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 Story of O (1954)

  our sex exposed, it is not for the sake of convenience, for it would be just as convenient the other way, but for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed there upon it and nowhere else, so that you may learn that there resides your master, for whom, above all else, your lips are intended. During the day, when we are dressed in normal attire and you are clothed as you are now, the same rules will apply, except that when requested you will open your clothes, and then close them again when we have finished with you. Another thing: at night you will have only your lips with which to honor us - and your wide-spread thighs - for your hands will be tied behind your back and you will be naked, as you were a short while ago. You will be blindfolded only to be maltreated and, now that you have seen how you are whipped, to be flogged. And yes, by the way: while it is perfectly all right for you to grow accustomed to being whipped - since you are going to be every day throughout your stay - this is less for our pleasure than for your enlightenment. How true this is may be shown by the fact that on those nights when no one desires you, you will wait until the valet whose job it is comes to your solitary cell and administers what you are due to receive but we are not in the mood to mete out. Actually, both this flogging and the chain - which when attached to the ring of your collar keeps you more or less closely confined to your bed several hours a day - are intended less to make you suffer, scream, or shed tears than to make you feel, through this suffering, that you are not free but fettered, and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to something outside yourself. When you leave here, you will be wearing on your third finger an iron ring, which will identify you. Bu then you will have learned to obey those who wear the same insignia, and when they see it they will know that beneath your skirt you are constantly naked, however comely or commonplace your clothes may be, and that this nakedness is for them. Should anyone find you in the least intractable, he will return you here. Now you will be shown to your cell."

• From Story of O (1954)

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

• From Story of O (1954)

  Thus, less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, during her second day there, she was taken after the meal into the library, there to serve coffee and tend the fire. Jeanne, whom the black- haired valet had brought back, went with her, as did another girl named Monique. It was this same valet who took them there and remained in the room, stationed near the stake to which O had been attached. The library was still empty. The French doors faced wet, and in the vast, almost cloudless sky the autumn sun slowly pursued its course, its rays lighting, on a chest of drawers, an enormous bouquet of sulphur colored chrysanthemums which smelled of earth and dead leaves. "Did Pierre mark you last night?" the valet asked O. She nodded that he had. "Then you should show it," he said. Please roll up your dress." He waited till she had rolled her robe up and behind, the way Jeanne had done the evening before, and till Jeanne had helped her fasten it there. Then he told her to light the fire. O's backside up to her waist, her thighs, her slender legs, was framed in the cascading folds of green silk and white linen. The five welts had turned black. The fire was ready on the hearth, all O had to do was ignite the straw beneath the kindling, which leaped into flame. Soon the branches of apple wood caught, then the oak logs, which burned with tall, crackling, almost colorless flames which were almost invisible in the daylight, but which smelled good. Another valet entered and placed a tray filled with coffee cups on the console, from which the lamp had been removed, then left the room. O went over near the console, while Monique and Jeanne remained standing on either side of the fireplace. Just then two men came in, and the first valet in turn left the room. O thought she recognized one of the men from his voice, one of those who had forced her the previous evening, the one who had asked that her rear be made more easily accessible. As she poured the coffee into the small black and gold cups, which Monique handed around with the sugar, she stole a glance at them. So it was this thin, blond boy, a mere stripling, with an English air about him. He was speaking again; now she was certain. The other man was also fair, thick set with a heavy face. Both of them were seated in the big leather armchairs, their feet near the fire, quietly smoking and reading their papers, paying no more heed to the women than if they had not been there. Now

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Maybe even humiliating, if you’re prone to that sort of thing. But 150 years after On the Origin of Species was published, isn’t it time to accept that our ancestors evolved along a sexual trajectory similar to that of our two highly social, very intelligent, closely related primate cousins? With any other question we have about the origins of human behavior, we look to chimps and bonobos for important clues: language, tool use, political alliances, war, reconciliation, altruism … but when it comes to sex, we prudishly turn away from these models to the distantly related, antisocial, low-I.Q. but monogamous gibbon? Really? We’ve pointed out how the agricultural revolution triggered radical social reconfigurations from which we’re still reeling. Perhaps the farfetched denial of our promiscuous sexual prehistory expresses a legitimate fear of social instability, but insistent demands for a stable social order (based, as we’re often reminded, upon the nuclear family unit) cannot erase the effects of the hundreds of thousands of years that came before our species settled into stable villages. If female chimps and bonobos could talk, do we really think they’d be griping to their hairy girlfriends about prematurely ejaculating males who don’t bring flowers anymore? Probably not, because as we’ve seen, when a female chimp or bonobo is in the mood, she’s likely to be the center of plenty of eager male attention. And the more attention she gets, the more she attracts, because as it turns out, our male primate cousins get turned on by the sight and sound of others of their species having sex. Imagine that. “What Horrid Extravagancies of Minde!” No man (who is but never so little versed in such matters) is ignorant, what grievous symptomes, the Rising, Bearing down and Perversion, and Convulsion of the Wombe do excite; what horrid extravagancies of minde, what Phrensies, Melancholy Distempers, and Outragiousness, the preternatural Diseases of the Womb do induce, as if affected Persons were inchanted…. W ILLIAM H ARVEY, Anatomical Exercitations concerning the Generation of Living Creatures (1653) Hysteria was one of the first diseases to be described formally. Hippocrates discussed it in the fourth century BCE, and you’ll find it in any medical text covering women’s health written from medieval times until it was removed from the list of recognized medical diagnoses in 1952 (twenty-one years before homosexuality was finally removed). Hysteria was still one of the most diagnosed diseases in the United States and Great Britain as recently as the early twentieth century. You might wonder how physicians treated this chronic condition over the centuries. We’ll tell you. Doctors masturbated their female patients to orgasm. According to historian Rachel Maines, female patients were routinely massaged to orgasm from the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s. Have a seat; the doctor will be right with you…. While some passed the job off to nurses, most physicians performed the therapy themselves, though apparently not without some difficulty.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'The theatre, for instance, and the entertainments . . . a-a-a!' he yawned. 'The electric light everywhere . . . a-a-a!' 'Yes, the electric light,' said Levin. 'Yes. Oh, and where's Vronsky now?' he asked suddenly, laying down the soap. 'Vronsky?' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; 'he's in Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he's not once been in Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I'll tell you the truth,' he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his handsome ruddy face, in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. 'It's your own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn't say which had the better chance. Why didn't you fight it out? I told you at the time that…' He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth. 'Does he know, or doesn't he, that I did make an offer?' Levin wondered, gazing at him. 'Yes, there's something humbugging, diplomatic in his face,' and feeling he was blushing, he looked Stepan Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking. 'If there was anything on her side at that time, it was nothing but a superficial attraction,' pursued Oblonsky. 'His being such a perfect aristocrat, don't you know, and his future position in society, had an influence not with her, but with her mother.' Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support. 'Stay, stay,' he began, interrupting Oblonsky. 'You talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of Vronsky or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You consider Vronsky an aristocrat, but I don't. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother— God knows whom she wasn't mixed up with. . . . No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honourable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that's another matter), and have never curried favour with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Old or young?' asked Levin, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not know whom, by Tanya's performance. 'Oh, I hope it's not a tiresome person!' thought Levin. As soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming, Levin recognised Katavasov in a straw hat, walking along swinging his arms just as Tanya had shown him. Katavasov was very fond of discussing metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Levin had had many arguments with him of late. And one of these arguments, in which Katavasov had obviously considered that he came off victorious, was the first thing Levin thought of as he recognised him. 'No, whatever I do, I won't argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,' he thought. Getting out of the trap and greeting his brother and Katavasov, Levin asked about his wife. 'She has taken Mitya to Kolok' (a copse near the house). 'She meant to have him out there because it's so hot indoors,' said Dolly. Levin had always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe, and he was not pleased to hear this. 'She rushes about from place to place with him,' said the prince, smiling. 'I advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar.' 'She meant to come to the bee-house. She thought you would be there. We are going there,' said Dolly. 'Well, and what are you doing?' said Sergey Ivanovitch, falling back from the rest and walking beside him. 'Oh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,' answered Levin. 'Well, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you for such a long time.' 'Only for a fortnight. I've a great deal to do in Moscow.' At these words the brothers' eyes met, and Levin, in spite of the desire he always had, stronger than ever just now, to be an affectionate and still more open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He dropped his eyes and did not know what to say. Casting over the subjects of conversation that would be pleasant to Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off the subject of the Servian war and the Slavonic question, at which he had hinted by the allusion to what he had to do in Moscow, Levin began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch's book. 'Well, have there been reviews of your book?' he asked. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of the question. 'No one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone,' he said. 'Just look, Darya Alexandrovna, we shall have a shower,' he added, pointing with a sunshade at the white rainclouds that showed above the aspen tree-tops. And these words were enough to re-establish again between the brothers that tone—hardly hostile, but chilly—which Levin had been so longing to avoid. Levin went up to Katavasov.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She did not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It seemed to her natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg, she was suddenly made distinctly aware of her present position in society, and she grasped the fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter. She had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son never left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch, that she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband— that it made her miserable to think of doing; she could only be at peace when she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha's old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch's house. In this uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by. Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write to her a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally said that permission to see her son must depend on her husband's generosity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he would keep up his character of magnanimity, and would not refuse her request. The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most cruel and unexpected answer, that there was no answer. She had never felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for the commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no answer. Anna felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering was the more poignant that she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not share it with Vronsky.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And me to go magnanimously to forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her! . . . What induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might have seen her, then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it's out of the question, out of the question!' Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a side-saddle for Kitty's use. 'I'm told you have a side-saddle,' she wrote to him; 'I hope you will bring it over yourself.' This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating posi tion! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would go was impossible, because he could not go; to write that he could not come because something prevented him, or that he would be away, that was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer, and with a sense of having done something shameful; he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to his bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his neighbourhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a long-standing promise to stay with him. The grouse marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on account of his work on the estate; Now he was glad to get away from the neighbourhood of the Shtcherbatskys, and still more from his farm-work, especially on a shooting expedition, which always in trouble served as the best consolation. XXV I N the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post-horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his big, old-fashioned carriage. He stopped half-way at a well-to-do peasant's to feed his horses. A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, grey on his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gate-post to let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man asked Levin to come into the parlour. A cleanly dressed young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with her bare arm to the door into the parlour, she bent down again, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing. 'Would you like the samovar?' she asked.

• 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 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 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 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)

  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 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 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)

  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 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 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 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.