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 Speak, Memory (1966)

  The summer of 1905 in Vyra had not yet evolved lepidoptera. The village schoolmaster took us for instructive walks (“What you hear is the sound of a scythe being sharpened”; “That field there will be given a rest next season”; “Oh, just a small bird—no special name”; “If that peasant is drunk, it is because he is poor”). Autumn carpeted the park with varicolored leaves, and Miss Robinson showed us the beautiful device—which the Ambassador’s Boy, a familiar character in her small world, had enjoyed so much the preceding autumn—of choosing on the ground and arranging on a big sheet of paper such maple leaves as would form an almost complete spectrum (minus the blue—a big disappointment!), green shading into lemon, lemon into orange and so on through the reds to purples, purplish browns, reddish again and back through lemon to green (which was getting quite hard to find except as a part, a last brave edge). The first frosts hit the asters and still we did not move to town. That winter of 1905–1906, when Mademoiselle arrived from Switzerland, was the only one of my childhood that I spent in the country. It was a year of strikes, riots and police-inspired massacres, and I suppose my father wished to keep his family away from the city, in our quiet country place, where his popularity with the peasants might mitigate, as he correctly surmised, the risks of unrest. It was also a particularly severe winter, producing as much snow as Mademoiselle might have expected to find in the hyperborean gloom of remote Muscovy. When she alighted at the little Siverski station, from which she still had to travel half-a-dozen miles by sleigh to Vyra, I was not there to greet her; but I do so now as I try to imagine what she saw and felt at that last stage of her fabulous and ill-timed journey. Her Russian vocabulary consisted, I know, of one short word, the same solitary word that years later she was to take back to Switzerland. This word, which in her pronunciation may be phonetically rendered as “giddy-eh” (actually it is gde with e as in “yet”), meant “Where?” And that was a good deal. Uttered by her like the raucous cry of some lost bird, it accumulated such interrogatory force that it sufficed for all her needs. “Giddy-eh? Giddy-eh?” she would wail, not only to find out her whereabouts but also to express supreme misery: the fact that she was a stranger, shipwrecked, penniless, ailing, in search of the blessed land where at last she would be understood.

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

  10:21–2221. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. 22. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Having placed the comfort first, He adds the more alarming perils; Brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father the son; children shall rise against parents, to put them to death. GREGORY. (Hom. in Ev. xxxv. 3.) Wrongs which we suffer from strangers, pain us less than those we suffer from men on whose affections we had counted; for besides the bodily affliction, there is then the pain of lost affection. JEROME. This we see often happen in persecutions, nor is there any true affection between those whose faith is different. CHRYSOSTOM. What follows is yet more dreadful, Ye shall be hated of all men; they sought to exterminate them as common enemies of all the world. To this again is added the consolation, For my name’s sake; and yet further to cheer them, Whosoever shall endure to the end, he shall be saved. For many are hot and zealous in the beginning, but afterwards grow cool, for these, He says, I look at the end. For where is the profit of seeds that only sprout at first? wherefore He requires a sufficient endurance from them. JEROME. For virtue is not to begin but to complete. REMIGIUS. And the reward is not for those that begin, but for those that bring to an end. CHRYSOSTOM. But that no man should say, that Christ wrought all things in His Apostles, and therefore it is nothing wonderful that they were made such as they were, since they did not bear the burden of these things, therefore He says, that perseverance was their work. For though they were rescued from their first perils; they are preserved for still harder trials, which again shall be followed by others, and they shall be in danger of snares as long as they live. This He covertly intimates when he says, Whosoever shall endure to the end, he shall be saved. REMIGIUS. That is, He who shall not let go the commands of the faith, nor fall away in persecution, shall be saved; he shall receive the reward of the heavenly kingdom for his earthly persecutions. And note that ‘the end’ does not always mean destruction, but sometimes perfection, as in that, Christ is the end of the Law. (Rom. 10:4.) So the sense here may be, Whosoever shall endure to the end, that is, in Christ. AUGUSTINE. (De Civ. Dei, xxi. 25.) To endure in Christ, is to abide in His faith which worketh by love.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. 39. in Ev.) The merciful Redeemer wept then over the fall of the false city, which that city itself knew not was about to come upon it. As it is added, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou (we may here understand) wouldest weep. Thou who now rejoicest, for thou knowest not what is at hand. It follows, at least in this thy day. For when she gave herself up to carnal pleasures, she had the things which in her day might be her peace. But why she had present goods for her peace, is explained by what follows, But now they are hidden from thy eyes. For if the eyes of her heart had not been hidden from the future evils which were hanging over her, she would not have been joyful in the prosperity of the present. Therefore He shortly added the punishment which was near at hand, saying, For the days shall come upon thee. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. If thou hadst known, even thou. The Jews were not worthy to receive the divinely inspired Scriptures, which relate the mystery of Christ. For as often as Moses is read, a veil overshadows their heart that they should not see what has been accomplished in Christ, who being the truth puts to flight the shadow. And because they regarded not the truth, they rendered themselves unworthy of the salvation which flows from Christ. EUSEBIUS. He here declares that His coming was to bring peace to the whole world. For unto this He came, that He should preach both to them that were near, and those that were afar off. But as they did not wish to receive the peace that was announced to them, it was hid from them. And therefore the siege which was shortly to come upon them He most expressly foretells, adding, For the days shall come upon thee, &c. GREGORY. (ut sup.) By these words the Roman leaders are pointed out. For that overthrow of Jerusalem is described, which was made by the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus. EUSEBIUS. But how these things were fulfilled we may gather from what is delivered to us by Josephus, who though he was a Jew, related each event as it toot place, in exact accordance with Christ’s prophecies. GREGORY. This too which is added, namely, They shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, is now witnessed in the altered situation of the same city, which is now built in that place where Christ was crucified without the gate, whereas the former Jerusalem, as it is called, was rooted up from the very foundation. And the crime for which this punishment of overthrow was inflicted is added, Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Mrs. Rodriguez?” I asked incredulously. The super nodded. The young woman stopped screaming when she heard me say her grandmother’s name. Our eyes and our lives connected in one timeless moment. She began to sob uncontrollably. Friends led her away. I turned and looked at the waves of flame sweeping each floor and I wondered, Where do my tears £0? Why is it that I can’t cry now when I need to? Yet I knew that later my tears would be unexpectedly triggered by the scent of lilacs, or the low hum of a cello. Eventually the black sky lightened over the East River. I sat on the curb, my back to the smoldering building. A fine mist fell on me from the tiny punctures in the fire-hoses, still pumping water into out homes. I sat very still, not knowing where to go from this spot. I was starting all over. I sat on a bench in Washington Square Park and inventoried my possessions: a pait of sweatpants, a T-shirt, and twenty dollars in my pocket. All my money had been hidden in the apartment. Back to double shifts. Back to sleeping in the 42"¢ Street movie theaters on weekends. I had no energy; I had no choice. My mind couldn’t fully accept the loss. I bought a hot dog and soda pop for one dollar and walked around the park, hunery for diversion. I was drawn toward a large crowd watching a young man in a top hat and tails juggling fiery torches. This was the silly part of the life of this city that I grudgingly loved, no matter how excruciatingly hard it was to survive here. “Who would ever want to be a juggler?” the woman next to me asked her companion. “I mean, what’s the point?” They both shook their heads and walked away. The joy Vd felt watching the juggler drained from my face. At the moment she’d spoken, I was thinking how wonderful it would be to learn a skill that could be practiced alone, simply for the pleasure of self-amazement. The man standing near my right elbow looked me in the eyes and cocked his head. His gaze made me uncomfortable. I wanted to turn away from him. It was as though he could see the play of emotions I was feeling. But somehow he drew me to look at him more closely. I saw a gentle man whose own feelings rippled across his face. It was as though we were carrying on an emotional dialogue without words. He raised his eyebrows in question. I shrugged. “Cynics.” I smiled. He shook his head and executed graceful motions with his hands—Deaf. He saw on my face that I understood. I smiled. He smiled. Then I was stuck. I looked at my hands, inarticulate at my sides. Once again I was bereft of words, left longing for language that could speak from heart to heart. Stone Butch Blues 267

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I smiled. “I’m gonna be forty in a couple of years, if I play my cards right.” Al nodded and turned back to the window. “We’re from the old days.” She did remember! An emotional storm cloud passed over her face. She turned to me angrily. “Leave the old days alone. Don’t bring me back, I’m dead.” I pulled away from her and then forced myself to lean forward again. “You're not dead, Al. You just got hurt real bad. You fought long and hard, but they hurt you bad. You did real good.” She turned her head toward me and let it droop. Her hand grasped for my arm, “I just couldn’t, I just ... es My voice dropped low, like a lover’s. “It’s OK now, it’s alright. You did so good that now you get to rest. It’s alright, Al.” She rested one hand on my head. The weight of her hand made me feel like a child. “Did Jackie give you that haircut?” I missed a beat, then I smiled and nodded. Al squeezed my arm. “Kid, tell her Pm sorry.” I put my hand over hers. “Jackie told me she’s not mad, Al.” She searched my face for confirmation it was true. “It’s true,” I lied, “she said don’t worry. She loves you, Al. There isn’t a day goes by she doesn’t think about you, and so do I.” Al smiled and patted my cheek. Stone Butch Blues 315 “Al,” I said, but her spirit had left like wind slamming a door shut. “Al?” She was staring out the window. Her body temperature dropped several degrees. “She’s gone,” said the Oracle. “Al,” I said, jiggling her arm. “Al, please, don’t go. Not yet, please, just give me another minute.” I hated myself for doing that. Only moments before I had sworn I would let her go back to her peace and now I was trying to drag her back again. My lip started to quiver and then my whole chin. My jaw ached. I had a second chance in life to tell her I loved her and then I blew it, just like I did as a teenager. And, like a kid, I didn’t want to leave until she reassured me that she loved me too. I leaned forward and put both my arms around her neck. “Pm sorry,” I said. “Dll leave you, Al.” The tears wouldn’t stop. “It’s just that I came all this way, across all these years, to tell you how much I love you, and now it’s too late. “T wanted to thank you. If it wasn’t for you, ’'d never have known I had a right to be me. You taught me enough to keep me alive all these years. There isn’t a day goes by that I’m not grateful for everything you gave me. You’ve meant so much in my life, Al. I always wanted to grow up in a way that would make 316 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Best Erotic Romance

  He’d capture one of her taut nipples—puckered and dark from the cold swim—between his lips. God yes. Her back would arch; she’d be arching her hips from the moment he started suckling and grazing with his teeth. She’d get so wet, so hot and slick, but he’d linger there, entranced by how hard her nipples would get, how ripe and juicy (he would murmur against her flesh, as if he were drunk, drunk on the lust of her). A teasing tongue in her navel, flicking out the water there, and then he’d move farther down. A quick nip on her hip bone, a nuzzle against her inner thigh. Her fingers would take the place of his mouth—seeing her pleasure herself always drove him a little mad—and then he’d find the true source of moisture, like Galahad succeeding in his quest for the Grail. He’d taste her, with a low groan that sent more shivers through her, before parting her folds and taking mercy on her. Strokes of his tongue against her clit, so knowing and true. He knew just how to touch her, urging her higher and higher, keeping her on edge until… Overhead the stars would wheel and blur as she surrendered to the sensations. She whirled through space on the spasms of her climax, tethered to the earth only by Ethan’s hands and mouth and touch on her. Lying on the sofa (where, yes, they’d also made love—there wasn’t a spot in the cabin where they hadn’t succumbed to heady, freeing passion), Bella slid her hand under her skirt and found her slick lips, her engorged clit. Riding on the memories, she brought herself to orgasm. Moisture stained her fingers even as tears stained her face. She hadn’t known, the last time they’d made love here, that it would be the last time. And now the cabin was for sale. Memories for sale: cheap. Bella hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the sofa, clutching a pillow and dampening another with her tears. But then, she probably hadn’t meant half of what she’d said (or even more than that) in the crimson heat of anger in their last days together. The bitter, nasty arguments in which they’d both used the intimate knowledge they had of each other to wound and cut. The vicious arguments, which had preceded the period of bone-chilling silence, which had preceded the taut, death-knell conversation ending their marriage. “I suppose we’d be better off apart.” “I suppose we would.” Bella couldn’t remember who’d said which sentence. It no longer mattered, anyway. She woke when she heard a noise. Disoriented, she blinked in the almost-darkness of twilight, unsure where she was, what she heard. The pillow clutched against her chest was damp. She fumbled for a lamp and clicked it on to remember the cabin, the memories. The door opened, and adrenalin surged. She stood, abruptly, to face the danger. Her heart twisted, betraying her. Ethan.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  perception of them. As Schopenhauer wrote, “The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him or her alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and inextricably lost.” We want to see that uniqueness of the other person in the present, bringing out those qualities we have taken for granted. We want to experience their vulnerability to pain and death, not just our own. We can take this meditation further. Let us look at the pedestrians in any busy city and realize that in ninety years it is likely that none of them will be alive, including us. Think of the millions and billions who have already come and gone, buried and long forgotten, rich and poor alike. Such thoughts make it hard to maintain our own sense of grand importance, the feeling that we are special and that the pain we may suffer is not the same as others’. The more we can create this visceral connection to people through our common mortality, the better we are able to handle human nature in all its varieties with tolerance and grace. This does not mean we lose our alertness to those who are dangerous and difficult. In fact, seeing the mortality and vulnerability in even the nastiest individual can help us cut them down to size and deal with them from a more neutral and strategic space, not taking their nastiness personally. In general, we can say that the specter of death is what impels us toward our fellow humans and makes us avid for love. Death and love are inextricably interconnected. The ultimate separation and disintegration represented by death drive us to unite and integrate ourselves with others. Our unique consciousness of death has created our particular form of love. And through a deepening of our death awareness we will only strengthen this impulse, and rid ourselves of the divisions and lifeless separations that afflict humanity. Embrace all pain and adversity. Life by its nature involves pain and suffering. And the ultimate form of this is death itself. In the face of this reality, we humans have a simple choice: We can try to avoid painful moments and to muffle their effect by distracting ourselves, by taking drugs or engaging in addictive behavior. We can also restrict what we do—if we don’t try too hard in our work, if we lower our ambitions, we won’t expose ourselves to failure and ridicule. If we break off relationships early on, we can elude any sharp, painful moments from the separation. At the root of this approach is the fear of death itself, which establishes our elemental relationship to pain and adversity, and avoidance becomes our pattern. When bad things happen, our natural reaction is to complain about what life is bringing us, or what others are not doing for us, and to retreat even further from

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

  On the contrary, Jerome says on the words “He was transfigured before them” (Mat. 17:2): “He appeared to the Apostles such as He will appear on the day of judgment.” And on Mat. 16:28, “Till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom,” Chrysostom says: “Wishing to show with what kind of glory He is afterwards to come, so far as it was possible for them to learn it, He showed it to them in their present life, that they might not grieve even over the death of their Lord.” I answer that, The clarity which Christ assumed in His transfiguration was the clarity of glory as to its essence, but not as to its mode of being. For the clarity of the glorified body is derived from that of the soul, as Augustine says (Ep. ad Diosc. cxviii). And in like manner the clarity of Christ’s body in His transfiguration was derived from His God. head, as Damascene says (Orat. de Transfig.) and from the glory of His soul. That the glory of His soul did not overflow into His body from the first moment of Christ’s conception was due to a certain Divine dispensation, that, as stated above ([4224]Q[14], A[1], ad 2), He might fulfil the mysteries of our redemption in a passible body. This did not, however, deprive Christ of His power of outpouring the glory of His soul into His body. And this He did, as to clarity, in His transfiguration, but otherwise than in a glorified body. For the clarity of the soul overflows into a glorified body, by way of a permanent quality affecting the body. Hence bodily refulgence is not miraculous in a glorified body. But in Christ’s transfiguration clarity overflowed from His Godhead and from His soul into His body, not as an immanent quality affecting His very body, but rather after the manner of a transient passion, as when the air is lit up by the sun. Consequently the refulgence, which appeared in Christ’s body then, was miraculous: just as was the fact of His walking on the waves of the sea. Hence Dionysius says (Ep. ad Cai. iv): “Christ excelled man in doing that which is proper to man: this is shown in His supernatural conception of a virgin and in the unstable waters bearing the weight of material and earthly feet.” Wherefore we must not say, as Hugh of St. Victor [*Innocent III, De Myst. Miss. iv] said, that Christ assumed the gift of clarity in the transfiguration, of agility in walking on the sea, and of subtlety in coming forth from the Virgin’s closed womb: because the gifts are immanent qualities of a glorified body. On the contrary, whatever pertained to the gifts, that He had miraculously. The same is to be said, as to the soul, of the vision in which Paul saw God in a rapture, as we have stated in the [4225]SS, Q[175], A[3], ad 2.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  At night I worked at the plastic pipe factory in South Buffalo. We’d dump huge twenty-five pound bags filled with powder into extrusion machines, and plastic pipe would push out the other end. The first day I started there my pocket watch stopped ten minutes after the shift started—it was jammed with powder. I got coated from head to foot with that dust. After a couple of weeks I was exhausted from working doubles. I saved up more than enough to fix my bike and I couldn’t think of anything else I needed. So I gave notice Friday night at the pipe factory. When I got home Saturday morning, I found Ed sitting on my front porch. She was wearing dress pants and a starched white shirt with ruby cuff links. Ed was a sight for sore eyes. She stared at me like she’d seen a ghost. “What’s that green shit all overt your” Only my eyes showed under the coat of powder. “You better get cleaned up,’ Ed told me. “Don’t you know about the funeral today? Old Butch Ro died.” Butch Ro was very much loved by all the old bulls. She was the elders’ elder. She had worked in the Chevy plant longer than anybody could remember. I could hardly imagine the depth of grief the older butches were feeling. They had loved each other so long and shared so much together. Ro and her lover almost never went out to the bars. I’d only seen them once in Niagara Falls at Tifka’s. But whether I had known her or not, it was important for me to attend her funeral. All the butches would be there. It was a sign of respect for the role she played in our community. I showered while Ed made coffee. She shouted something about dressing up as I was drying off. “What?” I called from the bathroom. “We're supposed to dress up.” Ed yelled. “Yeah, of coutse.” “No,” she shouted. “You know, like girls.” I put on a robe and came into the kitchen to make sure I'd heard her right. “Says who?” “The old bulls said so.” Ed shrugged. “But I don’t put on a dress for nobody!” She told me we were going to a funeral home to see a body, not knocking on heaven’s gate to get let in. I couldn’t put on a dress. I shuddered at the thought. Besides, it was a moot point—I didn’t own one. But if the word had come down from the older butches, something must be up. “C’mon, hurry up and get dressed,” Ed urged me. “Everybody’s probably already there by now.” It was too late to call up anyone for advice. I put on my blue suit, a white shirt, and a dark te. 124 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Best Erotic Romance

  He’d spent more time there than was strictly necessary to catch all the drops, knowing how it made her press up against him, nails digging into his back, whispering harsh and incoherent into his ear. Only then would he move down, along her collarbone, to everywhere but the center of her breasts until she moaned in unfulfilled need. He’d capture one of her taut nipples—puckered and dark from the cold swim—between his lips. God yes. Her back would arch; she’d be arching her hips from the moment he started suckling and grazing with his teeth. She’d get so wet, so hot and slick, but he’d linger there, entranced by how hard her nipples would get, how ripe and juicy (he would murmur against her flesh, as if he were drunk, drunk on the lust of her). A teasing tongue in her navel, flicking out the water there, and then he’d move farther down. A quick nip on her hip bone, a nuzzle against her inner thigh. Her fingers would take the place of his mouth—seeing her pleasure herself always drove him a little mad—and then he’d find the true source of moisture, like Galahad succeeding in his quest for the Grail. He’d taste her, with a low groan that sent more shivers through her, before parting her folds and taking mercy on her. Strokes of his tongue against her clit, so knowing and true. He knew just how to touch her, urging her higher and higher, keeping her on edge until… Overhead the stars would wheel and blur as she surrendered to the sensations. She whirled through space on the spasms of her climax, tethered to the earth only by Ethan’s hands and mouth and touch on her. Lying on the sofa (where, yes, they’d also made love—there wasn’t a spot in the cabin where they hadn’t succumbed to heady, freeing passion), Bella slid her hand under her skirt and found her slick lips, her engorged clit. Riding on the memories, she brought herself to orgasm. Moisture stained her fingers even as tears stained her face. She hadn’t known, the last time they’d made love here, that it would be the last time. And now the cabin was for sale. Memories for sale: cheap. Bella hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the sofa, clutching a pillow and dampening another with her tears. But then, she probably hadn’t meant half of what she’d said (or even more than that) in the crimson heat of anger in their last days together. The bitter, nasty arguments in which they’d both used the intimate knowledge they had of each other to wound and cut. The vicious arguments, which had preceded the period of bone-chilling silence, which had preceded the taut, death-knell conversation ending their marriage. “I suppose we’d be better off apart.” “I suppose we would.” Bella couldn’t remember who’d said which sentence.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  moved into a spacious home owned by relatives in the town of Milledgeville, in the center of Georgia, not too far from Atlanta. By 1940 the father was too weak to continue at his job. He moved back home, and over the next few months Mary watched as her beloved father grew weaker and thinner by the day, racked by excruciating pain in his joints, until he finally died on February 1, 1941, at the age of forty-five. It was months later that Mary learned that his illness was known as lupus erythematosus—a disease that makes the body create antibodies that attack and weaken its own healthy tissues. (Today it is known as systemic lupus erythematosus, and it is the most severe version of the disease.) In the aftermath of his death, Mary felt too stunned to speak to anyone about the loss, but she confided in a private notebook the effect his death had on her: “The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency, like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder.” She felt as if a part of her had died with her father, so enmeshed had they been in each other’s lives. But beyond the sudden and violent wound it inflicted on her, she was made to wonder about what it all meant in the larger cosmic scheme of things. Deeply devout in her Catholic faith, she imagined that everything occurred for a reason and was part of God’s mysterious plan. Something so significant as her father’s early death could not be meaningless. In the months to come, a change came over Mary. She became unusually serious and devoted to her schoolwork, something she had been rather indifferent to in the past. She began to write longer and more ambitious stories. She attended a local college for women and impressed her professors with her writing skill and the depth of her thinking. She had determined that her father had guessed correctly her destiny—to be a writer. Increasingly confident in her creative powers, she decided that her success depended on getting out of Georgia. Living with her mother in Milledgeville made her feel claustrophobic. She applied to the University of Iowa and was accepted with a full scholarship for the academic year beginning in 1945. Her mother begged her to reconsider, thinking her only child was too fragile to live on her own, but Mary had made up her mind. Enrolled in the famous Writers’ Workshop at the university, she decided to simplify her name to Flannery O’Connor, signaling her new identity. Working with fierce determination and discipline, Flannery began to attract attention for her short stories and the characters from the South she depicted and seemed to know so well, bringing out the dark and grotesque qualities just below the surface of southern

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  tribunal he had formed now held his fate in its hands. The charges against him were based on pure innuendo, but Robespierre made certain he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Upon hearing the sentence, he yelled at his judges, “My name is engraved on every institution of the revolution—the army, the committees, the tribunal. I have killed myself!” That same afternoon he and other condemned men were put in carts and led to the Place de la Révolution. Along the way, Danton passed the residence where Robespierre lived. “You’re next,” Danton shouted in his booming voice, pointing his finger at Robespierre’s apartment. “You will follow me!” Danton was the last one to be executed that day. An enormous crowd had followed the cart, and now they were quiet as he was led up the stairs. He could not help but think of Louis, whom he had reluctantly sent to the guillotine, and the many former friends who had died during the Terror. It had taken a few months, but he had grown sick of all the bloodshed, and he could sense the crowd before him was feeling the same way. As he laid his neck on the block, he shouted to the executioner, “Make sure you show my head to the people. It is worth a look!” After the execution of Danton, Robespierre unleashed what became known as the Great Terror. During four tumultuous months, the tribunal sent close to twenty thousand French men and women to the guillotine. But Danton had anticipated the shift in mood: the French public had had enough of the executions, and they turned against Robespierre with remarkable speed. In late July, in a heated meeting at the assembly, its members voted to arrest Robespierre. He tried to defend himself, but the words came out haltingly. One member shouted, “It is the blood of Danton that chokes you!” The following morning, without a trial, Robespierre was guillotined, and days later the assembly abolished the revolutionary tribunal. — At around the time of Robespierre’s execution, the new leaders of the revolution were looking for ways to drum up funds for the various emergencies France was facing, and someone mentioned the recent rediscovery of Louis’s magnificent coronation carriage, the Sacre . Perhaps they could sell it. A few of them went to inspect it, and they were aghast at what they perceived as its sheer hideousness. One deputy described it as “a monstrous assemblage built of the people’s gold and an excess of flattery.” All agreed that no one would buy such a grotesquerie. They had all of the gold from the coach removed and melted, sending it to the treasury. They dispatched the salvaged bronze to the republic’s foundries to help forge some much-needed cannons. When it came to the painted panels on the doors, with all of their mythological symbols, they found them too weird for anyone’s tastes and promptly had them burned. • • •

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The torturing of other Red Rebels continued in the room next door, including his brother Weihua, beaten to a bloody pulp. Mengzhe had his head shaved, and when they saw him next, his face was covered in the most hideous bruises. One day Jianhua was told his old friend and comrade Zongwei had been captured, and when Jianhua went to see him he was unconscious, his bare legs full of large punctures, blood oozing everywhere. They had flailed him with steel hooks for refusing to admit his crimes. How could the rather harmless Zongwei inspire such savagery? Jianhua ran to get the doctor, but when they returned it was too late: Zongwei died in his friend’s arms. The dead body was quickly carted away, and a cover story was created for how he had died. Jianhua was ordered to remain silent. A female teacher who refused to affirm in an affidavit the official East-Is-Red Corps version of his death was beaten and gang-raped by Little Bawang and his followers. In the months to come, Fangpu extended his powers everywhere, as he essentially ran the school and classes resumed. Battlefield News was the only newspaper allowed. The school itself had been renamed East-Is-Red Middle School. With the Corps’s power secure, the torture chamber was dismantled. Classes largely consisted of reciting quotes from Mao. Every morning they assembled before a giant poster of Chairman Mao and, brandishing their little red books, chanted to his long life. The East-Is-Red members began a scrupulous rewriting of the past. They held an exhibition to celebrate their victories, full of doctored photographs and fake news reports, all to bolster their side of events. An enormous statue of Chairman Mao, five times larger than life, was now installed at the school gate, towering over everything else. The former members of the Red Rebels had to wear white armbands that described their various crimes. They were made to kowtow before the Mao statue several times a day while classmates kicked them from behind. The former Red Rebels had become like the reviled teachers, cowed and obedient. Jianhua was forced to do the most menial labor, and having had enough of this, in early summer of 1968 he returned to his hometown. His father sent him and his brother to a farm deep in the mountains where they could be safe and work as laborers. In September, determined to finish his studies, Jianhua returned to school.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  My curves were softer now, but I still danced miles of aerobics each week, keeping myself in shape. Melissa’s father had loved seeing me strut across the room in trashy stockings, a slinky top with no bra, and a shockingly short “Do me” skirt. Jerry had been all about visual stimulation, and he loved ripping my clothes off me. Our life together had been a rush of hot lust and youthful immediacy. Hell, maybe we’d just been all about youth. It was so long ago, sometimes the details blurred. Some things, I’d never forget. After Jerry’s memorial service, I’d deliberately cut off contact with his Special Operations buddies. Cutting my ties to their wives and girlfriends had been harder, but I’d done that, too. We’d been family, bonded through history we couldn’t begin to describe to people who hadn’t been through it. Not that we were allowed to talk about much of anything. There had been days I’d wondered if our grocery lists would end up classified. When the guys were gone, we helped each other cope with morning sickness and colic, with repairs for our POS cars and day care that never stayed open late enough, and always, with the bone-deep loneliness and fear. I’d been part of a band of sisters who understood the occasional need for immediate overnight babysitting when the guys were home and one of them put his hands on his wife’s or girlfriend’s hips, looked into her eyes, and they shared a look that let you know they wouldn’t be coming up for air until morning. God, we were so young back then. So naïve and certain we were immortal. Eight months after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the quick, ferocious first Gulf War was over. Jerry was dead, I was moving out of base housing as a widow with two small children, and the guys were just getting back. Eric came straight to the house, his hair still wet from his shower. He took me in his arms and held me close, the low murmur of his, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” vibrating through my ears. I clung to him, inhaling the scent of his warm strong body, and knowing in that moment that while I’d survive losing Jerry, I’d never survive going through that kind of loss again. The Special Operations community is small and insular, and the women who’ve been part of it know the score. Eventually, Eric or others like him would be coming by my civilian apartment, wanting me to be part of their world again. They’d wait, quietly, until I was ready to rejoin them. I knew I’d never be ready. I packed up the car, hauled the kids and the dog to my hometown in Minnesota, got a business degree, and threw myself into my career and motherhood. And I never looked back. I cut my ties so completely, the only person I kept in contact with was my best friend, Janelle, and even that wasn’t by choice.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I whispered Edwin’s name out loud as teats ran down my cheeks. Theresa wheeled around and threw her arms around me. She knew. She understood. She held me while I choked on my tears. I sniffled and looked at my boots. She watched my face. There were tears in her eyes, too. She touched the stubble on my cheek with her fingertips. I couldn’t read her thoughts; I never could. It was time to leave. “You working?” I asked her. “Some,” she said. She touched my cheek again and turned to go. “Theresa,” I called her name. She looked at me. “Does she sit between the rows in your garden?” Theresa shook her head. “No, Jess. You’re the only one.” I picked up the big blue bear and extended it to her. She smiled sadly and shook her head again. Then the door shut and she was gone. Stone Butch Blues 193 I walked a couple of blocks to the supermarket and stood outside the automatic doors. After a while this little kid came by, holding onto his mother’s hand. He stared at the bear as he approached and then turned to watch it as he walked by. His mother sort of dragged him along before she turned to see what he was looking at. “Is it OK?” I asked her, nodding toward the bear. She looked surprised, but she nodded. I handed the bear to the boy. “Take good care of her, promise?” He nodded. His arms could hardly get around the stuffed animal. His mother nudged his shoulder. “Say thank you to the nice man.” 194 Leslie Feinberg THE SUN WAS JUST PEEKING over the horizon. My breath froze on my beard. I wearily boarded the temp labor bus. “Hey, Jesse,” Ben sat down next to me and reached out his huge, calloused hand, as he did every morning. He could have crushed my hand in his, but it was in his firm handshake that I always rediscovered his gentleness. I looked at this great bear of a man and smiled, genuinely glad to see him. The bitter cold didn’t seem to affect him. I remembered why when he pulled a silver hip flask from his coat pocket. He offered it to me first. I took a long swig and coughed as I handed it back to him. “Wild Turkey,” he smiled. “T like a little nip in the morning to get me going.” Actually, Ben liked little nips throughout the day to keep him going. We were parked next to a coffee shop. From where I sat I could see through the restaurant window. Annie, the waitress who had my complete attention, was pouring coffee and joking with the men at the counter. A powerful longing pulled on me, almost drawing tears. “How'd you like a piece of her?” a guy in the seat in front of us asked his friend. Ben watched me cringe. “Hey, shut up,” Ben told him.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ed and I were completely isolated. I wanted to leave. It was too painful. After a few minutes Alice came over to us, like an emissary. I felt bad that she had to play diplomat at a time when her grief was so unbearable, but I knew the butches were too angry to speak to us. I stood as she approached our table. I took her hand; she kissed my cheek. “The old butches are pretty mad at you two,” she explained gently. “Some of them feel like you spoiled it. See, they figured if they could make such a sacrifice to say goodbye to Ro, you young ones could, too. It’s not your fault, really. But you two better keep a low profile for a while, if you know what I mean.” Alice’s anguish was so discernible that I ached to reach out and hold her, but she wouldn’t have let me. I understood. It was easy for me to feel strong, to give of myself, dressed the way I was. For the butches who were watching us from across the diner, it had been painful and hard. Alice kissed my cheek lightly. “It'll blow over, you'll see,” she whispered. I hoped she was right. Stone Butch Blues 125 I figured I'd take Alice’s advice and lay low for a week or two, until I got some sign it was alright to appear at the bar again. But weeks of exile passed without a single phone call that would signal the ice had thawed. Mornings grew chilly. Autumn was in the air. There weren’t many jobs. The temp agency sent me to the cannery at Four Corners. It was an unpaid two- hour tide each way. I boarded the company bus at 4:45 A.M. It was cold and damp. Someone passed a bottle of whiskey around. I reached for the bottle and drank as I looked out the window. “Hey,” I heard Butch Jan’s voice growl, “are you gonna share that, or what?” She was kneeling on the seat in front of me. I held my breath. Jan leaned forward and grabbed a handful of my jacket. “Do you get it yet?” she demanded. Her face contorted with shifting emotions. I nodded. “Yes, I think I understood right away. I just didn’t know what to do. ’m sorry. I’m so sorry I messed it up for all of you to say goodbye to Ro.” Jan let go of my jacket and smoothed the leather. “Ah, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “The next day at the burial the family made us stay one hundred yards away from the grave. That wasn’t your fault either.” 126 = Leslie Feinberg I leaned closer to her. “Listen, Jan,” I whispered, “T’m sorry about everything, you know what I mean?” We both knew I had shifted the conversation to the night Jan saw Edna and I dancing together. “It wasn’t like you think, really.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  At night I worked at the plastic pipe factory in South Buffalo. We’d dump huge twenty-five pound bags filled with powder into extrusion machines, and plastic pipe would push out the other end. The first day I started there my pocket watch stopped ten minutes after the shift started—it was jammed with powder. I got coated from head to foot with that dust. After a couple of weeks I was exhausted from working doubles. I saved up more than enough to fix my bike and I couldn’t think of anything else I needed. So I gave notice Friday night at the pipe factory. When I got home Saturday morning, I found Ed sitting on my front porch. She was wearing dress pants and a starched white shirt with ruby cuff links. Ed was a sight for sore eyes. She stared at me like she’d seen a ghost. “What’s that green shit all overt your” Only my eyes showed under the coat of powder. “You better get cleaned up,’ Ed told me. “Don’t you know about the funeral today? Old Butch Ro died.” Butch Ro was very much loved by all the old bulls. She was the elders’ elder. She had worked in the Chevy plant longer than anybody could remember. I could hardly imagine the depth of grief the older butches were feeling. They had loved each other so long and shared so much together. Ro and her lover almost never went out to the bars. I’d only seen them once in Niagara Falls at Tifka’s. But whether I had known her or not, it was important for me to attend her funeral. All the butches would be there. It was a sign of respect for the role she played in our community. I showered while Ed made coffee. She shouted something about dressing up as I was drying off. “What?” I called from the bathroom. “We're supposed to dress up.” Ed yelled. “Yeah, of coutse.” “No,” she shouted. “You know, like girls.” I put on a robe and came into the kitchen to make sure I'd heard her right. “Says who?” “The old bulls said so.” Ed shrugged. “But I don’t put on a dress for nobody!” She told me we were going to a funeral home to see a body, not knocking on heaven’s gate to get let in. I couldn’t put on a dress. I shuddered at the thought. Besides, it was a moot point—I didn’t own one. But if the word had come down from the older butches, something must be up. “C’mon, hurry up and get dressed,” Ed urged me. “Everybody’s probably already there by now.” It was too late to call up anyone for advice. I put on my blue suit, a white shirt, and a dark te. 124 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I hurried out of the store before they could see me and raced home on my bike, just ahead of the tears. I lay on my bed for hours, until the steamy afternoon shifted to evening. Oak leaves rustled in the breeze outside my bedroom window; the streetlight projected their shadows on my wall. The whine of 242 = Leslie Feinberg cicadas rose and fell. Theresa had asked me to send her a letter someday. I wanted to write it now. I longed to deliver a bundle of sentences wrapped like a gift to her doorstep—words that would light up the night sky, words that would soothe and heal. But the words still wouldn’t come. During the long night I realized that if love had been enough, I might never have lost Theresa. But I did. I could say we came to a fork in the road. That was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. I knew I had lost Theresa in little ways long before we parted. I had been at the center of her world; she had become my whole world. As my universe shrank, I needed her to be everything for me, and in return I longed to be everything she needed. Neither of us could live up to the expectations. And yet, how could it be otherwise? How could I not sink to my knees at the end of the day and ask her for sanctuary? How could she refuse, loving me the way she did? The moments she pulled my head onto her lap and stroked my face were all I knew of refuge and acceptance. For her, my admission of need was what she’d asked of me in infinite ways. I don’t know where else I could have gone for safety in an unsafe world. And I don’t think she could have possibly sustained her love for me if I had remained a fortress. Maybe the problem was that I’d begun to believe her love could protect me, begun to expect it, to demand it. Maybe she believed if she just tried harder she could keep me safe. When she wiped the blood from my face did it mock her power? Would it be any different if we were in each other’s arms again? Someday I would tell her the little things I was beginning to understand. But for now, I could only write seven lines for her—a short poem squeezed from the clenched heart of a he-she: Especially in the cool night when leafy boughs make patterns on the walls and consciousness gently ebbs making way for sleep to lap my shores in that long moment of no control coals of remembering glow softly lending the darkness a different hue.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  help her, planning to send Isabel to Paris to live with a “man” who would act as the father—the man in this case being a woman known as Miss Dods, a notorious lesbian who loved to dress as a man and could easily pass for one. Mary delighted in furthering this plot, but before accompanying Isabel to Paris, one afternoon she received the shock of her life: Isabel confided to her in complete detail the stories that Jane had been telling her for months about Mary—that Shelley had never really loved his wife; that he had admired her but had had no feelings for her; that she was not the woman he had needed or wanted; that Jane was in fact the great love of his life. Jane had even hinted to Isabel that Mary had made him so unhappy that he had secretly wanted to die the day he left on his fatal sailing venture, and that Mary was somehow responsible for his death. Mary could hardly believe this, but Isabel had no reason to make up such a story. And as she thought about it more deeply, suddenly things began to make sense—the sudden coldness of Hogg, Leigh Hunt, and others who must have heard these stories; the looks Jane occasionally threw at Mary when she was the center of attention in a group; that look on her face when she threw Mary out of her house; the vehemence with which she wanted Mary to stay away from London and give up her child, which meant giving up their inheritance. All these years she had been not a friend but a competitor, and now it seemed clear that it was not Mary’s husband who had pursued Jane but Jane who had actively seduced him with her poses, her coquettish looks, her guitar, her put-on soft manner. She was false to the core. It was, after the death of Mary’s husband, the harshest blow of all. Not only did Jane believe these monstrous stories, but she had made others believe them. Mary knew how well her husband had loved her over so many years, and after so many shared experiences. To spread the story that she had somehow caused his death was beyond hurtful; it was like a knife being plunged into an old wound. She wrote in her journal: “My friend has proved false & treacherous. Have I not been a fool?” After several months of brooding over this, Mary finally confronted her. Jane burst into tears, creating a scene. She wanted to know who had spread this awful story of her betrayal, which she denied. She accused Mary of being cold and unaffectionate. But for Mary, it was as if she had finally woken up from a dream. She could now see the fake outrage, the phony love, the way Jane confused matters with her drama. There was no going back. Over the ensuing years Mary would not cut off ties with Jane, but

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  him. As they are about to make love in a hayloft, he begs her to remove her wooden leg, as a sign of her trust. This seems far too intimate and a violation of all her defenses, but she relents. He then runs away with the leg, never to return. In the back of her mind she was aware that Erik was somehow extending his stay in Europe. The story was her way of coping with this, caricaturing the two of them as the salesman and the cynical crippled daughter who had let down her guard. Erik had taken her wooden leg. By April she felt his absence rather keenly and wrote to him, “I feel like if you were here we could talk about a million things without stopping.” But the day after she mailed this she received a letter from him announcing his engagement to a Danish woman, and he told her of their plans to return to the States, where he would take up his old job. She had intuited such an event would happen, but the news was a shock nonetheless. She replied with utmost politeness, congratulating him, and they wrote to each other for several more years, but she could not get over this loss so easily. She had tried to protect herself from any deep feelings of parting and separation because they were too unbearable for her. They were like small reminders of the death that would take her away at any moment, while others would go on living and loving. And now those very feelings of separation came pouring in. Now she knew what it was like to experience unrequited love, but for her it was different—she knew that this was the last such chance for her and that her life was to be led essentially alone, and it made it all doubly poignant. She had trained herself to look death square in the eye, so why should she recoil from facing this latest form of suffering? She understood what she had to do—transmute this painful experience into more stories and into her second novel, to use it as means to enrich her knowledge of people and their vulnerabilities. In the next few years the drugs began to take a toll, as the cortisone softened her hip and jawbone and made her arms often too weak to type. She soon needed crutches to get around. Sunlight had become her nemesis, as it could reactivate the lupus rashes, and so to take walks she had to cover every inch of her body, even in the stifling heat of the summer. The doctors tried to remove her from the cortisone to give her body some relief, and this lowered her energy and made the writing that much harder. Under all the duress of the past few years, she had managed to publish two novels and several collections of short stories; she was considered one of the great American writers of her time, although