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 The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  directly. They are too relentless, and they usually have enough power to overwhelm you in direct confrontation. You must outwit them, finding unexpected angles of attack. Threaten to expose the hypocrisy in their narrative or the past dirty deeds they have tried to keep hidden from the public. Make it seem that a battle with you will be costlier than they had imagined, that you are also willing to play a little dirty, but only in defense. If you are particularly clever, appear relatively weak and exposed, baiting them into a rash attack that you have prepared for. Often the wisest strategy is to band together with others who have suffered at their hands, creating strength and leverage in numbers. Keep in mind that aggressors often get their way because you fear that in fighting them, you have too much to lose in the present. But you must calculate instead what you have to lose in the long term—decreasing options for power and expansion in your own field, once they assume a dominating position; your own dignity and sense of self-worth by not standing up to them. Surrender and docility can become a habit with devastating consequences for your well-being. Use the existence of aggressors as a spur to your own fighting spirit and to build your own confidence. Standing up to and outwitting aggressors can be one of the most satisfying and ennobling experiences we humans can have. Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if attacked. . . . A powerful desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their . . . endowment. —Sigmund Freud Keys to Human Nature We like to think of ourselves as relatively peaceful and agreeable members of society. We are social animals to the core, and we need to convince ourselves that we are loyal to and cooperative with the communities we belong to. But on occasion, all of us have acted in ways that go against this self-opinion. Perhaps it came in a moment when we felt that our job security was threatened, or that someone was blocking our career advancement. Or perhaps we believed we were not getting the attention and recognition that we deserved for our work. Or maybe it came in a moment of financial insecurity. Or perhaps it occurred in an intimate relationship in which we felt particularly frustrated in our attempt to get the other to change his or her behavior, or we sensed that he or she was going to abandon us. Out of frustration, anger, insecurity, fear, or impatience we suddenly found ourselves becoming unusually assertive. We did something a bit extreme to hold on to our job; we tried to push a colleague out of our way; we reached for some dubious scheme to secure easy and fast money; we went too far in trying to get attention; we turned belligerent and controlling with our partner; we

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

  The ambulances came, the boy, hoisted to his grandmother’s hip, watched the officers approach his father with guns drawn, how his father waved a bloody twenty-dollar bill, the way he did back in Saigon where the cops would take the money, tell the boy’s mother to calm down and take a walk, then leave as if nothing happened. The boy watched as the American officers tackled his father, the money slipping out in the tussle and landing on the sidewalk lit by sulfur lights. Focused on the brown-and-green money-leaf on the pavement, half expecting it to fly up, back onto a winter tree, the boy did not see his father cuffed, dragged up to his feet, his head pushed into the patrol car. He saw only the crumpled money, until a neighbor girl in pigtails swiped it when no one was looking. The boy looked up to find his mother being carried out by paramedics, her broken face floating past him on the stretcher. — In his backyard, an empty dirt field beside a freeway overpass, I watched Trevor aim his .32 Winchester at a row of paint cans lined on an old park bench. I did not know then what I know now: to be an American boy, and then an American boy with a gun, is to move from one end of a cage to another. He tugged at the visor of his Red Sox cap, his lips scrunched. A porch light reflected on the barrel a small white star in the faraway-dark, which rose and fell as he aimed. This is what we did on nights like this, a Saturday with no sound for miles. I sat on a milk crate sipping Dr Pepper and watched him empty one cartridge after another into metal. Where the rifle’s butt recoiled against his shoulder, his green Whalers T-shirt wrinkled, the creases grabbing with each shot. The cans leaped one by one off the bench. I watched, recalling a story Mr. Buford told us back on the farm. Years ago, hunting in Montana, Buford found a moose in his trap. A male. He spoke slowly, rubbing his white stubble, describing how the trap had cut off the moose’s hind leg—a sound like a wet stick snapping, he said—save for a few stringy pink ligaments. The animal groaned against its body, which, bleeding and torn, was suddenly a prison. It raged, fat tongue lolling out a voice. “Almost like a man’s,” Buford said, “like you and me.” He glanced at his grandson, then at the ground, his plate of beans speckled with ants. He put down his rifle, he explained, and took out the double barrel holstered to his back and steadied. But the buck noticed him and charged, tearing its leg clean off. It ran right at him before he could aim, then veered toward a clearing and broke through the trees, hobbling on what was left of itself. Like you and me, I said to no one.

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

  I’m dragged into a hole, darker than the night around it, by two women. Only when one of them screams do I know who I am. I see their heads, black hair matted from the floor they sleep on. The air sharp with a chemical delirium as they jostle in the blur of the car’s interior. Eyes still thick with sleep, I make out the shapes: a headrest, a felt monkey the size of a thumb swinging from the rearview, a piece of metal, shining, then gone. The car peels out of the driveway, and I can tell, from the smell of acetone and nail polish, that it’s your tan-and-rust Toyota. You and Lan are in the front, clamoring for something that won’t show itself. The streetlights fling by, hitting your faces with the force of blows. “He’s gonna kill her, Ma. He’s gonna do it this time,” you say, breathless. “We riding. We riding helicopter fast.” Lan is in her own mind, red and dense with obsession. “We riding where?” She clutches the flip-down mirror with both hands. I can tell by her voice that she is smiling, or at least gritting her teeth. “He’s gonna kill my sister, Mama.” You sound like you’re flailing down a river. “I know Carl. It’s for real this time. You hear me? Ma!” Lan rocks side to side from the mirror, making whooshing sounds. “We getting out of here, huh? We gotta go far, Little Dog!” Outside, the night surges by like sideways gravity. The green numbers on the dash read 3:04. Who put my hands in my face? The tires squeal at each turn. The streets are empty and it feels like a universe in here, an everything hurling through the cosmic dark while, in the front seat, the women who raised me are losing their minds. Through my fingers, the night is black construction paper. Only the frazzled heads of these two before me are clear, swaying. “Don’t worry, Mai.” You’re speaking to yourself now. Your face so close to the windshield the glass fogs a ring that spreads in equal measure to your words. “I’m coming. We’re coming.” After a while we swerve down a street lined with Continentals. The car crawls, then stops in front of a grey clapboard town house. “Mai,” you say, pulling the emergency brake. “He’s gonna kill Mai.” Lan, who all this time had been shaking her head from side to side, stops, as if the words have finally touched a little button inside her. “What? Who kill who? Who die this time?” “Both of you stay in the car!” You unbuckle your belt, leap out, and shuffle toward the house, the door left open behind you.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  That’s a fuckin’ miracle, he says. This block of Boston is mostly students, and they all seem to have somewhere to go. The kid’s got a book out , my father tells Sharkey, then turns to me— I don’t understand how you did that. What promoted you? When my mother was seventeen my father sent her a flurry of letters, just days before he would get her pregnant— My future depends on my talent to write—I have periods of doubt and fear. I do not want to fail . Sharkey tells me to keep an eye on him, that he gets in trouble sometimes, as my father staggers away from us down the sidewalk. I catch up, stop briefly to glance at an outdoor table covered with used CDs, but he orders me to keep walking. Suck city , he explains, full of fuckers , the two bouquets of flowers tucked under his arm. We pass the bank, where he cashes his government check, one of the banks he claims to have robbed many years before. He takes out his bank card, See that? I know, I tell him, you showed me. We’re in front of a pizza joint now. I’m hungry, I say, you hungry? He orders the steak bomb, I get a slice. He seems to know the woman at the register, or at least he acts like he does, giving her a demented stare. I drift away. She asks him if he needs anything else, if he’s all right, and my father replies, loudly, My name is Flynn, of course I’m doing all right, here in Boston. I’m Irish , he sneers, not African, or Spanish, or Chinese, who I love . The woman smiles wanly, That’s good you love them, passing the bag of food into his hands. We sit on his stoop in the fading sun, his sandwich difficult for him to negotiate, bits of fatty steak dropping to the concrete. I ask him about his father again, about the life raft. He tells the same story, nearly word for word—how he watched his father test it, dropping it over and over from a crane into Scituate Harbor until he got it right. I am now the age my father was when he entered his first bank, which is the same age my mother was when she killed herself. The sun is setting on us now. My father tells me that he has the original blueprints for the life raft. I know, I say, I gave them to you. You did? I was wondering where I got them. You’re Thaddeus, right, named after my grandfather? No, I say, I’m Nicholas, named after the Czar. After half an hour I tell him I have to shove off, I’m parked illegally, no sense pushing my luck. Don’t worry, he insists, just give the ticket to me, I’ll tell them you were visiting. Great, I say, I’ll remember that next time.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This is similar to what may happen when catatonic psychiatric patients come out of their immobility. They are often extremely agitated and may attack the staff. I once had the opportunity to work with a patient who had been in a catatonic state for two or three years. After carefully sitting by his side (getting closer, over the period of several days), I spoke to him softly about the shaking and trembling that I observed with people and animals when they come out of shock. I had also talked with the chief psychiatrist, and he agreed that they would not give him an injection of thorazine (or straitjacket him) if he came to in an agitated state, unless he was clearly dangerous to himself or others. Two weeks later I got a call from the psychiatrist. The man had begun to shake and tremble, started to cry and was released to a transitional living situation six months later. To review, fear both greatly enhances and extends immobility and also makes the process of exiting immobility fearful and potentially violent. An individual who is highly terrified upon entering the immobility state is likely to move out of it in a similar manner. “As they go in, so they come out” was an expression that Army M.A.S.H. medics used when describing the reactions of their war-wounded patients. If a soldier goes into surgery terrified, and needing to be held down, he or she will likely come out of anesthesia in a state of frantic and possibly violent disorientation. The same consequences are sadly true when children are frightened and abruptly separated from their parents before surgery. 41 If they go into the surgery in an agitated state, are held down and then surrounded by gowned and “masked monsters,” they come out of the anesthesia frightened and drastically disoriented. David Levy, in 1945, studied hospitalized children, many of them being treated for injuries requiring immobilization, such as splints, casts and braces. He found that these unfortunate children developed shell-shock symptoms similar to those of the soldiers returning from the war fronts in Europe and North Africa. 42 Some sixty-five years later, a troubled father recounts “an all-too ordinary” story about his son Robbie’s “minor” knee surgery, a virtual guarantee for trauma. The doctor tells me that everything is okay.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Rockefeller had expanded to two refineries in Cleveland and had renamed the company Standard Oil. Standard Oil was now the country’s largest refining business, but the competition remained stiff, even within Cleveland and its now twenty-eight refineries, including those of Standard Oil. Because of this booming business, more and more millionaires had built their mansions on Euclid Avenue. But if Rockefeller controlled entrée into this new organization, he could do great damage to his competitors. It was in the midst of these rumors that Rockefeller arranged for a very private meeting between him and Payne at a Cleveland bank. Payne knew Rockefeller well. They had been born two weeks apart, had gone to the same high school, and lived near each other on Euclid Avenue. He admired Rockefeller’s business savvy but also feared him. Rockefeller was the kind of man who could not stand to lose in anything. If someone passed him by in a horse-drawn carriage, Rockefeller would have to whip his horses and overtake it. They worshipped in the same church; Payne knew he was a man of high principle, but he was also quite mysterious and secretive. In their meeting, Rockefeller confided in Payne: he was the first outsider to be told of the existence of this secret organization, to be called the Southern Improvement Company (SIC). Rockefeller claimed it was the railroads that had come up with the idea of the SIC to increase their profits, and that he had really had no choice but to enter into the agreement. He did not invite Payne to join the SIC. Instead he offered to buy out Payne’s refinery at a very nice price, to give Payne a hefty amount of Standard Oil stock that would certainly mint him a fortune, and to bring him in as a high-level executive with an illustrious title. He would make far more money this way than by trying to compete with Standard Oil. Rockefeller said all of this in the politest tone. He was going to keep expanding and bring some much-needed order to the anarchic oil industry. It was a crusade of his, and he was inviting Payne to be a fellow crusader from within Standard Oil. It was a compelling way to present his case, but Payne hesitated. He had moments of exasperation in dealing with this unpredictable business, but he had not thought of selling the refinery. It was all so sudden. Sensing his indecision, Rockefeller gave him a look of great sympathy and offered Payne the chance to examine Standard Oil’s ledgers, to convince him of the futility of resistance. Payne could hardly turn that down, and what he saw in a few short hours astounded him: Standard Oil had considerably higher profit margins than his own.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  ordered the break-in. Watergate was a trifle, nothing to tarnish his reputation. It would fade away, along with all the other dirty political deeds never discovered or recorded in the history books. And indeed he was correct, for the time being—the public paid little attention to the break-in. Nixon went on to have one of the biggest landslides in electoral history. He swept every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He even won over a large percentage of Democrats. He now had four more years to solidify his legacy and nothing to stop him. His popularity numbers had never been higher. Watergate, however, kept coming back to life and would not leave him alone. In January 1973, the Senate decided to launch an investigation. In March, McCord finally spilled the beans, implicating various members of the White House staff in the ordering of the break-in. Hunt began demanding hush money to not reveal what he knew. The way out of this mess was simple and clear—hire an outside lawyer to do an internal investigation of the break-in, with the full cooperation of Nixon and his team, and bring all the details to light. Nixon’s reputation would suffer, some would go to prison, but it would keep him politically alive, and he was the master of coming back from the dead. Nixon, however, could not take such a step. There would be too much immediate damage. The thought of coming clean about what he knew and had ordered frightened him to death. In meetings with Dean he continued to discuss the cover-up, even suggesting where they could come up with hush money. Dean cautioned him to not get so involved, but Nixon seemed oddly fascinated by the growing mess he had created, and unable to pull himself away. Soon he was forced to fire Haldeman and Ehrlichman, both of whom had been deeply implicated in the break-in. It was an ordeal to get him to personally fire them, and when it came to delivering the news to Ehrlichman, he broke down and sobbed. But it seemed that nothing he did could stop the momentum of the Watergate investigation, which got closer and closer to Nixon, making him feel like a trapped rat. On July 19, 1973, he received the worst news of all: the Senate committee investigating Watergate had learned of the secret taping system installed in the White House, and they demanded that the tapes be handed over to them as evidence. All Nixon could think about was the intense embarrassment that would ensue if the tapes went public. They would make him the laughingstock of the world. Think of the language that he had used and the many harsh things he had advocated. His image, his legacy, all the ideals he had striven to realize, it would all be ruined in one fell stroke. He thought of his mother and his own family—they had never heard him speak

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

  The rain keeps on because nourishment, too, is a force. The first soldier steps back. The second one moves the wooden divider, waves the woman forward. The houses behind her now reduced to bonfires. As the Huey returns to the sky, the rice stalks erect themselves, only slightly disheveled. The shawl drenched indigo with sweat and rain. In the garage, on a wall of stripped paint, spotted brick underneath, a shelf hangs as a makeshift altar. On it are framed pictures where saints, dictators, and martyrs, the dead—a mother and father—stare out, unblinking. In the glass frames, the reflection of sons leaning back in their chairs. One of them pours what’s left of the bottle over the sticky table, wipes it clean. A white cloth is placed over the macaque’s hollowed mind. The light in the garage flickers once, stays on. The woman stands in a circle of her own piss. No, she is standing on the life-sized period of her own sentence, alive. The boy turns, walks back to his post at the checkpoint. The other boy taps his helmet and nods at her, his finger, she notices, still on the trigger. It is a beautiful country because you are still in it. Because your name is Rose, and you are my mother and the year is 1968—the Year of the Monkey. The woman walks forward. Passing the guard, she glances one last time at the rifle. The muzzle, she notices, is not darker than her daughter’s mouth. The light flickers once, stays on. I wake to the sound of an animal in distress. The room so dark I can’t tell if my eyes are even open. There’s a breeze through the cracked window, and with it an August night, sweet but cut with the bleach smell of lawn chemicals—the scent of manicured suburban yards—and I realize I’m not in my own house. I sit up on the side of the bed and listen. Maybe it’s a cat wounded from a skirmish with a raccoon. I balance myself in the black air and head toward the hallway. There’s a red blade of light coming through a cracked door at the other end. The animal is inside the house. I palm the wall, which, in the humidity, feels like wet skin. I make my way toward the door and hear, in between the whimpers, the animal’s breaths—heavier now, something with huge lungs, much larger than a cat. I peer through the door’s red crack—and that’s when I see him: the man bent over in a reading chair, his white skin and even whiter hair made pink, raw under a scarlet-shaded lamp. And it comes to me: I’m in Virginia, on summer break. I’m nine. The man’s name is Paul. He is my grandfather—and he’s crying. A warped Polaroid trembles between his fingers. I push the door. The red blade widens. He looks up at me, lost, this white man with watery eyes. There are no animals here but us. —

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Jess?” The voice startled me. I turned and faced a woman who looked familiar. One child wound around her legs. The other held her hand and stared at me. “It’s me—Gloria. Remember? We worked together at the print shop. You used to work there after school.” I nodded, but my mind felt swaddled in gauze. I tried to follow her words as they shot past me: Gloria was divorced, the foreman put the moves on her, she quit. What was happening with me? Her last question startled me. I shrugged. “Pm looking for a place to stay so I can try to find some work and get an apartment. By the way,” I told her, “T’ve always wanted to thank you for giving me the names of those bars. It changed my life.” Gloria glanced nervously at her children. “This is Scotty and this is Kim. Say hello to Jess. Jess and Mommy used to work together.” Scotty hid behind Gloria’s legs. Kim maintained her slack-jaw stare. Her gaze unnerved me, but there wasn’t the slightest hostility in it. Kim’s face was filled with wonder, as though I was a shower of fireworks exploding in a dark sky. “You can stay with us tonight, if you have no place to go. On the couch, I mean.” Gloria gave me her address. “After 7:30,” she said, “after I put the kids to bed.” That left a long time to kill. I stopped for gas. The line of cars snaked down the block. Newspaper headlines blaring about a gas shortage had panicked everyone. “You must be 168 Leslie Feinberg joking.” I complained to the attendant when I saw how much a tankful cost. “Don’t blame me,” he said. “Blame the Arabs. They got us by the balls.” “Oh, c’mon,” I told him, pointing to the river. “There’s tankers full of oil anchored out there just waiting for the prices to shoot sky high.” I knew—I’d tried to get the temp agency to send me out there to clean the ballast holds, but the agency said it was a man’s job. Once I got on I-190 headed north I really opened up the throttle, hearing everything I was feeling in the engine’s growl. Late in the afternoon I headed back to the city. I stopped at a West Side pizzeria for chicken wings. I stood at the counter growing impatient, but the man behind it wouldn’t wait on me. I turned around to see what he was looking at. I saw a table filled with jocks staring at me. I rapped on the counter. “Excuse me.” “What do we have here?” I heard a man’s voice behind me say. It was time to leave. One of the guys blocked the only exit. I pushed past him real hard and ran outside to the parking lot. I jumped on my bike, but it was too late. They were almost on top of me. My bike toppled as I leaped

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  When Theresa looked up I saw tears in her eyes. She pulled my head down and kissed me all over my face. “I love you too, Jess,” she whispered in my ear. Theresa and I both heard the commotion outside the bar at once. She put down her beer bottle and ran outside. I grabbed our bottles in case we needed to break them to use as weapons. We both stopped dead in our tracks outside. Justine was on her knees. A cop stood over her. His club hung loosely at his side. I saw the blood streaming down the side of Justine’s face. It was a sultry hot evening in July. A number of people had drifted outside the bar in order to drink their beers. Two cop cars were parked in front of the bar. Four cops faced us. “Get inside, all of you,” one of the cops barked. None of us moved. The cop standing over Justine grabbed a handful of her hair. “On your feet,’ he ordered. She stumbled as she tried to rise and fell back onto the concrete. Theresa slipped off her high heels. “Take your hands off her,” Theresa told the cop. Her voice was low and calm. “Leave her alone.” Theresa walked slowly toward the cop with the high heels at her sides. I held my breath. Georgetta took off both her stilettos and held one in each hand. She walked over to Theresa. They exchanged a look I couldn’t see and stood side by side. The cop put his hand on his gun butt. Somehow we all knew instinctively that none of the butches should move. Stone Butch Blues 139 I heard Peaches’ voice. “What’s goin’ on out here?” We glanced at each other. “Uh-oh,” she said. Theresa’s voice was low like a moan. “Leave her alone.” She and Georgetta inched forward until they flanked Justine. Theresa’s arm draped across Justine’s hunched shoulders. Justine grabbed Theresa and Georgetta’s arms and pulled herself to her feet. When Justine wobbled, Theresa wrapped one arm around her waist to steady her. The cop unholstered his gun. “You fucking slut,” he sputtered at Theresa. “You fucking perverts,” he shouted at all of us. Another cop pulled on his arm. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” Slowly, the four cops retreated. I exhaled as the cops drove away. Theresa and Georgetta held Justine in their arms as she cried. I started to rush to Theresa but Peaches wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Give ’em a minute, honey.” She advised. We formed a larger circle around them. Theresa turned and fell into my arms. I could feel her body trembling. “Oh god, are you OK?” I whispered into her hait. She buried her face in my neck. “I’m not sure yet. Pll let you know in a few minutes.” “T thought he was gonna shoot you,” I told her. 140 = Leslie Feinberg Theresa nodded. “I was so scared, Jess.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Another nurse laid me down gently. A gale wind blew behind my eyes. Doctors and nurses bent overt the table and peered at me. I wondered what they saw. The ceiling began to move. I was being wheeled somewhere. I remember opening my eyes and watching a doctor sewing my mouth. I wanted to struggle but I lay still. My head ached. When I opened my eyes again there was only a nurse in the room, writing on a clipboard. I tried to sit up. She came over and steadied me. “Take it easy,” she whispered. She read the fear in my eyes. “Do you know where you are?” she asked. I nodded. “You've been in and out since you got here. Your jaw is broken. You’re going to be drinking a lot of milkshakes for the next couple of months. We’re going to bandage your head wound. You have a concussion. The doctor’s waiting for the x-rays to come down. He may want you to stay overnight for observation.” My face and head felt huge and bloated. There was kindness in her smile. “One of the police officers will help you fill out a crime report.” My eyes widened in fear. “It’s required by law,’ she said. “You just lie there, now. Don’t try to get up. Pll be back in a while.” I stood up as soon as she left. The room rotated around the axis of my feet. I had trouble focusing my eyes. My head wasn’t working right. Stone Butch Blues 283 Soon they would find out I didn’t have insurance. Momentarily a cop would arrive. Every bit of information I gave him would be a lie. I was still a gender outlaw—any encounter with the police might end up with me in their custody. I panicked. It was time to escape. I checked my wallet. I had more than enough for a cab ride home. The emergency room was so chaotic no one noticed me leave. The icy blast of wind outside felt good against my swollen face, but it made my scalp ache. I stumbled to the corner of 14" Street and hailed a cab. The driver turned around in his seat. “Where to, pal?” I couldn’t answer. He frowned. “Where to, mister?” My hands moved in frustration. “You drunk or something?” Ruth. I wanted to get to Ruth. I grimaced so he could see my gums were wited. “Holy shit,” he said. I mimed writing. He handed me a pad and I wrote down my address. He watched me in the rearview mirror as he drove. “What happened?” I shrugged. “Oh, yeah. You can’t talk. I forgot.” He pulled up in front of my building. “That'll be $3.40,” he told me. I gave him a five and waved for him to keep it.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Nothing happened when I stopped taking hormones. For months I got up every morning and raced to the mirror, breathless with anticipation. Nothing changed. It was sort of anticlimactic. It took many hours of electrolysis before I began to feel the softness of my cheeks again. One morning I got up and found menstrual blood on my BVDs. I threw them out rather than risk anyone at the laundry seeing the apparent contradiction. But the real motion was taking place inside of me. I had to be honest with myself, it was as urgent as breathing. When I sat alone and asked what it was I really wanted, the answer was change. I didn’t regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn’t have survived much longer without passing, And the surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes. Yet I was so afraid to come out and face the world again. I wondered why I had to choose the opening years of the Reagan administration and the rise of the Moral Majority to demand the right to be myself. Would they arm villagers with torches and stakes and stalk me through the countryside? Would I stand alone, handcuffed in a precinct cell, with no one to turn to if I survived the nightmare? But then I acknowledged that no matter who had been in the White House, it had always been hard to be me. Stone Butch Blues 243 Between a rock and a hard place—something told me this lifetime wasn’t going to get any easier. I'd already been through a lot though, and it didn’t seem to me it could get much worse. Once again I couldn’t see the road ahead. I was still steering my own course through uncharted waters, relying on constellations that were not fixed. I wished there was someone, somewhere I could ask: What should I do? But no such person existed in my world. I was the only expert on living my own life, the only person I could turn to for answers. I knew I was changing when people began to gawk at me again. It had taken a year. My hips strained the seams of men’s pants. My beard grew wispy and fine from electrolysis. My face looked softer. Once my voice was hormone-lowered, however, it stayed there. And my chest was still flat. My body was blending gender characteristics, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Fever consumed me. Sidewalks rolled under my feet. Buildings curved over me and blocked the sky. Wind tore at my clothing. I made it to my apartment by leaning against the flimsy banister and resting on each landing, My sleeping bag and pillow looked inviting. The room was dark. For the first time in weeks I was warm enough. Too warm, really. As I lay down to sleep I thought I saw a bat-like demon flying back and forth above me, filling the room with the hum of beating wings. I fell asleep to escape my terror. When I awoke I saw Theresa sitting next to me. My pillow was soaking wet. Her hand felt cool on my cheek. I'd 254 = Leslie Feinberg almost forgotten her smile was a gift. “Theresa,” I whispered, “I love you so much. I miss you, honey. Please take me back.” She silenced me with her hand. Jess, you have to go to the hospital. I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m too sick to protect myself.” She soothed me with her fingertips. I¢5 “me nou, sweetheart. You can do it. 1 know you can. “Theresa, I’m so scated.” She nodded as she ran her fingers through my hair. I know, Jess. I know. I shook my head. “I don’t just mean the hospital. I don’t know how to live my life anymore. I’m afraid.” She nodded. You're doing it, Jess. Just hang on. I tried to get up on one elbow, but I sank back down. “I’m so alone, Theresa. I don’t belong anywhere. I don’t even know if I still exist.” Theresa wiped the tears from my eyes. I took her hand in mine. “Please, Theresa, stay with me. Please don’t go. Tm so scared.” I'm right here, baby, she reassured me. Ive abvays been here with you. I rolled down a hill toward unconsciousness. “But you're fading,” I whispered. I strained to walk against a bitter wind. I couldn’t make it to the hospital. My legs wouldn’t carry me much further, and I felt too weak to submit to an examination. Theresa had overestimated my strength—physically and emotionally. I coughed so violently I was afraid my ribs might crack. The sound of a distant siren seemed to bend like taffy. City lights shimmered. I walked aimlessly through the streets of the Lower East Side, unsure how to get back to my apartment. “C&D,” a young man whispered as I passed. “What you looking for?” I shook my head. “I don’t know.” His eyes lit up. “What you need?” I coughed and coughed, until the street lights spun around me. “Man,” he said, “you’re sick, huh?” “It was just a sore throat, but now I can’t stop coughing,” “How much money you got” he asked. I shrugged. “You got twenty dollars?” I nodded. “Wait here,” he told me.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as SanctuaryThe night she chased me in the Dream House and I locked myself in the bathroom, I remember sitting with my back against the wall, pleading with the universe that she wouldn’t have the tools or know-how to take the doorknob out of the door. Her technical incompetence was my luck, and my luck was that I could sit there, watching the door test its hinges with every blow. I could sit there on the floor and cry and say anything I liked because in that moment it was my own little space, even though after that it would never be mine again. For the rest of my time in the Dream House, my body would charge with alarm every time I stepped into that bathroom; but in that moment, I was the closest thing I could be to safe. When Debra Reid was eventually released on parole, she had to stay in prison longer than she needed to because securing housing was a condition of her release and she was having difficulty doing so. She told an interviewer, “I just want to get an apartment and turn my own little doorknob and use my own bathroom and eat my own food.” I can’t get Debra or her doorknob out of my mind. I hope she got what she needed. Dream House as Double CrossThis, maybe, was the worst part: the whole world was out to kill you both. Your bodies have always been abject. You were dropped from the boat of the world, climbed onto a piece of driftwood together, and after a perfunctory period of pleasure and safety, she tried to drown you. And so you aren’t just mad, or heartbroken: you grieve from the betrayal. Dream House as Unreliable NarratorWhen I was a child, my parents—and then, learning from their example, my siblings—loved to refer to me as “melodramatic,” or, worse, a “drama queen.” Both expressions confused and then rankled me. I felt things deeply, and often the profound unfairness of the world triggered a furious, poetic response from me, but while that was cute when I was a toddler, neither thing—feeling, responding to feeling—aged well. Ferocity did not become me. Later, retelling stories about this dynamic to my wife, my therapist, the occasional friend, filled me with incandescent rage. “Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?” I would yell. I want to reclaim these words—after all, melodrama comes from melos, which means “music,” “honey”; a drama queen is, nonetheless, a queen—but they are still hot to the touch. This is what I keep returning to: how people decide who is or is not an unreliable narrator. And after that decision has been made, what do we do with people who attempt to construct their own vision of justice?

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

  õ Ferdinand and Isabella saw themselves as loyal warriors for Roman Catholicism. And under them, Catholicism in Spain developed some fairly distinctive features. Here are two of the most important: ✳ The Spanish church was militant. Spanish Catholicism in this period was forged in battle against Jews and Muslims. And Spanish Catholics lived in constant suspicion of other cultures, looking for false converts everywhere. From the perspective of the missionaries and soldiers who carried Spanish Catholicism around the world, serving the Spanish crown was the best way to serve the Lord. Conquest and conversion went hand in hand. ✳ The Spanish church served the king and queen first, and the pope second. The Spanish monarchs bullied the Vatican into many concessions. They gained the right to appoint all the clergy, to collect church donations called tithes, and basically to act as mini- pope within Spain. BRINGING CHRISTIANITY TO THE NEW WORLD õ The Spanish conquistador Hernán de Cortés arrived in Mexico and began war against the Aztecs in 1519. In the decades that followed, Spain conquered—at least in theory—a huge swath of territory that included a lot of North America south of what is now Canada and west of the Mississippi; all of present-day Mexico; most of Central America; various islands in the Caribbean, Atlantic, and Pacific, including the Philippines; and the whole western half of South America. õ The Spanish had three goals: to expand their empire, to gain profits from natural resources, and to win converts for Catholicism. At this time, the church’s missionary force was comprised of men who had given up the idea of marriage and a normal civilian life to take holy orders. 52 The History of Christianity II õ Most were members of relatively new religious orders that were different from our stereotype of a Catholic monk. While most monks withdraw from the world and stay cloistered inside a monastery, praying, worshipping, and fasting, these missionaries were either friars or Jesuits. ✳ Friars are mendicants, meaning they rely on gifts from others. They are called to live out their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in active service to a community. ✳ Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, which was founded in 1540, later than the Franciscan and Dominican orders. They are supposed to be ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice, and they report directly to the pope. Lecture 6—The Church Militant in the Spanish Empire 53

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

  õ In John’s vision, this all culminates in the battle of Armageddon, when Jesus and the saints finally defeat these evil powers. They also defeat Satan, and an angel casts him down into a pit for 1,000 years. This is a period of time known as the millennium. The millennium is said to be a time of perfect peace, a time when God’s kingdom will be fully realized on earth. õ After 1,000 years Satan is released from the pit, and he immediately tries to marshal a final battle against the righteous. But God rains down fire on Satan and his evil forces, winning the battle. After this last showdown, the final judgment comes. The righteous will glorify God forever in heaven, while the wicked will be condemned to hell. INTERPRETATION õ Christians have had a hard time agreeing on exactly how to interpret the parts of the Bible that may speak to the end times. Over the centuries, Christians have fallen into three broad schools of thought regarding when Christ will return and how. They are called amillennialist, postmillennialist, and premillennialist Christians. ✳ Amillennialists do not read Revelation’s passage about the binding of Satan and Christ’s 1,000-year earthly reign as a literal prediction. They read it as a metaphor. Amillennialists believe that Christ will not literally rule on earth. Instead, they believe that Jesus is already reigning from heaven at the right hand of God. Today, this view is the accepted doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. ✳ Postmillenialism became more prominent among Protestants through the mid-19th century. The term postmillenialism refers to when these Christians think Christ will return: They believe Christ will return after the millennium, the 1,000-year earthly reign of the saints. Postmillennialists are generally optimistic about the course of human history; despite all the sin, they believe that things are getting better and better. Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond 233 ✳ Likewise, premillennialism refers to when these Christians think Christ will return: They believe Christ will come the millennium— in the flesh—to establish his 1,000-year reign with the saints, his followers, on earth. This means that until Jesus returns to begin his rule, human affairs will descend lower and lower into sin and despair. õ In the 19th century, premillennialism began to gain more influence in America. A few charismatic leaders shaped the way that many American evangelicals—and many Protestants around the world—still think about the end times today. õ One of the great figures in the history of American apocalyptic thought was William Miller. As a young man he wasn’t very religious at all, but in his 30s, he had a conversion experience. 234 The History of Christianity II

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Being so well read and cultivated, she was the delight of the artists and writers in town, and the Romans began to warm up to her. Within a few years, however, everything unraveled. Her husband instigated a feud with one of the leading families in Italy, the Colonnas. Then in 1484 the pope suddenly died, and without his protection Caterina and her husband were in grave danger. The Colonnas were plotting their revenge. The Romans hated Girolamo. And it was almost a certainty that the new pope would be a friend of the Colonnas, in which case Caterina and her husband would lose everything, including the towns of Forlì and Imola. Considering the weak position of her own family in Milan, the situation began to look desperate. Until a new pope was elected, Girolamo was still the captain of the papal armies, now stationed just outside Rome. For days Caterina watched her husband, who was paralyzed with fear and unable to make a decision. He dared not enter Rome, fearing battle with the Colonnas and their many allies in the crowded streets. He would wait it out, but with time their options seemed to narrow, and the news kept getting worse—mobs had sacked the palace they lived in; what few allies they had in Rome had now deserted them; the cardinals were congregating to elect the new pope. It was August and the sweltering heat made Caterina—seven months pregnant with her fourth child—feel faint and continually nauseated. But as she contemplated the impending doom, the thought of her father began to occupy her mind; it was as if she could feel his spirit inhabiting her. Thinking as he would think about the predicament she faced, she felt a rush of excitement as she formulated an audacious plan. Without telling a soul of her intentions, in the dark of night she mounted a horse and snuck out of camp, riding as fast as she could to Rome. As she had expected, in her condition no one recognized her and she was allowed to enter the city. She headed straight for the Castel Sant’Angelo, the most strategic point in Rome—just across the Tiber River from the city center and close to the Vatican. With its impregnable walls and its cannons that could be aimed at all parts of Rome, the person who controlled the castle controlled the city. Rome was in tumult, mobs filling the streets everywhere. The castle was still held by a lieutenant loyal to Girolamo. Identifying herself, Caterina was let into Sant’Angelo. Once inside, in the name of her husband she took possession of the castle, throwing out the lieutenant, whom she did not trust. Sending word out through the castle to soldiers who swore loyalty to her, she managed to smuggle in more troops.

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

  A sound now of dribbling. A liquid warmth slides down the hem of her black trousers. The acrid smell of ammonia. Lan pisses herself in front of the two boys—and holds the girl tighter. Around her feet a circle of wet heat. The brain of the macaque monkey is the closest, of any mammal, to a human’s. The raindrops darken as they slide down the blond soldier’s dirt-baked cheeks before collecting, like ellipses, along his jaw. — “Yoo Et Aye numbuh won,” she says, urine still dripping down her ankles. Then again, louder. “Yoo Et Aye numbuh won. “No bang bang.” She raises her free hand to the sky, as if to let someone pull her right up to it. “No bang bang. Yoo Et Aye numbuh won.” A tic in the boy’s left eye. A green leaf falling into a green pond. He stares at the girl, her too-pink skin. The girl whose name is Hong, or Rose. Because why not another flower? Hong—a syllable the mouth must swallow whole at once. Lily and Rose, side by side on this breath-white road. A mother holding a daughter. A rose growing out of the stem of a lily. He takes note of Rose’s hair, its errant cinnamon tint fringed blond around the temples. Seeing the soldier’s eyes on her daughter, Lan pushes the girl’s face to her chest, shielding her. The boy watches this child, the whiteness showing from her yellow body. He could be her father, he thinks, realizes. Someone he knows could be her father—his sergeant, squad leader, platoon partner, Michael, George, Thomas, Raymond, Jackson. He considers them, rifle gripped tight, his eyes on the girl with American blood before the American gun. “No bang bang . . . Yoo Et Aye . . . ,” Lan whispers now. “Yoo Et Aye . . .” Macaques are capable of self-doubt and introspection, traits once thought attributable only to humans. Some species have displayed behavior indicating the use of judgment, creativity, even language. They are able to recall past images and apply them to current problem solving. In other words, macaques employ memory in order to survive. — The men will eat until the animal is empty, the monkey slowing as they spoon, its limbs heavy and listless. When nothing’s left, when all of its memories dissolve into the men’s bloodstreams, the monkey dies. Another bottle will be opened. Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold. It is a beautiful country because you are still breathing. Yoo Et Aye numbuh won. Hands up. Don’t shoot. Yoo Et Aye numbuh won. Hands up. No bang bang.

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

  õ In the millet system, each religious minority religious community was a millet. The Jews were recognized as one millet and the Orthodox Christians were recognized as another millet. Each millet had a lot of autonomy in handling administration and settling internal disputes. õ In return for a modest amount of self-government, the patriarch had to ensure that Christians obeyed the law. The sultan continued many of the old taxes and restrictions practiced by earlier Muslim rulers and imposed a host of new rules meant to keep Christians in their place. õ One of the first things Mehmed did was confiscate the magnificent Hagia Sophia church and turn it into a mosque. Christian worship could only happen quietly, behind closed doors. So even if the patriarch acquired quite a bit of power, life for ordinary Christians became more difficult. õ Other legal restrictions included that Christians couldn’t use Muslim- style saddles, or engrave Arabic on their signet rings, or sell wine. They couldn’t wear crosses or carry icons or any other kind of Christian symbol in public. õ Perhaps the harshest penalty on Christians was this: The sultan had the right to seize Christian children at any time if he decided he needed more soldiers or servants in his court. In European territories of the empire like Bulgaria, families had to turn over a certain number of their male children to the state. Unlucky children ended up as slaves; luckier ones turned into court scholars or the sultan’s special bodyguards, called the Janissaries. õ The idea was to create a private army of foreigners who would be highly skilled but docile, with no political power. These boy-soldiers were circumcised, housed with Turkish families, and forced to convert to Islam, at least outwardly. Christians called this policy of stealing children the boy tribute or the blood tax, and it went on until the late 17th century. 106 The History of Christianity II õ Recently, historians have argued that everyday life was often different from legal theory; that despite anti-Christian prejudice and this oppressive edifice of legal restrictions, in many cases Muslims and Christians mingled pretty freely in their neighborhoods, buying and selling goods at market, and even seeking common justice in the Islamic courts. õ Ottoman rulers were often pragmatists who never would have been able to hold onto a vast and diverse empire for centuries if they hadn’t allowed non-Muslim subjects some breathing room. At the same time, it wasn’t for nothing that the sultan also took the title of caliph—that is, he claimed to be the head of the Muslim world, supreme in both religious and worldly power. õ He drew much of his authority from Islam. Islam could provide a framework for relative tolerance when the sultan and his Muslim subjects were feeling confident about the state of the empire, and it could encourage persecution and oppression when they were feeling nervous and insecure. Lecture 11—Christians under Muslim Rule 107

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

  understand the second key piece of the Quiet Revolution: the rise of a secular form of Quebec nationalism to replace the ardent Catholic nationalism that had previously defined French Canada. õ In the 1960s, a powerful and sometimes violent strain of nationalism arose in Quebec, an ideology that promised empowerment, that proclaimed that only native-born French speakers were “real Quebeckers” and that English speakers were agents of a foreign imperialist power. õ Between 1963 and 1970, the radical terrorist group Front de Libération du Québec regularly bombed government offices, mailboxes, railroads, and other targets, mainly targeting wealthy English-speaking communities. English-speaking Canadians began to flee Quebec in droves. This nationalist ardor inspired separatist political parties that still campaign today on the promise to work for Quebec’s independence from Canada. õ Since the Quiet Revolution, Quebec has come to adopt secularism as public policy. Specifically, Quebec has adopted the French ideology of church and state, laïcité, which strives to virtually banish the trappings of religion from public spaces and keep public policy free of religious ideas. õ Critics have suggested that when advocates of laïcité campaign to ban, for example, Muslim women who work in Quebec government offices from wearing a headscarf, it’s not just about religion. To critics, laïcité has fused with French-Canadian nationalism into a fiercely xenophobic attitude toward immigrants. õ The Quiet Revolution is a story that is particular to Quebec. But it points to some broader features in the history of secularization. In Quebec, the Catholic Church simply was not up to the challenges of the 20th century. 288 The History of Christianity II STRIPPING THE PUBLIC SQUARE õ From the 1960s onward, across Western Europe, most Brits, Danes, West Germans, and others still baptized their babies, got married in church, and wanted a church burial, but these rituals seemed to hold cultural rather than theological power. õ In the United States, church attendance rates were more buoyant, but a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s prohibited public school officials from requiring Bible reading or prayer in the classroom. Traditional Christian teachings about the subservient role of women in church and at home began to lose their hold. Practices outlawed by traditional Christianity, like abortion and homosexual activity, gained more social acceptance. Lecture 29—Secularism and the Death of God 289