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.

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• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  the depression and thoughts of giving up. You do your best. You’ve got to keep living. You’ve got to keep getting up every morning no matter how crazy it all seems. You’re amazed that you’re still alive, that after all the frustrations and confinement, in and out of bed, fevers, IVs, wetting your pants, soiling the sheets, you are still here, still in this world. You try to sit proudly in your wheelchair every day, try not to lose your balance. It is incredible how normal a person can look if he only tries. You do your best to get back into life again but you know deep down inside that nothing will ever be the same, that you have lost more than most people could ever imagine, sacrificed more for your country, short of dying, than most of your fellow citizens could ever comprehend.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Nor did she leave the slightest crumb of personality behind her; she took to the air with all her belongings, with every slightest scrap of evidence which might testify to the fact of her existence. She didn’t even leave the breath of a sigh behind, not even a toenail. A clean exit, such as the Devil himself might make for reasons of his own. One was left with a great void on his hands. One was deserted, and not only deserted, but betrayed, inhumanly betrayed. One had no desire to detain her nor to call her back; one was left with a curse on his lips, with a black hatred which darkened the whole day. Later, moving about the city, moving slowly in pedestrian fashion, crawling like the worm, one gathered rumors of her spectacular flight; she had been seen rounding a certain point, she had dipped here or there for what reason no one knew, she had done a tail-spin elsewhere, she had passed like a comet, she had written letters of smoke in the sky, and so on and so forth. Everything she had done was enigmatic and exasperating, done apparently without purpose. It was like a symbolic and ironic commentary on human life, on the behavior of the antlike creature man, viewed from another dimension. Between the time she took off and the time she returned I lived the life of a full-blooded schizerino. It was not an eternity which elapsed, because somehow eternity has to do with peace and with victory, it is something man made, something earned: no, I experienced an entr’acte in which every hair turns white to the roots, in which every millimeter of skin itches and burns until the whole body becomes a running sore. I see myself sitting before a table in the dark, my hands and feet growing enormous, as though elephantiasis were overtaking me at a gallop. I hear the blood rushing up to the brain and pounding at the eardrums like Himalayan devils with sledge-hammers; I hear her flapping her huge wings, even in Irkutsk, and I know she is pushing on and on, ever further away, ever further beyond reach. It is so quiet in the room and so frightfully empty that I shriek and howl just to make a little noise, a little human sound. I try to lift myself from the table but my feet are too heavy and my hands have become like the shapeless feet of the rhinoceros. The heavier my body becomes the lighter the atmosphere of the room; I am going to spread and spread until I fill the room with one solid mass of stiff jelly. I shall fill up even the cracks in the wall; I shall grow through the wall like a parasitic plant, spreading and spreading until the whole house is an indescribable mass of flesh and hair and nails.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  To shed the first layer is painful beyond words; the next layer is less painful, the next still less, until finally the pain becomes pleasurable, more and more pleasurable, a delight, an ecstasy. And then there is neither pleasure nor pain, but simply darkness yielding before the light. And as the darkness falls away the wound comes out of its hiding place: the wound which is man, man’s love, is bathed in light. The identity which was lost is recovered. Man walks forth from his open wound, from the grave which he had carried about with him so long. In the tomb which is my memory I see her buried now, the one I loved better than all else, better than the world, better than God, better than my own flesh and blood. I see her festering there in that bloody wound of love, so close to me that I could not distinguish her from the wound itself. I see her struggling to free herself, to make herself clean of love’s pain, and with each struggle sinking back again into the wound, mired, suffocated, writhing in blood. I see the terrible look in her eyes, the mute piteous agony, the look of the beast that is trapped. I see her opening her legs for deliverance and each orgasm a groan of anguish. I hear the walls falling, the walls caving in on us and the house going up in flames. I hear them calling us from the street, the summons to work, the summons to arms, but we are nailed to the floor and the rats are biting into us. The grave and womb of love entombing us, the night filling our bowels and the stars shimmering over the black bottomless lake. I lose the memory of words, of her name even which I pronounce like a monomaniac. I forgot what she looked like, what she felt like, what she smelt like, what she fucked like, piercing deeper and deeper into the night of the fathomless cavern. I followed her to the deepest hole of her being, to the charnel house of her soul, to the breath which had not yet expired from her lips. I sought relentlessly for her whose name was not written anywhere, I penetrated to the very altar and found—nothing. I wrapped myself around this hollow shell of nothingness like a serpent with fiery coils; I lay still for six centuries without breathing as world events sieved through to the bottom forming a slimy bed of mucus. I saw the constellations wheeling about the huge hole in the ceiling of the universe; I saw the outer planets and the black star which was to deliver me. I saw the Dragon shaking itself free of dharma and karma, saw the new race of man stewing in the yolk of futurity. I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face .

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Not I— I like an easy lay.” Slaves played something like the part that masturbation has played in most cultures: we learn in a book on dream interpretation that if a man dreams “he is stroking his genitals with his hands, he will obtain a slave or slave- woman.”  Th e stories of the Roman emperors, such a garish mélange of rumor and reality, have contributed not a little to the reputation of Roman sexual cul- ture. Th e proclivities of the Roman emperors have been notorious; in the words of the inimitable Gibbon, “of the fi rst fi fteen emperors, Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct.” Th eir sexual profi les can provide some index of the erotic style of the empire, insofar as we re- mind ourselves that an emperor’s sexual behavior acted as a cipher for his style of rulership. Nothing summarized the abject depravity of Tiberius as his use of young slave children on Capri. Nero’s reputation for philhelle- nism and debauchery fused in his three reputed marriages to eastern eu- nuchs. Eunuchs did in fact come to occupy an ever more important place in pederastic practices of the Roman Empire; Domitian, whose favorite was a eunuch cupbearer named Earinus, banned castration within the empire, but the transfrontier trade was able to pump eunuchs into the empire at a suffi cient level that their prominence continued to gain into late antiquity. Th e outsized villainy of Commodus could be seen in his incest and voyeur- ism, his three hundred concubines, and his infamous behavior, in which he “polluted every part of his body and his mouth, with both sexes.”  If reports about typologically “bad” emperors are hopelessly clouded by salacious invective, the biographies of successful imperial rulers may reveal more. Nothing belies the claim that pederastic discourse lost its vitality like the relationship between Hadrian and his Bithynian favorite, Antinous. Possibly a slave, Hadrian’s beloved died on the Nile under clouded circum- stances. Hadrian’s sorrow was demonstrative, but what still defi es easy  FROM SHAME TO SIN comprehension is the paroxysm of empire- wide mourning that ensued. A city was founded at the site of his death; Hadrian believed reports that a new star had appeared in the sky, and Antinous was worshipped as a god or hero; statues of Antinous proliferated until his face was a universal image, known “across the inhabited world.” Indeed, the haunting image of Anti- nous ranks behind only Augustus and Hadrian in the number of sculptures extant today. Dozens of cities issued coinage in his honor; games were be- ing founded in his memory de cades after Hadrian was in the grave. Provin- cial sycophancy and credulous paganism do not suffi ce to explain such an uncontrolled effl ux of grief. Th e image and story of Antinous resonated in powerful and unexpected ways.  Hadrian’s sexual persona cannot be dismissed as a side eff ect of his ener- getic philhellenism.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous breasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision. How had she come to expand thus beyond all grip of consciousness? By what monstrous law had she spread herself thus over the face of the world, revealing everything and yet concealing herself? She was hidden in the face of the sun, like the moon in eclipse; she was a mirror which had lost its quicksilver, the mirror which yields both the image and the horror. Looking into the backs of her eyes, into the pulpy translucent flesh, I saw the brain structure of all formations, all relations, all evanescence. I saw the brain within the brain, the endless machine endlessly turning, the word Hope revolving on a spit, roasting, dripping with fat, revolving ceaselessly in the cavity of the third eye. I heard her dreams mumbled in lost tongues, the stifled screams reverberating in minute crevices, the gasps, the groans, the pleasurable sighs, the swish of lashing whips. I heard her call my own name which I had not yet uttered, I heard her curse and shriek with rage. I heard everything magnified a thousand times, like a homunculus imprisoned in the belly of an organ. I caught the muffled breathing of the world, as if fixed in the very crossroads of sound. Thus we walked and slept and ate together, the Siamese twins whom Love had joined and whom Death alone could separate. We walked upside down, hand in hand, at the neck of the bottle. She dressed in black almost exclusively, except for patches of purple now and then. She wore no underclothes, just a simple sheath of black velvet saturated with a diabolical perfume. We went to bed at dawn and got up just as it was darkling. We lived in black holes with drawn curtains, we ate from black plates, we read from black books. We looked out of the black hole of our life into the black hole of the world. The sun was permanently blacked out, as though to aid us in our continuous internecine strife. For sun we had Mars, for moon Saturn; we lived permanently in the zenith of the underworld. The earth had ceased to revolve and through the hole in the sky above us there hung the black star which never twinkled. Now and then we had fits of laughter, crazy, batrachian laughter which made the neighbors shudder. Now and then we sang, delirious, off key, full tremolo. We were locked in throughout the long dark night of the soul, a period of incommensurable time which began and ended in the manner of an eclipse. We revolved about our own egos, like phantom satellites. We were drunk with our own image which we saw when we looked into each other’s eyes. How then did we look to others? As the beast looks to the plant, as the stars look to the beast.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  According to Clarkson, “Respect for religious freedom means respect for the integrity of the conscience of the individual.” He continues: “Groups that use deception and coercive forms of persuasion to induce people to abandon their own conscience and adopt the beliefs of another, certainly violate the religious freedom of individuals, even if governments and cult apologists turn a blind eye to such abuses and the slow corrosion of this area of constitutional rights.” It takes significant knowledge as well as maturity on all of our parts to navigate our religiously plural society. The protections we each enjoy under the Constitution are also enjoyed by people with whom we disagree. Unless we are able to embrace this concept in ways that inform our thinking on every aspect of counter-cult work, we risk undermining our own cause. We can take a hint from none other than George Washington, who famously wrote to the Touro synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790 about the meaning of religious freedom and citizenship. “For happily,” he wrote, “the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”220 To bigotry no sanction and to persecution no assistance. That is a good principle to guide us in our work. Nothing would grieve me more than to learn that this book has caused anyone to become religiously intolerant. I remember how I felt being spat upon, kicked, punched and verbally abused because I was a Moonie. Such treatment, always uncalled for, only served to reinforce my feelings that I was being persecuted for my faith in God. And it also had the opposite effect to what people desired. By reinforcing cult leaders’ claims about persecution, it made me dig my heels in deeper into my cult identity. It made me less willing to have dialogue with people who wanted to insult me and consequently with those who wanted to help. I was able to reconnect with my Jewish faith after I left the cult, but it was my freedom of choice to do so. Not everyone makes the same kind of decision. For some, the cult experience ruined their ability to have faith in any kind of organized religion. My point is, discrimination toward anyone for their beliefs—or their lack of belief—is illegal. In principle, I am against banning cults. That will only force them underground.221 Much as I abhor their practices, I also believe they have the right to exist, so I would not support legislation prohibiting them. On the other hand, I would love to see the government supporting an inoculation program against destructive mind control and cults in which citizens young and old were provided with an understanding that kept them free from undue influence. The Future

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

  The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, “Eh, I don’t trust this guy.” “But he’s a scientist.” “In Mexican science, maybe. I don’t trust him.” However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. “Wait, wait,” your mind says, “the racism code says if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he…is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out.” [image file=image_rsrc2TH.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2TJ.jpg] CHAMELEONOne afternoon I was playing with my cousins. I was a doctor and they were my patients. I was operating on my cousin Bulelwa’s ear with a set of matches when I accidentally perforated her eardrum. All hell broke loose. My grandmother came running in from the kitchen. “Kwenzeka ntoni?!” “What’s happening?!” There was blood coming out of my cousin’s head. We were all crying. My grandmother patched up Bulelwa’s ear and made sure to stop the bleeding. But we kept crying. Because clearly we’d done something we were not supposed to do, and we knew we were going to be punished. My grandmother finished up with Bulelwa’s ear and whipped out a belt and she beat the shit out of Bulelwa. Then she beat the shit out of Mlungisi, too. She didn’t touch me. Later that night my mother came home from work. She found my cousin with a bandage over her ear and my gran crying at the kitchen table. “What’s going on?” my mom said. “Oh, Nombuyiselo,” she said. “Trevor is so naughty. He’s the naughtiest child I’ve ever come across in my life.” “Then you should hit him.” “I can’t hit him.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,” she said. “A black child, I understand. A black child, you hit them and they stay black. Trevor, when you hit him he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colors before. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’m so afraid. I’m not going to touch him.” And she never did.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  THE SCI WARD Dr. M., the chief surgeon at the hospital’s Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Center, walks past me. He is very tired but still he recognizes me and says hello. He has been in the operating room all day. His first patient, a paraplegic from D ward, had to have a flap put on his rear end for a bedsore that wouldn’t heal. There are a lot of them in here with that problem and sometimes the flap doesn’t take and they have to do it all over again. It can be very frustrating. Dr. M.’s second patient was not as lucky and had to have his gangrenous left foot removed. The nurses did all they could to save the foot but in the end they just weren’t able to. There are a lot of paralyzed guys around here with amputated legs. You can get a really bad burn and not even know it. I remember hearing a story once about a guy who came home drunk one night with his girlfriend and she filled the bathtub and placed him in it, not realizing the water was scalding hot. He got burned really badly and died the following week. There are a lot of stories like that and you try to never forget them. These are important lessons, and as horrible as it may seem, remembering them is crucial to our survival. For nearly three months last year I was a patient here at the Long Beach VA hospital, healing a terrible bedsore on my rear end after a fall in the bathtub at my apartment. The accident happened not long after I had broken up with a woman named Carol who I first met at an antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles in the spring of 1972. Carol was the first woman I loved and the very first woman to break my heart. After we broke up I felt as if my whole world had fallen apart. I was depressed and hardly getting any sleep at night. I remember putting a bandage over the bruise but it just kept getting worse. After a while the bruise became a sore and the sore an open wound, until finally I had to turn myself in to the hospital. The last place I wanted to be was back in the Long Beach VA hospital. I hated the place. The conditions were atrocious, as bad if not worse than the

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  “Sure. I loved music so much. I remember singing my songs with Tom. He would help me with the lyrics sometimes, too,” he said with considerable pride. “So you could imagine being a successful musician, living a happy and spiritually fulfilled life?” I asked, nodding my head. I wanted him to create as powerful a mental image as he could. “You bet!” Phil said, his eyes defocused. He was obviously enjoying what he was imagining. “Can you imagine how good it feels to be up on stage, singing your songs, touching people with your creativity, making them happy?” I asked. I wanted Phil to get in touch with how good he would feel as a musician. “Yes! It’s a wonderful feeling,” he said. “Great. Just imagine enjoying your music, and perhaps see your friends there, too. They must admire and respect your talent a great deal. Perhaps you are even happily married, maybe have kids.” I knew that I was taking a risk, but he seemed to enjoy adding the wife and kids to his fantasy. I waited a few minutes in silence until Phil returned from his pleasant imaginary voyage. “Now I have another question.” I paused for a deep breath. “What do you think Tom would say now if he saw you in the Hare Krishnas?” I have to admit I was caught off guard, when Phil burst into intense sobbing, which continued for a full five minutes. By this time we were sitting together in a quiet park. Phil clutched his chest and rocked back and forth. The loud crying seemed to echo from deep within. I debated with myself whether or not to put my arm around Phil and console him; I decided not to interrupt. Eventually, he stopped and collected himself once more. I looked compassionately at Phil and decided to try the question again. “Really, what would you tell Tom?” I asked. Phil wiped his eyes and stated quite categorically. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?” I nodded and remained silent for a while. I decided to let him think about the question some more, hoping he would answer it within himself. I suggested we get up and walk some more. I wanted him to shift his frame of mind. “There are a few more things I would like to discuss with you before we go back to the house.” I started up again. “If you could put yourself in your parents’ shoes, how would you feel to lose a son?” “What?” he asked looking up at me. “Imagine being your mother,” I said. “She carried Tom and you, gave birth to both of you, nursed, diapered, washed both of you. Cared for you when you were sick. Played with you, taught you, watched you grow to adulthood. Can you feel what it must have been like for her to lose Tom?” “Yes. It was horrible,” he said. He was, indeed, talking as though he was his mother.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Magdalen came to see her almost every day. She walked around the kitchen cleaning things while Virginia sat at the table. Virginia watched her long, calm hands closing cabinets, sorting silverware, rubbing surfaces with wet, stained old cloths. She remembered how Magdalen used to run around and make so much noise. It was a clear memory, but it didn’t seem as though it was hers. — Virginia began getting up to cook Jarold’s breakfast again. She put an extra alarm clock beside the couch. She put on a robe over her rumpled clothes and moved around the kitchen. She put her plate of eggs opposite Jarold’s and ate them. Jarold’s jaws chewed stiffly; his throat was like wood. But they talked, and she found it comforting. Before he left he would hold her hand and kiss her. She’d wait until he was gone, then sit back down again and cry. — Charles had been dead eight months when Anne came. Virginia drove to the airport to pick her up. It was strange to be at the wheel of a car again, driving with a lot of other cars around her. It was very sunny, and the primary-colored metal of the cars was festive in the brightness. She turned the radio on and rolled down the window. Anne was waiting at the terminal in a gray suit. When she saw Virginia she tipped her head to the side and grinned; she raised her hand and waved it in stiff, frantic waves. They hugged. Anne only came up to Virginia’s chest. Still hugging, they leaned back to look at each other and laughed. Anne’s glasses were cockeyed. “Goodness, you’ve gotten thin,” she said. “Let’s take you home and feed you. I’m starved.” They rode through traffic, chattering. Virginia didn’t go straight home. She left the highway and drove up into the mountains. Anne rolled down her window and put her gray elbow on the ledge. She said, “It’s simply glorious up here.” — They had egg sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Virginia had cleaned the kitchen and put a vase of pink and white carnations on the table. The fruit was cut up in a large cream-colored bowl. They helped themselves at a leisurely pace, sometimes eating the wet, lightly bruised fruit straight from the bowl with their fingers. The afternoon sun came in, lighting up a sparkling flurry of dust flecks. — Virginia talked about Camille, Daniel and Magdalen. She told Anne about Camille’s career success and about how helpful Magdalen was. “She still lives like a hippie, though. I don’t think she misses the big ranch they had at all. She certainly doesn’t miss John. The only time she’s ever mentioned him was to say that she was always surprised at how stupid he turned out to be. It’s weird. It’s like it never happened.” “Well, you know some people work best in that kind of footloose life-style,” said Anne. “It’s called being a bohemian. Lily’s still that way.”

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  For years, I figured that as long as I used protection and avoided friends’ exes, bad consensual sex was a net wash—a silly, aerobic way to pass the time that didn’t positively or negatively affect my life. But bad sex is not a wash. It’s not a disaster, but it’s not a wash. In short, bad sex matters because good sex matters. Our pleasure matters. Our eroticism matters. Our time matters. I want to teach myself how to French braid! There is so much I want for me, and for you, that bad sex steals from us; there were so many instances while writing this book that I found myself grieving—for lost energy, lost time, lost spirit, lost self. I ask the question: Why do we tolerate bad sex?, in hopes of moving beyond tolerance, dreaming beyond tolerance, because sexual happiness is a matter of social justice and public health. For those of us who desire sex, sex is good for us. People who report satisfying sex lives feel better in the rest of their lives, and the physical benefits of pleasurable sex, from lower blood pressure to better sleep, are well-documented. Bad sex is worthy of our attention, our scrutiny, because our relationship to pleasure provides innumerable insights into our emotional states, helping us heal and lead fuller, happier lives. For some people, that can mean little sex at all. Pleasure is everywhere. In her famous 1978 speech, “The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde talks specifically of the erotic: of the joys that await us when we refuse to settle for the bad, the mundane, in our erotic lives. She imagines what is possible when we prioritize pleasure, rather than settling for lesser sensation, lesser joy. While I wish she were less dismissive of “the pornographic,” a category I believe can be enriching, she honors “the erotic” as a valuable source of power that is urgently necessary. “For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of,” Lorde wrote. The journey toward “erotic knowledge” that Lorde speaks of is rooted in difficult, at times mortifying, self-interrogation. But when we start asking ourselves what we like and want (orgasms! intimacy! revenge!), we get closer to claiming it. To begin the journey, we must abandon all preciousness. We’re talking about mashing and smashing the strangest-shaped parts of our bodies. Sometimes when I’m scraping cum crust off my pillowcase on the way to the hamper, I indulge in daydreams about what might happen if we understood sex as this silly, imperfect thing—not an act to champion or fear. It is not, and cannot be, everything, and this book does not aim to present it as such. I hope to deconstruct sex so we can better understand—and value—our relationship to it: to the bad sex, yes, but also to the sex we love.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He found her crying one day when he came home from work. It was so rare to see Diane cry that it was several minutes before he realized there were tears on her face. She was sitting in the aging purple armchair by the window, one leg drawn up and bent so that her knee shielded her face. Her shoulders were in a tight curl, she held her long bare foot tightly in her hand. She watched him walk past her. She let him reach the doorknob before she said, “You’re seeing someone.” He stopped and faced her, thankful and relieved that she had said it first. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “I didn’t know how.” “You cowardly piece of shit.” “It’s nothing serious,” he said. “It’s just an obsession.” “It’s Daisy, isn’t it?” She said the name like it was a disease. “How did you know?” “The way you mentioned her name. It was sickening.” “I didn’t intend for it to happen.” “What a slime-bag you are.” It was then that he identified the glistening on her cheeks and chin. The tears were wrenching and poignant on her still face. He dropped his bag of jelly beans and moved toward her. He sat on the fat arm of the chair and put his arms around her rigid, shivering body. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s like before,” she said. “With Rita. It’s so repulsive.” “If you can stay with me through this, just wait it out…” “I want you out of here by the end of the month.” The tears shimmered through her voice, which quivered like sunlight in a puddle. He wanted to make love to her. “You’re the cruelest person I’ve ever known.” Her voice almost broke into panting. She yanked herself out of the chair and walked away, kicking the bag of jelly beans as she passed, spraying them across the floor. He waited until she was out of the room and then went to scoop up a handful of the red, orange and green ones. He ate them as he looked out the picture window and down into the street. There were two junkies in ugly jackets hunched beside the jagged hole in a wire fence. I am a slime-bag, he thought. He went to his room to think about Daisy. The next morning he went to Daisy’s desk and sat near her on a box of books bearing an unflattering chalk drawing of the shipping department supervisor. She held her Styrofoam cup of tea with both hands and drank from it, looking over its rim with dark-shadowed eyes. “She said I was the cruelest person she’d ever known.” “Oh, you’re not so bad. She just doesn’t get out of the house much. She doesn’t know what’s out there.” “You don’t know me.” She put down her cup. “I talked to David last night. He cried too. He just lay there and stared at me with those big eyes. It was awful.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  But they talked, and she found it comforting. Before he left he would hold her hand and kiss her. She’d wait until he was gone, then sit back down again and cry. — Charles had been dead eight months when Anne came. Virginia drove to the airport to pick her up. It was strange to be at the wheel of a car again, driving with a lot of other cars around her. It was very sunny, and the primary-colored metal of the cars was festive in the brightness. She turned the radio on and rolled down the window. Anne was waiting at the terminal in a gray suit. When she saw Virginia she tipped her head to the side and grinned; she raised her hand and waved it in stiff, frantic waves. They hugged. Anne only came up to Virginia’s chest. Still hugging, they leaned back to look at each other and laughed. Anne’s glasses were cockeyed. “Goodness, you’ve gotten thin,” she said. “Let’s take you home and feed you. I’m starved.” They rode through traffic, chattering. Virginia didn’t go straight home. She left the highway and drove up into the mountains. Anne rolled down her window and put her gray elbow on the ledge. She said, “It’s simply glorious up here.” — They had egg sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Virginia had cleaned the kitchen and put a vase of pink and white carnations on the table. The fruit was cut up in a large cream-colored bowl. They helped themselves at a leisurely pace, sometimes eating the wet, lightly bruised fruit straight from the bowl with their fingers. The afternoon sun came in, lighting up a sparkling flurry of dust flecks. — Virginia talked about Camille, Daniel and Magdalen. She told Anne about Camille’s career success and about how helpful Magdalen was. “She still lives like a hippie, though. I don’t think she misses the big ranch they had at all. She certainly doesn’t miss John. The only time she’s ever mentioned him was to say that she was always surprised at how stupid he turned out to be. It’s weird. It’s like it never happened.” “Well, you know some people work best in that kind of footloose life-style,” said Anne. “It’s called being a bohemian. Lily’s still that way.” “Is she doing well?” “Oh, yes. You know, I don’t ever worry about her anymore. Ever since she’s gotten serious about photography, her whole life’s pulled together. She really works hard. She works for all the papers and magazines in Detroit.” Virginia looked at the pieces of fruit on her plate. “I always thought that Lily could do well if she wanted to,” she said. “She was such a sensitive child. I was sorry I couldn’t do anything to help her.” “Don’t feel that way.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Many people involved in faith-healing cults have to deal with the death of a child or other loved one who was prevented from receiving medical treatment. The remorse they feel when they leave such a group should not be turned on themselves in the form of blame or guilt. They need to realize that they were victims, too, and did what they believed to be right at the time. Other ex-cult members have to deal with the anger and resentment of their children, who in some cases were beaten, neglected or sexually abused. Many were deprived of an education and a normal childhood. Some were deprived of their own parents; certain cults, such as the Hare Krishnas, systematically separated children from their parents and allowed them to visit only infrequently.187 Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO group sent some of its members’ children to the organization’s school in India. By separating children from their parents, the allegiance of both generations became solely to the group.188 For years, Scientology “Sea Organization” parents were only allowed to see their children for an hour a day, if their production statistics were up. Children ran wild with almost no adult supervision. Leader David Miscavige has since prohibited Sea Org members from having children, and many women have been coerced into having abortions. For others involved in less destructive cults, the emotional toll on children can ultimately yield positive results. I saw that in the life of my client Barbara. She explained how, for most of her life, she had thought she was crazy. Then she realized, from talking with a friend, that the group her parents had been involved with for the previous decade was actually a destructive cult. Barbara had spent a good deal of her childhood growing up on the group’s commune. She and her brother Carl had been taught since early childhood that all negative emotions were harmful. Sadness, anger, jealousy, embarrassment, guilt and fear were all to be avoided and not “indulged in.” Of course, all of these emotions are entirely normal, but Barbara and Carl had been taught otherwise. They were very relieved to know that their lifelong problems were not signs of mental illness, and that help was available for them. Growing up, Barbara and Carl had tried to do what they were told, and dutifully attended cult indoctrination programs, but had never felt right about it. Nevertheless, they loved their parents and tried to do what would please them. Now that they were in college, as soon as they discovered that the group was a cult, they arranged for me and a former group member to counsel them, and then planned a rescue effort for their parents.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Certainly this was true of Gretchen Callahan’s involvement in a small fundamentalist Bible cult in southern California called the Truth Station.108 Its 30 members were led by a man who was convinced that he was in direct communication with God. The group lived in a house together and spent much of their time being indoctrinated. They believed that they were the only people on Earth living as true Christians. They also believed in the practice of faith healing. Yet Gretchen had a personal experience of a faith healing that failed—with fatal consequences. The group would routinely have long meetings in a crowded living room. The leader would spend hours putting members on the hot seat, verbally humiliating them, while everyone else watched. No one was allowed to get up and go to the bathroom. They had to stay and be part of the process. Members were led to believe that the sin in each of them had to be “brought into the light” and destroyed. No one knew whose turn on the hot seat would come next, and each person would sigh inwardly with relief when another member’s name was called. Questioning the leader’s authority was called “giving place to satanic spirits.” Being fully committed to the infallibility of the leader and his interpretation of the Bible was seen as the mark of a true believer. People would go to great lengths to demonstrate that they were, indeed, true believers. David, a young man in the group, felt the subtle power of the group pressuring him to become more “spiritual.” To prove his commitment to the group and be more accepted, he decided to stop taking insulin for his diabetes, believing that God would heal him. The members applauded his faith and his decision to throw away his insulin. In a matter of days, David’s health deteriorated. By the end of the week, the leader ordered around-the-clock prayer teams. Gretchen’s team was on when David took his last breath; yet the group, spurred on by the leader’s anxious exhortations, was convinced that David would be resurrected. They prayed for 15 hours over his body. David’s father, at that time a group co-leader, beat on his dead son’s chest, rebuking Satan and the angel of death, while David’s mother had to be removed from the room because her grief and anguish were viewed as spiritual weakness. Gretchen held David’s hand much of the day, as his body turned blue and became stiff. Even after the police arrived and the coroner took away the body, the group members continued to believe that the young man would return. For three months following his death, a place was set for him at the table, and members (including young children) had visions, dreams, and prophecies concerning his resurrection.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  For both Theodosius II and Justinian, the two great Christian codifiers of the law, prostitution was a particular fixation. Under Justinian, prostitution was the target of a policy even wider than his campaign against sexual procurement. Justinian and Theodora founded a convent for reformed prostitutes. This refuge was to be a means of escape for women trapped in the life of the brothel. Named “Repentance,” the convent advertised the possibility of inner change for the prostitute and established a reformatory on Christian terms. As we will see in Chapter 4, the idea of the penitent prostitute is exactly contemporaneous, and ideologically correlated, with the legal program against coercion in the sex industry. As with the regulation of same-sex eros, the state’s intervention in the sex trade reached its pitch of ideological fervor in the reign of Justinian, and once again relied on a religio-juridical complex. In his Secret History, Procopius cynically reported that the emperor and empress forced prostitutes who did not want to convert, against their will, to enter the monastery. He claimed that these prostitutes threw themselves off the walls of the convent as their only means of resistance. The very language, “forced to convert,” showed a close familiarity with the moral and intellectual foundations of Christian policy between Theodosius II and Justinian. Procopius inverted the dynamics of consent and coercion to create a malicious send-up of the Christian approach to prostitution.85 The policy initiated in 428 and fulfilled in the age of Justinian represented a momentous crack in the foundations of an ancient institutional order. What requires emphasis, though, and what proves revealing for the larger question of the Christianization of law, is the extent to which this was not destined to be one Christian sexual policy among others. It was the front edge of Christian legislative intervention in the sexual economy. Rules against homoerotic acts were explosive but exceedingly rare; the statutes against adultery already on the books were sufficient; the direct repression of prostitution was inconceivable. So the Christian state, from Theodosius II to Justinian, the two great codifiers, made sexual coercion the signal reform issue. Over a crucial century, in which other examples of Christian sexual legislation are virtually nonexistent, the problem of coerced prostitution generated a string of enactments whose evolving scope reflects the earnest ambitions of lawmakers. At its core this campaign against coerced prostitution is an expression of a new model of human solidarity. In the name of suppressing sin, the campaign brought the most morally invisible bodies inside the horizons of public solicitude. The state, so long accustomed to limiting its prerogatives to the regulation of property, status, and rank, could no longer remain absolutely indifferent to the exploitation of those bodies beyond civic claim to honor; it is no huge exaggeration to say that this policy marks the passing of an age. CONCLUSION: RHYTHMS OF CHANGE IN LATE ANTIQUITY

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  When did it happen? I thought of her like a maniac night and day, year in and year out, and then, without even noticing it, she drops out of my mind, like that, like a penny falling through a hole in your pocket. Incredible, monstrous, mad. Why all I had to do was to ask her to marry me, ask her hand—that’s all. If I had done that she would have said yes immediately. She loved me, she loved me desperately. Why yes, I remember now, I remember how she looked at me the last time we met. I was saying good- by because I was leaving that night for California, leaving everybody to begin a new life. And I never had any intention of leading a new life. I intended to ask her to marry me, but the story I had framed like a dope came out of my lips so naturally that I believed it myself, and so I said good-by and I walked off, and she stood there looking after me and I felt her eyes pierce me through and through, I heard her howling inside, but like an automaton I kept on walking and finally I turned the corner and that was the end of it. Good-by! Like that. Like in a coma. And I meant to say come to me! Come to me because I can’t live any more without you! I am so weak, so rocky, that I can scarcely climb down the El steps. Now I know what’s happened—I’ve crossed the boundary line! This Bible that I’ve been carrying around with me is to instruct me, initiate me into a new way of life. The world I knew is no more, it is dead, finished, cleaned up. And everything that I was is cleaned up with it. I am a carcass getting an injection of new life. I am bright and glittery, rabid with new discoveries, but in the center it is still leaden, still slag. I begin to weep—right there on the El stairs. I sob aloud, like a child. Now it dawns on me with full clarity: you are alone in the world! You are alone . . . alone . . . alone. It is bitter to be alone . . . bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. There is no end to it, it is unfathomable, and it is the lot of every man on earth, but especially mine . . . especially mine. Again the metamorphosis. Again everything totters and careens. I am in the dream again, the painful, delirious, pleasurable, maddening dream of beyond the boundary. I am standing in the center of the vacant lot, but my home I do not see. I have no home. The dream was a mirage. There never was a house in the midst of the vacant lot. That’s why I was never able to enter it.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The slave Euclia enjoys her temporary promotion, but she is undone by her pride. Tired of her airs, the fellow slaves reveal the plot to their master. Infuriated, he has Euclia’s tongue cut out and her body mutilated. Rather pitifully, he goes to Maximilla in his distress and reiterates his love for her. She rebukes him in a malicious double entendre that served to fuel rather than allay his suspicions. “I love, Aegeates, I do love, but what I love is not of this world.… Let me have my intercourse with this love and take solace only in it.” When Aegeates identifies Andrew as the cause of his troubles, he has the apostle arrested. The proconsul tempts his wife to return to bed by threatening to visit inconceivable torment on Andrew’s body. In the Acts of Andrew the lawful husband, the image of Roman order, has become the villain, and the bond between the apostle and the heroine—a purely chaste bond—is subjected to awful trials. Strengthened by Andrew’s preaching, Maximilla stands firm against Aegeates, and Andrew, after preaching from the gallows, is crucified. This artful romance, then, ends not with the mysterious pleasures of union that regenerate the world but with suffering and separation and hope for a final reunion with God.37 No piece of the apostolic cycle is so exquisitely framed as a romance as the legend known as the Acts of Paul and Thecla. The story of Paul and Thecla was a detachable part of the larger body of legends that accumulated around the figure of Paul. The Acts of Paul and Thecla are already, in their focus on Thecla as a protagonist, more reminiscent of romance than most apostolic lore. Thecla is directly modeled on the heroines of romance. She is a virgin, the daughter of Theoclia, citizen of Iconium. She is just of marriageable age, engaged to the leading young man of the city, Thamyris. When Thecla overhears Paul’s preaching through a window, she is enraptured by his words. She sat day and night at the window and listened to his gospel of virginity. Thecla’s mother, equal in her connivance to Leucippe’s, is astonished and alarmed at the enthusiasm of her daughter, who is attached to the window “like a spider.” Thecla’s mother sounds the alarm to her daughter’s fiancé, Thamyris, about the stranger whose teachings threaten to convulse the city of the Iconians. He and the other men of the city plot against Paul and have him arraigned before the governor, who exiles Paul but orders Thecla burned alive. She miraculously escapes and rejoins her apostle on the road. They travel to Antioch, where the sequence of events replays itself: a malignant suitor sets his mind on Thecla, she resists, she faces trial and execution, but she is miraculously rescued. Finally she and Paul part ways, and she journeys to Seleucia, her final resting place.38

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an over-long cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken. For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’ ” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts. — Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human. It embraces the whole universe. It includes the knowledge of death, which not even God enjoys. At the point from which this book is written I am the man who baptized himself anew. It is many years since this happened and so much has come in between that it is difficult to get back to that moment and retrace the journey of Gottlieb Leberecht Müller. However, perhaps I can give the clue if I say that the man which I now am was born out of a wound. That wound went to the heart. By all man-made logic I should have been dead. I was in fact given up for dead by all who once knew me; I walked about like a ghost in their midst. They used the past tense in referring to me, they pitied me, they shoveled me under deeper and deeper. Yet I remember how I used to laugh then, as always, how I made love to other women, how I enjoyed my food and drink, and the soft bed which I clung to like a fiend. Something had killed me, and yet I was alive. But I was alive without a memory, without a name; I was cut off from hope as well as from remorse or regret. I had no past and I would probably have no future; I was buried alive in a void which was the wound that had been dealt me. I was the wound itself . I have a friend who talks to me from time to time about the Miracle of Golgotha of which I understand nothing. But I do know something about the miraculous wound which I received, the wound which killed me in the eyes of the world and out of which I was born anew and rebaptized. I know something of the miracle of this wound which I lived and which healed with my death. I tell it as of something long past, but it is with me always. Everything is long past and seemingly invisible, like a constellation which has sunk forever beneath the horizon. What fascinates me is that anything so dead and buried as I was could be resuscitated, and not just once, but innumerable times. And not only that, but each time I faded out I plunged deeper than ever into the void, so that with each resuscitation the miracle becomes greater. And never any stigmata! The man who is reborn is always the same man, more and more himself with each rebirth. He is only shedding his skin each time, and with his skin his sins. The man whom God loves is truly a right-living man. The man whom God loves is the onion with a million skins.