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 Delta of Venus (1977)

  “I looked out of the window most of the time, not at the man sketching. After a while I did not hear the pencil working any longer and I turned slightly towards him, not wanting to lose the pose. He was sitting there behind his drawing board staring at me. Then I realized that he had his penis out and that he was in a kind of trance. “Thinking this would mean trouble for me since we were alone in the office, I started to go behind the screen and dress. “He said, ‘Don’t go. I won’t touch you. I just love to see women in lovely underwear. I won’t move from here. And if you want me to pay you more, all you have to do is wear my favorite piece of underwear and pose for fifteen minutes. I will give you five dollars more. You can reach for it yourself. It is right above your head on the shelf there.’ “Well, I did reach for the package. It was the loveliest piece of underwear you ever saw—the finest black lace, like a spider web really, and the panties were slit back and front, slit and edged with fine lace. The brassiere was cut in such a way as to expose the nipples through triangles. I hesitated because I was wondering if this would not excite the man too much, if he would attack me. “He said, ‘Don’t worry. I don’t really like women. I never touch them. I like only underwear. I just like to see women in lovely underwear. If I tried to touch you I would immediately become impotent. I won’t move from here.’ “He put aside the drawing board and sat there with his penis out. Now and then it shook. But he did not move from his chair. “I decided to put on the underwear. The five dollars tempted me. He was not very strong and I felt that I could defend myself. So I stood there in the slit panties, turning around for him to see me on all sides. “Then he said, ‘That’s enough.’ He seemed unsettled and his face was congested. He told me to dress quickly and leave. He handed me the money in a great hurry, and I left. I had a feeling that he was only waiting for me to leave to masturbate. “I have known men like this, who steal a shoe from someone, from an attractive woman, so they can hold it and masturbate while looking at it.” EVERYONE was laughing at her story. “I think,” said Brown, “that when we are children we are much more inclined to be fetishists of one kind or another. I remember hiding inside of my mother’s closet and feeling ecstasy at smelling her clothes and feeling them. Even today I cannot resist a woman who is wearing a veil or tulle or feathers, because it awakens the strange feelings I had in that closet.”

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  The man who came in was almost grotesque in appearance. He was short and stout, with a head too big for his body, features like an overgrown child’s, too soft and hazy and tender for his age and bulk. He walked very swiftly towards her and kissed her hand ceremoniously. He said, “My dear, how wonderful it is that you were able to escape from your home and husband.” Linda was about to protest when she became aware of the man’s desire to pretend. Immediately she fell into the role but trembled within herself at the thought of yielding to this man. Already her eyes were turning towards the door, and she wondered if she could make her escape. He caught her glance and said very quickly, “You need not be afraid. What I ask of you is nothing to be frightened about. I am grateful to you for risking your reputation to meet me here, for leaving your husband for me. I ask very little, this presence of yours here makes me very happy. I have never seen a woman more beautiful than you are, and more aristocratic. I love your perfume, and your dress, your taste in jewelry. Do let me see your feet. What beautiful shoes. How elegant they are, and what a delicate ankle you have. Ah, it is not very often that so beautiful a woman comes to see me. I have not been lucky with women.” Now it seemed to her that he looked more and more like a child, everything about him, the awkwardness of his gestures, the softness of his hands. When he lit a cigarette and smoked, she felt that this must be his first cigarette, because of the awkward way he handled it and the curiosity with which he watched the smoke. “I cannot stay very long,” she said, impelled by the need to escape. This was not at all what she had expected. “I will not keep you very long. Will you let me see your handkerchief?” She offered him a delicate, perfumed handkerchief. He smelled it with an air of extreme pleasure. Then he said, “I have no intention of taking you as you expect me to. I am not interested in possessing you as other men do. All I ask of you is that you pass this handkerchief between your legs and then give it to me, that is all.” She realized that this would be so much easier than what she had feared. She did it willingly. He watched her as she leaned over, raised her skirt, unfastened the lace pants and passed the handkerchief slowly between her legs. He leaned over then and put his hand over the handkerchief merely to increase the pressure and so that she would pass it again.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Instead, try this: affirm yourself with the values you are 100 percent rock-solid sure about, even if they have nothing to do with the task at hand. You heard that right. Even if it has nothing to do with your Challenge, affirm yourself with what you know is true about yourself. As the sun rises and sets, I am a loyal friend. I value being a good listener. I’m a really good mom. I’ve accomplished more than I ever thought possible through my own hard work. It may seem silly to affirm your love for your family or your commitment to your religious faith when you’re about to walk into a quarterly sales meeting, but it works. Likewise, you can gain strength by affirming your own courageous acts. A 2017 eye-tracking study from a group of Dutch researchers found that when participants brought to mind a memory of their own integrity—the time they stood by a friend when no one else did, the time they could have thrown a colleague under the bus but didn’t—they were able to look pictures of angry faces square in the eye. So affirm your truths. Affirm the times you did the right thing. Remind yourself of your best and your best will show up. THE CHALLENGE LIST, PHASE THREE: TAKE IT ON HOME Here we are, the home stretch. What are some things that scare you a lot? Don’t move on to these until you’re done with the things that scare you a little, then the things that scare you a little more, and you’ve experimented with dropping your safety behaviors. Even though we’re almost at the deep end, we’re still inching into the pool. Something you may notice is that as you nudge yourself through the things that scare you a little and the things that scare you moderately, these biggest things may not scare you as much as they used to. They may still curl your toes, but there may be a tiny flame of willingness where there wasn’t one before. Why? As you move through your small and medium challenges, you may be incrementally resetting your social anxiety set point. As Dr. Richard Heimberg so neatly summed up the process when I talked with him, “Good exposures set in motion a success spiral.” So let’s bring it on home. What are your big stretches? Think of some concrete things that make you want to hide behind the curtains. If you start planning an escape route, you know you’ve found your last big challenges. Here are mine: 8. Contact and interview psychology luminaries for this book (breathe) 9. Do a live, on-camera interview with minimal notes (ack!) 10. Send a real book out into the world containing my own story of social anxiety (double ack!)

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Remember the two swim coaches? Both coaches ostensibly wanted the same thing: for the kids to learn how to swim. Even the first coach, in a way, was trying to help. When we’re tempted to bail on the neighborhood cookout because we’re worried we’ll be awkward and the neighbors will think we’re weird, we can ask the Inner Critic how it’s trying to help. The answer? Almost always, it will be, I’m trying to keep you safe. Like a neurotic mother hen, the Inner Critic will say, If you don’t go, they can’t hurt you. Just sit this one out and you guarantee you won’t be ridiculed. Better safe than sorry, so why don’t you just stay home this time? But using self-compassion, you might then tell yourself, Oh, sweetheart, I know you’re scared. You don’t know the neighbors very well and this is intimidating. You’re not alone—everyone feels awkward and weird sometimes and everyone was new to the neighborhood at one point. You know from experience that just showing up is the worst part. It gets better from there. You’ve done hard things before, and I know you can do this, too, even while you’re feeling nervous. Now, if you feel corny calling yourself sweetheart, don’t. The point is to be kind and supportive and, most important, brave. Notice self-compassion didn’t say, Oh, sweetheart, I know you’re scared. Why don’t you stay home and eat a pint of Cherry Garcia instead? Just as the second coach didn’t offer empty praise or let the kid go on kicking incorrectly, neither does self-compassion let you off the hook. Just as the second coach gave our struggling swimmer a gentle, friendly nudge in the right direction, self-compassion can do the same for you. Self-compassion knows we all have our stuff, so why bother pretending we don’t? Self-compassion sees our inadequacies and failures and not only is cool with them but also provides a safe and caring place for them. Self-compassion loves the package deal that is you, or me. When you talk to yourself with compassion, you invert the Golden Rule—rather than treating others as you would like to be treated, you also treat yourself as well as you would treat others. Self-compassion is different from self-esteem. According to Dr. Neff, self-esteem is a label: I’m great! I’m beautiful! But even the positive labels we have for ourselves, if we are lucky enough to have them—I’m smart, I’m successful—are still just labels. The danger is that we tend to cling to positive labels and avoid trying new things that might threaten the label. There’s that word again: “avoid.” Indeed, a 2015 study showed that among those who practiced self-compassion even low self-esteem had little effect on their mental health, suggesting that self-compassion creates a buffer, a safety net of kindness, that keeps those on this high wire we call life from crashing down.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Vigilius, a pliant creature of Theodora, ascended the papal chair under the military protection of Belisarius (538–554). The empress had promised him this office and a sum of money, on condition that he nullify the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, and pronounce Anthimus and his friends orthodox. The ambitious and doubled-tongued prelate accepted the condition, and accomplished the deposition, and perhaps the death, of Silverius. In his pontificate occurred the violent controversy of the three chapters and the second general council of Constantinople (553). His administration was an unprincipled vacillation between the dignity and duties of his office and subservience to an alien theological and political influence; between repeated condemnation of the three chapters in behalf of a Eutychianizing spirit, and repeated retraction of that condemnation. In Constantinople, where he resided several years at the instance of the emperor, he suffered much personal persecution, but without the spirit of martyrdom, and without its glory. For example, at least according to Western accounts, he was violently torn from the altar, upon which he was holding with both hands so firmly that the posts of the canopy fell in above him; he was dragged through the streets with a rope around his neck, and cast into a common prison; because he would not submit to the will of Justinian and his council. Yet he yielded at last, through fear of deposition. He obtained permission to return to Rome, but died in Sicily, of the stone, on his way thither (554). Pelagius I. (554–560), by order of Justinian, whose favor he had previously gained as papal legate at Constantinople, was made successor of Vigilius, but found only two bishops ready to consecrate him. His close connection with the East, and his approval of the fifth ecumenical council, which was regarded as a partial concession to the Eutychian Christology, and, so far, an impeachment of the authority of the council of Chalcedon, alienated many Western bishops, even in Italy, and induced a temporary suspension of their connection with Rome. He issued a letter to the whole Christian world, in which he declared his entire agreement with the first four general councils, and then vindicated the fifth as in no way departing from the Chalcedonian dogma. But only by the military aid of Narses could he secure subjection; and the most refractory bishops, those of Aquileia and Milan, he sent as prisoners to Constantinople. In these two Justinian-made popes we see how much the power of the Roman hierarchy was indebted to its remoteness from the Byzantine despotism, and how much it was injured by contact with it.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  The palms of her hands were clammy and she felt dampness under her arms. “Open your door,” she told Caitlin, leaning way over to make Tim aware of her presence. But Caitlin just sat there, mesmerized. So she reached across and tried to open the door herself but it was locked. He had them automatically locked from his control panel. That did it! She threw herself over the seat, tumbling into Tim’s lap, taking him by surprise as she grabbed the car keys out of the ignition. He tried to hold her still, tried to wrestle the keys away from her but she was no fool. There was no way she was going to give them up. “Vix … Vix …” Caitlin said over and over. “What are you doing?” What was she doing? Saving her! She was prepared to scratch out Tim’s eyes if she had to. She’d read about situations like this. Stick the key all the way into his ear … or up his nose, to cause maximum pain. But somehow she couldn’t get herself to stick a key up Tim Castellano’s perfect nose. He twisted her arm until it hurt and wrenched away the keys. “Jesus,” he said, “what’s with you?” He started the car, backing up so suddenly Vix tumbled into Caitlin. He came to a screeching halt at their driveway and released the automatic door lock. Vix shoved open the door on Caitlin’s side and practically dragged her out. “Run …” she said. But Caitlin shook her off and chased Tim’s car down the dark road, calling, “Tim … wait …” He must have seen her following him because the car stopped. If Caitlin couldn’t protect herself, then Vix would have to do it for her. She headed toward them. But after a minute, Tim’s car pulled out and Caitlin called, “Vix … where are you?” “Here … ” Caitlin followed the sound of her voice. “Isn’t he incredible!” she asked, grabbing Vix. “I think he’s attracted to me. I could feel it.” “I could feel it, too,” Vix said. “When I fell over onto his lap. Inside his pants, if you get what I’m saying.” “He was hard?” “I refuse to answer that question.” “That’s so exciting.” “Are you crazy? He’s lewd. He’s sick.” “He just wanted to give us some advice. It’s not like he touched us or suggested anything.” “Is that what you were waiting for?” She shrugged. “I can’t believe this!” Vix said. “What would have happened if I hadn’t been here?” “He wouldn’t have done anything. I mean, maybe he was thinking about it … but … ” “He shouldn’t be thinking about it,” Vix told her. “We’re fifteen and he’s thirty-five, remember?” “Actually, I think he’d be a good one for my first time, don’t you?” “He’s married. His wife is pregnant. They have a three-year-old. So no, I don’t think he’d be a good one at all!” Where was her judgment? Caitlin held up two bills.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people— within interpersonal transactions—and thereby belongs to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily. The biology of love, as you’ll see in chapter 3 , concurs. Love alters the unseen activity within your body and brain in ways that trigger parallel changes within another person’s body and brain. More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections. It extends beyond personal boundaries to characterize the vibe that pulsates between and among people. It can even energize whole social networks or inspire a crowd to get up and dance. Positivity resonance doesn’t spring up at random. It emerges within certain circumstances, stemming from particular patterns of thought and action. These are love’s bedrock prerequisites. The first precondition is a perception of safety. If you assess your current circumstances as threatening or dangerous in any way, love is not at that moment a possibility for you. Indeed, your brain has been shaped by the forces of natural selection to be exquisitely attuned to threats. Your innate threat detection system even operates outside your conscious awareness.You could be engrossed in conversation, or enjoying a blissful run in the woods, for instance, and still instantaneously spot that writhing snake on your path. Although true threats are rare, not everyone can trust the world this way. People who suffer from anxiety, depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this overalert state thwarts both positivity and positivity resonance. Feeling unsafe, then, is the first obstacle to love. True Connection Matters Love’s second precondition is connection, true sensory and temporal connection with another living being. You no doubt try to “stay connected” when physical distance keeps you and your loved ones apart. You use the phone, e-mail, and increasingly texts or Facebook, and it’s important to do so. Yet your body, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love, the XOXs and LOLs. Your body hungers for more. It hungers for moments of oneness. Feelings of oneness surface when two or more people “sync up” and literally come to act as one, moving to the same hidden beat. You can sync up like this with a stranger just as you can with a lifelong companion. When positivity resonance moves between you and another, for instance, the two of you begin to mirror each other’s postures and gestures, and even finish each other’s sentences. You feel united, connected, of a piece.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  (d) It qualifies the idea of a future state by the doctrine of sin and redemption, and thus makes it to the believer a state of absolute holiness and happiness, to the impenitent sinner a state of absolute misery. Death and immortality are a blessing to the one, but a terror to the other; the former can hail them with joy; the latter has reason to tremble. (e) It gives great prominence to the general judgment, after the resurrection, which determines the ultimate fate of all men according to their works done in this earthly life. But we must distinguish, in this mysterious article, what is of faith, and what is private opinion and speculation. The return of Christ to judgment with its eternal rewards and punishment is the centre of the eschatological faith of the church. The judgment is preceded by the general resurrection, and followed by life everlasting. This faith is expressed in the oecumenical creeds. The Apostles’ Creed: "He shall come to judge the quick and the dead," and "I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting." The Nicene Creed: "He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end." "And we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." The Athanasian Creed, so called, adds to these simple statements a damnatory clause at the beginning, middle, and end, and makes salvation depend on belief in the orthodox catholic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, as therein stated. But that document is of much later origin, and cannot be traced beyond the sixth century. The liturgies which claim apostolic or post-apostolic origin, give devotional expression to the same essential points in the eucharistic sacrifice. The Clementine liturgy: "Being mindful, therefore, of His passion and death, and resurrection from the dead, and return into the heavens, and His future second appearing, wherein He is to come with glory and power to judge the quick and the dead, and to recompense to every one according to his works." The liturgy of James: "His second glorious and awful appearing, when He shall come with glory to judge the quick and the dead, and render to every one according to his works." The liturgy of Mark: "His second terrible and dreadful coming, in which He will come to judge righteously the quick and the dead, and to render to each man according to his works."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But notwithstanding all, he had a winning friendliness and cheerfulness in his face. Conflicts with the devil and his hosts of demons were, as with other solitary saints, a prominent part of Anthony’s experience, and continued through all his life. The devil appeared to him in visions and dreams, or even in daylight, in all possible forms, now as a friend, now as a fascinating woman, now as a dragon, tempting him by reminding him of his former wealth, of his noble family, of the care due to his sister, by promises of wealth, honor, and renown, by exhibitions of the difficulty of virtue and the facility of vice, by unchaste thoughts and images, by terrible threatening of the dangers and punishments of the ascetic life. Once he struck the hermit so violently, Athanasius says, that a friend, who brought him bread, found him on the ground apparently dead. At another time he broke through the wall of his cave and filled the room with roaring lions, howling wolves, growling bears, fierce hyenas, crawling serpents and scorpions; but Anthony turned manfully toward the monsters, till a supernatural light broke in from the roof and dispersed them. His sermon, which he delivered to the hermits at their request, treats principally of these wars with demons, and gives also the key to the interpretation of them: "Fear not Satan and his angels. Christ has broken their power. The best weapon against them is faith and piety .... The presence of evil spirits reveals itself in perplexity, despondency, hatred of the ascetics, evil desires, fear of death .... They take the form answering to the spiritual state they find in us at the time.315 They are the reflex of our thoughts and fantasies. If thou art carnally minded, thou art their prey; but if thou rejoicest in the Lord and occupiest thyself with divine things, they are powerless .... The devil is afraid of fasting, of prayer, of humility and good works. His illusions soon vanish, when one arms himself with the sign of the cross." Only in exceptional cases did Anthony leave his solitude; and then he made a powerful impression on both Christians and heathens with his hairy dress and his emaciated, ghostlike form. In the year 311, during the persecution under Maximinus, he appeared in Alexandria in the hope of himself gaining the martyr’s crown. He visited the confessors in the mines and prisons, encouraged them before the tribunal, accompanied them to the scaffold; but no one ventured to lay hands on the saint of the wilderness. In the year 351, when a hundred years old, he showed himself for the second and last time in the metropolis of Egypt, to bear witness for the orthodox faith of his friend Athanasius against Arianism, and in a few days converted more heathens and heretics than had otherwise been gained in a whole year.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  The wind is picking up. She shines her flashlight along the wooded road leading down to the beach. She doesn’t see the figure stepping out of the shadows until he grabs her. She’s paralyzed by fear. She can’t scream, can’t run. So this is how it’s all going to end. Talk about screwing up the wedding party! He spins her around … but wait … it’s not a madman, at least not the kind she had in mind. It’s Bru. “We have to talk,” he says. She shakes him off and walks faster. He strides alongside her. “I don’t know how any of this happened. I don’t know what I’m doing with her. What we’re doing together.” She stops and aims the flashlight at his face. “You two should have a really happy marriage!” “Look, Victoria, it’s a mistake … I admit it … okay?” “Spare me,” Vix says, holding up her other hand. He reaches for it and pulls her to him, making her gulp for air. She’s seventeen again, swimming for her life … but this time she’s being sucked under … this time she’s drowning. She drops the flashlight to the ground. He begins to kiss her. Soft little kisses at the sides of her lips, then hungry deep kisses. He takes her hand and leads her quickly, quickly down the road to his truck and without a word they head up island to his cabin. She awakens to the sound of the foghorn just before dawn, her heart pounding, her head throbbing. She grabs what she can find of her clothes from the pile on the floor, tiptoes barefoot to the door, and quietly, so as not to wake him, lets herself out. She steps into her shoes, drops her dress over her head, then she’s running … running through clumps of beach plum and bayberry that scratch her legs … running … running, until she comes to the main road, where she hitches a ride with the first car to come along, two women on their way to the early morning ferry. Maybe she should keep going, just get on the ferry, get off this island. But they’d worry about her. Abby would say, Look, her bed wasn’t slept in. Something terrible has happened … I know it . They’d call the police who would find her underwear in Bru’s truck or his bed or wherever she left it and accuse him of something even worse than the truth. The wedding would be postponed. “Is this close enough?” the driver asks at the sign pointing to the B&B. “Yes, thanks.” As Vix is walking the mile back she runs into Philippe—shit —who’s out for an early morning jog. Does he notice she’s still in last night’s clothes? “Ah, Veek-toria … enjoying an early morning walk?” “Yes,” she tells him, picking up her pace.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  All the time we worked, Diana hurled abuses at her - she was a half-wit, a street-whore, a common little frigstress. The ladies at the door looked on, and laughed. One of them - it might have been Evelyn - nodded to the trunk, and called: ‘Use the strap on her, Diana!’ Diana curled her lip. ‘They will strap her well enough, at the reformatory,’ she said; ‘when she returns there.’ At that, Zena fell to her knees and began to cry. Diana gave a sneer, and drew her foot away so that the tears should not fall upon her sandal. Dickie - the necktie at her throat pulled loose, the lilac at her lapel squashed flat, and browning - said: ‘Can’t we see them fuck again? Diana, make them do it, for our pleasure!’ But Diana shook her head; and the gaze that she turned on me was as cold and as dead as the eye of a lantern, when the flame inside has been quite put out. She said: ‘They have fucked their last in my house. They can fuck upon the streets, like dogs.’ Another lady, very drunk, said that, in that case, at least they should have the thrill of watching us, from a window. But I looked only at Diana; and, for the first time in all that terrible evening, I began to feel afraid. Now Maria returned with Mrs Hooper. Mrs Hooper’s eyes were bright. She held my old sailor’s bag, that I had brought from Mrs Milne’s and cast into the furthest corner of my closet, and a rusty black dress, and a pair of thick-soled boots. While the ladies all looked on, Diana threw the dress and boots at Zena; then she dipped her hand fastidiously into the sailor’s bag, and pulled out a crumpled frock, and some shoes, which she cast at me. The frock was one I had used to wear in my old life, and thought fine enough. Now it was cold and slightly clammy to the touch, and its seams were rimmed with moth-dust. Zena began at once to pull on the dreary black dress, and the boots. I, however, kept my own frock in my hands, and gazed at Diana, and swallowed. ‘I’m not wearing this,’ I said. ‘You shall wear it,’ she answered shortly, ‘or be thrust naked into Felicity Place.’ ‘Oh, thrust her naked, Diana!’ said a woman at her back. It was a Lady from Llangollen, minus her topper. ‘I’m not putting it on,’ I said again. Diana nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘then I shall make you.’ And while I was still too amazed to raise a hand in my defence, she had crossed the room, torn the robe from my fingers, and lowered the hem of its skirts over my head.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  When conversing about emotions, your use of singular possessive adjectives betrays this point of view: You refer to “my anxiety,” “his anger,” or “her interest.” Following this logic, love would seem to belong to the person who feels it. Defining love as positivity resonance challenges this view. Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people—within interpersonal transactions—and thereby belongs to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily. The biology of love, as you’ll see in chapter 3, concurs. Love alters the unseen activity within your body and brain in ways that trigger parallel changes within another person’s body and brain. More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections. It extends beyond personal boundaries to characterize the vibe that pulsates between and among people. It can even energize whole social networks or inspire a crowd to get up and dance. Positivity resonance doesn’t spring up at random. It emerges within certain circumstances, stemming from particular patterns of thought and action. These are love’s bedrock prerequisites. The first precondition is a perception of safety. If you assess your current circumstances as threatening or dangerous in any way, love is not at that moment a possibility for you. Indeed, your brain has been shaped by the forces of natural selection to be exquisitely attuned to threats. Your innate threat detection system even operates outside your conscious awareness.You could be engrossed in conversation, or enjoying a blissful run in the woods, for instance, and still instantaneously spot that writhing snake on your path. Although true threats are rare, not everyone can trust the world this way. People who suffer from anxiety, depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this overalert state thwarts both positivity and positivity resonance. Feeling unsafe, then, is the first obstacle to love. True Connection Matters Love’s second precondition is connection, true sensory and temporal connection with another living being. You no doubt try to “stay connected” when physical distance keeps you and your loved ones apart. You use the phone, e-mail, and increasingly texts or Facebook, and it’s important to do so. Yet your body, sculpted by the forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the abstractions of long-distance love, the XOXs and LOLs. Your body hungers for more. It hungers for moments of oneness. Feelings of oneness surface when two or more people “sync up” and literally come to act as one, moving to the same hidden beat.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I knew I must go down to fetch it; just as I was about to turn and begin my descent, however, I heard the creaking of a door and saw the bobbing glow of a candle. ‘Miss Astley -’ It was my landlady’s voice, sounding thin and querulous in the darkness. ‘Miss Astley, is that you?’ I didn’t stop to answer her, but hurled myself up the remaining stairs and ran into my room. With the door closed behind me I tore the jacket from my shoulders and the trousers from my legs, and stuffed them, with my shirt and drawers, into the little curtained alcove where I hung my clothes. I found myself a night-gown, and pulled it on; as I fastened the buttons at the throat, however, I heard what I had dreaded to hear: the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps on the stairs, followed by a hammering at my door and Mrs Best’s voice, loud and shrill. ‘Miss Astley! Miss Astley! It would oblige me if you would open this door. I have found a peculiar item in the downstairs passage, and believe that you have someone in there as you should not!’ ‘Mrs Best,’ I answered, ‘what do you mean?’ ‘You know what I mean, Miss Astley. I am warning you. I have my son with me!’ She caught hold of the door-knob, and shook it. Above our heads there were more footsteps: the baby had been woken by the noise, and begun to cry. I turned the key, and opened the door. Mrs Best, clad in a night-dress and a tartan wrap, pushed past me, into the room. Behind her, in a shirt and nightcap, stood her son. He had a terrible complexion. I turned to the landlady. She was gazing about her in frustration. ‘I know there is a gentleman in here somewhere!’ she cried. She pulled the covers from the bed, then stopped to look beneath it. At last, of course, she headed for the alcove. I darted to stop her, and she curled her lip in satisfaction. ‘Now we’ll have him!’ she said. She reached past me and tweaked the curtain back, then stepped away with a gasp. There were about four suits there, as well as the one that I had just taken off. ‘Why, you little strumpet!’ she cried. ‘I believe you was planning a regular horgy!’ ‘A horgy? A horgy?’ I folded my arms. ‘They’re bits of mending, Mrs Best. It’s not a crime, is it, to take in sewing, for gentlemen?’ She picked up the pair of underthings that I had so recently kicked off, and sniffed at them. ‘These drawers are still warm!’ she said. ‘From the heat of your needle, I suppose you’ll be telling me? From the heat of his needle, more like!’ I opened my mouth - but could find no answer to make her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  You are never so dainty, I’m sure, with the gentlemen of Soho.’ There was a knowingness to the remark. I said, ‘You have watched me before - before tonight!’ She answered: ‘Well, it is rather marvellous what one may catch, from one’s carriage, if one is quick and keen and patient. One may follow one’s quarry like a hound with a fox - and all the time the fox not know itself pursued - might think itself only about its little private business: lifting its tail, arching its eye, wiping its lips ... I might have had you, dear, a dozen times: but oh! as I said, why spoil the chase! Tonight - what was it, decided me at last? Perhaps it was the uniform; perhaps the moon ...’ And she turned her face to the carriage window, where the moon showed - higher and smaller than before, but still quite pink, as if ashamed to look upon the wicked world to which it was compelled to lend its light. I, too, flushed at the lady’s words. What she had said was strange, was shocking - and yet, I guessed, might easily be true. In the bustle and swarm of the streets on which I plied my shadowy trade, a stationary or a lingering carriage would be unremarkable - especially to me, who attended to the traffic of the pavements rather than the roads. It made me horribly uneasy to think she really had been observing me, all those times ... And yet, was it not just such an audience that I had longed for? Had I not lamented, again and again, precisely the fact that my new nocturnal performances must be staged in the dark, under cover, unguessed? I thought of all the parts I had handled, the gents I’d knelt to and the cocks I’d sucked. I had done it all, as cool as Christmas; now, the idea that she had watched me went direct to the fork of my drawers and made me wet. I said - I didn’t know what else to say - I said, ‘Am I then so - special?’ ‘We shall see,’ she answered. After that, we spoke no more. She took me to her home, in St John’s Wood; and the house, as I guessed it must be, was grand - a high, pale villa in a well-swept square, with a wide front door and tall casement windows with many panes of glass.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  You may not fully apprehend how these tableaux help toward the development of the human spirit; our backwardness in this branch of learning may very well be due to the stupid restraint of those who venture to write upon such matters. Inhibited by absurd fears, they only discuss the puerilities with which every fool is familiar, and dare not, by addressing themselves boldly to the investigation of the human heart, offer its gigantic idiosyncrasies to our view." "Very well, Monsieur, I shall proceed," Therese resumed, affected, "and proceeding as I have done until this point, I will strive to offer my sketches in the least revolting colors." Roland, with whose portrait I ought to begin, was a short, heavy-set man, thirty-five years old, incredibly vigorous and as hirsute as a bear, with a glowering mien and fierce eye; very dark, with masculine features, a long nose, bearded to the eyes, black, shaggy brows; and in him that part which differentiates men from our sex was of such length and exorbitant circumference, that not only had I never laid eyes upon anything comparable, but was even absolutely convinced Nature had never fashioned another as prodigious; I could scarcely surround it with both hands, and its length matched that of my forearm. To this physique Roland joined all the vices which may be the issue of a fiery temperament, of considerable imagination, and of a luxurious life undisturbed by anything likely to distract from one's leisure pursuits. From his father Roland very early on in life he had become surfeited by ordinary pleasures, and begun to resort to nothing but horrors; these alone were able to revive desires in a person jaded by excessive pleasure; the women who served him were all employed in his secret debauches and to satisfy appetites only slightly less dishonest within which, nevertheless, this libertine was able to find the criminal spice wherein above all his taste delighted; Roland kept his own sister as a mistress, and it was with her he brought to a climax the passions he ignited in our company. He was virtually naked when he entered; his inflamed visage was evidence simultaneously of the epicurean intemperance to which he had just given himself over, and the abominable lust which consumed him; for an instant he considers me with eyes that unstring my limbs. "Get out of those clothes," says he, himself tearing off what I was wearing to cover me during the night...

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Beth looked away, spots of color livid in her pale, hollow cheeks. “I’m fine.” Fran thought of the man coming over the ridge of the roof, of the way he’d crouched down low and shaken his hindquarters like a cat about to pounce. She thought of her voice caught frozen in her throat and Beth tumbling over the gutters, tearing one of them loose with a flailing arm or leg so that it swung with a groan of twisting metal and pinched itself shut under its own weight. I tried to warn you. Did I shout? Did I reach for you? Did your fingers slip through mine? There was nothing but a tangle of adrenaline and fear and the sight of rotten teeth bared in excitement as the men closed over Beth, swarming and clawing with mindless insect intent. That had happened. That was what was real. Downtown was deserted. This early, everyone would be at the power plant or inland, working on one of the town’s farms. Seabrook didn’t have much soil worth growing in, but there were a few strains of beans and sprouts that did all right, and one town over in Exeter was the sprawling pig-and-chicken outfit owned by a bunker brat, Sophie Widdel, whose billionaire parents had vanished on T-Day and left her with an armed security detail, a vault full of nonperishables and potable water, and the perfect sprawling underground complex to house it all. The town had to treat her like something between a CEO and a feudal baroness, which was a better deal than you got with most brats. Fran had heard there was a Gates baby somewhere in Connecticut who kept a big pit full of men in her bunker and fed them anyone who pissed her off, like Jabba the Hutt serving his dancers up raw to the stop-motion monster under his palace. In the parking lot of the gutted CVS, they passed a pair of black girls no older than five or six throwing a tennis ball for a gangly, speckle-coated mutt. Fran smiled and waved. The taller of the two returned her gesture shyly while the other hid behind her. She wondered what it was like to be a kid in this world, to have no memory of the civilization that had come and gone before they had fine motor control, to have no knowledge of men but the slavering, screeching face of t. rex. We outlived every dad in the world.

• From Between Us

  It is very plausible, therefore, that strong fear is related to aggression proneness even among the Bara. What may be different for the Bara is that this proneness is not considered antisocial; instead, it can be funneled into socially normative behavior, first by beating up peers from competing patrilineages, and later into socializing new generations of Bara children that need to be socialized to feel tahotsy. Finally, fear may hamper closeness in the child-parent relationships, true even among the Bara. But who says the relationship between parents and children needs to be close? Bara parents meet their children’s physical needs as long as the latter are not able to take care of themselves, and after that, they make their offspring fit for the social demands of a hierarchical society, and protect them from the wrath of the ancestral spirits. What more could a Bara child wish for? We need not go to cultures remote from our own to find this type of emotion socialization. A very similar approach was found in the United States before nineteenth-century Victorian norms came into vogue. Anger and punishment were used “in defense of hierarchy and religious orthodoxy” and to instill in children the respect for elders (including their parents), the fear of doom in eternity, and the fear of God. Child-rearing practices across the Atlantic were hardly different at that time. Louis XIII, a seventeenth-century French king, was brought up in a similar fashion: “[T]he whippings the child constantly received were designed, in some way, to suppress his sense of autonomy, and to prepare him for a role of submissiveness.” Regardless of class, the goal of childrearing was to combat pride, and instill feelings of submission. Even a king would have to be servile and please the potentially angry deity. Only in the nineteenth century did attacks on the disciplinary uses of fear emerge in American middle-class contexts. As historian Peter Stearns eloquently describes in his 1994 book American Cool: As the God-fearing qualities of religious virtue began to decline in mainstream American Protestantism, a fearful individual was no longer considered appropriately pious. Rather, he or she was emotionally crippled, incapable of taking the kinds of initiatives or displaying the kinds of confidence desirable in middle-class life. Most obviously, if fear became an emotional link between parent and child, long-term affection would be excluded even if short-term discipline was served. Fear, quite simply, became an emotional abuse of parental authority. It was around this time that affection trumped servitude, and that parent-child relations came to be seen as “loving” in the first place. Maternal love played a central role in this new model of child-rearing, as it contributed to raising a moral child. “God planted this deep, this unquenchable love for her offspring, in the mother’s heart,” a reverend wrote in an 1839 issue of The Mother’s Magazine.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  And that’s what I liked about Nick. He was only interested in what you were interested in. And I was not interested in my past. He liked that I was dark, but he didn’t know why. And he didn’t ask. He definitely didn’t understand. But for all of our differences he took me as I was. I needed that. Until he didn’t. Until he said that I was an emotional fort. Until nothing about me came easy, and he grew tired of trying. Nick and his words. Nick and his promises of never-ending love. I believed them all and then he left me. Love comes slow, but God does it go fast. He was beautiful—then he was ugly. I esteemed him, then I esteemed him not. Dr. Saphira Elgin had tried to teach me to control my anger. She wanted me to be able to pinpoint the source of it so I could rationalize my feelings. Talk myself down. I can never pinpoint the source. It runs around and around in my body without a point of origin. I blew her off. I always blew her off. But now I try to pinpoint it. I’m angry because… Isaac is touch, and he is sound. He is smell and he is sight. I tried to make him a single sense like I did with everyone else, but he is all of them. He overpowers my senses and that is exactly why I ran from him. I was afraid of feeling brightly—afraid I would become used to the color and sounds and smells, and they would be taken from me. I was a self-fulfilling prophecy; destroying before I could be destroyed. I wrote about women like that, I didn’t realize I was one. For years I believed that Nick left me because I failed him. I couldn’t be what he needed because I was empty and shallow. That’s what he insinuated. “Why can’t you love wedding cake, Brenna?” “Why can’t I take your darkness away?” “Why can’t you be who I need?” But, I didn’t fail Nick. He failed me. Love sticks, and it stays and it braves the bullshit. Like Isaac did. And I am mad at Isaac because he is all of that. And I am all of this. It’s irrational.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The act was scandalous and prolonged. Bending over, supported by his hands, leaning upon the crest of a little hillock facing the thicket where I lay, the young master exposed naked to his companion in debauch the impious sacrificial altar, and the latter, whom the spectacle filled with ardor, caressed the idol, ready to immolate it with a spear far more awful and far more colossal than the one wherewith the captain of the brigands of Bondy had menaced me; but, in no wise intimidated, the young master seemed prepared unhesitatingly to brave the shaft that was presented to him; he teased it, he excited it, covered it with kisses; seized it, plunged it into himself, was in an ecstasy as he swallowed it up; aroused by criminal caresses, the infamous creature writhed and struggled under the iron and seemed to regret it was not yet more terrible; he withstood its blows, he rose to anticipate them, he repelled them.... A tender couple lawfully connected would not have caressed one another so passionately... their mouths were pressed together, their sighs intermingled, their tongues entwined, and I witnessed each of them, drunk with lust, bring his perfidious horrors to completion in the very vortex of delight. The homage is renewed, and in order to fire the incense nothing is neglected by him who cries aloud his demand for it; kisses, fingerings, pollutions, debauchery's most appalling refinements, everything is employed to revive sinking strength, and it all succeeds in reanimating them five times in swift succession; but that without either of them changing his role. The young lord was constantly the woman and although there was about him what suggested the possibility he could have acted the man in his turn, he had not for one instant even the appearance of wishing to. If he visited the altar corresponding to the one in him where sacrifices were performed, it was in the other idol's behalf, and there was never any indication the latter was threatened by assault. Chapter 11 Ah, how slowly the time seemed to pass! I dared not budge for fear of detection; at last, the criminal actors in this indecent drama, no doubt surfeited, got up and were prepared to start along the road that was to take them home, when the master drew near the bush which hid me; my bonnet betrayed me... he caught sight of it....

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Seeing me falter, he pushed me rudely ahead, and thus, without wishing to be there, I found myself in the middle of that appalling sepulcher. Imagine, Madame, a circular cavern, twenty-five feet in diameter, whose walls, hung in black, were decorated by none but the most lugubrious objects, skeletons of all sizes, crossed bones, several heads, bundles of whips and collecti cutlasses, poignards, firearms: such were the horrors one spied on the walls illuminated by a three-wicked oil lamp suspended in one corner of the vault; from a transverse beam dangled a rope which fell to within eight or ten feet of the ground in the center of this dungeon and which, as very soon you will see, was there for no other purpose than to facilitate dreadful expeditions: to the right was an open coffin wherein glinted an effigy of death brandishing a threatful scythe; a prayer stool was beside it; above it was visible a crucifix bracketed by candles of jet; to the left, the waxen dummy of a naked woman, so lifelike I was for a long time deceived by it; she was attached to a cross, posed with her chest facing it so that one had a full view of her posterior and cruelly molested parts; blood seemed to ooze from several wounds and to flow down her thighs; she had the most beautiful hair in all the world, her lovely head was turned toward us and plainly wrought upon her lovely face, and there were even tears flowing down her cheeks: the sight of this terrible image was again enough to make me think I would collapse; the further part of the cavern was filled by a vast black divan which eloquently bespoke all the atrocities which occurred in this infernal place. "And here is where you will perish, Therese," quoth Roland, "if ever you conceive the fatal notion of leaving my establishment; yes, it is here I will myself put you to death, here I will make you reverberate to the anguishes inflicted by everything of the most appalling I can possibly devise." As he gave vent to this threat Roland became aroused; his agitation, his disorder made him resemble a tiger about to spring upon its prey: 'twas then he brought to light the formidable member wherewith he was outfitted; he had me touch it, asked me whether I had ever beheld its peer.