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.

Page 92 of 99 · 20 per page

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Four days later Dan Lafferty issued a written statement to the media in which he declared that he and Ron were “not guilty of any of the crimes for which we have been accused,” adding that “the time is at hand when the true criminals will be made known.” On December 29, five days before their trial was scheduled to begin in Provo, Lieutenant Jerry Scott, the commander of the Utah County Jail, took Dan from his cell to ask him some questions. When Dan returned, he found his older brother suspended by his neck from a towel rack in an adjacent cell, unconscious and no longer breathing; Ron had used a T-shirt to hang himself. “I pushed the intercom button and told them they better get down there,” Dan says. Lieutenant Scott arrived immediately but could detect no pulse in Ron. Although Scott and two other deputies administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR, they were unable to revive him. By the time paramedics showed up, said Scott, the inmate “appeared dead.” Despite the fact that Ron had stopped breathing for an estimated fifteen minutes, the paramedics eventually managed to get his heart beating again, and he was placed on a respirator in the intensive care unit of the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. After remaining comatose for two days, he regained consciousness—an astonishing recovery that Dan attributes to divine intervention. Although the brothers were slated to be tried together three days after Ron emerged from his coma, Judge J. Robert Bullock ordered that Dan should be tried alone, as scheduled, allowing Ron time to recover and undergo extensive psychiatric evaluation to determine if he’d suffered brain damage. The court appointed two attorneys to represent Dan, but he insisted on defending himself, relegating them to advisory roles. Five days after the trial began, the jury went into deliberation, and nine hours later found Dan guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. During the subsequent session to determine whether Dan should be put to death for his crimes, Dan assured the jurors, “If I was in your situation, I would impose the death penalty,” and promised not to appeal if they arrived at such a sentence. “The judge freaked out when I said that,” Dan later explained. “He thought I was expressing a death wish, and warned the jury that they couldn’t vote to execute me just because I had a death wish. But I just wanted them to feel free to follow their conscience. I didn’t want them to worry or feel guilty about giving me a death sentence, if that’s what they thought I deserved. I was willing to take a life for God, so it seemed to me that I should also be willing to give my own life for God. If God wanted me to be executed, I was fine with that.” Ten jurors voted for death, but two others refused to go along with the majority.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  No one likes to admit that they were under someone else's influence (or even duped), but until you do, you will likely persist in beating yourself up unnecessarily. This is not to imply that you didn't have personal responsibility for your actions: you did-we all do (unless a gun is held to our heads). But you were functioning under the duress of what the legal world calls "undue influence"and in some cases you may have been sold an out-and-out bill of goods. Your free will was not taken away per se, but it was certainly distorted and restricted. As for leaving, when you became strong enough to see that you could leave your cultic social system, only then could you begin to free yourself-to make that leap. Now you face the challenge of making another worldview shift, this one of your own choosing. [image file=img/img0006.jpg] When people leave a negative or harmful cultic relationship, they often struggle with the question, Why would anyone (my leader, my lover, or my teacher) do this to me? When the deception and exploitation become evident, the enormous unfairness of the victimization and abuse can be difficult to accept. Often former cult members have difficulty sorting out their experiences and tend to blame themselves. They don't immediately comprehend the vital role of the cult leader, and at times are reluctant to hold the leader responsible for certain behaviors, actions, and consequences. A cult cannot be truly explored or understood without understanding its leader. Psychologists Edward Levine and Charles Shaiova write that a cult's formation, proselytizing methods, and means of influence and control "are determined by certain salient personality characteristics of [the] cult leader.... Such individuals are authoritarian personalities who attempt to compensate for their deep, intense feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and hostility by forming cultic groups primarily to attract those whom they can psychologically coerce into and keep in a passive-submissive state, and secondarily to use them to increase their income [status, or other gain]."' In examining the motives and activities of cult leaders, it is painfully obvious that cult life is rarely pleasant for devotees because the power imbalance in cults breeds injustices and abuses of all sorts. As a defense against the heightened anxiety that accompanies such powerlessness, many people in cults and abusive relationships assume a stance of self-blame. Typically this self-deprecating attitude is reinforced by the group's self-serving message that the followers are never good enough and are to blame for everything that goes wrong. Demystifying the cult leader's power is an important part of the psychoeducational recovery process. This examination of power is critical to truly gaining freedom and independence from the leader's control. The process starts with some basic questions: Who was this person who claimed to be God, omniscient, all powerful? What did he get out of this masquerade? What was the real purpose of the group (or relationship)?

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  I had never thought much about this dilemma until after I had been working for many years in a bar that was regularly voted “a smoker’s paradise” in a New York City guidebook. I had quit smoking a few months before taking the job, primarily because cigarettes made me feel so completely awful, and now I was spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on an acupuncturist to help me with swollen glands and difficulty breathing as a result of inhaling smoke that wasn’t even mine. (I ended up quitting the job about a month before Mayor Bloomberg’s ban took effect; in my final hours, I secretly allowed myself to be interviewed by the antismoking crusaders, to advance their cause.) Anyone to whom I complained at the time said—wisely!—Why don’t you just get a different job? There are hundreds upon hundreds of restaurants and bars in New York City. My therapist—I had taken on yet another choking shift in order to keep seeing her—suggested I help rich kids study for the SAT instead, which made me want to sock her. How could I explain? I had already had a hundred restaurant jobs in New York City, and finally I had found one at which I made more in a week than I would have in an entire semester as an adjunct instructor (the other discernible option). I also thought—a larval Karen Silkwood—if “they”—whoever they are—let me work here, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? But it was that bad. The bills I stashed under my mattress were almost wet with smoke, and stayed that way until rent time. And it’s only now that I see that the job ensured me something else I needed: the constant company of alcoholics apparently worse off than I was. I can still see them all: the silent owner who had to be carried into the back of a taxi at dawn after he’d blacked out from Rolling Rocks and shots of Stoli that we’d served him, raking in his Wall Street–derived tips; the punk Swedes who drank shot after shot of jalapeno-pickled vodka dissolved in iced coffee (the Swedeball, we called it); the rotted teeth of a successful foley editor; the man who inexplicably took off his belt after a few Hurricanes and started whipping a fellow diner with it; the woman who left her baby in a car seat under the bar one night and forgot about it … their example, and the ease with which I deemed myself together by comparison, purchased me a few more years of believing alcohol more precious than toxic to me. The self without sympathetic attachments is either a fiction or a lunatic…. [Yet] dependence is scorned even in intimate relationships, as though dependence were incompatible with self-reliance rather than the only thing that makes it possible.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In cults and abusive relationships, people in subordinate positions usually come to accept responsibility for their abuse, as if they deserve the foul treatment or that it is for their own good. Sometimes they persist in believing that they are bad rather than considering that the person in whom they believe is untrustworthy, unreliable, or cruel. It is simply too frightening for them to confront the truth: it threatens the balance of power and means risking total rejection, loss, or perhaps even the death of self or loved ones. This explains why an abused or exploited cult member may become disenchanted with the relationship or group yet continues to believe in the teachings, goodness, and power of the leader. Or at least continues to be under the sway of the leader. Even after leaving the group or relationship, many former devotees carry a burden of guilt and shame but continue to regard their former leader as paternal, all good, or godlike. This is quite common in those who walk away from their groups, particularly if they never seek the benefits of exit counseling or therapy. Often a parallel phenomenon is found in battered women and children who are abused by their parents or other adults they admire. To heal from a traumatic experience of this type, it is important to understand who and what the perpetrator is. So long as there are illusions about the leader's motivation, powers, and abilities, those who have been in such a grip deprive themselves of an important opportunity for growth: the chance to empower themselves and to become free of the tyranny of dependency on others for their well-being, spiritual growth, or happiness. The Authoritarian Power DynamicThe purpose of a cult (whether group, family, or one-on-one) is to serve the emotional, financial, sexual, and/or power needs of the leader. The single most important word here is power. The dynamic around which cults are formed is similar to that of other power relationships and is essentially ultra-authoritarian, based on a disproportional power imbalance. The cult leader, by definition, must have an authoritarian personality in order to fulfill his role in the power dynamic. Traditional elements of authoritarian personalities include the following traits, as identified by political science professor Ivan Volgyes:2 • A tendency toward hierarchy • A drive for power (and wealth) • Hostility, hatred, and prejudice • Superficial judgments of people and events • A one-sided scale of values favoring the one in power • The interpretation of kindness as weakness • A tendency to use people and see others as inferior • A sadistic-masochistic tendency • The incapacity to be ultimately satisfied • Paranoia In a study of dictators, psychologist Peter Suedfeld writes: Since compliance depends on whether the leader is perceived as being both powerful and knowing, the ever-watchful and all-powerful leader (and his invisible but observant and powerful instruments, such as secret police) can be invoked in the same way as an unobservable but omniscient God....

• From Action (2014)

  Toys with porous bases or elements like “jelly” (extra-squishy-feeling and pliable material) or rubber are as attracted to bacteria as you are to using them. For this reason, I typically don’t stock these myself, but if a partner likes them and wants to use them together, I ask that, if it’s an impromptu thing and we haven’t picked out a new one together, we use a toy cleaner, or, if they don’t have it, some other kind of disinfectant, since the chemicals in soaps, especially scented ones, can be absorbed into the toy and cause infections upon contact with skin. For toys of glass, plastic, or other kinds of non-porous substances: Use a disposable cloth like a paper towel, or a clean rag, with antibacterial spray or soap and warm water, to shine up your dildo or whatever. Household tasks can be so tedious!!! For all other materials, check the packaging—substances that are designed to verisimilarly imitate human skin, like that on anatomical reproductions or sex dolls, usually require special care. THE REPLACEMENTS [image file=image_1030.jpg] Sometimes, toys need to be retired if they’re too far gone to rinse up in the dishwasher and return to your bed good as new. (The upside to this time of mourning and loss: Now you get to replace them with new ones!) Any machine with an electrical flaw, or a corroded battery compartment, should be removed from your collection. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE—I learned this via sparks flying out of a vibrator and straight onto a sensitive area, and I do not recommend it. If the engine in your toy wears out, or if it starts chomping batteries like handfuls of candy underwear, bid it adieu, as it is likely on the road to faulty wiring. Visible dents or flaws in most toys are fine as long as they don’t affect its structure or how it feels on/in you. There’s one situation in which I junk toys regardless of quality-control concerns: If I split with a long-term partner, with whom I used toys specifically together and not so much by myself, I offer them the toys or throw them away, even when I want to employ them with someone new. My Hitachi is a one-on-one thing that enjoys the occasional threesome, but any equipment purchased specifically for me and one other partner is out. I don’t want my next paramour, whenever it is that they come on the scene, to immediately feel expectations from me based on what I did with an old squeeze, and especially not in the context of our forays into non-standardized sex as they’re unfolding in real time. I don’t mean to bestow upon some stained hunks of suggestively shaped metal and rubber some kind of sacrosanct and solemn Great Meaning, so if you and your partner are like, “Actually, it’s fine with me that that piece has known other orifices,” go ahead and do you. Just make sure everything in your toolkit is clean. PARTNER SEX

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  In Phil’s case, before joining the Hare Krishnas he was a depressed, suicidal person wracked with guilt because he felt responsible for his brother’s death. If I hadn’t been able to help him face his feelings and reframe his brother’s fatal accident, he never would have been able to leave the group. (One could speculate that, on some unconscious level, he was punishing himself for his “sin” by being involved in the group.) Until he could rethink the circumstances of his brother’s death and verbalize what he felt, he would never be able to take a fresh step forward. In this, and other cases like it, if the individual was not happy or healthy just before joining the group, it is imperative to find some positive reference point for the person to use as an identity anchor. If there are no strong positive experiences to use for this purpose, then one has to be either created or cultivated. Imagination can be used to create positive experiences. For example, one might ask, “If you had had a warm, loving family, what would it feel like?” or “If your dad had been everything you wanted when you were growing up, what qualities would he have had, and what kinds of things would you want to do together?” In order for Phil to even consider leaving the Krishnas, he needed to remember his previous, authentic self, and recall how good it felt to play guitar, write songs and have fun with his friends and family. He needed to remember Tom as a person full of life, not just as a victim. In Phil’s inner life, he was able to resurrect Tom—his desire to be an investigative journalist, his dislike of organized religion, and his assertive stance toward life. Since twins are almost always extremely close, it was imperative that Phil reestablish his positive emotional link with Tom. Key #5: Get the Cult Member to Look at Reality From Many Different Perspectives During my interaction with Phil, I asked him to look at himself from a variety of viewpoints. When I asked Phil to switch perspectives, and think like Tom, a dramatic shift occurred. I asked him, “What would Tom do, if you were the one who had died? Would he have joined the Krishnas?” Phil had become so frozen by grief that he had never been able to find a perspective on it. When I asked him, “What would Tom say, if he knew you were in the Krishnas?” the answer came back, “He’d laugh at me and tell me to rejoin the real world.”

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  When I was writing on the poet James Schuyler in graduate school, my adviser noted in passing that I seemed oddly compelled by the idea of Schuyler’s flaccidity. His comments on this account made me feel guilty, as if he thought I were trying to neuter or castrate Schuyler, a closet Solanas. I wasn’t, at least not consciously. I just liked the way that Schuyler seemed to be performing, especially in his long poems, a drive to speech or creation not synonymous with desire in any typical sublimated-lust kind of a way. He had a cruising eye, to be sure (here he is in a grocery store: “I grabbed / a cart, went wheeling / up and down the aisles trying to get a front view of / him and see how he was / Hung and what his face was like”). But his poetics struck me as refreshingly without a will to power, or even a will to perversity. They feel triumphantly wilted, like so many of the flowers Schuyler paid tribute to. This wiltedness may have had, in part, a chemical root. As Schuyler writes in “The Morning of the Poem”: “Remember what / The doctor said: I am: remembering and staying / off [the sauce]: mostly it’s not / So hard (indeed): did you know a side effect of / Antabuse can be to make / You impotent? Not that I need much help in that / department these days.” The climactic expulsion at the poem’s end is not come, but urine. Recalling a night long ago, drunk on Pernod in Paris, Schuyler writes: “I made it: there I was, confronting a urinal: I / inched down my zipper and put my right hand into / The opening: hideous trauma, there was just no way I could / transfer my swollen tool from hand to hand without a great / Gushing forth (inside my pants), like when Moses hit the rock: so / I did it: there was piss all over Paris, not to mention my shirt and pants, light sun tans.” “The Morning of the Poem” takes place, as do many of Schuyler’s poems, against the backdrop of his mother’s home in East Aurora, New York. As he moves in and out of memory and anecdote, his mother shuffles around the house, plays the radio all night, leaves out the dishes just so, watches her TV programs, jokes about the size of a skunk in the trash, and bickers with Schuyler about his desire to leave the windows open to the rain (“‘I’m the one who will have to clean it up,’” she snarls, the maternal refrain). Schuyler’s other great epic poem, “A Few Days,” finishes his mother’s story, ending with the lines: “Margaret Daisy Connor Schuyler Ridenour, / rest well, / the weary journey done.”

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Words are given new meaning – the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way – it becomes a ‘group’ word or phrase.”6 The terms that Limori’s group used had a context and history in the group that was unique, and often their general definitions had little bearing on how we used them. Many of the terms had a colourful and meaningful history to us, which could be summed up in the word or phrase. As a group, we had a shared history and stories of events that had significant spiritual meaning for us. When we named those events with a word or phrase they became filled with all the contextual spiritual lessons that Limori had been trying to teach us in that moment. For example, anytime anyone raised a question about Limori’s methods or teaching, or questioned whether or not something she had done had exhibited egoic properties, one of us might pipe up and say, “But remember the Pear Tree Story.” The mere mention of the phrase itself did exactly what Lifton describes: it stopped our thoughts of dissent and questioning. We would remember the story and all its messages about Limori working for our good and that her every action was undertaken to teach us, and any thoughts of discomfort with her methods would be set aside. “Oh, right,” I would think. “Limori only has our best interests at heart and would never say or do anything that was harmful. If I don’t understand her methods at this moment, I probably will when I’ve achieved more spiritual growth.” The underlying message I was delivering to myself during these internal dialogues was, “Any failure to understand is always mine, not hers. And any action that looks hypocritical or untrue simply means that I have failed to grasp what Limori is trying to teach.” In its most benign form the shared language of a community gives that community cohesiveness, a sense of familiarity and intimacy and a way to shorthand explanations or narrative. We experience this phenomenon to one degree or another in almost every community we belong to, whether it be centred around work, family or hobbies. Take up any new hobby, such as motorcycling, video games or collecting Smurfs, and one of the first things you’ll notice is that you need to learn the language of the community that participates in that hobby. There are words that are new to you that describe the materials and equipment you’ll be using, the techniques and skills you’ll need and the history of the hobby. It’s a mini-culture all its own and one of the key elements that makes it unique is the language the members use. The same goes for a cult, but as with most everything else in the cult experience, the language is taken to an extreme and used not simply to inform but to control.

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  I don’t pretend to know what makes people work, but I’d be willing to bet that if more people were more open and let themselves go during sex, their brains as well as their bodies, the world would be a better place. I doubt that so many people would be so aggressive and power-crazy if they found a suitable sex partner who would accept all of them. If people could free themselves of deep-rooted sex guilts they’d spend more time becoming good lovers and wouldn’t have so much time for revenge and wars. Good sex makes my husband and me very mellow. Who would think of hating and fighting and plotting to get someone else if they’d just been very sexually satisfied… no matter what means they employed to reach that happy goal? Not many, I’ll bet. So I’m ending up defending my “dirty” thoughts! Believing in them, I guess is what I mean. [Letter] LilI only fantasize when I masturbate, and I suppose what I think about is typical. I imagine it is a man making love to me, that he kisses me passionately all over my body, concentrating most of his ardor on my cunt, teasing the outer lips, loving me totally and expertly. I simply lie there in ecstasy, which makes me feel a little guilty later at having such a selfish fantasy, since I never even imagine touching him. [Letter] AlisonWhen I was fourteen, I had the usual relationship with a close girlfriend (I think most girls have them). In my bedroom she would pretend to be the madam of a house and I would be a virgin girl. She would dress me in a sort of sexy bikini made of chiffon scarves. She would then be the customer, a rowdy seaman who would take me against my will. She would lie on me and rub her vagina against mine. I experienced very intense orgasms (more intense than from any man). After she moved away I never had the chance of another relationship like ours. Now when I masturbate I usually think that I am being seduced by a pretty female. However, if it ever should occur again in reality, I would need to be seduced by the woman in order to control my embarrassment.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Jenkins has lately been thinking a lot about kindness, and the polarity between kindness and cruelty. In a deep, philosophical way. Being poly, she says, means working very hard at allowing someone else to do something that might be hurtful to you: to see someone else. On the other side of the coin, it means being exquisitely sensitive to your spouse or long-term partner with whom you are being open, if you have that type of arrangement. Or being sensitive to everyone’s needs equally if you are part of a “throuple.” Whatever the specific poly arrangement, it requires kindness that is deliberate and painstaking. “You can learn about communication. You can learn about yourself and others. You can learn empathy too. But kindness may not be learnable,” Jenkins muses. Being polyamorous and writing about it, she says, has been a learning experience in many regards. “You have to work at forgiveness, both interpersonally and in a larger sense,” she says. “I think one thing that has really become clear to me is that social change and social justice are not just about large-scale politics. It’s about how we respond to and police one another.” And how we police ourselves. For in addition to all the threats and roadblocks women like Jenkins are up against when they decide monogamy is not for them and choose to be open about it, or when they decide to be non-monogamous without disclosing it (they might create incredible unhappiness in their home lives, or be divorced, or be harassed as Jenkins was by infuriated total strangers, or be subjected to physical violence, raped, or even killed), they mirror and intensify society’s contempt for the woman who is untrue, doubling it back onto themselves. Subjected to slut-shaming, many women join in and pile on themselves. With the exception of Annika, most women I interviewed were like thirty-three-year-old Mara. She had an older, possessive ex-Marine boyfriend who would not or could not have sex with her and refused to seek treatment for his erectile dysfunction. Eventually, Mara had an affair. “I can’t tell you what it meant to me, to be desired,” she said, as if reading from a script written by Marta Meana’s study participants. It was like a tonic for Mara to be wanted, finally. She was a beautiful young woman in her late twenties at the time, and it struck me as healthy and normal that she had wanted and sought out sexual and emotional satisfaction, that she got the latter from the former. But years later, happily married, the fact that she had “cheated” on her then-boyfriend—who found out because he invaded her privacy by opening her mail—brought her to tears. Her guilt hung in the diner where I interviewed her, and I wished I could wave a magic wand to absolve her of it.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Some sales start slow. Bud knew the proper value of every animal that came into the ring. Even with a modest opening bid, you sometimes got a little resistance. Still, he was puzzled by the immobilized bidders before him, given the charismatic animal in the ring. “TEN-TEN-TEN.” Bud never liked to drop a bid because it reflected on his own estimation of the bottom line, but there was no reserve on the sale, so he forged ahead. “NINE-NINE-NINE DO I HEAR NINE-NINE-NINE-nine…EIGHT!” Again Bud paused, which he never did, and surveyed the sparse crowd imploringly. An auctioneer can sense when the audience digs in its heels. He knows that the sellers have placed their trust in his ability to charm the dollars out of those pockets, and if he fails, mortgages don’t get paid, hay doesn’t get bought, careers end. So do marriages. In a good year—back when there were good years—ranchers would bring stock to auction and walk away with what might be the only check they got until the following spring. Many were now living month to month. It was a heavy load to carry, and Bud did so nobly. “You wanna improve your breeding program, this bull is for you!” Bud said. “C’mon folks, don’t let this opportunity pass you by. I know there’s hard times out there but this is a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. Let’s start again, at SEVEN-SEVEN-SEVEN…” People were dead still, some actually sitting on their hands, fighting the urge. Sonny could see they were embarrassed for him. Meantime, Joaquin pranced around and pawed the sawdust, like the only living creature on the planet, his hot breath clouding the chill air. “FIVE!” Bud cried. “Folks, I’ve never done this before, but if I don’t hear five I’m gonna stop the auction. There’s no way this fine animal should sell for less than half his worth. So there you have it. Five or we bring in the next animal.” Bud’s gavel was in midair when the slaughterhouse man tipped his buckaroo. “FIVE-FIVE GIMME SIX, NOW FIVE, GIMME SIX-SIX-SIX,” pause, then less forcefully, “Six, six, I have five, do I hear five and a half?” Bud’s eyes scanned the crowd, pleadingly, looking for anyone who would spare Joaquin the indignity of the slaughterhouse. Surely, as cattlemen, they must perceive the absence of justice, the offense against nature. Doris raised her hand. Bud gave her a look and pointedly ignored her bid. “FIVE-FIVE, GOING ONCE, GOING—.” “SIX!” Doris called out so the whole world could hear. Bud rolled his eyes. “Six from the cowgirl in back,” he said, “who ain’t got her head screwed on today.” “Mom, what are you doing?” Sonny demanded. “I need a new pet,” she said. “I’m lonely.” “What are you gonna do, sell the café?” Fortunately, the slaughterhouse man bid six and a half. “Seven!” said Doris. “Mom, you don’t have seven thousand dollars,” Sonny said under his breath. “Please stop.”

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  When it comes down to it, our brains are not so different from the most basic cells in their operational trajectory: stimulus, response. Our brains are mechanical objects programmed in such a specific way that if you input a certain stimulus, you will always get the same response. In his story, David talked about how quantum mechanics and probability validate this finding—that our circuitry leaves no space for randomness, for any different outcomes outside of what our programming dictates. And he interviewed a neuroscientist named Robert Sapolsky who wrote an entire book on the subject called Behave. Sapolsky explained to David the process of moving a muscle: “A muscle did something. Meaning a neuron in your motor cortex commanded your muscle to do that. That neuron fired only because it got inputs from umpteen other neurons milliseconds before. And those neurons only fired because they got inputs milliseconds before and back and back and back. Show me one neuron anywhere in this pathway that, from out of nowhere, decided to say something that activated in ways that are not explained by the laws of the physical universe, and ions, and channels, and all that sort of stuff. Show me one neuron that has some cellular semblance of free will. And there is no such neuron.”[9] After reading all those articles about my brain, I relistened to David’s piece. It seemed to align with what I’d learned: that my brain is a predictable computer programmed by my experiences in childhood. One that does not divert from its code. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. If input X, then outcome Y. So it is. Every time. The problem with this premise, of course, is that whereas other children had programmers who fed their brains with love and kindness, my programmers were evil. My code is flawed. My first instinct was to just delete the bug. Remove my terrible code from the system entirely. Briefly, ancient plans resurfaced: carbon monoxide and sleeping pills. But that would have its ramifications, too. My previous efforts to heal might not have fixed me, but they had woven me into this world, sewing me emotionally and professionally into a network of lives. I had friends who cared dearly about me, mentees who looked up to me. And Joey, of course. If I cut myself out of the web, I would leave a gaping hole that would hurt all those around me. And the whole point of this endeavor was to stop hurting people. I guess I had to embrace the impossible. Goddamn it, what a task: I had to fight against fate itself. CHAPTER 14 [image file=image_rsrc3E3.jpg] If the existential quandary was that I was trapped within the loop of stimulus, response and I could not change the responses…then maybe I could change the stimuli. Maybe I could hack my brain.

• From Untrue (2018)

  In Alicia Walker’s words, “When it comes to sexual autonomy, women are up against external and internal constraints in ways that men just aren’t.” In some instances, as with Walker’s study participants, the social script about women not caring as much as men about sex led them to believe they were “weird” or “just jacked up” not only for wanting sex so badly that they sought it outside their marriages but for wanting it period. Meanwhile, the proscription against extra-pair sex and particularly female infidelity is so comprehensive that one woman I interviewed, whom I’ll call Michelle, was unable to forgive herself—not for cheating but for having been with a married woman. MichelleMichelle is a self-confident, independent, and inspiring person. She runs a nonprofit and has a prominent profile, speaking often on national news shows and writing for popular publications with huge readerships. She is a thought leader on Serious Topics, beautiful and smart. But she is also approachable and funny and fun, and her sense of humor is vast and wicked. I wasn’t aware she was gay until, at her prompting, I found myself talking to her about my book at a mutual friend’s party. Forthright and wry, Michelle said, “You know I’m a lez, right? Well, anyway, I am and now you know, and at some point I have to tell you about this woman I was involved with. I am still trying to understand it and how it happened and why I did what I did.” Michelle was soon off traveling for a series of speaking engagements, but we continued to be in touch. We exchanged some emails about her situation and her thoughts about it, but she kept things very general. Eventually we sat down together at a café when I was visiting the town where she lives. Michelle described the woman she was involved with for a time, Delia, as “very married, publicly married, you might say, and sort of a rock star in the lesbian community in my town.” They met at a cocktail party—“the kind that starts off very civilized but becomes a rager,” in Michelle’s words. Delia, whom Michelle found endearingly self-conscious, was there without her wife. When they spoke, they realized they had sons the same age, and after a couple of drinks, Delia told Michelle, “My wife is out of town, and I’m so happy about it.” “I took that in,” Michelle told me as we sat in the café. “I mean, I didn’t realize yet that she was flirting with me and that I was attracted to her, because it never crossed my [mind] that I’d allow myself to be interested in someone who’s married.” I asked her why, and without pausing, Michelle told me, “Because I want to be more than someone’s affair.” Still, the fact that Delia had dropped an unsubtle hint that she was unhappy in her marriage lodged in Michelle’s brain and stayed there.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The full measure of Sonny’s disgrace was becoming apparent. “They were gonna turn him into dog food,” he explained. But Lola turned on her heel and marched back into the house. “We’re in trouble now,” Sonny confided, as he fed Joaquin a peanut butter cookie, his favorite. But he couldn’t help feeling relieved as he watched Joaquin gambol off and take possession of his pasture. The place where he belonged. Joaquin represented the future, if there was a future to be had. Vistas in this part of the country are so immense you can see the storms a hundred miles away. The norther was bringing heavy weather—lowering clouds and lightning over the mountains, thunder grumbling like timpani and the wind whipping up dust devils on the parched prairie. Over dinner, Sonny bet Lola five dollars it would finally rain. “You’ve lost enough money already today,” she observed. Sonny looked into his bowl of chili as if it might contain a reply to that observation, but there was none. Lola of course was well acquainted with Sonny’s shortcomings. Had she been at the auction she could have sized it up before he unloaded the trailer. He certainly knew how much they were counting on that money. There wasn’t much left to sell, except the ranch itself, which had belonged to her mother. All they really had in the world. It wouldn’t do any good to make him feel worse than he already did, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Ten thousand dollars!” Lola said for about the twentieth time. “It’s not like I had to pay all that,” he said. “It was just the auction fee, like two hundred bucks.” “Ten thousand we would have had if you’d just kept your hands in your lap.” “I know. It’s all my fault. I’m really sorry.” Lola wasn’t finished but she could see that nothing she said was going to make the money magically reappear. “Oh, don’t go so hangdog,” she said. “It’s just, I’m so sick of pinching pennies. I know you’re working hard, but we’re on the brink of disaster here.” And then, under her breath, one last time, “Ten thousand dollars!” There was nothing soft about Lola’s life. Compared to city girls she was sparely constructed, with long, ropy muscles. She didn’t consider herself attractive, but she was certainly arresting, with unflinching blue eyes and a scar on her right cheek that came from a tumble in her barrel-racing days. Except for one ill-considered tattoo she was flawless. She often wore her honey-colored hair in a ponytail to keep from having to fuss with it, braiding it through the back of a trucker hat, where it bobbed about like the tail of a palomino. Anyone with experience in the West would instantly recognize her as a cowgirl.

• From Action (2014)

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

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  As a college student in the 1970s, she embraced feminism and sexual freedom, rejected Catholicism, and found a supportive network of friends who shared her ethic of unfettered self-expression. As Nancy put it, “I thought of myself as a free thinker and rebel. Mom’s disapproval made me guilty but it also inspired me.” During that same period she discovered that a glass or two of wine helped relax deep-rooted inhibitions that weren’t changing as readily as her ideas. Sex with Burt was exciting and satisfying before they got married. “We were so experimental with each other,” Nancy explained, “I actually enjoyed the guilt. I thought of us as coconspirators, saboteurs of a dying morality. We had a ball.” But after they married, Nancy’s strict upbringing suddenly reasserted itself. She established a closer connection with her mother and a renewed sense of loyalty to the expectations and ideals with which she had been raised. The two glasses of wine that once had calmed her inhibitions no longer did the job. The increasing physical tolerance that marks the biochemistry of addiction was abetted by a mounting psychological conflict that required ever greater doses of alcohol to quell. Although Burt knew little of Nancy’s inner struggle, he was painfully aware that sex between them was losing its spark. He interpreted Nancy’s sagging desire as confirmation of his lack of attractiveness. He became so distraught that even though he worried about Nancy’s drinking, he sometimes encouraged her to drink because once in a while she would let go and become her old fun self again. Their problems escalated when they started discussing having a baby. They both knew the risks associated with drinking during pregnancy, but Nancy couldn’t stop. Eventually, their marriage was wracked by drunken disagreements. The alcohol that had first entered the picture as beneficial gradually made everything worse. On the brink of separation they went to their first AA meeting together. Burt found it relatively easy to stop drinking. Nancy too felt much better after a few weeks of sobriety. Their fighting mostly stopped, and she looked forward to the day when they could finally have a baby. Yet as her commitment to recovery took hold she felt increasingly sexless, which in turn forced her to examine her eroticism with an honesty she had never attempted before.4

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  She was stuck at Janet Memorial. “It’s temporary,” Christina continued. “Like I was saying, as soon as Jack moves into a better place he’ll be able to take Mason to live with him. In the meantime, you want to do something nice for Mason—take his dog, Fred.” She had no idea he lived at Janet Memorial, the orphanage on Salem Avenue. He hadn’t told her anything about his life and she hadn’t asked him any questions. But so what? She knew how she felt when they were together. Wasn’t that enough? Fred was a different story. Mason took Fred everywhere, except to work and to school. One day over vacation he asked if she could keep him for the afternoon, while he was at work. She’d told him sure, without thinking about what she’d do with him. She couldn’t risk bringing him home. If Irene caught her with a dog in the house she’d be in big trouble. So she’d gone to Suzanne’s, whose parents were both at work. She’d had to hold Fred in her arms to keep him from setting foot on the floor or, worse, jumping onto the furniture. In Suzanne’s room they’d made a little bed for him out of a box and some rags. Barking was off-limits. Suzanne lived in an apartment house on Chilton where dogs weren’t allowed. After her visit to Dr. O’s office she told Mason she’d had her teeth cleaned and that Dr. O had found a small cavity. “I have to go back to get it filled. He said I won’t need Novocain.” Mason wasn’t impressed. “I’ve had teeth pulled without Novocain and it hurt like hell.” “Dr. O would never hurt you.” “That’s where I’m going from now on.” They were walking home from the movies. “So I was wondering,” she said, not able to stop herself, “where does Fred live?” A shadow fell over his face. Why was she doing this? “He lives around,” Mason said. “He stays with one of my friends. But I pay for his food and I walk him every day. I can’t have a dog at Janet, if that’s what you’re getting at.” She hated herself for putting him in this position. “I’m sorry.” “For what?” “That you’re an orphan.” He forced a laugh and grabbed her hand, pulling her behind him as he ran. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00011.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00011.jpg] C-46 HAS A CHECKERED HISTORYGIs Nicknamed the Transport “The Flying Coffin”By Henry AmmermanDEC. 26 — The C-46, the aircraft that crashed into the Elizabeth River on Dec. 16, began life with a bad name. It was rushed into military service in 1943 to fly supplies over the Himalaya “hump” from India to Burma. Allied pilots called her the “flying coffin,” with at least 31 known instances of fires or explosions in flight between May 1943 and March 1945. Many others went missing and were never found. Disabled C-46s were stranded at bases from Kansas to Karachi.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Not that she hadn’t cried the first time, until he’d taken her in his arms and reassured her. I will never leave you. You understand? I will always be here for you and the boys. The others, he didn’t love them, they weren’t worth the hem of her dress. He just couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t ask her to do the things he could pay for, things that made him feel dirty. She was his wife. Now he was done with all that. He’d been done with it for years. Couldn’t remember the last time. But there it was, gnawing at him, giving him sharp pains in his left side, as if he’d eaten popcorn and set off his diverticulitis. The priest listened as Ben explained he was a Jew but too ashamed to talk about this with his rabbi. The priest was kind and forgiving. He asked Ben to think of others before thinking of himself, to help others before helping himself. To do good with the time he had left. Ben promised. He made a generous donation to the church and another to his synagogue. He visited the cemetery every day to talk to Estelle, to apologize for the things he’d done, to tell her she’d been his one and only love. If I could do it over… he’d cry. Please, Stellie, give me another chance to prove how much I love you. But Estelle never responded. He stood alone as the winter wind whipped his hat off his head, hoping for a sign—a falling leaf, a dove flying by. He’d have settled for a pigeon. But there was nothing. This was why he cried. [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00012.jpg] [image "Elizabeth Daily Post" file=Image00012.jpg] EditorialNEW YEAR, BUT OLD BUSINESSDEC. 31 — We watched while giant machines of the air skimmed our rooftops in ever-increasing numbers. We warned against that inevitable day when disaster would follow in their wake. They said it couldn’t happen. They said we were attempt ing to block progress. We watched as the last twisted wing of the plane that had claimed 56 lives was dragged from the banks of the Elizabeth River. We waited in vain for a solution that would make recurrence impossible. We are still watching and waiting. When will a concern for the safety of our citizens take pre cedence over a concern for the business of the Port Authority’s Newark Airport? 8 [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] [image file=Image00005.jpg] MiriEvery year Corinne let it be known that Miri was welcome to bring her mother to the Osners’ New Year’s Eve party. Every year Miri explained to Corinne that Rusty never went out on New Year’s Eve because New Year’s Eve was when Rusty’s father had died. “I’m sorry,” Corinne would say. “But maybe this year…” “I doubt it,” Miri would tell her. Not that she ever extended Corinne’s invitation to Rusty. Why would she?

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Stein would like to work. That she’d like to be a librarian or a clerk at a bookstore. Instead she wound up saying what she thought Rusty wanted to hear. “You’re the best mother.” “You’re just saying that so you can keep an expensive bracelet she had no right to give you.” “I don’t care about the bracelet.” “Good. Then give it back. It’s inappropriate for a stranger to give you such an extravagant gift.” “She’s not exactly a stranger,” Miri muttered under her breath as Rusty walked away with the bracelet. Miri chased her down the hall. “Mom…” “What?” “You took the bracelet.” Rusty handed it to Miri. The next day after school she returned the bracelet. She didn’t want to offend Mrs. Stein. But as soon as she began, “My mother doesn’t think…” Mrs. Stein gave her a kind smile, a knowing smile, and took the box. “Maybe I will give it to my daughter, after all.” “I’m sure she’d like it.” “She’s hard to please.” “Even so.” “Thank you, Miri.” There. She’d done what she had to do. She would tell Rusty she’d returned the bracelet and she hoped that would satisfy her. Rusty could be moody but her bad moods rarely lasted. —BEFORE THE FAMILY sat down to Miri’s birthday dinner, Rusty gave her a small box wrapped in blue paper and tied with a white ribbon. “Happy birthday, honey.” Inside was a gold and garnet bracelet, not exactly the same as Mrs. Stein’s, but close enough. “It’s beautiful,” Miri said, slipping it onto her wrist. “Now you see why…” Rusty began. Miri hugged her mother. “I’m sorry.” “There’s no need to be sorry,” Rusty told her, smoothing her hair. “I love you.” “I love you, too.” Miri would never know if Rusty had already bought her the bracelet when she showed her the one from Mrs. Stein, or if she went out and bought it that day. “It looks really pretty, doesn’t it?” She held up her arm for Rusty to admire. Rusty smiled at her. “It does. It’s delicate enough to go with anything.” Miri resisted the urge to laugh. At least Rusty hadn’t called her delicate. —LATER THAT NIGHT, Mason stopped by with a birthday present for Miri. After Rusty greeted him, she went into her room, closing the door behind her, so the two of them could have the living room to themselves. “Fifteen minutes,” Rusty called. “Four feet on the floor at all times.” They couldn’t help laughing over that rule, and when they did, Rusty laughed, too. The present was wrapped in layers of tissue paper and tied with red and white bakery string. Miri opened it carefully, stealing looks at Mason. But he was looking down at the floor. At first she wasn’t sure what it was except it was made of wood. Beautiful polished wood. A spyglass? She held it to her eye.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  —What took so long? Libbets asked. —Checking out the medicine cabinet, Paul said. Your parents have some excellent shit in there. —What didst thou find? Davenport said. —Wait a sec, guys, Libbets said anxiously. You aren’t going to take prescription drugs from my parents’ bathroom without permission? —Never a thought in our minds, babe, Davenport said, holding in his lungs the last of another joint, so that his voice was husky and forced. But do you mean to suggest that you have never taken advantage of that most convenient supply? What are you, un-American? —Lots of stuff, Paul said. Diverse items. Tranquilizers and sleeping pills. He fell lengthways upon the couch. —Elixirs, Davenport said, that have a promising effect, very promising, when combined in small dosage levels with alcoholic beverages. —Let me go look, Libbets said. I’ll go look. Once she had gone, Davenport’s demeanor changed. It was the strangest thing. Suddenly, he was friendly again. Suddenly. They were old friends after all. Davenport knew how Paul got encased in himself. They were old friends and they had been through a few things, but they could still have a good laugh about masturbation or at somebody else’s expense. That Davenport’s headband was stupid, that his beard was a little on the simian side—Paul could overlook this stuff. He could still like him. So they talked about Thanksgiving. And since Davenport was adopted, as were his brothers and sisters, the notion of a collegial family get-together had its dark, obverse side. Davenport’s younger sister actually aspired, he claimed, to a life of prostitution. She liked to hang around the bars in Times Square. And his younger brother was racked by psychosomatic illnesses. Lately, he had been hospitalized with phantom kidney pain. Which of these children could one day run the Davenport venture-capital organization? Which would entertain at their Sea Island summer home? Francis Chamberlain Davenport IV, the likely choice, wanted to be a Jungian psychoanalyst. —What’s to be thankful for at Thanksgiving? Davenport asked. Indian corn in plastic wrap for sale next to Velveeta? Butterball turkey with built-in thermometer? Rod McKuen? Helen Reddy doing “Delta Dawn”? Are you getting this all down, Charles? They laughed. They sang. Half a line of “Delta Dawn.” And of “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.” —Okay, okay. Libbets turned up again. There’s plenty there. I don’t see how they could miss them. What kind should we do? —Seconal, definitely, Paul said. —Hey, as long as it does the job, Davenport said. I am not picky. —You don’t think this is going to, you know, be a problem with the beers? —Check the expiration date, Paul said. I thought they looked pretty cool. The need behind teen oblivion overcame any reservations. Which was the way Paul figured it would go. Soon the three of them were crowded into the bathroom, around the medicine cabinet, looking at the little prescription containers. Libbets’s hands were shaking as she handed around the reds. And Paul was moved by this.