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 The Pisces (2018)

  We can get him some food.” “I know,” I said. “But his medicine is at home.” “I’ll give you money for a car to go back and pick it up.” The thing was, I could easily do that. I didn’t want to tell her that I was abandoning her for the swimmer. If anyone would understand that I was shirking the duties of friendship over a boy, Claire would understand. But in this situation maybe she wouldn’t. Also, I didn’t want to hear myself say it. “I don’t think that will work,” I said. “I’m sorry.” 32. Dominic was not doing well. He had started peeing indoors no matter how often I took him outside. I didn’t know if it was because he was sick or because he was angry at me for being away so much. I was afraid to tell Annika what was going on, but just to be safe I took him to the vet. The vet ran some blood tests and said that it was further issues related to his pancreas and kidneys, and that his blood sugar was very high. His insulin dose would have to be increased. I emailed Annika, in part to relay the news, but also because I couldn’t afford to pay the $1,300 vet bill. I was scared. Immediately my phone lit up. “Where is he? Put him on,” she said. “He’s right here,” I said, aiming the phone at his face. “Oh no, I can see it in his eyes. Something is not right.” “They gave me a higher dose of insulin to give him.” “I mean besides that. He looks depressed. Hold on, I’m looking up depression symptoms in dogs. Okay. Is he lethargic? Has he been sleeping excessively or showing signs of clinginess?” “No, that’s just me,” I said. “Lucy! I’m serious. Loss of appetite?” “Definitely not.” “Weight loss?” “No, it’s just been the peeing. That’s it. Which I think is directly related to the insulin.” “How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me that something was wrong right away?” “Only a few days. And I didn’t want to worry you.” “Lucy, he is my child! You have to tell me when anything like this happens. Are you able to give him the care he needs? What did the vet say specifically? Should I come home?” “No, no, don’t come home. The vet said he is going to be totally okay as long as we adjust this insulin to the new amount. I can do that. It’s easy.” “I still think he looks depressed,” she said. “I’ll take him to group.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  On a rational level, I know that I am equating being a good mother with being a martyr, but on an emotional level, I am having a hard time letting go of this vestige of my previous life. I’ve been having sex with various men for months now, but the thought of having sex while on a family trip suggests that I am fully establishing myself as an independent human being outside of my relationship with my children. Sleeping with Blaze is a fantasy, yes, but it’s also proof that I have given myself full permission to have a private life. I have proven in so many ways to myself over the past year that I am strong, resilient, adventurous, curious, passionate and open, but it turns out I have one last thing to prove to myself, that I can be a mother and a fulfilled woman and that the two are not mutually exclusive. Sandy, sticky and freckled from the sun by early evening, I luxuriate in a long shower, scrubbing myself clean with the coconut-scented bath products the resort has provided. I shimmy into my favorite dress, the bright orange Indian-print halter I wore on one of my dates with #4, knowing this is the easiest access piece of clothing I own. I tuck a condom into my small straw clutch purse and then the four of us head out to dinner. Michael snaps a picture of me, Georgia and Hudson sitting on the back of a tuk tuk, bouncing along the narrow road to the beach restaurant. Georgia is squished in the middle, one hand on my leg and the other on Hudson’s, and his hand is wrapped over hers. In the photo, they are smiling widely, filled with joy to be in their happy place and, for Georgia, being with both of her parents at the same time. I have a small smile and am looking not at the camera but sideways at them, cherishing this moment and, as I’ve done a million times before, feeling gratitude for their extraordinary relationship. Georgia worships Hudson and he is attentive and kind to her, even now in the peak of his teenage years when no one could rightfully expect such tenderness. My kids are alright and I am on my way to being alright too. I think guiltily of the condom hidden inside my purse, trying to persuade myself that it’s OK that it’s there, that all of this – my thriving and my kids thriving – goes hand in hand. Dinner takes a long time and when it finally ends, we drift over to the beach where a reggae band is playing. I cannot take my eyes off the singer, a petite woman with thick braids swaying as she moves to the beat.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  And perhaps as punishment or to regain control of the narrative—that I might be like her and have a moment like that, the beloved vanisher—I confessed. “I suppose it won’t matter with me,” I said. “Now that you’ve been through it in such a sad way.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, I guess you will be okay when I leave here.” “What do you mean ‘leave’?” “I’ll be going away soon.” “For how long?” “Well, for good.” I told him everything: that I was from a place where there was no ocean and would be leaving in three weeks to return there, permanently. I asked him if he knew what the desert was. He only stared at me. Immediately I knew that I had hurt him. “Do you think—” I started to say. I was going to backtrack, to ask him what could be possible. Could I take him with me? Could he ever exist in a desert? But he put his hands over his face and began moaning. “Theo,” I said. He wouldn’t answer me and seemed to be in a trance. It was like he’d become a Siren. As Homer said, the Sirens had gorgeous, melodic voices, but they could also howl with pain and agony. It was not pain as I had romanticized it: him beautifully bereft with aching for me. It was not the Sirens as we humans imagined them, armed with divine power. This was vulnerability, a bit of madness even, and what it revealed was that he truly loved me, and that love could be grotesque. Dominic woke up in the other room and began barking along with Theo’s moaning. “Please calm down,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I told him that maybe I could work something out. Maybe I could stay after all. I hadn’t known how much he cared. But he said it was too late. “You lied to me,” he said. “I was going to keep coming to see you on land. I had even wanted to ask you to come join me under the water, seriously. And here you have been set to abandon me all along.” I didn’t know exactly what “under the water” meant. Was he more delusional than I was? Did he know I couldn’t live under there? “Theo, no, it isn’t like that. I really am in love with you. I want to stay with you forever.” “That you would think of leaving me,” he said. “That you would let me grow so close to you and never tell me it was finite. It breaks my heart. It’s humiliating too.” “I was afraid that if I told you there was an end date you would see me differently. I liked the way you saw me. I didn’t want anything to change. And then it was too late, you knew me the way you knew me.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  That Sunday, as we clean up after a lunch of tuna niçoise salad at #6’s apartment, he asks if I want to walk to the international grocery store where I love to peruse the aisles and get dinner ideas for the kids. I tell him that I can’t, that I actually have to leave soon to meet a friend. He rattles off a list of my friends, asking who I am going to see: Lauren? Mara? Jessica? I shake my head. “Ah, I see. A friend,” he says slowly. “A date?” “Well, yes,” I say sheepishly. “And she’s off!” he says with a bemused smile. I give him a quick kiss goodbye before we have a chance to launch into further conversation. I feel equal parts guilty and empowered, but my honesty has prevented me from being in the uncomfortable position of having to lie. The sun is starting to go down, if it ever really came up at all – it’s one of those winter days that feels like snow is about to blanket the city. I sit at a darkly lit tapas bar, order a glass of mulled wine, and contemplate how it is that I came to be sitting at a bar in the middle of a Sunday afternoon with a glass of wine, having just left one man’s apartment to go and meet another. Where are my children? I should be home drinking hot apple cider, eating popcorn and playing an epic game of Risk with them. A year ago my life was perfectly ordinary, deceptively steady, centered around my family life that in actuality was only weeks away from combusting. Thankfully #8 dashes in before I can get totally lost in my thoughts, which will swallow me whole if I give them room to grow. I am struck again by how large his physical presence is, how much of the small room both his solid build and dazzling smile take up. He rushes over, apologizing for being late, giving me a chaste kiss on the cheek and explaining that he has to go to a party after this and couldn’t decide what to wear. I note his deep blue cashmere sweater and pressed jeans. “So this is pretty weird, but the party I’m going to is actually a sex party and I’ve never been to one so I had no idea what would be appropriate to wear,” he says. “It seems to me that if you’re going to a sex party, what you wear is totally beside the point, but OK, do tell,” I say, my eyes popping open. He admits that he is nervous about the party and not sure what to expect, but that he has been dating a woman who is in an open marriage and that she has been trying to get him to come to one of these parties she and her husband host every month.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Suicide was one of those things that, having been suicidal, in retrospect, I felt like I could talk about without being judgmental. But at the same time, there was no rational reason I could see giving her to live. Could I say that I was once suicidal but things were better now? Could I say that I was glad I had lived? The thing was, I hadn’t really known I was suicidal until I woke up with the doughnuts. Also, even if things were better now, were they ever permanently better? Who was I to put that pressure on her to stay alive? But what kind of person didn’t try to talk their friend out of killing herself? I didn’t want to tell her that she had to live for her children. I knew that she felt bad enough about them already. I could have told her what an amazing and fun and funny person she was, but I knew that right now it all felt to her like just a performance. Her charming personality was only more heaviness—another mask that she was going to have to pick up again to prove she hadn’t lost it in the depression. The only reason to put it on again was out of fear that she might never get it back. Otherwise, there was no real reason to have to put on a heavy costume every day. It was too tiring. “Would you sleep over?” she asked. I felt claustrophobic. I thought about Theo. “I can’t,” I said. “The dog.” “The dog can sleep here. We can get him some food.” “I know,” I said. “But his medicine is at home.” “I’ll give you money for a car to go back and pick it up.” The thing was, I could easily do that. I didn’t want to tell her that I was abandoning her for the swimmer. If anyone would understand that I was shirking the duties of friendship over a boy, Claire would understand. But in this situation maybe she wouldn’t. Also, I didn’t want to hear myself say it. “I don’t think that will work,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The harsh, even cruel, Dark Age practice of inordinate penance not only gave credibility to the idea of salvation; in a way, it gave credibility to the whole of Christian society. The brutal scourging of a naked king or archbishop was exciting evidence of spiritual equality before God, and man. But once the clerical experts found mechanical means to erode the full penitential rigours, a yawning hole began to appear in the fabric of Christian conviction. Such means were all too easily discovered: the real evil of canon law was that it constantly chipped away – rather like modern tax-lawyers – at the egalitarian provisions in Christianity. It rebuilt hierarchies and pyramids on democratic spiritual foundations, and introduced the cash nexus into the supposed world to come. The canon lawyer was always engaged in a struggle with Death the Leveller, and always beat him – at least to the satisfaction of the papal curia. It is in the seventh century that we first hear of men undertaking to perform the penances of others, in return for payment. This was forbidden; indeed, at first the Church opposed any form of commutation. The first loop-hole allowed was vicarious penance without pay. A man might perform another’s penance from motives of love (or fear; or hope of future favour). Thus we find an early case where a powerful man got through a seven-year fasting penance in three days with the help of 840 followers. And once vicarial penance in any form was admitted, it proved impossible to keep money out of it. Was not alms-giving a form of penance? There, it was argued, the payment was to God, or to God’s servants to perform God’s purposes, and could not, therefore, be reprehensible. The Church at first opposed penitential alms-giving, too, as an easy way to Heaven for the rich man. But it soon found justificatory texts: ‘The ransom of a man’s life are his riches’ (Proverbs, 13:8); and ‘Make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’ This last passage was particularly useful; it might almost have been framed by an ingenious canon lawyer for his professional purposes. Thus the penitential system was quite quickly transformed into a means whereby the wealth of the sinful rich could be diverted into ecclesiastical endowments. An early case was that of the Anglo-Saxon Wulfin, who slew six priests; he went on a penitential trip to Rome, and was there told to endow a foundation for seven monks to pray for him for ever. Another case, from the tenth century, was Eadwulf, King Edgar’s Chancellor. He loved his little son so much that he had him sleep between himself and his wife; one night, both were drunk and the son was suffocated. Eadwulf proposed to walk to Rome as a barefoot pilgrim; but he was told to repair a church instead.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  That’s not gonna do it, I thought. It’s not the pills or the depression. It’s the sex and love. But you can’t tell a person’s husband, one who probably still very much loves her, about her addiction to other men. You can’t say, Oh, the real problem is in her heart and cunt. Who was I to know what the real problem was anyway? Maybe her real problem was drug addiction, and this love and sex thing was only a poor substitute. But if that was the case then where was my drug problem? And why was she crying for men but never for drugs? Why was it that whenever one of them left or did not give her enough of what she wanted, she dissolved into a disaster? And why was I vomiting on Abbot Kinney last night? “I’ll go see her,” I said. I walked and fed Dominic quickly and then I went to see Claire, just like that, no fear of what I would see, no recalling the memory of having almost been hospitalized by the doughnut incident. There was only this person who needed me. It wasn’t a reflection of me that I was seeking, a way to feel good about myself. There was just this human being for whom I could maybe bring some love. For once I could actually do something of service. The thought of getting out of my own mind, and the situation with Theo, made me feel good for a moment. The psych ward smelled like institutional mashed potatoes and the nurses said that Claire was with a doctor. I wondered if this was where I was going to end up. Or would I end up in a hospital in Phoenix? As the patients moved back and forth, shuffling around the locked ward, I felt very aware of my freedom. One woman about my age sat in a chair, in her gown, digging her nails into her scalp: red sores scabbing all along the hairline. With every few digs she would intently scrutinize the skin she had scraped off and then put it in her mouth. I did not feel like I was a better person than these people, but perhaps stronger, or luckier, or something. Then I felt ashamed of my strength and freedom. I was one of them, only I was out here. But I wasn’t one of them, was I? I had been alive a long time and had not ended up in one of these places. I had come close but never completely lost my freedom. Didn’t it say something about my ability to make decisions, or at the last moment save myself and evade disaster?

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  For a thousand years Augustine was the most popular of the Fathers; medieval European libraries contained over 500 complete manuscripts of his City of God, and there were, for instance, twenty-four printed editions between 1467–95. Above all, Augustine wrote about himself: he issued his so-called Confessions in 397, two years after he became a bishop. He was a tremendous egoist: it is characteristic of him that his spiritual autobiography should have been written in the form of a gigantic address to God. Yet it is arguable that Augustine’s references to himself hide more than they reveal. His Confessions is one of the few works of classical literature still read today because it centres around a personal relationship, between the young, sinful Augustine and his pious Christian mother, Monica (his father, Patrick, is virtually ignored), and because it describes the author’s efforts to overcome the sexual impulse. These are transcendental themes, fascinating in any age. But it is not clear that either had much actual bearing on Augustine’s life and spiritual development. It is true that Augustine, aged seventeen, took a regular concubine, who bore him a son. But there is no evidence that he was ever a libertine. The arrangement was normal at the time; later, Pope Leo used to say that a young man’s desertion of his concubine was the first step to godliness. Augustine seems to have been if anything undersexed, and to have had a very limited interest in worldliness. The notion that he turned from the pleasures of the classical culture to the austerities of Christianity is false. Augustine was always a person with a very strong and austere religious bent, which he plainly inherited from his mother. The question was, what precise direction would this religious impulse take? For most of Augustine’s youth and early manhood he was a Manichee. The Manichees were not really Christians at all. Mani was a late third-century Mesopotamian ecstatic, who had combined Montanism with eastern elements into a new synthetic religion. He had been executed by the Persians in 276, but his cult had spread east to China, where it was very influential, and west into the Mediterranean. It had reached Augustine’s home territory about sixty years before his birth. Our knowledge of Manicheism, from recently discovered Coptic and Chinese sources, is still fragmentary. Like gnosticism, it was dualist. But it was characterized by intense pessimism about the potentialities of human nature and its inherent goodness, relieved only by confidence in the existence of a godly élite. Manichees were passionate, self-disciplined, righteous and obstinate. They demanded an exceptionally long catechumenate: Augustine became a ‘hearer’ aged twenty, and remained one for nine years – he never graduated to the ‘elect’. Manichees were secretive and had their own personal networks of contacts. That was one chief reason why they were hated by all established regimes. Except for brief intervals, they were never tolerated by any government, whatever its racial, religious or ideological complexion.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Christ no! Do you want to know the best part of all this? David found out about this last attempt. He’s been writing me letters compulsively. Two of them a day, pages and pages. He doesn’t even mail them; he comes here and drops them off for me. It’s like the more suicidal I am, the more he wants me. When I get out we are going to try and live together. Arnold is going to get full custody of the kids in the divorce and I can’t be arsed to give a fuck. So I’m too crazy to be a mother? Well then, that’s fine. I didn’t make myself this way. It is what it is.” “You sound…good,” I said. “I’m great,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown. “And what about you?” “I’m a mess. I think I may have poisoned my sister’s dog.” “Oh my God.” She giggled. “You did what?” “It’s not funny. He’s dead.” “That beast you brought to my house? You poisoned him? With what, bad Alpo?” “No. Tranquilizers.” “Oh shit.” “Yeah.” “A junkie dog. Jesus, who would have thought? You know, I could tell he had a drug problem. He tried to steal my TV.” She snorted. Now it wasn’t comforting at all to have the old Claire back. Why was she laughing? She was like one of those young boys who shoots animals with a BB gun and then has no remorse. Except I was the one who had killed Dominic. I wondered if we were both inherently evil people. Bad women. Were we? Evil people rarely know they’re evil. Someone had told me that once. What if we were put on the planet to fill some purpose but that purpose was bad? Maybe this was why we had to die. “He was such a sweet dog,” I said. “It’s horrible. My sister is going to be destroyed. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.” “Listen,” she said, “it’s not your fault he couldn’t handle his shit. Never trust an addict, Lucy, not even a dog.” “Stop it. I feel irredeemably awful.” “Well, you’re not.” “Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re the worst one and there is no hope for you?” “Darling, I know I’m the worst one,” she said. “And of course there’s no hope.” I began to cry. “Oh, love, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m guessing it wasn’t intentional.” “No, of course it wasn’t intentional. And he had diabetes. So maybe it was that.” “It probably was.” “I really fucked up this time.” “Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Your sister can find another dog. But there’s only one Lucy.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The thing had crept on her like a foe in the dark—it had been slow, insidious, deadly; it had waxed strong as Stephen herself had waxed strong, being part, in some way, of Stephen. Restlessly tossing from side to side, Anna Gordon would pray for enlightenment and guidance; would pray that her husband might never suspect her feelings towards his child. All that she was and had been he knew; in all the world she had no other secret save this one most unnatural and monstrous injustice that was stronger than her will to destroy it. And Sir Philip loved Stephen, he idolized her; it was almost as though he divined by instinct that his daughter was being secretly defrauded, was bearing some unmerited burden. He never spoke to his wife of these things, yet watching them together, she grew daily more certain that his love for the child held an element in it that was closely akin to pity. CHAPTER 11 1 M artin went to Morton, he went very often, for Sir Philip liked him and encouraged the friendship. Anna liked Martin too, and she made him feel welcome because he was young and had lost his mother. She spoilt him a little, as a woman will spoil who, having no son must adopt some one else’s, so to Anna he went with all his small troubles, and she doctored him when he caught a bad chill out hunting. He instinctively turned to her in such things, but never, in spite of their friendship, to Stephen. Yet now he and Stephen were always together, he was staying on and on at the hotel in Upton; ostensibly staying because of the hunting; in reality staying because of Stephen who was filling a niche in his life long empty, the niche reserved for the perfect companion. A queer, sensitive fellow this Martin Hallam, with his strange love of trees and primitive forests—not a man to make many intimate friends, and in consequence a man to be lonely. He knew little about books and had been a slack student, but Stephen and he had other things in common; he rode well, and he cared for and understood horses; he fenced well and would quite often now fence with Stephen; nor did he appear to resent it when she beat him; indeed he seemed to accept it as natural, and would merely laugh at his own lack of skill.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  We sat down at the kitchen table. She was tan from the Roman sun and smelled like orange blossoms. Her ass had gotten bigger under her yoga pants and she wore a blousy shirt to cover it. I sat with my hands under me, clenched in fists, and squeezed them hard every time she spoke. “What am I going to do now? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?” “Do you want me to go out and get you something to eat?” I asked. “Eat?” she looked up at me. “Oh no, I can’t eat.” “Okay.” “I wanted so many more years with him. There was so much life we had left together. I mean, I would have eventually outlived him. But not for so many more years. He wasn’t even old. And to me he was still a puppy. He will always be my puppy.” “Annika, I’m so sorry,” I said. But she didn’t blame me. She didn’t say, “How could you have let this happen?” Instead she stared blankly, her full lips slightly parted, as though she too now knew the nothingness. Maybe it was the first time she could see it. Even when we lost our father she hadn’t had this look. This was the face of a mother who had lost her child. It made me think about my mother. I wondered, if my mother hadn’t died—if it had been me who died instead and my mother had lived—was this what she would have looked like? Steve came over and put his hands on her shoulders. He said that they were going to have Dominic cremated, because California law would not allow them to bury a body so close to the beach. The vet tech would come pick him up in the morning. With that Annika began to sob. She went inside the pantry. I followed her to the door and saw her lie down on the floor with her dead dog, her hair fanned out beside him. He was hers, the creature she loved most, and I had taken him from her. I could smell him from the doorway. Neither Annika nor Steve said anything about the smell, but the scent of death was wafting up from his body and through the glass house. —After Steve had gone to bed and Annika fell asleep on the floor of the pantry, I crept out to the rocks in the dark to see Theo. He hadn’t come out of the water and was resting his arms on one of the rocks, bobbing in the waves. “You’re late,” he said, looking up at me. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.” “I know, I’m sorry. But I’ll always come. And tomorrow, the water.” “I’m glad,” he said without smiling.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Was this what the eve of one’s wedding was like? I felt that we were being held on the rock by Aphrodite herself. Tomorrow she would drop me into the water, but maybe the water was only her lap. What if I would only be dropping to a warmer, deeper embrace? I moved against him again and again. As I moved, I imagined us beside a giant underwater sand castle. The walls of the castle were made of coral and sea crystals of all colors, textures, and sizes: peach, silver, pastel mint, cyan pieces embedded in translucent white chunks, big slabs made of thousands of tiny sparkling dark-green crystals, rusted gold rocks, transparent indigo pyramids, rosy sea glass, neon-orange honeycombs of coral. The castle had tall turrets and spires, and Theo and I were beside it, preparing to enter. But then I began to come and, as I did, the castle melted slowly to the ground. He and I clung together as the castle vanished, eclipsed by a wave of pleasure, disappearing from my inner vision. I didn’t stop moving until I rode over the peak of that orgasm. If anyone had looked at the rocks they would have seen a woman, thirty-eight years old, hopefully a little younger-looking, writhing against what looked like a large fish. Or maybe they would have seen her just riding the air. I wasn’t sure which was crazier. —When I got back to the house Steve was awake at the kitchen table, eating cereal, wearing a pair of blue striped pajamas, hairs sticking out from his balding head. I was drenched with sea spray and grime. He looked at me sternly. “Late-night swim?” he asked. “Just a beach walk,” I said. “I don’t know what went on while we were gone,” he said calmly. “But why is it that every time you come here, disaster strikes?” “Don’t worry, I’m leaving tomorrow night,” I said. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not telling you to leave. I only mean—your sister just wants to be good to you. She only wants you to be happy.” “I know.” “But you can’t not make a mess.” “I guess I can’t.” “If it were up to me, we would have hired a dog sitter. But Annika wanted to give you the time here. You know she’d do anything for you.” “Would she?” I asked. “Yes!” he said, as though it were crazy that I didn’t know. But the truth was, I didn’t. “Whose blood is that? What happened?” he asked, pointing to the sofa. He had turned over the pillows. “It’s—” But just as I was about to answer, he cut me off. “No, you know what? I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know.” “Okay,” I said. “But it’s my blood. There was no one else here but me.”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I am consumed with feelings of guilt, terrified that if I let myself thrive in my life outside of motherhood I am sacrificing my children. Friends and books keep telling me I must grab the oxygen mask first for myself and second for the kids, but it sounds like validation for selfish behavior. On a rational level, I know that I am equating being a good mother with being a martyr, but on an emotional level, I am having a hard time letting go of this vestige of my previous life. I’ve been having sex with various men for months now, but the thought of having sex while on a family trip suggests that I am fully establishing myself as an independent human being outside of my relationship with my children. Sleeping with Blaze is a fantasy, yes, but it’s also proof that I have given myself full permission to have a private life. I have proven in so many ways to myself over the past year that I am strong, resilient, adventurous, curious, passionate and open, but it turns out I have one last thing to prove to myself, that I can be a mother and a fulfilled woman and that the two are not mutually exclusive. Sandy, sticky and freckled from the sun by early evening, I luxuriate in a long shower, scrubbing myself clean with the coconut-scented bath products the resort has provided. I shimmy into my favorite dress, the bright orange Indian- print halter I wore on one of my dates with #4, knowing this is the easiest access piece of clothing I own. I tuck a condom into my small straw clutch purse and then the four of us head out to dinner. Michael snaps a picture of me, Georgia and Hudson sitting on the back of a tuk tuk, bouncing along the narrow road to the beach restaurant. Georgia is squished in the middle, one hand on my leg and the other on Hudson’s, and his hand is wrapped over hers. In the photo, they are smiling widely, filled with joy to be in their happy place and, for Georgia, being with both of her parents at the same time. I have a small smile and am looking not at the camera but sideways at them, cherishing this moment and, as I’ve done a million times before, feeling gratitude for their extraordinary relationship. Georgia worships Hudson and he is attentive and kind to her, even now in the peak of his teenage years when no one could rightfully expect such tenderness. My kids are alright and I am on my way to being alright too. I think guiltily of the condom hidden inside my purse, trying to persuade myself that it’s OK that it’s there, that all of this – my thriving and my kids thriving – goes hand in hand.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  My book presented the argument that one should read the vast number of erasures in Sappho’s work as intentional. True, Sappho had not included these herself. They were created by the passage of time and dirt since 600 BCE. Most of her work was actually missing, with only 650 lines of 10,000 surviving. But I argued that to reimagine these blanks as created by Sappho herself was far less of a co-option than filling in the gaps with what little we know of her life, creating our own meanings for them out of a desire to make history our own, and above all, projecting a first-person speaker upon them. I felt that the only way we would cease projecting was if the blanks were read as intentional text themselves. Forget whether she was a lesbian, preferred younger men, was hypersexual, bisexual, or had multiple male lovers. If we were going to ascribe meaning, let’s do it with what was there rather than what was not there. Unfortunately this was a total garbage proposition. I, myself, had a very complicated relationship with emptiness, blankness, nothingness. Sometimes I wanted only to fill it, frightened that if I didn’t it would eat me alive or kill me. But sometimes I longed for total annihilation in it—a beautiful, silent erasure. A desire to be vanished. And so I was most guilty of all in projecting an agenda. I knew it, which was why I had not really pressed ahead. I wasn’t sure if my advisory committee knew it. But I was about to be cut off and I figured that a shitty book was probably better than no book at all. So I continued to trudge, not wanting to quit and get a “real” job, not really knowing what I could do anyway. Most of my time in public was spent in the library, amidst the undergrads, and that was where I had heard them use the words butterface and brown bagger. They used these words to describe women of attractive body and unattractive face, and this woman on Abbot Kinney was, in my opinion, definitely one. I moved quickly behind her to observe her further. Her visage, when she turned her head to talk to the man, was hard and pronounced, with a jutting nose and chin, but she had good hair and a hot body to save her. She wore a pair of tiny navy silk shorts from which the very bottom of her ass cheeks protruded ever so slightly. You almost felt compelled to touch them. Everything she said was filtered through her own awareness of how good her ass looked, the words she spoke merely an afterthought compared to the glory at the bottom of those shorts. She was almost like a vehicle for shorts and an ass. She sort of danced a little down the sidewalk and flicked her hair.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3 Like some vile and prolific thing, this first quarrel bred others, and the peace of Morton was shattered. The house seemed to mourn, and withdraw into itself, so that Stephen went searching for its spirit in vain. ‘Morton,’ she whispered, ‘where are you, Morton? I must find you, I need you so badly.’ For now Stephen knew the cause of their quarrels, and she recognized the form of the shadow that had seemed to creep in between them at Christmas, and knowing, she stretched out her arms to Morton for comfort: ‘My Morton, where are you? I need you.’ Grim and exceedingly angry grew Puddle, that little, grey box of a woman in her schoolroom; angry with Anna for her treatment of Stephen, but even more deeply angry with Sir Philip, who knew the whole truth, or so she suspected, and who yet kept that truth back from Anna. Stephen would sit with her head in her hands. ‘Oh, Puddle, it’s my fault; I’ve come in between them, and they’re all I’ve got—they’re my one perfect thing—I can’t bear it—why have I come in between them?’ And Puddle would flush with reminiscent anger as her mind slipped back and back over the years to old sorrows, old miseries, long decently buried but now disinterred by this pitiful Stephen. She would live through those years again, while her spirit would cry out, unregenerate, against their injustice. Frowning at her pupil, she would speak to her sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Stephen. Where’s your brain, where’s your backbone? Stop holding your head and get on with your Latin. My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later—life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you. Now come along, do, and get on with that Latin. Remember you’ll soon be going up to Oxford.’ But after a while she might pat the girl’s shoulder and say rather gruffly: ‘I’m not angry, Stephen—I do understand, my dear, I do really—only somehow I’ve just got to make you have backbone. You’re too sensitive, child, and the sensitive suffer—well, I don’t want to see you suffer, that’s all. Let’s go out for a walk—we’ve done enough Latin for to-day—let’s walk over the meadows to Upton.’ Stephen clung to this little, grey box of a woman as a drowning man will cling to a spar. Puddle’s very hardness was somehow consoling—it seemed concrete, a thing you could trust, could rely on, and their friendship that had flourished as a green bay-tree grew into something more stalwart and much more enduring.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Find love again? What a joke. I need to be a mother right now, nothing more and nothing less. The idea that I thought I might be entitled to my own personal life is at best laughable and at worst tragically unrealistic. #3 calls me immediately. He says that in his limited experience with teenage boys, smoking weed is quite common and that the extenuating circumstance of his being in a foreign country makes it more complicated, but not necessarily a more heinous offense. I explain that Hudson has been in trouble at school before for this same reason and that I am terrified we are on our way down a slippery, dangerous slope. Being a single mother to an angry teenage boy who despises me for being the parent he is stuck with feels way beyond my pay grade. “I’m sorry that I have to cancel. I suspect I’m more trouble than I’m worth. We can reschedule, I hope, but if you don’t want to, I get it,” I say, so afraid of rejection that I try to beat him to the punch. “I have an idea,” he says brightly. “What if I meet you in the city? My friend has an apartment I can stay in.” “You would drive into the city to see me?” I ask, moved and astonished. “Yes, why not? I want to see you and a night in the city will be fun.” I’m not sure how to respond. I am scared that I am failing in my most important role – as a mother. But now that I’ve had a taste of what it feels like to be seen as a woman again, I’m reluctant to turn my back on it. Is it ever going to be possible to be both, an attentive mother and a woman with a fulfilling romantic relationship? My going on a date will not have a direct impact on Hudson, since he will be on an airplane anyway, but I am afraid that acting on my own needs will inadvertently take away from him in ways I can’t yet fathom while rewarding me, when what I deserve is punishment for falling down on the job and allowing Hudson’s predicament to even exist. Regardless, I accept #3’s generous offer, hoping I can sneak in this one last hurrah before settling in for the long haul on my own again. CHAPTER 9 Comfort Zone I was a month shy of five years old when my father died. My mother had subsequently refused to go anywhere without me and my sister, worrying that we would be further traumatized by her leaving us for even one evening, so she toted us along on dates friends arranged for her.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  and I agree entirely that what you predict will actually come to pass, if matters take the course you anticipate; but they will do nothing of the kind. I have done our good Lord so many injuries whilst I lived, that to do Him another now that I am dying will be neither here nor there. So go and bring me the holiest and ablest friar you can find, if there is such a one, and leave everything to me, for I shall set your affairs and my own neatly in order, so that all will be well and you’ll have nothing to complain of.’ Whilst deriving little comfort from all this, the two brothers nevertheless went off to a friary and asked for a wise and holy man to come and hear the confession of a Lombard who was lying ill in their house. They were given an ancient friar of good and holy ways who was an expert in the Scriptures and a most venerable man, towards whom all the townspeople were greatly and specially devoted, and they conducted him to their house. On reaching the room where Ser Ciappelletto was lying, he sat down at his bedside, and first he began to comfort him with kindly words, then he asked him how long it was since he had last been to confession. Whereupon Ser Ciappelletto, who had never been to confession in his life, replied: ‘Father, it has always been my custom to go to confession at least once every week, except that there are many weeks in which I go more often. But to tell the truth, since I fell ill, nearly a week ago, my illness has caused me so much discomfort that I haven’t been to confession at all.’ ‘My son,’ said the friar, ‘you have done well, and you should persevere in this habit of yours. Since you go so often to confession, I can see that there will be little for me to hear or to ask.’ ‘Master friar,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘do not speak thus, for however frequently or regularly I confess, it is always my wish that I should make a general confession of all the sins I can remember committing from the day I was born till the day of my confession. I therefore beg you, good father, to question me about everything, just as closely as if I had never been confessed. Do not spare me because I happen to be ill, for I would much rather mortify this flesh of mine than that, by treating it with lenience, I should do anything that could lead to the perdition of my soul, which my Saviour redeemed with His precious blood.’ These words were greatly pleasing to the holy friar, and seemed to him proof of a well-disposed mind. Having warmly commended Ser Ciappelletto for this practice of his, he began by asking him whether he had ever committed the sin of lust with any woman.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Good sir,’ Aldobrandino replied, ‘I neither know you nor recall ever having seen you before, but since you show concern for my safety, you must indeed be a friend. It is perfectly true that I did not commit the crime for which it is said that I must be condemned to death, even though I have sinned in many other ways, which possibly explains my present predicament. In all reverence to God, however, I can tell you this: that if He were to have mercy on me now, there is nothing, whether great or small, that I would not do, and do willingly, let alone promise. Ask of me what you please, then, for you may be quite certain that if I should happen to be released I shall honour my word to the letter.’ ‘All I want you to do,’ replied the pilgrim, ‘is to pardon Tedaldo’s four brothers for landing you in this plight in the mistaken belief that you murdered their brother, and, provided that they ask you to forgive them, to treat them as your own kith and kin.’ ‘Only the person who has been wronged,’ replied Aldobrandino, ‘knows how sweet and how intense is the desire for revenge. But in order that God may take thought for my salvation, I shall willingly forgive them; indeed, I do forgive them, here and now. And if I ever emerge from this place with my life and liberty, I shall act in a way that will certainly meet with your approval.’ This reply satisfied the pilgrim, and without enlightening him any further he departed, strongly urging him to be of good cheer and assuring him that before the next day was over he would hear the news of his deliverance. After leaving Aldobrandino, he made his way to the law-courts and obtained a private interview with the most senior official. ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘no man, especially in your position, should ever shrink from the task of uncovering the truth, so that, when a crime is committed, punishment may be inflicted on the guilty and not on the innocent. So as to ensure that this is done, thus bringing credit to yourself and retribution to those who have earned it, I have been prompted to call upon you. As you know, you have brought Aldobrandino Palermini to trial, you think you have discovered convincing proof that he is the man who murdered Tedaldo Elisei, and you are about to pronounce sentence upon him. But the evidence is false beyond any shadow of a doubt, and I believe I can prove it to you between now and midnight by handing over the young man’s real murderers.’

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I quickly hang up, hoping she caught only a blur of me; she calls right back. I decline the call and call her back without using video. She asks me suspiciously where I am. “I’m home. What are you up to?” I ask. She tells me that Hudson went out with his friends and she and Michael went out to dinner and are now waiting for the ball to drop. Then she says the words that land with a thud on my heart, that she misses me. “I miss you too, but I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll do something special,” I say. “OK, but what did you do tonight? Are you OK? Are you lonely by yourself?” Both moved and dismayed by her concern, I am proud of her for her compassion but sad that she feels she has to worry about me. I reassure her that I spent time with friends and am thrilled to be home now, dry and warm and snug, and she seems satisfied. I blow her kisses as I hurry to hang up the phone and turn it over so I don’t have to see the screen again. I want to turn it off completely, but I don’t like the kids not being able to reach me whenever they need to and dread the recriminations when I am accused of not being available because God forbid, I didn’t come right to the phone. Fresh in my mind is my most recent debacle when Daisy’s shower backed up with her alone at home, leaving inches of water that seeped into the carpet in her bedroom in the 45 minutes it took for me and #6 to have quick afternoon shake-off-Thanksgiving sex at his apartment. By the time I turned my phone over to find ten missed calls from her, a few from Michael and a couple more from the building’s super, the shake-off sex was rendered null and void and my parenting acumen was on the line. “OK, sexy bath scene take two,” I say, jumping in without attempting grace this time. I lie back, closing my eyes and pressing my feet into his thighs to keep myself from sliding down. “I love the look on your face when I enter you,” he says, shifting toward me and watching me. He moves his hips as the water rises above us like ocean waves until I push him away so that he is lying against the tub and I am leaning forward to straddle him. “Ah yes, so Laura is in control now,” he says, raising his eyebrows. I am still not used to talking during sex. I know that #6 finds it incredibly sexy, needs it even, my voice as tantalizing as the rest of my body, but I’m at a loss as to what to say. Giving words to my physical desire is like learning an entirely new language.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Even as she moved on in her romantic life with her soon-to-be husband, I understood implicitly that we would always come first: it was the ultimate act of maternal devotion, attending to her needs only after ours were managed. In books and movies I run through in my memory, it seems women who move on from their spouse’s death or from divorce are often able to seamlessly fold their new husbands into the mix – after a bumpy start, the dust settles and the kids accept it as a given that their mother has moved on. Sometimes the dust endlessly floats through space and the kids hate their stepfathers forever, but this rarely stops the mother. Why does this challenge have me flummoxed when other women seem to manage it without such intense turmoil and inner strife? My kids aren’t rebelling against anyone at this point and they’re not the ones throwing up roadblocks – I am. I cannot wrap my head around how logistically this is supposed to work. If I am to continue to be a good mother in the way I perceive good mothers to be, it means abrogating myself outside of my maternal duties. But the experiences of the past few weeks – flirting with men, talking to them, having sex, imagining the possibilities – has unleashed a previously forbidden side of myself I am unwilling to bottle back up. I am torn between what I have always believed a good mother to represent – complete devotion – and what I now think I need to be a complete person, which includes, but is not limited to, being a good mother. * The day I return to the city is cool and gloomy with relentless rain. I drive two hours with windshield wipers methodically thumping from side to side, and all the produce I bought at local farm stands tucked in the seat beside me so that I can prepare the dinner I had planned for #3. He texts me throughout the day. The heavy downpours are slowing traffic to a halt and his ETA keeps getting later and later. He has his dog with him and has to make frequent stops to let her out. I feel guilty that I’m the reason for this disastrous trip, and when he finally arrives well into the evening after countless delays, it feels decidedly anticlimactic. I wait for him under an umbrella in front of his friend’s apartment building, ready to apologize for everything from the weather to the traffic to the difficulty of parking in the city. I see him emerge from his car before he spots me and I am struck by how out of place he looks here, a country boy in the city. I am enamored of him in his bucolic milieu, but here, in my hometown, he looks out of his element, as if he might be consumed whole by the carefully styled bearded hipsters and lithe women pushing thousand-dollar strollers.