Humiliation

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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  For a long while I thought I had escaped, but as time goes on I see that I am no better, that I am even a little worse, because I saw more clearly than they ever did and yet remained powerless to alter my life. As I look back on my life it seems to me that I never did anything of my own volition but always through the pressure of others. People often think of me as an adventurous fellow; nothing could be farther from the truth. My adventures were always adventitious, always thrust on me, always endured rather than undertaken. I am of the very essence of that proud, boastful Nordic people who have never had the least sense of adventure but who nevertheless have scoured the earth, turned it upside down, scattering relics and ruins everywhere. Restless spirits, but not adventurous ones. Agonizing spirits, incapable of living in the present. Disgraceful cowards, all of them, myself included. For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter. Once every few years I was on the verge of making this discovery, but in characteristic fashion I always managed to dodge the issue. If I try to think of a good excuse I can think only of the environment, of the streets I knew and the people who inhabited them. I can think of no street in America, or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on toward the discovery of the self. I have walked the streets in many countries of the world but nowhere have I felt so degraded and humiliated as in America. I think of all the streets in America combined as forming a huge cesspool, a cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away to everlasting shit. Over this cesspool the spirit of work weaves a magic wand; palaces and factories spring up side by side, and munition plants and chemical works and steel mills and sanatoriums and prisons and insane asylums. The whole continent is a nightmare producing the greatest misery of the greatest number. I was one, a single entity in the midst of the greatest jamboree of wealth and happiness (statistical wealth, statistical happiness) but I never met a man who was truly wealthy or truly happy. At least I knew that I was unhappy, un-wealthy, out of whack and out of step. That was my only solace, my only joy. But it was hardly enough. It would have been better for my peace of mind, for my soul, if I had expressed my rebellion openly, if I had gone to jail for it, if I had rotted there and died. It would have been better if, like the mad Czolgosz, I had shot some good President McKinley, some gentle, insignificant soul like that who had never done anyone the least harm.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  46 Arkansas governor Orval Faubus also exploited class rift. He distanced himself from the “Cadillac crowd” and constructed himself as the victim of upper-class arrogance. The national media painted him as the “hillbilly” from Greasy Creek, in the Ozarks. Time caught him entertaining visitors as “milk dribbled down his chin”; he could be heard “belching gustily” like a backcountry rube. A large photograph in Life identified as the governor’s “kinfolk” one Taylor Thornberry, a cross-eyed, crazy-looking man in overalls. At a private meeting in Newport, Rhode Island, away from the unfolding drama, President Eisenhower tried to convince Faubus to accept the court-ordered desegregation plan; the southern governor left the meeting angry and humiliated. He later admitted that he knew full well that Eisenhower’s advisers had thought him as nothing more than a “country boy.” 47 From the start of the crisis, Faubus used dual fears of racial and class violence to justify ordering the Arkansas National Guard to Central High School. In his announcement the day before the school year opened, he claimed to have reports of white “caravans” ready to descend upon Little Rock from numerous outlying areas. Whether or not a race war would arise from the conflict, he let it be known that white thugs, rabble-rousers, and rednecks were contending for a place in history. 48 Taylor Thornberry, the cross-eyed kin of Orval Faubus, as depicted in Life magazine (1957). His features underscored Faubus’s hillbilly and degenerate roots. Life magazine, September 23, 1957 Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Faubus loved playing the redneck card. His continued defiance infuriated Eisenhower, who dispatched the 101st Airborne Division and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. Military protection ensured that the nine black students slated to attend Central High were not barred. On the national stage, and standing before the cameras, the governor of Arkansas embodied the southern stereotype to a tee. He was a complete caricature of folly and backwardness. A reporter for Time accused him of “manufacturing the myth of violence” and then “whipping up” a mob to make it a reality. 49 Little Rock was the most important domestic news story of 1957. It transformed the Central High neighborhood into a newsroom, attracting reporters from the major newspapers, magazines, and television networks. By the end of September, the number of press people had grown from a handful to 225 highly visible journalists and cameramen. The standoff between the courts and the governor—the “crisis” environment swirling about the school grounds— grabbed the world’s attention. On September 24, when President Eisenhower gave a televised speech announcing that he would send troops to the Arkansas capital, 62 percent of America’s television sets were tuned in. As mobs descended, reporters were themselves targeted for violence.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ed drove her car to the funeral home. I followed on my motorcycle. Once we arrived, I sat on my bike in the parking lot. I wanted to show my respect for Butch Ro, but I wished I didn’t have to go in. “What’s with you, Jess?” Ed asked me in exasperation. “T don’t know,” I told her. I felt a sense of dread. When we got inside, it took a minute to find the right room. Then I knew we had found it. There, around the open casket, were Butch Ro’s lifelong friends. All of them were wearing dresses. That’s how much they loved het. These were burly, big-shouldered he-shes who carried their womanhood in work-roughened hands. They could playfully slap you on the back and send you halfway across the room. Their forearms and biceps were covered with tattoos. These powerful butch women were comfortable in work chinos. Their spirit roared to life when they wore double-breasted suits. Wearing dresses was an excruciating humiliation for them. Many of their dresses were old, from another era when occasional retreats were still necessary. The dresses were outdated, white, frilly, lace, low-cut, plain. The shoes were old or borrowed: patent leather, loafers, sandals. This clothing degraded their spirit, ridiculed who they were. Yet it was in this painful drag they were forced to say their last goodbye to the friend they loved so much. Ro’s femme, Alice, greeted each one of them. You could see how much she longed to fall against their solid bodies, to feel the gentle strength of their arms. Instead she respectfully refused to acknowledge the pain they all shared together. She held in her own. Ro—the butch Alice had loved for almost thirty years—lay in the casket next to her, laid out in a pink dress and holding a bunch of pink-and-white flowers. What cruel hand controlled this scene? I saw them just as they saw Ed and me. It was Ro’s family—father, mother, and brothers. They saw us the moment we walked in, and whispered in the funeral director’s ear. In a flash, the director announced the funeral home was closing and we all had to leave. Just like that. Ed and I went to the local diner for coffee. We were sitting there when all the older butches came filing in past us. Each of them had found a place to change clothes, even if it meant crouching down in the backseat of a car. When they saw us, they all headed straight for the opposite side of the diner. Jan charged at me with murder in her eyes, but the other women restrained her. Butch Jan—the elder I wanted to turn to for advice. Butch Jan—my friend. Jan had been cool to me for a long time, ever since the night she saw me dancing with Edna. Now she really hated me. A few minutes later Alice came in, supported by a butch on each side.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Karla and I leaned forward and looked at each other. “I’m sorry,” I told her, “I didn’t mean any harm.” Miss Moore stopped walking. “You girls didn’t do anything wrong. You came up against an unspoken tule that needs changing, I just want you both to survive it.” When the principal, Mr. Donatto, finally called me into his office, Miss Moore asked if she could come in too. He knitted his thick eyebrows together. “Td prefer it if you didn’t, Suzanne.” Mr. Donatto shut the door and motioned for me to sit down. I felt alone in a hostile world. He slumped in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. I looked at the painting of George Stone Butch Blues 43 Washington on the wall and wondered whether he was wearing a white sheepskin coat or if the painting was never finished. Mr. Donatto cleared his throat. I knew he was ready. “T’ve been told you made some trouble in the lunchroom today, young lady. Would you care to explain yourself?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I didn’t do anything.” Mr. Donatto leaned back in his chair. “The world is a very complicated place. More complex than you kids realize.” Oh god, I thought. Here comes the lecture. “In some schools there are fights between the colored children and the white students. Did you know that?” I shook my head. “T’m proud that we have good relations between the races at this school. That’s not been easy since the school district changed. We want to keep things calm, do you understand?” “T don’t know why I can’t eat lunch with my friends. We’re not fighting.” Mr. Donatto’s jaw clenched. “The cafeteria is the way it is because the students are most comfortable with the arrangement.” “Well, Pm not.” I wondered who was controlling my mouth. Mr. Donatto slammed his palm on the desk. 44 Leslie Feinberg Miss Moore opened the door. “Can I be of help, sit?” “Get out and shut the door,’ he shouted at her. He turned back to me and took a deep breath. “T want you to understand that what we want is good relations between the students.” “Then why can’t I eat lunch with my friends?” Mr. Donatto came over to me and leaned so close I could feel his breath on my face. “Young lady, you listen to me and you listen to me good. I’m trying to hold this school together and Pll be damned if ’m going to let a little troublemaker like you undo all my hard work. Do you understand me?” I blinked as little bits of spit hit my face. “You are suspended for one week.” Suspended? For what? “I wanted to quit anyway,” I told him. He smirked. “You can’t quit until you’re sixteen.” “T can’t quit but you can suspend me?” “That’s right, young lady. Miss Moore,” Mr. Donatto yelled, “this student has been suspended. See that she leaves the building immediately.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  we’d better dissolve, and let you run your own affairs to suit yourself.” Clark had no desire to break up the partnership at this point—it was too profitable, and despite the qualities that grated on his nerves, he needed Rockefeller as the man to look after the dull details of their growing enterprise. He simply wanted to intimidate Rockefeller with this threat, which seemed to be the only way to get him to back off on his tireless quest to quickly grow the refinery business. As usual, Rockefeller said little and seemed to defer. Then, the following month, Rockefeller invited Clark and Andrews to his house to discuss future plans. And despite all of Clark’s previous admonitions, Rockefeller outlined even bolder ideas for expanding the refinery, and once again Clark could not control himself. “We’d better split up!” he yelled. Then something odd happened—Rockefeller agreed to this and got Clark and Andrews to affirm that they were all in favor of dissolving the partnership. He did this without the slightest trace of anger or resentment. Clark had played a lot of poker, and he felt certain Rockefeller was bluffing, trying to force his hand. If he refused to budge on the young man’s desire to expand the business, Rockefeller would have to back down. He could not afford to be on his own; he needed Clark more than the other way around. He would be forced to realize his rashness and ask to resume the partnership. In doing so, Rockefeller would be humbled. Clark could set the terms and demand that Rockefeller follow his lead. To his amazement, however, the next day Clark read in the local newspaper the announcement of the dissolution of their business, the notice obviously placed there by Rockefeller himself. When Clark confronted him later that day, Rockefeller calmly replied he was merely putting into action what they had agreed upon the day before, that it had been Clark’s idea to start with, and that he thought Clark was right. He suggested they hold an auction and sell the company to the highest bidder. Something about his dull, businesslike manner was infuriating. At this point, agreeing to the auction was not the worst option. Clark would outbid him and be rid of this insufferable upstart once and for all. On the day of the auction in February 1865, Clark used a lawyer to represent his side, while Rockefeller represented himself, yet another sign of his arrogance and lack of sophistication. The price kept ticking upward, and finally Rockefeller bid $72,500, a rather ridiculous and shocking price to pay, a sum that Clark could not possibly afford. How would Rockefeller have so much money, and how could he possibly run this business without Clark? He clearly had lost any business sense that he had had. If that was what he was willing to pay, and he had the funds, let him have it and good

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  other courtiers, and the queen let him get away with it. She drew a line, however, when he asked for high political positions for himself and his friends, and then he would fly into a rage. It was humiliating to depend on the whims of a woman! But days later he would calm down and return to his charm offensive. Kept away from political power, he saw that his only chance for fame and glory was to lead an English army to victory. Elizabeth allowed him to lead some smaller military expeditions on the Continent. His record was mixed—he was brave but not very good at strategy. Then, in 1596, he persuaded her to let him lead a Drake- like raid on the Spanish coast. This time his boldness paid off, and the campaign was a success. To the English people, now somewhat drunk on their new status as a European power, Essex represented their new swagger, and he became their darling. Essex wanted more of this and kept asking the queen for another chance in battle. He attributed her reluctance to the many enemies he had made in the court, men who envied him. In 1598 news reached the court that a band of Irish rebels under Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, was moving through English- controlled territory in Ireland and wreaking havoc. Now Essex offered his services to lead a force to crush Tyrone. He pleaded and persisted, and Elizabeth finally relented. Feeling confident of his powers over the queen, he requested for the campaign the largest army yet assembled by the English. Elizabeth granted his wish. For the first time, he felt truly appreciated by her. She did have a strange ability to make him want to please her. He expressed his gratitude and promised to finish the job quickly. Ireland would be the means for him to rise to the top. Once he was there, however, the troubles mounted. It was the winter of 1599; the weather was awful and the terrain hopelessly boggy. He could not advance his enormous force. The Irish were elusive and masters at guerrilla warfare. While the English remained hobbled in their camps, thousands of soldiers died from disease and just as many began to desert. Essex could only imagine his many enemies at court talking behind his back. He felt certain the queen and several ministers were somehow plotting his downfall. He had to test her again—he asked for reinforcements. The queen agreed, but she ordered him to finally find and fight Tyrone. Suddenly the pressure was too much, and he blamed the queen and her envious courtiers for trying to rush him. He felt humiliated by the position he was in, and by the end of the summer he had decided upon a plan that would put an end once and for all to his misery—he would secretly negotiate a truce with Tyrone, then return to England

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  disappeared from the scene, apparently having a nervous breakdown. By the end of the war, not a single reconnaissance plane had been produced, and the air force canceled the contract. Perelle himself, broken by the experience, quit his job in December of that year. Hughes, trying to salvage something from the war years, could point to the completion of one of the flying boats, later known as the Spruce Goose. It was a marvel, he claimed, a brilliant piece of engineering on a massive scale. To prove the doubters wrong, he decided to test-fly the plane himself. As he flew over the ocean, however, it became painfully clear that the plane did not have nearly enough power for its enormous weight, and after a mile he gently set it down on the water and had it towed back. The plane would never fly again and would be dry-docked in a hangar at a cost of $1 million per year, Hughes refusing to take it apart for scrap. By 1948 the owner of RKO Pictures, Floyd Odlum, was looking to sell. RKO was one of Hollywood’s most profitable and prestigious studios, and Hughes was itching to get back in the limelight by establishing himself in the film business. He bought Odlum’s shares and gained a controlling interest. Within RKO there was panic. Executives there knew of his reputation for meddling. The company had just brought in a new regime, headed by Dore Schary, that was going to transform RKO into the hottest studio for young directors. Schary decided to quit before being humiliated, but he agreed to first meet Hughes, mostly out of curiosity. Hughes was all charm. He took hold of Schary’s hand, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “I want no part of running the studio. You’ll be left alone.” Schary, surprised by his sincerity and agreement with Schary’s proposed transformation of the studio, relented, and for the first few weeks all was as Hughes had promised. But then the phone calls began. Hughes wanted Schary to replace an actress on the latest film in production. Realizing his mistake, Schary immediately resigned, taking with him many of his own staff. Hughes began filling positions with men who followed his orders, hiring exactly the actors and actresses that he himself liked. He bought a screenplay called Jet Pilot and planned on making it the 1949 version of Hell’s Angels . It was to star John Wayne, and the great Josef von Sternberg was to direct. After a few weeks Sternberg could not endure one more phone call and quit. Hughes took over. In a complete repeat of the production of Hell’s Angels , it took nearly three years to finish, mostly because of the aerial photography, and the budget soared to $4 million. Hughes had shot so much footage he could not decide how to cut it down. It took six years before it was ready, and by then the jet scenes were completely out of date and

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  evening, the fire spread quickly from ship to ship. The Spanish galleons tried to regroup farther out to sea, but their formation was loose and scattered, and the fast English ships fired at them like ducks in the water. As the winds changed again, the Spanish were forced to retreat northward, into the stormiest parts of the North Sea. Trying to round England and retreat to Spain, they lost most of their ships and over twenty thousand Spanish soldiers died. The English had lost no ships and had only around a hundred casualties. It was one of the most lopsided victories in military history. For Philip, it was the most humiliating moment in his life. He retired into his palace, where he holed himself up for months contemplating the disaster. The armada had left Spain utterly bankrupt, and in the years to come England would prosper while Spain became the second-rate power. Somehow Elizabeth had outwitted him. To the other leaders in Europe who hated her, she now seemed invincible and a ruler to be feared. Pope Sixtus V, who had excommunicated her and had given his blessing to the armada, now exclaimed, “Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all!” — Now in England there arose a veritable cult around the Virgin Queen. She was now referred to as “Her Sacred Majesty.” To catch a glimpse of her riding through London or passing on her barge on the Thames seemed like a religious experience. One group, however, proved less susceptible to this powerful aura—the new generation of young men now filling the royal court. To them, the queen was showing her age. They respected her accomplishments, but they saw her more as a domineering mother figure. England was a rising power. These young men yearned to make a name for themselves on the battlefield and so earn public acclaim. Yet Elizabeth continually thwarted this desire. She refused to finance a large-scale campaign to finish off Philip, or to aid the French in their fight against the Spanish. They saw her as tired and felt it was time for their spirited, masculine generation to lead England. And the young man who came to epitomize this new spirit was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Born in 1566, Essex was handsome and high-strung. He knew the queen had a weakness for young men, and he quickly charmed her, becoming her new favorite. He genuinely liked and admired her, but at the same time he resented the power she possessed over his fate. He began to test her: he asked for favors, mostly money. She gave these to him. She seemed to enjoy spoiling him. And as the relationship progressed, Essex began to see her as a woman he could manipulate. He started to criticize her rather boldly in front of

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  huge losses, but he could not. He had literally run out of money. Not only did he agree to put a stop to his campaign, but he had to sell to Rockefeller the lion’s share of his refineries, storage tanks, steamships, and pipelines. Scott would never recover from this humiliating and rather sudden defeat: a year later he suffered a stroke, and within a few years he died at the age of fifty-eight. — Although it appeared that Rockefeller’s control of the oil business was now complete, a businessman and engineer named Byron Benson had an idea about how to poke a hole in his expanding empire. Rockefeller could call the shots with his immense resources, but he could not compete with technological progress. What gave Rockefeller an advantage was that pipelines were relatively short, at most thirty miles long. He could dominate by creating pipeline networks all across Pennsylvania and by controlling many of the railroads operating between the refineries and the pipelines. Even if someone had an independent pipeline, at some point he would depend on Standard Oil to transport the oil the rest of the way. What if, however, Benson could design something new—one long, continuous pipeline that would run from the oil fields of western Pennsylvania to the Eastern Seaboard? In that way he could deliver oil directly to the few independent East Coast refineries that remained and guarantee low prices for them, bypassing Rockefeller’s network. This would halt Rockefeller’s momentum, and with more of these long-range pipelines, rivals to Standard Oil could begin to compete on fairer terms. It would not be easy. The pipeline would require some novel engineering to make the oil flow upward over the hills and mountains that would inevitably be in the way, but Benson had been working on this. And because Rockefeller had made so many enemies and so many feared his growing monopoly, Benson was able to raise very large sums of money from investors, more than enough to cover the high cost of building such a pipeline. Benson named his enterprise the Tidewater Pipeline Company, and in 1878 construction began. But almost immediately he had to deal with an insidious campaign to halt the work on the pipeline. Benson depended on railroad tank cars to transport the heavy materials to the construction site, but it seemed that over the years Rockefeller had bought up the lion’s share of such cars and had virtually cornered the market. Wherever he turned to find tank cars, Benson ran into Standard Oil subsidiaries that controlled them. Benson had to find other means of moving the material, and this added to his costs and wasted valuable time. All of this only made him more determined to finish the job and outwit Rockefeller. This, however, was only the beginning. Benson needed to make his route to the sea as easy as possible, to save money, and that would mean running it through Maryland. But now word reached him

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  transferred to this new house, Jeanne seemed to undergo a transformation. She now acted like a complete angel, offering to help the prioress in all of her daily tasks. Moreover, given some books to read on Saint Teresa and mysticism, Jeanne became engrossed in the subject. She spent long hours discussing spiritual questions with the prioress. Within months she had become the house expert on mystical theology. She could be seen meditating and praying for hours, more than any other sister. Later that same year the prioress was transferred to another house. Deeply impressed by Jeanne’s behavior and ignoring the advice of others who did not think so highly of her, the prioress recommended Jeanne as her replacement. Suddenly, at the very young age of twenty-five, Jeanne now found herself the head of the Ursuline nuns in Loudun. Several months later, the sisters at Loudun began to hear some very strange stories from Jeanne. She had had a series of dreams, in which a local parish priest, Urbain Grandier, had visited and physically assaulted her. The dreams became increasingly erotic and violent. What was strange was that before these dreams, Jeanne had invited Grandier to become the director of the Ursuline house, but he had politely declined. In Loudun, locals considered Grandier a gallant seducer of young ladies. Was Jeanne merely indulging in her own fantasies? She was so pious that it was hard to believe she was making it all up, and the dreams seemed very real and unusually graphic. Soon after she began telling them to others, several sisters reported having similar dreams. One day the house confessor, Canon Mignon, heard a sister recount such a dream. Mignon, like many others, had long despised Grandier, and he saw in these dreams an opportunity to finally do him in. He called in some exorcists to work on the nuns, and soon almost all of the sisters were reporting nightly visits from Grandier. To the exorcists it was clear— these nuns were possessed by devils under the control of Grandier. For the edification of the citizenry, Mignon and his allies opened the exorcisms up to the public, who now flocked from far and wide to witness a most entertaining scene. The nuns would roll on the ground, writhing, showing their legs, screaming endless obscenities. And of all the sisters, Jeanne seemed the most possessed. Her contortions were more violent, and the demons that spoke through her were more strident in their satanic oaths. It was one of the strongest possessions they had ever seen, and the public clamored to witness her exorcisms above all the others. It now seemed apparent to the exorcists that Grandier, despite never having set foot in the house or having met Jeanne, had somehow bewitched and debauched the good sisters of Loudun. He was soon arrested and charged with sorcery. Based on the evidence, Grandier was condemned to death. After much torture, he was burned at the stake on August 18, 1634, before

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  12 Leslie Feinberg “Brian says you're a girl, but I think you're a sissy boy,” one of them said. I didn’t speak. “Well, what are your” he mocked me. I flapped my arms, “Caw, caw!” I laughed. One of the boys knocked the jar filled with pollywogs from my hand and it smashed on the gravel. I kicked and bit them but they held me and tied my hands behind my back with a piece of clothesline. “Let’s see how you tinkle,” one of the boys said as he knocked me down and two of the others struggled to pull off my pants and my underpants. I was filled with horror. I couldn’t make them stop. The shame of being half-naked before them—the important half—took all the steam out of me. They pushed and carried me to old Mrs. Jefferson’s house and locked me in the coal bin. It was dark in the bin. The coal was sharp and cut like knives. It hurt too much to lie still, but the more I moved the worse I made the wounds. I was afraid I’d never get out. It took hours before I heard Mrs. Jefferson in the kitchen. I don’t know what she thought when she heard all the thumping and kicking in her coal bin. But when she opened the little trap door on the coal bin and I squirmed out onto her kitchen floor, she looked scared enough to fall down dead. There I stood, covered with coal soot and blood, tied up and half-naked in her kitchen. She mumbled curses under her breath as she untied me and sent me home wrapped in a towel. I had to walk a block and knock on my parents’ door before I found refuge. They were really angry when they saw me. I never understood why. My father spanked me over and over again until my mother restrained his arm with a whisper and her hand. A week later I caught up with one of the boys from the Scabbie gang. He made the mistake of wandering alone too near our house. I made a muscle and told him to feel it. Then I punched him in the nose. He ran away crying; I felt great, for the first time in days. My mother called me into our house for dinner. “Who was that boy you were playing with?” I shrugged. “You were showing him your muscle?” I froze, wondering how much she had seen. She smiled. “Sometimes it’s better to let boys think they’re stronger,” she told me. I figured she was just plain crazy if she really believed that. The phone rang, “T’ll get it,’ my father called out. It was the parent of the kid whose nose I bloodied; I could tell by the way my father glowered at me as he listened.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  him. She was the most like him of all his children. As he would have done, she had thought ahead—her plan was to play for time until her remaining allies could come to her defense. She had cleverly fortified Ravaldino in a way that would allow her to keep retreating behind barricades if the walls were breached. In the end, they would have to take the castle from her by force, and she was more than prepared to die in defense of it, sword in hand. As she listened to Borgia address her, it was clear he had come to flatter and flirt—everyone knew his reputation as a devilish seducer, and many in Italy thought Caterina had rather loose morals. She listened and smiled, occasionally reminding him of her past deeds and her reputation as a Sforza—if he wanted her to surrender, he would have to do better. He persisted in his courtship and asked to parley with her personally. She appeared to finally succumb to his charm; she was a woman, after all. She ordered the drawbridge to be lowered and started walking toward him. He continued to press his case, and she gave him certain looks and smiles that indicated she was falling under his spell. Now only inches away, he reached for her arm, and she playfully withdrew it. They should discuss matters in the castle, she said with a coy expression, and began to walk back, inviting him to follow. As he stepped onto the drawbridge to catch up with her, it began to rise, and he leaped back to the other side just in time. Enraged and embarrassed by the trick she had tried to play, he swore revenge. During the next few days he unleashed a torrent of cannon fire at the castle walls, finally opening a breach. Borgia’s troops flooded in, led by the more experienced French. It was now hand-to-hand combat, and at the front of her remaining troops was Caterina. The head of the French troops, Yves d’Allegre, stared at her in amazement as the beautiful countess—her ornamented cuirass over her dress—charged at his men from the front line, handling her sword deftly, without a trace of fear. She and her men were about to withdraw further into the castle, hoping to prolong the battle for days, as she had planned, when one of her own soldiers grabbed her from behind and, his sword at her throat, marched her over to the other side. Borgia had put a price on her head, and the soldier had betrayed her for the reward. The siege was over, and Borgia himself took possession of his great prize. That night he raped her and kept her confined in his rooms, trying to make it seem to the world that the infamous warrior countess had willingly succumbed to his charms. Even under duress she refused to sign away her domain, and so she was brought to Rome and soon thrown into the dreaded prison

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  One morning the foreman replaced me on the line. “Goldberg, come on,” Jack commanded. I followed him into the shipping department. “Wait here,” he said. Tommy made a face behind Jack’s back. “I hate that guy,” he told me after Jack left. “He reminds me of this officer I had in the Navy, always ragging me. I hated his guts.” I nodded, but I didn’t speak. Tommy was OK, but I didn’t know if he’d repeat anything I said. Tommy looked at the clock. “Almost break time,” he said. “God, I hated the Navy. Two years of my life they stole from me. I used to watch the clock all day. They could force me to do anything, but they couldn’t stop time. Sooner or later they had to let me out.” I shrugged. “So why’d you join?” “Are you kidding?” he asked me. “So I wouldn’t get drafted into the Army. LBJ’s sending any guy who can walk over to "Nam.” Jack came around the corner with Kevin, his assistant, and Jim Boney. Damn, I hated Jim Boney. 86 Leslie Feinberg “Hey, Tommy, you makin’ a real woman out of Jess?” Boney taunted. Tommy leered and grabbed his own crotch. “C’mon,” Jack ordered me to follow him. I looked back at Tommy. He mouthed the words I'm sorry. I mouthed the words, Fuck you. Jack led me to a giant folding machine that > was idle. I watched as he took out his tools. “Now watch,” he ordered as he began to set the machine for a different-size fold. I couldn’t believe it. This was an apprentice job. No one else was allowed to learn the mysteries of setting up a job or repairing the machines. Apprenticing led to a journeyman’s card. My hopes fluttered. “You set the vertical, same way,’ Jack said. He grabbed a rag and wiped oil off his hands as I tried to set the vertical folds. “No, like this,’ he corrected. The lunch whistle interrupted us. “After lunch,” he said. I flew up to the cafeteria. Why do triumphant moments have to be so fleeting? Just when all the congratulations had died down, Duffy, the chief shop steward, approached our table. “Goldberg, can I talk to you a minute?” I motioned to the chair next to me, “Sute.” He gestured toward the door. By the time we got out in the hall, I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Duffy, don’t tell me there’s some fucking reason why I can’t bust the barrier to a number five grade.” He folded his arms and looked at the floor. “Listen, Goldberg, I know you want that grade, and you deserve it. No woman in this plant has ever gone higher than a four, and none of the guys, except one, have ever worked lower than a five. It ain’t right.” I narrowed my eyes. “So?”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  On July 27, the armada anchored at Calais, just a few miles from where the Spanish army awaited them. In the middle of the night, the English sent five unmanned “fireships”—loaded with flaming wood and pitch—toward the anchored galleons. With the high winds that evening, the fire spread quickly from ship to ship. The Spanish galleons tried to regroup farther out to sea, but their formation was loose and scattered, and the fast English ships fired at them like ducks in the water. As the winds changed again, the Spanish were forced to retreat northward, into the stormiest parts of the North Sea. Trying to round England and retreat to Spain, they lost most of their ships and over twenty thousand Spanish soldiers died. The English had lost no ships and had only around a hundred casualties. It was one of the most lopsided victories in military history. For Philip, it was the most humiliating moment in his life. He retired into his palace, where he holed himself up for months contemplating the disaster. The armada had left Spain utterly bankrupt, and in the years to come England would prosper while Spain became the second-rate power. Somehow Elizabeth had outwitted him. To the other leaders in Europe who hated her, she now seemed invincible and a ruler to be feared. Pope Sixtus V, who had excommunicated her and had given his blessing to the armada, now exclaimed, “Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all!” — Now in England there arose a veritable cult around the Virgin Queen. She was now referred to as “Her Sacred Majesty.” To catch a glimpse of her riding through London or passing on her barge on the Thames seemed like a religious experience. One group, however, proved less susceptible to this powerful aura—the new generation of young men now filling the royal court. To them, the queen was showing her age. They respected her accomplishments, but they saw her more as a domineering mother figure. England was a rising power. These young men yearned to make a name for themselves on the battlefield and so earn public acclaim. Yet Elizabeth continually thwarted this desire. She refused to finance a large-scale campaign to finish off Philip, or to aid the French in their fight against the Spanish. They saw her as tired and felt it was time for their spirited, masculine generation to lead England. And the young man who came to epitomize this new spirit was Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Born in 1566, Essex was handsome and high-strung. He knew the queen had a weakness for young men, and he quickly charmed her, becoming her new favorite.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  When you came home that night, after Lan and I had eaten our share of tea-rice, we all walked the forty minutes it took to get to the C-Town off New Britain Avenue. It was near closing and the aisles were empty. You wanted to buy oxtail, to make bún bò huế for the cold winter week ahead of us. Lan and I stood beside you at the butcher counter, holding hands, as you searched the blocks of marbled flesh in the glass case. Not seeing the tails, you waved to the man behind the counter. When he asked if he could help, you paused for too long before saying, in Vietnamese, “Đuôi bò. Anh có đuôi bò không?” His eyes flicked over each of our faces and asked again, leaning closer. Lan’s hand twitched in my grip. Floundering, you placed your index finger at the small of your back, turned slightly, so the man could see your backside, then wiggled your finger while making mooing sounds. With your other hand, you made a pair of horns above your head. You moved, carefully twisting and gyrating so he could recognize each piece of this performance: horns, tail, ox. But he only laughed, his hand over his mouth at first, then louder, booming. The sweat on your forehead caught the fluorescent light. A middle-aged woman, carrying a box of Lucky Charms, shuffled past us, suppressing a smile. You worried a molar with your tongue, your cheek bulging. You were drowning, it seemed, in air. You tried French, pieces of which remained from your childhood. “Derrière de vache!” you shouted, the veins in your neck showing. By way of reply the man called to the back room, where a shorter man with darker features emerged and spoke to you in Spanish. Lan dropped my hand and joined you—mother and daughter twirling and mooing in circles, Lan giggling the whole time. The men roared, slapping the counter, their teeth showing huge and white. You turned to me, your face wet, pleading. “Tell them. Go ahead and tell them what we need.” I didn’t know that oxtail was called oxtail. I shook my head, shame welling inside me. The men stared, their chortling now reduced to bewildered concern. The store was closing. One of them asked again, head lowered, sincere. But we turned from them. We abandoned the oxtail, the bún bò huế. You grabbed a loaf of Wonder Bread and a jar of mayonnaise. None of us spoke as we checked out, our words suddenly wrong everywhere, even in our mouths. In line, among the candy bars and magazines, was a tray of mood rings. You picked one up between your fingers and, after checking the price, took three—one for each of us. “Đẹp quá,” you said after a while, barely audible. “Đẹp quá.”

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  338 The History of Christianity II õ But getting rid of the missionaries was not sufficient to squelch Chinese Christianity. The communists saw that to consolidate their hold on this vast country, they needed to win the loyalty, or at least gain great influence over, native clergy. From the communist perspective, if they couldn’t extinguish Christianity, then the next best thing would be to herd as many believers as possible into a church controlled entirely by the government. õ In 1951, the party founded a new organization that was eventually called the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. They later set up a different organization to try to control the country’s Catholics, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION õ The ugliest period in modern Chinese history was the Cultural Revolution. Mao had become convinced that capitalists, counterrevolutionaries, intellectuals with Western ideas, and various other “enemies of the people” were lurking all around. õ In 1966, he called for loyal communists to purge these poisons from the country. Young people in particular raced to take up this call— they formed groups of vigilantes called Red Guards. They particularly preyed on professors and intellectuals, often dragging them out of their homes into the street for a “struggle session” that usually turned into torture and public humiliation. õ In 1968 Mao decided the Red Guards had too much power and dismantled the movement. He sent millions of bourgeois intellectuals to labor camps and farms, where the wholesome life of the revolutionary peasant was supposed to purify their minds. õ During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, the government banned all religion—even the Three-Self Movement. The journalist David Aikman tracked down a number of Christian survivors of these years and recorded their stories in a book called 339Lecture 34—Chinese Christianity: Missionaries to Mao Jesus in Beijing . He writes about one Christian in Henan province named Zhang Rongliang, who in 1974 was denounced by elders in his own church. õ Zhang actually got along with the local communist officials, and at first they tried to just talk him into renouncing Christianity so they could let him go free. But he wouldn’t do it. Officials put his trial, or struggle, on closed-circuit television and broadcast it into local schools as a warning to children. The police cuffed him, beat him with batons, charged him with “counterrevolution under the guise of religion,” and shipped him off to a labor camp.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I told the doctor I was afraid of the grownup male patients on the ward. I said I was sure my parents were disappointed in me, but I wanted to make them happy and proud of me. I told him I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, but if I could just go home, Pd do whatever he thought I should. I didn’t mean it, but I said it. He nodded, but he seemed mote interested in keeping his pipe lit than in me. Two days later, my parents appeared on the ward and took me home. We didn’t speak about what had happened. I concentrated on running away, waiting for the right moment. I had to agree to see the shrink once a week. I hoped I wouldn’t have to see him for long, but the appointments continued for several yeats. I remember the exact day the shrink dropped the bombshell: he and my parents had agreed charm school would help me a lot. The date is etched in my mind. November 23, 1963. I walked out of his office in a daze. The humiliation of charm school seemed more than I could bear. I might have killed myself if I could have figured out a painless route. Everyone else seemed to be walking around equally as stunned. When I got home my parents had the television turned up loud and an announcer reported that the president had been shot in Dallas. It was the first time I’d ever seen my father cry. The whole world was out of control. I closed my bedroom door and fell asleep in order to escape. I didn’t think I could survive the spotlight of charm school illuminating my shameful differences. But somehow I got through it. My face burned with humiliation and anger each time I had to pivot on the runway in front of the whole class, over and over again. Charm school finally taught me once and for all that I wasn’t pretty, wasn’t feminine, and would never be graceful. The motto of the school was Every gir/ who enters leaves a lady. | was the exception. | Just when it seemed like it couldn’t get worse I noticed my breasts were growing. Menstruation didn’t bother me. Unless I bled all over myself it was a private thing between me and my body. But breasts! Boys hung out of car windows and yelled vulgar things at me. Mr. Singer at the pharmacy stared at my breasts as he rang up my candy purchases. I quit the volleyball and track teams because I hated how my breasts hurt when I jumped or ran. I liked how my body was before puberty. Somehow I thought it would never change, not like this!

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  I’d forgotten to sign up for housing and after a week sleeping in my car Doug offers me the empty bed. Sam comes by for a shower, leaves his toothbrush, a change of clothes. The weather turns. Sam hooks up with a teenage girl who’s likely a runaway. One night it makes no sense to send them out into the snow to bicycle back to the camper. They curl up behind our desks, and that’s where they sleep for a few months, at least until the girl goes back home. When Sam isn’t sleeping on our floor he’ll dress up in a skeleton suit and stand at the trashbarrels in the dining common, a sign taped to the wall behind him giving statistics on world hunger, on how many children have died that day. He’ll silently reach into the trashbarrels and pull out the food others toss, eat it with his hands, there in his skeleton suit. Emily and I stay together for six months, until the school year ends and we drift back to our hometowns. That summer I live on the boat with Phil and work for the gangsters. Once, after having been “missing” for a few weeks, Tony lines all the local misfits who work for him up on his porch. Holding a wad of hundreds, he asks each of us what he owes. For the last couple months I’ve been wiring the lights around his new swimming pool. When he gets to me I say, Eight hundred , which I figure is about right. Tony laughs, shakes his head, looks at the carpenter, rolls his eyes—Eight hundred ? He reaches out, pinches my cheek, slaps it lightly, still laughing— Eight fuckin’ hundred dollars? The carpenter shrugs. The fuckin’ kid doesn’t think I’ll kill him , Tony mutters, then peels off eight bills. That November, back at school, Emily’s now with someone else, and one night we’re all at a party at his apartment. Emily’s telling a story about a friend of her family’s, an eccentric guy who comes to their house for Christmas and Thanksgiving. I’m half listening, eavesdropping from another conversation. Emily’s generally soft-spoken, but telling this story animates her. This guy approaches a woman in a bar and begins chatting her up. After a while the woman says, You don’t even know who I am, do you? And he, thinking she might be famous, says, Should I? She answers, Well, you should, you bastard, you married me. The story seems somehow packaged, unlikely, the punch line about being so out of it you try to pick up your ex-wife too wacky. Emily’s telling the story, in part, as a cautionary tale, of the fate that awaits us as would-be writers—this guy calls himself a poet. When Emily says the man’s name I listen harder. When she says he’s a failed writer I down more of my beer. This eccentric friend had related the story of encountering his ex-wife around her family’s dinner table.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ In May of 1498, he and two of his closest allies were marched out to the scaffolding in downtown Florence and stripped of their clerical robes. The executioners shaved their heads and the backs of their hands, a symbolic act of real degradation. Then, the friars were hanged. õ Their executioners used gunpowder to stoke a huge bonfire around the gallows and burned their bodies to ashes. They tossed the ashes in the river so that no sign would be left of the heretic and his allies— although some of Savonarola’s most devoted followers collected a few ashes from the water. õ From the perspective of the 21st century, the deaths of Savonarola and Pico can be hard to comprehend. How could an eccentric preacher and a philosopher become so dangerous that they deserved such brutal fates? But this is the last great lesson of their story: The world of ideas is inseparable from the realities of power. SUGGESTED READING Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Martines, Fire in the City. Ozment, The Age of Reform. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä Why is it so hard to define religion? Do you find one definition more persuasive than others? ä Who posed a more dangerous threat to the church’s status quo: Savonarola or Pico della Mirandola? ä Do you see the attitudes of Savonarola and Pico among Christians today? Lecture 1—Prophets of Reform before Protestantism 11 LECTURE 2 LUTHER AND THE DAWN OF PROTESTANTISM The Reformation was a set of debates, as well as violent wars, over how to reform or change Christianity. It was a fight about the authority of the church, the authority of the individual, and how both of those relate to the authority of secular government. It was a fight over the authority of church tradition as opposed to the authority of the Bible and personal religious experience. And it was a debate between those who wanted to resolve these fights by following the rules of the Roman Catholic Church and slowly pushing for change, and those who got fed up and wanted out. 12

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Actually in the bed, its wide featureless face absurdly crowned by a panama hat, lay a full-sized human effigy. It was only the rudimentary dummy that schoolboys make to suggest their sleeping forms in the near-darkness of an abandoned dorm, but in the light of a summer afternoon the bunched-up bedding and clothes of which it consisted were revealed as glaringly offensive. Its lolling pillow of a head was meant not to deceive but to warn. Looped around it, and displayed over the bedcover, was an Old Wykehamist tie, ineptly knotted, which made me remember, for a second, how my mother used to stand behind me at the mirror each morning to knot my tie when I was a little boy. Red rose petals were scattered artistically around, and where the heart of the effigy might have been there was a rust-red stain on the white bedspread that did resemble the colour of long-dried blood. I reached for a little bottle on the bedside table: it was vanilla essence. After we’d looked at it for a bit, I let Charles turn, and sit down on the edge of the bed, and then yanked the doll apart, casting its hat on to an armchair and rolling up the tie. ‘You recognise that tie,’ said Charles, with surprising detachment. I smiled. ‘What a pickle, eh?’ And indeed it was the general state of the room, in which a fight had clearly taken place, that had shocked me when I first entered it. The composition on the bed had been in bizarre, attentive contrast to the slewed pictures, toppled knick-knacks and pillaged drawers of the rest of the room. ‘I can’t take another of these melodramas,’ Charles said. Though I was deeply curious, I felt a strong reluctance to ask Charles what had taken place, or to probe the humiliation he had undergone. I helped him to take off his jacket and shoes, and laid him down on the pillow that had recently imitated his head. As if entranced, he was asleep within seconds. 5The first instalment of Charles’s papers was crammed into an old briefcase. Carrying it on the Underground, I felt like a young schoolmaster, taking home a bag bulging with books and essays. It was heavy, as I lolled in the crowded train, holding it by its charred leather handle, which had been strengthened with black insulating tape and was slightly sticky to the touch.