Guilt

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 Looking for Alaska (2005)

  And my ID blows. But I’ll flirt my way through.” She made a sudden and unsignaled left turn, pulling onto a road that dropped precipitously down a hill with fields on either side, and she gripped the steering wheel tight as we accelerated, and she waited until the last possible moment to brake, just before we reached the bottom of the hill. There stood a plywood gas station that no longer sold gas with a faded sign bolted to the roof: COOSA LIQUORS: WE CATER TO YOUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. Alaska went in alone and walked out the door five minutes later weighed down by two paper bags filled with contraband: three cartons of cigarettes, five bottles of wine, and a fifth of vodka for the Colonel. On the way home, Alaska said, “You like knock-knock jokes?” “Knock-knock jokes?” I asked. “You mean like, ‘Knock knock...” “Who’s there?” replied Alaska. “Who.” “Who Who?” “What are you, an owl?” I finished. Lame. “That was brilliant,” said Alaska. “I have one. You start.” “Okay. Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” said Alaska. I looked at her blankly. About a minute later, I got it, and laughed. “My mom told me that joke when I was six. It’s still funny.” — So I could not have been more surprised when she showed up sobbing at Room 43 just as I was putting the finishing touches on my final paper for English. She sat down on the couch, her every exhalation a mix of whimper and scream. “I’m sorry,” she said, heaving. Snot was dribbling down her chin. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She picked up a Kleenex from the COFFEE TABLE and wiped at her face. “I don’t...” she started, and then a sob came like a tsunami, her cry so loud and childlike that it scared me, and I got up, sat down next her, and put my arm around her. She turned away, pushing her head into the foam of the couch. “I don’t understand why I screw everything up,” she said. “What, like with Marya? Maybe you were just scared.” “Scared isn’t a good excuse!” she shouted into the couch. “Scared is the excuse everyone has always used!” I didn’t know who “everyone” was, or when “always” was, and as much as I wanted to understand her ambiguities, the slyness was growing annoying. “Why are you upset about this now?” “It’s not just that. It’s everything. But I told the Colonel in the car.” She sniffled but seemed done with the sobs. “While you were sleeping in the back. And he said he’d never let me out of his sight during pranks. That he couldn’t trust me on my own. And I don’t blame him. I don’t even trust me.” “It took guts to tell him,” I said. “I have guts, just not when it counts.

• From Action (2014)

  Even if people in your life treat porn like an immoral cesspool in which sinners are drowning their deficient souls, it’s more of a sizzlin’ cabana party, from what I’ve seen on my computer screen. Much like a coconut rum–infused fuck-a-thon, it’s pretty unbeatable in moderation: a nice diversion from real life, but not what you expect it to be like around-the-clock. THE ETHICAL SMUT [image file=image_859.jpg] Taking in a rude motion picture is the same as any other consumer choice—you can decide how to do it ethically. If you’re concerned that the pornography you like to watch is disadventageous to either the individual actors in it or our twisted society-culture on the whole, man, let’s talk about how to make sure you’re watching videos that you don’t feel go against your moral code. Are you mad at what you like because it doesn’t square with your personal gender, race, class, or sexual orientation–based politics? I try to take a look at the way I conduct myself in the world, and reexamine what my actual feelings and behaviors about social justice, equal rights, and respecting people of all stripes are. Yeah, yeah—they’re pristine. Except they’re not, of course! Few people can be convinced of their bigotry, even when it’s obvious that we live in a white supremacist patriarchy that imbues us with it. Look, I get that you’re not currently guffawing heartily at a homeless person on your office flat-screen TV and smacking your secretary’s ass while clad in a KKK uniform. However: If you were born white, male, straight, or cisgender, you were given a book of get-out-of-jail-free cards that was withheld from others, and if you’re not trying to redistribute them in all things, including pornography, that’s kind of a boner-killer for the rest of us. In your broader life, do you make a concerted effort to lift up and listen to others in order not to bulldoze them? Great! Let’s take a look at how that extends to your skinematic taste. Are you able to recognize, if you’re watching porn that isn’t a perfect representation of your politics (aka, 97 percent of porn), what and where the flaws are? Okay, then go ahead and watch it if you want to.

• From Action (2014)

  Get all altruistic. You know how people sometimes sniff that volunteering and other forms of do-gooderism are ultimately, like, so selfish in the end—they’re all about making the person doing it feel good about themselves. To this, I say: Correct, probably! And that is so rad. People who apply their time and energy, if they are fortunate enough to find themselves with extra supplies of these resources, to making the world the slightest bit less harrowing for others, have the right to feel good about themselves (so long as they don’t post TOO many pictures of it on the internet—I don’t care if people talk about the causes they love, but I rankle when that’s to the end of broadcasting their own saintly virtue and generosity). Also: Who cares! Good is being done here. If, in chasing momentarily rewarding-feeling self-aggrandizement rights, a person is chipping at the net grossness of the planet’s collective miseries, at least they’re trying to both preen and big-up themselves (even if that’s just internally) through fellowship. I vastly prefer this kind of grandstanding to the types of which the by-products do not serve anyone but their enactors. Like, attempting to have THE HOTTEST SEX-HAIRSTYLE TO PROVE YOU’RE THE TOP DOG doesn’t end up affecting anybody besides the updo-er in question, but fixing to have THE BIGGEST SEX-HEART BY DOING GOOD TURNS at least helps others out. A secret: I used to be one of the eye-rollers who mentally (and sometimes vocally) accused people who donated time, cash, and/or public support of being self-deifying phonies. But you know how people who are obsessed with whether the motives of others are “fake” or not are so often anxious in that way because they’re fearful that expressing their own interest in similar activities is valid? When I waffled about the worth of my own motives, which were fine—and would have been even if they were narcissistic—I was stating an argument to counter what I actually believed because I was worried that if I got involved in causes I cared about, people would roll their eyes at ME. That is major dunce behavior, and it shouldn’t have stopped me from just saying FUCK IT and heading down to the food pantry to see what I could do. You don’t have to “volunteer” quite so overtly, either. As I mentioned, not everyone has that temporal luxury—and maybe you don’t WANT to plant a rain forest on an oil spill! Find your own version of answering to the itchy beliefs you’re inclined to scratch at most persistently by quizzing yourself thusly: Did I add worth and/or goodness to another person’s life today? If the answer is yes: You are closer to whole than you would have been otherwise, and more appealing, because there is nothing hotter than a person unafraid of actively executing what they think is true.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  highest standards demanded by God. The world which he would have constructed on these principles would have been one vast monastery.46 It would have been impossible to sustain the mixed human society of vice and virtue which Augustine presents in the ‘City of God’, where no Christian has the right to avoid everyday civic responsibilities in this fallen world, even to be a magistrate who is responsible for executing other human beings, precisely because we are all caught up in the consequences of Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden. Augustine’s pessimism started as realism, the realism of a bishop protecting his flock amid the mess of the world. It is worth noticing that his first denunciations of Pelagius’s theology came not in tracts written for fellow intellectuals, but in sermons for his own congregation.47 The sack of Rome in 410 produced a scatter of refugees throughout the Mediterranean and this began spreading the dispute beyond Pelagius’s Roman circle. One enthusiastic follower of Pelagius, a lawyer named Celestius, arrived in North Africa and began expounding Pelagius’s views to an extreme point where he left no possibility of affirming original sin. So he said that there was no sin to remit in baptism: ‘sin is not born with a man, it is subsequently committed by the man; for it is shown to be a fault, not of nature, but of the human will’.48 There could not have been a more sensitive issue to choose in North Africa, where much of the argument between Catholics and Donatists had centred on both sides’ claim to be the true heir of Cyprian’s third-century teaching on baptism as the only way to gain salvation. It was these statements of Celestius which first provoked Augustine’s fury against the group of propositions which came to be labelled as Pelagianism; his relations with Pelagius himself did not descend to the same bitterness. Over the next few years, a complicated series of political moves and counter-moves raised the temperature to new heights; Augustine’s crusade against the Pelagians eventually resulted in their defeat and the dismissal from Church office of all their highly placed supporters. In the process, Augustine’s thoughts about the nature of grace and salvation were pushed to ever more extreme positions, which can be traced both through The City of God and the long series of tracts which he wrote attacking Pelagian thought. Eventually he could say not simply that all human impulses to do good are a result of God’s grace, but that it is an entirely arbitrary decision on the part of God as to who receives this grace. God has made the decision before all time, so some are foreordained to be saved through grace – a predestined group of the elect. The arbitrariness is fully justified by the monstrousness of Adam’s original fall, in which we all have a part through original sin: Augustine repeatedly uses the terrible word ‘lump’ (massa) to describe humanity in its state of loss. It is a word to which he often returned, associating it with Latin words for ‘loss’, ‘sin’,

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  it was possible to work out exact scales of what penance was appropriate for what sin: tariffs of forgiveness. They saw the spiritual life as a constant series of little setbacks, laboriously compensated for before the next little lapse. They used their tariff books to help layfolk who were oppressed by guilt and shame. When missionaries from Ireland and Scotland started spreading their faith in northern and central Europe in the seventh century, they brought tariff books with them; these were the first ‘penitentials’ or manuals of penance for clergy to use with their flocks. The idea was hugely popular – who would not jump at the chance of being able to do something concrete and specified, however hard, in order to lift a burden of guilt? It became the basis of the medieval Western Church’s centuries-long system of penance: a practice whereby everyone repeatedly confessed their sins to a priest, who then consulted his book or his memory and awarded the necessary penance. Despite its success and acceptance into the Church’s pastoral practice, the whole system directly contradicted Augustine’s theology of grace, and that was to become an issue which helped permanently to split the Western Church in the sixteenth century Reformation, as we will see.23 The fact that this remote corner of Europe could have such a profound influence on the whole Church is testimony to the restless energy of Celtic Christians, for whom the sea was a series of trackways to their neighbours and cultures far beyond. They treasured a legend of St Brendan sailing to discover new lands to the west, which has long generated Irish pride in its anticipation of Christopher Columbus, and is certainly testimony to the openness of Celtic society to such a possibility. In the later sixth century one of the greatest of their monastic leaders, Columba or Colmcille (‘Dove of the Church’), not only founded the monasteries of Durrow and Derry in central and northern Ireland, but also built an island monastery far to the north on the island of Iona, which remains one of the best-known sacred places in the Atlantic Isles; he frequently crossed the sea between his various foundations.24 But adventurous as Columba was, he was still moving within a Gaelic Celtic world. One of his younger contemporaries, also Columba (but conventionally and conveniently distinguished from the elder as Columbanus), found a new and more challenging image for his travels: he would follow the biblical example of Abraham and travel to strange peoples to do the will of his God. Columbanus’s first journeys (probably in the 580s) were into Christian Gaul, where his foundation of monasteries was met with less than wholehearted gratitude by the existing episcopate. One liturgical issue which was to prove a recurrent source of annoyance between Celtic and non-Celtic Catholics was their disagreement about the date for celebrating Easter, that earliest and most

• From Action (2014)

  • A note to special guest stars: The key to nailing your walk-on role in someone else’s relationship: It’s best not to try and steal the show here. While this is a fun and light evening for YOU, the people with whom you’re sleeping are going to maintain joint custody over this memory for the rest of the time they’re magnetized to each other. While it’s up to them how they approach your encounter—there’s no way to control other people’s feelings—you have some responsibility to contribute to its emotional tenor. How are these two treating each other? Are they looking at each other with great devotion and intensity? Don’t try to hop in on that. I’m thinking of the words “equal” and “equitable.” Wreathe both parties with affection and attention equally: Make all parties feel sexy, included, and accounted for. Ménagin’ is the best—have fun. OPEN RELATIONSHIPS [image file=image_1092.jpg] One method of maintaining a loving partnership that includes sex from outside forces: non-monogamy. I’m not at all proud to admit that I’ve cheated on almost every boyfriend I’ve ever had except for a few, including my last one—although that doesn’t mean I stopped hooking up with other people when we were dating. The difference is, in that relationship, my foremost love associate knew about (and was cool with) my liaisons. It’s taken me a while to admit this, but in the past few years I’ve come to accept that I mostly prefer romantic relationships that don’t require me to be sexually faithful. I think a lot of people find this “deviant” or weird, but, unlikely as it may sound, it’s actually not that complicated. Monogamy has always been hard for me, even in the context of loving, committed relationships. In the past, the trouble usually began after a few months, when some new heartthrob would swim into my life. Although I knew my then-boyfriends wouldn’t be cool with it, I would start lying about how often I saw said heartthrobs, flirting with them on Facebook and in person, or secretly having “sleepovers” with them that involved a lot of physical contact but no official “fooling around.” I rationalized all of this behavior as friends bein’ friendly, even though my motivations were decidedly less pure. Once I started being dishonest, it was hard for me to stop. Although my cheating usually didn’t involve anything more serious than some furtive makeout sessions, I’d always wake up the next morning smothered in guilt, which quickly morphed into resentment: Why should I feel bad about wanting to fool around with people while I’m young? The answer, of course, was BECAUSE YOU ARE LYING TO A PERSON WHO CARES ABOUT YOU, JERKUS. But I also had a point: It’s totally okay to feel like kissing basically everybody, if you can find a way to do it without being deceitful and/or disrespectful to anyone else. I just hadn’t figured out that way yet.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  At the treatment facility, the chief psychiatrist told Frank that Susan would need to be isolated and that Frank couldn’t see or talk to her for a month. Frank couldn’t imagine a more painful fate. Even at the Moon, she’d been with him every moment. When doctors finally allowed him to visit, Frank found Susan much improved. They walked hand in hand across the grounds, and they talked. Frank felt a crushing guilt. All these years, he’d been selfish—mission had always come before family—and he’d never realized the toll this had taken on Susan. He, too, attended counseling sessions. He considered resigning from Eastern, changing his hard-charging ways. But he realized, with the doctor’s help, that such a move would run counter to his DNA; it would do no one any good if he tried to become someone he was not. Instead, he promised to himself and to Susan: He would make more time for her, he would do more to communicate with her. And he swore to himself never to let anything like this happen again to the person he loved most. Susan stayed for four months at the Institute of Living before returning home to Miami. From that day forward, neither she nor Frank touched alcohol again. Susan even brought home a friend from the facility, a young woman with addiction issues who’d been rejected by her family. Susan helped the woman find an apartment and a job, then counseled her for months until she’d settled in to the community. After that, Susan threw herself into volunteer work, helping organizations that fought drug abuse, an effort that would extend to a national scope in later years. Frank had never known a feeling of pride such as he felt for Susan in the months after she came home. In May 1975, Borman was elected president and chief operations officer of Eastern Airlines. He was beloved by many in the company, from board members to pilots to mechanics. Often, he worked unloading baggage at the airport or checking engine parts on the tarmac, and he drove an old Chevy to work. In a later newspaper profile, another airline executive would say of him, “He kind of preceded all the ‘excellence’ books.” Less than two years later, Borman became chairman of the board at Eastern, and he appeared in several of the company’s television commercials. Even on TV, he couldn’t help but talk straight. “Selling you a seat on Eastern Airlines isn’t easy. It’s not easy to sell you on any airline. You know, they’re all pretty much the same,” he said in one spot. For several years under Borman, Eastern enjoyed record-setting profits. But labor difficulties, and the deregulation of the airline industry, caused a downturn in the company’s business. Borman fought to right the ship, even making concessions that went against his instincts. For a time, the moves worked. But after a downturn in the economy, and new labor conflicts, Eastern was sold to new owners.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  In the summer before Anders’s third year at the Academy, he and about four hundred classmates boarded the USS Bennington, an aircraft carrier bound from the East Coast for Halifax, to see how fliers operated at sea. Also aboard was an array of fighter aircraft: Panthers, Cougars, Crusaders, and the AJ Savage, a three-engine nuclear-weapon-carrying bomber. On the first night, a young Marine pilot made a landing approach in his Cougar, floated over all the wires, and slammed into a pack of parked airplanes. Such was the surplus of aircraft after the Korean War that sailors just pushed the damaged ones overboard rather than fix them. Hours later, an AJ Savage came roaring in and hit badly on landing. The pilot and copilot tumbled down the flight deck head over heels in their severed, flaming cockpit but somehow managed to survive; the third crewman, however, died when he was thrown under the ship. The smoke had hardly cleared on that incident when Anders saw one of the gull wings of a Corsair fold up during takeoff. Just off the flight deck, the plane did a full roll and plummeted into the water. Immediately, the carrier turned toward the downed aircraft to make a rescue. Anders could see the pilot in the cockpit, but it was clear the man wasn’t moving. Anders had been on the plebe swim team and could handle himself in rough waters; now he had a decision to make. He could jump in and try to rescue the pilot, or he could allow carrier rescue personnel to do what they were trained to do. The sight of the pilot, unresponsive and starting to sink, pulled on him, but he also knew the ship was moving at about thirty-five knots, he had no life jacket, and he’d have to fall about fifty feet before hitting the water. He had a thought that would bother him for years: If he did jump, he might get put on report or receive demerits. He saw a helicopter and a destroyer approaching to assist in the rescue, and in a split second he made his decision to stay aboard the ship. Rescuers couldn’t reach the scene, however, before the pilot and his airplane disappeared under the waves. Anders hardly knew what to make of the disasters he’d seen. Navy pilots were trained to be the best in the world in combat, yet they risked their lives every day, even during takeoff and landing. Still, an airplane had the power to take the fight to an enemy with an immediacy unavailable to giant ships. It was more personal, too, just pilot and machine as one. When it came time to decide what to do with his military career, Anders wanted nothing to do with aircraft carriers, but knew he had to fly. —Anders continued to write to Valerie every day.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  It wouldn’t go to the Moon, but it would put Anders in position to make that journey—and to walk on the lunar surface—on a subsequent Apollo flight. Anders spent long stretches away from home during training. Valerie was raising their five children (the family had welcomed another son, Eric, after Anders joined NASA) in El Lago, a small town near Houston where many astronauts lived, making Bill’s paycheck go seven ways. One day, Anders calculated the amount of time he spent with each of his kids: eleven minutes per week per child. He regretted it, and didn’t consider himself to be a good father because of all the time he spent away. But for now, beating the Russians was more important than being an ideal family man. Valerie saw it much the same way. She would have preferred her husband to be home more often, but she believed in NASA’s mission, and in winning the Space Race. Even if it wasn’t easy running a household by herself, things never got boring for Valerie. She was interested in science and technology, and in astronomy, so she watched with special interest as America worked its way to the Moon, and she made sure her kids watched, too. One day she took all five of them to Ellington Air Force Base to see Bill fly the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, the closest thing engineers could build to approximate the lunar module astronauts would land on the Moon. It was the weirdest ship any of them had ever seen, with a gimbal-mounted J-35 jet engine, sixteen lift rockets, and seating for the pilot that looked like an outhouse without a door. Tubular arms and legs jutted in every direction. Together, the jet engine and lift rockets could simulate flying in one-sixth gravity—equal to that on the Moon. Anders and Neil Armstrong took turns as pilot, making it look as if they were descending to the lunar surface. Aboard the ship, Anders felt like NASA’s golden boy, one of the few who’d already been chosen to land on the Moon. When the flying ended, three-year-old Eric picked up a loose screw and swallowed it. NASA doctors took X rays—a child never received a more state-of-the-art examination. It was a day unlike any Valerie had experienced. Twenty-four hours later, on May 6, 1968, a system failure caused Armstrong to lose control while he was flying the LLRV. At an altitude of less than two hundred feet, the machine pitched sideways and plummeted toward the ground. Armstrong ejected just moments before the craft impacted and burst into flames. Even with his parachute, his descent lasted only ten seconds. When Anders told Valerie the story, she didn’t get upset or ask her husband to reconsider his mission. She thought, as she often did, This is the life we’ve signed up for . In August 1968, Anders told Valerie that he was going to the Moon.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Eric, after Anders joined NASA) in El Lago, a small town near Houston where many astronauts lived, making Bill’s paycheck go seven ways. One day, Anders calculated the amount of time he spent with each of his kids: eleven minutes per week per child. He regretted it, and didn’t consider himself to be a good father because of all the time he spent away. But for now, beating the Russians was more important than being an ideal family man. Valerie saw it much the same way. She would have preferred her husband to be home more often, but she believed in NASA’s mission, and in winning the Space Race. Even if it wasn’t easy running a household by herself, things never got boring for Valerie. She was interested in science and technology, and in astronomy, so she watched with special interest as America worked its way to the Moon, and she made sure her kids watched, too. One day she took all five of them to Ellington Air Force Base to see Bill fly the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, or LLRV, the closest thing engineers could build to approximate the lunar module astronauts would land on the Moon. It was the weirdest ship any of them had ever seen, with a gimbal-mounted J-35 jet engine, sixteen lift rockets, and seating for the pilot that looked like an outhouse without a door. Tubular arms and legs jutted in every direction. Together, the jet engine and lift rockets could simulate flying in one-sixth gravity—equal to that on the Moon. Anders and Neil Armstrong took turns as pilot, making it look as if they were descending to the lunar surface. Aboard the ship, Anders felt like NASA’s golden boy, one of the few who’d already been chosen to land on the Moon. When the flying ended, three-year-old Eric picked up a loose screw and swallowed it. NASA doctors took X rays—a child never received a more state-of-the-art examination. It was a day unlike any Valerie had experienced. Twenty-four hours later, on May 6, 1968, a system failure caused Armstrong to lose control while he was flying the LLRV. At an altitude of less than two hundred feet, the machine pitched sideways and plummeted toward the ground. Armstrong ejected just moments before the craft impacted and burst into flames. Even with his parachute, his descent lasted only ten seconds. When Anders told Valerie the story, she

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  The marquess laughed. “I believe you could do it, too. Look at you! You’re like a savage. Dark-skinned, long-haired, and built like an ape.” Olivia whimpered in agony, knowing that Sebastian was bleeding from wounds she had helped to inflict. She had teased him with those same descriptions, but now he would wonder and think himself less of a man, when in fact he was more of one than anyone she had ever met. “He’s beautiful,” she snapped. “You’re a fool for failing to see how wonderful he is. The loss is yours.” She tugged at Sebastian. With a jerky nod, he gestured for her father to precede them. Just as quickly as they’d arrived, they departed, her father following in his carriage. As they jolted forward, she moved to sit beside Sebastian, wrapping her arms around his stiff body. She watched Dunsmore House roll by the window, wishing it and the man inside a good riddance. Chapter Five Sebastian paced the length of his room in furious strides, damning himself for a fool for thinking he could return to England and survive the experience unscathed. Over and over he played the afternoon’s events in his mind. What would have happened had he not intercepted Olivia’s ship? Would she have arrived and been duped into thinking Carr was her husband? The ruse wouldn’t have lasted long. His father must have intended for Olivia to go straight to Dunsmore House. A few months to assure a pregnancy, and she would have been too devastated to ever leave. The thought made him sick, it was so heinous. And he’d brought his wife back to this cesspool. Now she knew just how vile was the blood that flowed in his veins. The adjoining door opened softly behind him. When Sebastian turned to face Olivia, he stilled, devastated to see her attired in a white lace night rail and robe that had to be part of her trousseau. Her dark eyes skimmed over him, noting that he was still fully dressed. “You’re leaving,” she said flatly. He stood there, sweat instantly misting his skin. He wanted to say something, anything, to erase the wounded look from her eyes, but his mouth was too dry. “When?” she asked in a pained whisper. “Now?” His voice came colder than he’d intended. “You said you wanted an absent husband.” “I know what I said.” She stared at him, her heart in her eyes. Against his will, Sebastian held out his hand to her, and she ran into his arms, her softness and redolence enveloping his senses. How had he thought this would be easy? “I don’t want to leave you,” he murmured into her hair, and then hated himself for admitting the weakness. “Can you wait?” she begged. “Allow me to settle Father’s concerns. A week or two at most, and then I’ll go with you.”

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  a two-seat helicopter after midnight and flew with the pilot to search for the downed plane and survivors. The men found a tiny patch of solid ground on which to set down. Borman jumped from the chopper and into the waters of the swamp, which rose to his chest. All around, he heard moans and cries for help. He worked to unpin victims from wreckage, helped the injured into arriving rescue helicopters, searched with a woman for her missing baby. Working a system of flashlights, he set up a local flight control, guiding choppers in and out of the scene. He departed on one of the last rescue craft out of the area, flying to the hospital to monitor the treatment of survivors. Of the 176 passengers and crew aboard Flight 401, 98 died in the accident. Borman, who traveled constantly for work, was on assignment in New York in the fall of 1973 when he received a phone call telling him that Susan was very ill and advising him to return home immediately. It was past midnight, but he found an Eastern jet and jumped a ride on the empty plane. He had no idea what was wrong with his wife or how she was doing. It proved the longest and most helpless flight of his life. When he reached Susan’s bedside the next morning, it became clear she’d had a nervous breakdown. “I can’t live like this, Frank,” she told him. “I’m very sick but I’ll do whatever it takes to get better.” Borman didn’t know what to do. The doctor at Eastern Airlines did. “If you leave her here she’s never going to get better, because she’ll still be Mrs. Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines,” he told Borman. The doctor had already made arrangements for Susan to go to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, for treatment of her alcohol addiction, and for intensive psychotherapy. On the flight to Hartford, Susan was nearly catatonic and didn’t speak. At the treatment facility, the chief psychiatrist told Frank that Susan would need to be isolated and that Frank couldn’t see or talk to her for a month. Frank couldn’t imagine a more painful fate. Even at the Moon, she’d been with him every moment. When doctors finally allowed him to visit, Frank found Susan much improved. They walked hand in hand across the grounds, and they talked. Frank felt a crushing guilt. All these years, he’d been selfish—mission had

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  team. But his best night of high school came during senior year at a local dance in Tucson, when he spent the evening moonstruck by a golden- haired sophomore named Susan Bugbee. She’d been voted the most beautiful girl in her class, and Frank, a longtime believer in democracy, thought the voters had gotten it right. He was aching to ask her out, but this young man who stared down thunderstorms in small airplanes couldn’t stomach the idea of rejection. Instead, he came up with a plan. A friend of Frank’s would call Susan on the phone. Pretending to be Frank, he would ask her for a date. That way, if she said no, Frank wouldn’t hear it. Susan said yes. Frank wished he’d heard it. The two began dating, and right away Frank sensed he’d met his soul mate. Susan was bright and quick-witted, warm and fun, and loyal to her friends. Sometimes she wrote “Susan Bugaboo” instead of “Bugbee” in her notebooks. She had a mischievous gleam in her eye, the same as when she’d been in elementary school and pulled the fire alarm during a rainstorm as a prank (the nuns were not happy; Susan’s father loved it and smoothed things over with the sisters). Susan’s parents were both college graduates, rare in those days. Her mother was Tucson’s first female dental hygienist, her father a surgeon who’d moved to Arizona after losing a lung to tuberculosis. Susan had been very close to her father, who took her on house calls and had her join him on his volunteer work to help the underprivileged. They often went on adventures together: on his days off, he would drive her outside the Tucson city limits to the ends of dusty roads, where they would capture tortoises together (she’d keep them as pets for a while, then release them), and Dr. Bugbee would buy his daughter turquoise jewelry from Native Americans who sold their wares from the backs of old pickup trucks. Susan was never as close to her mother, who seemed to resent her for all the attention people paid to her. One day, when Susan was thirteen, her father had an asthma attack. His oxygen bottle was empty, so Susan’s mother told her to run to Johnson’s Drugstore and get a new one. Susan got the pharmacist to drive her home, to save time and in case he could help. But by the time she returned, her father lay dead on the floor. “You’re late,” Susan’s mother said. “You killed your father.”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A few months later Kaoru managed to find the house in the mountains where Ukifune lived. He visited her there, and she did not disappoint. "I once had a glimpse of you through a crack in a door," he told her, and "you have been very much on my mind ever since." Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her to a waiting carriage. He was taking her back to the shrine, and the journey there brought back to him the image of Oigimi; again his eyes clouded with tears. Looking at Ukifune, he silently compared her to Oigimi—her clothes were less nice but she had beautiful hair. When Oigimi was alive, she and Kaoru had played the koto together, so once at the shrine he had kotos brought out. Ukifune did not play as well as Oigimi had, and her manners were less refined. Not to worry—he would give her lessons, change her into a lady. But then, as he had done with Oigimi, Kaoru returned to court, leaving Ukifune languishing at the shrine. Some time passed before he visited her again; she had improved, was more beautiful than before, but he could not stop thinking of Oigimi. Once again he left her, promising to bring her to court, but more weeks passed, and finally he received the news that Ukifune had disappeared, last seen heading toward a river. She had most likely committed suicide. At the funeral ceremony for Ukifune, Kaoru was wracked with guilt: why had he not come for her earlier? She deserved a better fate. Kaoru and the others appear in the eleventh-century Japanese novel The Tale of Genji, by the noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. The characters are based on people the author knew, but Kaoru's type appears in every culture and period: these are men and women who seem to be searching for an ideal partner. The one they have is never quite right; at first glance a person excites them, but they soon see faults, and when a new person crosses their path, he or she looks better and the first person is forgotten. These types often try to work on the imperfect mortal who has excited them, to improve them culturally and morally. But this proves extremely unsatisfactory for both parties. The truth about this type is not that they are searching for an ideal but that they are hopelessly unhappy with themselves. You may mistake their dissatisfaction for a perfectionist's high standards, but in point of fact nothing will really satisfy them, for their unhappiness is deep-rooted. You can recognize them by their past, which will be littered with short-lived, stormy romances. Also, they will tend to compare you to others, and to try to remake you. You may not realize at first what you have gotten into, but people like this will eventually prove hopelessly anti-seductive because they cannot see your individual qualities. Cut the romance off before it happens.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Clara’s door is closed and dark, as is the door which leads to the secret chambers of the Druid. There’s a light on in Fact. You proceed cautiously. Megan is at her desk. She looks up when you come in, goes back to her reading. “Remember me?” “I remember something about a lunch date.” She keeps her eyes on her desk. “Oh, no. I’m sorry.” She looks up. “You’re always sorry.” “There was this thing I had to do.” “A sweet young thing?” “An old thing gone sour.” “I have feelings, too, you know.” “Damn it, I’m sorry.” “I know you’ve had a lot on your mind lately,” Megan says. “How about dinner?” “One more meal with you could be the death of me.” She’s smiling now. “Just let me pack up my things here. Won’t take a minute.” Once you open the drawers of your desk you realize it could take all night. There is a vast quantity of flotsam: files, notebooks, personal and business correspondence, galleys and proofs, review books, matchbooks, loose sheets with names and phone numbers, notes to yourself, first drafts of stories, sketches and poems. Here, for instance, is the first draft of “Birds of Manhattan.” Also the “U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981,” indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm, and on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number. Who is Laura Bowman? You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past. Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues. In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She’s reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she’d never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn’t going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won’t do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only initiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary. “Meg. Come over here a minute.” Now you are committed. You hold out the bill. She raises her eyebrows. “This will make you forget you didn’t eat lunch.” “What is it?” “The powder that made Bolivia famous.” She lifts the bill tentatively to her nose and bends over the desk. “Do the other one, too,” you say when she offers you the bill.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  When you talk to him on the phone you tell him everything is swell. You believe your filial duty is to appear happy and prosperous. It is the least you can do for him after all he’s done for you. You don’t want him to feel bad, and as it is, he has plenty to worry about. Then, too, you feel that spilling the beans would be irrevocable. He would never be able to forgive Amanda. As long as there is a chance she might still return, you don’t want him to know about her treachery. You want to tough it out on your own. You plead work, commitments, parties with Nobel Prize-winners as your reasons for staying in the city, even though home is only two hours away. Sooner or later you will have to go, but you want to put it off as long as possible. • • • You stand in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and stare at the mannequin. Sometime last week, when you started shouting at it, a policeman came over and told you to move along. This is just how she looked at the end, the blank stare, the lips tight and reticent. When did she become a mannequin? Back at the office, your resolution to pursue the facts of the recent French elections has staled. A little nap in one of the upstairs offices would be the thing. But you’ve got to hang in there. You make yourself a cup of instant espresso with four tablespoons of Maxim. Megan tells you there have been three calls for you: one from the president of the Polar Explorers, one from France and another from your brother Michael. You go into Clara’s office to snag the page proofs but they’re not on the desk. You ask Rittenhouse about this, and he tells you that Clara called and asked to have the proofs delivered to Typesetting. She also told him to messenger a photocopy down to her apartment. “Well,” you say, not sure whether you are horrified or relieved. “That’s that, I guess.” “Do you have any last-minute changes,” Rittenhouse asks. “I’m sure there’s time for some last-minute changes.” You shake your head. “I’d have to go back about three years to make all the necessary changes.” “I don’t suppose you remembered that bagel,” Megan says. “Not to worry. I’m not really hungry anyway. I shouldn’t be eating lunch.” You apologize. You beg her pardon. You tell her there are so damn many things on your mind. You have a bad memory for details. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn’t even guess at the balance of your checkbook. Every day you misplace your keys or your wallet. That’s one of the reasons you’re always late. It’s so hard just getting in here every morning, let alone remembering all that you’re supposed to do. You can’t pay attention when people talk to you. So many little things.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She’s going to burn her fingers off before she’s through.” The women lowered their voices as I came back from the cage with a fresh box of crystals. But Ada, who had stopped by for a brief chat, did not care whether or not I heard her parting words. “I don’t know what she’s doing with them crystals, but I bet she’s not reading them!” She was right. I could not even tell Ginger how I was managing to pull down such high bonuses, although she often asked. The truth was, I would slip crystals into my socks every time I went to the bathroom. Once inside the toilet stall, I chewed them up with my strong teeth and flushed the little shards of rock down the commode. I could take care of between fifty and a hundred crystals a day in that manner, taking a handful from each box I signed out. I knew Ginger was hurt by my silence, and by what she saw as my disloyalty to the other RR women. I was angered by the feeling of persistent guilt that her words aroused in me, but I could say nothing. I could also say nothing about the increasing time she and Ada spent together. I longed for a chance to be alone, to enjoy the privacy that was not possible once I started to share the sunporch on Walker Road. I hated the amount of time I spent thinking about Ginger and Ada. I began to feel more and more desperate to get out of Stamford, and my bonuses went up. One day in the beginning of March, I saw Rose talking to Bernie, the plant’s efficiency expert, and looking after me speculatively as I came out of the john. I knew my days at Keystone were numbered. That week I made forty dollars in bonuses. On Friday, Rose told me that the plant was cutting back readers and they were going to have to let me go. Since I was a member of the union, they gave me two weeks severance pay, so I would leave immediately and not make a fuss. Even though it was what I wanted to happen, I still cried a little on the way home. “Nobody likes to be fired,” Ginger said and held my hand. Cora was sorry to lose the extra income. Ginger said she’d miss me, but I could tell she was also secretly relieved, as she confided to me months later. I made plans to return to New York City. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 20 I don’t know why I was seized with such a desire to go to Mexico.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Your mother never turned away a stray dog, or heard about the plight of children in other parts of the world without volunteering her time or reaching for her checkbook, and she greeted Amanda as if she were a refugee. Amanda’s need to belong was part of her attraction. It was as if you came across one of those magazine ads—“You could turn the page, or you could save a child’s life”—and the child in question was right there , charming and eager to please. Long before the wedding she took to calling your parents “Mom and Dad,” and the house in Bucks County “home.” You were all suckered. Your father once asked you if you didn’t think the vast difference in your backgrounds might be a problem in the long haul, the only expressed reservation you remember. Before you had given the subject much thought, there was on all sides the imminent assumption of marriage. After two years of living together, it seemed the thing to do. You were uneasy—had you lived enough of your life yet?—but your scrutiny of the situation yielded no decisive objections. Amanda was desperate for it. She was always saying she knew you would leave her someday, as if you had to behave like all the other swine in her life, and apparently she thought that marriage would delay or perhaps even cancel your flight. You did not feel that you could open quite all of your depths to her, or fathom hers, and sometimes you feared she didn’t have any depths. But you finally attributed this to an unrealistic, youthful idealism. Growing up meant admitting you couldn’t have everything. The proposal was not entirely romantic. It came about after you had stayed out late with some friends at a party Amanda did not choose to attend. You crept in toward dawn and found her awake watching TV in the living room. She was furious. She said you acted like a single man. She wanted someone who would make a commitment. She didn’t want the kind of bum her mother kept bringing home. Your guilt was aggravated by a headache. The sun was coming up and you felt that she was right. You were a bad boy. You wanted to amend your life. You wanted to make it up to Amanda for the shitty life she had had as a kid. You told her you would marry her, and, after sulking de rigueur , she accepted. You arrived in New York with the question of what Amanda was going to do. She had talked about college, but lost interest when it came time to fill out the applications. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. For several months she watched TV. People were always telling Amanda she could be a model. One day she stopped in at one of the agencies and came home with a contract. At the start she hated modeling and you took this as a sign of character.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  The subway entrance is half a block up. You take the steps two at a time, dodging the zombies trudging up the stairs. An uptown train with open doors waits at the platform. A line at the token booth. You vault the turnstile. A metallic voice issues from the speaker on the booth: “Hey, you! ” You dash inside as the doors close. People are staring. When the train begins to move they return to their Posts and their private sorrows. Looking out the sooty windows at the receding platform and seeing Michael standing outside the turnstiles, you duck away from the window. You don’t want to see him. It’s not that he’s a bad guy. You feel guilty of everything. Even now, a transit cop with a walkie-talkie may be striding through the cars to arrest you. You sit down and allow the racket of the train to fill your head. You close your eyes. Soon the noise doesn’t seem like noise and the motion doesn’t feel like motion. You could fall asleep. You open your eyes and look at the ads. TRAIN FOR AN EXCITING NEW CAREER. BE AN INSTANT WINNER WITH WINGO! SOFT AND LOVELY HAIR RELAXER. BE A MODEL—OR JUST LOOK LIKE ONE . At Fiftieth you get off and walk up the stairs to the street. Walking east, you cross abrupt thermoclines as you move between the cool shadows of tall buildings and brief regions of direct sunlight. At Fifth Avenue you stand on the corner and look over at the long row of windows fronting Saks. You cross the street to the third window down from the uptown corner. The mannequin is gone. You count windows again. Where the Amanda mannequin had been is a new one with brunette acrylic on its head and a delicately upturned nose. You walk up and down the block, examining each of the mannequins. For a moment you think you have found it on Fiftieth Street, but the face is too angular and the nose is wrong. You came here with a notion of demonstrating to yourself that the icon was powerless, yet you are unsettled now that it is gone. What does this mean? You decide that it has disappeared because you were through with it, and you consider this a good omen. • • • On Madison you pass a construction site, walled in by acres of plywood on which the faces of various rock stars and Mary O’Brien McCann are plastered. Thirty stories above you, a crane dangles an I-beam over the street beside the skeleton of a new building. From the sidewalk the crane looks like a toy, but a few months back you read about a pedestrian who was killed at this site when a cable broke. DEATH FALLS FROM SKY , the Post said. You pass the Helmsley Palace—the shell of old New York transparently veiling the hideous erection of a real estate baron.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  “Are you sure?” “Sure.” You just wish she would hurry up and finish it off. Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles. “Thanks.” You shovel the contents of the top drawer onto the desk and wonder how, exactly, to deal with all this paper. Some of it may be significant. Most of it is junk. How do you tell the difference? “We had some trouble here this morning,” Megan says. She sits down on the edge of your desk. You resist the urge to jump out of the chair and run down the hall with your jacket pulled over your head. No comment . All day you have been stifling the memory of your drunken-commando raid on Clara’s office. You want to explain to Megan that it was a joke, you were drunk, it was Tad’s idea. It wasn’t really you, just a clownish alter ego over whom you have no control. You don’t do things like that. You’re not that kind of guy at all. If Alex were seriously hurt, though, Meg probably would have said so already. You keep your eyes fixed on a pamphlet entitled “Manual of Factual Verification.” “What do you mean, trouble?” “Well, when Rittenhouse came in this morning he found Alex Hardy passed out on the floor of Clara’s office.” You find it difficult to talk. “Really? Is he all right?” “I don’t imagine he feels terrific. He’ll be fine once his blood detoxifies. He’s taking the cure up at McLean’s. Famous Drinking Writers’ Club.” “Didn’t he hurt himself when he fell?” “That’s the strange thing. There was no sign of injury, but there was blood on the floor of Clara’s office. And on the walls, too. Very peculiar.” “Did he say anything? I mean, about what happened?” “Nothing coherent. He said something about being attacked by pygmies.” “They didn’t call the, uh, police, did they?” “Why would they?” “Just wondering. Sounds to me like a weird deal all around.” You start to relax. Alex is okay and the visions of cops at your door are fading. “Another odd thing,” Megan says. “There was a mink in the mailroom.” “A mink? ” “It was hiding in a mail bag full of rejected manuscripts. When the mail guy hoisted the bag this morning it started biting him. They had to call the ASPCA.” “Really strange.” Poor Fred, you think. “How are you coming?” she says, pointing at the desk. “I think this calls for drastic measures.” You stand up and collect all the wastebaskets in the room, lining them up beside the desk. You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan. “Could you give this to Alex for me? Tell him it’s one of the Young Turks.” She takes the book. You pull open the drawers one by one and dump the contents, entire, into the steel buckets. “That’s done. Let’s eat.” In the cab, you ask Megan where she wants to eat.