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)

  He was the first maybe-trans person she had ever met. He probably wouldn’t have called himself trans. Just a cross-dresser. Which was what Amy called herself at the time. But no one had ever seen her dressed up. Not even on Halloween. She had figured that by the time she got to college and had a lock on her door, she’d spend a bunch of her time behind it dressed up pretty. But even by her sophomore year, she had barely accumulated the basics of a wardrobe. Her makeup remained in an equally dismal state. She’d had no one to teach her the art of makeup so she stuck to the three cosmetic basics whose application was more or less explained by their packaging: lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. Her frequent attempts to shop for women’s clothes failed more often than not. She never went into women’s boutiques—it’d be impossible to explain herself in there. Instead, she haunted department stores—Walmarts and Targets—taking circuitous routes around the edges of Women’s Wear, feigning interest in adjacent kitchen appliances, then snatching something, anything: a swimsuit, a purse, a bra. The whole exercise humiliated her. She looked like a creep, she knew. But she couldn’t be cool. The closer she got to actually buying clothes, actually browsing in the women’s section, the more her blood rushed and her face reddened. The more her hands shook. There wasn’t any way to be casual while holding a pair of panties and looking like you’re at risk of passing out. Because who did that? What the fuck was wrong with her? And how much other random shit did she buy attempting to hide those panties? Did she think the checkout girl wouldn’t think a college boy buying a baby- doll dress was weird if the purchases also included three bags of chips, some beef jerky, and a folding chair? She found Patrick in the fall of her second year at college. Forty miles away. A thirty-six-year-old divorced hotel clerk posting in a Yahoo group that he wanted someone to dress up with. Just two guys, dressing up in lingerie, to relax. He undercut his own casual, no-homo, bro-vibe by adding that he was versatile. Nineteen-year-old college student. 5'8" 140 Ibs. Do you have lingerie for me? It took Amy two hours of deliberation to send that message. No, but there’s a store for cross-dressers where I get mine, Patrick replied. Ill pick you up from your school if you want and we can go tomorrow. Which was how Amy ended up standing on the street in front of her dorm, wearing a hood low over her eyes, as if her pervert tranny intentions could be read plainly on her face by any other passing student who glanced her way. Picture an anonymous strip mall, veneered in a too-red brick, housing a Subway franchise, a vacuum cleaner store, and sandwiched between the two, a dingy painted sign that read: GLAMOUR BOUTIQUE. Now picture Amy’s disappointed face.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Thalia stands, rushes over to Reese, and hugs her. Ames hangs back with Katrina, waiting for Reese to notice them. He’s apprehensive, and Katrina, beside him, gives Ames’s hand a nervous squeeze. When Reese catches sight of the two of them, she pulls away from Thalia, her face darkening. A slight sunburn reddens her face and her skin stretches tight over her cheekbones. Her eyes move wildly from Ames to Katrina, then back to Thalia. “T called them,” Thalia says simply. “I didn’t know if you could pay or what you might need.” Ames knows Reese well enough to know that she is wavering between anger and gratitude, that she hates being seen in such a compromised position, but that anyone who comes down to a hospital in Midwood must, somewhere inside of them, care about her. Perhaps if it had just been Ames, she might have let herself go to anger, but with Katrina there, Reese’s teeth flash as she gives Katrina a nervous smile. “T didn’t do it,” she says, and Ames realizes that she is talking to Katrina. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” “Okay,” says Katrina simply. “Thalia said that. But she also said you've been upset. Anyway, you don’t have to explain anything. I drove here. I can give you a ride.” “Thank you,” Reese says. “I want to explain. This is humiliating, but I’m glad to see you.” There are papers for Reese to sign, insurance information for her to verify before she’s discharged. Ames asks if she needs help, or money, but she shakes her head. He stands beside her at the reception counter anyhow. When she’s done, he asks if she will please give him a hug. He intends the request as a gift—to spare her having to ask for one herself—and because, honestly, he needs one too. Katrina drops off Thalia first. Thalia gives Reese a kiss goodbye on the cheek as she gets out of the car, and thanks Katrina for the ride. Then, to Reese’s surprise, Thalia turns to Ames. “Take care of her,” she instructs him, and before Ames can respond, she turns and strides her long strides away from the car. “She’s a good friend,” Katrina says, pulling out. Reese sits in back, and Katrina has to duck forward to see Reese’s face in the rearview mirror. Reese nods without responding. “Do you want some food?” Ames asks. “Or just to go home?” “T want to go home,” Reese says. But then, a minute later, as Katrina turns the wheel and pulls into the traffic on Bedford, Reese says, “But I have to explain myself. I will never sleep if I don’t. And I never expected to have you two here, to have this chance.”

• From Story of the Eye (1928)

  He glimpsed a tiny key hanging from a nail in the woodwork. “What is that key for?’ he asked Don Aminado. From the expression of dread on the priest’s face, Sir Edmund realized it was the key to the tabernacle. The Englishman returned a few moments later, carrying a ciborium of twisted gold, decorated with a quantity of angels as naked as cupids. The wretched Don Aminado gaped at this receptacle of consecrated hosts on the floor, and his handsome moronic face, already contorted because Simone was flagellating his cock with her teeth and tongue, was now fully gasping and panting. After barricading the door, Sir Edmund rummaged through the closets until he finally lit upon a large chalice, whereupon he asked us to abandon the wretch for an instant. “Look,” he explained to Simone, “the eucharistic hosts in the ciborium, and here the chalice where they put white wine.” “They smell like come,” said Simone, sniffing the unleavened wafers. “Precisely,” continued Sir Edmund. “The hosts, as you see, are nothing other than Christ’s sperm in the form of small white biscuits. And as for the wine they put in the chalice, the ecclesiastics say it is the blood of Christ, but they are obviously mistaken. If they really thought it was the blood, they would use red wine, but since they employ only white wine, they are showing that at the bottom of their hearts they are quite aware that this is urine.” The lucidity of this logic was so convincing that Simone and I required no further explanation. She, armed with the chalice and I with the ciborium, the two of us marched over to Don Aminado, who was still inert in his armchair, faintly agitated by a slight quiver through his body. Simone began by slamming the base of the chalice against his skull, which jolted him and left him utterly dazed. Then she resumed sucking him, which provoked his ignoble rattles. After bringing his senses to a height of fury with Sir Edmund’s help and mine, she gave him a hard shake. “That’s not all,” she said in a voice that brooked no reply. “It’s time to piss.” And she struck his face again with the chalice, but at the same time she stripped naked before him and I finger-fucked her. Sir Edmund’s gaze, fixed on the stunned eyes of the young cleric, was so imperious that the thing went off with barely any hitch; Don Aminado noisily poured his urine into the chalice, which Simone held under this thick cock. “And now, drink,” commanded Sir Edmund. The paralyzed wretch drank with a well-nigh filthy ecstasy at one long gluttonous draft. Again Simone sucked and wanked him; he continued gurgling desperately and revelling in it.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  11 months of the year mental accounting prevails over financial common sense. Another argument against selling winners is the well-documented market anomaly that stocks that recently gained in value are likely to go on gaining at least for a short while. The net effect is large: the expected after-tax extra return of selling Tiffany rather than Blueberry is 3.4% over the next year. Closing a mental account with a gain is a pleasure, but it is a pleasure you pay for. The mistake is not one that an Econ would ever make, and experienced investors, who are using their System 2, are less susceptible to it than are novices. A rational decision maker is interested only in the future consequences of current investments. Justifying earlier mistakes is not among the Econ’s concerns. The decision to invest additional resources in a losing account, when better investments are available, is known as the sunk-cost fallacy, a costly mistake that is observed in decisions large and small. Driving into the blizzard because one paid for tickets is a sunk-cost error. Imagine a company that has already spent $50 million on a project. The project is now behind schedule and the forecasts of its ultimate returns are less favorable than at the initial planning stage. An additional investment of $60 million is required to give the project a chance. An alternative proposal is to invest the same amount in a new project that currently looks likely to bring higher returns. What will the company do? All too often a company afflicted by sunk costs drives into the blizzard, throwing good money after bad rather than accepting the humiliation of closing the account of a costly failure. This situation is in the top-right cell of the fourfold pattern, where the choice is between a sure loss and an unfavorable gamble, which is often unwisely preferred. The escalation of commitment to failing endeavors is a mistake from the perspective of the firm but not necessarily from the perspective of the executive who “owns” a floundering project. Canceling the project will leave a permanent stain on the executive’s record, and his personal interests are perhaps best served by gambling further with the organization’s resources in the hope of recouping the original investment—or at least in an attempt to postpone the day of reckoning. In the presence of sunk costs, the manager’s incentives are misaligned with the objectives of the firm and its shareholders, a familiar type of what is known as the agency problem. Boards of directors are well aware of these conflicts and often replace a CEO who is encumbered by prior decisions and reluctant to cut losses. The members of the board do not necessarily believe that the new CEO is more competent than the one she replaces. They do know that she does not carry the same mental accounts and is therefore better able to ignore the sunk costs of past investments in evaluating current opportunities. The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “It’s the home of Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy. I’d like to see the places that inspired those people to write such wonderful books.” All this talk of literary greats reminds me that I should be studying. I glance at my watch. “I’d better go. I have to study.” “For your exams?” “Yes. They start Tuesday.” “Where’s Miss Kavanagh’s car?” “In the hotel parking lot.” “I’ll walk you back.” “Thank you for the tea, Mr. Grey.” He smiles his odd I’ve-got-a-whopping-big-secret smile. “You’re welcome, Anastasia. It’s my pleasure. Come.” He holds his hand out to me. I take it, bemused, and follow him out of the coffee shop. We stroll back to the hotel, and I’d like to say it’s in companionable silence. He at least looks his usual calm, collected self. As for me, I’m desperately trying to gauge how our little coffee morning has gone. I feel like I’ve been interviewed for a job, but I’m not sure what for. “Do you always wear jeans?” he asks out of the blue. “Mostly.” He nods. We’re back at the intersection across the road from the hotel. My mind is reeling. What an odd question… And I’m aware that our time together is limited. This is it. This was it, and I’ve completely blown it, I know. Perhaps he has someone. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I blurt out. Holy crap—I just said that out loud? His lips quirk up in a half smile, and he peers down at me. “No, Anastasia. I don’t do the girlfriend thing,” he says. Oh… What does that mean? He’s not gay. Oh, maybe he is! He must have lied to me in his interview. And for a moment, I think he’s going to follow up with some explanation, some clue to this cryptic statement—but he doesn’t. I have to go. I have to try to reassemble my scattered thoughts. I have to get away from him. I walk forward, and I trip, stumbling headlong into the road. “Shit, Ana!” Grey cries. He tugs the hand he’s holding so hard that I fall back against him just as a cyclist whips past, narrowly missing me, heading the wrong way up this one-way street. It all happens so fast—one minute I’m falling, the next I’m in his arms and he’s holding me tightly against his chest. I inhale his clean, wholesome scent. He smells of freshly laundered linen and some expensive body wash. It’s intoxicating. I inhale deeply.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  No point in plotting nothing. Now everybody get back to work.’ But Levi was still laughing. ‘That ain’t even legal – you can’t coop nobody up. Some of us got girls to go home to, man. Fact is, I wanna be cooped up with my girl come Christmas Day – I’m sure you do too, Bailey. So we just want to find some way that we can all come to, like, an arrangement about that. Come on, Bailey – you don’t want to coop us up in this store on Christmas. Come on, brother.’ Bailey looked closely at Levi. All the other kids had stepped back a little into the alcove by the door, signalling an intention to leave. Levi stood firmly where he was. ‘But there ain’t nothing to talk about,’ said Bailey in a low, resolved tone. ‘That’s the instruction – do you get that?’ ‘Umm, can I?’ said Tom, taking a step forward. ‘Mister Bailey, we’re not trying to irritate you, but we were just considering whether . . .’ Bailey waved him off. There was nobody else in this back lot. Just Levi. ‘Do you get that? This comes from above my head and it’s done. Can’t be changed. You get that, Levi?’ Levi shrugged and turned from Bailey slightly, just enough to show how little this stand-off meant to him. ‘I get it . . . I just think it’s bullshit, that’s all.’ Candy whistled. Mike pushed the fire-exit door open and held it, waiting for the others.  the anatomy lesson ‘Tom – all of you, get yourselves back to work – now ,’ said Bailey, scratching one hand with the other. The welts were pink and raw. ‘Levi, stay where you are.’ ‘It’s not just Levi, we all feel – ’ tried Tom bravely, but again Bailey held a finger up in the air to stop him. ‘Right now , if it ain’t inconveniating you too much. Somebody’s got to work round here.’ Tom offered a look of pity to Levi and followed Mike and Candy back to work. The fire door swung shut, very slowly, pushing out a little of the warm store air into this barren cement place. At last the judder of the lock sounded and echoed across the back lot. Bailey took a few steps closer to Levi. Levi kept his arms folded high on his chest, but Bailey’s face this close was a shocking thing and Levi could not help blinking over and over. ‘ Don’t – act – like – a – nigger – with – me – Levi ,’ said Bailey in a whisper, each word with a momentum of its own, like darts he was throwing at a target. ‘I see you, acting up, trying to make me look stupid – thinking you’re all that, ’cos you’re the only brother any of these kids met in they whole lives.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  When I finished my meals it was back to the heap of refuse until they had some time to make sport of me. "In the meantime I hung there. And when they passed, they would perhaps give me some strong slap, twist the nipples of my chest, spread my legs wider with one of their paddles. "It was an agony beyond anything I had known in the Queen's chamber. And soon, in the evening, the stable boys received word that they might come and use me as they wished. So I had them to satisfy as well. "They were better dressed, but they smelled of the horses. They came in and took me out of the hogshead, and one of them thrust the long rounded leather handle of his whip into my anus. Lifting me up by this, he forced me into the stable. I was then laid over a barrel again and raped by all of them. "It seemed unendurable, and yet I endured it. And as in the Queen's chamber, I could feast my eyes on my tormentors all day long though in between their wants they took little notice of me. "One evening however, when all of them had had much to drink and had been congratulated for a very good meal upstairs, they turned for more imaginative play with me. I was terrified. I had no thoughts of dignity anymore and began to groan behind my gag as soon as they approached me. I squirmed and twisted to resist their hands. "The games they chose were as degrading as they were disgusting. They spoke of decorating me, of improving my appearance, that I was altogether too clean and too fine an animal for my lodgings. And, spread-eagling me in the kitchen, they soon cut loose their fury on me with a dozen concoctions they made from the honey, the eggs, the various syrups and mixtures at their disposal. I was soon covered with these egregious liquids. They painted my buttocks, and laughed as I struggled. They painted my penis and balls. They decorated my face with it, and stuck back my hair with it. And when they had finished, they took the feathers from the fowl and pasted these to my body. "I was terror-stricken, not of any real pain, but merely of their vulgarity and their meanness. I could not bear the humiliation of such disfigurement. "Finally, one of the Pages came in, to see what was the noise, and he took pity on me. He had them release me and told them to wash me.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I called a taxi to take me to the train station the morning after that kiss. I didn’t wake my mother to tell her I was going back to school. I didn’t leave a note. A week went by. She didn’t call. When she “had her accident,” which is how they termed it at the hospital, Peggy was the one to find her. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said on the phone. “She’s still alive, but the doctors say you should come as soon as you can. I’m so, so sorry.” My knees didn’t buckle. I didn’t fall to the ground. I was at the sorority house. I could hear girls cooking in the kitchen, chatting about their fat-free diets and how not to “bulk up” at the gym. “Thanks for letting me know,” I told Peggy. She was whimpering and snorting. I didn’t tell anyone at the sorority house what was happening. I didn’t want to deal with the indignity of it all. It took me almost an entire day to get up there. I wrote a final paper for a class on Hogarth on the train. Part of me was hoping my mother would be dead by the time I arrived. “She knows you’re here,” Peggy said in the hospital room. I knew that wasn’t true. My mother was in a coma. She was already gone. Once in a while, her left eye would blink open—clear blue, frozen, blind, a terrifying, empty, soulless eye. I remember noticing in the hospital room that her roots were showing. She’d been vigilant about keeping her hair icy blond as long as I’d known her, but her natural color had grown in, a warmer shade— honey blonde, my color. I’d never seen her real hair before. My mother’s body stayed alive for exactly three days. Even with a tube down her throat, a machine taped to her face to keep her breathing, she was still pretty. She was still prim. “Her organs are shutting down,” the doctor explained. System failure. She felt nothing, he assured me. She was brain dead. She wasn’t thinking or dreaming or experiencing anything, not even her own death. They turned off the machine and I sat there, waiting, watching the screen blip, then stop. She wasn’t resting. She was not in a state of peace. She was in no state, not being. The peace to be had, I thought, watching them pull the sheet over her head, was mine. “Oh, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry.” Peggy sobbed and embraced me. “You poor thing. You poor dear little orphan.” Unlike my mother, I hated being pitied.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She heard laughter and conversation about her. She heard the rumbling of the old man's voice, and a woman say that the Prince's girl should serve the wine, should she not, so they might all see her? "And haven't they seen me," Beauty thought. Could it be worse than the Great Hall, and what if she spilled the wine? "Beauty, go to the sideboard and take the pitcher. Serve carefully and well, and come back to me," said the Prince, again without looking at her. Beauty moved through the shadows to find the gold pitcher on the sideboard. She could smell the fruity aroma of the wine, and she turned, feeling awkward and graceless, and approached the first table. "A common serving girl, slave," she thought, more keenly than she had thought anything when she had been displayed. With trembling hands she poured the wine slowly into goblet after goblet, and through her glazed vision saw smiles and heard whispered compliments. Now and then some haughty man or woman was quite indifferent to her. She was shocked once by a pinch on her rear and gasped to a general round of laughter. As she bent over the tables, she felt the nakedness of her belly, saw the chains shimmering as they connected her pinched nipples. Each common gesture made her feel more hopeless. She backed away from the last table, from a man who sat back with his elbow on the arm of his chair and smiled at her. And then she filled Lady Juliana's goblet and saw those bright round eyes looking up at her. "Lovely, lovely, O, I do wish you weren't so possessive of her," said Lady Juliana. "Put the pitcher down, my dear, and come here to me." Beauty obeyed and returned to the Lady's chair. When she saw the Lady snap her fingers and point to the floor, Beauty blushed. She fell to her knees, and then in a strange impulsive moment, she kissed the Lady's slippers. It seemed to happen very slowly. She found herself bending down towards the silver slippers and then she touched them with her lips fervently. "Ah, what a darling," said the Lady Juliana. "Give me only and hour with her." And Beauty felt the woman's hand on the back of her neck, caressing her, stroking her, and then gathering her hair back and smoothing it tenderly. Tears came to Beauty's eyes. "I am nothing," she thought. And there was that awareness again of some change in her, some quiet despair, except that her heart was racing. "I would not even have her here," said the Prince under his breath, "save my mother commands it, that she be treated like any other slave, that she be enjoyed by others. Given my own will, I would chain her to my bedpost. I would beat her.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Methamphetamine! Psilocybin! PCP!” he shouted, then suddenly lowered his voice to point at Rohypnol. “Forget-me pills, lunch money, Mexican Valium, mind eraser, rib, roach, roofies, trip-and-falls, wolfies . . .” He was almost inaudible. And then he was screaming again. “This is why you don’t accept drinks from strangers! Girls! Never leave a friend alone at a party! The upside is that the victim forgets!” He stopped to catch his breath. He was a sweaty blonde with a V-shaped build like Superman. “But it isn’t addictive,” he said casually, then turned back to the chart. So my memory seemed to be intact insofar as I could recall with pristine clarity this moment from my adolescence, but I had no recall of what had happened under the influence of Infermiterol. Were there other holes in my memory? I hoped there might be. I tested myself: Who signed the Magna Carta? How tall is the Statue of Liberty? When was the Nazarene Movement? Who shot Andy Warhol? The questions alone proved that my mind was still pretty sound. I knew my social security number. Bill Clinton was president, but not for much longer. In fact, my mind felt sharper, the pathways of my thoughts more direct than before. I could remember things I hadn’t thought of in years: I could remember the time senior year of college when my heel broke on the way to Feminist Theories and Art Practices, 1960s–1990s, and I walked in late, limping and disgruntled, and the professor pointed at me and said, “We were just discussing feminist performance art as a political deconstruction of the art world as a commercial industry,” and told me to stand at the front of the classroom, which I did, my left foot arched like a Barbie’s, and the class analyzed it as a performance piece. “I can’t get past the context of the art history classroom,” a Barnard girl said. “There are so many conflicting layers of meaning here, it’s wonderful,” said the bearded TA. And then, simply to humiliate me, the professor, a woman with long waxy hair and crude silver jewelry, asked me how much I’d paid for my shoes. They were black suede stiletto boots, and they’d cost almost five hundred dollars, one of many purchases I’d made to mitigate the pain of having lost my parents, or whatever it was I was feeling. I could remember all of this, each sniveling, pouty face in that classroom. One idiot said I was “broken by the male gaze.” I remembered the tick of the clock as they stared. “I guess that’s enough,” said the professor, finally. I was permitted to take my seat. Out the window of the classroom, flat, wide yellow leaves fell from a single tree onto gray concrete. I dropped the class, had to explain to my adviser that I wanted to focus more on Neoclassicism, and switched to

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  "And now she told me that crawling was indeed too good for me, that I must place my arms on the ground, and my chin, and must inch along in that manner, my buttocks high in the air where she might paddle them. 'Arch your back,' she said, 'down, I want your chest pressed to the ground,' and as skillfully as any Page or mistress, she forced me along as the others praised her and marveled at her skill and stamina. I had never been in such a position. It was so ignominious I didn't want to picture it, my knees scraping along, my back painfully arched, my buttocks thrust as high as before. And she commanding me always to move with greater speed as my buttocks grew ever more raw. They were throbbing as the blood throbbed in my ears. And my tears were now blinding me. "And it was then that that moment came I spoke of earlier. I belonged to this girl with the flaxen hair, this impudent, clever Princess who herself was punished as shamefully as I was day in and day out but for the moment could do as she wished with me. I struggled along, glimpsing Lord Gregory's boots, the boots of the grooms, hearing the girls' laughter. I reminded myself that I must please the Queen, I must please Lord Gregory, and finally I must please my cruel flaxen-haired mistress. "She paused for breath. She exchanged her paddle for a leather strap and proceeded to lash me. "At first it felt weaker than the paddle, and I felt a merciful relief. But she immediately learned to swing it with such strength it walloped the welts on my buttocks. Now she let me stop so she might feel these welts. She pinched them, and in the silence I could hear my own low crying. "'I think he is ready, Lord Gregory,' said the Princess, and Lord Gregory said softly, he thought that I was. I thought it meant I would be returned to the Queen. "This was very foolish of me. "It was only that I would now be lashed swiftly into the Hall of Punishments. Of course there were a handful of Princesses chained from the ceiling, their legs tied up in front of them. Now she brought me up to the first of these. "She told me to rise and to spread my legs very wide as I stood before her. I saw the captive Princess's pained face, her blushing cheeks, and then her naked and moist sex peering shyly from its wreath of golden pubic hair, much ready for pleasure or more pain, after days of teasing. But it hung low, at the level of my chest, I suppose, and that was like my tormentor liked it. "For she ordered me to bend over towards it, and to thrust my hips out behind me. 'Give me your buttocks,' she said.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  It was all kids’ stuff. Then an orange discount sticker on the bottom shelf caught my eye—9½ Weeks. I picked it up. Trevor had claimed that it was one of his favorite movies. I still hadn’t seen it. “Mickey Rourke’s performance in this is unparalleled. Who knows? You might relate to it.” I resembled Kim Basinger, he explained, and just like me, her character worked in an art gallery. “This movie inspires me to try new things,” he said. “Like what?” I asked, amused by the thought that he might have the courage to do more in bed than reposition himself to get “better leverage.” He took me into his kitchen, turned his back, and said, “Get on your knees.” I did as I was told and knelt down on the cold marble tile. “Keep your eyes closed,” he said. “And open your mouth.” I almost laughed, but I played along. Trevor took his blow jobs very seriously. “Have you seen Sex, Lies, and Videotape?” I asked him. “James Spader in that—” “Be quiet,” he said. “Open up.” He put an unpeeled banana in my mouth, warning me that if I took it out he’d know, and he’d punish me emotionally. “Okay, master,” I mumbled sarcastically. “Keep it in there,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen. I didn’t think it was very funny, but I played along. Back then, I interpreted Trevor’s sadism as a satire of actual sadism. His little games were so silly. So I just knelt there with the banana in my mouth, breathing through my nose. I could hear him on the phone making a reservation for two for dinner that night at Kurumazushi. After twenty minutes he came back in, took the banana out of my mouth. “My sister’s in town so you have to leave,” he said, and put his flaccid penis in my mouth. When he wasn’t hard after a few minutes, he got angry. “What are you even doing here? I don’t have time for this.” He ushered me out. “The doorman will hail you a cab,” he said to me, like I was some one-night stand, some cheap prostitute, like somebody he didn’t know at all. Anal sex came up with Trevor only once. It was my idea. I told him I wanted to prove that I wasn’t uptight—a complaint he gave because at some point I’d hesitated to give him a blow job while he sat on the toilet. We tried once on a night we’d both had a lot to drink, but he lost his erection as he tried to wedge it in. Then all of a sudden he got up and went into the shower, saying nothing to me. Maybe I should have felt vindicated by his failure, but instead I just felt rejected. I followed him to the bathroom. “Is it because I smell?” I asked him through the shower curtain. “What’s wrong?

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Then I must jump through the first hoop, hands behind my neck and somehow manage to squat again for her. 'Yes, my Princess,' I said and obeyed at once, and then through another hoop and another with the same compliance. I was agile and without the slightest shame, though my penis and balls moved ungracefully with my exertions. "Her blows grew harder, less regular. My moans were very loud and sudden and provoked much laughter. "And when she commanded me now to jump up and grab the bar of the trapeze in both hands, I felt the tears come purely from my stress and exhaustion. I hung from the trapeze as she paddles me, driving me back and forth, and then commanded me to twist and catch the chains above with my feet. "This was quite impossible and as I struggled to obey, the hall echoed with laughter. Felix stepped forward and at once lifted my ankles until I was swinging as she had wished and I had to bear her spanks in this position. "And as soon as she tired of this, I was ordered to drop to the ground, at which point she came forward with a long thin leather strap, and buckling the end of it around my penis, she now pulled me, on my knees towards her. I had never been so led or pulled before, by the very root of my cock, and my tears flowed copiously. My whole body was hot and trembling, and my hips were being tugged ahead of me so that no thought of grace could possibly exist even had I the presence of mind for it. She pulled me to the Queen's feet, and then turning, pulled me along, running on her clicking heels so that I struggled and groaned and cried behind my closed lips to keep up with her. "I was wretched. The circle seemed endless. The strap around my penis constricted it, and my buttocks were so painfully tender now that they ached even when she was not striking them. "But we'd soon completed the circle. I knew she had exhausted her inventiveness. She had relied upon my disobedience and reluctance, and encountering none, her show lacked any real feature save my complete obedience. "But she had now a subtle test for me for which I was unprepared.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I could remember things I hadn’t thought of in years: I could remember the time senior year of college when my heel broke on the way to Feminist Theories and Art Practices, 1960s–1990s, and I walked in late, limping and disgruntled, and the professor pointed at me and said, “We were just discussing feminist performance art as a political deconstruction of the art world as a commercial industry,” and told me to stand at the front of the classroom, which I did, my left foot arched like a Barbie’s, and the class analyzed it as a performance piece. “I can’t get past the context of the art history classroom,” a Barnard girl said. “There are so many conflicting layers of meaning here, it’s wonderful,” said the bearded TA. And then, simply to humiliate me, the professor, a woman with long waxy hair and crude silver jewelry, asked me how much I’d paid for my shoes. They were black suede stiletto boots, and they’d cost almost five hundred dollars, one of many purchases I’d made to mitigate the pain of having lost my parents, or whatever it was I was feeling. I could remember all of this, each sniveling, pouty face in that classroom. One idiot said I was “broken by the male gaze.” I remembered the tick of the clock as they stared. “I guess that’s enough,” said the professor, finally. I was permitted to take my seat. Out the window of the classroom, flat, wide yellow leaves fell from a single tree onto gray concrete. I dropped the class, had to explain to my adviser that I wanted to focus more on Neoclassicism, and switched to “Jacques-Louis David: Art, Virtue, and Revolution.” The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub. I got out of the shower, took an Ambien and two Benadryl, wrapped a mildewed towel around my shoulders, and went back out into the living room to check my phone, which had charged sufficiently for me to turn it on. When I looked through my call history, the numbers I had dialed were Trevor’s and an unidentified 646 number, which I had to assume was Ping Xi’s. I deleted the number and took a Risperdal, pulled a gray cable-knit sweater and pair of leggings out of a pile of dirty laundry in the hallway, put the fur coat back on, stuck my feet into slippers, and looked for my keys. I found them still stuck in the lock on the door. • • • IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON, I gathered, from the clouds drifting overhead like crumpled bedsheets. In the lobby, I ignored the doorman’s cautious salutation about the storm and shuffled out and down the disappearing path snaking between the banks of snow piled high on the sidewalk and over the curb.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  But Charlie was so overwhelmed by his good luck that he wilted. “Conduct me,” I said. “I seem to have lost my baton.” “Well then, do it like Mitropoulos—with your bare hands.” “You’re a real find,” he said, thrashing around under the covers. But, hand or baton, it was hopeless. His teeth were chattering and great shudders were shaking his shoulders. He was gasping for breath like an emphysema patient. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “It’s just that you’re such a find, I can’t believe it.” He seemed to be sobbing and choking alternately. “Will you see me again in spite of this?” he pleaded. “You promise you won’t hold this against me?” “What kind of ghoul do you think I am?” I was astonished. All my maternal instincts had been roused by his helplessness. “What kind of creep would throw you out?” “The last one this happened with,” he moaned. “She threw me out and tossed my clothes to me in the hall. She forgot one sock. I had to go home on the subway with one bare ankle. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.” “Darling,” I said, rocking him. I guess I should have been tipped off about Charlie’s emotional instability by his sobbing and choking and shuddering—but not me. For me this only confirmed his sensitivity. The Prince and the Pea. It was understandable. Opening nights got him down. We could always sing Cole Porter together instead of fucking. But instead he fell asleep in my arms. He slept like no one I’ve ever known. He wheezed and sputtered and farted and thrashed. He groaned and shuddered. He even picked his pimples in his sleep. I stayed up half the night watching him in utter amazement. In the morning he woke up smiling and fucked me like a stud. I had passed the test. I had not thrown him out. This was my reward. For the next eight months or so we went together, usually spending nights either at his place or mine. I was in the process of getting an annulment from Brian, and was teaching at CCNY while finishing my M.A. at Columbia. I was still living in the same apartment where Brian had cracked up and I hated to stay alone nights, so when Charlie couldn’t stay with me, I followed him to the East Village and shared his narrow bed. He loved me, he said, he adored me, he said, and yet, he kept holding back. I sensed something funny in his declarations of love, something tentative and insincere. I was wild because it was the first time anyone had ever held back on me. I was used to having the upper hand and his tentativeness incensed me. It made me more and more crazy about him, which in turn made him more and more tentative. The old, old story.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Kids will be kids, we say. But bullying is a national epidemic. In one study, over 50 percent of children nationwide reported being verbally or socially bullied at school, or having participated in bullying another child at school, at least once in two months. Over 20 percent reported being the victim or perpetrator of physical bullying, and over 13 percent reported involvement with electronic bullying. Bullying is considered a serious enough childhood risk, with potential lifelong health consequences, that at press time, the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council’s Committee on Law and Justice are producing a comprehensive report on its biological and psychological ramifications. 64 If you suffer mental anguish in the moment, whether from bullying or another cause, should your suffering count as harm, and should the perpetrators be punished? A recent legal case implies the answer is sometimes yes. A company in Atlanta demanded DNA samples from its employees because someone was contaminating its warehouse with feces. It’s illegal to take genetic information from someone without his consent (it violates the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act), but the case was won largely on emotional grounds. The two plaintiffs were awarded about $250,000 each to compensate them for feeling humiliated and bullied, plus a remarkable $1.75 million in punitive damages for “emotional distress and mental anguish.” The large award was not for the plaintiffs’ actual emotional suffering but their potential emotional suffering in the future. After all, their personal health information could be used against them at any time for the rest of their lives. This fear of the future was easy for jurors to simulate and therefore empathize with. In a chronic pain case, it’s harder: how do you see the invisible? There are no injuries to look at, and nothing to help your brain create the simulation, so empathy suffers and consequently so does compensation. 65 The legal system has difficulty dealing with mental anguish for purely practical reasons. How do you measure it objectively if emotions have no essences or fingerprints? Also, physical harm like a broken leg is usually more economically predictable than emotional harm, which is far more variable. And how do you distinguish everyday emotional pain from lasting harm? 66 Perhaps the most important question here is: Whose suffering counts as harm? Who deserves our empathy and therefore the full protection of the law? If you negligently or intentionally break my arm, you owe me. But if you negligently or intentionally break my heart, you don’t, even if we were close for a long time, regulating each other’s body budgets, and the breakup will put me through a physical process that can be as excruciating as withdrawal from an addictive drug. You can’t sue someone for heartbreak, no matter how much you might want to (or how much they deserve it). The law is about creating and enforcing social reality. Empathic claims about pain are fundamentally claims about whose rights matter . . . and whose humanity matters. 67 ...

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Mind you, I had little idea what was to happen to me. But very soon I saw that I was in a dark and dirty place, full of the grease and soot of the cooking where the pots were always boiling and dozens of menials were at work at the chopping of vegetables and the cleaning or plucking of the fowl, and all the other tasks that go to produce the banquets served here. "No sooner was I brought in that they rejoiced to have a little amusement. I was surrounded by the crudest beings I had ever seen. 'But what is this to me,' I thought. 'I obey no one.' "But in moments, I realized these creatures were no more interested in my compliance than they were interested in the compliance of the fowl they slaughtered, or the carrots they scrubbed, or the potatoes they threw in the pot. I was a plaything to them and seldom did they even address me as though I had ears to hear or sense to comprehend what they said about me. "I was at once collared in leather, this collar linked to the cuffs on my wrists, and my wrists to my knees so that I could not rise from my hands-and-knees position. A bit with a bridle was placed in my mouth, and bound so securely to my head that I might be pulled forward by leather straps with little ability to resist, my limbs reluctantly allowing me to follow. "I refused to stir. I was dragged about on the dirty kitchen floor while they howled with laughter. They had their paddles out, and were soon punishing me mercilessly. Nothing was spared, of course, but my buttocks in particular delighted them. And the more I bucked or struggled, the more they found it hilarious. I was no more than a dog to them. And that was precisely how they treated me. But this was only the beginning. I was soon unshackled enough to be thrown over a great barrel. And there I was raped by one and all of the men, the women looking on with laughter. I was sore from this, and so dizzy from the motion of the barrel that I was sick, but this again they thought most amusing. "But when they were done with me, and had to return to their work, they shackled me above the open hogshead that received the garbage. My feet were deposited firmly in the waste of cabbage leaves and carrot tops, onion peels, and chicken feathers that made up the refuse of the day's work and, as they added to it, it rose around me. The stench was terrible and when I writhed and struggled, again they laughed, and thought of other ways to torment me."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  "Now kiss the hem of my skirt, and the tip of my foot in its slipper." He did as she requested. "That is good," she said. "Now you may go." His shocked expression just made her laugh. She ridiculed him, then made a confession: she was repulsed by him. Now that she had a villa in her name, she was free of him at last. She called out, and a young man appeared from the shadows of the courtyard. As Don Mateo watched, too stunned to move, they began to make love on the floor, right before his eyes. The next morning Conchita appeared at Don Mateo's house, suppos- edly to see if he had committed suicide. To her surprise, he hadn't—in fact he slapped her so hard she fell to the ground. "Conchita," he said, "you have made me suffer beyond all human strength. You have invented moral tortures to try them on the only man who loved you passionately. I now declare that I am going to possess you by force." Conchita screamed she would never be his, but he hit her again and again. Finally, moved by her tears, he stopped. Now she looked up at him lovingly. Forget the past, she said, forget all that I have done. Now that he hit her, now that she could see his pain, she felt certain he truly loved her. She was still a mozita—the affair with the young man the night before had been only for show, ending as soon as he had left—and she still belonged to him. "You are not going to take me by force. I await you in my arms." Finally she was sincere. To his supreme delight, he discovered that she was indeed still a virgin. Interpretation. Don Mateo and Conchita Perez are characters in the 1896 novella Woman and Puppet, by Pierre Louÿs. Based on a true story—the "Miss Charpillon" episode in Casanova's Memoirs—the novella has served as the basis for two films: Josef von Sternberg's Devil Is a Woman, with Mar- lene Dietrich, and Luis Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire. In Louÿs's story, Conchita takes a proud and aggressive older man and in the space of a few months turns him into an abject slave. Her method is simple: she stimu- lates as many emotions as possible, including heavy doses of pain. She ex- cites his lust, then makes him feel base for taking advantage of her. She gets him to play the protector, then makes him feel guilty for trying to buy her. Her sudden disappearance anguishes him—he has lost her—so that when she reappears (never by accident) he feels intense joy; which, however, she Oderint, dum metuant [Let them hate me so long as they fear me], as if only fear and hate belong together, whereas fear and love have nothing to do with each other, as if it were not fear that makes love interesting.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  A. Antidepressants are the most prescribed drug in the United States, with 118 million prescriptions written in 2005 alone. One of the most prominent side effects of these drugs is the dampening of libido, so maybe the whole issue will just fade away—chemical castration. If not, there’s always Viagra, with well over a billion tablets doled out in the decade since it was introduced in 1998. But Viagra creates blood flow, not desire. Now men can fake sexual interest too. Progress? B. It’s not the same, is it? And isn’t there something humiliating (not to say emasculating) about sneaking off at night to look at porn on your computer? This course often leads to serious anger and resentment that can destroy a relationship. 3. Serial monogamy: divorce and start over. This option seems to be the “honest” approach recommended by most experts—including many relationship counselors. A. Serial monogamy is a symptomatic response to the issues posed by the conflict between what society dictates and what biology demands. It solves nothing in terms of snowballing male (and thus, female) sexual frustration in long-term sexually monogamous relationships. B. Though often presented as the honorable response to the conundrum, the serial monogamy cop-out has led directly to the current epidemic of broken homes and single-parent families. How is it “adult” to inflict emotional trauma on our children because we’re unable to face the truth about sex? Susan Squire, author of I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage, asks: “Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children’s lives maybe forever, just to be able to fuck someone with whom the fucking is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?”34 A man who pursues long-term happiness by leaving behind a string of hurt, embittered women and emotionally wounded children is little more than a dog chasing tail—his own. And if you’re a woman whose husband is “cheating,” your options are no better: pretend you don’t notice what’s going on, go out and have your own revenge affair (even if you don’t feel like it), or destroy your own family and marriage by calling in the lawyers. These are all losing scenarios. Even the term we use to describe this betrayal of self and family, “cheating,” echoes the standard narrative of human sexuality in its implication that marriage is a game that one player can win at the expense of the other. The woman who “tricks” a man into supporting children he thinks are his has, according to this model, cheated—and won. Another big winner, according to the standard narrative, is the “baby-daddy” who manages to impregnate a string of women who then raise his children while he’s already on to his next conquest. But in any true partnership—married or not—cheating cannot lead to any sort of victory. It’s win-win or everybody loses.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  The words devastated Susan. On the spot, she knew she’d never forget them. But something about that incident steeled Susan’s spine. From the day Frank began dating her, he sensed an undergirding of strength in Susan. This girl, he thought, can handle anything. As high school drew to a close, Frank needed to decide on a future. He wanted to be a fighter pilot—a perfect way to combine flying and defense of his country. World War II had ended nearly a year earlier, but already tensions were building with the Soviet Union. No less an expert in looming tyranny than Winston Churchill now warned that “an iron curtain” had descended across Europe. Frank believed him. After scoring high on admissions exams, Frank enrolled at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the fall of 1946. Cadet Borman was all baby face and golden hair compared to his classmates. Many had already attended college, and at least half were veterans of World War II. In early fall, Borman tried out for the plebe (first year) football team. He’d been a star high school quarterback, but at this level he didn’t have the necessary arm strength. He joined anyway, as the varsity team’s assistant manager, in charge of gathering dirty socks and sweaty jockstraps. It was thrilling for Borman, who got to observe head coach Earl Blaik’s legendary intensity and to watch one of the young assistant coaches, Vince Lombardi, develop his own military coaching style. Borman fell in love with West Point. The rules, the order, the discipline—it all seemed designed to tune out distraction and allow a man to get on with what really mattered. As a kid, he’d already been different from his peers—he went after the things that were important to him, as if he were on a mission. At West Point, nothing mattered but the mission. He pledged himself to the academy’s motto—Duty, Honor, Country. It seemed to Borman that a person who believed in anything less wouldn’t get where he needed to go. All the while, Borman and Susan continued dating, if only by U.S. mail. She was still in Tucson, and they were separated by more than two thousand miles. West Point did not allow furloughs for plebes, even for holidays. Fearing he’d receive a breakup letter from Susan, Borman struck first, sending a letter to Susan saying they needed to cool their relationship. It only made sense, in light of their distance, his commitment to West Point, and the focus he’d need to make his new