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 Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “No, I know,” Carrie assures her. “I know. She is a man.” The way Carrie nodded, as if convincing herself, felt wrong to Katrina on an intuitive level. “Hold on, what are people saying exactly?” Carrie grimaced a little. “That he used to be a woman, you know, that he is a transgendered man.” “Oh fuck.” Katrina slumped back in her chair and stared at the drop-panel ceiling. Carrie put her hand on Katrina’s desk and leaned forward, concerned. “No! Katrina! He passes very well! It’s not a problem for anyone here. I only want your help in creating a supportive environment. We don’t have any policies yet for transgendered employees, so I think it’s important to do this correctly now...” Katrina’s first urge was to call Ames. But the situation was humiliating for them both. Katrina couldn’t face it on top of everything else. Instead, she thought to call Reese. “Okay,” cackles Iris, “so they think he was assigned female at birth? That he’s female-to-male?” “Yes,” says Katrina with a sigh, “that’s what I’m gathering.” Reese is enjoying this turn of events more than she should. “Can you blame them? That pretty boy. His beard hasn’t recovered from laser, and oh my god, even after that pert little nose got broken, it must be easy for them to imagine him as a trans guy.” “Amy isn’t that tall, right?” Thalia asks. “I’ve only seen pictures of her.” Each of the women in that room has some favorite complaint about her body, through which she can’t help but assess the bodies of other women. At six foot two, Thalia’s was her height. “Like five eight, maybe nine,” says Iris. “Perfect trans guy height.” “But you actually know trans men,” Iris corrects Thalia. Reese has to catch her laughter. This is really just so delicious. “Yeah, you know to clock a burly dude. Cis people are off looking for, like, Gwyneth Paltrow with a little mustache.” “In other words: They’re looking for Amy.” Iris’s face looks as pleased as Reese feels. Katrina’s interest has snagged on a different detail. “Burly?” “Oh yeah,” say the other women in emphatic unison. “If you want a manly man,” Iris counsels her, “find yourself a trans man. They’re the only ones you can be sure want to be that way, instead of compensating their way into it.” “Huh,” says Katrina. The sails of Katrina’s sexuality billow with new considerations. “Thalia likes the FTM4MTF romance,” Iris teases. “She’s always got a boy panting after her. She’s got a dancer right now.” “Really? Why didn’t you tell me?” Reese’s feelings get hurt when Thalia shares her love life with Iris but keeps it from her. “Lemme see a photo!” “Tonight is not about me,” Thalia snaps. “Fine.” Reese shifts focus back to Katrina to hide her miffed feelings. “So anyway, what advice do you want about this situation?”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I have seen many alliances like the one between Larry and his father. Typically these coalitions are formed during or after the breakup with the goal of punishing one of the parents. In these situations, the child is usually a preadolescent or young adolescent and the targeted parent is the one who sought the divorce. The ally parent, like Larry’s father, has presumably been hurt and humiliated by rejection. The child, like Larry, feels himself to be the family guardian—a gallant Horatio standing at the bridge who seeks to restore the family or help the sorrowful parent . At the breakup, one-fifth of the children in this study formed such alliances on behalf of one parent against the other. 5 They were very talented nabobs of negativism, often provocative and very rude. It was as if they had been granted a hunting license by the powerful authority of one parent (the ally who was teaching them to be good) to destroy the wicked parent in their sights. Pull your skirt down, you’re a whore, God will punish you, and so on. The mischief wrought by presumably well-bred children was astonishing. These bizarre alliances crop up like mushrooms over the postseparation landscape. They are powerful because they assuage the loneliness and hurt felt by one child and one parent. By becoming each other’s trusted companions-in-arms, they support one other. To their credit, children tended to make such alliances with the parent who seemed to be suffering most and needed help. Those children who participated were likely to be more insecure than the siblings who refused to get involved. Often the best candidate was a child like Larry who prior to the divorce was a loner with few friends and outside interests. Such youngsters find the parent’s attention dazzling. In following these alliances over the years, I find that the vast majority are short-lived and can even boomerang. Children are capricious allies. They soon become bored or ashamed of their mischief. Not one alliance lasted through adolescence and most crumbled within a year or two. Larry’s alliance with his father lasted somewhat longer because his mother was easily cowed by his father and it took her several years to find the strength to control her son. Until she called the police, she had not been able to punish or restrain his bad behavior. In any case, most children find their way back to age-appropriate activities as they enter adolescence, and this, as the co-optive parent finds, turns the tables. With time they are likely to turn against the parent who encouraged them to misbehave. As one sixteen-year-old girl, who had attacked her father five years earlier for all kinds of sinful behavior, told me, “I don’t want to make my mom sound rotten but she was very persuasive. We were terrible to my dad. I’m still surprised that he was willing to forgive us after all that we said and did to him.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Doesn’t your shit look like that?” Obediently, I glanced down at the puffy, water-logged poop that was starting to fray, stringy pieces pulling away and sinking. “No,” I whispered. Mary Sue shoved me back toward where I’d been seated. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” she said. The long shadows of afternoon passed over us. The light grew dim. Afternoon turned to evening. The demonstrators became tired. They excused us, announcing that tomorrow we would return to back-to-basics mode. Our walk to breakfast the next morning became a mandatory silent march. The lack of chatter with just the sounds of our shoes crunching gravel opened my ears to a stillness I’d never noticed before. Hearing a bird call now and then and a whisper of wind rifling through the leaves on the nearby trees, I think I would have enjoyed the silence had it not been a punishment. Instead, I felt stilted and unnatural, not sure how careful I should be in keeping noise out of my movements. All our free time was confiscated in service of back-to-basics. We were told we’d been lazy. Not flushing the toilet had been the last straw. As we marched in the sharp cold of morning, our two long rows were intersected by another group of marchers. The Punk Squad consisted of teens who had been in trouble with the law or sent to Synanon by families who felt they’d lost control of their children. Punks typically had a rabid aversion to Synanon and were notorious for acting out. They were monitored closely, had little freedom and lived a near-constant military lifestyle. Punks wore overalls like we did, but instead of tennis shoes, their feet were clad in sturdy military boots. The Punks marched uniformly through the mists in two parallel lines, breaking the quiet with their military singing, heads erect, eyes forward, arms swinging in unison. Their booted feet struck the ground all at once, defiant to our own silent progression. Together, they sang, “There was a girl who wore a yellow ribbon. She wore it for her sweetheart who lived in Tomales Bay.” “Tomales Bay!” the girl’s voices rang out. The boys’ baritone voices echoed, “Tomales Bay!” “She wore it for her sweetheart who lived in Tomales Bay!” They marched strong and shouted robustly, gazing neither right nor left as if they were a single entity. We children watched until they disappeared down the road, and we continued our own scraggly march. “No talking,” we were reminded as we went into the Commons. First came the milk. I’d learned to drink it big gulps with several seconds’ rest and normal breathing between gulps. Pleased to see pancakes with little tabs of butter instead of eggs, I prepared to tuck into the warm cakes set in front of me. Pancakes had always been my favorite breakfast food and I hadn’t had any since I’d come to Synanon.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It seems to have been a fair system, but the mining income also had to produce enough funds to support the Renaissance palaces looming over the town. It was long after Luther had left home, in the 1520s, that this balance became increasingly difficult to maintain. While the counts continued to squeeze money out of the leaseholders, income from the mines began to decline—the seams were deeper and therefore harder to reach, water had to be pumped out, and they required more machinery. The numbers of smelter-masters shrank and the silver-refining companies ( Saigergesellschaften ) that had been financing the mine operators now began to gain possession of the mines as the smelter-masters became indebted to them. 45 A proud, independent man, by the 1520s Hans Luder himself was unable to pay off his debts and was forced to work for the hated capitalists, in his case the Saigerhandelsgesellschaft at Schwarza, on a salary of fifty guilders a year with, humiliatingly, a supervisor at his side. 46 When he died in 1530 there were no mines for his son in Mansfeld to inherit, only the family property—worth a not insubstantial sum—to be shared equally among the children. 47 While in 1508 there had been forty-two smelter-masters in Mansfeld, by 1536 their number had halved. 48 In the 1560s, by which time the counts were running the Mansfeld mines themselves, the entire mining enterprise went bankrupt. 49 By the end of the century, the seams were exhausted and German silver production had given way to competition from the silver of the New World. Hans Luder and his contemporaries tried to make sense of economic relationships that no one could understand or control, and which were eventually to destroy them. They had no economic theory and little understanding of how wealth was created: No one knew why the capitalists in Nuremberg and Leipzig profited while the mine owners suddenly became impoverished. Economic thought was based on the assumption that wealth was limited. If one person had wealth, another could not get it. Metals, it was believed, resulted from the mixing of quicksilver and brimstone and were shaped by the influences of the planets. Mining was a matter of luck. There were diviners, and there were printed advice books, but no one knew where the rich seams might lie. Small wonder that the figure of Fate should have been so ubiquitous in the Mansfelders’ lives. There was a rich mining folklore that left its mark on Luther. With water essential to the process of smelting, he grew up with the belief in “nixes,” or water sprites, mischievous creatures who played tricks on humans. The fossils found in the mines were said to be drawings made by the spirits of the earth and of the air, and strange uncanny lights were believed to point to the rich seams.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  While he lived under Luther’s roof, Karlstadt was compelled to write a full recantation of his views on the Last Supper, again printed at Wittenberg and once more prefaced by Luther. 36 Luther conceded that Karlstadt’s treatises on the subject had been presented as theses, matters for discussion, not as statements of truth; but like others, Luther said, he had forgotten the form in which they had been issued and taken them to be statements of his real views. Turning Karlstadt’s emphasis on the spirit against him, Luther insisted that it was clear that his views were not “of the spirit,” because the spirit made people certain and bold; Karlstadt and his ilk, on the other hand, spoke only out of craziness and human darkness, and therefore everyone should be warned against his views. This was humiliating enough, but in early September, Karlstadt was writing to Luther as Luther’s “slave,” apologizing for disturbing his “sweet dream” and begging him to get the Elector to permit him to live in Saxony, preferably in Kemberg. He knew, he groveled to “your reverend lordship,” that it lay in Luther’s “might, not to say, power” to have his exile lifted. 37 Luther duly wrote to the Elector but, possibly on Spalatin’s advice, the Elector refused to permit Karlstadt to reside in Kemberg, because it was on the road to Leipzig and thus “suspicious” travelers might pass through and spread his message. He was to live only in “villages and hamlets” within three miles of Wittenberg, securely marooned in the country and away from the town and the university, but still under the authorities’ watchful eye. 38 The wellsprings of Karlstadt’s intellectual life—colleagues and students, a printer and a pulpit—were all denied him. It seems that he was now condemned to work as a farmer. It left Karlstadt a broken man. He kept his word, publishing virtually nothing once he returned to the Wittenberg area. He did manage to move to Kemberg, however, from where he journeyed to meet sympathetic figures like the noblemen Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald in Silesia. A few years later, he moved to Basle, where he found a more congenial intellectual home, but he did not publish much. His theology continued to develop the idea of Gelassenheit, and when he died in 1541, he was in the process of composing a major synoptic work on theology in which Gelassenheit would have played a central role. It is puzzling that he failed utterly to capitalize on either the Peasants’ War or on the support his ideas were gaining in the cities of southern Germany. The man who wanted to engage in honest toil like a peasant found himself attacked and hunted by peasants who saw him as a learned grosser Hans, just another “big Jack.”

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  τἄπεινόω, to lower, in point of height :—Pass., πᾶν ὄρος ταπεινωθή- σεται Ἐν. Lue, 3-53 πρόσωπον éx μετεώρου ταπεινούμενον Hipp. Coac. 152; of rivers, Diod. 1. 36. II. metaph. ἕο lessen, τὸν φθόνον Plut. Pericl. 32: 20 disparage, Polyb. 6. 15, 7, cf. 3.85, 7:—Pass. to be lowered or lessened, Plat. Tim. 72 D. 2. to humble, abase, Xen. An. 6. 3> 18; τ. καὶ συστέλλων Plat. Lys. 210 E; ταπεινώ- σαντες... τοὺς νῦν ἐπηρμένους Aeschin. 87. 24 :—Pass., ταπεινωθεὶς" ἔπε- ται Plat. Phaedr. 254 E; ὑπὸ πενίας Id. Rep. 553 C; τεταπείνωται ἡ τῶν ᾿Αθηναίων δόξα Xen. Mem. 3. 5, 43 ἐταπεινοῦντο ταῖς ἐλπίσι Diod. P32) IE: 3. in moral sense, to. make lowly, to humble, ἑαυτόν Ev. Matth. 23. 12, al.:—Pass. to humble oneself, τὴν θεὸν ἐξιλάσαντο TO τε- ταπεινῶσθαι σφόδρα Menand. Δεισ. 4; so in N. T. τἄπείνωμα, τό, that which is made low:—in astronomy the declination of a star, opp. to ὕψωμα, Plut. 2. 149 A, Sext. Emp. M. 5. 35. II. humility, Eust. Opusc. 265. 78. Timetvncis, 7, a lowering, eS humiliation, abasement, Polyb. 9. 33, 10; δουλεία καὶ τ. Diod. 453; τ. ποιεῖν τινος Id. 11.87: abase- ment, defeat, Plat. Legg. 815 A, Phat. 2. a lessening, disparage- ment, Arist. P, A. 4. 10, 49. 8. low estate, low condition, Lxx (Gen. 29. 32), Ev. Luc. 1. 48, al. 4. lowness of style, Plut. 2.7 A, Quintil. Inst. 8. 3, 48. τάπηκ [a], ητος, 6, a carpet, rug, Lat. tapes, τάπητα φέρεν μαλακοῦ ἐρίοιο Od. 4.1243; χλαινάων .. οὔλων Te ταπήτων 1]. 16. 2243; used to spread on seats and beds (v. sub δέμνιον), εἷσεν δ᾽ ἐν κλισμοῖσι τἀπησί τε πορφυρέοισιν 9. 200, cf. το. 156., 24. 645, Od. 4. 298., το. 12, etc. ; φορμὸν ἔχειν ἀντὶ τάπητος Ar. Pl. 542.—Later Att. forms are ταπίς, dams, qq. ν. τἄπητιον, 76, Dim. of foreg., Alciphro Fr. 18. watt, Att. crasis for τὰ ἐπί :---τἀπιεικῇ, for τὰ ἐπιεικῆ. τάπις [a], os, 7,=d5ams (which seems to be the older Ait. form), Xen. Cyr. 8. 8, 16, An. 7. 3 8 and 27, Plut., etc. τἀπό, Att. crasis for τὰ ἀπό :--τἀπόρρητα, for τὰ ἀπόρρητα. ταπρῶτα, Adv. for τὰ πρῶτα, at first, 1]. τ. 6. τάρ, acc. to some old Gramm. an enclit. Conjunction, εἴ Tap, ov Tap, where are now written εἴτ᾽ dpa, οὔτ᾽ ἄρα, as in 1]. 1. 65, 93; v. Cobet. Misc. Crit. p. 315.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Weak and debilitated from his time in prison, Kaiser on July 17 was forced to participate in a disputation with none other than Johannes Eck, Luther’s antagonist at Leipzig, who had even gone to Rome to procure the bull against him. It is unclear whether Luther knew before his collapse that Eck had taken an interest in Kaiser’s case. Luther had been the butt of Eck’s coarse humor at Leipzig, and now Eck mocked Kaiser to his face as a man “whose wares are even worse than his salesmanship.” 43 Unable to burn Luther, Eck meant to burn Kaiser. Protected by the Elector Friedrich and his successor Johann, Luther was safe. In fact it was now he who was on the side of the authorities, as he had wryly noted after his encounter with Karlstadt in the Black Bear Inn: “I who ought to have become a martyr have reached the point where I am now making martyrs of others.” 44 Karlstadt was very much on his mind, too, and shortly before the breakdown, Luther had become convinced that he would never win him back to the fold. At the climax of his collapse he worried that his death or the Devil’s attacks would prevent him writing against the sacramentarians, and he felt the weight and isolation of leading the movement: “Oh what dreadful misery the Schwärmer [enthusiasts] will cause after my death!” 45 The events of Kaiser’s martyrdom followed closely upon Luther’s breakdown. On July 18 he was taken to Passau and again given an opportunity to recant. When he refused, he was ritually defrocked in a ceremony carried out in front of a large crowd, which included Eck. Piece by piece, his priest’s robes were stripped from his body by the bishop of Passau, and he was shaved. Then he was dressed in nothing but a smock, or Kittel, a black slashed beret was put on his head, and, now an ordinary layman, he was handed over to the city judge. This ritual was not the end of his humiliation, however. Kaiser was kept in the castle dungeon for yet another month, and then paraded in chains around the town, before being taken to his home town of Schärding, where he was executed on August 16. Kaiser died true to his Lutheran faith.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “Are you lucky to be here?” “Yes.” “Why are you lucky to be Synanon kids?” Silence. “Look how many brothers and sisters you have. Look how many parents you have. On the outside, kids have to live with their biological parents in the nuclear family, but we know here in Synanon that this isn’t good for children. The parents in these families smother their children with their clingy affections. Here you have freedom, you have space, you can breathe. Synanon children are smarter and healthier than children on the outside. “Do you know what this is?” She spread her arms wide. “It’s an experiment, a working experiment. That’s what I mean when I say you are the models for the future. One day everyone will want to come to Synanon. All of you were lucky enough to be the first.” During my time in the school, I came to see other children’s parents as a kind of curiosity, their relationships a concept rather than a reality. Some parents visited now and then, most did not. Some worked as demonstrators, although after a while, it was easy to forget that a demonstrator had a child in the school because the parents did not seem to have any special bond with their offspring. I knew which adults were the parents of which kids, and in most cases there was a strong physical resemblance, but that was where the relationship ended. Adults led completely separate lives from us. One of our many father figures in the school was Don Leitner, who showed up at some point as a demonstrator. Short and stumpy-looking with limbs not quite proportioned with his torso, Don had thin lips that disappeared when he smirked, which was often, and small round eyes set unattractively close together. I hated him. It seemed that whenever Don and I were in the same room, his sole purpose was to publicly humiliate me. My only relief from his malice was Sophie, whom he loved to torture equally. By the time Don started working in the school, I’d grown tired of seminars and lectures that often made no sense. Forced to sit through so many games and talks, I created a detailed fantasy world, to which I’d retreat whenever the need arose. Don immediately spotted that I was not paying attention. The first time he demanded that I recite back to him everything he had said during one of his meetings, I remained silent and miserable, embarrassed that I could remember nothing. “You can’t tell me anything? Why is that?” He waited. I said nothing. “I think you can’t tell me because you’re an idiot. Are you retarded, Celena? Are you a retard?” I felt my body grow hot while he laughed out of the side of his thin lips, the rest of the kids joining in. “I don’t like retards, Celena. Next time you better pay attention.” But I couldn’t. Every time Don spoke, my mind closed.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  It was borderline gangrene. I spent a month flat on my stomach; I couldn't walk or sit; I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing Bobby Jorgenson's scared-white face. Those buggy eyes and the way his lips twitched and that silly excuse he had for a mustache. After the rot cleared up, once I could think straight, I devoted a lot of time to figuring ways to get back at him. 2K OK ok Getting shot should be an experience from which you can draw some small pride. I don't mean the macho stuff. All I mean is that you should be able to talk about it: the stiff thump of the bullet, like a fist, the way it knocks the air out of you and makes you cough, how the sound of the gunshot arrives about ten years later, and the dizzy feeling, the smell of yourself, the things you think about and say and do right afterward, the way your eyes focus on a tiny white pebble or a blade of grass and how you start thinking, Oh man, that's the last thing I'll ever see, that pebble, that blade of grass, which makes you want to cry. Pride isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. All I know is, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. Humiliation shouldn't be part of it. Diaper rash, the nurses called it. An in-joke, I suppose. But it made me hate Bobby Jorgenson the way some guys hated the VC, gut hate, the kind of hate that stays with you even in your dreams. I guess the higher-ups decided I'd been shot enough. At the end of December, when I was released from the 91st Evac Hospital, they transferred me over to Headquarters Company—S-4, the battalion supply section. Compared with the boonies it was cushy duty. We had regular hours. There was an EM club with beer and movies, sometimes even live floor shows, the whole blurry slow motion of the rear. For the first time in months I felt reasonably safe. The battalion firebase was built into a hill just off Highway |, surrounded on all sides by flat paddy land, and between us and the paddies there were reinforced bunkers and observation towers and trip flares and rolls of razor-tipped barbed wire. You could still die, of course—once a month we'd get hit with mortar fire—but you could also die in the bleachers at Met Stadium in Minneapolis, bases loaded, Harmon Killebrew coming to the plate.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “Look at Celena and how quietly she sits,” one of the demonstrators said. “Fuck her! Fuck you!” Donna yelled. Her face filled with blood, seeming as if it might burst as a demonstrator held her head still against her will. Carlene had given up, breaking into sobs. Watery mucus dripped from her nose. The buzz of the clippers rang, and I felt the comb vibrate over my scalp as chunks of hair fell onto our shoulders and laps. It took only a few minutes to have our hair shaved to a quarter of an inch. The demonstrators passed around oval hand mirrors, seemingly oblivious to our distress. This was “act as if” at its finest. “Take a look at how beautiful you are now,” a demonstrator said to me. I couldn’t stomach looking in the mirror. I avoided mirrors whenever I could. I already knew how I looked: a narrow skinny head with big, dark, haunted eyes. In my dresser drawer was a knitted hat I’d tucked away for these occasions. Every moment that I was allowed I would wear that hat until my hair grew back to some semblance of normalcy. For days we girls skulked around, startlingly odd-looking with our newly shaven appearances until time wore away our timidity and awkwardness and we were once again ourselves. A few days after the mandatory haircuts, a group of us girls were rounded up again. “Come, come!” two of the demonstrators beckoned. The summons was for a special tea party at the Big House. A large, white, plantation-style home on the property where Chuck and Betty had once lived was now a museum of sorts. I was given a shiny, poufy dress the color of pale pink frosting, which clashed with my dark skin and reddish undertones. The fabric, stiff and unyielding, caged my boyish muscular body and long neck. I was freakishly eye-catching wearing this princess attire while sporting my newly shaven look.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  A lumbering drinking pal of Mother’s from the technical university where she’d gotten her teaching degree, he sported a meager russet beard with a skunk stripe and a French accent I later learned was fake. He’d first materialized on our sofa one morning, shoeless, his coat draped across him. The conventioneer’s name tag pasted to the breast pocket—apparently printed by the wife I never met—read, DON’T BRING HIM HOME HE’S GOT THE CAR !!! I liked the sentences he could spin out in midair, with commas and clauses and subclauses woven through. I liked how he oohed at the poetry I’d been encouraged to press on him since about age eleven. It was tricky to find the right moment—after I’d faked interest in Ming porcelain but before he got too lubricated to talk right. Having not seen him since I was in grade school, I felt pushy showing up in his office brandishing recommendation forms. But he’d said on the phone I could come, so I leaned in his open door slot to ask was he busy . He sat behind a desk sprawled with papers, hands interleaved before him as if by a mortician. He closed the door behind me, then steered me to a chair facing his desk. I figured he’d decided against recommending me, having found the poems and essays I’d sent him in advance dim-witted. I felt oafish before him. No sooner did he sit down than he bobbed back to his feet like he’d forgotten something. He walked to my side and—with a kind of slow ceremony I did nothing to stop—lifted my T-shirt till I was staring down at my own braless chest. With his trembling and sweaty hand, he cupped first one breast, then the other, saying, By God, they’re real! Such was the interview that landed me in a school far beyond my meager qualifications. For years I stayed grateful that the whole deal had been fast—a small price to pay for getting out of Leechfield. Though it was smaller than more violent assaults that had happened as a kid, which I paid for longer, it touched the same sore place—did I draw these guys somehow? But for ten years or more, when I was spent or hurt and totting up unnecessary gloom, his bearded face would float to mind, and I’d conjure a deep fry pot big enough to lower the pasty bastard into. Later, I pitied him more, for he was no doubt writhing in his own private hell. Which point is moot, since by now the worms have eaten him, and slowly. What’s a typical journey to college? I couldn’t tell you. I hope my son, Dev, had one last summer. His dad was staring owlishly into the computer screen, trying to download music, while I slipped folded shirts into fiberboard drawers and ran extension cords. Before I left, Dev heard a series of moist-eyed platitudes till he said, Mom, don’t Polonius me with this nagging.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Bull nodded. “If they want to get away with this one, they better come around smilin’ with their peckers up. Lemme go take care of this stupid cocksucker and see if I can scare him out of town before he really gets in trouble.” Shaking his head, he shrugged to Proctor, then turned in the doorway. The horsing around of two black women in the back of the crowd suddenly turned to screaming, and the others tried to separate them. “Now,” Proctor insisted. “She’s at the church, alone! We’ve got to go now! Break up, and we’ll meet on the steps and batter down the door with our lust!” As the unruly group began to move forward the captain fell in beside the white-haired man. “Do you think you can keep them all together?” Proctor looked up at the black face. “I know I can’t. Some will slip off by accident, some by design. Oh, these demons will haunt the good folk throughout this town—” He paused to yell instructions: “You go down by way of the docks. You three move off to the Hill. We don’t want to attract attention.” He turned back to the captain. “But enough will be there to ornament the debacle handsomely, Captain. And I have you, you black devil! I have you! I’ll squeeze the juices from your black fruit into that sphinx’ monstrous hole yet—oh, she’ll be able to take you, Captain! You’ll defile the equalized altars of day and night, and this world will come tumbling around us! We have hours till midnight, and your fires are mounting again. I can tell the way your eyes flash in the moon.” And the captain’s long, low laughter cut the shrill cries of the scattering figures who disappeared off through the streets. “You high, nigger?” “Oh, man, I’m so high! You high?” “Flyin’, boy. That stuff is fine!” Jomo, Sambo and Jeb lurched and bumbled through the dock’s junk. “Man, I got to take a wicked piss.” “We gonna have to get up there with Proctor soon.” “Well, this black snake of mine is gonna get pretty riled if I don’t let him spit. Nigger, I’m gonna pee on your foot—” “Shit—” “Hey, look at that sleepy white man curled down there. Ain’t he a-snorin’ away, on his back, with his mouth open.” “You ain’t gonna—” “If there’s one thing that makes me happier than a white boy drinkin’ my piss, it’s a white man.” They gathered below the dock. “You two grab him when he starts to fight.” “There—” “We got him for you—” “In the face—” Robby swallowed wet and bitter, came up gagging and blind to be struck down by feet and hard hands. They were laughing. “Hold him there—yeah, keep his head back. Look at him take that stuff right down!” “He don’t look like he likes that at all—!” “You better swallow, boy, or you gonna drown in nigger piss!”

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  A copper anklet sloped beneath the knob of her ankle, crossed low on her calloused heel. (Uneven hem brushes smudged knees.) A print sash bound her belly. “Where is your brother?” “In the wheelhouse, asleep.” “Where were you?” “On deck. I was sitting in the sun.” “With the men on the docks all coming by to stare? How many with their hands in their pockets?” “Oh . . . !” “None of them with what I got.” He leaned back. His fingers tracked his stomach. “Come here. Tell me what’s for supper.” “Your thoughts have gone as high as your gut, now?” “How do you and the boy get chores done if you sleep and sun all the time?” “But what is there to do in port?” She stepped across the rug, laughing. He grabbed her wrist. She stumbled and he caught: “How many times!” She pushed his chest. Her wrist turned under slippery fingers. “Five times? Six? I’ll say seven—” “But see, you’ve already—” “Once already. Six more now.” He kneaded her inner thigh. “ Cap tain . . . !” She tried to pull away. His hand went beneath the hem. She shrieked and bit the sound off. What spilled after was a giggle. “How many years have I had you two, now?” His forearm shifted like bunched blacksnakes. She tried to push his hand from under her skirt. Stopped trying. She opened her lips and caressed his arm. “How many years? Seven. Now, once for each year you’ve worked on my boat.” He looked down at himself. She touched where he looked: she took it, slipping the loose skin from the head. When she fingered beneath the twice full bag, he arched his back. “Pig. Sit on it. Little white pig . . .” Three calloused fingers were knuckle deep in her. She bent; her hair swept his face. He caught it in his yellow teeth, twisted his head. Kirsten grabbed at her hair, and made an ugly sound. His teeth opened on laughter; it and her hair spilled black lips mottled with cerise. Barking. Claws at wood. Black paws and long muzzle lapped the bunk. The captain kicked the dog with his bare foot (the big chain around his ankle jangles). “Down, Niger! Down, you stupid dog!” Down; then back, nuzzling between them: dog’s tongue. One color: Kirsten’s nipple, the dog’s tongue, the captain’s palm. Niger lapped her crotch for salt. “Down, Niger!” The dog barked. Then the captain looked up: frowned. One shutter had swung open. A woman’s face pressed the glass (dock-side of the boat), tongue caught at the corner of her mouth. Her fingers tipped the sill. Sunlight behind her exploded in loose hair, dimmed her features. Niger barked at her once more. Her eyes shifted; she saw the captain.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Gunner felt a hand on his head. Thought it was Nazi; opened his eyes to see it was too large, and black. He looked up expecting his master. Instead, a strange, big-bellied black (spades cannot smile in this story) grinned: “You been fuckin’ that young uns’ face pretty hard, ’ey?” “Sure have.” “Shit. What did you do? Piss all over him?” “Yeah!” Hard fingers went over Gunner’s face. “Sure would like to watch that wet-head suck on my cock. He up for turn-out?” “Sure.” Nazi reached for the fisherman’s crotch. The black moved his legs apart. Nazi’s fingers defined a dick like a joint of pipe in grimy khaki. “Hey, chew on that, cocksucker. This nigger wants some head.” Thrusts his hips forward, and a falsetto laugh tumbles down into a rasping growl as Gunner opens his mouth on the shape. It thickens between his teeth. The smell of sweat and days. The grunt broke off: “Take that black mother out and feed it to the son of a bitch.” Nazi fingered apart the brass buttons, pulled out the great meat, dead black. He forced Gunner’s mouth with two fingers (they tasted of pee) and guided the dick down. “How do you like the way my boy sucks, nigger?” “Play with my balls, man.” Nazi pulled out the sac. Gunner put his arms around the thighs. “Hey, nigger, how much pussy you had on that black fucker this week?” “I don’ keep no count. Ten, fifteen.” “How does my boy suck beside them bitches?” “That’s right, motherfucker, mash my balls around in his face.” The tight skin unwrinkled under the warmth of Gunner’s chin. “You ever fuck a sheep, nigger?” “Yeah.” “You ever fuck a goat?” “Yeah.” “Nigger, you ever fuck a pig?” “Yeah.” “How does my boy there on his knees between yours feel on that hog sticker?” “Squeeze my fuckin’ balls, Nazi. Yeah, you’re doing fine there, cocksucker. I’m gonna shoot his head off. Oh, yeah, a little harder—not you, Nazi, stupid bastard—yeah. Like that, like . . .” Scum filled the back of Gunner’s mouth, welled to the front. The man gasped, bit the gasp off, but more of it hissed out, anyway. Gunner pushed his face far forward as he could, his throat constricting. Nazi’s fingertips touched his lips. The nigger said: “That boy sucks like he’s still thirsty.” Nazi: “He drinks anything you want to give him.” Gunner’s face was sweating. As he came back a wind blew from the alley end. Nazi: “I’d sure like to watch you give him some more to drink. He ain’t had very much. Don’t know where he picked up that thirst. I guess it’s working on all the dick.” The fisherman pulled his dick free. It hung wet under Gunner’s cheek.

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  The poet contrasts the gods of the empire and YHWH, the God of homecoming (chap. 46). The imperial gods are shown to be inanimate objects that must be carried as burden (vv. 1–2), whereas YHWH is one who can take concrete action: I have made, and I will bear; I will carry, and will save. v. 4 The defeat of the Babylonian gods in chapter 46 is matched in chapter 47 by the defeat and utter humiliation of the nation of Babylon. Thus the poetry, line by line, enacts the debasement of Babylon: Come down and sit in the dust, virgin daughter Babylon! Sit on the ground without a throne, daughter Chaldea! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones and grind meal. vv. 1–2 The reason for the defeat of Babylon, says the poet, is that Babylon did not “show mercy” (v. 6). Like every superpower, Babylon failed to reckon with the ultimacy of YHWH and so imagined itself to be completely autonomous and free to act as it chose. A variety of images are used to contrast the dismantling of Babylon with the rehabilitation of Israel and especially of Jerusalem. Thus in chapter 54, in the imagery of divorce and remarriage, Israel had been abandoned by husband YHWH. Now, says the poet, the husband who had abandoned her has redeemed her and restored her to honor as his wife. While the language is indeed patriarchal and attests to the vulnerability of women in that ancient culture, the imagery serves a lyrical purpose, namely, the acknowledgment of divine abandonment and the end of abandonment in restoration: For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the LORD, your Redeemer. 54:7–8 The double use of “compassion” suggests YHWH’s intensely emotional commitment to Israel. The sum of all this poetry is to assert a new intention on the part of YHWH that is voiced in the term gospel: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” 52:7

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Thus, for example, Joshua took the five Amorite kings, “struck them down and put them to death, and he hung them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening” (Joshua 10:26). The second stage is Roman crucifixion. Contrary to the biblical tradition, this was live crucifixion. The condemned person was affixed to the cross to die in agony and was usually left thereafter as carrion for birds and dogs. Death after crucifying was the public warning in the Roman tradition. Martin Hengel, in his 1977 book, gathered together a vast number of references to Roman crucifixion. I once looked up all those references, and I have not been able to see crucifixion in the same way since. Consider his general conclusion: “Crucifixion was aggravated further by the fact that quite often its victims were never buried. It was a stereotyped picture that the crucified victim served as food for wild beasts and birds of prey. In this way his humiliation was made complete. What it meant for a man in antiquity to be refused burial, and the dishonour which went with it, can hardly be appreciated by modern man” (87–88). In the Roman author Petronius’s famous novel Satyricon of 61 C.E. , for example, some crucified robbers have a “soldier, on guard by the crosses to stop anyone from taking down a body for burial” (111–112). It was actually nonburial that made being crucified alive one of the three supreme penalties of Roman punishment (along with being devoured alive or burned alive). It was the typical execution reserved for runaway slaves and for other members of the lower classes who subverted the Roman order. Because of the ignominy and dishonor of this type of execution, it necessarily involved guarded crosses or at least severe sanctions against removal of the body before death and burial of the body after death. The third stage is Hasmonean crucifixion. The biblical and Roman traditions were clearly contradictory. It was quite possible, in the biblical tradition, to hang the body on the cross until sunset and then remove it before nightfall. But how could that be done in the Roman system, where the person might not be dead by sunset, prolonged death agony was part of the public effect, and nonburial was the consummation of the procedure? Josephus says, in Jewish War 1.97 and Jewish Antiquities 13.380, that the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus crucified eight hundred of his Pharisaic enemies in 88 B.C.E . It was live crucifixion, because he “slaughtered their children and wives before the eyes of the still living wretches.” There is a coded reference to that massacre in 4Q169, a pesher or application of the book of Nahum to the life of the Dead Sea Essenes that was discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran (DSST 185–197).

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  By overall frames I mean the narrative genre of innocence vindicated, righteousness redeemed, and virtue rewarded. In other words, on all three narrative levels—surface, intermediate, and deep—biblical models and scriptural precedents have controlled the story to the point that without them nothing is left but the brutal fact of crucifixion itself. I need to clarify, however, what I mean by prophecy historicized. I do not intend the apologetical or polemical use of biblical texts as prophecies about Jesus, as if such texts were uniquely and exclusively pointing to Jesus the future Messiah. Prophecy historicized means that Jesus is embedded within a biblical pattern of corporate persecution and communal vindication. Such texts may point particularly or especially to Jesus, but, at least originally, they did not point privately or exclusively to him. The question, in other words, is whether those passion-resurrection details derive from historical recall or biblical model? I gave the evidence for that latter alternative in The Cross That Spoke and Who Killed Jesus? and shall not repeat it here. But, lest all of this get too abstract, I give one example of this process, one instance of prophecy historicized, one case in which a text about mutual passion and mutual vindication is actualized during the crucifixion of Jesus. It was just mentioned as the gall and vinegar drink from Psalm 69:21. RECALLING SCRIPTURE Psalm 69 itself has a dyadic structure of persecution and vindication. The first and longer part in 69:1–29 is a catalogue of sufferings from one whose “eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” Then, in 69:30–36, there is an abrupt shift from pleading to thanksgiving, a sudden change from lament for persecution to gratitude for vindication. These are the transition verses: But I am lowly and in pain; let your salvation, O God, protect me. I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. (Psalm 69:29–30) The verse I am interested in occurs in that former section as the catalogue of woes gives way to a series of curses against the persecutors: They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:21) The sufferer receives poison (gall) and vinegar instead of food and drink. In context it is the climax of derision and oppression suffered at the hand of enemies. That is, of course, a general metaphor for lethal attack, but how can it be applied to Jesus, who is already being crucified? The Cross Gospel in the Gospel of Peter makes it cohere quite literally and successfully with the actual situation of execution. In that gospel, as you recall, it is the Jewish people who crucify Jesus and then repent when they see the miracles that accompany his death. But here is what happens before that moment: Now it was midday and a darkness covered all Judaea. And they became anxious and uneasy lest the sun had already set, since he was still alive.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  He describes a dinner in which the rich host, Virro, invites some poor clients to a meal and then deliberately insults them by giving good bread, food, wine, and service to himself and his friends but bad equivalents to them. We are back again with commensality, but now as calculated insult and intentional humiliation. Juvenal addresses Trebius, one of those hangers-on who sit far from the host and hope to get his scraps instead of their own bad food. You appear To yourself as a free man, a tycoon’s guest; he thinks you — Not bad guesswork—a slave to his kitchen’s odor. For who Could be so destitute as to suffer this patron twice If as a boy he had worn the free man’s golden device, Or even the leather boss, the badge poor folk would wear? The hope to dine well deceives you: “Look, that half-eaten hare He’ll give us now, or from the haunch of boar some bits; We’ll get what’s left of the capon soon.” So all of you sit In silence, ready, with bread held tight, untasted, and wait. It’s a wise man who treats you thus. If you can tolerate All this, you deserve it. Some day you’ll offer, with shaven pate, Your head to be slapped [like a clown] and won’t be afraid of being skinned By keen whips [like a slave], worthy at last of such feasts and such a friend. Unless you had started life as slaves, asks Juvenal, how could you take such abuse? Maybe, he concludes, you will end up as slaves. Despite his seething resentment we catch a glimpse of what lower-class clientage must have felt like in actual practice. But that is in a big city. It is hard even to imagine how the lower classes fared in rural situations within a patronal society. In the crowded city, even the poorest clients were useful to greet the patron as he appeared from his house in the morning or to accompany him on political or social visits during the day. Their presence and number proclaimed his importance. But, as Juvenal noted, clientage could be very, very close to slavery, and at times it could be much worse. Although slave societies and patronal societies have both been justified as moral associations, it is probably better not to mourn their passing from the human scene. James and Peter What is at stake here is the meaning of the itinerancy of Jesus. Why is he always going somewhere rather than being settled in one place and letting crowds come to him? Many people were permanently on the move in that first century for reasons of teaching, business, administration, or military activity. In those cases itinerancy was simply an accidental necessity of one’s mission. But was the itinerancy of Jesus more than that? Was his itinerancy or even vagrancy a programmatic part of his radical message?

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  The rioters drove the poor fellow into the gymnasium and set him up on high to be seen by all and put on his head a sheet of byblos spread out wide for a diadem, clothed the rest of his body with a rug for a royal robe, while someone who had noticed a piece of the native papyrus thrown away in the road gave it to him for his sceptre. And when in some theatrical farce he had received the insignia of kingship and had been tricked out as a king, young men carrying rods on their shoulders as spearmen stood on either side of him in imitation of a bodyguard. Then others approached him, some pretending to salute him, others to sue for justice, others to consult him on state affairs. Then from the multitude standing round him there rang out a tremendous shout hailing him as Marin, which is said to be the name for “lord” in Syria. For they knew that Agrippa was both a Syrian by birth and had a great piece of Syria over which he was king. Carabas’s mockery as pseudo-king involves not physical abuse or torture but rather a theatrical mime with throne, crown, robe, scepter, bodyguard, salutation, consultation, and especially his proclamation as Lord. Supposing, now, that one took a prophetic exegesis such as that of Barnabas 7 and a historical story such as that of poor Carabas and fused them together. One would get, I propose, a story like that in Mark 15:16–20: Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. Let me focus the argument a little. Compare the crown (of wool) among thorns at the end of the Epistle of Barnabas 7 text given earlier with the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head here. I can easily imagine a development from former to latter but not the reverse. In fact, I cannot conceive of a human imagination reading Mark 15:16–20 and developing Epistle of Barnabas 7 out of it, but the reverse process, with a little help from the Carabas farce, is quite comprehensible. Or again, that spitting or striking with a reed comes not from what actually happened to Jesus, but from the popular ritual of spitting one’s sins out upon the scapegoat and hurrying it toward the desert by poking or striking it with sharp reeds. To prove my hypothesis would demand a similar argument for every incident in our present passion narratives.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Simon Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe. What I emphasize from that text, and throughout the rest of this chapter, is its profoundly political implications. It is not primarily interested in trance, ecstasy, apparition, or revelation, but in authority, power, leadership, and priority. The thrust of that description is not just its emphasis on the risen apparitions of Jesus but its insistence that Paul himself is an apostle—that is, one specifically called and designated by God and Jesus to take a leadership role in the early church. Notice three elements. There is, first of all, the balance of Cephas and the Twelve against James and the apostles . Normally one thinks of the Twelve Apostles with Peter mentioned always in first place. For certain Christian groups, as we saw earlier, the Twelve Apostles represented in microcosm the New Testament just as the Twelve Patriarchs represented the Old Testament. But here the Twelve seem distinct from the apostles. But of course they have to be, or else Paul himself cannot be an apostle. That is why he mentions “to all the apostles” just before mentioning himself as “the least of the apostles.” He cannot claim to be one of the Twelve but can and does claim to be an apostle , one sent (that is what the Greek term apostolos means) by God and Jesus. And despite the admission of belatedness at the end, as well as the insistence on divine grace, that final sentence puts it bluntly: there is I and there is they , but we are all apostles; I am their equal.