Grief

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.

Page 109 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I went back upstairs, opened a bottle of beer, and sat on the edge of the bed. That’s when I recalled the weekend before when Milli had called me on the pay phone at work. Just at that moment when I realized the Marine was coming toward me, I forgot—it sounded like she was crying, I just didn’t remember, with all the excitement, to ask her later why she had called. Now Id give anything to know. The telephone rang. I ran to pick up the receiver. It was Edwin. Of course she knew. Darlene had been waiting downstairs with the car while Milli came upstairs to pack. Darlene wanted Ed to tell me how sorry she was and how much she loved me, too. “You OK?” Edwin asked me. “T don’t think so,” I told her. There was a long silence. “You were great together,” Ed said. “Yeah, we wete, weren’t we?” “She really loved you,” Ed reminded me. “Those lunches you packed for Milli in the brown paper bags with those little red hearts on them?” “How did you know that?” I asked. “Did the other girls tease her about it?” Stone Butch Blues 21 “Hell no,” Edwin said. “They were jealous. You made it hard on the rest of us butches. We all had to start packing ‘love lunches.’ Anyway, promise you won't tell Darlene this?” I promised. “Milli told Darlene that she thought she might have been loved once or twice in her life, but nobody had ever cared about her as good as you did.” I took a deep breath. “Did she say that a long time ago?” “Nah,” Ed said, catching my drift, “recently.” “Ed, I hurt.” “T know,” Ed said gently. “P’m sort of in the same boat. Things are kind of rough right now with me and Darlene.” “Why is it so hard?” I felt confused. “T don’t know,” Ed sighed. “I guess love’s never easy. But it’s different between a butch and a pro.” Ed sounded lost in her own thoughts. “It’s love with no illusions.” There was a long silence. We both took a deep breath. “My bike isn’t running.” “Go to work tonight,” Edwin advised. “Tl meet you there in the morning and we'll take a look at it.” “Ed,” I said, “I really fucked up this time.” 122 = Leslie Feinberg “Nah,” she reassured me, “you just got a little more growing up to do.” “T don’t know if I can do it,’ I told her. My friend laughed. “You got no choice.” ISTOPPED GOING TO THE bars for a few weeks. Td heard Milli left town, but I just didn’t feel like seeing anybody. I got two temp jobs in order to pay for some major repairs on my Norton and to keep me busy. My life felt so hollow after I lost Milli. During the day I packed cartons of milk at the dairy on Niagara Street.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I could feel one of the dominoes under my feet—part of the fleet that we had destroyed a dozen times or more. I thought of my grandfather sitting on the bench, the way he had warned my mother one day that I was too young to be reading so much, the pensive look in his eyes as he pressed the hot iron against the wet seam of a coat; I thought of the attack on San Juan Hill which the Rough Riders had made, the picture of Teddy charging at the head of his volunteers in the big book which I used to read beside the workbench; I thought of the battleship “Maine” that floated over my bed in the little room with the iron-barred window, and of Admiral Dewey and of Schley and Sampson; I thought of the trip to the Navy Yard which I never made because on the way my father suddenly remembered that we had to call on the doctor that afternoon and when I left the doctor’s office I didn’t have any more tonsils nor any more faith in human beings. . . . We had hardly finished when the bell rang and it was my wife coming home from the slaughterhouse. I was still buttoning my fly as I went through the hall to open the gate. She was as white as flour. She looked as though she’d never be able to go through another one. We put her to bed and then we gathered up the dominoes and put the tablecloth back on the table. Just the other night in a bistro, as I was going to the toilet, I happened to pass two old fellows playing dominoes. I had to stop a moment and pick up a domino. The feeling of it immediately brought back the battleships, the clatter they made when they fell on the floor. And with the battleships my lost tonsils and my faith in human beings gone. So that every time I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and looked down toward the Navy Yard I felt as though my guts were dropping out. Way up there, suspended between the two shores, I felt always as though I were hanging over a void; up there everything that had ever happened to me seemed unreal, and worse than unreal—unnecessary. Instead of joining me to life, to men, to the activity of men, the bridge seemed to break all connections. If I walked toward the one shore or the other it made no difference: either way was hell. Somehow I had managed to sever my connection with the world that human hands and human minds were creating. Perhaps my grandfather was right, perhaps I was spoiled in the bud by the books I read. But it is ages since books have claimed me. For a long time now I have practically ceased to read. But the taint is still there.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Jacqueline’s face tightened. The question threatened to reveal something that could pierce Butch Al’s armor. Then Jacqueline saw I really needed the answer. “She’s been hurt real bad. It’s hard for Al to say everything she feels. But, yeah, I don’t think I could be with her if she wasn’t tender with me.” We both heard Al unlock the bathroom door. Jacqueline looked apologetic. I signaled that I understood. She left the kitchen. I was alone. I had a lot to think about. I lay down on the couch. After a while, Jackie brought me bedding, She sat down beside me and stroked my face. It felt good. She looked at me for a long time with a pained expression. I didn’t know why but it scared me. I guess I figured she could see what was coming and I couldn't. 36 Leslie Feinberg “Are you teally OK, honey?” she asked. I smiled. “Yeah.” “Do you need anything?” Yeah. I needed a femme who loved me like she loved Al. I needed Al to tell me exactly what they were going to do to me next time and how to live through it. And I needed Jacqueline’s breast. Almost as soon as the thought crossed my mind, she put my hand on her breast. She turned her head in the direction of the bedroom as though she was listening for Al. “Are you sure you’re OK?” she asked one last time. “Yeah, ?m OK,” I said. Her face softened. She touched my cheek and pulled my hand away from her breast. “You're a real butch,” she said, shaking her head. I felt proud when she said that. In the morning I woke up early and left quietly. Butch Al and Jacqueline weren’t at the bar after that. Their phone was disconnected. I heard some stories about what happened to Al. I didn’t choose to believe any of them. The summer passed. It was time for my junior year of high school to begin. As summer turned to fall I stopped going to Niagara Falls on the weekends. Just before Christmas I went back to Tifka’s to see the old crowd. Yvette wasn’t there. I heard she died alone in an alleyway, her throat slashed from ear to eat. Mona overdosed, purposely. No one had seen Al. Jackie was working the streets again. I walked against a bitter wind from bar to bar along the Tenderloin strip. I heard her laughter before I saw her. There was Jacqueline in the shadow of an alley, sharing an ironic laugh with other working girls. She saw me. Jacqueline came to me readily, smiling. I saw the glaze of heroin across her eyes. She was thin, very thin. She faced me. She opened the collar of my overcoat in order to straighten my tie. She turned my collar up against the cold. I stood with my hands buried deep in my pockets. I felt like I did the night I danced with Yvette.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  I knew I’d never be ready. I packed up the car, hauled the kids and the dog to my hometown in Minnesota, got a business degree, and threw myself into my career and motherhood. And I never looked back. I cut my ties so completely, the only person I kept in contact with was my best friend, Janelle, and even that wasn’t by choice. She simply refused to accept my silence, and she had my parents’ address. The year Melissa started middle school, I started sending Christmas and birthday cards in return. Eventually, after a tearful phone reunion, Janelle and I started calling each other. By then, we were both online, so we emailed as well. We rarely discussed her husband, Chris, and by unspoken agreement, she never brought up anybody else from the past. We talked about our jobs and the kids and the books we were reading. Last year, out of the blue, after years of comfortable correspondence, she sent me a Facebook invitation. The moment I realized what a “friends” list was, I knew my days of peaceful isolation were over. “Oh, sweetie, I’ve missed you so! May I please be a FB friend?” This from the woman who’d watched my son while I was in labor with Melissa. “Hey, toots! It’s good to see you!” From Janelle’s Chris, who’d helped Jerry rebuild motorcycles and later on carried his body back, though I hadn’t found out about that until Melissa was in high school. Greetings and welcomes. So many friends, so much quiet acceptance. And some conspicuous absences. I didn’t ask about those. The guys had all been adrenaline junkies, and several had planned to make careers of the military. There had been so many conflicts in the intervening years. I didn’t want to know. Even with the online reunions, I told myself I was going to keep concentrating only on the present. To make my point, I used a real profile picture—then was surprised that several others had, too. With a jolt, I realized their lives allowed that now. They’d moved on as well. Eric had a cartoon character for his profile picture. “I miss you.” His friend request caught me off guard, though in retrospect, I’d been half-expecting it. I could almost hear the warm burr of his voice as I clicked Accept. We’d always had an easy friendship. And if I was honest with myself, I had to admit he’d been easy on the eyes. Eric was tall and slender, with dark blond curls and dancing blue eyes. He was usually laughing, he didn’t understand the concept of “subtle,” and he had the most gorgeously pinchable butt. Not that I’d ever pinched him, but Janelle and the other girls sure had. There’d been a few times I’d been ticked at Jerry and wondered “what if” I hadn’t been married, and if Eric hadn’t had that constant string of girlfriends. But, hell, my fantasies had never gone beyond innocent daydreams.

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

  õ They understood their actions as both a religious revolt and a political act. When they marched on Mexico City in 1810, they marched under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Their movement was never very organized, and morphed from a campaign for greater political liberty into a brawl between Indians, mestizos, and white Mexicans. õ In 1811 royal authorities captured Hidalgo and his aides and executed them. But other parish priests came along to take his place as leaders in the Mexican independence movement, and Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. Though he did not live to see that day, Hidalgo is commonly revered in Mexico. õ Independence, however, came with a cost. It cast Mexico into an era of political chaos. Power changed hands 35 times between 1822 and 1855. People were desperate for order, even if it meant repression, and local strongmen called caudillos stepped forward to fill this power vacuum. The most famous caudillo in Mexico was Antonio López de Santa Anna, who began as a soldier for the Spanish king battling the rebels, but switched sides to support the independence movement in the 1820s. õ Generally, church authorities figured it was in their best interest to stay on the caudillos’ good side. For example, in Argentina, many clergy supported Juan Manuel de Rosas—they put his picture on church altars and denounced his opponents as enemies of Jesus Christ himself. THE CHURCH AND LIBERAL REFORMERS õ Eventually, Argentinians got fed up with Rosas’s reign of terror and forced him to flee the country for exile in England. The political reformers who overthrew the caudillos across Latin America often campaigned under the banner of liberalism. õ In the 19th century, Latin American liberals considered themselves loyal products of the Enlightenment who defended the liberty of the individual against the unjust forces of tradition and superstition, Lecture 27—Rebellion and Reform in Latin America 265 particularly the monarchy and the Catholic Church. Liberals thought the Catholic Church could be a force for good as long as it stuck to spiritual matters and left politics in the hands of secular authorities. õ Those who opposed the liberals called themselves conservatives. These were people in the upper classes who wanted to keep the social hierarchy just as it had been in colonial times. To them, the church played a crucial role in keeping the poor in their place and preserving social order, although in truth they wanted to control the church almost as much as the liberals did. õ Conservatives helped the church resist liberal reforms. Sometimes they did this overtly, for example, by withholding the right to a church marriage or burial to anyone who supported Mexico’s liberal constitution of 1857. Sometimes they found a roundabout way to resist, like finding ways to help church authorities keep some control over property they were required to transfer to the government. 266 The History of Christianity II

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Dear Reader: I want to let you know that Stone Butch Blues is an anti-oppression/s novel. As a result, it contains scenes of rape and other violence. None of this violence is gratuitous or salacious. Leslie Stone Butch BLUES a novel by Leshe Feinberg DEAR THERESA, I'm lying on my bed tonight missing you, my eyes all swollen, hot tears running down my face. Theres a fierce summer lightning storm raging outside. Tonight I walked down streets looking for you in every woman’ face, as I have each night of this lonely exile. I'm afraid IM never see your laughing, teasing eyes again. I had coffee in Greennich Village earlier with a woman. A\ mutual friend fixed us up, sure wed have a lot in common since were both “into politics.” Well, we sat in a coffee shop and she talked about Democratic politics and seminars and photography and problems with her co-op and how she’ so opposed to rent control. Small wonder—Daddy is a real estate developer. I was looking at her while she was talking, thinking to myself that I'm a stranger in this woman’s eyes. She’s looking at me but she doesnt see me. Then she finally said how she hates this society for what it’s done to “women like me” who hate themselves so much they have to look and act like men. I felt myself getting flushed and my face twitched a little and I started telling her, all cool and calm, about how women like me existed since the dawn of time, before there was oppression, and how those societies respected them, and she got her very interested expression on—and besides it was time to leave. So we walked by a corner where these cops were laying into a homeless man and I stopped and mouthed off to the cops and they started coming at me with their clubs raised and she tugged my belt to pull me back. I just looked at her, and suddenly I felt things well up in me I thought 1 had buried. I stood there remembering you like I didnt see cops about to hit me, like I was falling back into another world, a place I wanted to go again. And suddenly my heart hurt so bad and I realized how long its been since my heart felt—anything. I need to go home to you tonight, Theresa. I cant. So lm writing you this letter.

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

  82The History of Christianity II THE CIVIL WAR õAfter years of wrangling over policies both foreign and domestic, Charles finally prorogued Parliament in March of 1629—meaning he dismissed them and continued to go his own way. For the next 11 years, Charles managed to govern without summoning Parliament. But by 1641 Ireland had joined Scotland in open revolt. õCharles finally had to face the fact that the landed gentry who dominated Parliament were the only ones with the power to collect taxes on a national scale. In other words, he had no choice but to call Parliament into session to try to raise more cash. õBy this point, Parliament had lost all faith in the king’s ability to lead an army or run the country. The members of Parliament (MPs for short) began passing a slew of laws to empower themselves and weaken the king. They decided to indict Laud on charges of treasonous acts and eventually had him beheaded. õBy the summer of 1642, civil war was looming: Charles was trying to round up an army, and English towns were declaring their allegiance to the king or to Parliament. The MPs who were most critical of the king started raising an army of their own. They were nicknamed the Roundheads for the Puritan fashion of wearing their hair cropped closely to their head. The royalists were known as the Cavaliers. õAt first things went okay for the royalists on the battlefield. But Charles still had his perennial problem: He was running out of money. Soon, the tide turned against his forces. In 1646, Scottish soldiers captured him and happily handed him over to the Roundheads. õBy January of 1649, King Charles was on trial for high treason, and he was beheaded at the end of the month. He became a martyr to many loyal subjects. Anything he had touched became a holy relic with healing powers, especially handkerchiefs dipped in his blood at the scene of his execution.

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

  77Lecture 8—Puritans, Kings, and Theology in Practice õBy the end of her church trial, Hutchinson had very few friends left, but one person stood up with her and walked by her side out of that church: Mary Dyer. People gossiped that her stillbirth represented God’s punishment for her “monstrous” religious ideas. õHutchinson and most of her family died just a few years later in New York during a brutal Indian massacre. Mary Dyer went on to become a Quaker, and she kept coming back to Boston, determined to preach her message, until the Puritans arrested her and ordered her hanged in 1660. PARADOXES õChristian theology is based on a set of paradoxes: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but still one being; God is all-knowing and all- powerful, yet somehow isn’t to blame for sin or all the bad things in the world; Christ is both human and divine at the same time; people are saved through faith, but they also have to live the right way, too. Over the centuries theologians have worked very hard to keep these opposing ideas in balance and not let orthodoxy teeter too far in one direction or the other. õAcross the expanse of Christian history, almost all the people who have been labeled heretics let this delicate equilibrium slide too far in one direction or another. For example, early heretics argued that the members of the Trinity were actually separate, that God the Father was superior to the Son and Holy Spirit. õWilliams and Hutchinson disrupted the balance between grace and works. In Christianity, it seems people can’t really follow logic too far to its ultimate conclusion. People have to live with paradox and mystery, especially if they want to use this theology to govern a working Christian community. 78The History of Christianity II õThe Puritans had to make their terrifying vision of a wrathful, arbitrary God workable. In practice, they rationalized God. They made God just and logical with their ideas of the covenant. The heretics who outraged them most, who brought out the Puritans’ most savage inhumanity, were those who violated this delicate set of compromises. SUGGESTED READING Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire. Bradstock, Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England. Frasier, Cromwell. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äCould King Charles I have avoided launching a civil war and losing his head? äHow did the radical dissenters’ religious ideas shape their politics? äWhich of these movements were “winners” and which were “losers”? By what measure? 79 LECTURE 9 RELIGIOUS DISSENT AND THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR T his lecture continues the story of the British Reformation in the 17 th

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The storm has passed now. There is a pink glow of light on the horizon outside my window. I am remembering the nights I fucked you deep and slow until the sky was just this color. I cant think about you anymore, the pain is swallowing me up. | have to put your memory away, like a precious sepia photograph. There are still so many things I want to tell you, to share with you. Since I cant mail you this letter, IM send it to a place where they keep women’s memories safe. Maybe someday, passing through this big city, you will stop and read it. Maybe you wont. Good night, my love. I DIDN’T WANT TO BE different. I longed to be everything grownups wanted, so they would love me. I followed all their rules, tried my best to please. But there was something about me that made them knit their eyebrows and frown. No one ever offered a name for what was wrong with me. That’s what made me afraid it was really bad. I only came to recognize its melody through this constant refrain: “Is that a boy or a girl?” I was one more bad card life had dealt my parents. They were already bitterly disappointed people. My father had grown up determined he wasm't going to be stuck in a factory like his old man; my mother had no intention of being trapped in a marriage. When they met, they dreamed they were going on an exciting adventure together. When they awoke, my father was working in a factory and my mother had become a housewife. When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, she told my dad she didn’t want to be tied down with a kid. My father insisted she’d be happy once she had the baby. Nature would see to that. My mother had me to prove him wrong. My patents were enraged that life had cheated them. They were furious that marriage blocked their last opportunity to escape. Then I came along and I was different. Now they were furious with me. I could hear it in the way they retold the story of my birth. Rain and wind had lashed the desert while my mother was in labor. That’s why she gave birth to me at home. The storm was too violent to be forded. My father was at work, and we had no phone. My mother said she wept so loudly in fear when she realized I was on the way that the Dineh grandmother from across the hall knocked on the door to see what was wrong, and then realizing my birth was imminent, brought three more women to help. The Dineh women sang as I was born. That’s what my mother told me. They washed me, fanned smoke across my tiny body, and offered me to my mother.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  he kept turning around to look for a sign from Walter. My whole hand was bound up in a red-soaked cloth. I felt so sorry for my finger that hot tears of grief ran down my face. I was thinking maybe I should bury it. I wondered who I should invite. Walter lifted my injured hand up high with one of his large, gentle hands, and held me tightly against him with the other. I shook violently. “It’s gonna be OK, honey,’ he crooned. “I see a lot of these things happen. It’s gonna be alright.” The next thing I knew I was lying on an operating table. I panicked. What if they took my clothes off? There was no one around. A fly buzzed around me and landed on my hand. My body lurched. The fly circled and landed again. This time as my 98 Leslie Feinberg injured hand jerked, my finger seemed to move in a different direction. I passed out. It was Duffy’s face I saw as I drifted back to consciousness. He was smiling, but he looked upset, too. “Duffy,” I whispered, “where’s my finger?” He winced. “It’s OK, Jess. They saved your finger.” I didn’t think it was true. ’d seen lots of movies where they lie to injured people like that. I lifted my head slightly to look at my hand. It was covered with layers of gauze and there was some kind of metal device running from my forearm into the gauze and then emerging at the tip of where my finger would be. Duffy nodded. “Your finger’s OK, Jess. The bone wasn’t completely severed.” He turned away as he said it. I thought maybe he was going to throw up. I was still dressed in my bloody work clothes. “Get me out of here, Duffy.” He stopped at the pharmacy to fill my prescriptions and drove me home. When I awoke he was gone. There was a note on the nightstand explaining when I should take the pills. He also left his phone number and said I should call when I woke up. I was relieved to find I was still in my work clothes. I called him later that night and he raced over. “Jack set you up, Jess.” Duffy paced around my kitchen. “Just before he put you on that machine one of the guys saw Kevin removing the safety device. Jack could claim he took it off because the hose was on the blink, but ordering someone to put their hand in it was an out-and-out contract violation.” I had trouble following what Duffy was saying. It wasn’t just that my mind was hazy with painkillers, I didn’t want to understand. “But get this, Jess,” Duffy bent over the kitchen table and pounded it. “After we took you to the hospital Jack reinstalled the safety device and swears it was on all the time. The bastard set you up, Jess.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  In short, he soon found himself almost completely isolated. That must have cut him to the quick, for before very many weeks had passed, he became deathly ill and a consultation was held. He recovered a bit, enough to get out of bed and walk about, but still a very sick man. He was supposed to be suffering from ulcers of the stomach, though nobody was quite sure exactly what ailed him. Everybody understood, however, that he had made a mistake in swearing off so abruptly. It was too late, however, to return to a temperate mode of living. His stomach was so weak that it wouldn’t even hold a plate of soup. In a couple of months he was almost a skeleton. And old. He looked like Lazarus raised from the grave. One day my mother took me aside and with tears in her eyes begged me to go visit the family doctor and learn the truth about my father’s condition. Dr. Rausch had been the family physician for years. He was a typical “Dutchman” of the old school, rather weary and crochety now after years of practicing and yet unable to tear himself completely away from his patients. In his stupid Teutonic way he tried to scare the less serious patients away, tried to argue them into health, as it were. When you walked into his office he didn’t even bother to look up at you, but kept on writing or whatever it might be that he was doing while firing random questions at you in a perfunctory and insulting manner. He behaved so rudely, so suspiciously, that ridiculous as it may sound, it almost appeared as though he expected his patients to bring with them not only their ailments, but the proof of their ailments. He made one feel that there was not only something wrong physically but that there was also something wrong mentally. “You only imagine it” was his favorite phrase, which he flung out with a nasty, leering gibe. Knowing him as I did, and detesting him heartily, I came prepared, that is, with the laboratory analysis of my father’s stool. I had also an analysis of his urine in my overcoat pocket, should he demand further proofs.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  My mom rang the bell and confronted the mom. “Look, this is our dog.” This lady lied to my mom’s face. “This is not your dog. We bought this dog.” “You didn’t buy the dog. It’s our dog.” They went back and forth. This woman wasn’t budging, so we went home to get evidence: pictures of us with the dogs, certificates from the vet. I was crying the whole time, and my mom was losing her patience with me. “Stop crying! We’ll get the dog! Calm down!” We gathered up our documentation and went back to the house. This time we brought Panther with us, as part of the proof. My mom showed this lady the pictures and the information from the vet. She still wouldn’t give us Fufi. My mom threatened to call the police. It turned into a whole thing. Finally my mom said, “Okay, I’ll give you a hundred rand.” “Fine,” the lady said. My mom gave her some money and she brought Fufi out. The other kid, who thought Fufi was Spotty, had to watch his mother sell the dog he thought was his. Now he started crying. “Spotty! No! Mom, you can’t sell Spotty!” I didn’t care. I just wanted Fufi back. Once Fufi saw Panther she came right away. The dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining. “Why are you crying?!” “Because Fufi loves another boy.” “So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.” Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent. I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to, and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them and buy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.” When I was twenty-four years old, one day out of the blue my mother said to me, “You need to find your father.” “Why?”

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

  Now man is required to offer sacrifice for three reasons. First, for the remission of sin, by which he is turned away from God. Hence the Apostle says (Heb. 5:1) that it appertains to the priest “to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Secondly, that man may be preserved in a state of grace, by ever adhering to God, wherein his peace and salvation consist. Wherefore under the old Law the sacrifice of peace-offerings was offered up for the salvation of the offerers, as is prescribed in the third chapter of Leviticus. Thirdly, in order that the spirit of man be perfectly united to God: which will be most perfectly realized in glory. Hence, under the Old Law, the holocaust was offered, so called because the victim was wholly burnt, as we read in the first chapter of Leviticus. Now these effects were conferred on us by the humanity of Christ. For, in the first place, our sins were blotted out, according to Rom. 4:25: “Who was delivered up for our sins.” Secondly, through Him we received the grace of salvation, according to Heb. 5:9: “He became to all that obey Him the cause of eternal salvation.” Thirdly, through Him we have acquired the perfection of glory, according to Heb. 10:19: “We have [Vulg.: ‘Having’] a confidence in the entering into the Holies” (i.e. the heavenly glory) “through His Blood.” Therefore Christ Himself, as man, was not only priest, but also a perfect victim, being at the same time victim for sin, victim for a peace-offering, and a holocaust. Reply to Objection 1: Christ did not slay Himself, but of His own free-will He exposed Himself to death, according to Is. 53:7: “He was offered because it was His own will.” Thus He is said to have offered Himself. Reply to Objection 2: The slaying of the Man Christ may be referred to a twofold will. First, to the will of those who slew Him: and in this respect He was not a victim: for the slayers of Christ are not accounted as offering a sacrifice to God, but as guilty of a great crime: a similitude of which was borne by the wicked sacrifices of the Gentiles, in which they offered up men to idols. Secondly, the slaying of Christ may be considered in reference to the will of the Sufferer, Who freely offered Himself to suffering. In this respect He is a victim, and in this He differs from the sacrifices of the Gentiles. (The reply to the third objection is wanting in the original manuscripts, but it may be gathered from the above.—Ed.) [*Some editions, however, give the following reply:

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ruth sighed. “It was a patchwork quilt.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I felt my color rise. “It’s nice to remember where you come from. But now I’m ready to go home,” she said. Ruth squeezed my hand. “C’mon, Jess. Let’s go home.” 322 = Leslie Feinberg THE MOMENT I CLIMBED THE subway stairs at Christopher Street I heard an amplified voice say the words lesbian and gay. When I emerged to street level, I found myself in the midst of a crowd of hundreds of people listening to speakers at a rally. I'd seen gay demonstrations in the streets before. I had always paused to watch from across the street, proud this young movement was not beaten back into the closets. But I always walked away feeling outside of that movement and alone. This time one voice stopped me in my tracks. It was a young man who took the mike and in a strong voice, trembling with emotion, described being restrained and forced to watch his lover being beaten to death with baseball bats by a gang, “I watched him die there on the sidewalk,” he cried, “and I couldn’t save him. We have to do something. This can’t keep going on.” He handed the microphone to a woman whose hair was wrapped in bright African fabric. She urged others to come up and speak. A young woman from the crowd climbed up on the stage. “There were these guys in my neighborhood in Queens.” Her voice could hardly be heard, even with the microphone. “They used to yell things at me and my lover. One night, I heard them behind me. I was alone. They pulled me into the parking lot behind the hardware store and raped me. I couldn’t stop them.” Tears streamed down my face. The man next to me put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes were filled with tears, too. “T never told my lover what happened,” she whispered into the microphone. “T felt like we’d have both been raped if I told her.” As she climbed down from the stage I thought: This is what courage is. It’s not just living through the nightmare, it’s doing something with it afterward. It’s being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It’s trying to organize to change things. And suddenly I felt so sick to death of my own silence that I needed to speak too. It wasn’t that there was something in particular I was burning to say. I didn’t even know what it would be. I just needed to open my throat for once and hear my own voice. And I was afraid if I let this moment pass, I might never be brave enough to try again. I moved closer to the stage, nearer to finding my voice. The woman who was chairing looked at me. “Did you want to speake” I nodded, dizzy with anxiety. “C’mon up, brother,” she urged me.

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

  Objection 6: Further, it is written (Mat. 27:55,56): “There were there”—that is, by the cross of Christ—“many women afar off, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him; among whom was Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” Now this Mary who is called “the mother of James and Joseph” seems to have been also the Mother of Christ; for it is written (Jn. 19:25) that “there stood by the cross of Jesus, Mary His Mother.” Therefore it seems that Christ’s Mother did not remain a virgin after His Birth. On the contrary, It is written (Ezech. 44:2): “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it.” Expounding these words, Augustine says in a sermon (De Annunt. Dom. iii): “What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that ‘no man shall pass through it,’ save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this—‘The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it’—except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this—‘it shall be shut for evermore’—but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?” I answer that, Without any hesitation we must abhor the error of Helvidius, who dared to assert that Christ’s Mother, after His Birth, was carnally known by Joseph, and bore other children. For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring. Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb [*”Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.)], wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man. Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her. Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost. We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When he said that, my body just let go. I remember the exact traffic light I was at. For a moment there was a complete vacuum of sound, and then I cried tears like I had never cried before. I collapsed in heaving sobs and moans. I cried as if every other thing I’d cried for in my life had been a waste of crying. I cried so hard that if my present crying self could go back in time and see my other crying selves, it would slap them and say, “That shit’s not worth crying for.” My cry was not a cry of sadness. It was not catharsis. It wasn’t me feeling sorry for myself. It was an expression of raw pain that came from an inability of my body to express that pain in any other way, shape, or form. She was my mom. She was my teammate. It had always been me and her together, me and her against the world. When Andrew said, “shot her in the head,” I broke in two. The light changed. I couldn’t even see the road, but I drove through the tears, thinking, Just get there, just get there, just get there. We pulled up to the hospital, and I jumped out of the car. There was an outdoor sitting area by the entrance to the emergency room. Andrew was standing there waiting for me, alone, his clothes smeared with blood. He still looked perfectly calm, completely stoic. Then the moment he looked up and saw me he broke down and started bawling. It was like he’d been holding it together the whole morning and then everything broke loose at once and he lost it. I ran to him and hugged him and he cried and cried. His cry was different from mine, though. My cry was one of pain and anger. His cry was one of helplessness. I turned and ran into the emergency room. My mom was there in triage on a gurney. The doctors were stabilizing her. Her whole body was soaked in blood. There was a hole in her face, a gaping wound above her lip, part of her nose gone. She was as calm and serene as I’d ever seen her. She could still open one eye, and she turned and looked up at me and saw the look of horror on my face. “It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, barely able to speak with the blood in her throat. “It’s not okay.” “No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay. Where’s Andrew? Where’s your brother?” “He’s outside.” “Go to Andrew.” “But Mom—” “Shh. It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.” “You’re not fine, you’re—” “Shhhhhh. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Go to your brother. Your brother needs you.” The doctors kept working, and there was nothing I could do to help her. I went back outside to be with Andrew. We sat down together, and he told me the story.

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

  I answer that, Habit comes between power and act: and since the removal of what precedes entails the removal of what follows, but not conversely, the removal of the habit ensues from the removal of the power to act, but not from the removal of the act. And because removal of the matter entails the removal of the act, since there can be no act without the matter into which it passes, hence the habit of a virtue is possible in one for whom the matter is not available, for the reason that it can be available, so that the habit can proceed to its act—thus a poor man can have the habit of magnificence, but not the act, because he is not possessed of great wealth which is the matter of magnificence, but he can be possessed thereof. Reply to Objection 1: Although the innocent have committed no sin, nevertheless they can, so that they are competent to have the habit of penance. Yet this habit can never proceed to its act, except perhaps with regard to their venial sins, because mortal sins destroy the habit. Nevertheless it is not without its purpose, because it is a perfection of the natural power. Reply to Objection 2: Although they deserve no punishment actually, yet it is possible for something to be in them for which they would deserve to be punished. Reply to Objection 3: So long as the power to sin remains, there would be room for vindictive justice as to the habit, though not as to the act, if there were no actual sins. Whether the saints in glory have penance?Objection 1: It would seem that the saints in glory have not penance. For, as Gregory says (Moral. iv), “the blessed remember their sins, even as we, without grief, remember our griefs after we have been healed.” But penance is grief of the heart. Therefore the saints in heaven have not penance. Objection 2: Further, the saints in heaven are conformed to Christ. But there was no penance in Christ, since there was no faith which is the principle of penance. Therefore there will be no penance in the saints in heaven. Objection 3: Further, a habit is useless if it is not reduced to its act. But the saints in heaven will not repent actually, because, if they did, there would be something in them against their wish. Therefore the habit of penance will not be in them. Objection 4: On the other hand, penance is a part of justice. But justice is “perpetual and immortal” (Wis. 1:15), and will remain in heaven. Therefore penance will also.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  We’d been family, bonded through history we couldn’t begin to describe to people who hadn’t been through it. Not that we were allowed to talk about much of anything. There had been days I’d wondered if our grocery lists would end up classified. When the guys were gone, we helped each other cope with morning sickness and colic, with repairs for our POS cars and day care that never stayed open late enough, and always, with the bone-deep loneliness and fear. I’d been part of a band of sisters who understood the occasional need for immediate overnight babysitting when the guys were home and one of them put his hands on his wife’s or girlfriend’s hips, looked into her eyes, and they shared a look that let you know they wouldn’t be coming up for air until morning. God, we were so young back then. So naïve and certain we were immortal. Eight months after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the quick, ferocious first Gulf War was over. Jerry was dead, I was moving out of base housing as a widow with two small children, and the guys were just getting back. Eric came straight to the house, his hair still wet from his shower. He took me in his arms and held me close, the low murmur of his, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” vibrating through my ears. I clung to him, inhaling the scent of his warm strong body, and knowing in that moment that while I’d survive losing Jerry, I’d never survive going through that kind of loss again. The Special Operations community is small and insular, and the women who’ve been part of it know the score. Eventually, Eric or others like him would be coming by my civilian apartment, wanting me to be part of their world again. They’d wait, quietly, until I was ready to rejoin them. I knew I’d never be ready. I packed up the car, hauled the kids and the dog to my hometown in Minnesota, got a business degree, and threw myself into my career and motherhood. And I never looked back. I cut my ties so completely, the only person I kept in contact with was my best friend, Janelle, and even that wasn’t by choice. She simply refused to accept my silence, and she had my parents’ address. The year Melissa started middle school, I started sending Christmas and birthday cards in return. Eventually, after a tearful phone reunion, Janelle and I started calling each other. By then, we were both online, so we emailed as well. We rarely discussed her husband, Chris, and by unspoken agreement, she never brought up anybody else from the past.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxiii. Quæst. q. 65) Well may she say, He hath been dead four days. For the earth is the last of the elements. It signifies the pit of earthly sins, i. e. carnal lusts. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. in Joan. xlix. 19) The Lord groaned, wept, cried with a loud voice. It is hard for Him to arise, who is bowed down with the weight of evil habits. Christ troubleth Himself, to signify to thee that thou shouldest be troubled, when thou art pressed and weighed down with such a mass of sin. Faith groaneth, he that is displeased with himself groaneth, and accuseth his own evil deeds; that so the habit of sin may yield to the violence of repentance. When thou sayest, I have done such a thing, and God has spared me; I have heard the Gospel, and despised it; what shall I do? then Christ groaneth, because faith groaneth; and in the voice of thy groaning appeareth the hope of thy rising again. GREGORY. (xxii. Moral.) Lazarus is bid to come forth, i. e. to come forth and condemn himself with his own mouth, without excuse or reservation: that so he that lies buried in a guilty conscience, may come forth out of himself by confession. AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxiii. Quæst. q. 65) That Lazarus came forth from the grave, signifies the soul’s deliverance from carnal sins. That he came bound up in grave clothes means, that even we who are delivered from carnal things, and serve with the mind the law of God, yet cannot, so long as we are in the body, be free from the besetments of the flesh. That his face was bound about with a napkin means, that we do not attain to full knowledge in this life. And when our Lord says, Loose him, and let him go, we learn that in another world all veils will be removed, and that we shall see face to face. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix) Or thus: When thou despisest, thou liest dead; when thou confessest, thou comest forth. For what is to come forth, but to go out, as it were, of thy hiding place, and shew thyself? But thou canst not make this confession, except God move thee to it, by crying with a loud voice, i. e. calling thee with great grace. But even after the dead man has come forth, he remains bound for some time, i. e. is as yet only a penitent. Then our Lord says to His ministers, Loose him, and let him go, i. e. remit his sins: Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt. 18:18) ALCUIN. Christ awakes, because His power it is which quickens us inwardly: the disciples loose, because by the ministry of the priesthood, they who are quickened are absolved.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I called Edwin’s house. Wee sorry, I listened to the recording in shock, but the number you dialed has been disconnected. I rang her sister’s house. In a quavering voice Edwin’s sister said, “She shot herself—weeks ago.” I put the receiver down gently, trying not to disturb Ed’s memory. “Edwin, Ed,” I whispered as though she was asleep in my arms and I could wake het. I went back to the bedroom and lost consciousness. When I woke, I hoped Edwin’s death was just a dream. I called my foreman. “Where the hell you been, boy?” he shouted. “T’ve been sick. Real sick.” “Can you get a doctor’s note?” I stopped and thought for a moment. “No,” I said. Stone Butch Blues 191 “You're fired,” he growled and hung up. I slept on and off for several days. A nagging pain woke me up, but it was emotional, not a result of the surgery. I changed my bandages in the bathroom. Just two surgical lines crossed my chest. Together with the stitches they looked like railroad tracks. After a little more than a week it looked like it was healing pretty well. I pulled on a clean white T-shirt. Something propelled me into the kitchen to get a beer. As I snapped off the cap I located the source of the pain: Edwin’s suicide. It couldn’t be true that Ed no longer existed in the world. How could she be gone? Hadn’t I known she was seething inside? I remembered she said she’d marked a page in the book she gave me that summed up what she was struggling with. I tore through the books on my shelf, but I couldn’t find the slim volume she’d given me. I finally discovered it in an unpacked box in my hall closet and sat down on the floor to leaf through the book. She’d matked the page in blue ink: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others ... Avo souls, two thoughts, tyvo unreconciled strivings; hyo warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. 192 Leslie Feinberg I looked at the inscription, the way she’d dotted the 7in her name with an inky heart. Pain roared through my body like a fire whipped by the wind. “Ed,” I cried out loud. “Please come back. Give me another chance to understand. I'll be a better friend if you'll just come back.” Silence. One beer followed another; I got pretty drunk. And then I broke down and cried for the loss of Edwin and for all the tears ’'d suppressed since I’d lost Theresa.