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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  He called when he said he would, was never late, and put a lot of thought into planning their dates. “He actually paid attention to what I said. He asked me questions about myself and remembered the answers. I was used to a scene where you can have sex with someone for six months and never even broach the subject of what that might mean or where it might be going. Ray didn’t play that game. He liked me and wasn’t afraid to say so.” Ray’s openness, his consistency, and his emotional generosity brought Joni a sense of peace and security she had never known in a romantic relationship. She found his ability to intuit her needs positively enchanting, and the fact that he seemed to have so few needs of his own was also a plus. “What an irresistible lure, having a man who can anticipate your needs,” I said. “Tell me, how long did it last?” “Not long enough. I feel like I’m constantly having to ask Ray for everything these days; sometimes I have to ask him twice. I can’t stand it,” she answers. “Ah, cowboys to the rescue. You don’t even have to ask them once.” Over the course of therapy, I am repeatedly struck by the force of Joni’s aversion to any expression of need. There’s something extreme about how humiliated and subjugated the need for care leaves her feeling, and I can see how her fantasies of cowboys tap right into this core emotional issue. In her colorful erotic tales, she’s able to be at the mercy of others with none of the debilitating powerlessness she dreads. This particular script (and indeed each of her other fantasies) allows her to circumvent the dangers of dependence: the helplessness, the fury, the humiliations. Moreover—and this is important—she is desired for the very qualities that she most loathes about herself in reality. In the refuge of her mind she transforms passivity into erotic delight; power becomes an expression of care, and risk is reunited with safety. Joni is overcome by the consequences of dependence on all fronts: her own neediness is abject, and the emotional needs of others are likewise overwhelming. She resolves this by peopling her fantasies with caricatures of machismo. These are forceful men who have no weaknesses and need no care. These men don’t ask; they take. Joni is thus relieved of the social imperative of female caretaking, and her own carefree sexual greed is liberated. Behind the Cowboy’s Mask Erotic fantasies have an uncanny ability to resolve more than one issue at a time. While Joni’s fantasies certainly speak to her individual conflicts, they also answer a cultural taboo against women’s sexuality in general. Massive investments have been made throughout history to ensure that female sexual desire is kept in check.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  There are grassy areas along that part of the boulevard, little gardens set back from the lights of the street, and so I didn’t see S. and his friends at first, they were gathered some distance from the pavement. A woman was standing and waving her arms above her head, that was what caught my attention, and as I approached I saw that S. was sitting on the ground, leaning into K., who had both her arms around him, and that he was holding something to his face. They had piled their signs in the grass beside them, what was left of their signs, they had all been torn to pieces. What happened, I asked the woman who had waved me over, and she answered in English, Some assholes showed up, she said, some of those assholes in masks, they grabbed our signs from us, and they hit S., she went on, when he tried to stop them they knocked him down. All these police and none of them did anything, she said, they’re assholes too, when we went to find them they said they would send someone but that was twenty minutes ago. They don’t care what happened to us, we’ve been calling them but they just keep telling us to wait. She motioned to a man standing to one side, who was gesturing with his free hand while he spoke quickly into his phone. I’m so sorry, I said, do you need anything, is there anything I can do, but she shrugged this away. Does S. need a doctor, I asked, should we take him, but he cut me off, Ne, he said loudly, not moving or lowering his hand from his eye, he was pressing a bag of ice to it, I saw now, and the woman shrugged again. The cowards, the woman said, they were here and then they were gone, in their stupid masks. And what they said to us, they told us we were spreading trash, there are children here, they said, they said we were being—and she paused, looking at the others as she said bezsramni, shameless. Indecent, K. said then, they said we were indecent, they called us dirty queers. She spoke quietly, despite the noise of the protests, she spoke without anger or any trace of emotion; I could see why her children found her such a comfort.

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

  WHEN CATHERINE HIT PUBERTY SHE was fifty pounds overweight. Sexually invisible, repeatedly rejected, she was the “ugly sidekick” left guarding the door while her girlfriends made out on the other side of it. Today she is a beautiful woman, married for almost fifteen years. She and her husband play out a fantasy in which she is a high-priced prostitute. Men pay top dollar for the pleasure of her company—they want her so much they’re willing to spend a small fortune and risk their jobs and marriages for a little bit of her time. The more outrageous their transgressions, the greater her value. Catherine’s past humiliations are vindicated by the men who now can’t walk past her without marveling. In her theater of the surreal she triumphantly exacts revenge for the pains and frustrations of her adolescence. Daryl’s wife complains, “He can’t even decide on a restaurant, and he wants to tie me up? What’s that about?” The difficulty Daryl feels about asserting himself in his daily life is spectacularly remediated in his domination fantasies. In the highly ritualized and consensual choreography of bondage and domination, Daryl’s aggression finds safe expression. His wants are honored, his fear of going too far is contained, and his masculine power brings others pleasure rather than pain. Lucas, an unabashedly gay man who grew up in a small town in southern Illinois, spent years passing for straight, terrified that he’d be found out. He played high school football and even had sex with a cheerleader because she approached him in a crowd and he knew that turning her down would raise suspicions about his sexuality. Now in his thirties, he says, “I got the hell out of that town so I could be openly gay without it threatening my life. And now I find myself walking the nude beach at Aquinnah pretending to be straight so some guy can try to turn me. I’ll be straight, but on my terms. Today I only act straight when I think it’ll get me laid. Lucky for me, so many gay men get off on turning a straight guy that I get laid all the time!” Emir is a one-woman man, and has been his whole life. “I’ve always had girlfriends, real girlfriends, women I’ve loved whom I’ve stayed with for years. That’s me. I’ve been with Althea for five years now. We used to have a great sex life, but since we had a baby six months ago she doesn’t want sex nearly as often as she used to. I have to deploy my whole seductive arsenal to convince her, and sometimes even that doesn’t work. Most of the time I take care of myself.” Emir’s favorite fantasy is having sex with two women at once. “I like the idea of all that attention.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  “As a matter of fact,” the other voice went on, “if you do tie her up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it, that’s no good either. You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.” Then they made O get up and were on the verge of untying her, probably in order to attach her to some pole or wall, when someone protested that he wanted to take her first, right there on the spot. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone’s knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally, they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire. She could hear glasses being filled and the sound of the men drinking, and the scraping of chairs. They put some more wood on the fire. All of a sudden they removed her blindfold. The large room, the walls of which were lined with bookcases, was dimly lit by a single wall lamp and by the light of the fire, which was beginning to burn more brightly. Two of the men were standing and smoking. Another was seated, a riding crop on his knees, and the one leaning over her fondling her breast was her lover. All four of them had taken her, and she had not been able to distinguish him from the others. They explained to her that this was how it would always be, as long as she was in the château, that she would see the faces of those who violated or tormented her, but never at night, and she would never know which ones had been responsible for the worst. The same would be true when she was whipped, except that they wanted her to see herself being whipped, and so this once she would not be blindfolded. They, on the other hand, would don their masks, and she would no longer be able to tell them apart.

• From Story of O (1954)

  “I leave you to Sir Stephen,” René then said. “Remain the way you are, he’ll dismiss you when he sees fit.” How often had she remained like this at Roissy, on her knees, offered to one and all? But then she had always had her hands bound together by the bracelets, a happy prisoner upon whom everything was imposed and from whom nothing was asked. Here it was through her own free will that she remained half-naked, whereas a single gesture, the same that would have sufficed to bring her back to her feet, would also have sufficed to cover her. Her promise bound her as much as had the leather bracelets and chains. Was it only the promise? And however humiliated she was, or rather because she had been humiliated, was it not somehow pleasant to be esteemed only for her humiliation, for the meekness with which she surrendered, for the obedient way in which she opened? With René gone, Sir Stephen having escorted him to the door, she waited thus alone, motionless, feeling more exposed in the solitude and more prostituted by the wait than she had ever felt before, when they were there. The gray and yellow silk of the sofa was smooth to her cheek; through her nylon stockings she felt, below her knees, the thick wool rug, and along the full length of her left thigh, the warmth from the fireplace hearth, for Sir Stephen had added three logs which were blazing noisily. Above a chest of drawers, an antique clock ticked so quietly that it was only audible when everything around was silent. O listened carefully, thinking how absurd her position was in this civilized, tasteful living room. Through the Venetian blinds could be heard the sleepy rumbling of Paris after midnight. In the light of day, tomorrow morning, would she recognize the spot on the sofa cushion where she had laid her head? Would she ever return, in broad daylight, to this same living room, would she ever be treated in the same way here? Sir Stephen was apparently in no hurry to return, and O, who had waited so submissively for the strangers at Roissy to take their pleasure, now felt a lump rise in her throat at the idea that in one minute, in ten minutes, he would again put his hands on her. But it was not exactly as she had imagined it.

• From Story of O (1954)

  When Natalie came back, she set the box down on the bed, opened it, and one by one removed the objects inside, unwrapping the paper in which they were packed, and handing them to Sir Stephen. They were masks, a combination headpiece and mask; it was obvious they had been made to cover the entire head, with the exception of the mouth and chin—and of course the slits for eyes. Sparrow-hawk, falcon, owl, fox, lion, bull: nothing but animal masks, but scaled to the size of the human head, made of real fur and feathers, and eye crowned with lashes when the actual animal had lashes (as the lion), and with the pelts or feathers descending to the shoulders of the person wearing them. To make the mask fit snugly along the upper lips (there was an orifice for each nostril) and along both cheeks, all one had to do was adjust a fairly loose strap concealed inside this cope-like affair which hung down the back. A frame made of molded, hardened cardboard located between the outside facing and the inner lining of skin, kept the shape of the mask rigid. In front of the full-length mirror, O tried on each of the masks. The most striking, and the one she thought transformed her most and was also most natural, was one of the owl masks (there were two), no doubt because it was composed of tan and tawny feathers whose color blended beautifully with her tan; the cope of feathers almost completely concealed her shoulders, descending half way down her back and, in front, to the nascent curve of her breasts. Sir Stephen had her rub the lipstick from her lips, then said to her as she took off the mask: “All right, you’ll be an owl for the Commander. But O, and I hope you forgive me, you’ll be taken on a leash. Natalie, go look in the top drawer of my desk, you’ll find a chain and a pair of pliers.” Natalie came back with the chain and pliers, which Sir Stephen used to force open the last link, fastened it to the second ring that O was wearing in her loins, then forced it closed again. The chain, similar to those used for dogs—in fact that was what it was—was between four and five feet long, with a leather strap on one end. After O had again donned the mask, Sir Stephen told Natalie to take the end of the chain and walk around the room, ahead of O. Three times Natalie paraded around the room, trailing O behind her by the rings, O being naked and masked. “Well, I must say,” Sir Stephen remarked, “the Commander was right, all the hair will have to be removed. But that can wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile, keep your chain on.”

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

  In retrospect, she realizes that this was an attempt to escape the problematic distribution of needs and resources that ruled the family’s emotional economy. Over the years she has developed a network of solid friendships that have nurtured her in many ways. But in the end, neither boarding school, nor her career, nor alcohol, nor even her friends have protected her from the inescapable dependency or from the quagmire of vulnerabilities that intimate love entails. Act II: Enter Ray. In his own words, Ray is a meat-and-potatoes man. He’s the happy product of successful male socialization: independent, self- reliant, and able to handle his own problems. He was not like the guys Joni usually dated—struggling, self-absorbed, emotionally undependable, alcoholic artists who weaseled out of relationships by saying things like, “Let’s not try to define this; can’t we just see where it goes?” and “It’s because I like you that I can’t be with you.” Ray, on the other hand, made it clear that he was interested. He called when he said he would, was never late, and put a lot of thought into planning their dates. “He actually paid attention to what I said. He asked me questions about myself and remembered the answers. I was used to a scene where you can have sex with someone for six months and never even broach the subject of what that might mean or where it might be going. Ray didn’t play that game. He liked me and wasn’t afraid to say so.” Ray’s openness, his consistency, and his emotional generosity brought Joni a sense of peace and security she had never known in a romantic relationship. She found his ability to intuit her needs positively enchanting, and the fact that he seemed to have so few needs of his own was also a plus. “What an irresistible lure, having a man who can anticipate your needs,” I said. “Tell me, how long did it last?” “Not long enough. I feel like I’m constantly having to ask Ray for everything these days; sometimes I have to ask him twice. I can’t stand it,” she answers. “Ah, cowboys to the rescue. You don’t even have to ask them once.” Over the course of therapy, I am repeatedly struck by the force of Joni’s aversion to any expression of need. There’s something extreme about how humiliated and subjugated the need for care leaves her feeling, and I can see how her fantasies of cowboys tap right into this core emotional issue.

• From Story of O (1954)

  In a tiny private dining room of the La Pérouse restaurant, along the quays of the Left Bank, a room on the third floor whose dark walls were brightened by Watteau-like figures in pastel colors who resembled actors of the puppet theater, O was ensconced alone on the sofa, with one of Sir Stephen’s friends in an armchair to her right, another to her left, and Sir Stephen across from her. She remembered already having seen one of the men at Roissy, but she could not recall having been taken by him. The other was a tall, red-haired boy with gray eyes, who could not have been more than twenty-five. In two words, Sir Stephen told them why he had invited O, and what she was. Listening to him, O was once again astonished at the coarseness of his language. But then, how did she expect to be referred to, if not as a whore, a girl who, in the presence of three men (not to mention the restaurant waiters who kept trooping in and out, since luncheon was still being served) would open her bodice to bare her breasts, the tips of which had been reddened with lipstick, as they could see, as they could also see from the purple furrows across her milk-white skin that she had been flogged? The meal went on for a long time, and the two Englishmen drank a great deal. Over coffee, when the liqueurs had been served, Sir Stephen pushed the table back against the opposite wall and, after having lifted her skirt to show his friends how O was branded and in irons, left her to them. The man she had met at Roissy wasted no time with her: without leaving his armchair, without even touching her with his fingertips, he ordered her to kneel down in front of him, take him and caress his sex until he discharged in her mouth. After which, he made her straighten out his clothing, and then he left. But the red-haired lad, who had been completely overwhelmed by O’s submissiveness and meek surrender, by her irons and the welts which he had glimpsed on her body, took her by the hand instead of throwing himself upon her as she had expected, and descended the stairs, paying not the slightest heed to the sly smiles of the waiters and, after hailing a taxi, took her back to his hotel room. He did not let her go till nightfall, after having frantically plowed her fore and aft, both of which he bruised and belabored unmercifully, he being of an uncommon size and rigidity and, what is more, being totally intoxicated by the sudden freedom granted him to penetrate a woman doubly and be embraced by her in the way he had seen her ordered to a short while before (something he had never before dared ask of anyone).

• From Story of O (1954)

  The following day, when O arrived at Sir Stephen’s at two o’clock in answer to his summons, she found him looking older and his face careworn. “Eric has fallen head over heels in love with you, O,” he told her. “This morning he called on me and begged me to grant you your freedom. He told me he wants to marry you. He wants to save you. You see how I treat you if you’re mine, O, and if you are mine you have no right to refuse my commands; but you also know that you are always free to choose not to be mine. I told him so. He’s coming back here at three.” O burst out laughing. “Isn’t it a little late?” she said. “You’re both quite mad. If Eric had not come by this morning, what would you have done with me this afternoon? We would have gone for a walk, nothing more? Then let’s go for a walk. Or perhaps you would not have summoned me this afternoon? In that case I’ll leave.…” “No,” Sir Stephen broke in, “I would have called you, but not to go for a walk. I wanted …” “Go on, say it.” “Come, it will be simpler to show you.” He got up and opened a door in the wall opposite the fireplace, a door identical to the one into his office. O had always thought that the door led into a closet which was no longer used. She saw a tiny bedroom, newly painted, and hung with dark red silk. Half of the room was occupied by a rounded stage flanked by two columns, identical to the stage in the music room at Samois. “The walls and ceiling are lined with cork, are they not?” O said. “And the door is padded, and you’ve had a double window installed?” Sir Stephen nodded. “But since when has all this been done?” O said. “Since you’ve been back.” “Then why? …” “Why did I wait until today? Because I first wanted to hand you over to other men. Now I shall punish you for it. I’ve never punished you, O.” “But I belong to you,” O said. “Punish me. When Eric comes …” An hour later, when he was shown a grotesquely bound and spread-eagled O strapped to the two columns, the boy blanched, mumbled something and disappeared. O thought she would never see him again. She ran into him again at Roissy, at the end of September, and he had her consigned to him for three days in a row, during which he savagely abused and mistreated her.

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

  For Coral’s part, she may never like Jed’s sexual kinks, but I encourage her to be open to understanding them. By holding court, judging him, and failing to grasp his red-light tastes, she’s condemned to feeling demeaned. Sadly, she fails to see that Jed is actually taking a big risk by trusting her to enter the primal bog of his erotic self. Rebalancing the “Dominant” Culture Most fans of kinky sex, at least those I’ve encountered, are drawn by the erotics of power and not, as it may appear to an outsider, by violence or pain. In fact, the carefully negotiated contracts, which specify what can and cannot be done, by whom, to whom, and for how long, are meant to guarantee both pleasure and safety. You submit only as much as you’re willing; you dominate only as far as you’re allowed. In the parallel universe of sex, power bids become a plaything, an experiment, a way to temporarily experience relations we’re loath to inhabit in real life. If, in our daily life, we shun dependence, in our erotic life we might welcome it. If it is our aggression that makes us twitch with discomfort, sexual enactments can permit a safe experience of power. Whether our real-life aversion is to submission, as it is for Elizabeth, or to autonomy, as it is for Jed, the sexual drama can offer catharsis. For years S-M and D-S (domination and submission) were fringe behaviors that roamed on the outskirts of conventional sexuality. They were primarily a practice of gay men, who tended to be more successful than heterosexuals at isolating sexual aggression for the purpose of pleasure (as the sociologist Anthony Giddens notes). In recent years these marginal practices have moved into the mainstream. A growing number of citizens in the early twenty-first century—gay and straight, male and female, left and right, urban and suburban—get their sexual kicks from giving and taking orders. There are far too many of them to fit a minority psychological profile. The social critic Camille Paglia sees this rise in domination and submission as a collective fantasy that tweaks the rough spots of our egalitarian culture. It seems to me that rituals of domination and submission are a subversive way to put one over on a society that glorifies control, belittles dependency, and demands equality. In cultures where these values are at a premium—America, for example—we find more and more people seeking to give up control, revel in dependency, and recognize the very inequities no one wants to talk about. Seen in this light, sex clubs are havens of acceptance for what society rejects. This explicit exchange of power, which transfers freely and consensually from one party to another, is a far cry from the rigid distribution of power that pervades our society. In real life, power is much harder to negotiate, and almost impossible either to acquire or to relinquish. No one wants to give up her piece of the pie.

• From Story of O (1954)

  He also pointed out to her that she had never been possessed in his presence by René (or by anyone else), as she had been by him in René’s presence (and at Roissy by a whole host of others). From this she should not conclude that René would be the only one to humiliate her by handing her over to a man who did not love her—and perhaps derive pleasure from it—in the presence of a man who did. (He went on at such length, and with such cruelty—she soon would open her thighs and back, and her mouth, to those of his friends who, once they had met her, might desire her—that O suspected that this coarseness was aimed as much at himself as it was at her, and the only thing she remembered was the end of the sentence: in the presence of a man who did love her. What more did she want in the way of a confession?) What was more, he would bring her back to Roissy sometime in the course of the summer. Hadn’t it ever struck her as surprising, this isolation in which first René, then he, had kept her? They were the only men she saw, either together, or one after the other. Whenever Sir Stephen had invited people to his apartment on the rue de Poitiers, O was never invited. She had never lunched or dined at his place. Nor had René ever introduced her to any of his friends, except for Sir Stephen. In all probability he would continue to keep her in the background, for to Sir Stephen was henceforth reserved the privilege of doing as he liked with her. But she should not get the idea that she belonged to him, that she would be detained more legally; on the contrary. (But what hurt and wounded O most was the realization that Sir Stephen was going to treat her in exactly the same way René had, in the same, identical way.) The iron and gold ring that she was wearing on her left hand—and did she recall that the ring had been chosen so tight-fitting that they had had to force it on her ring finger? she could not take it off—that ring was the sign that she was a slave, but one who was common property. It had been merely by chance that, since this past autumn, she had not met any Roissy members who might have noticed her irons, or revealed that they had noticed them. The word irons, used in the plural, which she had taken to be an equivocal term when Sir Stephen had told her that irons were becoming to her, had in no wise been equivocal; it had been a mode of recognition, a password. Sir Stephen had not had to use the second formula: namely, whose irons was she wearing? But if today this question were asked of O, what would she reply? O hesitated. “René’s and yours,” she said.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But I had to confess I was wrong. Sometimes with Bissor — who was the only one of the lycée boys whose standard of living was not beyond my own means — I went to the movies on Saturdays. More than anything else, it was the way we spent our leisure time that showed up the difference between ourselves and our schoolmates; we used to go to the Kursaal which they considered a dive, having never set dainty foot there. Certainly, they were not altogether wrong. In order to get in for the three o’clock show, we had to queue up at one, be jostled and elbowed and attacked by kids of our own age, older boys, and even adults, until the box office opened. Often the queue grew too long and dissolved into sudden confusion; by the time things had straightened out, we had lost our places. Once, our tickets were torn out of my hand before I could identify the thief; Bissor in his rage couldn’t refrain from railing at me while I burst into tears. So we went to complain to the manager and he allowed us into the theater despite his mistrust. On one of our movie Saturdays, Bissor was unexpectedly called in for an additional assignment on his newspaper route. We decided that I’d go alone to buy the tickets and leave one with the cashier for Bissor to pick up as soon as he was free to join me. It was anguish for me to stand in line without Bissor; I was a weakling, and I don’t know how many humiliations his presence saved me. I got to the Kursaal long before the box office opened, but there was already a big crowd. To my delight, a policeman was there lording it over the whole square. The Sicilian laborers who composed our aristocracy, with slicked-down hair and bright ties; the ragged bootblacks who were its lowest class and had gathered the price of a ticket by collecting cigarette butts; the fritter-vendors in their greasy fezzes; the Maltese cabbies with their cap visors coquettishly broken; the porters with professional ropes thrown over their shoulders; all these people, so brutal and dishonest in past weeks, were now miraculously orderly, almost polite, waiting under the eyes of the Mohammedan policeman, an enormous fellow with a pock-marked face and a pointed black mustache. I felt happy being where I was: the façade of the Kursaal, built to look like a dragon’s head, spat out its flames; there were colored posters glued to the monster’s cheeks, and the crowd itself was disturbing but full of living joy; all this contributed to give me each time the same glow of happiness. On this particular day, there was also the promise of security.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The posters on the dragon’s cheeks announced two Tom Mix films and one Rin-Tin-Tin. We were used to this, but we never tired of exulting in the triumphs of our wonderful cowboy. We joined him in his pursuit of the stagecoach that contained the gold and the exquisite blond heroine and was being driven away by bandits. How could one remain a passive spectator when faced with such sublime excitements? We threw ourselves into the scuffles and added to the rhythm of the galloping horses by stamping our feet on the floor; we pulled at the reins with our hero and roared with joy or disappointment. For a few minutes, we all forgot our individual fears and hatreds and became a single unit in the noisy expression of our emotions. We entered the hall slowly, quietly. I was sorry the policeman had not come in with us, because the crowd’s savagery soon revealed itself again. My seat was in the second row and so close to the screen that I would certainly come away with an aching back, a headache, and a stiff neck. The Kursaal, in spite of its majestic name, smelled of wine. But the magic of its silver screen, brightened by a frame of darkness, and the mystery of its little blue lights, even its odor — a special mixture of disinfectant, damp, and human emanations — made me ecstatic. The impatient audience was already overexcited, stamped rhythmically on the floor and began to whistle. But the projecting staff was used to their outbursts and ignored the cries of: “Come on! Let’s go! We want the picture! Give us our money back!” Soon, however, the fickle occupants of the reserved stalls lost interest in shouting and turned their energy on us, the Jews, who sat crowded together. A shower of beans and gourd seeds began to fall on my head. Because humiliation was my daily bread, I believed for a long time that all stories which tell of heroic action resulting from humiliation were either exaggerated or completely false. Our skin was thick and, if we weren’t stung too deeply, we could bear it: we could manage to continue enjoying ourselves, as people can who are pestered by flies. But, that day, the show was delayed and the ingenuity of our tormentors became excessively inventive and went beyond a mere sting. In the gloom, they had the bright idea of striking matches and tossing them over us. Our real fears delighted them and they roared with joy each time they threw a match. Meanwhile, we tried to save ourselves by ducking down in our seats and heard them call: “Kiki! Kiki!” — which is, for them, the nickname of all Jews. Sickened by my own impotence, crushed under the weight of blind and anonymous injustice, I could have burst into tears from disgust and rage.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Would my own success adopt the features of Monsieur Bismuth? A stout man, bald, with a shifty look in his eye, in an oak-paneled office with all the shelves full of leather-bound books? The school principal had been somewhat simple in his approval and admiration of the druggist’s successes, and had overlooked the spasms of his hands, his limping, his difficult inner struggle, his accent that he had only just managed to repress, his rejection of his whole identity. The day that I was at last daring enough to denounce the values of the middle class, the violence with which my sponsor defended them revealed to me how incapable he was of ever being a mere representative of this class, one who is undisturbed in his beliefs, through lack of any other awareness. “Let him be an example for you.” Never, I felt it that day, as I slowly walked back to our street, would I be able to be a druggist, to look at all like Monsieur Bismuth. To my pity for his infirmity, for his dreadful limping, there was now added, in spite of myself, some pride and contempt. Both my parents were tall and lithe, both of them of a strong and lively breed; I too, as a mere animal, gave promise of being well proportioned. Men who were small and fat made me laugh. But why were these unjust demands being made on me? Why was I expected, in exchange for a scholarship that covered the expenses of my studies, to abandon my dream that seemed to me still, at that time, to be so profound, so definitive? I understood nevertheless the terms of our agreement: if I wanted to become anything worthwhile, I would often have to walk along that silent passage. If I chose that path, I would have to accept... or cheat. Because I was being allowed to enter high school, I already thought I had won the battle. But I was beginning to find out, too, that the struggle had only just begun. PART TWO Alexandre Mordekhai Benillouche ~ 1. THE CITY ~ My name is Benillouche, Alexandre Mordekhai. How galling the smiles of my classmates! In our alley, and at the Alliance School, I hadn’t known how ridiculous, how revealing, my name could be. But at the French lycée I became aware of this at once. From then on, the mere sound of my own name humiliated me and made my pulse beat faster. Alexandre: brassy, glorious, a name given to me by my parents in recognition of the wonderful West and because it seemed to them to express their idea of Europe. My schoolmates sneered and blared “Alexandre” like a trumpet blast: Alexan-ndre! With all my strength, I then hated them and my name. I hated them, but I believed they were right, and I was furious with my parents for having chosen this stupid name for me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I saw this well one evening. As we had returned too late from work to eat by daylight, we had retired to our tents to sit around the lamps. I had left the scouts to join one of the other groups. We had started eating when one of the workers had such a violent fit of vomiting that he had no time to leave our little circle of light. The others noisily protested and insulted him. He got up with difficulty, went over to the second pole, and leaned against it; there, with his hands in the air and his head hanging, he went on throwing up spasmodically. Finally, he tottered to the door and, no sooner had he passed it than he doubled up, hugged his stomach, and fell howling to the ground, clawing at the earth in his pain. In the half-light on the parched grass, he was like a big animal struggling in the grip of an unknown disease. How could one relieve such an attack of appendicitis in a work-camp? Maddened by the pain, the sick man had become a child again and was calling his mother. I knelt beside him and tried to touch his stomach, but he pushed me away so brutally that I got up, disconcerted by his violent refusal. All the workers left their tents and stood helplessly around him. At last the camp tailor, an elderly man who had been forgotten here in spite of his large family, took him gently on his knees and nursed him like a child. The patient calmed down and I stood there, useless and humiliated, watching what I could not do myself, I mean take one of them in my arms and nurse and comfort him. Soon the others recovered their spirits and decided to cover his stomach with hot ashes and oil, believing that he must be suffering from intestinal trouble. I came out of my dream and protested, trying to explain that what he needed was ice and that they might kill him by treating appendicitis with heat. They would not believe me and insisted on the virtues of their traditional remedy which they had already applied, they said, most successfully. Too energetically, I answered that they had always been wrong, which angered them so that they decided to take no more notice of me. The moment was too grave for their usual show of superficial politeness toward me. I gave up the argument and went back to the tent where the scouts, their curiosity satisfied, had now settled down again. They spared me their irony, but their faces were eloquent and, as the sick man could no longer be heard and was no doubt soothed, they tried to while away the evening with part singing.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things, or the endurance of them, but liability to them, the expectation, indeed the very mention of them, that is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man. (In Verrem 16) The horrible personal and physical aspects of crucifixion were matched by the social, communal, and political meaning. This is important not just as the “context” for our understanding of the Jesus’s execution (as though the barbaric practice were just a dark backdrop to a theology produced from somewhere else), but as part of the very stuff of the theology itself. We might already have figured this out from the careful placing of Philippians 2.8b, thanatou de staurou, “even the death of the cross,” at the dead center of the poem that some think antedates Paul himself. As we shall see later, the first half of that poem is a downward journey, down to the lowest place to which a human being could sink with regard to pain or shame, personal fate or public perception. This was precisely the point. Those who crucified people did so because it was the sharpest and nastiest way of asserting their own absolute power and guaranteeing their victim’s absolute degradation. The early Christians did not suppose that Jesus might in principle have died in one of a number of ways (being stoned, killed in battle, assassinated with a dagger in a crowd, or whatever). Reading backward in the light of the subsequent events, they interpreted the crucifixion as part of the strange, dark divine plan in which the shame and horror were part of the intended meaning. Jesus, they believed, had gone to the lowest point possible for a human being, never mind a Jew, never mind one whose followers had hoped he was the coming king.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Another time, a sergeant’s intrusion in our activities hurt us cruelly. Mimouni was the son of a street vendor and, as he received no pocket money from home, had the bright idea of imitating his father by selling the goodies that came in his parcels. The news of his initiative spread like wildfire throughout the dormitories, and Mimouni’s bed soon became a real country grocery, while the owner patiently awaited customers. But the sergeant was informed of this by the kids from the institutions and was horrified. He burst into our room and struck Mimouni, who was terrified and couldn’t understand how it could be wrong to imitate his own father. Then the sergeant scolded all of us and, seeing that we failed to follow his line of argument, became even more angry. Almost speechless with rage, the soldier finally resorted to the decisive argument, and that is how, for the first time in my life, I encountered the device of explaining a defect or a fault in an individual by referring it back to his Jewish faith. The furious sergeant revealed to us indeed why this infamous idea had ever occurred to Mimouni: Mimouni was a Jew and all Jews are irresistibly drawn toward commerce. This was my first experience of what was to become a commonplace, and I thus learned to associate the idea of being Jewish with the idea of trade, so that I began to resent all Jews who dared engage in business.

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

  ready to bolt. His face was sickly white and he rolled his eyes like a spooked horse at the people moving past—derelicts, sailors, Indians in cowboy hats, winos doing their wino shuffle and shouting at enemies they alone could see. I was skittish myself. But it took more than a boy with his arms full of firepower to get the attention of these citizens. No one gave us a second look. The pawnbroker ignored me as I went back and forth to the car. I lined everything up on the top of the cabinet and waited. “That it?” she said. I said that was it. She came from around back and locked the door. Then she went behind the counter again. She ran her eyes over the goods. She picked up the double- barreled shotgun, broke it open, held the barrels up to the light and squinted through each of them in turn. Then she snapped the gun shut again, hard, too hard. It was painful to watch. I knew that gun, as I knew the other gun and the rifles. I had used them all and felt respect for them, and something more than respect. I did not like to see them handled as this woman handled them, slapping them around, levering and pumping the actions as if she were trying to break them. But I said nothing. I was unnerved by her big competent hands and her doll’s face that never changed expression, and most of all by her refusal to look at me. The longer she didn’t look at me the more I wanted her to. She made me feel insubstantial, which gave her the edge. And she knew what she was doing. She tore down every gun and rifle without hesitation, checked its barrel, checked its firing mechanism, and put it together again as fast as I could have. Once she’d looked at them all she shrugged and said, “I don’t need this truck.” “But you said you’d look at them.” She turned to the shelf behind her and started lifting things again. “I looked at them.” I stared at her back. She said, “I might be able to take them as pawn.” “Pawn? How much can I pawn them for?” She shrugged. “Five apiece.” “Five dollars? But that’s not fair!” She didn’t answer.

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

  JEROME. This was done that we might be delivered from those stripes of which it is said, Many stripes shall be to the wicked. (Ps. 32:10.) Also in the washing of Pilate’s hands all the works of the Gentiles are cleansed, and we are acquitted of all share in the impiety of the Jews. HILARY. At the desire of the Priests the populace chose Barabbas, which is interpreted ‘the son of a Father,’ thus shadowing forth the unbelief to come when Antichrist the son of sin should be preferred to Christ. RABANUS. Barabbas also, who headed a sedition among the people, is released to the Jews, that is the Devil, who to this day reigns among them, so that they cannot have peace. 27:27–3027. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. 28. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. 29. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, king of the Jews! 30. And they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. iii. 9.) After the lord’s trial comes His Passion, which Matthew thus begins, Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, &c. JEROME. He had been styled King of the Jews, and the Scribes and Priests had brought this charge against Him, that He claimed sovereignty over the Jewish nation; hence this mockery of the soldiers, taking away His own garments, they put on Him a scarlet cloak to represent that purple fringe which kings of old used to wear, for the diadem they put on Him a crown of thorns, and for the regal sceptre give Him a reed, and perform adoration to Him as to a king. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Hence we understand what Mark means by clothed him with purple; (Mark 15:17.) instead of the royal purple, this scarlet cloak was used in mockery; and there is a shade of purple which is very like scarlet. Or it may be, that Mark spoke of the purple which the cloak contained, though its colour was scarlet. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxxvii.) What should we henceforth care if any one insults us, after Christ has thus suffered? The utmost that cruel outrage could do was put in practice against Christ; and not one member only, but His whole body suffered injuries; His head from the crown, the reed, and the buffetings; His face which was spit upon; His cheeks which they smote with the palms of their hands; His whole body from the scourging, the stripping to put on the cloak, and the mockery of homage; His hands from the reed which they put into them in mimicry of a sceptre; as though they were afraid of omitting aught of indignity.

• 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.