!" .,Go ahead." Gi l shot him in the shoulder, hoping that would make him drop the satchel. The gun made a terrifying lot of noise in the small, luminous cavern their bodies carved out of the fog. With his left, Gil grabbed the carrying strap of the satchel and pulled at it, pointing the gun's muzzle straight at the officer's eye:

• From Querelle (1953)

  t4 I JEAN GENET direction of his thoughts (as though he wanted to veil them, or show them a touch of insolence), his lips remained slightly drawn apart from his teeth, whose beauty he knew, their white ness dimmed, now, by the night and the shadow cast by his upper lip. Watching Gil and Roger, now reunited by glance and smile, he could not make up his mind to withdraw, to enclose within hin1self those teeth and their gentle splendor, which had the same restful effect on his vague thoughts as the blue of the sea has on our eyes. Meanwhile, he was lightly running his tongue over his palate. It was alive. One of the sailors started to go through the motions of buttoning his peacoat, turning up the collar. Querelle was not used to the idea, one that had never really been formulated, that he was a monster. He considered, he observed his past with an ironic smile, frightened and tender at the same time, to the extent that this past became confused with what he himself was. Thus might a young boy whose soul is evident in his eyes, but who has been metamorphosed into an alligator, even if he were not fully conscious of his horrendous head and jaws, consider his scaly body, his solemn, gigantic tail, with which he strikes the water or the beach or brushes against that of other monsters, and which extends him with the same touching, heart-rending and indesbuctible majesty as the train of a robe, adorned with lace, with crests, with battles, W ith a thousand crimes, worn by a Child Empress, extends her. He knew the horror of being alone, seized by an immortal enchantment in the midst of the world of the living. Only to hi m had been accorded ! he hor rendous privilege to perceive his monstrous participation in the realms of the great muddy rivers and the rain forests. And he was apprehensive that some light, emanating from within his body, or from his hue consciousness, might not be illuminating him, might not, in some way from inside the scaly carapace, -give off a reflection of that true form and make him visible to men, who would then have to hunt him down. In some places along the ramparts of Brest, trees have been

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  After minutes: “Should we try to go around the hill to the straight side?” Jim asks. “It's all quieting down—maybe it's cool now. Maybe we should just go up on the road to our cars.” They dress. “I'm not sure it's over,” Jim says. The other listens. “I don't hear anything. I'll take a chance on the road. Wanna come?” Jim pauses. “I'll go around the hill,” he says. They kiss again. They laugh—the reality is too difficult to accept. They are actually in danger—but for what? “Good luck.” “Good luck.” Jim weaves along the park's lower rough paths. Branches scratch his bare perspiring shoulders. After long, long minutes the steep descent is over. Now he has to go around, then over, another hill. He pauses. Then he begins to move toward the straight part of the park. Whrrrr! Jim can see the helicopter. He lies on the ground. Something pierces his leg. A glass? A broken branch? A branch—not a serious cut. But the blood pours out rich and red. He blocks it with dried leaves. He remains there until the helicopter rises into the sky, whirs away. Jim continues to climb, his body clamped by the unmoving heat. Now he's on a main path connecting bridle trails. He hears hooves. He starts to rush away. But this time it's only a man and a woman on horseback. “Hi!” they call to him. “Hi,” he answers. “You know what's happening on the other side of the park?” the woman asks him. Jim looks at her. He shakes his head, no. His world is totally invisible to them. As he moves now more slowly along the path, he encounters other straight couples hiking. In minutes he has entered a completely different world. Standing on a path, he looks out at the unthreatened straight section of the park. There are no red signs here. The sound of horses. This time he doesn't even start. Another man and a woman on horseback approach him. The retreating helicopter hovers momentarily overhead. But here there is no sense of danger. The man and the woman don't even look up at it. “Hi,” they call to Jim. This time he doesn't answer. On the main road in the straight area, Jim hitchhikes down the hill. A man he's been with in the gay section stops. On the car seat is one of the red signs. Jim reaches for it. “They used those weird signs to bust people in the gay area,” the man tells him. “Some kind of fire ordinance. I ran when I saw what was happening.” Jim tries to read the sign, the convoluted vague wording in the tiny letters: “… firebreak or fire road… motorcycle, motorscooter vehicle within any mountain fire district … special permit from the chief … obstruct the entrance … firebreak….”

• From Querelle (1953)

  156 I JEAN GENET saw himself, and he saw himself large, very large, opposed and equal to the world. And out there, his main opponent was Mario, whose sleepless nights were assuming the great scale of some musical meditation on the origin and end of time. The _impossibility of arresting Gilbert Turko, of finding his hide-out, of discovering the connections he somehow knew to exist between the two murders, created the dull feeling of unease in the detective; in some mysterious fashion, he attributed this to his previous worries about Tony the Docker. \Vhen Dede returned without having learnt anything specific about the latter's doings, Mario fell into th.e clutches of the fear that made him hesitate on the landing, as he was leaving the boy's room, before going down the stairs. Dede noticed this very slight hesitation and said : "In any case, you haven't got anything to worry about. He won't dare do anything." Mario swallowed a curse. If he chose to go out alone, unaccompani ed by his habitual companion (that young police man who had once said to the admiring Dede: "What a handsome pair·you two are"-and had thus managed to make the boy see both of them together a-s a mightY sexual entity), he did so to erase the shame of his first fright and to exorcise it by audacity. Mario decided to hit the streets at night, in the fog, the best time and place for a quick murder. He strode along purposefully, hands in poc kets of his gaberdine coat, or else smoothing and puiling tight the fingers of his brown leather gloves-a gesture connecting him straight back to the invincible machinery of the police. The first time out he didn't even pack hi s revolver, hoping, by such extreme candor and innocence, to disarm the hypothetical dockers who were after his ass, but the fo llowing day he did take it along; it was, after all, a necessary adj unct to what he himself thought of as his courage-his belief in a system of order symbolized by the gun. When he wanted to arrange a meeting with Dede, he traced a street name on the steamy windowpane of his office in the police station, and when

• From Querelle (1953)

  But Mario couldn't come. Querelle turned around, abruptly, and squatted down on the ground. As if ordained by fate, the detective's prick plunged into his mouth, _ just as the train plunged into the tunnel leading to the station. It was the first time Querelle kissed a man on the mouth. It seen:ted to him he was pressing his face against a mirror reflecting his own image while letting his tongue run over the harsh surfaces inside a head hewn out of granite. Nevertheless, as it was an act of love, and of forbidden love, he knew that he was committing evil. His erection hardened. Their mouths remained soldered together, their tongues lolling round each other or pricki&Jg each other with their tips; neither one of them dared to move on to the rough cheeks, where a kiss would have been a sign of tenderness. Their open eyes met and mirrored expressions of gentle sarcasm. The detective's tongue was very hard. Querelle's work as a steward neither humiliated him nor lowered his prestige in the eyes of his comrades. Performing all 201 I QUERELLE the details of his task with a simplicity that is the true nobility, he could be seen on deck in the mornings, squatting on his haunches, polishing the Lieutenant's shoes. His neck bent, his hair falling over his eyes, he would sometimes look up, the brush in one hand, a shoe in the other : he was smiling. Then he would get up, in one quick motion, return all his utensils to their box with a juggler's speed and go back to the cabin. He walked with quick, limber steps, a steady joy in his body. "Here you are, sir." "Very good. But don't forget to put my clothes away." The officer was too timid to smile. Faced with his joy and this power, he did not dare to show his own happiness, for he was certain that one single moment of abandon would leave him completely at the mercy of the beautiful beast. He was afraid of Querelle. No matter how severe he was, he never succeeded in casting a blight over that body, that smile. Yet he knew his own strength. He was even a little taller than the crewman, but he was aware of a certain weakness lurking in the depths of his own body. It was something almost tangible, and it was sending waves of fear through all the muscles of his body. "Did you go ashore, yesterday?" "Y essir. It was starboard watch ashore." "You could have reminded me of that. I needed you. Next time let me know before you go." "Aye-aye, sir."

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle was still afraid. He thought it best to appear noncommittal. Looking at Gil one was reminded of a young Hindu whose beauty alone prevents his immediate ascension to heaven. His fetching smile, his lascivious look provoked voluptuous ideas in him as well as in others. Like Querelle, Gil had become a murderer by accident-by bad luck-and it would have pleased the sailor to tum the boy into a replica of himself. "That would be a scream, wouldn't it, to leave a little Querelle here to go on prowling through the fogs of Brest," he thought. He had to bring Gil to admit a murder he had not wanted to commit, as well as another one, which he was completely innocent of. In such fertile soil he would plant a seed of Querelle, and it would come up and grow. The sailor was aware of his power, not over, but in Gil. Gil had to see what a murder 213 I QUERELLE was. He had to get used to it. And he had to come out of hiding. Querelle got up and said : ··Don't worry, kid. You're doin' all right. In fact, you're doing pretty well, for a beginner, like. Just have to keep on going. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go and talk to Nono." .. \Vhat, you haven't told him anything yet?" ··Don't worry. You don't think I could just take you to La Feria, or do you? Too many cops around. And you never know with those girls, .either. But we'll see what can be done. The thing is not to get too big-headed, you know. Don't think that the big guys will be falling over themselves to meet you, just because you snuffed somebody. You have to get a reputation as a real stick-up artist. \Vhat you did was just like a joy-killing. But don't you worry. I'll take care of things. Well, I've got to run now. See you later, kid." They shook hands, and, as he was leaving, Querelle turned around once more and said : .. \Vhat about that little friend of yours, has he been to see you?" .. I'm sure he'll show up any minute now." Querelle smiled. ••Tell me, he's got a crush on you, that bambino-or am I wrong?" Gil blushed. He thought that the sailor was pulling his leg, reminding him of the official motive for his killing Theo. It wasn't funny at all. His chest constricted, in a flat voice he replied : .. You're crazy. See, I had a go at his sister once. That's the story. You're nuts, Jo. Don't believe everything they tell you. Cunts is what I like." .. Hell, there ain't nothin' wrong with the kid having eyes for you. I'm a sailorboy, you know, I know what that's like. Well, bye again, Gil. Take it easy." 0 0 0 214 I JEAN GENET

• From Querelle (1953)

  224 I JEAN GENET had absolute confidence in him, though this was strangely intermingled with a fear that Querelle might "turn him in.'' "Soon as you got some dough and some new clothes you'll be ready to take the trip.'' It looked like a great adventure, and one that the murders had led up to. Thanks to them, Gil would have to dress smartly, more so than he had ever done in his life, not even on Sundays. Buenos Aires, here I come. "I can certainly hear what you're saying;'! sure would like to pull a job, make some dough. But where? Do you know?" "Right now, here in Brest, I know only one place, a simple breaking and entering scene. There's better ones elsewhere, but here in Brest that's the only thing I'm hep to. I'll go case the joint, and then, if you're ready, we can go do the job together. No sweat. I'll be right there with you." "I couldn't d o it by myself? Perhaps that would be better?" "You crazy? Forget it. I want to go with you. First thne out, you need a buddy.'' Querelle was a night-tamer. He had familiarized himself with all the expressions of darkness, he had peopled the dark shadows with the most dangerous monsters he carried within himself. Then he had vanquished them by drawing deep breaths through his nostrils. Thus the night, although it did not entirely belong to him, obeyed his commands. He had become used to living in the repugnant company of his murders; he kept a kind of miniature logbook, a catalogue of blood baths, calling it (only to himself) "my bouquet of mortuary flowers!' The log contained maps of the scenes of the crimes. The sketches were primitive. Whenever he found himself unable to draw something, Querelle simply wrote in the word for it, and the spelling was fairly shaky. He was an uneducated man. 0 • 0

• From Querelle (1953)

  He turned to the mirror to adjust the peak of his cap, to bend it over a little more to the left. In the mirror he could see the whole room in which he had now lived for over a year. It was smaii, cold, and on the wails there were some photographs of prize fighters and female movie stars, clipped out of the papers. The only luxury item was the light fixture above the divan : an electric bulb in a pale pink glass tulip. He did not despise Mario for being scared. Quite some time ago he had understood the nobility of self-acknowledged fear, what he called the jitters, or cold feet . . . Often enough he had been forced to take to his heels in order to escape from some dangerous and armed foe. He hoped that Mario would accept the chaiienge to fight, having decided himself, should a good occasion arise, to knock off the docker who had just come out of the joint. To save Mario would be to save himself. And it was natural enough for anyone to be scared of Tony the Docker. He was a fierce and unscrupulous brute. On the other hand, it seemed strange to Dede that a mere criminal should cause The Police to tremble, and for the first time he had his doubts that this invisible and ideal force which he served and behind which he sheltered might just consist of weak humans. And, as this truth dawned on him, through a little crack in himself, he felt both weaker and-strangely enough-stronger. For the first time he was taking thought, and this frightened him a little. "What about your chief? Haven't you told him?" "Don't you \VOrry about that. I've told you your job : now get 54 I JEAN GENET on with it." Mario dimly feared the boy might betray him. The voice in which he answered showed signs of softening, but he caught himself quickly, even before opening his mouth, and the words came out tough and dry. Dede looked at his wristwatch. "It's getting on for four," he said. "It's dark already. And there's some fog rolling in . . . Visibility five meters." ''Well, what are you waiting for?" Mario's voice was suddenly more commanding. He was the boss. Two quick steps had been quite sufficient to take him across the room and bring him, with the same ease of move-.

• From Querelle (1953)

  apropos of a painting that is an attempt to represent Jesus as a child, "in his eyes, in his smile, one can already foretell the sadness and despair of the Crucifixion," we say that that is a truly abominable instance of bad literary writing. However, in order to succeed in giving the reader the truth about Gil's and Querelle's relations, he or she will have to allow us to use this detestable literary cliche we ourselves condemn, give us permission to write that Gil suddenly had a presentiment of Querelle's treachery and of his own immolation. It isn't just that this commonplace expediently speeds up the definition of the respective roles of these two heroes : one is a redeemer, the other one quite beyond redemption : there is more to it, as we shall, both of us, see. Gil made a movement which to some extent freed him from the all-pervasive tenderness that joined him to his murderer. ( It is appropriate to point out, in this context, that it surely is not hate, but another kind of feeling that can cause a father to engage in friendly conversation with the murderer of his son, oblivious to the astonished and appalled stares of the public-directing his quiet questions to the witness of the beloved creature's last moments. ) Gil went into. the darker part of the cave, and Querelle sauntered after him. "You have it?" Gil raised his head. He was on his knees, looking for the gun under a heap of coiled rope. "What?'' Then he laughed, a little shrilly. "I must be crazy!" he added. "Let's see it." Gently he asked for the revolver, and gently he took it from Gil. Salvation beckoned. Gil had gotten up again. "\Vhat are you going to do?'' Querelle hesitated. He turned his back to Gil, walked back to the comer where Gil usually stayed. Then he said : ''It's time for you to go. 'TI1ings are hotting up." "No kidding?" 250 I JEAN GENET The length of that remark was just about right for Gil's capability at that moment. His voice was in danger of breaking. The fear of the guillotine, donnant for a long time, suddenly caused a strange phenomenon : it made all the blood in his body run back to his heart. "Yup. They're looking for you again. But don't get the jitters. And don't think I'll leave you in the lurch." Gil tried to understand, but vaguely and inconclusively, what all the business about the revolver was about, and then he saw Querelle putting it in the pocket of his peacoat. The notion that an act of treachery was being consummated flashed into his mind, while at the same time he felt profoundly relieved to be rid of an object that would force him to act, probably even to murder. Stretching out his hand he said : "Will you let me keep it?"

• From Querelle (1953)

  148 I JEAN GENET sion, but exactly the way Theo had wanted them to see the kid, as he himself had wanted to show him. Intimidated by the police inspectors, they drifted into a story that was both crazy and tentative-crazy, because of its fear of being tentative-but appeared more plausible the longer they went on talking. They did of course become aware of the fact that these statements had no basis in fact whatsoever, that they were nothing but a kind of poetry which allowed them t o talk, at long last, and seriously, about things they had always used in their obscen ities-in their songs, even-but at the same time, this sudden o utpouring intoxicated them. They knew that their portrait of Gil was inflated, not unlike the cadaver of a drowned man. Here are some of the traits that the masons said they had found indicative of Gil's queerness: the prettiness of his face, his style of singing, trying to make his voice soft as velvet, his sartorial coquettishness, his laziness and carelessness at work, his fear of Th eo, the pallor and smoothness of his skin, etc., a number of such details that they felt were real clinchers, having heard Theo and some other guys they had run across in their lives poke fun at fairies in comments like: "Look at the girlie ... suc h a little doll's face he's got ... he likes to work just about as much as some expensive whore ... he's made to work with his asshole . . . coos like a turtledove . . . and the way he carries his tool kit, dangling it like a queen swinging her purse on the beat in Marseilles ... " Those traits, poorly interpreted, combined to create a picture of a faggot such as none of the masons could ever have seen. All they knew about the "autnies" and "fairies'' was what they said about them themselves, what Theo used to say, a hysterical babble of catch phrases: "Sure as hell, that's a pederast's pet! ... You take it straight, sideways, or inbetween? ... To the highest bidder, eh? ... 'Why don't you just fuck off to your sugar daddy, you ain't fit to work here! . . ." While they were able to spout this stuff with the greatest of ease, it did not really represent any reality. As their emotions weren't involved in the subject, no conversation could

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  But when I got to Bhave’s ashram, almost everyone was gone. An elderly man explained that caste riots had broken out in nearby Ramnad, a large rural area of the southeast, and government leaders in far-off New Delhi had ordered the area cordoned off in the hope of containing the burnings and killings. Not even reporters were allowed in. Nonetheless, teams of three or four from the ashram had walked around the roadblocks and were going from one village to the next, holding meetings, letting people know they were not abandoned, and dispelling rumors that were even worse than reality—an on-the-ground organizing effort to reverse the spiral of violence. Each team had to include at least one woman. Men couldn’t go into the women’s quarters to invite women to meetings, and if there was no woman present, other women were unlikely to come anyway. But the ashram had no women left. That’s how I was persuaded that a foreigner in a sari would seem no more out of place than someone from New Delhi, and why I found myself leaving behind all my possessions except a cup, a comb, and the sari I had on, and getting on a rickety bus. As my companion, the elderly man from the ashram, explained to me, if the villagers wanted peace, they would feed and house the peacemakers. If they didn’t want peace, no outsiders could help anyway. As we started on our journey, I noticed that without possessions, I felt oddly free. After hours on that ancient bus that seemed to stop everywhere, we arrived at the place where police barriers had blocked the dusty road into Ramnad. Without a car or even an oxcart, we just bypassed the road altogether and walked into this large area so traumatized by caste riots. Thus began a week unlike any other. We walked between villages in the heat of the day, stopping to cool off in shallow streams or find shade in groves where chai and steamed rice cakes called idlis were sold from palm-roofed shelters. At night, I watched as villagers slowly came out of their small earthen houses and compounds to sit around a kerosene lamp in circles of six or twenty or fifty. I listened as villagers told stories of burnings and murders, thefts and rapes, with fear and trauma that needed no translation. It was hard to imagine anything that could slow this cycle of violence, yet villagers took comfort from neighbors who had ventured out of their compounds, too. People seemed relieved to see one another, talk, be heard, separate truth from rumor, and discover that any outsiders knew or cared. To my surprise, these long nights often ended with pledges to keep meeting, to sort out what was true and what was not, and to refuse to be part of vengeful cycles that only endangered them more.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Airline passengers usually look like where they’re going—business suits to Washington, D.C., jeans to L.A.—but I can’t imagine a convention of such unconventional visitors in Rapid City. It’s the kind of town where people still angle-park their cars in front of the movie palace. My bearded seatmate is asleep in his studded jacket and nose ring, so I just accept one more mystery of the road. At the airport, I meet five friends from different parts of the country. We are a diverse group of women—a Cherokee activist and her grown-up daughter, two African American writers and one musician, and me. We’ve been invited to a Lakota Sioux powwow celebrating the powerful place that women held before patriarchy arrived from Europe, and efforts now to restore that place. As we drive toward the Badlands, we see an acre of motorcycles around each isolated diner and motel. This solves the mystery of the leather and chains, but creates another. When we stop for coffee, our waitress can’t believe we don’t know. Every August since 1938, bikers from all over the world have come here for a rally named after Sturgis, a town that’s just a wide place in the road. They are drawn by this sparsely populated space of forests, mountains, and a grid of highways so straight that it is recognizable from outer space. Right now about 250,000 bikers are filling every motel and campground within five hundred miles. Our band of six strong women takes note. The truth is we are a little afraid of so many bikers in one place. How could we not be? We have all learned from movies that bikers travel in packs, treat their women like possessions, and may see other women as sexual fair game. But we don’t run into the bikers because we spend our days traveling down unmarked roads, past the last stand of trees, in Indian Country. We eat home-cooked food brought in trucks, sit on blankets around powwow grounds where dancers follow the heartbeat of drums, and watch Indian ponies as decorated as the dancers. When it rains, a rainbow stretches from can’t-see to can’t-see, and fields of wet sweet grass become as fragrant as gigantic flowers. Only when we return late each night to our cabins do we see motorcycles in the parking lot. While walking in Rapid City, I hear a biker say to his tattooed woman partner, “Honey, shop as long as you want—I’ll meet you at the cappuccino place.” I assume this is an aberration. On our last morning, I enter the lodge alone for an early breakfast, trying to remain both inconspicuous and open-minded. Still, I’m hyperconscious of a room full of knife sheaths, jackboots, and very few women. In the booth next to me, a man with chains around his muscles and a woman in leather pants and an improbable hairdo are taking note of my presence. Finally, the woman comes over to talk.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  A student from Bob Jones University who sought counseling there after being sexually assaulted was asked to “repent,” as if she had attracted the assault. In Texas, I saw people outside an auditorium where I was about to speak. Because their signs called me a humanist, I assumed they were welcoming—until a former fundamentalist explained to me that because humanism is bad and secular, Christians were demonstrating against my speech. In some audiences, feminism is blamed for, say, divorce or plummeting birthrates or lower salaries—instead of blaming unequal marriage or lack of child care or employers who profiteer—but this is an education, too. People who arrive assuming that no one could possibly disagree with equal pay may learn otherwise from someone who rises to say that the free market takes care of that; unequal pay just means that women aren’t worth as much as employees. Anyone who believes we’re living in a postfeminist age will learn that violence against females—from female infanticide and child marriage to honor killings and sex trafficking—has now produced a world with fewer females than males, a first in recorded history. On the other hand, hearing men say they want to humanize the “masculine” role that is literally killing them, and that they want to raise their own children, keeps all those present from measuring progress by what was, and raises a new standard: what could be. Altogether I’ve seen enough change to have faith that more will come. I. • It’s 1971, and I’m just beginning to talk about the women’s movement—with Dorothy, not yet on my own—when I get an invitation to give the address at the Harvard Law Review banquet. This annual event is reserved for top students, and guest speakers tend to be political leaders or prestigious legal scholars—definitely all men. Once I discover this isn’t a practical joke, it’s an easy no. I tell them the woman they should ask is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a brilliant lawyer who was one of the first female students at Harvard Law School, and who has just created the first Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Then I get a call from Brenda Feigen, a friend who also was one of the early women at Harvard Law and who now runs the Women’s Rights Project with Ruth. She says I have to do it—Ruth will never be asked because she left Harvard to go to Columbia Law School—and besides, if I say no, they may go back to men-as-usual. Brenda promises to help with research and to ask current women law students to do the same. I remind her that my fear of public speaking is just as serious as her fear of flying, but she says I can write every word, and it will be more like reading than speaking. This and other arguments finally make me say yes to my worst nightmare.

• From Querelle (1953)

  !vlario's face remained grim. A strange heat seemed to animate it, without heightening its color; it was pale, but the lines were set so hard and so rigidly dra\vn and patterned that they lit the face up with an infinity of stars. It looked as if Mario's whole life were surging upwards, mounting from his calves, parts, torso, heart, anus, guts, anns, elbows, and neck, right up into the face, where it grew desperate at not being able to escape, to go on, to disappear into the night and come to an end in a shower of sparks. His cheeks were a little hollowed, making the chin look firmer. He wasn't fro\vning; his eyeballs were slightly protuberant, and his eyelid looked like a small amber rosebud attached to the stem of his nose. In the front of his mouth Mario was rolling around an ever increasing amount of spittle, not daring, not knowing how to swallow it. His fear and his hatred mingled and massed there, at the farthest reaches of himself. His blue eyes looked almost black, under brows which had never appeared so light, so blond. Their very brightness troubled Dede's peace of mind. (The boy was far more peaceful than his friend was agitated-profoundly agitated, as if he alone had dredged up to the surface all the mud deposited in both of them; and this new force of purpose in the detective made him look both desperate and grave, with a touch of that restrained irritation so typical a trait in accredited heroes. Dede seemed to have recognized this and could find no better means of displaying his gratitude than by accepting, with elegant simplicity, his purification, his becoming endowed with the vernal grace of April woodlands. ) We were saying-that extreme brightness of 48 I JEAN GENET