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 Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The next day, in a bookstore, I drew the now powerless picture out of my wallet and—I was careful with it, for it deserved respect—inserted it between the leaves of a book titled Peace of Mind, where perhaps some other embattled soul might find it and make better use of it. Although the idea of dying had long filled me with dread, I came to prefer the raw dread to some belief whose chief appeal lay in its very absurdity. I have always hated the impregnable declaration, “I believe because it is absurd.” Yet, as a therapist, I keep such sentiments to myself: I know that religious faith is a powerful source of comfort and never to tamper with a belief if I have no better replacement. My agnosticism has rarely wavered. Oh, perhaps a few times in school during morning prayer, I would feel queasy at the sight of all my teachers and classmates, heads bowed, whispering to the patriarch above the clouds. Has everyone but me gone mad? I wondered. And then there were those newspaper photos of the beloved Franklin Delano Roosevelt attending church every Sunday—those gave me pause: FDR’s beliefs had to be taken very seriously. But what of Paula’s views? What of her letter to her son, of her belief in a purpose awaiting us that we cannot anticipate? Freud would have been amused at Paula’s metaphor—and in the religious arena, I have always agreed with him entirely. “Wish fulfillment, pure and simple,” he would have said. “We wish to be, we dread nonbeing, and we invent pleasant fairy tales in which all our wishes come true. The unknown purpose awaiting us, the enduring soul, Heaven, immortality, God, reincarnation—all illusions, all sweeteners to cut the bitters of mortality.” Paula always responded gently to my skepticism and softly reminded me that though I thought her beliefs were implausible, they were impervious to disproof. Despite my doubts, I liked Paula’s metaphors and listened to her preachifying with more tolerance than I had ever listened to anyone before. Perhaps it was simply barter, I trading a small corner of my skepticism for a closer snuggle with Paula’s grace. At times I even heard myself mouthing little phrases such as: “Who knows?” “Where, after all, does certainty lie?” “Can we ever really know?” I envied her son. Did he realize how blessed he was? How I longed to be the son of such a mother. Around this time I attended the funeral service of a friend’s mother in which the priest offered a story of consolation. He described a congregation of people on a shore who sadly wave good-bye as a ship sails away. The ship diminishes in size until only the tip of its mast is visible. When that too vanishes, the onlookers murmur, “She’s gone.”

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. in Matt. 28) Shewing His humility, and thus teaching us many lessons of wisdom. But not yet did the disciples who remained about Him know His glory; they thought indeed that if He arose He could command the winds, but could by no means do so reposing or asleep. And therefore there follows, And they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? THEOPHYLACT. But He arising, rebukes first the wind, which was raising the tempest of the sea, and causing the waves to swell, and this is expressed in what follows, And he arose, and rebuked the wind; then He commands the sea; wherefore it goes on, And he said to the sea, Peace, be still. GLOSS. (non occ.) For from the troubling of the sea there arises a certain sound, which appears to be its voice threatening danger, and therefore, by a sort of metaphor, He fitly commands tranquillity by a word signifying silence: just as in the restraining of the winds, which trouble the sea with their violence, He uses a rebuke. For men who are in power are accustomed to curb those, who rudely disturb the peace of mankind, by threatening to punish them; by this, therefore, we are given to understand, that, as a king can repress violent men by threats, and by his edicts sooth the murmurs of his people, so Christ, the King of all creatures, by His threats restrained the violence of the winds, and compelled the sea to be silent. And immediately the effect followed, for it continues, And the wind ceased, which He had threatened, and there arose a great calm, that is, in the sea, to which He had commanded silence. THEOPHYLACT. He rebuked His disciples, for not having faith; for it goes on, And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have not faith? For if they had had faith, they would have believed that even when sleeping, He could preserve them safe. There follows, And they feared with a great fear, and said one to another, &c. For they were in doubt about Him, for since He stilled the sea, not with a rod like Moses, nor with prayers as Elisha at the Jordan, nor with the ark as Joshua, the son of Nun, on this account they thought Him truly God, but since He was asleep, they thought Him a man.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: Fear is nowise in the concupiscible: for it regards evil, not absolutely, but as difficult or arduous, so as to be almost unavoidable. But since the irascible passions arise from the passions of the concupiscible faculty, and terminate therein, as stated above ([1367]Q[25], A[1]); hence it is that what belongs to the concupiscible is ascribed to fear. For fear is called sorrow, in so far as the object of fear causes sorrow when present: wherefore the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5) that fear arises “from the representation of a future evil which is either corruptive or painful.” In like manner desire is ascribed by Damascene to fear, because just as hope arises from the desire of good, so fear arises from avoidance of evil; while avoidance of evil arises from the desire of good, as is evident from what has been said above ([1368]Q[25], A[2];[1369] Q[29], A[2];[1370] Q[36], A[2]). Whether there is a natural fear?Objection 1: It would seem that there is a natural fear. For Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 23) that “there is a natural fear, through the soul refusing to be severed from the body.” Objection 2: Further, fear arises from love, as stated above (A[2], ad 1). But there is a natural love, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv). Therefore there is also a natural fear. Objection 3: Further, fear is opposed to hope, as stated above ([1371]Q[40], A[4], ad 1). But there is a hope of nature, as is evident from Rom. 4:18, where it is said of Abraham that “against hope” of nature, “he believed in hope” of grace. Therefore there is also a fear of nature. On the contrary, That which is natural is common to things animate and inanimate. But fear is not in things inanimate. Therefore there is no natural fear. I answer that, A movement is said to be natural, because nature inclines thereto. Now this happens in two ways. First, so that it is entirely accomplished by nature, without any operation of the apprehensive faculty: thus to have an upward movement is natural to fire, and to grow is the natural movement of animals and plants. Secondly, a movement is said to be natural, if nature inclines thereto, though it be accomplished by the apprehensive faculty alone: since, as stated above ([1372]Q[10], A[1]), the movements of the cognitive and appetitive faculties are reducible to nature as to their first principle. In this way, even the acts of the apprehensive power, such as understanding, feeling, and remembering, as well as the movements of the animal appetite, are sometimes said to be natural.

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

  CLEMENT OF ALEXENDRIA. (Clem. Al. lib. ii. Pædag. c. 2.) Drunkenness is an excessive use of wine; crapula1 is the uneasiness, and nausea attendant on drunkenness, a Greek word so called from the motion of the head. And a little below. As then we must partake of food lest we suffer hunger, so also of drink lest we thirst, but with still greater care to avoid falling into excess. For the indulgence of wine is deceitful, and the soul when free from wine will be the wisest and best, but steeped in the fumes of wine is lost as in a cloud. BASIL. (in Reg. Brev. ad int. 88.) But carefulness, or the care of this life, although it seems to have nothing unlawful in it, nevertheless if it conduce not to religion, must be avoided. And the reason why He said this He shews by what comes next, And so that day come upon you unawares. THEOPHYLACT. For that day will not come when men are expecting it, but unlooked for and by stealth, taking as a snare those who are unwary. For as a snare shall it come upon all them that sit upon the face of the earth. But this we may diligently keep far from us. For that day will take those that sit on the face of the earth, as the unthinking and slothful. But as many as are prompt and active in the way of good, not sitting and loitering on the ground, but rising from it, saying to themselves, Rise up, begone, for here there is no rest for thee. To such that day is not as a perilous snare, but a day of rejoicing. EUSEBIUS. He taught them therefore to take heed unto the things we have just before mentioned, lest they fall into the indolence resulting therefrom. Hence it follows, Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all those things that shall come to pass. THEOPHYLACT. Namely, hunger, pestilence, and such like, which for a time only threaten the elect and others, and those things also which are hereafter the lot of the guilty for ever. For these we can in no wise escape, save by watching and prayer. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. l. ii. c. 77.) This is supposed to be that flight which Matthew mentions; which must not be in the winter or on the sabbath day. To the winter belong the cares of this life, which are mournful as the winter, but to the sabbath surfeiting and drunkenness, which drowns and buries the heart in carnal luxury and delight, since on that day the Jews are immersed in worldly pleasure, while they are lost to a spiritual sabbath.

• From Cleanness (2020)

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

• From Cleanness (2020)

  But for us it is always too late, she said. When N. gets his diploma he has to find a job, right away, a good job in England, if he doesn’t he has to come back here, and if he comes back here it will be very hard for him to leave again, do you understand, if he comes back here he will be trapped. I know you care about him, she said, settling back in her chair, I know your heart, and she hesitated, groping for the phrase, your heart is in the right place, but what you say isn’t true for us, please, you must help him see that. N. groaned when I repeated this to him the next morning at school. You see, he said, she won’t listen, it’s impossible to talk to her. It’s because she loves you, I said, it’s a way of loving you, and he sighed and looked away. Well, N. said at the restaurant table, lowering his hands before Z. interrupted him—Listen up, Gospodine , he said, you’re going to like this. N. smiled at me. No more law school, he said, I’m transferring, in the fall I’ll be doing literature. There was a cheer around the table, as several students said Chestito , congratulations, and all of us raised our glasses. But what about your mother, I asked after we drank, how did you convince her? N.’s smile widened. It was easy, he said, I just failed all my classes, and everyone laughed. I don’t approve of your methods, I said, though I was laughing too, and Z. raised his glass and said To whatever works, and we toasted again. We toasted on the street, too, after a fashion, lifting the carton to one another before we drank. This had been our plan, to leave the others after dinner and drink together, just the three of us, a prelude to more drinking at the club. We passed the carton as we walked the narrow streets, but the second or third time it made the circuit I handed it directly to Z. Hey, he said, trying to give it back to me, you can’t skip your turn. But I didn’t take it. I need to slow down, I said, I can’t drink as much as you. I was already feeling it, the wine from earlier and the vodka we were drinking too quickly now, I could feel the edges of myself softening, a kind of tingling, like a limb waking up. It was dangerous to drink so much; I didn’t have a sense of who I would be if I got really drunk, I had never let myself go like that, as men around me did in my childhood, it was another way I had always been unlike them. Gospodine , Z. said, his voice heavy with disappointment, come on now, and he shook the carton, still holding it out to me, don’t let us down. All right, I said, relenting.

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

  Whether those things are more feared, for which there is no remedy?Objection 1: It would seem that those things are not more to be feared, for which there is no remedy. Because it is a condition of fear, that there be some hope of safety, as stated above [1389](A[2]). But an evil that cannot be remedied leaves no hope of escape. Therefore such things are not feared at all. Objection 2: Further, there is no remedy for the evil of death: since, in the natural course of things, there is no return from death to life. And yet death is not the most feared of all things, as the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5). Therefore those things are not feared most, for which there is no remedy. Objection 3: Further, the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 6) that “a thing which lasts long is no better than that which lasts but one day: nor is that which lasts for ever any better than that which is not everlasting”: and the same applies to evil. But things that cannot be remedied seem to differ from other things, merely in the point of their lasting long or for ever. Consequently they are not therefore any worse or more to be feared. On the contrary, the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5) that “those things are most to be feared which when done wrong cannot be put right . . . or for which there is no help, or which are not easy.” I answer that, The object of fear is evil: consequently whatever tends to increase evil, conduces to the increase of fear. Now evil is increased not only in its species of evil, but also in respect of circumstances, as stated above ([1390]Q[18], A[3]). And of all the circumstances, longlastingness, or even everlastingness, seems to have the greatest bearing on the increase of evil. Because things that exist in time are measured, in a way, according to the duration of time: wherefore if it be an evil to suffer something for a certain length of time, we should reckon the evil doubled, if it be suffered for twice that length of time. And accordingly, to suffer the same thing for an infinite length of time, i.e. for ever, implies, so to speak, an infinite increase. Now those evils which, after they have come, cannot be remedied at all, or at least not easily, are considered as lasting for ever or for a long time: for which reason they inspire the greatest fear. Reply to Objection 1: Remedy for an evil is twofold. One, by which a future evil is warded off from coming. If such a remedy be removed, there is an end to hope and consequently to fear; wherefore we do not speak now of remedies of that kind. The other remedy is one by which an already present evil is removed: and of such a remedy we speak now.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Whatever happened I would be swept along with it, whether I wanted to be or not, what I wanted was irrelevant. In the light of the flare I saw a policewoman’s face, a young woman, hardly older than M.; behind the plastic visor her eyes flicked from right to left in fear. And then, just as I felt myself lean further forward, propelled not by any will of my own but by a larger will, ready to spring, from the very back of the crowd a man began to sing. Immediately other voices joined him, soon everyone was singing the national anthem, which is restrained and minor-key, as much mournful as celebratory, nothing like my own country’s anthem, and it was as if the crowd relaxed into it; the pressure that had built dissolved, the song caught it and dispersed it. The police relaxed too, leaning back again, the crowd began to move, the fear I had felt became relief and then, as we turned the corner, something like joy, which I saw reflected on M.’s face and on the other faces around me; everyone was smiling again, beneficent, a nation again, that was what I felt, an ideal nation. People kept singing for a block or two as we left the Party headquarters behind, turning right on the narrow street just past it, they cycled through two or three verses before the song faded away once we reached Stamboliyski Boulevard. We had returned to civilization, I thought, we were passing shops and restaurants, their lit interiors calling us back from what we had almost become, it was unimaginable now. At the intersection with Vitosha, the beautiful old church, Sveta Nedelya, sat brooding in the pool of its lights. Ostavka , people were still chanting, but it felt half-hearted now, a matter almost of form. That hasn’t happened before, M. said, meaning the moment at the Party headquarters, I was scared almost, she said, were you, and I admitted that I was, that for a minute I had thought things might get bad. But it’s good that we’re scared, she said. If we’re scared, that means they’re scared, too. She looked at me, her face bright in a streetlamp, then looked away. They need to be scared, she said, maybe that’s the whole point, they need to know they should be scared of us. We turned back onto Vitosha, where M. stopped and said goodbye, she would take the metro home. I guess I should do my homework, she said, squeezing my arm in farewell before deciding instead to give me a quick hug.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as the River Lethe Later that fall, she asks you to join her at the Harvard-Yale football game. It is a favorite tradition of hers, and she has flown there for the occasion, but she needs to be back in Indiana earlier than expected. “If you drive there, you can bring me back,” she says. You drive from Iowa to Connecticut to meet her. And so after a day of autumn temperatures and flask sips and people in furs and expensive bottles of champagne rolling around on the muddy ground like Budweiser cans, you sleep hard in an uncomfortable hotel bed. The next afternoon—after delays, and brunch with her friends, and more delays—you prepare to leave. She is a reckless driver—nothing has changed since that trip to Savannah—so you get behind the wheel of your car without asking. You pull away from New Haven alternating between the radio, conversation, and silence. You scoot down through Connecticut and New York. In Pennsylvania the light drops away early, and rain glosses the pavement. Somewhere in the middle of the endless, hilly length of this state, the one you’d grown up in, she interrupts herself midsentence. “Why won’t you let me drive?” she asks. Her voice is controlled, measured, like a dog whose tail has gone rigid; nothing is happening, but something is wrong. Dread gathers between your shoulder blades. “I’m okay driving,” you say. “You’re tired,” she says. “Too tired to drive.” “I’m not,” you say, and you aren’t. “You’re too tired, and you’re going to kill us,” she says. The timbre of her voice hasn’t changed. “You hate me. You want me to die.” “I don’t hate you,” you say. “I don’t want you to die.” “You hate me,” she says, her voice going up half an octave with every syllable. “You’re going to kill us and you don’t even care, you selfish bitch.” “I—” “You selfish bitch.” She begins to pound the dashboard. “You selfish bitch, you selfish bitch, you selfish—” You pull off at the next exit and park at a gas station. She throws open the passenger door even before the car stops moving and stalks around the parking lot like a teenage boy who is trying to cool down before he punches a wall. You sit in the driver’s seat, watching her pace. The urge to cry is present, but far off, as if you’re high. When she starts walking back toward the car, her eyes fixed on your face, you hastily unbuckle your seat belt and run to the passenger seat. You don’t want her to leave without you, and you’re not sure she won’t. Afterward, the drive is framed by the wet, dark mountains. You remember going through Pennsylvania around Christmas the year before and seeing eighteen-wheelers overturned on the side of these same roads, their engine blocks blackened by extinguished fires. And cars, too, on the highway’s shoulder, casually burning.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Déjà Vu She says she loves you, sometimes. She sees your qualities, and you should be ashamed of them. If only you were the only one for her. She’d keep you safe, she’d grow old with you, if she could trust you. You’re not sexy, but she will have sex with you. Sometimes when you look at your phone, she has sent you something stunningly cruel, and there is a kick of fear between your shoulder blades. Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like she’s determining the best way to take you apart. Dream House as Murder Mystery Lightning flashes, the power dies, and when the electricity comes back on again a dinner guest is folded over the dessert course with a dagger in her back. The handle of the blade is inlaid with precious gems, but her tiara is missing. When the undercover detective reveals herself—the plucky reporter, of course!—the mystery deepens: the cost of the gems in the handle of the knife far outweighs the value of the stolen tiara, whose diamonds were merely glass. Who among them would give up a tool of such immeasurable value to take something so worthless? And so boldly, in front of so many people? The plucky reporter paces on the Persian carpet in front of the suspects. Was it Heathcliff, the brawny dockworker turned mob boss? Ethan, the foppish social climber with eyes like the distant radiance of Mars? Samson, the experimental artist with a murky and enigmatic past? The reporter crosses dozens of times in front of a slight, blonde woman sitting in the corner, but never includes her on the list. The blonde woman is leaning back with flinty cool, following the action. She nods and listens, and every so often tilts her chin in the direction of the plucky reporter and lets loose a dazzling smile. The plucky reporter turns to Samson with a trembling, gloved finger. Samson stands to defend himself. Ethan begins shouting, Heathcliff glowers. And no one pays attention to the blonde woman, who stands and walks toward the corpse of the dinner guest. She grips the blade with both hands and pulls it out like King Arthur deflowering the stone. The body of the dinner guest, whose eyes are wide and wet with betrayal, lifts with the movement and then slams back down on the place setting, lemon cake squashed against her bosom. The blonde woman wipes the blood off the blade onto the dinner guest’s dress and replaces it in her purse. Everyone continues to argue as she walks out the front door and into the night. IV The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn’t that they’ll remember; it’s that you’ll remember. —Sarah Manguso

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  It is as if something has been cut loose. You roll off the couch, stand, and dart to the other side of the room. She vanishes into her bedroom and comes out again with your suitcase. With a tremendous yell, she hurls it across the room, where it crashes into the wall. She reaches down and grabs something—your very fancy ModCloth boot, the first pair of shoes you’ve ever spent that much money on—and throws it at you. It spins, misses. She throws the other one, and it also misses you but takes a framed picture off the wall, and later you will try to figure out if she never landed a throw because you were so quick to dodge them or because she couldn’t aim for shit, but you will never come to any conclusion. She reaches down to grab something else, and you find yourself delving into deep wells of childhood experience: playfully outrunning your little brother, who is determined to put something gross in your hair. The house is a circle, so you run away from her, toward the kitchen, and she follows you, like your brother would when he was seven, and you dart through the office and the hallway and then into the bathroom. You slam the door and lock it, and a millisecond later you jerk away from the knob when the whole door shakes, as if she’s hurled herself against it. She is still screaming. You back away toward the far wall and slide to the floor. It sounds like she is trying to break the door down. You are there for some time, but you don’t have your phone and can’t say how long, exactly. Eventually, the sounds stop. It is eerily silent. You stand and unlock the door. You come out trembling, crying. She is sitting on the couch, staring into nothingness like a doll. She turns and looks at you, her face slack. “What’s wrong?” she says. “Why do you look so upset?” On that night, the gun is set upon the mantlepiece. The metaphorical gun, of course. If there were a literal gun, you’d probably be dead. [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 30. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type E279.3, Ghost pulls bedclothing from sleeper.Dream House as Sniffs from the Ink of WomenNorman Mailer once said, “The sniffs I get from the ink of women are always,” among other things, “too dykily psychotic.” In other words, one woman writing is mad and a woman-who-loves-women writing is mad squared. Hysteria and inversion, compounded like interest; an eternally growing debt. Mailer’s use of the adverb dykily suggests that, for him, disinterest in his dick must be a species of psychosis.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  When you get to the airport, the security line is long, and the TSA agent confiscates your metal water bottle, which you have forgotten to empty. As you pull your heavy suitcase through the airport, you start to cry because of the water bottle, except it’s really not the water bottle, and a kindly employee with crimped hair—in 2012!—stops to ask if you’re all right. You feel terrible about thinking that thing about her hair; also you sort of want to hug her. And you want to cry and explain that the TSA agent stole your favorite water bottle because he wouldn’t let you drink its contents, because perhaps he believed that the bottle contained the liquid from a bomb and by drinking it you would turn into that same bomb, or probably he was just on a power trip because his face didn’t change when you begged him to let you keep what you already owned, and also you’re afraid you’re going to miss your flight because your girlfriend spent her time this morning putting on her face, an expression you’ve always found sort of funny and vaguely sexist but that now just strikes you as horrifyingly ominous, because it suggests that she has one face and needs to put on another, and you saw underneath it last night, when you were so afraid and cowering, and she was screaming, and you were hiding from her, hiding from the woman who once told you she loved you and wanted to have children with you and called you the most beautiful and sexy and brilliant woman she’d ever met, you had to hide from her in a bathroom with a lock on the door, and if your family found out they’d probably think it proved every idea they’ve ever had about lesbians, and you wish she was a man because then at least it could reinforce ideas people had about men, and how she probably wouldn’t understand but the last thing queer women need is bad fucking PR, and then you feel bad because for all you know this airline employee could be queer, she could understand. You collapse into your airplane seat with minutes to spare, the last person to board the plane. You are sweaty from running, and you are crying, and you keep sucking snot back up into your nose. Your seatmate is a businessman in a charcoal-gray suit who is definitely regretting not springing for first class, and he keeps looking over at you. And as the ground gets farther and farther away you swear to yourself that you’re going to tell someone how bad it is, you’re gonna stop pretending like none of these things are happening, but by the time the ground is coming toward you again you are already polishing your story.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He turned away from me again and took a deep breath. The point isn’t to make you feel sorry, he said more calmly, looking at the night and the wind that filled it, the point is that I’m not just scared, that’s not the only reason I don’t want to tell people what I am. If I was open, he said, looking at me, it would be like saying what he did to me was okay, it would be like accepting it. I don’t know if I was like this before, probably I was, probably he saw I was and thought I wanted it; and maybe I did want it, maybe that’s why I never said anything, maybe I let it happen because I wanted it. I don’t know, he said, that’s the problem, how can I know what I wanted then, before he did it, how can I know what’s me and what’s what he did to me? I know it’s stupid, but what if he made me this way, how can I be proud of it then, he said, how can I march in some fucking parade, maybe that’s fucked up but it’s what I feel. He stopped suddenly, as if he had just realized how loudly he was speaking; he looked around but no one was paying us any mind. Can we go now, he said, please, I don’t want to eat anymore. Yes, I said, of course, and I scanned the room for our server, catching her eye and making a little motion in the air to signal for our check. Was everything all right, she said when she brought it, gesturing to our half-eaten meals, and I said it was, thank you, we were just ready to go, and I gave her a too-large tip, not wanting to wait for my change. R. was already pulling on his coat, wrapping his scarf around his neck, bundling himself up as I rose. He was eager to get away from what he had said, I thought, and I worried it wasn’t only the place he was fleeing but me, too, that now I would show him an image of himself he hated. There was so much I wanted to say to him but he didn’t give me the chance, he had gotten up too quickly, and now he was moving away with his back to me; I would have had to call out to him as I rose from my seat, which of course I couldn’t do in the crowded restaurant, though I wanted to call or reach out to him, to catch him and draw him near. I followed as he made his way between the tables, and then he paused for me to join him before he shoved open the door.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  And she was the mother of two children ages eleven and fifteen, whom Garrido had both fathered. The convicted rapist had created a family he completely controlled. Dugard and her children lived in a makeshift compound accessible through a maze of tarps and sheds. “All of the sheds had electricity by cords, rudimentary outhouse and shower, as if you were camping,” said Fred Kollar, El Dorado County sheriff. 421 Jaycee Dugard’s formal education effectively ended at the time of her kidnapping. Dugard’s two daughters never attended school. A source close to the investigation told the press, “Some type of brainwashing clearly occurred.” Similar to the situation of Elizabeth Smart, Duggard seemed physically able to escape. “There were moments in the 18 years when she could have called attention to who she was. She hadn’t forgotten her real identity. In fact, she remembers a remarkable amount about her old life,” a source told the press. But like Elizabeth Smart and Patty Hearst, the same source attributed “mind games” as the cause of Dugard’s inaction and seeming inability to escape. “It sounds simplistic, but the real prison was her brain,” a source told reporters. 422 Phillip Garrido, like Brian Mitchell, had a female accomplice. Her name was Nancy Bocanegra, and she married Phillip Garrido in Leavenworth, Kansas, when he was still an inmate in prison. Garrido served eleven years for the kidnapping and rape of his previous victim. He was released in 1988. Nancy Garrido was with her husband when he kidnapped Jaycee Dugard, and she was criminally charged like Wanda Barzee, Mitchell’s accomplice. Nancy Garrido was also a certified nurse assistant, which probably explains how Phillip Garrido managed to deliver two babies and provide some level of medical care for Dugard and her children, without seeing doctors. 423 Garrido’s brother, Ron, described Nancy Garrido as “a robot.” He said in an interview, “She would do anything he asked her to...It’s no different from [Charles] Manson.” 424 Many who knew Phillip Garrido gave him the nickname “creepy Phil,” but examining psychologists found him to be “very coherent.” He owned a print shop, where Jaycee Dugard and her children worked. Customers described the mother and daughters as “polite” and “well mannered,” though one customer commented, “Obviously, there was some brainwashing going on.” Dugard went by the name “Alissa,” and her two children were called “Angel” and “Starlet.” “They were not dressed like average teenage girls. They were dressed very conservatively,” one print shop customer remarked. 425 Phillip Garrido later told police, “We raised them right. They don’t know anything bad about the world.” 426 Like Brian Mitchell, Garrido believed he was special and chosen by God. He was prone to rant about his religious beliefs and at times gave “impromptu sermons.” Garrido once blogged, “The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongues of angels.”

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

  I stared at the Beast in utter astonishment. What was I to do? Though my heart was hammering a loud warning of caution not to anger the Beast, I somehow managed to whisper, “No, Beast.” The Beast merely nodded bleakly, saying, “Very well, then,” in a tone that indicated he had expected my reply, and he abruptly left the hall. Relieved that I had not provoked the Beast with my refusal to his preposterous request, I too left the dining room to retire for the evening. Have I forgotten to describe my bedchamber? Do not think it is because the room was not worth mentioning, for it was, and continues to be, the most beautiful room I would find in this elegant castle. When first entering the chamber on the previous evening, I was too preoccupied to take much notice of my surroundings. On this night, however, I darted from one thing to the next, examining the wonderful array of objects that had been placed there for my pleasure, until at last my eyes beheld the extraordinary bed upon which I was to sleep. Along its towering posts it displayed, in great detail, the carved images of wild animals, spiraling along the edges and seemingly moving upward until, at the top, there sat a beautiful man with a crown. I knew not the meaning of the exquisite carvings that lanced that wooden frame, but gazed attentively at them nonetheless, for their beauty was not lost on me in spite of my humble upbringing. Beside the bed an enormous bouquet of no less than one hundred fragrant pink roses stood placidly in an oversize vase that had been set on the bedside table. And, upon my word, from that day forward I was never to enter my chamber of an evening without finding an equally remarkable display of freshly cut flowers beside the bed. The bedding was every bit as magnificent as everything else I had feasted my eyes on that day, and a shiver of pure delight ran through me as I slipped between the sumptuous silken sheets. It was such a pleasurable feeling that I was momentarily tempted to remove my nightdress. Instead, I ran my hand slowly across the bedding. My senses were rapidly becoming engulfed in exotic sensations amidst the influence of such luxury. I was startled out of my enchantment suddenly when there came a light rapping on the door of my chamber. “Who’s there?” I inquired, sitting up and clutching the silk sheets about my neck. “It is only I, your servant, the Beast,” came the gentle reply. His manner was as reassuring and appealing to me as his appearance was frightful. “Do come in,” I said, more at ease.

• From Post Office (1971)

  God o mighty, I thought, I wish he’d hurry up. My lunch is over two hours late now. Then the guide handed us all timecards. He showed us the timeclocks. “Now here is how you punch in.” He showed us how. Then he said, “Now, you punch in. “ Twelve and one half hours later we punched out. That was one hell of a swearing-in ceremony. 11After nine or ten hours people began getting sleepy and falling into their cases, catching themselves just in time. We were working the zoned mail. If a letter read zone 28 you stuck it to hole no. 28. It was simple. One big black guy leaped up and began swinging his arms to keep awake. He staggered about the floor. “God damn! I can’t stand it!” he said. And he was a big powerful brute. Using the same muscles over and over again was quite tiring. I ached all over. And at the end of the aisle stood a supervisor, another Stone, and he had this look on his face—they must practice it in front of mirrors, all the supervisors had this look on their faces—they looked at you as if you were a hunk of human shit. Yet they had come in through the same door. They had once been clerks or carriers. I couldn’t understand it. They were handpicked screws. You had to keep one foot on the floor at all times. One notch up on the restbar. What they called a “restbar” was a little round cushion set up on a stilt. No talking allowed. Two 10 minute breaks in eight hours. They wrote down the time when you left and the time when you came back. If you stayed 12 or 13 minutes, you heard about it. But the pay was better than at the art store. And, I thought, I might get used to it. I never got used to it. 12Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there 10 hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, “I want to tell you something. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuck in 23 minutes. That’s the production schedule. Now, just for fun, let’s see if each of us can meet the production schedule! Now, one, two, three … GO!” What the hell is this? I thought. I’m tired. Each tray was two feet long. But each tray held different amounts of letters. Some trays had two or three times as much mail in them as others, depending upon the size of the letters. Arms started flying. Fear of failure. I took my time. “When you finish your first tray, grab another! “ They really worked at it. Then they jumped up and grabbed another tray. The supervisor walked up behind me. “Now,” he said, pointing at me, “this man is making production. He’s halfway through his second tray!” It was my first tray.

• From Post Office (1971)

  7 “Chinaski! Take route 539!” The toughtest in the station. Apartment houses with boxes that had scrubbed- out names or no names at all, under tiny lightbulbs in dark halls. Old ladies standing in halls, up and down the streets, asking the same question as if they were one person with one voice: “Mailman, you got any mail for me?” And you felt like screaming, “Lady, how the hell do I know who you are or I am or anybody is?” The sweat dripping, the hangover, the impossibility of the schedule, and Jonstone back there in his red shirt, knowing it, enjoying it, pretending he was doing it to keep costs down. But everybody knew why he was doing it. Oh, what a fine man he was! The people. The people. And the dogs. Let me tell you about the dogs. It was one of those 100 degree days and I was running along, sweating, sick, delirious, hungover. I stopped at a small apartment house with the box downstairs along the front pavement. I popped it open with my key. There wasn’t a sound. Then I felt something jamming its way into my crotch. It moved way up there. I looked around and there was a German Shepherd, full-grown, with his nose halfway up my ass. With one snap of his jaws he could rip off my balls. I decided that those people were not going to get their mail that day, and maybe never get any mail again. Man, I mean he worked that nose in there. SNUFF! SNUFF! SNUFF! I put the mail back into the leather pouch, and then very slowly, very, I took a half step forward. The nose followed. I took another half step with the other foot. The nose followed. Then I took a slow, very slow full step. Then another. Then stood still. The nose was out. And he just stood there looking at me. Maybe he’d never smelled anything like it and didn’t quite know what to do. I walked quietly away.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “So what about you, yourself? Do you pretend to yourself that death will not come?” “No, I can’t really do that. Since in my work as a psychiatrist I talk to many people who are terribly troubled about life and death, I have to face the truth all the time.” “Let me ask you again, then”—Merges’s voice, now soft and weary, had lost all its menace—“how you stand it? How can you take pleasure from any part of life, any activity at all, with death looming ahead and only one life?” “I’d turn that question upside down, Merges. Perhaps death makes life more vital, more precious. The fact of death bestows a special poignancy, a bittersweet quality, to life’s activities. Yes, it may be true that living in the dream dimension confers immortality upon you, but your life seems to me to be soaked in ennui. When I asked you, a while back, to describe your life, you answered with the single phrase ‘I wait.’ Is that life? Is waiting living? You still have one life left, Merges. Why not live it to the fullest?” “I cannot! I cannot!” Merges said, bowing his head deeper. “The thought of no longer existing, of not being among the living, of life going on without me, is—is—simply too terrible.” “So the point of the curse is not perpetual revenge, is it? You use the curse to avoid coming to the end of your last life.” “It is simply too terrible to just end. To not be.” “I have learned in my work,” said Ernest reaching over and patting Merges’s great paw, “that those who most fear death are the ones who approach it with too much unlived life inside them. It’s best to use all of life. Leave death nothing but the dregs, nothing but a burned-out castle.” “No, no,” moaned Merges, shaking his head. “It is simply too terrible.” “Why so terrible? Let’s analyze it. Precisely what is so fearful about death? You’ve already experienced it more than once. You said that each time your life ended, there was a brief interval before the next life began.” “Yes, that’s right.” “What do you remember of those brief moments?” “Absolutely nothing.” “But isn’t that the point, Merges? Much of what you fear about death is how you imagine it might feel to be dead and yet to know that you can no longer be among the living. But when you’re dead, you have no consciousness. Death is the extinguishing of consciousness.” “Is that supposed to be reassuring?” Merges growled. “You asked me how I can stand it? That’s one of my answers. I’ve also always gotten comfort from the maxim of another philosopher, who lived a long, long time ago: ‘Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.’” “Is that any different from ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead’?” “A big difference. In death there is no ‘you.’ ‘You’ and ‘dead’ cannot coexist.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Especially anything that in some way diminishes me. From the very beginning I told you that because of our former social relationship and because of our mutual friends, Earl and Emily, I could not conceal myself from you. Yet you’ve never once expressed any interest in knowing anything about me. Don’t you think that odd?” “When I started seeing you, I was not going to take the risk of losing someone important to me again. I couldn’t go through that. So I had only two choices—” As she so often did, Irene stopped, as though I should be able to divine the rest of her statement. Although I didn’t want to prompt her, it was best, for now, to keep the flow going. “And those two choices were?” “Well, not to let you matter to me—but that was impossible. Or not to see you as a real person with a narrative.” “A narrative?” “Yes, a life narrative—proceeding from a beginning to an end. I want to keep you outside of time.” “Today, as usual, you walked into my office and straight to your chair, without looking at me. You always avoid my eyes. That what you mean by ‘outside of time’?” She nodded. “Looking at you would make you too real.” “And real people have to die.” “Now you’ve got it.” Lesson 3: Grief Rage “I just heard, Irene,” I began a session one afternoon, “that my brother-in-law died a few hours ago. Suddenly. A coronary. I’m obviously shaken and not at full strength”—I heard my voice quaver—“I’ll do my best to stay present with you.” It was hard to say, hard to do, but I felt I had no choice. Morton, the husband of my only sister, had been a dear friend and an important presence in my life since I was fifteen. I had been staggered by my sister’s midday call and immediately booked the next flight to Washington to join her. As I set about canceling my appointments for the next few days, I saw that I had one with Irene in two hours that would still leave me time to catch my flight. Should I keep that appointment? In our three years together, Irene had never come late for an appointment or missed one, not even during the time of horror when Jack’s tumor was ravaging his brain and persona. Despite the nightmare of witnessing her husband’s relentless deconstitution, Irene had throughout been faithful to our work. And I had been too. Since our first session, when I promised her, “I will see this through with you,” I had committed myself to engaging her as genuinely as I could. My choice, then, on this day of grief, seemed clear: I would meet with her, and I would be honest. But Irene didn’t respond. After we had sat together in silence a couple of minutes, I prodded: “Where do your thoughts go?” “I was wondering how old he was.” “Seventy.

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

  He picked at a hole in his grass-stained white Vans. His nail scraped at the leather in the sneaker, the hole widening. I hadn’t noticed, until then, the crickets chirping. The day dimmed around us. Trevor said, “I think it sucks to be the sun ’cause he’s on fire.” I heard what I thought was another cricket, a closer one. The throb, a thudded beating. But Trevor, still sitting, legs spread, had let his penis, soft and pink, hang out from the pant leg of his shorts, and was now pissing. The stream rattled on the slanted metal roof before falling off the side, dribbling onto the dirt below. “And I’m putting out the fire,” he said, his lips curled in concentration. I turned away, but kept seeing him, not Trevor, but the boy in Ohio, the one who will soon be found by the hour I had just passed through, unscathed. Together, with nothing to say, we spat, one by one, the grapefruit seeds stored in our cheeks. They fell on the tin roof in big fat drops and blued as the sun sank fully behind the trees. — One day, after overtime at the clock factory, the boy’s mother came home to a house littered with hundreds of toy soldiers, their curled plastic lives spread like debris across the kitchen tiles. The boy usually knew to clean up before she came home. But this day he was lost in the story he made of their bodies. The men were in the midst of saving a six-inch Mickey Mouse trapped in a prison made of black VHS tapes. When the door opened, the boy leapt to his feet but it was too late. Before he could make out his mother’s face, the backhand blasted the side of his head, followed by another, then more. A rain of it. A storm of mother. The boy’s grandmother, hearing the screams, rushed in and, as if by instinct, knelt on all fours over the boy, making a small and feeble house with her frame. Inside it, the boy curled into his clothes and waited for his mother to calm. Through his grandmother’s trembling arms, he noticed the videocassettes had toppled over. Mickey Mouse was free. — A few days after the shed roof, the grapefruit, I found myself sitting shotgun in Trevor’s truck. He fished the Black & Mild from the chest pocket of his T-shirt, laid it gently across his kneecaps. Then he grabbed the box cutter from his other pocket and cut a lengthwise slit along the cigarillo before emptying its contents out the window. “Open the glove,” he said. “Yeah. No, under the insurance. Yeah, right there.”