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 Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  My carnal thinking had made a mess of my head, and I felt as though I were standing in the doorway of my mind, wondering where to begin, how to organize my thoughts so they weren’t so out of control. That’s when I realized that religion might be able to hose things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without feeling guilty or something. I just didn’t want to have to think about this guilt crap anymore. For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance. The slot-machine God provided a relief for the pinging guilt and a sense of hope that my life would get organized toward a purpose. I was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn’t, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never lasts. My slot-machine God disintegrated on Christmas Eve when I was thirteen. I still think of that night as “the lifting of the haze,” and it remains one of the few times I can categorically claim an interaction with God. Though I am half certain these interactions are routine, they simply don’t feel as metaphysical as the happenings of that night. It was very simple, but it was one of those profound revelations that only God can induce. What happened was that I realized I was not alone in my own surroundings. I’m not talking about ghosts or angels or anything; I’m talking about other people. As silly as it sounds, I realized, late that night, that other people had feelings and fears and that my interactions with them actually meant something, that I could make them happy or sad in the way that I associated with them. Not only could I make them happy or sad, but I was responsible for the way I interacted with them. I suddenly felt responsible. I was supposed to make them happy. I was not supposed to make them sad. Like I said, it sounds simple, but when you really get it for the first time, it hits hard.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  My brilliant friend Mitch says that light, unlike anything else in the universe, is not affected by time. Light, he says, exists outside of time. He tells me it has something to do with how fast it travels and that it is eternal, but it is still a mystery to physicists. I say this only because time kept traveling through me. When I was young I thought I had forever to figure things out. I am talking about feeling like Hitler. But I didn’t. I didn’t have long to figure things out. I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. I was into habit. I grew up going to church, so I got used to hearing about God. He was like Uncle Harry or Aunt Sally except we didn’t have pictures. God never sent presents either. We had this dumpy house and dumpy car, and I had zits. Looking back, I suppose God sent sunsets and forests and flowers, but what is that to a kid? The only thing I heard from God was what I heard on Christmas Eve, that story I told you, when God made me feel so guilty, and I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t feel like I knew God, and yet He was making me experience this conviction. I felt that the least He could have done was to come down and introduce Himself and explain these feelings of conviction in person. If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God. Still, I knew, because of my own feelings, there was something wrong with me, and I knew it wasn’t only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasn’t on the skin; it was in the soul. It showed itself in loneliness, lust, anger, jealousy, and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went—at the store, at home, at church; it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it, and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, couldn’t love right, couldn’t feel good things for very long without screwing it all up. We were like gasoline engines running on diesel. I was just a kid so I couldn’t put words to it, but every kid feels it.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  The thing about the extension cord is I was pretty sure I had one in the basement, in a box with some other cords, but if I looked I might have found it, and then I would not have been able to go to Home Depot. What we needed was a new extension cord, the latest technology, I thought to myself. I put my boots on very quickly. The good voice, the frugal voice, the Penny voice started inside my head: Don, please, there are children who could use this money for Christmas presents. It’s August, I said out loud. What about environmental movements, Good Voice said, what about the rain forests that could hold a cure for cancer, a cure for AIDS. Tree hugger, I said to Good Voice while putting on my motorcycle helmet. You have a problem, Good Voice said. You’re a pansy, I said back. You’re irresponsible! Good Voice shouted. Shut your gaping pie hole, I yelled back. The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things. I like things with buttons. [image "9780785263708_0205_003" file=Image00079.jpg] A writer I like named Ravi Zacharias says that the heart desires wonder and magic. He says technology is what man uses to supplant the desire for wonder. Ravi Zacharias says that what the heart is really longing to do is worship, to stand in awe of a God we don’t understand and can’t explain. I started thinking about what Penny was saying and what Ravi Zacharias says. I was riding my motorcycle down to Home Depot, wondering if Penny and Ravi would make good friends, when I decided I was being stupid, very wasteful and stupid. I knew we had an extension cord in the basement, and I knew I was really going to Home Depot to get some drill bits or a laser level or one of those tap lights, and that I wasn’t going to get an extension chord but something else, something I would find when I got there, something that would call to me from its shelf. At the time I didn’t have very much money, and the money I had I needed to learn to use wisely. Money does not belong to me, Rick once told me. Money is God’s. He trusts us to dish it out fairly and with a strong degree of charity. I heard an interview with Bill Gates, and the interviewer asked him if he knew how rich he was, if he could really get his mind around it. He said he couldn’t. The only way I can understand it, he said, is that there is nothing I can’t buy.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  It was loud in front, because the little girl was cheering, and Ida joined in with her peculiarly deep, good-natured whinnying. In the middle all three were silent, for Gerda had again become nervously despondent because of the dust, and both the old Consul and her son were deep in thought. It was quiet in the back too... but only apparently, as Tony and the guest from Bavaria were talking in a hushed, intimate manner. - What were they talking about? From Mr Grünlich... Herr Permaneder had made the apt remark that Erika "fei" was far too kind and pretty a child, but that she hardly resembled Frau Mama at all; to which Tony had replied: 'She's quite the father, and one can say: not to her detriment, for outwardly Grünlich was a gentleman - all that is true! So he had gold colored favourites; completely original; I never saw anything like it again..." And then, although Tony had already told him the story of their marriage in detail at Niederpaurs in Munich, he inquired about everything again and in detail and with an anxious, sympathetic blink, asked all the details about the bankruptcy... 'He was a bad man, Herr Permaneder, otherwise Father wouldn't have taken me away from him, believe me. Not all people on earth always have a good heart, life has taught me that, you know, as young as I am for a person who's been a widow for ten years or something like that. He was evil, and Kesselmeyer, his banker, who was as silly as a puppy, was even more evil. But that's not to say I consider myself an angel and blameless...don't get me wrong! Grünlich neglected me, and when he was sitting with me, he read the newspaper, and he deceived me and kept leaving me in Eimsbüttel because I could have found out about the morass in the city, he was in it... But I'm also just a weak woman and I have my flaws and I certainly didn't always do my job properly. For example, by recklessness and extravagance and new dressing gowns I gave my husband cause for concern and lamentation... But one thing I may add: I have an excuse, and that is that I was a child when I married, a goose I was, a stupid thing. For example, do you think that, a short time before my engagement, I would have known that four years earlier the federal laws governing the universities and the press had been renewed? Beautiful laws, by the way!... Oh, yes, it really is so very sad that you only live once, Herr Permaneder, that you can't start life again; one would handle many things more skilfully..." For example, by recklessness and extravagance and new dressing gowns I gave my husband cause for concern and lamentation...

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I was shell-shocked. This is how the bomb fell: For my mother that year I had purchased a shabby Christmas gift—a book, the contents of which she would never be interested in. I had had a sum of money with which to buy presents, and the majority of it I used to buy fishing equipment, as Roy and I had started fishing in the creek behind Wal-Mart. My extended family opens gifts on Christmas Eve, leaving the immediate family to open gifts the next morning, and so in my room that night were wonderful presents—toys, games, candy, and clothes—and as I lay in bed I counted and categorized them in the moonlight, the battery-operated toys of greatest importance, the underwear of no consequence at all. So in the moonlight I drifted in and out of anxious sleep, and this is when it occurred to me that the gift I had purchased for my mother was bought with the petty change left after I had pleased myself. I realized I had set the happiness of my mother beyond my own material desires. This was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt that I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can’t explain, bad and terrible things. The guilt was so heavy that I fell out of bed onto my knees and begged, not a slot-machine God, but a living, feeling God, to stop the pain. I crawled out of my room and into the hallway by my mother’s door and lay on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room. We opened the rest of our gifts the next morning, and I was pleased to receive what I did, but when my mother opened her silly book, I asked her forgiveness, saying how much I wished I had done more. She, of course, pretended to enjoy the gift, saying how she wanted to know about the subject. I was still feeling terrible that evening when the family gathered for dinner around a table so full of food a kingdom could feast. I sat low in my chair, eye-level with the bowls of potatoes and corn, having my hair straightened by ten talking women, all happy the holiday had come to a close. And while they ate and talked and chatted away another Christmas, I felt ashamed and wondered silently whether they knew they were eating with Hitler. 2 Problems What I Learned on Television SOME PEOPLE SKIP THROUGH LIFE ; SOME PEOPLE are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time or time is moving through us.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  That night in bed, my mind played the images over as a movie, and I felt the nervous energy of a river furling through my lower intestines, ebbing in tides against the gray matter of my mind, delivering me into a sort of ecstasy from which I felt I would never return. This new information seemed to give grass its green and sky its blue and now, before I had requested a reason to live, one had been delivered: naked women. All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and wrong in the universe. And it wasn’t only sexual sin that brought about feelings of guilt, it was lies and mean thoughts and throwing rocks at cars with Roy. My life had become something to hide; there were secrets in it. My thoughts were private thoughts, my lies were barriers that protected my thoughts, my sharp tongue a weapon to protect the ugly me. I would lock myself in my room, isolating myself from my sister and my mother, not often to do any sort of sinning, but simply because I had become a creature of odd secrecy. This is where my early ideas about religion came into play. The ideas I learned in Sunday school, the ideas about sin and how we shouldn’t sin, kept bugging me. I felt as though I needed to redeem myself, the way a kid feels when he finally decides to clean his room. My carnal thinking had made a mess of my head, and I felt as though I were standing in the doorway of my mind, wondering where to begin, how to organize my thoughts so they weren’t so out of control. That’s when I realized that religion might be able to hose things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without feeling guilty or something. I just didn’t want to have to think about this guilt crap anymore. For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  knowing that sin forges opportunity. She gave herself up wholly to the divine service, shunning all parties of pleasure, and everything worldly, insomuch that she made it a matter of conscience to be present at a wed- ding, or to hear the organ played in church. When her son was seven years old, she chose a man of holy life as his preceptor, to bring him up in piety and sanctity. But when he was between fourteen and fifteen, nature, who is a very mysterious schoolmaster, finding him well grown and idle, taught him a very different lesson from any he had learned from his preceptor ; for under that new in- struction he began to look upon and desire such things as seemed to him fair and among others a demoiselle who slept in his mother's room. No one had the least suspicion of this, for he was regarded as a child, and nothing was ever heard in the house but goodly dis- course. The young gallant having begun secretly to solicit this girl, she went and told her mistress. The mother loved her son so much, that she believed this to be a story told to get him into disgrace ; but the girl repeated her complaints so often that her mistress at last said she would find out the truth of the matter : if it was as the girl -stated, she would punish her son severely, but if not, the accuser should pay the penalty. In order, then, to come at the truth, she ordered the demoiselle to make an appointment with the young gentleman that he should come to her at midnight, to the bed in which she lay alone near the door in his mother's chamber. The demoi- selle obeyed her orders, and that night the mother lay down in the demoiselle's bed, resolving that if her son came thither she would chastise him in such a manner that he should never lie with a woman without remem- bering it. Such were her angry thoughts when her son Third day \ Q UEEJV OF NA VA RRE. 283 actually entered the bed in which she lay ; but unable still to bring herself to believe that he had any unchaste intention, she waited tor some plamer evidence of his bad purpose before she would speak to him But she waited so long, and nature is so frail that her anger ended in an abominable pleasure, and she forgot that she was a mother. As water retained by force is more impetu ous when let loose, so was it with this unfortunate woman, who made her whole pndo consist in the violence she did her body When she began to descend the first step from iier chastity she found herself at once at the bottom, and became pregnant that night by him whom she wished to hinder from getting others with child.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: More is required for an offender to pardon an offense, than for one who has committed no offense, not to be hated. For it may happen amongst men that one man neither hates nor loves another. But if the other offends him, then the forgiveness of the offense can only spring from a special goodwill. Now God’s goodwill is said to be restored to man by the gift of grace; and hence although a man before sinning may be without grace and without guilt, yet that he is without guilt after sinning can only be because he has grace. Reply to Objection 2: As God’s love consists not merely in the act of the Divine will but also implies a certain effect of grace, as stated above ([2215]Q[110], A[1]), so likewise, when God does not impute sin to a man, there is implied a certain effect in him to whom the sin is not imputed; for it proceeds from the Divine love, that sin is not imputed to a man by God. Reply to Objection 3: As Augustine says (De Nup. et Concup. i, 26), if to leave off sinning was the same as to have no sin, it would be enough if Scripture warned us thus: “‘My son, hast thou sinned? do so no more?’ Now this is not enough, but it is added: ‘But for thy former sins also pray that they may be forgiven thee.’” For the act of sin passes, but the guilt remains, as stated above ([2216]Q[87], A[6]). Hence when anyone passes from the sin of one vice to the sin of a contrary vice, he ceases to have the act of the former sin, but he does not cease to have the guilt, hence he may have the guilt of both sins at once. For sins are not contrary to each other on the part of their turning from God, wherein sin has its guilt. Whether for the justification of the ungodly is required a movement of the free-will?Objection 1: It would seem that no movement of the free-will is required for the justification of the ungodly. For we see that by the sacrament of Baptism, infants and sometimes adults are justified without a movement of their free-will: hence Augustine says (Confess. iv) that when one of his friends was taken with a fever, “he lay for a long time senseless and in a deadly sweat, and when he was despaired of, he was baptized without his knowing, and was regenerated”; which is effected by sanctifying grace. Now God does not confine His power to the sacraments. Hence He can justify a man without the sacraments, and without any movement of the free-will.

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

  But in the state of corrupt nature man needs grace to heal his nature in order that he may entirely abstain from sin. And in the present life this healing is wrought in the mind—the carnal appetite being not yet restored. Hence the Apostle (Rom. 7:25) says in the person of one who is restored: “I myself, with the mind, serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.” And in this state man can abstain from all mortal sin, which takes its stand in his reason, as stated above ([2185]Q[74], A[5]); but man cannot abstain from all venial sin on account of the corruption of his lower appetite of sensuality. For man can, indeed, repress each of its movements (and hence they are sinful and voluntary), but not all, because whilst he is resisting one, another may arise, and also because the reason is always alert to avoid these movements, as was said above ([2186]Q[74], A[3], ad 2). So, too, before man’s reason, wherein is mortal sin, is restored by justifying grace, he can avoid each mortal sin, and for a time, since it is not necessary that he should be always actually sinning. But it cannot be that he remains for a long time without mortal sin. Hence Gregory says (Super Ezech. Hom. xi) that “ a sin not at once taken away by repentance, by its weight drags us down to other sins”: and this because, as the lower appetite ought to be subject to the reason, so should the reason be subject to God, and should place in Him the end of its will. Now it is by the end that all human acts ought to be regulated, even as it is by the judgment of the reason that the movements of the lower appetite should be regulated. And thus, even as inordinate movements of the sensitive appetite cannot help occurring since the lower appetite is not subject to reason, so likewise, since man’s reason is not entirely subject to God, the consequence is that many disorders occur in the reason. For when man’s heart is not so fixed on God as to be unwilling to be parted from Him for the sake of finding any good or avoiding any evil, many things happen for the achieving or avoiding of which a man strays from God and breaks His commandments, and thus sins mortally: especially since, when surprised, a man acts according to his preconceived end and his pre-existing habits, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii); although with premeditation of his reason a man may do something outside the order of his preconceived end and the inclination of his habit. But because a man cannot always have this premeditation, it cannot help occurring that he acts in accordance with his will turned aside from God, unless, by grace, he is quickly brought back to the due order.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  If I want something, I can have it. He said that Microsoft saved him because he was really more interested in what he was doing than how much money he had. Lots of rich people are not happy, he said. Sometimes I am glad I don’t have very much money. I think money might own me if I had too much of it. I think I would buy things and not be satisfied with the things I have so I would have to buy more. Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Rick says money should be your tool and that you should control it, it shouldn’t control you. This means when I want a new extension cord and I already have one, I should use the one I have and give the rest of the money to people who are having very hard times in their lives. This means I probably didn’t need to buy a timer for the lamp. Rick said I should be giving money to Imago-Dei, our church. He said giving 10 percent would be a good place to start. I knew this already. It’s called tithing, and somehow it is biblical. The Bible also tells the story of these beautiful people in the very first Christian churches who are giving all their money to the church and the elders are dishing it back out to the community based on need. [image "9780785263708_0206_005" file=Image00080.jpg] One of my good friends, Curt Heidschmidt, gave me a lecture about tithing not very long ago. It was strange to get a lecture about tithing from Curt because Curt is not even a church sort of guy. He goes and all, but he hates it. Usually people who go to church but hate it aren’t going around giving lectures about tithing, but Curt gave me a pretty good talking-to. Curt works at a cabinet shop and cusses all the time and tells dirty jokes. But he tithes, sort of. He used to keep a huge jar on his dresser that was full of money, and when he deposited his paychecks he would pull out 10 percent from the bank. Cold, hard cash. He would take the money home and put it in that jar. The thing must have had a couple thousand dollars in it. I was over one night watching South Park, and Curt was griping because the cabinet shop didn’t pay him enough so that he could get the motorcycle he wanted. “Well,” I told him, “you must have thousands of dollars in that stinking jar, Curt. Use that.” This was before I knew it was his tithing money. “Can’t.” “Why?” “Can’t.” “Why?” “Isn’t mine, Miller.” Curt leaned back in his recliner and looked at me over the top of his beer can. “Isn’t yours?” I asked.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  Trevor wanted to say more, but instead shut his mouth and thought about the words he wanted to spew at his father. Not once when his dad lost it had he ever apologized. Never had he heard his dad be tender with his mom. She was a sweet woman—sad, but sweet. Trevor felt the weight of his mom on his shoulders. He was already the main person who tried to help her cope with the divorce and now this?! Dad having a baby with the woman he left mom for—this should go over well. Trevor stewed in his cynicism. He climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and grabbed his gear from the trunk. He didn’t look back to say goodbye. THREE YEARS LATER Trevor hung up the phone; his stomach was tight with tension. The conversation with his mom was typical. She was warm, kind, and caring, but after she asked Trevor about how he liked college, she went into the usual routine. “Trevor, when can you come home? I’m so lonely and I really miss you. Besides, I need you here. Without your father, I miss having a man in the house!” The guilt she piled on and the way she clung to Trevor made him want to run and hide or escape in some way. He experienced a wave of heaviness crashing over his head. He felt as though he were drowning, as if there were no oxygen available, like there was no sliver of hope to escape this suffocation. He just listened until his mom was finished saying what she was going to say. “Mom, I gotta go. I’ll try to get home as soon as I can. I love you. Take care of yourself. Maybe you should consider dating a decent guy, not like the last several . . .” Then he did what came naturally at this point in his life—more like a habit he couldn’t shake. Whenever he felt overwhelmed or suffocated, he opened his computer and clicked on an all too familiar website. Pleasure and arousal filled him simultaneously with guilt and disgust. After finding a quick release, he wondered why looking at naked guys was where he found relief from the neediness of his mom and the longing he had for a real dad. The moment of pleasure was replaced with a feeling of disgust. What if the other guys knew he looked at gay porn? Why couldn’t he just be a normal guy and look at naked women? he wondered. Trevor had grown to hate himself. He always felt drawn to men who seemed like the real deal—like Jeff’s dad. He wanted someone to wrestle with him, put him in a headlock, and teach him how to be a man. Instead, he watched men be sexual with each other. What is that about? he wondered.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I say this only because time kept traveling through me. When I was young I thought I had forever to figure things out. I am talking about feeling like Hitler. But I didn’t. I didn’t have long to figure things out. I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. I was into habit. I grew up going to church, so I got used to hearing about God. He was like Uncle Harry or Aunt Sally except we didn’t have pictures. God never sent presents either. We had this dumpy house and dumpy car, and I had zits. Looking back, I suppose God sent sunsets and forests and flowers, but what is that to a kid? The only thing I heard from God was what I heard on Christmas Eve, that story I told you, when God made me feel so guilty, and I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t feel like I knew God, and yet He was making me experience this conviction. I felt that the least He could have done was to come down and introduce Himself and explain these feelings of conviction in person. If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  In the short year at Graceland I hurt all the guys at one time or another. Fixing the carnage would take time. I had to make things right with each of them. I had really messed things up. Jeremy, the guy with the marine haircut who was going to become a cop, couldn’t stand me. I had run my car through the garage door one night and neglected to fix it. Jeremy parked his motorcycle in the garage and so he had to use the broken door every day. My room was directly above the garage, so when Jeremy went to work in the morning at five o’clock, he would start his motorcycle engine, and it sounded like somebody was starting a lawn mower next to my bed. I would get furious, and later that night I would ask him if there was something we could do. He said no, that was where he needed to keep his motorcycle. And that was true. So, every time Jeremy had trouble getting the broken door up and down, he would get mad at me, and every time he started his motorcycle at 5:00 a.m., I would get mad at him. The issue, of course, was not about the motorcycle or the door; the issue was about whether or not we respected each other, whether or not we liked each other. One evening I was down in the basement talking to Tuck while he was working out. I decided to do some laundry while I was down there, but somebody’s clothes were in the dryer. There was no place to put them so I put them on the floor. I didn’t think anything of it, you know, because the floor was pretty clean, but it turned out the clothes were Jeremy’s and, later that night, when he got home, he wrote a note on our white board to the person who had thrown his clothes on the floor. I didn’t actually throw them on the floor, I just sort of set them there, but still, he was pretty heated. I told him it was me, and I apologized. He had to go for a walk he was so mad. It was the last straw for him.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The immediate concern, the first night, had been to get him patched up. I lied to James on the phone, and felt the sudden sadness of complicity. I said that we had been fooling around in the kitchen and there had been an accident with a knife. He came over promptly in his car, and I went down to let him in. He adjusted with only slight awkwardness to his professional role, with a practical briskness which did not quite conceal his curiosity. Arthur was hanging about in my dressing-gown, apprehensive of a doctor; when I introduced them I assumed James would find him attractive, although the makeshift dressing on his cheek spoilt the general impression. It had to be stitched and there was an injection. I watched, out of the way, James’s absorption in the intimate, serious work, running through a long series of subcutaneous stitches and drawing the skin neatly together above. That way, he said, the scar would be smaller. Arthur shot me little tear-whelmed glances as it took place, and I looked on, firm and encouraging, as a parent might over some necessary ordeal of its child. I was touched, too, by James’s expertise, his deft, slender hands holding Arthur’s head, his intent application to a task that I could never perform for him. When it was done Arthur looked as if deservedly reproved, past the worst now, his face rueful and very swollen. James washed his hands and said, ‘I’ll have that whisky.’ As I poured it for him he shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Don’t do that again, Will,’ he recommended. ‘Bloody terrifies me.’ I was struck by the uncertainty of it all: he clearly thought we had had a fight and made his own interpretation of what was itself a lie. It was almost amusing how far he was from the truth. ‘I won’t ask you how it happened.’ ‘Oh …’ I waved my arm about. ‘You know.’ I saw that though appalled by it all he was also impressed: I took on the spurious glamour of a wildly passionate person, my dwindling agitation being read as the wake of a violent erotic upheaval. Arthur had gone to the bedroom, and I longed to tell James everything, to clear myself at once. Yet I feared his advice, the necessity of action it would entail. I remained standing up and kept the conversation short and superficial, so that he would have felt embarrassed to make any personal observations on the boy he’d heard so much about. I closed down on James in a graceless, scared way.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  You should do what I tell you, she said. It’s not your train, he responded, less pained now than sullen, you didn’t build it, you didn’t buy it, using logic like a rampart he could retreat behind, you can’t tell me what to do, but none of this merited any reply. There’s nothing for me to do, he went on, trying another tack, I don’t have anything to play with, I don’t have any toys, you won’t let me climb, I’m bored, he said, skuka mi e . He was on better ground here, I thought, there was some justice in his complaint, though the woman still sat silent. My arm, he said a moment later, as if remembering, it really hurts, and he held it out to her as she took it again in her hand, gently this time, looking concerned, saying Let me see, and then yes, it’s very bad, I’m afraid we’ll have to cut it off, so that suddenly he was giggling, twisting away as she leaned in, still holding his arm, and began to tickle him. He was all joy now, the tears barely dry on his face, and after a moment at this game he ended draped across her lap, his arms cast about her, a posture so sweet it was almost painful to see, as it was painful to see my mother, who watched them with such longing I had to look away. I could remember a time when we had touched like that, my mother and I, when I sought out her presence and her touch, too, and I wondered where that ease and openness had gone, and why they had been replaced with such stiff discomfort, a sense almost of taboo that kept me from making any answer to her expressions of love. I felt for the first time how cruel I had been, when I had stopped answering her calls and e-mails, which grew increasingly frantic until they fell away. For a time I had been lost to her, and she couldn’t have known I would return. They stayed like this for some time, the woman and the boy, with his arms around her and her hands resting on his back. I lost myself then, writing my notes, so that it was a few moments before I became aware that the boy was watching me; he had pushed himself from his grandmother’s lap and was sitting upright, and there was an intensity to his looking, a gravity of desire. I want to write too, he told his grandmother, and while she looked in her bag for a pen, he leaned forward and shyly, as if she might object, drew from the metal bin one of the cards my mother had discarded from her magazines, and then, when she nodded at him and smiled, a second and a third.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I should have known it was going to happen, she said, I mean I did know, I guess I was waiting for it, but she was still surprised when it became clear that he had taken one of these conversations offline. He was actually fucking one of them, my sister said, grimacing at the words, he wasn’t just dicking around online. And now, since she still hadn’t said a word about what she knew, she didn’t just feel complicit, she told us, but guilty of a crime. She became more difficult with her mother, they fought all the time, she said, she felt pity and disgust for her, she wasn’t sure which she felt more. He never just chatted with one woman, she went on, he was always chatting with several of them at once. He was polite sometimes, sweet, but he could be rude, too, he was rough with some of them, it was like he was a different person with each one. It was like that for me, too, I thought as I listened to her, it’s one of the things I crave in the sites I use, that I can carry on these multiple conversations, each its own window so that sometimes my screen is filled with them; and in each I have the sense of being entirely false and entirely true, like a self in a story, I suppose, or the self I inhabit when I teach, the self of authority and example. I know they’re all I have, these partial selves, true and false at once, that any ideal of wholeness I long for is a sham; but I do long for it, I think I glimpse it sometimes, I even imagine I’ve felt it. Maybe it’s an illusion but I think I did feel this wholeness in the field with my father, alone and with the night surrounding us, and my father was necessary to it even as he withdrew into his own longings, as I imagine now, contemplating the stars that I contemplated beside him, though I was contemplating him perhaps more than the stars. His withdrawal didn’t diminish our closeness but deepened it, it was a sign of vulnerability and trust, like an animal turning its back. I emerged from these thoughts to find myself on a small street deep among the blokove , which rose stark on both sides twelve or thirteen stories, the length of city blocks, their blankness relieved by graffiti and, higher up, by lines of laundry hung out in the sun, as well as by fissures and patches where the facades had cracked. As I walked a narrow path between the buildings and the cars that were parked nose-first almost against their walls, like nursing cats, I looked into the dim boxes framed by the windows I passed, apartments identical in size and shape though none of them was exactly the same.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He had only recently told them about me, in the process coming out to them; how could he tell them he might have syphilis, he asked me, what would they think. He was frantic by the last e-mail he sent, and I felt horrible for what I had done. We spoke again when he woke, and I told him that I would wire him money, of course I would pay for everything, I said, after all it was all my fault. Though I braced myself for his anxiety to turn to resentment and then to blame, it never did. By Sunday night he had regained his resolve: we would go to our respective clinics in the morning, we agreed, we would be treated, it would all be over soon. I had put the computer away and settled into bed to read when the buzzer rang. I knew who it was, of course, but I still stepped out onto the balcony to look. Mitko stood below, bareheaded against the cold, peering up to catch sight of me. He smiled when he saw me, and I held my hand out to him in a staying motion, as if patting something down, before going back in to quickly put on the clothes I had left crumpled on the floor. We had agreed, R. and I, that when Mitko returned I shouldn’t let him into my apartment, that we should speak outside or go somewhere else; I don’t like the idea of him there, R. said, and really he thought I should cut him off entirely. Why would you see him again, he had asked me several times over the last days, you don’t owe him anything, you’ve already helped him, and if you keep helping him there will be no end to it, he’ll take and keep on taking. You know he doesn’t care about you, R. said in one of our conversations, you were never friends or anything else. I did know this, and so I found it difficult to explain the obligation I felt, the sense that I couldn’t, whatever else might happen, simply cut Mitko adrift, though I had tried to do that before, and maybe I would have to do it again. You want to be the big American, R. said in a final charge, you think you can fix things, you want to save him. And maybe that was part of it; certainly there was a tenderness in me that Mitko struck as no one else did, and I hated that, for all his sometimes brutality, he was finally so helpless in a world that took little heed of him. I did want to help him, but I no longer believed, if I ever had, that Mitko could be drawn in any permanent way out of what had become his life.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  So in the moonlight I drifted in and out of anxious sleep, and this is when it occurred to me that the gift I had purchased for my mother was bought with the petty change left after I had pleased myself. I realized I had set the happiness of my mother beyond my own material desires. This was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt that I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can’t explain, bad and terrible things. The guilt was so heavy that I fell out of bed onto my knees and begged, not a slot-machine God, but a living, feeling God, to stop the pain. I crawled out of my room and into the hallway by my mother’s door and lay on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room. We opened the rest of our gifts the next morning, and I was pleased to receive what I did, but when my mother opened her silly book, I asked her forgiveness, saying how much I wished I had done more. She, of course, pretended to enjoy the gift, saying how she wanted to know about the subject. I was still feeling terrible that evening when the family gathered for dinner around a table so full of food a kingdom could feast. I sat low in my chair, eye-level with the bowls of potatoes and corn, having my hair straightened by ten talking women, all happy the holiday had come to a close. And while they ate and talked and chatted away another Christmas, I felt ashamed and wondered silently whether they knew they were eating with Hitler. 2 Problems What I Learned on Television SOME PEOPLE SKIP THROUGH LIFE ; SOME PEOPLE are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time or time is moving through us. My brilliant friend Mitch says that light, unlike anything else in the universe, is not affected by time. Light, he says, exists outside of time. He tells me it has something to do with how fast it travels and that it is eternal, but it is still a mystery to physicists.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  A ne e li vyarno , he said, isn’t that right, challenging me to deny it. He paused to drink, as though bracing himself for a confrontation he knew he couldn’t avoid. I did all that because we’re friends, he said, those are things friends do, it isn’t just sex for me. He stopped then, as if he realized he had gone too far, had leaned too hard on the fiction of our relationship and felt the false surface give way. But we aren’t friends like that, I said as Mitko took another long drink. We both get something from it, I went on, and the bluntness of the language was now the tool I wanted: I get sex, I said, and you get money, that’s all. But now I was the one who had gone too far, and so I softened what I had said, or tried to: I like you, I said, I like being with you, skup si mi , I said, you’re dear to me, you’re beautiful. But Mitko’s expression had hardened. He set down his glass and placed both of his hands on his knees. When have I ever said no to you, he asked, and it was true, though he had delayed and put me off he had always given in when I insisted, he had never truly refused. The trouble with you is you don’t know what you want, he said, you say one thing and then another. I knew he was right, and not just about my relationship with him; always I feel an ambivalence that spurs me first in one direction and then another, a habit that has done much damage. I didn’t deny what he said, I even nodded in agreement, at which his mood only darkened. I’m not like that, he went on, I’m a man of my word, if I say that I’m through with you I’m through, I won’t change my mind, and if I see you again, if we pass each other in the street, at NDK, in Plovdiv, in Varna, it doesn’t matter where, I’ll pretend I don’t know you, he said, I won’t even say hello. Is that what you want, he said, and then, without pausing for me to respond, be careful. There wasn’t anything playful or warm about him now; though he sat naked in front of me he was entirely unavailable.

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

  Because of the corruption which resulted from the Fall, none has been free from concupiscence except Christ and the glorious Virgin. And wherever there is concupiscence, there is either venial or mortal sin, provided that it is allowed to dominate the reason. Hence the precept is not, let sin not be; for it is written: “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” [Rm 7:18]. First of all, sin rules in the flesh when, by giving consent to it, concupiscence reigns in the heart. And, therefore, St. Paul adds “so as to obey the lusts thereof” to the words: “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body” [Rm 6:12]. Accordingly the Lord says: “Whoever looks on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart” [Mt 5:28]. For with God the intention is taken for the act. Secondly, sin rules in the flesh when the concupiscence of our heart is expressed in words: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” [Mt 12:34]. And again: “Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth” [Eph 4:29]. Therefore, one is not without sin who composes frivolous songs. Even the philosophers so thought, and poets who wrote amatory verses were sent into exile. Lastly, sin rules in the flesh when at the behest of desire the members are made to serve iniquity: “As you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness to greater and greater iniquity” [Rm 6:19]. These, therefore, are the progressive steps of concupiscence. WAYS TO OVERCOME CONCUPISCENCEWe must realize that the avoidance of concupiscence demands much labor, for it is based on something within us. It is as hard as trying to capture an enemy in one’s own household. However, this desire can be overcome in four ways. Firstly, by fleeing the external occasions such as, for instance, bad company; and in fact whatever may be an occasion for this sin: “Do not gaze not upon a maiden lest her beauty be a stumbling-block to you... Do not look around you in the ways of the city, nor wander up and down in its streets. Turn away your face from a woman dressed up, and do not gaze upon another’s beauty. For many have perished by the beauty of a woman, whereby lust is enkindled as a fire” [Sir 9:5-9]. And again: “Can a man hide fire in his bosom, and his garments not burn?” [Prov 6:27]. And thus Lot was commanded to flee, “neither stay you in all the country about” [Gen 19:17]. The second way is by not giving an opening to thoughts which of themselves are the occasion of lustful desires. And this must be done by mortification of the flesh: “I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection” [1 Cor 9:27].