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 143 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  While lesbian magazines and newspapers like Off Our Backs tore the book apart, as if it could single-handedly destroy feminism, it sold and sold and sold. Gay women were coming out of the closet in record numbers, and they wanted to know more about how to please themselves and their lovers. That didn’t make it any less traumatic for me to read the caustic reviews. I had poured so much of my own heart and soul into that book, largely because coming out had been a miserable business for me, and there had been no resources at all to help me with problems like difficulty having an orgasm or the daunting question of what to do with a woman who expected me to pleasure her. I wanted to break the silence about cunnilingus, sex toys, tribadism, masturbation, penetration, kinky sex, sexual health and prevention of STDs, group sex—anything I could think of that some woman somewhere might want to do, I wrote about. I was sick of the homophobic shame that colored our lives and made it difficult to take any joy in love or erotic abandon. Above all, I was sick of the “truism” that one woman would somehow automatically know how to get another woman off. Why should we have to fumble around in the dark when a little education could provide the lubrication to get past any unpleasant friction?

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Self-understanding and self-expression are much harder to accomplish when so many supposedly progressive people are saying hateful things about each other and demanding that everybody take sides. I chose to come out as a newly-transitioning FTM in the pages of Girlfriends magazine, in an advice column I wrote for most of that magazine’s history. I doubt any other topic created as much controversy. We were buried under an onslaught of mail—much of it supportive, and some of it virulently hostile. Granted, my place in the lesbian pantheon of elders was far from secure anyway, because of my earlier work opposing censorship, defending pornography, educating people about butch/femme relationships, and speaking out on behalf of the BDSM community. Being a full-fledged transsexual was the last nail in the coffin that gender-essentialist, right-wing lesbian-feminists had been cobbling together for me for decades. But there was another element in the letters that demanded the editors of Girlfriends fire me immediately. They expressed deeply personal feelings of being abandoned, passed over, and kicked to the curb. There are a lot of reasons why that hurt exists. The hottest-running vein of emotion seems to be the feeling that transmen are betraying feminist principles and selling out the important work that dykes do combating sexism and homophobia. I’ve supposedly taken the easy way out and decided to bathe in the poisonous, overheated waters of male privilege and heteronormativity. You’d recognize the place in an instant. The hot tub is shaped like a penis. There’s a long-standing tradition among dykes of hating men. And I would be the last person to tell you that hatred doesn’t have a valid reason for existing. As the most powerful people in our society, men have been responsible for most of the lesbian-bashing that goes on. Not all of it, however, and that’s important to remember. Homophobic women are fully capable of rejecting their lesbian daughters and supporting moral panics that have done things like get lesbian professors fired from women’s colleges, kicked lesbians out of the armed forces, and caused other widespread forms of discrimination and misery. But when a man beats you up, fires you, or steals your girlfriend, it feels worse, because the playing field isn’t level. Lesbians don’t compete with straight women for a sense of sexual prowess or safety on the street and in their own bars and clubs.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish." But the face with the fixed blue eyes sticking out did not change. "Read it!" repeated the voice. "Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford," she said. And she read the letter. "Well, I _am_ surprised at her ladyship," she said. "She promised so faithfully she'd come back!" The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease. She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have _known_ his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it; or if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. "It comes," she thought to herself, hating him a little, "because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he's like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!" But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated. The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die. So Mrs. Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. "I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn't!" she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  Of course, you’re not, she said. I had to realize what she had lived through. She’d just finished college in Seoul, at the top of the class, when she allowed herself to be trapped. First, she said yes to a proposal. She followed the tradition of moving into a husband’s parents’ house. His relatives bullied the young bride. On dates, he’d been pliant, docile; in this alien house, she was criticized all day long. It was like being a servant, but with less privilege. Maids get paid. By the time she gave birth, she’d had enough. She left with the child. In months, he trailed them to L.A. He pled, full of apologies, but she’d found a job. It paid so well, they’d given up needing him. She toiled, piled cash. It was all for infant Haejin, a girl who’d get the outsize life she’d been denied. But I’ve heard this, I said. No, she said. I hadn’t, not if I believed I could quit. Since I wished to be a pianist, I should make it happen. What I wanted, I’d have. I was the one who’d requested a piano. It had been my idea. I had a gift, she said. It was also an obligation. I’d be lost without the music. – I pulled all the applications to conservatories; accepted at Edwards, I said I would go. But the school also has a piano program, she said. It’s why you applied in the first place. Haejin, they’ll let you in. We hadn’t been in the habit of arguing, but now we couldn’t stop. The fight lasted until April, the night of a cello recital. Though I hadn’t listened to music since Libich, we’d had the tickets since the previous fall. It wasn’t the piano. I’ll be fine, I thought, but then string music filled the hall. I’d have given anything to be able to perform as well as I’d hoped I could. It was true, as she said, that I’d started playing the music on my own. I was so small, at first, that I had to sit on a trunk balanced on top of the piano bench. It lifted me up. Disembodied in the piano’s polished depths, I hurled back and forth like its possessing spirit, shown large, powerful. I’d loved the piano. I still did. It was too bad. I wiped my face; she noticed. She held out a tissue, but I ignored it. I couldn’t admit I’d cried. The cello recital ended. In the parking lot, I insisted I’d drive. I had a license, but she didn’t often let me behind the wheel; this time, she gave in. Maybe she pitied me. She’d tired of fighting. I didn’t ask, and it was the last time we talked. In silence, I drove. I got us a mile from home before I started crying again. Half-blind, I rolled into the opposing lane.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I knew just what I wanted. In a cupboard beneath Kitty’s table there was a little tin box with a pile of coins and notes in it - a portion of our wages went there every week, for us to draw on as we chose. The key to it lay mixed up with her sticks of grease-paint, in the old cigar-box in which she kept her make-up. I took this box, and tipped it up; the sticks fell out, and so did the key — and so, I saw, did something else. There had always been a sheet of coloured paper at the bottom of the box, and I had never thought to lift it. Now it had come loose and behind it was a card. I picked it up with trembling fingers, and studied it. It was creased, and stained with make-up, but I knew it at once. On the front was a picture of an oyster-smack; two girls smiled from its deck through a patina of powder and grease, and on the sail someone had inked, ‘To London’. There was more writing on the back - Kitty’s address at the Canterbury Palace, and a message: ‘I can come!!! You must do without your dresser for a few nights, though, while I make all ready ...’ It was signed: ‘Fondly, Your Nan’.It was the card that I had sent her, so long ago, before we had even moved to Brixton; and she had kept it, secretly, as if she treasured it.I held the card between my fingers for a moment; then I returned it to its box and placed the paper sheet above it, as before. Then I laid my head upon the table, and wept, again, until I could weep no more.I opened the tin box at last, and took, without counting it, all the money that lay inside - about twenty pounds, as it would turn out, and only a fraction, of course, of my total earnings of the past twelve months; but I felt so dazed and ill at that moment I could hardly imagine what I would ever need money for, again. I put the cash into an envelope, tucked the envelope into my belt, and turned to go.I hadn’t glanced about me, yet, at all; now, however, I took a last look round. One thing only caught my eye, and made me hesitate: our rail of costumes. They were all here, the suits that I had worn upon the stage at Kitty’s side - the velvet breeches, the shirts, the serge jackets, the fancy waistcoats.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  PART IIIOURSELVESBreaking the CyclePart III is about the secrets we keep from ourselves and about the search for the truth: the exploration of true love, genuine intimacy, real friendship, and the process of healing. It examines the journey we have to take in order to know ourselves, to work through the traumas of our past and to accept our own flaws and limitations as well as those of the people around us. Analyzing the emotional inheritance we might pass on to the next generation is a step toward breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma. This is the emotional work we do not only for those who came before us, but for our children as well. The hazard of intimacy frequently plays itself out in families. Parents communicate with their children their ambivalence about being vulnerable. They often either avoid a real intimate exchange or hide behind their wounds and create false intimacy, making their children become their caretakers. As children, we experience our parents’ fears and inherit them, perceiving the world the way our parents did, defending ourselves in similar ways. We are invested in keeping our family secrets but mostly we are trying to keep secrets from ourselves. What we can’t let ourselves know leaves us unfamiliar to ourselves, unable to know others or to be fully known by them. Part III describes the ongoing process of examining our lives, the scars of childhood trauma, and the wish to be better parents than our parents were. It examines conflicts of loyalty as they appear in romantic relationships, between parents and children, and in women’s friendships. The growing ability to integrate and process pain helps us find meaning, heal, live life to the fullest, and raise the next generation with honesty and integrity. 9THE TASTE OF SORROWIt is rare that I find myself taken off guard by a patient’s secret. But I was not prepared for what I discovered after Isabella’s death. I have never met Isabella. She was my patient Naomi’s best friend. It isn’t unusual for therapists to feel that we know our patients’ friends, lovers, and family. In some ways, we accompany those people from afar, as if they were characters in a beloved book. We will never meet them but we know them intimately and have feelings for them. We get attached to the people in our patients’ lives; we follow their stories; we watch them change with our patients and see their relationships develop or sometimes end. Naomi has been in therapy with me for three years, and that is how I have come to know Isabella, who has been her best friend since childhood. Both of them grew up as only children, and in some ways they have been sisters to each other. Naomi takes a tissue from the box on the side table. She is shaken. She tells me that Isabella has just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and that the doctors don’t know yet how bad it is or if it’s treatable.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  She mourns her inability to carry and give birth to her baby. Alice is filled with fear that she won’t be able to love her newborn, and we realize that she feels like an unlovable girl herself. “What if she doesn’t know that I’m her mother?” She wipes her tears. “What if she doesn’t love me ?” There is so much pain buried inside her, sadness that she is used to covering up with irritation and anger. She doesn’t want anyone to know that just like her mother, she secretly mourns. She doesn’t want her daughter to have to experience her grief, the way she carried her mother’s grief. She knows what a burden that was on her, and she is worried that her daughter will have to live that legacy. “I told Art about our session,” Alice says when she walks into my office the following week. “We had a long conversation about breastfeeding and hormones, and it’s like I had another session with him after my session with you.” She adds with a smile, “Victory. We made a decision.” Alice pulls a bottle of water from her bag. She places it on the table. “Do you notice how anxious I am?” she asks. “I want everything in place before our baby is born. And I made the decision that I won’t take hormones. One thing is crossed off my list and it’s a relief, so thank you.” “Tell me more,” I ask. “How did you make that decision?” “Suddenly, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. I told Art that I realized my wish to breastfeed was based on the fear that I wouldn’t be able to love the baby without those hormones. I told him how upsetting it was for me to realize that I doubt myself as a woman, and that under the surface this was about my feelings that my father didn’t love me. Art knows the whole story, and a lot has changed between my father and me since I met him. I think he helped me to see my father as a full person. You will appreciate this,” she says playfully. “I think I fell in love with Art when I realized how afraid he was of losing his daughter, Lili, in his divorce. Isn’t that a good psychological link?” she asks with a smile. “He was the father I never had, and I betrayed my mother for the first time when I fell in love with him,” she says. I ask her to explain. “It was as if my mother and I had a secret contract that we were the family.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So saying, no otherwise than as she had a fountain of water in her head, bowing herself over the bowl, without making any womanly outcry, she began, lamenting, to shed so many and such tears that they were a marvel to behold, kissing the dead heart the while an infinite number of times. Her women, who stood about her, understood not what this heart was nor what her words meant, but, overcome with compassion, wept all and in vain questioned her affectionately of the cause of her lament and studied yet more, as best they knew and might, to comfort her. The lady, having wept as much as herseemed fit, raised her head and drying her eyes, said, 'O much-loved heart, I have accomplished mine every office towards thee, nor is there left me aught else to do save to come with my soul and bear thine company.' So saying, she called for the vial wherein was the water she had made the day before and poured the latter into the bowl where was the heart bathed with so many of her tears; then, setting her mouth thereto without any fear, she drank it all off and having drunken, mounted, with the cup in her hand, upon the bed, where composing her body as most decently she might, she pressed her dead lover's heart to her own and without saying aught, awaited death. Her women, seeing and hearing all this, albeit they knew not what water this was she had drunken, had sent to tell Tancred everything, and he, fearing that which came to pass, came quickly down into his daughter's chamber, where he arrived what time she laid herself on her bed and addressed himself too late to comfort her with soft words; but, seeing the extremity wherein she was, he fell a-weeping grievously; whereupon quoth the lady to him, 'Tancred, keep these tears against a less desired fate than this of mine and give them not to me, who desire them not. Who ever saw any, other than thou, lament for that which he himself hath willed? Nevertheless, if aught yet live in thee of the love which once thou borest me, vouchsafe me for a last boon that, since it was not thy pleasure that I should privily and in secret live with Guiscardo, my body may openly abide with his, whereassoever thou hast caused cast him dead.' The agony of his grief suffered not the prince to reply; whereupon the young lady, feeling herself come to her end, strained the dead heart to her breast and said, 'Abide ye with God, for I go hence.' Then, closing her eyes and losing every sense, she departed this life of woe. Such, then, as you have heard, was the sorrowful ending of the loves of Guiscardo and Ghismonda, whose bodies Tancred, after much lamentation, too late repenting him of his cruelty, caused honourably bury in one same sepulchre, amid the general mourning of all the people of Salerno."

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  Changes like these when once begun always develop. Not only was the Phoenix party’s kitchen self- conducted, but the food cooked in it was of the simplest. Condiments were eschewed. Rice, dal, vegetables and even wheat flour were all cooked at one and the same time in a kitchen with a view to introducing reform in the Bengali kitchen. One or two teachers and some students ran this kitchen. The experiment was, however, dropped after some time. I am opinion that the famous institution lost nothing by having conducted the experiment for a brief interval, and some of the experiences gained could not but be of help to the teachers. I had intended to stay at Shantiniketan for some time but fate willed otherwise. I had hardly been there a week when I received from Poona a telegram announcing Gokhale’s death. Shantiniketan was immersed in grief. All the members came over to me to express their condolences. A special meeting was called in the Ashram temple to mourn the national loss. It was a solemn function. The same day I left for Poona with my wife and Maganlal. All the rest stayed at Shantiniketan. Andrews accompanied me up to Burdwan. ‘Do you think,’ he asked me, ‘that a time will come for Satyagraha in India? And if so, have you any idea when it will come?’ ‘It is difficult to say,’ said I. ‘For one year I am to do nothing. For Gokhale took from me a promise that I should travel in India for gaining experience, and express no opinion on public question until I have finished the period of probation. Even after the year is over, I will be in no hurry to speak and pronounce opinions. And so I do not suppose there will be any occasion for Satyagraha for five years or so.’ I may note in this connection that Gokhale used to laugh at some of my ideas in Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule and say: ‘After you have stayed a year in India, your views will correct themselves.’ 131.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The hour of vespers come and the doctor being about to go to the patient in question, there came to him a messenger from certain very great friends of his at Malfi, charging him fail not for anything to repair thither incontinent, for that there had been a great fray there, in which many had been wounded. Master Mazzeo accordingly put off the tending of the leg until the ensuing morning and going aboard a boat, went off to Malfi, whereupon his wife, knowing that he would not return home that night, let fetch Ruggieri, as of her wont, and bringing him into her chamber, locked him therewithin, against certain other persons of the house should be gone to sleep. Ruggieri, then, abiding in the chamber, awaiting his mistress, and being,--whether for fatigue endured that day or salt meat that he had eaten or maybe for usance,--sore, athirst, caught sight of the flagon of water, which the doctor had prepared for the sick man and which stood in the window, and deeming it drinking water, set it to his mouth and drank it all off; nor was it long ere a great drowsiness took him and he fell asleep. The lady came to the chamber as first she might and finding Ruggieri asleep, nudged him and bade him in a low voice arise, but to no effect, for he replied not neither stirred anywhit; whereat she was somewhat vexed and nudged him more sharply, saying, 'Get up, slugabed! An thou hadst a mind to sleep, thou shouldst have betaken thee to thine own house and not come hither.' Ruggieri, being thus pushed, fell to the ground from a chest whereon he lay and gave no more sign of life than a dead body; whereupon the lady, now somewhat alarmed, began to seek to raise him up and to shake him more roughly, tweaking him by the nose and plucking him by the beard, but all in vain; he had tied his ass to a fast picket.[257] At this she began to fear lest he were dead; nevertheless she proceeded to pinch him sharply and burn his flesh with a lighted taper, but all to no purpose; wherefore, being no doctress, for all her husband was a physician, she doubted not but he was dead in very deed. Loving him over all else as she did, it needeth no asking if she were woebegone for this and daring not make any outcry, she silently fell a-weeping over him and bewailing so sore a mishap. [Footnote 257: A proverbial way of saying that he was fast asleep.]

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  I should have left the jacket on her body, left it to burn up when the gas tank exploded and turned the psychotic jane’s car into shrapnel. I could have remembered her without the jacket, without wearing her blood around my ribs, but I needed it. I knew that now I would be working the streets alone, had to toughen up, get a meaner act. I knew how much some women would pay to watch me stand over them, as long as I was wearing the jacket. Was I staving off grief, keeping myself from mourning her, or was I just being opportunistic, hustling my own poor girl’s dead body for the tools of my trade? Funny how just as soon as you realize someone you love is dead, you can think about everything except the simple, inescapable fact of your loss. Something trickles down the back of my neck. Does this clinic have an unusually zealous energy conservation plan? Most likely, the air conditioning broke down. Well, that’s what happens when you shoot your technocrats. They can’t seem to get a broken window fixed in my building, let alone the furnace when it blew up last winter. I treasure no hopes for resumption of the space race, either—or genetic engineering. Men everywhere may heave a sigh of relief. The spectacle of a thawing sperm bank leading to the extinction of our species has stayed the just retribution of women. Even if test-tube babies were possible, I doubt they’d be too popular. During the Two-Hundred-Year War, the End-of-the-World War, the Nine-to-Five War, whatever you want to call it, more than half the babies born were the result of artificial insemination. Now that they’re slowly cleaning up the air and water and the old munitions and chemical-waste dumps, the birth-defect rate has fallen considerably. There’s a widespread horror of any technological tampering that might further damage the gene pool. That’s why there’s no birth control employing synthetic hormones any more. That’s why there’s always some legislator agitating for sterilization of the unfit and more maternity incentives. Myself, I think babies are a necessary evil, and I don’t want to get close enough to one to smell it. It’s just fine with me that men don’t run the world any more, that the war has stopped, and that we’re trying to stop contaminating the planet. But I can’t help but wonder why so many of us have not profited greatly from the women’s revolution, despite the fact that we are women. Perhaps it’s because I’m not the right kind of woman.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Because there was nothing else to do, I waited on Mamma patiently. My devotion was not rewarded by anything like Berenice’s fiery and thorough ministrations. Occasionally it became too much for me, and I would whip myself in front of my dressing glass. “During those unhappy years, I learned to detest the men who followed Mamma about, fickle fools who were attracted by her dynamic personality but always attempted to quench her fire. They never stood by her when she was despondent or out of work. I began to take charge of Mamma’s engagements and income, and invested everything I could. I became quite fussy and boring, obsessed with interest rates, real estate, and securities. I also obtained a reputation for being an indomitable virago when negotiating Mamma’s contracts and appearances. “We were in, of all cities, Paris, when Mamma had her greatest triumph. She sang her favorite role in The Bird of Paradise , Flavia, the girl who sells tropical birds on the wharf in Florence, who is impregnated by the heir-apparent of the Doge, and kills herself on the eve of his betrothal so she will not be tempted to disrupt his wedding, not knowing that it was not her lover in whom she confided the news of her conception, but his evil twin brother who was thought to be dead, who had returned to the city and trained all her birds to peck out the prince’s eyes when they are released in one brilliant flock at his coronation, which is her deathbed request. “Mamma sang as she had never sung before. But she caught influenza while two counts, one French and one Italian, were making love to her in an open carriage on her way back to our hotel. They were quite piqued because her fever made her delirious before she could tell them which of their countries had won her accolade for amative skill. She died before the week was up, leaving me with her estate. “Would you believe that with all that money at my disposal, it took me a month to find Berenice? A month of harrowing anxiety and sickening fear. I could hardly see to the funeral. But my search finally bore fruit. I found my sister, your mother, in the grimmest section of the city. She was ill, carrying you, dear child, and in desperate need.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  33.PHOEBEThe first time I played music for anyone else, Phoebe said, it was to audition with a well-known soloist. He didn’t think he wanted a child student, but one of my mother’s friends had urged him to give me a trial. Until then, I’d had no lessons: I sat at the piano because I loved what I could do. He stacked books on his bench. I climbed up, then I played as I always had. I stopped when the soloist pressed his hands into his eyes. I thought that, disliking what I’d done, he hoped to avoid looking at me. I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure I wanted the instruction; it felt artificial, like being taught to breathe. But then, he put his hands down, and I saw he was crying. He asked what I thought while I hit the keys. I told him that sound was trapped in the piano. I had to let it out. So, you’ve heard the piano’s soul shining through, he said. I couldn’t tell, at the time, what he meant. Now, though, I think he was right. It’s taken me a long while to recall what I was born knowing. I’ve visited the old Hilcox Street graves. People in those days died more often as infants, often within the first month of life. I’ve written down the inscriptions of children who barely lived. I’ll recite the names. What I’ve learned from grief is how superficial it is. I’m tired of being selfish. I had the single plea: Lord, I’m in pain. But I want to be useful. I’ll delight in God’s will, which is His grace toward me. If I act with faith, I don’t have to be afraid. DAVID FITCH SYBIL DAVIS EZRA CATLIN JOHN GIBB LOUIS WHITING MERIT WYETH GILBERT MERRILL SARAH ELLIS CHRISTOPH POULSON MATTHIAS HILCOX PHILIP STILSON MARION COIT JULES DUCLOT ISAIAH PIERSON PHINEAS ALBIG ELIPHELET BALL MABEL LANG NAOMI HOYLAND JOSIAH MEIGS IRVING PLATT ELIHU RINEHART BENJAMIN CHILTON EZRA LEVITT FRANCIS STILES WILLIAM INGERSOLL ELIJAH GIRD DANIEL HALL J. T. BRINTNAL ELIPHELET LADD JULIET FALTIX RUTH YUNDT HEZEKIAH DAVIS LEVI TALBOT MERIT LAHN JOHAN PURNELL ITHIEL TODD HAVILA FAUST T. I. HOYT FEIT NEWTON LANG HORATIO COTTELL DANIEL PLATT FRANCIS JOSEPH COIT BAVIL KING MARIAH HALL ITHIEL BUEL ISAAC ALBURTIS JOEL BOYD LYDIA GIBB MERIT TODD EDWARD HOPKINS NATHANIEL HOLLIN JOEL BARTGIS FIELDING BLAUVELT GAIL LUNT JABEZ BOYD GILBERT ETHEL KIRK TITUS MARTIN MILES KEITH OBADIAH PECHIN FAITH HOYT PRATT RICHARD WELLS PHILIP NEWHALL ETTA MYGATT LUCIUS ALBIG PHILA HOYT JOHN LYALL MILES EVANS ELIHU GILL SYBIL BUEL J. D. STILES FRANTZ BOYD LORING ALLEN GAIL FAUST PHILA FALTIX JULIET LUNT

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  People turned aside, afraid. John Leal, too. But then, he noticed an old man helping the girl up, and he was ashamed. In secret, John Leal nursed the girl, Mina. He applied the primitive first-aid training he’d learned from his activist group. She had lived in hiding in China until hostile neighbors alerted the police. The minute she was told she’d be sent back, she’d known what would happen: since foreign blood was believed to be a pollution, the regime aborted all babies conceived abroad. She cried for the child she’d lose. He did his best, but he couldn’t stop the bleeding. That night, Mina died, along with the unborn child. Five months after his abduction, he was driven with no explanation to the Chinese border, beaten, and told to cross the frozen river back into Yanji. He did: he survived, but he was down thirty pounds, his left arm broken. In this shape, he couldn’t help his group, so he returned to the States. The girl he failed to save, Mina, traveled with him. Each night, when he tried to sleep, she materialized next to his bed. He asked what she wished him to do, but she didn’t respond. Lips tight, she watched him. It took several nights to notice she wasn’t wearing shoes. In life, she’d owned sandals that he’d given to a shoeless inmate when Mina died. He asked if this was what she wanted, shoes. She ignored the question. The next morning, on an impulse, he went outside shoeless. He stood on cold asphalt, holding up a sign to raise cash for Yanji activists. From that night on, Mina’s spirit left him alone. He kept fundraising in bare feet. In time, he learned to focus his canvassing efforts on big, Korean American churches. First along the East Coast, and then the West. He was Korean, himself; half-Korean, that is. Phoebe’s father helped his campaign: he invited John Leal up to the pulpit with him. It was how John Leal had known about Phoebe. He’d mentioned having attended Edwards to Reverend Lin, who then talked about his own child, also Noxhurst-bound. Oh, her father’s church—she thought she’d talked about it. Oh. Well, he’d founded a church in L.A. She wasn’t the least bit religious, no. Her parents had split up when she was little. So, the Yanji group—it had lost a second activist, then a third. Both abducted, perhaps killed. The group then disbanded. With no fundraising left to do, John Leal had returned to Noxhurst to work at a nonprofit, a legal-aid organization advising recent immigrants. It was useful work, he said, but less satisfying. He wanted to help people firsthand. Instead, he filled in official forms. He solicited grants. The people we’d met at his house thought as he did, hoping to shape their lives around public service. Now, he was looking around, waiting to find what he’d do next. –

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Mamma came home early from the theater one evening and caught Berenice in the act of whipping me with a handful of long-stemmed roses. This could have been passed off as bizarre but well-intentioned corporal punishment, and Berenice would have received no more than a scolding for being too severe. But she had stuffed a peeled persimmon up me before beginning the flagellation, and I was so frightened when I saw Mamma that it tumbled out, rolled across the floor, and came to rest at her feet. “Our mamma, who could pass the most loathsome beggers on the street without distress, was enraged and disgusted by the sight of our love-play. Because I was apparently the victim—tied and bleeding from the thorns—she did not blame me, but she flew at Berenice and tried to claw her eyes out, ignoring my screams for mercy and my shouts that it was all my fault, I could explain, please stop! Berenice seized her wrists and held her, weeping and cursing, at arms’ length. “Mamma vowed to disinherit her, turn her out with nothing but the clothes on her back. Luckily, it was near dawn, and a group of Mamma’s friends who had been out all night drinking and singing in the cafés burst in on us and insisted we accompany them to breakfast. Mamma, surrounded by her drunk and rowdy friends, found it hard to enforce this harsh sentence immediately. Berenice stood in the doorway of our suite, pale and still. I ran into our room, rifled my jewelry and Mamma’s purse, found a heavy cloak, stuffed extra underthings, a nightgown, and another dress in a small case, and brought these gifts to her. Mamma’s face darkened when she saw me put the bag at Berenice’s feet and slip the cloak around her shoulders, but she was simultaneously fending a hand away from her bodice and being told a really scandalous story about her deadliest enemy. “‘Don’t worry about me,’ Berenice said, kissing my tear-stained cheeks. ‘Perhaps this should have happened earlier. You and I had gone as far as we could under her roof. I know someone in Paris who can get me started on my own. A woman who knows how to wield a whip won’t have any trouble making her living in Paris. So come to me when you can, my love. I’ll wait for you there.’ And so we were parted.” “This is so sad,” breathed Clarissa. “Isn’t my waffle ready yet?” “Oh. Yes, I suppose it must be. Give me your plate. You’ll have to eat this in a hurry, now.” “I will, I will. Tell me how sad it was!” “Well, I thought I would die. My whole world had been ruined. But despite my misery, I stayed with Mamma. Often I would chastise myself for not having Berenice’s independent fire. But I had a premonition that my role was necessary and important, and that I would recover my long-lost love all in good time.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  death. Most of my cherished hopes were shattered. But I remember that I did not give myself up to any wild expression of grief. I could even check the tears, and took to life just as though nothing had happened. Dr. Mehta introduced me to several friends, one of them being his brother Shri Revashankar Jagjivan, with whom there grew up a lifelong friendship. But the introduction that I need particularly take note of was the one to the poet Raychand or Rajchandra, the son-in- law of an elder brother of Dr. Mehta, and partner of the firm of jewellers conducted in the name of Revashankar Jagjivan. He was not above twenty-five then, but my first meeting with him convinced me that he was a man of great character and learning. He was also known as Shatavadhani (one having the faculty of remembering or attending to a hundred things simultaneously), and Dr. Mehta recommended me to see some of his memory feats. I exhausted my vocabulary of all the European tongues I knew, and asked the poet to repeat the words, He did so in the precise order in which I had given them. I envied his gift without, however, coming under its spell. The thing that did cast its spell over me I came to know afterwards. This was his wide knowledge of the scriptures, his spotless character, and his burning passion for self-realization. I saw later that this last was the only thing for which he lived. The following lines of Muktanand were always on his lips and engraved on the tablets of his heart: ‘I shall think myself blessed only when I see Him in every one of my daily acts; Verily He is the thread, Which supports Muktanand’s life.’ Raychandbhai’s commercial transactions covered hundreds of thousands. He

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  It must have been horrible, but in history classes they always say it was a necessary precondition for revolution. Women got radicalized during World War I and World War II, but it evaporated when the men came home. It took one generation to learn how to do the work, another generation to take competence for granted, and a third one to refuse to give up the control. Not that there was anything other than a halfhearted attempt to take it back. When the whole shooting match was over, most of the army didn’t want to be repatriated. They had wives, families, whole lives in Europe. So they stayed on the land they had laid to waste with trenches, napalm—everything except atomics. It sounds to me like nuclear weapons might not have been that much worse than what they used in their place. Maybe there is such a thing as poetic justice. I’m not immune to the irresistible forces of social change. When Amanda Kim ran for president, I would have voted for her. When the national elections that defeated her were proven to be fraudulent, I would have gone on strike and rioted to put her in office. I would have thrown rocks at the National Guard when they tried to put down the revolt with tear gas and rubber bullets, and I would have cheered the women who deserted and came over to our side. When Kim was assassinated, I would have marched in her cortège and mourned for her and vowed that our first female Chief of State would not be the last. Maybe I would have been one of the witnesses who saw miracles in the wake of the funeral procession—people healed, springs cleansed, childbirth without pain. They say Kim’s body lay in state for months with no sign of physical deterioration, and an odor of roses still lingers in her tomb. I could have been one of the Hands of the Goddess, the religious order that sprang up to spread the glad word that She had manifested among us. The day Kim was laid to rest, when a Russian missile removed New Orleans from the map and the South African Aryan Republic retaliated (as they had always promised they would if nuclear weapons were used) by simultaneously melting down Moscow and Washington, D.C., I would have joined my sister-workers on the rooftops to mow down the government troops who had finally been shipped home from Europe to straighten out the womenfolk. I can easily imagine myself lobbing bottles full of burning gasoline and detergent into their jeeps. All things considered, I would have been one of the happiest celebrants in the month-long carnival that followed the signing of peace with Mother Russia.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs. Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him. "Now don't you fret, Sir Clifford!" she said, in a luxury of emotion. "Now don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!" His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. "There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!" she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: "There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!" And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last. So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: "Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!" And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn-out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! such a come-down! so shameful! And it _was_ so upsetting as well. After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: "Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!" And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same: "Do kiss me!" and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery. And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity of being a child when he was a man.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  She shoved her hand down the front of the faded jeans and rummaged around. EZ bent double, trying to stop her, and Kay removed her hand and kneed her in the crotch. “No, there’s nothing there, just pussy,” she said, her voice made harsh with old grief. “That’s why you look at Michael as if looks could kill, ’cause she went out and bought herself a dick?” She smacked EZ between the legs, and let her go to her knees from the pain. “Michael, come here. Let’s get a good look at that joint of yours. Come on, EZ, you been starin’ at her basket all night long, now it’s right in your face and you damn well better look good and hard.” Michael was not being nice. She ran her tongue around her mouth, pushed down on her cock with two fingers, then wrapped her hand around it and jacked it off. “See, you don’t want to suck it because you figure that makes you pussy, but welcome to the twentieth century, EZ, where it takes a real man to suck cock. Blow it.” Five weapons in female hands circled her head, and the sixth went down her throat. “I am glad to see you’re not pretendin’ you don’t know how this is done,” Kay said calmly. “D’you think none of our tricks ever told me what went on every time I stepped out to take a leak or get a beer? You got quite a reputation, girl, for sneakin’ around doin’ something most people think is American as apple pie. Don’t think you’re gonna hide your light under a bushel no more, cocksucker. We just found something socially useful for that nasty mouth of yours to do.” With her hands behind her back, EZ had very little control over the depth of Michael’s penetration. She tried holding her neck stiff, but the prick of steel against her scalp took the starch right out of her. She gave up and let Michael make full use of her. When they hauled her to her feet, her face was covered with tears and less attractive substances, and Kay took the red bandana off her jacket to mop her off. EZ permitted this, but when Kay reached into her jeans again, she bolted. Michael and Joy caught her by the belt-loops and dragged her back, and Kay slapped her backhanded, a serious penalty when she was wearing all of her rings. EZ had to let that hand worm its way into her crotch and bring up a handful of female lubrication, which Kay smeared across her face.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The abbot made a show of being concerned at this accident and letting untruss him, caused fetch cold water and cast it in his face and essay many other remedies of his fashion, as if he would recall the strayed life and senses from [the oppression of] some fumosity of the stomach or what not like affection that had usurped them. The monks, seeing that for all this he came not to himself and feeling his pulse, but finding no sign of life in him, all held it for certain that he was dead. Accordingly, they sent to tell his wife and his kinsfolk, who all came thither forthright, and the lady having bewept him awhile with her kinswomen, the abbot caused lay him, clad as he was, in a tomb; whilst the lady returned to her house and giving out that she meant never to part from a little son, whom she had had by her husband, abode at home and occupied herself with the governance of the child and of the wealth which had been Ferondo's. Meanwhile, the abbot arose stealthily in the night and with the aid of a Bolognese monk, in whom he much trusted and who was that day come thither from Bologna, took up Ferondo out of the tomb and carried him into a vault, in which there was no light to be seen and which had been made for prison of such of the monks as should make default in aught. There they pulled off his garments and clothing him monk-fashion, laid him on a truss of straw and there left him against he should recover his senses, whilst the Bolognese monk, having been instructed by the abbot of that which he had to do, without any else knowing aught thereof, proceeded to await his coming to himself. On the morrow, the abbot, accompanied by sundry of his monks, betook himself, by way of visitation, to the house of the lady, whom he found clad in black and in great tribulation, and having comforted her awhile, he softly required her of her promise. The lady, finding herself free and unhindered of Ferondo or any other and seeing on his finger another fine ring, replied that she was ready and appointed him to come to her that same night. Accordingly, night come, the abbot, disguised in Ferondo's clothes and accompanied by the monk his confidant, repaired thither and lay with her in the utmost delight and pleasance till the morning, when he returned to the abbey. After this he very often made the same journey on a like errand and being whiles encountered, coming or going, of one or another of the villagers, it was believed he was Ferondo who went about those parts, doing penance; by reason whereof many strange stories were after bruited about among the simple countryfolk, and this was more than once reported to Ferondo's wife, who well knew what it was.