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 Cleanness (2020)

  The benches at the little plaza were full anyway, packed with children and what I took for their grandparents, the very old and the very young, as though everyone of vital age had been called away. R. and I stood behind the benches, watching the last well-dressed couples bend into their cars and slide off, until the speakers behind us popped awake and the lights in the square went out. R. made a humming noise of anticipation, and all of the bodies on the benches stiffened with attention. But as the music started, a kitsch fusion of folk instruments and Slavic chorus and dated synthesizer, as different quadrants of the hill and its ancient walls were illuminated, now in red, now blue and green, I felt myself receding from the square, from the light and sound. For hours I had managed not to think about R. leaving, about the uncertainty of our future, the guilt I felt no matter how I tried to dismiss it. I had never wanted permanence before, not really, or I had wanted my freedom more; I had accepted that passionate feeling faded, all my earlier experience had confirmed it, when love that seemed certain simply dissolved, on one side or both, for no particular reason, leaving little trace. But what I felt for R. was different, it didn’t dissolve, and I wanted to believe in our language of boundlessness and the impossibility of change; to let it go would mean there had been bad faith, on one or both of our parts, maybe it isn’t fair to think that but I thought it. The lights were acting out some mounting drama, it was hard to say precisely what. The hill, which had at first been illuminated quadrant by quadrant, was now swept by red and blue lights, first in one direction and then the other. It must have meant the clashing of armies, though which were the virtuous Bulgarian forces and which the victorious Turks was lost on me, despite the narration of two children who stood on the rearmost bench, whispering excitedly to each other Turtsite! Turtsite! at each sweep of the lights. Whatever was happening a climax was approaching, it was clear in the martial lament of the music and also in the lights, which were mounting ever higher, toward the citadel itself and its reconstructed tower, though the effect was dampened by an anachronistic line of vehicles, the opera trucks at the fore, making its way down the hill.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I followed the path through the wooded part of campus, the trees that separate the main buildings from the faculty houses. The two floors of my cottage had been divided into apartments, of which mine was the loveliest, I thought, on the ground floor with windows facing into the trees. I had moved in less than a year before, tired of taking the bus each morning from my apartment off campus. I hadn’t known how soon I would be leaving, not just Sofia but teaching altogether, it had become unbearable, the drudgery and routine of it, earlier that spring I had realized I couldn’t face another year. A short set of stairs led to my door, four or five steps, and as I began to climb them I stumbled, catching myself with my hands and then falling onto my side against the concrete, where I lay or half lay for a moment before sitting upright on the bottom step. I swallowed hard against a wave of nausea, of nausea and something else, they were indistinguishable, seven years, I thought, seven years undone, a betrayal of vocation. But I rejected this even as I thought it, it wasn’t my vocation, it was just something I had done, a way I had passed the time; don’t be so pious, something said in me, and something else cringed away. I swallowed again, I couldn’t be sick here, everyone would see it, if I was going to be sick I had to get inside. But though I willed myself to stand I remained where I was, barely upright, my hands buttressed at my sides and my torso leaning forward, swaying a little. I was exaggerating or making excuses, it wasn’t so bad or it was worse. You can’t know tonight, I thought, in the morning you’ll know, and I feared what I would feel, how my actions would look in the light of day, those were the words I used, the light of day, I was thinking in old phrases.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  He hates those books. He’ll say, ‘It’s not my thing. Let’s just make some time to be together. The more sex you have, the more sex you have, right?’ That’s his stock answer.” “I’ve recommended books to you before, but in this instance it sounds like you’re using them to hide behind. Why is it so hard for you to talk about yourself? To be your own advocate? What would happen if you said, ‘Nico, I want to tell you about myself—what I think and feel about sex, about myself sexually?’” “The whole subject is so emotionally overwhelming it makes me sleepy.” Maria was taught that nothing is free; everything must be earned. Privilege is for those who’ve never had to work hard, and it’s morally suspect. The credo was: you sacrifice for the good of the family. Her reluctance to put herself forward is particularly strong in the sexual realm. “It seems OK to ask for what you really need,” I explain, “but to ask for something just because you want it or like it is selfish. Pleasure itself, unless you’ve earned it, is dubious. It also raises the question of how much you feel you deserve and are worthy of receiving—just because you’re you. But eroticism is precisely that: it’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake, offered to you gratuitously by Nico.” Together, Maria and I work on cultivating a healthy sense of deserving that spans sitting down in the morning when she drinks her coffee, reading the paper while the kitchen is still dirty, and going out with her friends even if it means Nico has to spend two nights in a row taking care of the baby. She is to take a break from the idea that pleasure must be paid for, in advance, by the performance of duty. We chisel away at this complex system of fairness and merit, where everything has to be perfectly equitable in order to neutralize selfishness. Maria has taken hold of this idea. “I think my ‘low desire’ is, more than anything else, related to my lack of ownership around sex and my conflict with pleasure, especially pleasure with my husband. I can’t explain why I’m so uncomfortable opening myself up to Nico erotically. What I do know is that family is never where I’ve gone to get anything extra.” “Right. For you, family is about self-sacrifice, not enjoyment. But a healthy sense of entitlement is a prerequisite for erotic intimacy.” Only when Maria starts to look at what she brings to the erotic stalemate does Nico’s contribution become apparent.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  The central agent of eroticism is the human imagination, but for many people the project of sexual self-discovery is hampered by parental messages that induce fear, guilt, and mistrust. Something that is meant to protect children often turns out to be a source of much anxiety in adult sexual love. Lena grew up with a roster of what is and is not acceptable for a worthy woman to dream about, act on, and get off on. The eldest daughter in a conservative, devoutly religious household, Lena learned that decent women hewed to strict standards of womanly behavior, were never aggressive or pushy, and always put the needs of others before their own. Like her mother (and centuries of women before her) Lena has derived her self-esteem and validation from being a giver and not a taker. By making herself indispensable, she has hoped to counteract the vagaries of love. But Lena’s niceness is precisely what turns her husband off. Her coy lovemaking and her lack of sexual assertiveness inhibit him. In recent months Lena has started to wonder what her marriage would be like if she were less accommodating. She is experimenting with the idea that she might be liked for who she is, not only for what she gives. Together we have been deconstructing the anxiety, guilt, and self-abnegation that are the legacy of the nice girl. Lena would love to become bold enough not only to know what she likes but to be able to ask for it. Buying lingerie at Victoria’s Secret with her husband may not sound like much, but for Lena it was as uplifting as a Wonderbra. The internal tensions that crackle in the sexuality of Steven, Dylan, Melinda, and Lena are a result of childhood conflicts. The details of our erotic proclivities and apprehensions are refined throughout our lives but often originate in our childhood experiences, both good and not so good. Sometimes it takes a bit of psychological sleuthing to make sense of all this, but very little in one’s erotic imagination is happenstance. Me in the Context of We Our physical and emotional dependence on our parents surpasses that of any other living species, in both magnitude and duration. It is so complete—and our need to feel safe is so profound—that we will do anything not to lose them. We will suppress our wishes and push our aggression underground. We will take the blame for abuse, submit to control, become self-reliant, and otherwise renounce our needs. In short, we’ll apply a wide range of self-preservation tactics, all aimed at maintaining our primary bond.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I repeated the words to myself, ardor and arduous, struck as I had been before by the false similarity between them; I rolled them around without intention, it hardly counts as thought, until as if by their own engendering there appeared among or against them a new word, ordure, the three words linked and tumbling, consequence and cause, until R. came up behind me and placed his hand on my neck, pulling my face toward his own. I drew away from him after a moment. Let’s go, I said, taking his hand and pulling him toward the stairs; I wanted to escape the house and the weight of what filled it. When we climbed from the basement we found the woman waiting for us in the main room, standing hopefully at the glass table that served for a counter. There was a slight wilting in her frame when she saw we were empty-handed, something like a wave receding, though her smile never faltered as she asked whether we had enjoyed what we had seen. Oh yes, I said, very much, so many wonderful things, as if I were trying to make amends for the thoughts I had just had. It felt wrong to leave so quickly, having stayed so long, and I asked if she had a card, saying we would love to see the studio they kept in Sofia. She didn’t, she said, but she took a sheet of paper from a drawer, on which she wrote in beautiful Cyrillic an address we promised to visit. She kept smiling as she handed this to me, but I could see she didn’t believe what I had said; her gaze had gone a little unfocused, she was already staring past us at the empty street. Outside, I wanted to tell R. why I had needed to leave so suddenly, but as I began to speak what I had felt seemed ridiculous, out of scale, and I let it drop. It was already late afternoon, and we angled our way back to the busier part of town. We didn’t have any plans for the evening, and as we walked I kept an eye on the walls of the buildings beside the road, which were crowded with posters for concerts and exhibitions and plays, a surprising number for such a small town, I thought, posters mounted over other posters, bulging like plaster from the walls.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  There were times—especially when he seemed so full of himself, so smug and certain of his superior knowledge—when she amused herself by imagining his face when she finally told him the truth . But things had changed. In the past several weeks, as she grew closer to him, most of the fun had gone out of it. The secret had become a burden, an irritating burr she wanted to remove, and she had even rehearsed confessing it. More than once she had entered his office and taken a deep breath, intending to tell all. But she never had—partly out of embarrassment at having concealed it for so long, partly out of genuine caring. Dr. Lash had played it straight: he had denied none of the things she had confronted him with—almost nothing. He had been devoted to her welfare. Why embarrass the poor man now? Why cause him pain? That was the caring part. But there was still another reason. She liked being a magus, liked the excitement of secret knowledge. Her penchant for secrets expressed itself in an entirely unpredictable fashion. Thesaurus in hand, she devoted her evenings to writing poetry that teemed with themes of trickery, secrecy, rolltop desks, hidden compartments. The Internet offered the perfect outlet, and she shipped out many poems to the singlepoet.com chat room. Upward I gaze at sealed edges of honeycombed compartments swollen with nectared mysteries. When I am big I shall have my own chambers, fill them with grown-up secrecy. The secret she had never revealed to her father loomed larger. As never before, she felt his presence. His slim, bent frame, his medical instruments, his desk with its secrets held a particular fascination for her, which she tried to express in verse. Stoop-shouldered presence absent now and forever cobwebbed stethoscope ruby crackled-leather chai r rolltop desk cubicles brimming with the mystery and scent of dear dead patients chattering in the dark until silenced by morning sunspears piercing the dust illuminating the wooden desk, which, like a meadow that once bore dancing feet and now greens idly yet remembers still the crease of peopled times. Myrna hadn’t shared these poems with Dr. Lash. She had plenty to talk about in her therapy sessions, and the poetry seemed irrelevant. Besides, her poems might have invited questions about the theme of secrecy, and they might have led directly to the secret of the dictation tape. Sometimes she worried that her withholding would create a wedge between them. But she assured herself that she could overcome that. Nor did she need Dr. Lash’s approval of her poetry. She found plenty of affirmation elsewhere. The singlepoet.com Internet chat room was crowded with single male poets. Life had become exciting. No more overtime at her Silicon Valley office. Nightly, Myrna rushed home to open her e-mail box, which bulged with praise for her poetry and her refreshing directness.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Can you believe she and Martin and Rosa are talking together?” Sarah’s words rang in my ears as I biked back to my office. I knew I had every reason to be satisfied with my morning’s work. The residents were right: it had been a good meeting—a fantastic one—because it not only encouraged members to improve relationships in their lives but, as Sarah’s report suggested, also engaged them more fully in all aspects of the ward’s therapy program. Most of all, I had shown them that there is no such thing as a boring or empty patient—or group. Within every patient, and within every clinical situation, lies the chrysalis of a rich human drama. The art of psychotherapy lies in activating that drama. But why did my good work give me so little personal satisfaction? I felt guilty—as though I had done something fraudulent. The praise I so often pursued didn’t sit well with me that day. The students (covertly egged on by me) had imbued me with great wisdom. In their eyes I offered “powerful” interpretations, worked my “magic,” led the group in a prescient, sure-handed manner. But I knew the truth: that throughout the meeting I had scrambled and improvised wildly. Both students and patients viewed me as something I was not, as more than I was, more than I could be. It occurred to me that in that respect Magnolia, the archetypal earth mother, and I had much in common . I reminded myself that small is beautiful. My job was to lead a single group meeting and make it helpful to as many of its group members as possible. And hadn’t I done that? I reviewed the group from the perspective of each of the five members. Martin and Rosa? Yes, good work. I was certain of them. Their agendas for the meeting had, to some degree, been filled: Martin’s demoralization, his conviction that he had nothing of value to offer, had been effectively challenged; Rosa’s belief that any person unlike herself—that is, any nonanorexic—would misunderstand and attempt to manipulate her had been refuted. Dorothy and Carol? Though inactive, they had nonetheless appeared engaged. Perhaps they had benefited from spectator therapy: watching someone else work effectively in therapy often primes a patient for good therapeutic work in the future. And Magnolia? Therein lay the problem. Had I helped Magnolia? Was she helpable? In the head nurse’s briefing I had learned that she had not responded to a wide array of psychotropic medication and that everyone, including her case worker of several years, had long ago given up trying to engage her in any insight-oriented psychotherapy. So why had I decided to try once more?

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Maybe they just contain nonsense.” “Oyvin, don’t talk narishkeit—foolishness. Beautiful books!” “Carrying around that bag of books all the time, Momma, even in Glen Echo? You’re making a shrine of them. Don’t you think—” “Everybody knows about you. The whole world. My hairdresser tells me her daughter studies your books in school.” “Your hairdresser? That’s it, the final test?” “Everybody. I tell everybody. Why shouldn’t I?” “Momma, don’t you have anything better to do? What about spending your Sunday with your friends: Hannah, Gertie, Luba, Dorothy, Sam, your brother Simon? What are you doing here at Glen Echo anyway?” “You ashamed I should be here? You were always ashamed. Where else should I be?” “I only mean we’re both all grown up. I’m over sixty years old. Maybe it’s time we should each have our own private dreams.” “Always ashamed of me.” “I didn’t say that. You don’t listen to me.” “Always thought I was stupid. Always thought I didn’t understand anything.” “I didn’t say that. I always said you didn’t know everything. It’s just the way you—the way you—” “The way I what? Go ahead. You started—say it—I know what you’re going to say.” “What am I going to say?” “No, Oyvin, you say it. If I tell you, you’ll change it.” “It’s the way you don’t listen to me. The way you talk about things you don’t know anything about.” “Listen to you? I don’t listen to you? Tell me, Oyvin, you listen to me? Do you know about me?” “You’re right, Momma. Neither of us has been good at listening to the other.” “Not me, Oyvin, I listened good. I listened to the silence every night when I came home from the store and you don’t bother to come upstairs from your study room. You don’t even say hello. You don’t ask me if I had a hard day. How could I listen when you didn’t talk to me?” “Something stopped me; there was such a wall between us.” “A wall? Nice to say to your mother. A wall. I built it?” “I didn’t say that. I only said there was a wall. I know I retreated from you. Why? How can I remember? This was fifty years ago, Momma, but everything you said to me was, I felt, some sort of reprimand.” “Vos? Reperand?” “I mean criticism. I had to stay away from your criticism. Those years I was feeling bad enough about myself as it was, and I didn’t need more criticism.” “What did you have to feel bad about? All those years—Daddy and I working in the store for you to study. Till midnight. And how many times did you phone for me to bring home something for you? Pencils or paper. Remember Al? He worked in the liquor store.

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

  8. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. 9. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; 10. And gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord appointed me. CHRYSOSTOM. The Chief Priests knowing that they had purchased a murder were condemned by their own conscience; they said, It is the price of blood. JEROME. Truly straining out the gnat, and swallowing the camel; for if they would not put the money into the treasury, because it was the price of blood, why did they shed the blood at all? ORIGEN. They thought it meet to spend upon the dead that money which was the price of blood. But as there are differences even in burial places, they used the price of Jesus’ blood in the purchase of some potter’s field, where foreigners might be buried, not as they desired in the sepulchres of their fathers. AUGUSTINE. (App. Serm. 80. 1.) It was brought about, I conceive, by God’s providence, that the Saviour’s price should not minister means of excess to sinners, but repose to foreigners, that thence Christ might both redeem the living by the shedding of His blood, and harbour the dead by the price of His passion. Therefore with the price of the Lord’s blood the potter’s field is purchased. We read in Scripture that the salvation of the whole human race has been purchased by the Saviour’s blood. This field then is the whole world. The potter who is the Lord of the soil, is He who has formed of clay the vessels of our bodies. This potter’s field then was purchased by Christ’s blood, and to strangers who without country or home wander over the whole world, repose is provided by Christ’s blood. These foreigners are the more devout Christians, who have renounced the world, and have no possession in it, and so repose in Christ’s blood; for the burial of Christ is nothing but the repose of a Christian; for as the Apostle says, We are buried with him by baptism into death. (Rom. 6:4.) We are in this life then as foreigners. JEROME. Also we, who were strangers to the Law and the Prophets, have profited by the perverse temper of the Jews to obtain salvation for ourselves. ORIGEN. Or, the foreigners are they who to the end are aliens from God, for the righteous are buried with Christ in a new tomb hewn out in the rock. But they who are aliens from God, even to the end, are buried in the field of a potter, a worker in clay, which being bought by the price of blood, is called the field of blood.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: Speaking simply, ignorance differs from error, because ignorance does not of its very nature imply an act of knowledge, while error supposes a wrong judgment of reason about something. However, as regards being an impediment to the voluntary, it differs not whether we call it ignorance or error, since no ignorance can be an impediment to the voluntary, unless it have error in conjunction with it, because the will’s act presupposes an estimate or judgment about something which is the object of the will. Wherefore if there be ignorance there must needs be error; and for this reason error is set down as being the proximate cause. Reply to Objection 2: Although error is not of itself contrary to matrimony, it is contrary thereto as regards the cause of marriage. Reply to Objection 3: The character of baptism is not caused directly by the intention of the baptizer, but by the material element applied outwardly; and the intention is effective only as directing the material element to its effect; whereas the marriage tie is caused by the consent directly. Hence the comparison fails. Reply to Objection 4: According to the Master (Sent. iv, D, 30) the marriage between Lia and Jacob was effected not by their coming together, which happened through an error, but by their consent, which followed afterwards. Yet both are clearly to be excused from sin (Sent. iv, D, 30). Whether every error is an impediment to matrimony?Objection 1: It would seem that every error is an impediment to matrimony, and not, as stated in the text (Sent. iv, D, 30), only error about the condition or the person. For that which applies to a thing as such applies to it in all its bearings. Now error is of its very nature an impediment to matrimony, as stated above [4957](A[1]). Therefore every error is an impediment to matrimony. Objection 2: Further, if error, as such, is an impediment to matrimony, the greater the error the greater the impediment. Now the error concerning faith in a heretic who disbelieves in this sacrament is greater than an error concerning the person. Therefore it should be a greater impediment than error about the person. Objection 3: Further, error does not void marriage except as removing voluntariness. Now ignorance about any circumstance takes away voluntariness (Ethic. iii, 1). Therefore it is not only error about condition or person that is an impediment to matrimony. Objection 4: Further, just as the condition of slavery is an accident affecting the person, so are bodily or mental qualities. But error regarding the condition is an impediment to matrimony. Therefore error concerning quality or fortune is equally an impediment. Objection 5: Further, just as slavery or freedom pertains to the condition of person, so do high and low rank, or dignity of position and the lack thereof. Now error regarding the condition of slavery is an impediment to matrimony. Therefore error about the other matters mentioned is also an impediment.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  What turns us on often collides with our preferred self-image, or with our moral and ideological convictions. Ergo the feminist who longs to be dominated; the survivor of sexual abuse who infuses her personal erotics with her traumatic experiences; the husband who fantasizes about the au pair (the stripper, the masseuse, the porn star) in order to boost his enjoyment with his wife; the mother who finds the skin-to-skin contact with her baby sensuous and, yes, erotic; the wife who masturbates to images of hot sex with the psychopathic boyfriend she knew she was never going to marry; the lover who needs to think about the hunk he spotted at the gym in order to get off with his boyfriend. We think that there must be something wrong with us for having such prurient thoughts—that this kind of fantasy doesn’t belong in the erotic life of the happily married woman, that domination and objectification have no legitimate place in the mind of an upstanding husband and father. The greater our discomfort with the content of our erotic imagination, the greater the guilt and shame we feel, and the more powerful our internal censors. Ralph has been living with Sharon for fifteen years. By all accounts they are a very happy pair. But soon after they got together, Ralph found himself fantasizing every time they made love: his beloved Sharon kept getting replaced by a seventeen-year-old vixen in a darkened movie theater. For Ralph, his inner life is like a tribal war: the tender lover on one side and the lecherous groper on the other. He confessed one day, “This doesn’t sit right with me. I would never touch a seventeen-year-old. I see myself as a decent person, and I can’t connect the dots. There’s no way I can admit this to Sharon. I can hardly admit it to myself.” In fact, the erotic imagination is fueled by a host of feelings that are far from proper: aggression, raw lust, infantile neediness, power, revenge, selfishness, and jealousy (to name only a few). These feelings, which are all permanent residents of our intimate relations, can threaten the stability of our connection and make love miserable. It is much easier, and often wiser, to banish them to the edge of our imagination, where they can do no harm. In the antechambers of the erotic mind, the rules of propriety are turned on their heads, often invited in for the sole purpose of being trampled. Forbidden frontiers are crossed, gender roles are reversed, modesty is corrupted, and imbalances of power are luxuriously played out, all for the sake of excitement. In fantasy we act out what we dare not do in reality. Joni and Ray Joni’s lament goes something like this: “Ray thinks I don’t like sex.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Whether we admit it or not, we all want to change something fundamental about ourselves. Most likely though, being human, our first effort may be targeted at changing whoever is in our line of sight. We look for ways to get others to change—be they our spouses, employers, children or parents—and search out ways to cajole or coerce them to get with the program. With a modicum of insight, however, we will probably recognize that deep change must occur first within ourselves. Yet, just how this long-term change process occurs remains elusive. In the attempt to improve our lives, we may urge ourselves with the familiar refrains: “Just apply yourself … Start exercising tomorrow … Cut down on the sweets, booze, shopping … Pull yourself together … Come on, shape up, work out … You can do it if you really want.” And so it goes over and again. These exhortations and good intentions are all admirable efforts at what we call self-control. While this ability is an important life skill, it is often modest in what it can accomplish and is fraught with obvious shortcomings. Frequently, this strategy only works in the short run, leading us blindly into the quicksand of guilt and self-recrimination. Ironically, there are some days when it is no simple matter just to schedule a dental appointment or arrange for an annual medical exam. Consider the following snapshot of goal setting: On Monday, John and his wife conclude that they could use some extra income for their daughter’s dental braces. John, seeking a raise, summons his capacity for self-control. While keeping in mind his value to the firm, he awaits a strategically opportune moment. When he receives a generous compliment from his boss during their routine Friday meeting, he is cued to delicately broach the topic of the raise. In order to hold all of this information in check, until the ripe moment, his brain must employ volitional memory. John’s voluntary memory has to keep his clandestine intentions intact for four days. That’s not too hard, but not simple either. Anyone who has ever said to herself, midweek, “This weekend I will go the gym and work out,” knows how elusive it can be to keep that intention fresh. To get up on Saturday, pull the jogging shoes out of the closet and go to the gym before family responsibilities crowd out precious personal time is no small achievement.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I let go of R.’s arm as we reached the bottom of the hill, where lights met us again along the stone road, from which it was a five- or ten-minute walk to the observatory point where we would watch the show. Not many of the other operagoers joined us there, they scattered to their cars or set off on foot for home. The benches at the little plaza were full anyway, packed with children and what I took for their grandparents, the very old and the very young, as though everyone of vital age had been called away. R. and I stood behind the benches, watching the last well-dressed couples bend into their cars and slide off, until the speakers behind us popped awake and the lights in the square went out. R. made a humming noise of anticipation, and all of the bodies on the benches stiffened with attention. But as the music started, a kitsch fusion of folk instruments and Slavic chorus and dated synthesizer, as different quadrants of the hill and its ancient walls were illuminated, now in red, now blue and green, I felt myself receding from the square, from the light and sound. For hours I had managed not to think about R. leaving, about the uncertainty of our future, the guilt I felt no matter how I tried to dismiss it. I had never wanted permanence before, not really, or I had wanted my freedom more; I had accepted that passionate feeling faded, all my earlier experience had confirmed it, when love that seemed certain simply dissolved, on one side or both, for no particular reason, leaving little trace. But what I felt for R. was different, it didn’t dissolve, and I wanted to believe in our language of boundlessness and the impossibility of change; to let it go would mean there had been bad faith, on one or both of our parts, maybe it isn’t fair to think that but I thought it.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I wondered if they were the same people I had seen before, whether their entire protest consisted of cleaning up, that gesture M. had been so proud of, leaving the city better than they had found it, leaving it pristine. My phone buzzed again, but I didn’t want to meet D. now, I would write him soon to say I wasn’t coming, or not for a while. It was pointless for me to stick around, I couldn’t do anything to help, I wasn’t any help at all, but I let my bag drop to the grass anyway, I sat down with them to wait.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  that these handsome old buildings, webbed with vines of actual ivy to which a few brown leaves still clung, were my home. ARTHUR HATED SHOP, which was a required course for boys at Concrete High. After making his eighth or ninth cedar box he revolted. He was able to negotiate his way out by agreeing to work in the school office during that period. I thought he would help me, but he refused angrily. His anger made no sense to me. I did not understand that he wanted out, too. I backed off and didn’t ask again. But a few days later he came up to me in the cafeteria, dropped a manila folder on the table, and walked away without a word. I got up and took the folder to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. It was all there, everything I had asked for. Fifty sheets of school stationary, several blank transcript forms, and a stack of official envelopes. I slipped them into the folder again and went back to the cafeteria. Over the next couple of nights I filled out the transcripts and the application forms. Now the application forms came easy; I could afford to be terse and modest in my self-descriptions, knowing how detailed my recommenders were going to be. When these were done I began writing the letters of support. I wrote out rough copies in longhand, then typed up the final versions on official stationary, using different machines in the typing lab at school. I wrote the first drafts deliberately, with much crossing out and penciling in, but with none of the hesitance I’d felt before. Now the words came as easily as if someone were breathing them into my ear. I felt full of things that had to be said, full of stifled truth. That was what I thought I was writing—the truth. It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed that I was an Eagle Scout, and a powerful swimmer, and a boy of integrity. These were ideas about myself that I had held on to for dear life. Now I gave them voice. I made no claims that seemed false to me. I did not say that I was a star quarterback or even a varsity football player, because even though I went out for football every year I never quickened to the lumpen spirit of the sport. The same was true of basketball. I couldn’t feature myself sinking a last-second clincher from the key, as Elgin Baylor did for Seattle that year in the NCAA playoffs against San Francisco. Ditto school politics; the unending compulsion to test

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  It operates as a sensory deprivation tank. Find other surfaces in the house. Then, I’d like you to masturbate next to Stella, to experience the possibility of pleasing yourself in her presence. Take note of the tension and the guilt. Be mindful of them, rather than trying to avoid them.” I chose masturbation for several reasons. First, it is the one area of James’s sexuality where he can let go freely. Second, it invites him to be totally self-centered, and relieves him of the responsibility of pleasing his wife. Third, it will—I hope—confirm for him that attending to himself doesn’t have to hurt her. Being watched will support his ability to indulge his erotic individuality guilt-free. Finally, it will turn his performance anxiety on its head. The act of masturbating in her presence is itself a grand performance, with Stella as the sole spectator. For the first time he can consider that she may actually enjoy taking in his enjoyment. Letting her watch him roam freely in his own erotic territory is itself an intimate gift. Each of these layers helps to create a reality that is entirely different from the one he felt with his mother. After all, we don’t masturbate in front of our parents, but we can with our lovers. Of course, when I made this suggestion I considered Stella’s plight as well. When James touches her tentatively, waiting for her to give him the go-ahead, she is filled with resentment. As it turns out, James’s cautious regard is a turn-off. His deference leaves her feeling burdened; his dogged focus leaves her aching. Earlier in our conversation, James made a point of telling me that Stella had a temper. “While that may be so,” I confirmed, “if you had made love to her more often you would have a wife with a very different temper, because the frustration that people can experience when the body is not touched, stroked, held, and pleasured drives people up a wall. What you then get is arousal transformed into rage.” I tell Stella what I’ve told many people who are cherished spouses but famished lovers: “You know he loves you; you’ve never doubted that; and that’s why you’ve stayed all these years. What hurts so much is that you’ve never felt wanted by him. You feel that it’s all on you to make it happen, and indeed it is. You’ve forfeited sensual complicity for emotional security. It’s a cruel bargain.” Like a glacier suddenly melting, tears roll down Stella’s face. They speak volumes about the longing and rejection she’s lived with for so long. It’s virtually impossible not to take such repeated denial personally, to see it as proof that one is undesirable, and to slip into self-doubt. To James I say, “Love and desire are not the same. Cozy is not the same as sexy.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  James’s mother relied on him for support, company, and conversation. (She referred to his father as simply the Paycheck.) “When I was older and wanted to do things with my friends, I knew she was disappointed. She’d say, ‘Have a good time’ in a way that made it very hard for me to have a good time.” James grew up torn between his desire not to displease his mother and his need to lead his own life. “Getting a scholarship to Stanford, clear across the country, was the best thing that could have happened to me. She couldn’t deny me that opportunity. I left, but I took a lot of guilt with me.” The first time James set eyes on Stella, she was a vision. “Everything about her was graceful, vibrant, colorful. Here was a woman who was not afraid to stand out. She was all light.” Stella was the antithesis of James’s mother, and for the first time he was able to love a woman and not feel burdened with responsibility and guilt. In fact, Stella regularly rejected his attempts to be overly accommodating, explaining that they made her feel smothered. He laughs when he recounts how anxious he used to feel when he wanted to do something that didn’t include her—he was always afraid of disappointing her. He had a way of asking, “Do you mind?” that drove her crazy. Finally she snapped, “Look, I’m not your mother. You don’t have to ask my permission.” Stella has taught James, largely through example, that you can be close to someone—intimate, caring, secure—without feeling sacrificed in the process. In asserting her independence, Stella has communicated over and over that she’s not fragile, and that her well-being does not depend exclusively on him. The price of love does not have to be personal obliteration. In many ways, James and Stella have an enviable marriage. They enjoy each other. He still makes her laugh out loud, and she is the fiercest but most trusted critic of his graphic design work and, as he would add, “everything else, too.” Stella, clear about where she stands, says, “Even when I hate his guts I’ve never been bored. The day I’m bored I’m out of here.” In the thirty-one years they’ve been together they’ve raised four children, renovated two houses, suffered the loss of all four of their parents, survived Stella’s breast cancer, and toasted the birth of their first grandchild. This is the bright side of their story. But in the middle of this pastoral landscape is the minefield of sex, where their worst arguments occur. She wants it; he doesn’t. She wants to talk about it; he doesn’t. She gets angry. He gets defensive. They clash, then wait for the dust to settle. This situation is chronic and relentless, and recently it got a lot worse.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  By making herself indispensable, she has hoped to counteract the vagaries of love. But Lena’s niceness is precisely what turns her husband off. Her coy lovemaking and her lack of sexual assertiveness inhibit him. In recent months Lena has started to wonder what her marriage would be like if she were less accommodating. She is experimenting with the idea that she might be liked for who she is, not only for what she gives. Together we have been deconstructing the anxiety, guilt, and self-abnegation that are the legacy of the nice girl. Lena would love to become bold enough not only to know what she likes but to be able to ask for it. Buying lingerie at Victoria’s Secret with her husband may not sound like much, but for Lena it was as uplifting as a Wonderbra. The internal tensions that crackle in the sexuality of Steven, Dylan, Melinda, and Lena are a result of childhood conflicts. The details of our erotic proclivities and apprehensions are refined throughout our lives but often originate in our childhood experiences, both good and not so good. Sometimes it takes a bit of psychological sleuthing to make sense of all this, but very little in one’s erotic imagination is happenstance. Me in the Context of We Our physical and emotional dependence on our parents surpasses that of any other living species, in both magnitude and duration. It is so complete—and our need to feel safe is so profound—that we will do anything not to lose them. We will suppress our wishes and push our aggression underground. We will take the blame for abuse, submit to control, become self-reliant, and otherwise renounce our needs. In short, we’ll apply a wide range of self-preservation tactics, all aimed at maintaining our primary bond. Things get tricky when you consider that one of our greatest needs, developmentally speaking, is autonomy. From the moment we can crawl, we navigate the treacherous paths of separation in an attempt to balance our fundamental urge for connection with the urge to experience our own agency. We need our parents to take care of us, but we also need them to give us enough space to establish our freedom. We want them to hold us and we want them to let us go. Throughout our lives we grapple with this interplay between dependence and independence. How artfully we reconcile these needs as adults depends greatly on how our parents reacted to the stubborn duality in our little selves. It’s important to point out that our parents’ behavior, what they actually do, is only one part of the situation. Another part is our interpretation of their actions.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I pulled my fingers from him (slowly now, gently), and he grabbed my hand and brought it to his mouth, cleaning it though it wasn’t dirty, he was immaculate, he had cleaned himself out before I arrived. As he lay on his side gasping he said again So fucking good, not smiling now, and I thought I had satisfied him. But when he stood I saw he wasn’t satisfied, his cock was still hard as he stepped across the room and bent over to pick up the coil of my belt. I sat up as he held it out, and when I didn’t take it he said I want you to beat me, his voice neutral, matter-of-fact, I want you to whip me with it. I swung my legs off the bed but didn’t get up, I hesitated before finally taking the belt from him and standing. This hadn’t been part of the scene we had planned, he hadn’t said he wanted it, I wasn’t sure it was a scene I liked. He knelt on the bed again, on his hands and knees, presenting his ass. I stepped to the foot of the bed, letting the belt unroll from my hand, then taking the tip again to fold it, I would strike him with half its length. I had never whipped anyone before but that was how my father had done it, taking the strap to us, as he said, that was how he punished us. I took the folded belt in both hands and brought my hands together, making the halves bend out like wings, and then snapped it quickly twice, the noise loud in the small room, making me flinch. That too was what my father had always done, frightening us to double our punishment, I guess, to make us fear the belt before we felt it. At the sound of it he shifted his position, he lowered his torso, dropping to his elbows and resting his head on his clasped hands. I delayed a little more, I rubbed his ass with my free hand, gripping the flesh. Then I struck him, not gently but I knew he could feel my reluctance, and after a second and a third time he said Harder, his voice muffled against his hands, and then again, harder, and I obeyed, striking him each time with greater force, warming into it. But still he said Harder after each stroke, almost like a taunt, and I didn’t know whether it was in response to his voice or to my movement that I became cruel again, became all acquiescence, I would punish him if it was punishment he wanted. I would tan his hide, I thought, which was another thing my father said when he beat us, I’ll tan your hide; he said it with the voice he used only when he was very angry, the voice of his childhood, his country voice.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  So I empathized with her dilemma. I listened, probed gently, and kept my opinions to myself. Finally I suggested that she write a softer letter to the medical board: “Honest but softer,” I said. “Then the doctors will get only a reprimand rather than a license forfeiture.” All this, of course, was in bad faith. No medical board in the world was going to take her letter seriously. No one was going to believe that all the clinic physicians were conspiring against her. There was no possibility of either reprimand or revocation of license. She lapsed into thought, weighing my advice. I believe she felt my caring for her, and I hoped she would not know that I was being false. Finally she nodded. “You’ve given me good, sound counsel, Irv. It’s just what I needed.” I felt painfully the irony that it was only now, when I had acted in bad faith, that she considered me helpful and trustworthy. Despite her sensitivity to the sun, Paula insisted on walking with me to my car. She put on her sun hat, wrapped herself in her veil and linens, and, as I started the ignition, leaned into the car window to give me a last hug. As I drove away I looked back through the rearview mirror. Silhouetted against the sun, her hat and linen wrapping gleaming with light, Paula was incandescent. A breeze came up. Her clothes fluttered. She seemed a leaf, trembling, twisting on its stem, readying itself for the fall. In the ten years before this visit, I had dedicated myself to my writing. I turned out book after book—a productivity due to a simple strategy: I put the writing first and let nothing and no one interfere with it. Guarding my time as fiercely as a mother bear guards her cubs, I eliminated all but absolutely essential activities. Even Paula fell into the nonessential category, and I did not take the time to call her again. Several months later my mother died, and while I was flying to her funeral, Paula slipped into my mind. I thought of her farewell letter to her dead brother—the letter containing all the things she had never said to him. And I thought of what I had never said to my mother. Almost everything! My mother and I, though loving one another, had never spoken directly, heart to heart, as two people reaching out with clean hands and clear minds. We had always “treated” each other, spoken past each other, each of us fearing, controlling, deceiving the other. I’m certain that’s why I had always wanted to speak honestly and directly to Paula. And why I hated being forced to “treat” her falsely. The night after the funeral, I had a powerful dream.