Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  If she asked, could He answer? What if she were suddenly to cry out loudly: ‘Look at us, we are two yet we stand for many. Our name is legion and we also are waiting, we also are tired, oh, but terribly tired . . . Will You give us some hope of ultimate release? Will You tell us the secret of our salvation? Wanda would rise from her prayers rather stiffly to purchase a couple of votive candles, and when she had stuck them into the sconce she would touch the foot of the silver Christ as she bade Him farewell—a time-honoured custom. Then she and Stephen might turn again to the lake of fire that flowed round the monstrance. But one morning when they arrived at the church, the monstrance was not above the high altar. The altar had just been garnished and swept, so the Host was still in the Lady Chapel. And while they stood there and gazed at the Host, came a priest and with him a grey-haired server; they would bear their God back again to His home, to the costly shrine of His endless vigil. The server must first light his little lantern suspended from a pole, and must then grasp his bell. The priest must lift his Lord from the monstrance and lay Him upon a silken cover, and carry Him as a man carries a child—protectively, gently, yet strongly withal, as though some frustrated paternal instinct were finding in this a divine expression. The lantern swung rhythmically to and fro, the bell rang out its imperative warning; then the careful priest followed after the server who cleared his path to the great high altar. And even as once very long ago, such a bell had been the herald of death in the putrefying hand of the leper: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ death and putrefaction—the warning bell in the dreadful hand that might never again know the clasp of the healthful—so now the bell rang out the approach of supreme purity, of the Healer of lepers, earth-bound through compassion; but compassion so vast, so urgent, that the small, white disc of the Host must contain the whole suffering universe. Thus the Prisoner of love Who could never break free while one spiritual leper remained to be healed, passed by on His patient way, heavy-laden. Wanda suddenly fell to her knees, striking her lean and unfruitful breast, for as always she very shamefully feared, and her fear was a bitter and most deadly insult. With downcast eyes and trembling hands she cowered at the sight of her own salvation. But Stephen stood upright and curiously still, staring into the empty Lady Chapel. CHAPTER 49 1 O n a fine June day Adèle married her Jean in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires—the shrine of innumerable candles and prayers, of the bountiful Virgin who bestows many graces.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Fine, think creedal Christians. Final judgment may be a fearful prospect, but we know that we, having been justified by faith, need fear “no condemnation,” as Paul says (Rom. 8:1). We may have in our minds at this point an image of the great wall of the Sistine Chapel, with the living (that’s the meaning of “quick” here) and the dead summoned to face Jesus and hear their ultimate fate. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Most devout Christians, when they think about it, are aware of the gentle prompting of the Spirit. This doesn’t necessarily happen all or even most of the time, but it is a reality. Most are happy to trust that even when they are not explicitly conscious of that work, the Spirit is getting on with the job behind the scenes. But most, however “orthodox,” are happy to leave it at that, to think of the Spirit as basically given to make us like Jesus, to help us to be holy, to teach us to pray. All that is true, of course. But the truth of which the creed speaks at this point is so much more. Likewise, most well-taught Christians know that “catholic” here doesn’t mean “Roman Catholic.” (When I worked at Westminster Abbey, with a few hundred or more tourists coming to services every day and hearing the creed, one of the most frequent questions I was asked afterwards was, “Is this a Catholic church?” “Yes,” I used to say, “but not in the sense I think you mean.”) The word “catholic” here has its proper sense of “universal,” “worldwide.” Many, however, have not been taught even that much about the “communion of saints” (though for some it means that we are still able to be in touch, in some sense or other, with those we have loved and see no more). Forgiveness is something most creedal Christians quietly and gratefully celebrate, without being quite clear why it occurs here in the creed at all. When it comes to “resurrection” and “the life everlasting,” we still have a major problem. Most Christians, certainly in the Western churches, still assume that the whole purpose of the Christian faith is so that we might “go to heaven when we die.” God wants to share fellowship with people, and those who have faith will be those people. For some, “resurrection” functions simply as a fancy metaphor for “eternal life,” seen in terms of a spiritual bliss outside the world of space, time, and matter. For others, this ultimate goal still dominates the horizon, not least because countless prayers and hymns reinforce it. The word “resurrection,” especially the resurrection “of the body,” remains a puzzle. As I heard one elderly man say, “I’ll be going to heaven when I die, and I certainly don’t want to take this old body with me.”

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Even today, when our words can be broadcast around the world in a split second, a politician on the campaign trail, a bishop preaching in different parishes every night of the week, or even an author doing a series of book launches will tell the same story again and again—but with local variations, either to fit a different audience or simply because he or she has decided to try a different tack.) Here is Luke’s version, and Luke himself leaves us in no doubt as to what it’s about, as to what Jesus intended by it. Once we get to its heart, it contains as high a Christology as anything in John, Paul, or Hebrews: While people were listening to this, Jesus went on to tell a parable. They were, after all, getting close to Jerusalem, and they thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. “There was once a nobleman,” he said, “who went into a country far away to be given royal authority and then return. He summoned ten of his slaves and gave them ten silver coins. ‘Do business with these,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’ His subjects, though, hated him, and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ “So it happened that when he received the kingship and came back again, he gave orders to summon these slaves who had received the money, so that he could find out how they had got on with their business efforts. The first came forward and said, ‘Master, your money has made ten times its value!’ “‘Well done, you splendid servant!’ he said. ‘You’ve been trustworthy with something small; now you can take command of ten cities.’ “The second came and said, ‘Master, your money has made five times its value!’ “‘You too—you can take charge of five cities.’ “The other came and said, ‘Master, here is your money. I kept it wrapped in this handkerchief. You see, I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man: you profit where you made no investment, and you harvest what you didn’t sow.’ “‘I’ll condemn you out of your own mouth, you wicked scoundrel of a servant!’ he replied. ‘So: you knew that I was a hard man, profiting where I didn’t invest and harvesting where I didn’t sow? So why didn’t you put my money with the bankers? Then I’d have had the interest when I got back!’ “‘Take the money from him,’ he said to the bystanders, ‘and give it to the man who’s got it ten times over!’ (“Master,” they said to him, “he’s got ten times that already!”) “Let me tell you: everyone who has will be given more; but if someone has nothing, even what he has will be taken away from him. But as for these enemies of mine, who didn’t want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in front of me.”

• From How God Became King (2012)

  It is, rather—and it will take the later books of the New Testament and indeed much of the Christian writing of the second century to explore this —that the suffering of Jesus’s followers is actually, like Jesus’s own suffering, not just the inevitable accompaniment to the accomplishing of the divine purpose, but actually itself part of the means by which that purpose is to be fulfilled. When Mark’s Jesus tells his followers to take up their own cross and follow him, we see a line straight through the New Testament to the theme of suffering and martyrdom that we find in Paul, 1 Peter, and Revelation: “If any of you want to come the way I’m going,” Jesus said, “you must say no to your own selves, pick up your cross, and follow me. Yes: if you want to save your life, you’ll lose it; but if you lose your life because of me and the message you’ll save it. After all, what use is it to win the world and lose your life? What can you give in exchange for your life? If you’re ashamed of me and my words in this cheating and sinning generation, the son of man will be ashamed of you when he ‘comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels.’ “I’m telling you the truth,” he said; “some people standing here won’t experience death before they see God’s kingdom come in power.” (Mark 8:34–9:1) We sent Timothy...so that he could strengthen you and bring comfort to your faith, so that you wouldn’t be pulled off course by these sufferings. You yourselves know, don’t you, that this is what we are bound to face. For when we were with you, we told you ahead of time that we would undergo suffering; that’s how it has turned out, and you know about it. (1 Thess. 3:2–4) In fact, because of the Messiah I’ve suffered the loss of everything, and I now calculate it as trash, so that my profit may be the Messiah, and that I may be discovered in him, not having my own covenant status defined by Torah, but the status which comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness: the covenant status from God which is given to faith. This means knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection, and knowing the partnership of his sufferings. It means sharing the form and pattern of his death, so that somehow I may arrive at the final resurrection from the dead. (Phil. 3:8–11) We have this treasure in earthenware pots, so that the extraordinary quality of the power may belong to God, not to us. We are under all kinds of pressure, but we are not crushed completely; we are at a loss, but not at our wits’ end; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are cast down, but not destroyed.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It has a clasp in the middle that you have to twist just so to undo and if he has to tackle that he will surely feel defeated before he even gets to the bra. Game time decision: I quickly remove all of my clothes – all of them, even the thong – and fold them neatly in a pile on the desk next to his motorcycle helmet because even in this moment, incredibly, I am concerned about the thin, delicate fabric of my dress becoming wrinkled. By the time he emerges from the bathroom, I am standing back in the spot where I started a few minutes ago, completely naked. I cannot think of a time in my 47 years when I have ever felt so wholly out of my body, so certain that I do not belong where I am. It’s not too late to retreat, to reach for the clothes a mere arm’s length away, to get in my car and backtrack to the life I have known for decades, the only life I ever wanted for myself. I hold my breath; he looks at me, unflinchingly. The air between us is charged as we each wait for the other to make the first move now that I have surprised him and bared myself. Jump, Laura , I hear the voice in my head instruct me. Ever so slightly, I nod my head in assent. This is the only way forward. * Five months have passed since our separation, which began 48 hours after I discovered that Michael was having an affair with a woman twenty years my junior. He moved into a two-bedroom rental in a brownstone while I stayed in the spacious “forever” apartment we finished a painstaking year-long renovation of just a few months before he moved out, also forever. Six nights a week, I have all three of our kids at home with me; Saturday nights, I’m down to just the two teenagers while our seven-year-old daughter goes to Michael’s apartment for a sleepover. The older kids refuse to talk to him, so I’m suddenly a single mother to them. Although Michael and I had agreed when we separated that we could – and should – date other people while we try to figure out if reconciliation is possible, dating has been just about the furthest thing from my mind. With a broken heart, a young child underfoot and two teenagers carefully assessing my comings and goings (whoever thinks teenagers don’t care what their parents are doing clearly hasn’t lived with two teens watching for signs their parents might reunite), the mere idea of dating has been laughable. But now it’s early July 2018 and I am conscious that my senses, long dulled by a dark and oppressive winter, are beginning to stir. Even noting the sweet scents and gentle sounds of summer feels like a reawakening as I have been numb for months.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Just that lack of willingness to disclose—that’s all it took for me to perceive rejection. So this gave me a little edge. Also, his observation about me and death could have been a bit scary if he wasn’t so matter-of-fact. I mean, he was a stranger, male, and likely stronger than me. He could easily pull me off a rock into the water and drown me. But I trusted him completely—at least in terms of my physical safety. And now that he had complimented me about my proximity to death and I had owned it, and thrown it right back at him, I felt cool. We had both decided now that death was my territory. I was the Professor of Death. Much more than a middle-aged woman who was beginning to get serious crushy feelings for a young stranger in the water. “I know about death,” he said. “Have you ever seen someone die?” I asked. “Like up close and one-on-one?” “Yes,” he said. “I have watched a number of people die.” “Scary, right? The dying process. I don’t feel scared about death but dying freaks me the fuck out.” “I’m not scared of dying,” he said. “You’re not?” Now he was the professor and I was the pussy. “I would say I’m less scared of dying than I am of life.” Actually, I maybe agreed with him. “I think I’m equally scared of both,” I said. This was the truth. It felt good to say it. “What is it about dying that scares you the most? Are you afraid of having regrets?” “No,” I said. “I think it’s literally the physical process. Like, the suffocation. I’m so scared to be suffocating and panicking. I get panicked even when I go to the dentist. I am not good with discomfort. So I think I’m more scared of the discomfort—my own fear around it—than anything else.” “It might be scary for a moment,” he said. “Maybe for a few minutes. But then, from what I’ve seen, you are very free.” “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s the fear before the freedom that I’m scared of. If I could just go to sleep—just like that, go to sleep and never wake up—I would do that anytime. I would do it tonight. But I’m scared to be conscious while it’s happening.” “I had that feeling about you. That you would be happy to just go to sleep.” “Why? Because I’m so boring?” “Not at all,” he said. “The opposite. But I can feel you’ve suffered.” He was so dramatic. “Yeah, well, life is the dumbest,” I said, standing up. “I’ve suffered too,” he said. “I’ve been sick.” This piqued my interest. “Yeah?” “Yes. I have stomach problems, terrible stomach cramps. Problems with my bowel. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” The word bowel made me giggle. “What kind of problems?”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I think this is what was most frightening: me and my Theo haze and Claire and her druglike need were the same thing. I didn’t want to look at it; I didn’t want to look at her. To look at her would be to see the danger that I was facing on the other side of Theo’s visit, the darkness that inevitably fell when you spent too much time basking in the sun of a man. To look at her was to know that I was inevitably the cause of my own darkness, my own nothingness. The more you went for the ephemeral light, the more the void opened on the other side. It was waiting for me right there. I set my alarm for five. I wanted time to try to look beautiful, even though the wind and salt air always washed away anything I did to my hair or face. Dominic, never an early riser, was still asleep—sprawled in the bed where I had been, one ear above the sheets. I picked him up, carried him to the little white loveseat in the bedroom, and covered him with a blanket. He didn’t stir. Then I changed the sheets on the bed so they would smell clean and not like wet dog. I got in the deep tub and soaked. It was cold out and the hot water felt good to my bones. I brushed my teeth, then drenched myself in one of my sister’s expensive body oils: something called Exotic Seduction made with jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, and lavender oils. I dabbed two extra drops on my nipples and one in my belly button. I applied spearmint lip gloss and rubbed some honey wax in my hair. Then I put on a knee-length gray cotton sundress and a wool sweater. I brought two large blankets outside and placed them in the wagon, unlocked the gate, and started dragging it across the sand. It was quiet. No one was out. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was using the wagon to carry my beach stuff out for the day. I was simply having a beach day. I got to the rocks and saw the rosy dawn, the sun rising over the mountains. The rocks were cold and wet, and each wave that came in slapped against them—making its own little crash for a moment, then vanishing. I hadn’t slept much and felt giddy. What the hell was going on? I was out here looking for a merman. Was I crazy? Was I becoming just another Venice lost soul, belongings in a wagon, having insane visions by the ocean? I laughed aloud to myself. I imagined moving onto the beach at the end of the summer when Annika returned.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  But here we meet the paradox that Proverbs puts to us in a famous pair of apparently contradictory sayings. “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself,” and, “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” (26:4–5). In the present context, two cautions are in order. First, beware, lest in giving an answer you agree to the terms of the question, which may themselves be deeply flawed. Second, beware, lest in refusing to give an answer (because of those deep flaws) you appear to let the case go by default. I honor those who have tried to do the second, but I fear—and this is the point of this whole chapter—that they have not always heeded the earlier warning. Thus the speaker has been turned up so loud—“YES! THERE IS A GOD! YES! JESUS IS GOD!”—that the much more subtle and interesting point the gospels are making has all but been drowned out, along with the messages from two of the other speakers (the first and the fourth). As I said before, it is possible for one truth, overemphasized, to drown out others with which it needs to be balanced and modulated. It is time to listen with a good deal more care to the story the Bible itself tells us about Israel’s God, the world’s creator. The Biblical Story of God The story the Bible tells about Israel’s God is quite different from the stories many, including many Christians, have told. In the biblical story, the creator God calls Abraham, who lived in present-day Iraq, and bids him go wandering off as a nomad in the direction of what we now know as Israel/Palestine. This God makes a covenant with Abraham containing dramatic and grandiose promises. Through Abraham, God will cause all the families of the earth to be blessed; this follows the sorry tale of folly and wickedness in Genesis 3–11, which results in the scattering and division of the human race after the building of the tower of Babel (Babylon, also in today’s Iraq). The story of God and Abraham is the starting point for the whole of the rest of the biblical narrative, and it in turn gains its meaning from what has gone before.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I stood frozen by the door until they had settled Hudson onto the examining table, and then cautiously approached the doctor who seemed to be in charge, asking her to please check his legs right away, that I hadn’t seen him move them yet. I held my breath waiting, and when his toes started moving, I collapsed in the chair next to Georgia. Hours later, after a series of X-rays and MRIs, a brain bleed was ruled out and we were reassured it was just a concussion. Shakily but gratefully, we left the hospital. It was 9pm and I wanted to start the drive back home. I mapped out two hours on local roads and saw we could stop at a motel for the night at that point. The skies and roads had cleared and we set off. Within an hour, both kids were sound asleep and thus could not hear the stream of curses emerge from my mouth as a sudden blizzard blew snow in every direction. The roads were pitch-black and curvy, snow coming down in white twisting sheets. I drove 25mph, leaning forward in my seat as far as I could. Georgia woke up and started asking a litany of questions: where are we, is this safe, can we stop for the night, are there any snacks in here? “Georgia!” I yelled. “Stop talking. I have to focus.” I saw a sign indicating that in ten miles there was a gas station and a motel. Hallelujah , I thought, and crept along the road, counting down every mile. When we at last pulled off the highway, the gas station was closed and the only difference I could see between this motel and the one in Psycho was that this one was called Lee’s. There was no sign of life, just a few dim lightbulbs over weathered doors and broken screens. “Mommy, do you want to stay here?” Georgia asked with trepidation. “No, we can’t stay here. It’s creepy and it looks deserted anyway.” Back on the road, slipping along in a blaze of white, it was now 1am and my eyes were fluttering. I was exhausted, terrified, and saw no end to this journey from hell. Every twenty minutes my mother would call, demanding an update on our whereabouts, and I would calm her down only to panic myself. On and on we went this way as I searched my GPS for the nearest motel and reassured Georgia with a false cheerfulness that we would be at a warm, clean motel very soon. When we pulled off the highway thirty minutes later into the motel parking lot, I laughed bitterly when I saw that it was not just closed but actually boarded up. I put my head down on the steering wheel and started pounding it with my fists. “Mommy, do you wish now that we had stayed at Lee’s Motel?” Georgia asked so sincerely that I started laughing, possibly a tad maniacally.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Over time, I continued to go out dressed in public more and more, typically doing rather mundane things such as going to museums or shopping. I always made sure that there were lots of people around and that I could easily “get away” in the event that something bad happened. Admittedly, the early sense of excitement associated with being dressed as female in public was enhanced by the inherent sense of danger that unfortunately plagues any public crossdressing experience. The fear, of course, was not merely that I would be noticed or “read” as a crossdresser (which happened on countless occasions during the many years that I publicly crossdressed), but that I might be targeted for violence if I was ever “found out” by the wrong person.It was during my public phase that I first began going to crossdresser support and social group meetings (this was in Kansas in 1994, before the word “transgender” came into vogue). They were my first opportunity to speak openly about my crossdressing and to meet others who shared that experience. It also provided me with the chance to learn some of the techniques that other crossdressers used to make their female appearance more convincing. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing crossdresser named Deborah take me under her wing. Among other things, she showed me how to use cosmetics to effectively cover my beard shadow, an invaluable skill for any crossdresser who wishes to be gendered by others as female. It’s common for people to dismiss crossdressers for what is perceived to be their exaggerated use of makeup. However, the truth of the matter is that crossdressers (unlike cissexual women) typically have beard shadows, which are perhaps the dominant visual cue we rely on when gendering people as male. While I would have preferred to have the privilege of forgoing makeup if I wished, my beard shadow made it virtually impossible for me to be regularly gendered as female without it.Complaints about how crossdressers overuse cosmetics are often related to more general critiques that claim that crossdressers exaggerate stereotypically feminine dress and behaviors, thus turning themselves into caricatures of women. Often, these sentiments are rooted in the oppositional sexist assumption that cissexual women are entitled to express and explore femininity while those assigned male are not. Even those critiques that are not downright oppositional sexist are still cissexual-woman-centric, in that they view MTF crossdressing solely in terms of how it portrays cissexual women, rather than viewing it from an MTF spectrum perspective. Back when I crossdressed, I very much enjoyed dressing and acting in a highly feminine manner, but not because I thought that women really were or should be that way. If I indulged in an exaggerated form of femininity, it was only because I never really had the chance to explore that side of myself growing up as a boy. I spent virtually every day of my life wearing T-shirts, jeans, sneakers, and no makeup.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I hate when I recognize myself being a snob but nonetheless note the Folgers with disdain, thinking a writer in Brooklyn who insists on making his own coffee should have some artisanal blend that he makes in a special coffee filtration system only the most coffee-educated could appreciate – not Folgers in a Mr. Coffee pot. As the coffee brews, he suggests that when it’s done, we take it to his backyard instead of to the park. I hesitate and then quietly agree again, admonishing myself for not saying what I want to say, which is that I feel uncomfortable and would prefer a walk in a public space. I want him to know that I recognize that I am being deceived in some way, that I’m not so gullible I don’t see it, but I don’t want to appear to be a mousy, timid, nervous woman. Reluctantly, I accept the coffee, which tastes bitter and stale, and follow him out the back door to the yard. The yard is small but pretty, with an abundance of greenery and a porch swing under an awning, where we sit, gently swaying as we talk about his writing, until twenty minutes in, I confess that I am terribly uncomfortable, that I’m getting bitten up by mosquitoes, pointing to swollen red spots on my bare legs, and he leads the way back inside. This time, we sit on his couch in the living room and I ask about his vast collection of DVDs and CDs, items that don’t get a lot of shelf space in most homes anymore. Only a few minutes into our having settled on the sofa, he leans toward me as I am mid-sentence and starts kissing me. “OK,” I say, pulling back slightly. “Well, that’s one way to get me to stop talking.” “Can we move to my bedroom?” he asks, his coffee-laden breath too close to my face. “Um, OK, sure. That was fast,” I say, grimacing slightly. I don’t really want to sleep with him, but I don’t know how to get myself out of here. He has steered me here, but I have shown only hesitation, not one sign of actual resistance. I feel completely disconnected from myself, as if I am no longer here in this gloomy apartment but on the other side of the door where a brilliant blue sky shines on my real life, where I should be right now. I am scared to say no to this man – he is intense and determined, and I fear that I might have led him to this inevitable conclusion so that saying no now would brand me a tease, a blue-baller, a naïf, someone who doesn’t understand the sexual dynamics between a man and a woman.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  In addition, many of these comments were unarguably mean-spirited and insulting, and no attempt was made to disguise them as flirting. I was clearly being overtly sexualized by these strangers, and not because I was deemed attractive, but simply because I appeared to be a woman. And the purpose of such blatantly vulgar remarks was not to express attraction or potentially garner my interest, but rather to exert a modicum of control over me: to make me feel uncomfortable, intimidated, angry, or fearful, to force me to look away or to cross the street to avoid their harassment.These days, I recognize the huge difference between sexual desire and sexualization. Sexual desirability is something that we all hope to have to some extent. When other people express their sexual desire for us, it can be extremely empowering, so long as such expressions are reserved for the appropriate time and place—i.e., from the right person and when we have signaled our openness or willingness to reciprocate. Sexualization, on the other hand, has the opposite effect: Rather than empowering the person, it’s used to leverage power over them. This can be seen all the time in the media, where women often appear not as fully formed human beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions, but as purely sexual objects used to sell cars, beer, and other commodities. Some might naively argue that these women have power—specifically, the power to lure men—but it’s a power that only serves heterosexual male interests. After all, how much power is there in being a carrot on a stick dangled in front of someone? Such depictions exist in sharp contrast to media expressions of sexuality that center on real-life women’s sexual desires and perspectives, such as The Vagina Monologues or a Margaret Cho show.The fact that sexualization is an attempt to dehumanize and disempower women is even more evident in remarks we get on the street, which invariably occur when women are presumed vulnerable (when we are alone or outnumbered) and often go unchallenged solely because the men who make such comments are physically stronger than the women they harass. Perhaps it’s only one in fifty or one in a hundred men who stoop to the level of catcalls (or worse), but over time they take their toll and achieve their intended effect: They make us feel like we are targets. Indeed, the sexualization that occurs in both media imagery and public harassment reinforces a power dynamic between the sexes in which men are invariably viewed as predators and women as prey.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  My fears stem not so much from my own concern about being excluded, or for the many other subgroups not mentioned here who also feel increasingly left out of this community. Rather, I fear that this inward, homogenizing trend represents a lost opportunity to learn from one another and to change the minds of the public at large. If we hope to correct this insular, exclusionary trend, then we must begin to (once again) think in terms of alliances rather than monolithic communities. Alliance-based activism begins with the recognition that we are all individuals, each with a limited history and experiencing a largely unique set of privileges, expectations, assumptions, and restrictions. Thus, none of us have “superior knowledge” when it comes to sexuality and gender. By calling ourselves an alliance, we explicitly acknowledge that we are working toward a common goal (how about “making the world safe and just for people of all genders and sexualities”?), while simultaneously recognizing and respecting our many differences. There can be no legitimate accusations of “divisiveness” in an alliance, as differences of opinion would be expected from the start. Thinking in terms of alliances can encourage us to move beyond the single goal of creating safe queer/trans spaces, to recognize that, in reality, there is no such thing as a “safe space.” After all, the very notion of safety is often predicated on a presumed and exclusionary sense of “sameness” and “oneness.” And unlike subversivism, which fosters a grim and belittling view of the heterosexual, gender-normative majority, alliance-based gender activism recognizes that the only way we will change society is by engaging the mainstream public and working with, rather than against, our straight allies.If we hope to build alliances that are respectful of all queer and transgender perspectives, then we must stop talking about the gender binary system, as if there is only one. As a trans woman, I deal with lots of gender binaries: male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, cissexual/transsexual, cisgender/transgender, and so on. As someone who is marginalized in queer/trans spaces for not being “subversive” or “transgressive” enough, I find that calls to “shatter the (male/female) gender binary” sound hollow.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We ride in a rickety yellow schoolbus to a location twenty minutes away from the shack, where we pick up our tubes. There are no guides on this adventure – I’ve already signed my life away on a stack of waivers – so when the bus dumps us at a spot upriver, I know that we are expected to make our way back on our own in individual tubes that look like old tires. I see people walking along the road, having emerged from the river shivering and muddy, and the guys next to us on the bus are talking about people who have died in rapids. I don’t realize that my breathing has become shallow until Hudson whispers, “Are you sure you want to do this, Mom?” “Oh yes, I’m fine, it’ll be great,” I say through gritted teeth, and he laughs because we both know that I am petrified. We collect our equipment and head toward the water, where he patiently suggests that I step to the side and let everyone else go ahead of us since it will take a long time for me to take all the baby steps I need to become immersed. Smiling, I set my tube in the water and hop right in, immediately drifting away while he stands on the river bank watching me, stunned. I am freezing, scared and uncomfortable, but I want him to see that I am strong and brave too. I am far from fearless. In fact, I have many, many fears, lists I could stay up all night writing, classifying those that are paralytic (ziplines, mice, getting water up my nose), to those that just freak me out (mayonnaise), to those I could work up the courage to face down if I was so inspired to (like this very moment). I may proceed with a whimper, not boldly like he does and like I wish I could, but I am doing it all the same. I am emboldened by the fact that I am already living through some of my worst fears and surviving, sometimes even with grace, so stepping out of my comfort zone? That’s my home now. It was easy to bow out of activities that daunted me while I was married because I felt then that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, but now, I am first and foremost proving to myself, and secondarily to my kids, that I am tougher and have a stronger backbone than it may have previously appeared. While Hudson watches me and I gloat in the glory of my lionheart, I crash into a pile of rocks. My tube tips over, my leg scrapes against the rough edge of the rocks and I flip under the icy water. It pierces me like nothing I have ever felt before – bracing and bone-chilling – but I understand immediately that that’s all it is, cold. I have bigger fish to fry, as I emerge sputtering and coughing.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I eyed his phone on the counter; I understood at that moment that I would have to scroll through it that night for a clue as to what was happening. I offered to charge it in the kitchen for him, but he grabbed the phone and closed our bedroom door behind him. If he refused to share the real reason behind his unhappiness, I would dig for it myself. I felt like I had just walked through a doorway to another planet – this was my family, my home, my marriage, my forever, my safe ground I walked on no matter what was whirling around in the world outside, and yet suddenly there was a chasm in the ground. I could sense it, but I couldn’t find its source; I was terrified that when I did, I would plunge through it. I cleaned the kitchen, then tiptoed into our bedroom and took his phone from his nightstand. My heart pounded as I walked to the chair at our desk off the hallway and sank down onto it. I easily opened his phone since he and I used the same passwords. I had no idea what I was looking for, so I read his texts, wading through hundreds of business-related texts and finding only one text of note. I didn’t recognize the sender; when I googled him, I saw that he was a therapist. Why wouldn’t Michael tell me if he was seeing a therapist? I then skimmed through hundreds of emails, still coming up empty-handed. I was starting to feel foolish about my paranoia and guilty that I was invading his privacy, but I knew something was amiss and I wasn’t going to know exactly what it was unless I found it out on my own: Michael had closed himself to me. I went into his Notes folder and in a bit of technological wizardry I didn’t know I was capable of, figured out there were notes in the virtual trash bin that could be opened. I found a letter he had written to someone to whom he had given a watch – not just any watch, but the first watch his father had ever given him. It was a loving letter but not proof of anything. It could have been a note to Hudson, though it was odd that neither of them had mentioned it to me. Stumped, I sat idly, staring at the phone screen, grimacing at my suspicious mind but also enormously relieved. I was about to turn his phone off and quietly return it to its spot on his nightstand when an app caught my eye – I had used WhatsApp to communicate with friends in other countries, but I didn’t know Michael used it. I clicked on it, but it was locked. I entered the passwords we usually used. Still locked. My stomach dropped as I instantly understood that what I was looking for was in here.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was a pair of hands. Fair hands, pale under the moon, with the nails bitten down to just slivers. Run! shrieked a voice inside me. A surge of adrenaline rang through my body like an alarm. But I couldn’t move. Then I saw a beautiful face, the wave of brown hair in an eye, and I gasped out loud. Was this the face of death? “So sorry,” the face said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just taking a break for a second from my swim.” “It’s okay,” I sputtered, still frozen in place. The swimmer leaned on the rock with his arms. They were thick and meaty—not cut like a bodybuilder’s, but you could see the muscles underneath what looked like a layer of baby chub. They reminded me of eating a piece of fish with thick skin and a small layer of fat, strong and also soft, very white. I wanted to bite them. His chest was hairless, and I noticed that the color of his nipples matched perfectly his lips, like pencil erasers. He looked like he was twenty-one, at most. If this was death then death was hot. “Doesn’t it scare you to be night-swimming? Isn’t the water freezing?” I asked. “I’ve got a wet suit on my lower half,” he said. “But no, it doesn’t scare me. I like the way the splashes look in the moonlight and I like having the ocean to myself. Well, almost to myself.” “Yeah, it’s nice out here,” I said. The wine was wearing off. I suddenly felt exhausted. His teeth were shiny white, but not like an actor’s. They didn’t look bleached or fake. They were practically iridescent, like the inside of a shell. There was something almost feminine about him, pretty, but his jaw was well defined. These surfer boys. I always forgot that they were real. I mean, I knew that they existed. I knew they were alive. But it really seemed to me that the surfing was a costume, like they were only pretending to be so enamored of it. How could anyone be that devoted to something so lacking a destination? Just wave after wave, over and over. I wished someone were that enamored of me. But their love for surfing was real. It was a fact. They really loved surfing as much as they appeared to love it. This one didn’t have a board, though. This wasn’t a surfer. This was a swimmer. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Lucy.” I felt old. “Nice to meet you, Lucy,” he said. “I’m Theo.” When he said his name, his hotness increased. He was real, there in the water, real in a way that I wasn’t. He was swimming and wet and I was—what was I doing? I thought of all my books, the ones waiting for me in piles back in my parching Phoenix apartment, collecting dust.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Fear is a great intoxicant in its own way. Anyone hooked on its adrenaline can tell you that. But in taking this risk, this angry set of words, one sentence, I had lost control of my own narrative. Now he owned the power. I was at his mercy. I thought the only way to get it back would be to continue testing him. Play it cool, don’t panic. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.” He didn’t want that, he said. But he wasn’t sure what to do. He said he felt that he had not been able to satisfy me in the relationship for a long time. “Satisfy me or satisfy yourself?” “Well, maybe a little of both,” he said. The AAA man arrived. Jamie did most of the talking. I could hear what the man was saying but I couldn’t really take it in because I was processing what had just happened. I should have kept my mouth shut, I thought. But in another way, I felt that I had been true to myself, I just wasn’t sure to which self. The self that wanted to shake things up so as to receive attention and doting? The self that needed to be shaken up, because the ache of living in a body was so fucking dull? Some higher self that said he wasn’t right for me? The 22 percent of me that was an asshole? “Let’s sleep on it,” said Jamie, after the spare had been put on my wheel. “We don’t have to decide anything right away.” “Together or separate?” I asked. Together or separate was always a big question for us. He wanted no more than two nights a week together. I pushed for four. When I was in my apartment alone, I longed to be in his fold. I hinted and alluded to having free time. I got drunk on white wine, then begged. I wanted the access, the invitation, to feel that I was always welcome. It was a need based on his absence of need. So I pushed for more togetherness. But once I was with him, the closeness was never what I wanted it to be. I suffocated in his presence. When he wasn’t pushing me away, the closeness was cloying. “Maybe separate would be better for tonight. Tomorrow and Tuesday too? Maybe for the week. I have a lot of work and it would be good to maybe just try this on, the space, see how it feels?” “Sure,” I said, though I was scared. He kissed me on the forehead. “I love you,” he said. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Oh, come on, Lucy,” he said. He opened my car door, climbed out, and slammed it shut. “I’m sorry!” I said, my voice trailing after him. 5. I had always thought of depression as having no shape.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It was crazy to go into it so blind, but I felt I had no choice. Also, didn’t everyone go in blind? No one knew what was going to happen next. I hoped that it would be peaceful. I was just looking for peace. When Theo swam up to the rocks I saw there was a full moon hanging low over the ocean like a big fish egg. I didn’t notice it until he appeared, though I don’t know how I could have missed it. As he crawled up, tail slapping against the rocks, I felt that I was seeing him again for the first time. He looked like a surfer, or not a surfer, just a creature, maybe a fellow human, but more beautiful than anyone else and in that way not human like I was human. How much beauty was I projecting upon him, and how much was the moon? And if I was not projecting the beauty, and it was not the moon, how much of him was real beyond the beauty? I wondered if we were ever not projecting. We think we’ve grown or learned something, but maybe it’s always just a new projection. Were my incessant thoughts and feelings just a mechanism to escape the nothingness, or was the nothingness comprised of my thoughts and feelings themselves? Was there another way out besides out? It didn’t matter now. He smiled at me and I felt like he was looking at me at the altar. I felt like I had more control of him than I’d ever had. Even though I was the one who was surrendering her life to join him, the sacrifice seemed to give me power. It was the dead-girl thing. The dead girl was always the one with power. “I didn’t know if I would need a suitcase,” I said. “You don’t,” he said. He had a rope with him. “Will you take it with us anyway? So no one knows what happened?” “I’ll take it under, yes.” A shot of adrenaline surged through me. I felt scared. “So how does this work?” I asked. “I’ve always heard that humans can’t drown themselves—that you need to attach a rock or something. Apparently the human body, however stupidly, always fights to live. What do we do? Do you tie me up with that rope and pull me under, to the bottom?” “You will tie yourself up,” he said. “It is true that the human body does fight to the surface, sometimes even against your will.” I noticed that he said “fight to the surface.” He did not say fight to live. Never once did he explicitly mention my death in this. He still wouldn’t. But he hadn’t contradicted me either when I said drown. I dipped my hand into the icy water. My fingers went numb almost immediately. “I cannot help tie you,” he said. “I can only guide you down to the bottom.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Then I texted Adam the wolf-monkey. I sent him a picture of my hospital bracelet. Look where I am…hospitalized! I needed to feel seen by someone, even someone I barely knew and did not like. I’ve always hated doctors’ offices or anything having to do with medicine, because I’m always afraid they’re going to tell me I’m dying. If I’m going to die, I would rather just die and never know about it in advance. Even at my most suicidal I feared the dying process. I was exhausted so I lay down in my cloth hospital gown on the little bed. It felt like some kind of surrender, a sweet womb or coma. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself a bit. Then I felt a little wetness between my thighs and realized I was dribbling pee. My inner thighs felt chafed and irritated, from the sex and from the urine. But everything was going to be fine. I wanted to just lie here forever. I wanted kind nurses to take care of me. Books were nothing in this world. Academia was nothing. Forget about boys swimming up to you in the ocean and graphic designers stabbing at your asshole. The doctor’s name was Dana Ward. She was blond with a severe ponytail and had definitely never made a mess in her life. I imagined that she went to Cornell and had always been self-contained. She had a nice engagement ring—not gigantic—but big enough that she could flash it and make other women feel shitty. She was a left-hand gesturer. I bet she used the word fiancée . “Let’s see here,” she said. “It looks like you think you might have a urinary tract infection?” “Yes, I know for sure that I do. I just need Cipro and Pyridium,” I said. “I’m going to have you leave a urine sample and that will take some time for us to get tested. In the meantime I can start you on those medicines. Do you get them often?” “It’s been years.” “Anything different that might have caused this?” I wanted to say, Well, I tried to have anal on the floor of a hotel bathroom. It was not a bathroom in a hotel room—just a bathroom connected to the hotel bar. Also, the guy was a stranger. Also, I’m in a group-therapy program for sex and love addiction. But clearly it’s not working. “My husband and I have been having a lot more sex. We’re trying to get pregnant. It could just be too much,” I said instead. I seriously had no idea where that came from. “Any chance that he could have been exposed to any sexually transmitted diseases?” Was she implying that my fictitious husband was unfaithful?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I was scared of it, scared of feeling the freeze rush into me, or maybe scared of the warmth rushing out of me. I had never thought of that warmth as something I would miss. And Theo was being so distant from me now too, sulking. I felt lonely. “I wonder what the experience will be like, how my life will—manifest under there. Also, how I will stay under the waves and not just bob to the surface.” I was hunting for a potential answer. “You have to trust me,” he said. “It’s going to be beautiful. I will help you go. You will have chosen, but I will assist you. Then we will have a very long time together.” “And we’ll still make love under there?” “Of course we will,” he said. “Okay,” I said. “I’m just a little scared.” “Here, let me come up and join you.” With that he pulled himself out of the water and took a seat next to me. “I love you,” he said, cupping my face with his cold, wet hand. He kissed me softly on the cheek in a way that made me feel like a sweet child, no longer horrible. I felt that I was again back in the womb he and I shared, an innocent. Was this all it took to be cleansed: one beautiful person to treat you kindly and gently, and you were exonerated? How could Dominic’s death and Theo’s love both be true at the same time? How could I have killed Dominic and still be worthy of such tender affection? I was either awful or I wasn’t. Which one was it? I didn’t think I could be both. His kisses moved from my cheek to my nose to my lips. I gently kissed and licked his beautiful mouth, one lip and then the other. He lay back on the rocks and pulled me on top of him. My thighs sandwiched his pelvis. As we kissed more, I felt him get hard under his cloth. I was excited to still have that remaining life force in me, the kind that could make his cock come alive. I began rubbing my body against him, moving up and down on his thigh and then on his pelvis. Then I moved my pussy back and forth on the length of his cock, over the cloth, as though I were anointing him. I rubbed faster and faster as we stayed in an embrace, our mouths locked on each other. A warmth spread from my pussy up through my stomach and into my heart. It radiated out through the top of my head. Everything was suddenly warm, the cold completely eliminated. Was this what the eve of one’s wedding was like? I felt that we were being held on the rock by Aphrodite herself.