Jealousy

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 Henry and June (1986)

  He, too, cries out, “It is all so unreal, so swift.” And I see another Henry, or perhaps the same Henry who walked that day into my house. We talk as I wished we would talk, so easily, so truly. I lie on his bed covered by his coat. He watches me. “You expected—more brutality?” His mountains of words, of notes, of quotations are sundered. I am surprised. I did not know this man. We were not in love with each other’s writing. But what are we in love with now? I cannot bear the picture of June’s face on the mantelpiece. Even in the photograph, it is uncanny, she possesses us both. I write crazy notes to Henry. We cannot meet today. The day is empty. I am caught. And he? What does he feel? I am invaded, I lose everything, my mind vacillates, I am only aware of sensations. There are moments in the day when I do not believe in Henry’s love, when I feel June dominating both of us, when I say to myself, “This morning he will awake and realize he loves no one but June.” Moments when I believe, madly, that we are going to live something new, Henry and I, outside of June’s world. How has he imposed truth on me? I was about to take flight from the prison of my imaginings, but he takes me to his room and there we live a dream, not a reality. He places me where he wants to place me. Incense. Worship. Illusion. And all the rest of his life is effaced. He comes with a new soul to this hour. It is the sleeping potion of fairy tales. I lie with a burning womb and he scarcely notices it. Our gestures are human, but there is a curse on the room. It is June’s face. I remember, with great pain, one of his notes: “life’s wildest moment—June, kneeling on the street.” Is it June or Henry I am jealous of? He asks to see me again. When I wait in the armchair in his room, and he kneels to kiss me, he is stranger than all my thoughts. With his experience he dominates me. He dominates with his mind, too, and I am silenced. He whispers to me what my body must do. I obey, and new instincts rise in me. He has seized me. A man so human; and I, suddenly brazenly natural. I am amazed at my lying there in his iron bed, with my black underwear vanquished and trampled. And the tight secrecy of me broken for a moment, by a man who calls himself “the last man on earth.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It was after midnight when they left the opera. They went to a neon-lit deli manned by aging waiters wearing red jackets, several of whom had violent tics in their jaws. Daisy persuaded him to order a salad and a milk shake; she was worried that he didn’t eat enough. He sipped his shake uncomfortably and watched her eat cream cheese and salmon. She talked about her unhappy relationship with her father, pausing to bend her head so she could nip up the fallen croissant flakes with her tongue. Waiters ran around the table, some of them bearing three food-loaded plates in each hairy hand. He tried to make her take some pills and stay out with him longer, but she said she felt too guilty about David. There was also some art work she wanted to do. She sighed and looked at the ground. She pulled away from him four times before he let her go. He watched her walk away and thought, “Now it’s too late to buy jelly beans.” When he opened the door to his apartment, Diane hit him in the face. He was so startled, he stood there and let her hit him three more times before he grabbed her wrist. “You filthy bastard!” she screamed. “You went to the opera with her! We always go to the opera together and you went with that cunt!” “I hardly thought you wanted to go.” “Well, I did. I waited for you to come home from work.” Her voice hobbled tearfully. “I never thought you would go with that cunt.” “She’s not a cunt.” She swung her free hand, catching his ear. She yanked at the lobe, tearing out his tiny blue earring. It pinged on the floor, sparkled and rolled away. “Shit!” he screamed. He dropped to his knees and felt the floor with his palms. “Don’t you have any self-control?” “I don’t give a shit about self-control. Get the fuck out.” “Will you just wait until I find my earring?” “I don’t care about your fucking earring. Get out before I kill you.” “God, you’re so irrational.” He listened for sobbing from outside the slammed door. There was none. His ear was bleeding and his face burned, but he was oddly exhilarated. He was sorry Diane was so upset, but there was something stirring about a violent tantrum. It was the sort of thing he liked to tell stories about. — The street was buzzing with junkies and kids with big radios. They stood in a jumbled line against buildings and crawled out of holes in the walls and fences. They mumbled at him as he walked past. “I got the blues, I got the reds, I got the greens and blacks, the ones from last week.” He walked three blocks to Eliot’s apartment; he didn’t expect Eliot to answer the door, but he buzzed anyway. He was startled when Eliot’s suspicious voice darted from the cluster of tiny holes that served as an intercom.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Hymie of course told her it wouldn’t make any difference to him one way or the other. Glued to her like a snake, a cigarette in his mouth, the girls passing below on the boulevard, it was hard for him to imagine a woman not being able to fuck any more. He was sure the operation would be successful. Successful! That’s to say that she’d fuck even better than before. He used to tell her that, lying on his back looking up at the ceiling. “You know I’ll always love you,” he would say. “Move over just a little bit, will you. . . . there, like that. . . . that’s it. What was I saying? Oh yes . . . why sure, why should you worry about things like that? Of course I’ll be true to you. Listen, pull away just a little bit . . . yeah, that’s it. . . . that’s fine.” He used to tell us about it in the chop suey joint. Steve would laugh like hell. Steve couldn’t do a thing like that. He was too honest—especially with women. That’s why he never had any luck. Little Curley, for example—Steve hated Curley—would always get what he wanted. . . . He was a born liar, a born deceiver. Hymie didn’t like Curley much either. He said he was dishonest, meaning of course dishonest in money matters. About such things Hymie was scrupulous. What he disliked especially was the way Curley talked about his aunt. It was bad enough, in Hymie’s opinion, that he should be screwing the sister of his own mother, but to make her out to be nothing but a piece of stale cheese, that was too much for Hymie. One ought to have a bit of respect for a woman, provided she’s not a whore. If she’s a whore that’s different. Whores are not women. Whores are whores. That was how Hymie looked at things. The real reason for this dislike, however, was that whenever they went out together Curley always got the best choice. And not only that, but it was usually with Hymie’s money that Curley managed it. Even the way Curley asked for money irritated Hymie—it was like extortion, he said. He thought it was partly my fault, that I was too lenient with the kid. “He’s got no moral character,” Hymie would say. “And what about you , your moral character?” I would ask. “Oh me! Shit, I’m too old to have any moral character. But Curley’s only a kid.” “You’re jealous, that’s what,” Steve would say. “Me? Me jealous of him?” And he’d try to smother the idea with a scornful little laugh. It made him wince, a jab like that. “Listen,” he would say, turning to me, “did I ever act jealous toward you? Didn’t I always turn a girl over to you if you asked me? What about that red-haired girl in SU office . . . you remember . . .

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The burgundy-headed girl curled her legs up on the couch and turned back to her Monopoly game with the contemptuous black-haired girl, who lay across the couch like an eel on a market stand. The stretch-pants woman tried to talk to him. “Do you work around here, Fred?” “No.” “What kind of business are you in?” “Nothing. I mean, I’m retired.” The patches of shirt under his arms were glued with sweaty hair-lace. Jane was being mauled by a fat oaf who didn’t care that you could feel her innermost life on her skin. The stretch-pants woman asked him to step into the kitchen. This house advertised its discretion and made sure men did not meet each other. He saw only the man’s dismal black-suited shape through the slats of the swinging kitchen door as he stood there holding his drink, the ice cubes melting into a depressing fizz. He heard the black shape’s blurred rumble and Jane’s indifferent voice. She sounded much nicer when she said good-bye to him. The pale-eyed hostess opened the swinging door and gave him a flat smile. “Okay, sir, would you like to step out?” Jane stood smiling in her checked dress, her hands behind her back, one white-socked ankle crossing the other, her chin tilted up. He remembered how he had seen her first, how she could’ve been any girl, any bland, half-friendly face behind any counter. He felt a funny-bone twinge as he realized how her body, her voice, her every fussy gesture had become part of a Jane network, a world of smells, sounds and touches that found its most acute focus when she had her legs around his back. — The minute she came into the room, he went to her and put his arms around her hips. “Hello, Jane.” “Hi.” “It was strange not seeing you out there waiting for me.” She looked puzzled. “I guess I somehow got used to thinking of you as my own little girl. I didn’t like the idea that you were with some other guy. Silly, huh?” “Yes.” She broke away and snapped the sheet out over the bed. “Do you say things like that because you think I like to hear them?” “Maybe. Some of the girls do, you know.” He could feel the sarcasm of her silence. He watched her pull her dress off over her head and drop it on the aluminum chair. “I guess it’s only natural that you’ve begun to get jaded.” She snorted. “I wouldn’t call it that.” “What would you call it?” She didn’t answer. She sat on the bed and bent to take off her heels, leaving her socks on. When she looked at him again she said, “Do you really think it’s a good idea for you to come to see me every night? It’s awfully expensive. I know lawyers make a lot of money, but still. Won’t your wife wonder where it’s going?”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It was precisely this snakelike copulation in the dark, this double-jointed, double-barreled hookup, which put me in the strait jacket of doubt, jealousy, fear, loneliness. If I began my hemstitching with Georgiana and the myriad- branched candelabra of sex I was certain that she too was at work building membrane, making ears, eyes, toes, scalp and whatnot of sex. She would begin with the monster who had raped her, assuming there was truth in the story; in any case she too began somewhere on a parallel track, working upwards and outwards through this multiform, uncreated being through whose body we were both striving desperately to meet. Knowing only a fraction of her life, possessing only a bag of lies, of inventions, of imaginings, of obsessions and delusions, putting together tag ends, coke dreams, reveries, unfinished sentences, jumbled dream talk, hysterical ravings, ill-disguised fantasies, morbid desires, meeting now and then a name become flesh, overhearing stray bits of conversation, observing smuggled glances, half-arrested gestures, I could well credit her with a pantheon of her own private fucking gods, of only too vivid flesh and blood creatures, men of perhaps that very afternoon, of perhaps only an hour ago, her cunt perhaps still choked with the sperm of the last fuck. The more submissive she was, the more passionately she behaved, the more abandoned she looked, the more uncertain I became. There was no beginning, no personal, individual starting point; we met like experienced swordsmen on the field of honor now crowded with the ghosts of victory and defeat. We were alert and responsive to the least thrust, as only the practiced can be. We came together under cover of dark with our armies and from opposite sides we forced the gates of the citadel. There was no resisting our bloody work; we asked for no quarter and we gave none. We came together swimming in blood, a gory, glaucous reunion in the night with all the stars extinguished save the fixed black star hanging like a scalp above the hole in the ceiling. If she were properly coked she would vomit it forth like an oracle, everything that had happened to her during the day, yesterday, the day before, the year before last, everything, down to the day she was born. And not a word of it was true, not a single detail. Not a moment did she stop, for if she had, the vacuum she created in her flight would have brought about an explosion fit to sunder the world. She was the world’s lying machine in microcosm, geared to the same unending, devastating fear which enables men to throw all their energies into creation of the death apparatus. To look at her one would think her fearless, one would think her the personification of courage and she was, so long as she was not obliged to turn in her traces. Behind her lay the calm fact of reality, a colossus which dogged her every step.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  This did not make her feel contempt or draw away from him. She liked this vicarious view of herself; it excited and reassured her. She wasn’t a directionless girl adrift in a monstrous city, wandering from one confusing social situation to the next, having stupid affairs. She was a bohemian, experimenting. The idea made rock music start playing in her head. She kissed him with something resembling passion. “I would like to actually fuck you sometime,” he said. “But I don’t think you enjoy sex here. I don’t want it if you can’t enjoy yourself.” She smiled and tweaked the light layer of flab at his waist. “But that doesn’t apply to blow jobs, right?” After he left, the day suddenly became very busy. Most of the men she saw were unpleasant, and she found herself taking refuge in the idea of Bernard the lawyer as she endured their malodorous company. That night Sandra called her. Stephanie was sitting on her bed eating orange sorbet from a pint box and trying to view her life in a positive way, and she welcomed the interruption. “Hi,” said Sandra. “You’re not writing, are you?” “No, in fact, I was avoiding it.” “Again?” “I’m afraid so.” Sandra sighed. “Maybe you’re trying to write at the wrong time of day. Most people have times of day when they’re more productive than others. Have you considered that?” “No, I haven’t. Anyway, I have a job, you know.” “That’s right, I forgot. You don’t have as much leeway as I do.” Sandra was supported by her husband, a painter whose father had given him a building. Stephanie had told Sandra that she was working as a maid for an agency that had several apartments on the Upper West Side. In her mind, this was grubbily close to the truth, and it rendered her conveniently unreachable by phone. She felt that Sandra viewed her fictional job with a mixture of secret repugnance and respect, astounded that a person she knew could do such a job without any apparent loss of self-esteem. Sandra began to talk about the opening. After Stephanie had left, an important East Village art critic had arrived, and Sandra had hoped he would pay attention to her. But he ignored her completely and openly admired the work done by her friend Yolanda. “I know it’s petty, but by the end of the night, I could hardly speak to her. It’s not just this one incident either; she’s always getting attention—ever since she started putting those little beads in her hair and going out with that guy Serge. And I know what this sounds like, but sometimes I think people respond to her just because she’s black and they want to prove they’re not racist. I mean, I know she’s good, but I work all the time, and she only does one painting every few months. And her stuff is derivative as hell.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “One of the times I was there, I was watching this girl called Marissa, a skinny, not very attractive girl with blank brown eyes. It was almost the end of the night and she was squatting on the floor with her skirt hiked up to her waist, counting her money with a little furry-animal look of concentration, and I thought about how she must look to someone like you, despite her nasty personality—like this cute little beast who can be swept up and fondled and experienced and then put down.” “That’s fabulous.” He looked deeply entertained. “You have such a wonderful way of expressing things.” She thought: If he says “fabulous” one more time tonight, I may punch him in the nose. It was a cool autumn evening. Clawlike leaves smelling of ashes rasped and scuttled across the pavement as they walked to her apartment. They were silent and she felt uncomfortable about it. They were returning from a dinner that should’ve been nice but wasn’t. Bernard had been distracted and (she felt) bored by her. He had flirted subtly with their waitress, which she’d observed with a detached sense of disappointment, a cold and lifeless form of jealousy. As they mounted the stairs, she felt they were heading toward a destination simply because it was more trouble than it was worth to avoid it. Once inside the warm apartment, though, she felt better about him, and she sensed a similar change in his mood. They lay snuggled on her bed and told short stories about their lives. He mentioned a girl he’d had a particular passion for in college, a headstrong dancer with long red hair, and told how he had finally seduced her one night after a party. “It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. At the last moment she panicked and said, ‘No, let me just take you in my mouth.’ ” “Why didn’t she want to screw?” “Because she felt too vulnerable and didn’t want me to enter her.” “What happened?” “Well, I fucked her.” Pause. “And that was the beginning of a long and intense relationship.” “Did you ever consider marrying her?” What a silly idea, said his face. “No, no. I wasn’t thinking about that then.” “Did you ever feel a passion like that for your wife?” “No, I really didn’t. She was by far the most beautiful of all the women I’d been with, but I wasn’t nearly as attracted to her as I had been to the others.” He touched her nose. “You’re really concerned about that, aren’t you?” They kissed and petted, and her absurd bed creaked. Then they separated and talked again. She told him about the time her sister’s boyfriend had tried to seduce her in the middle of their breakup. “What happened?” He smiled. “Nothing. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t attracted to him and he was obviously doing it out of hostility to my sister.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Once inside the warm apartment, though, she felt better about him, and she sensed a similar change in his mood. They lay snuggled on her bed and told short stories about their lives. He mentioned a girl he’d had a particular passion for in college, a headstrong dancer with long red hair, and told how he had finally seduced her one night after a party. “It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. At the last moment she panicked and said, ‘No, let me just take you in my mouth.’ ” “Why didn’t she want to screw?” “Because she felt too vulnerable and didn’t want me to enter her.” “What happened?” “Well, I fucked her.” Pause. “And that was the beginning of a long and intense relationship.” “Did you ever consider marrying her?” What a silly idea, said his face. “No, no. I wasn’t thinking about that then.” “Did you ever feel a passion like that for your wife?” “No, I really didn’t. She was by far the most beautiful of all the women I’d been with, but I wasn’t nearly as attracted to her as I had been to the others.” He touched her nose. “You’re really concerned about that, aren’t you?” They kissed and petted, and her absurd bed creaked. Then they separated and talked again. She told him about the time her sister’s boyfriend had tried to seduce her in the middle of their breakup. “What happened?” He smiled. “Nothing. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t attracted to him and he was obviously doing it out of hostility to my sister.” “Oh, no. That probably had nothing to do with it.” “Well, maybe not. I think part of it was that he was intrigued by me as a variation of her.” “Exactly!” He said this with great emphasis, as though she’d hit upon something important. “I almost seduced my wife’s sister the first time we separated, but we both balked at the last minute, mostly her. We were at the kitchen table, drinking gin.” He smiled. “Of course your sister’s boyfriend wanted you. One wants them all.” She began to talk about an old lover of hers who reminded her of Bernard, but as she talked she kept imagining Bernard on a clean tiled kitchen floor, humping his blond wife’s blond sister. It reminded her of the stories in The New Yorker about decent professional people having extramarital affairs. The more she contemplated this picture, the more difficult it was to imagine sex with this man...this customer. She had a quick feeling of sympathy for his wife, lying in her single bed, in her separate room, next to the room of a man who wanted them all. She started to feel something like guilt, and to forestall it, she began to kiss him. The bed creaked and he parted her legs. From that moment on, the same sense of disaffection that she’d felt in the restaurant overtook her.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  It wasn’t hard to avoid Frankie after that—we wotked at opposite ends of the plant. I hung back > in the afternoons. I didn’t want to run into either of them at the time clock. The more I thought about the two of them being lovers, the more it upset me. I couldn’t stop thinking about them kissing each other. It was like two guys. Well, two gay guys would be alright. But two butches? How could they be attracted to each other? Who was the femme in bed? I found myself obsessing about Frankie and Johnny. I was so deep in thought on Wednesday morning that I didn’t notice Scotty and I were the only guys in the department. Scotty motioned toward the men’s room. “You better go in there,” he said. “Whate” He just nodded toward the men’s room. I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the door. The men’s room was filled with guys—some from my department, some I didn’t recognize. Bolt spoke first. “We’ve been waiting for you,” he said. My fists clenched at my sides. Frankie must have told the guys about me out of spite. I should have known better than to trust her. Whatever misunderstanding we had should have been between us. [’d deal with her later. Right now I was badly outnumbered. Bolt reached out his hand and moved toward me. I backed up against the wall. My temples pounded with blood. Bolt grabbed me by the shoulder; I pushed his hand off. I was cornered. “Leave me alone,” I growled. Stone Butch Blues 219 Walter moved toward me. “Take it easy, son. We just want to talk to you.” “Yeah? About what?” Bolt and Walter looked at each other and backed away from me. “About the union,” Walter said. I shook my head in confusion. “Ernie’s wife works at a factory that the textile workers’ union organized. She put us in contact with a really good guy who helped them. We need to know where you stand.” I had trouble regaining my composure. “You mean this is an organizing drive?” Bolt shrugged. “We been talking up till now. We need to get a union organizer out here and call a general interest meeting, This shit can’t go on much longer without blowing up.” This job didn’t seem that bad to me. “What kind of grievances?” I asked. “Like we make shit wages and they make us work overtime practically every weekend,” Ernie said. I nodded. “Yeah, but then we get other days off.” Skids answered me. “Sure, because they don’t want to pay us time and a half.” Walter nodded. “Two people can be working the same machine and get paid different. It’s all based on whether you suck up to the foreman.” 220 Leslie keinberg “The fumes are terrible,’ Ernie added. “None of us know what we’re breathing. And it’s so fucking hot you can hardly breathe some days.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  What he disliked especially was the way Curley talked about his aunt. It was bad enough, in Hymie’s opinion, that he should be screwing the sister of his own mother, but to make her out to be nothing but a piece of stale cheese, that was too much for Hymie. One ought to have a bit of respect for a woman, provided she’s not a whore. If she’s a whore that’s different. Whores are not women. Whores are whores. That was how Hymie looked at things. The real reason for this dislike, however, was that whenever they went out together Curley always got the best choice. And not only that, but it was usually with Hymie’s money that Curley managed it. Even the way Curley asked for money irritated Hymie—it was like extortion, he said. He thought it was partly my fault, that I was too lenient with the kid. “He’s got no moral character,” Hymie would say. “And what about you, your moral character?” I would ask. “Oh me! Shit, I’m too old to have any moral character. But Curley’s only a kid.” “You’re jealous, that’s what,” Steve would say. “Me? Me jealous of him?” And he’d try to smother the idea with a scornful little laugh. It made him wince, a jab like that. “Listen,” he would say, turning to me, “did I ever act jealous toward you? Didn’t I always turn a girl over to you if you asked me? What about that red-haired girl in SU office . . . you remember . . . the one with the big teats? Wasn’t that a nice piece of ass to turn over to a friend? But I did it, didn’t I? I did it because you said you liked big teats. But I wouldn’t do it for Curley. He’s a little crook. Let him do his own digging.” As a matter of fact, Curley was digging away very industriously. He must have had five or six on the string at one time, from what I could gather. There was Valeska, for example—he had made himself pretty solid with her. She was so damned pleased to have some one fuck her without blushing that when it came to sharing him with her cousin and then with the midget she didn’t put up the least objection. What she liked best was to get in the tub and let him fuck her under water. It was fine until the midget got wise to it. Then there was a nice rumpus which was finally ironed out on the parlor floor. To listen to Curley talk he did everything but climb the chandeliers. And always plenty of pocket money to boot. Valeska was generous, but the cousin was a softy. If she came within a foot of a stiff prick she was like putty.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  I can’t believe I’d been married to Derek for two years before I found out about his history in strip clubs. Perhaps that sounds a little too grandiose for what amounts to a handful of visits, but it feels like a secret past that I’d known nothing about, and I am, I’ll admit, a little jealous. Maybe more than a little bit. Even though I believe him when he says he hasn’t been to one since before we started dating, it’s the secrecy that sets me off more than the idea of beautiful, almost-naked women all over him. I’m jealous and turned on and confused by the intersection of the two. Plus it’s the present I’m more concerned about than the past, and the fact that I won’t be there. He’s heading off to his best friend Greg’s bachelor party, and suddenly I’m turning into the stereotypical wife, suspicious of what antics these men, and more specifically, my man, might get up to. But even more than jealousy, what lurks inside me is curiosity. So when Derek tells me that in his single days, when he’d been horny but hard up for dates, he’d spent some of his fancy Wall Street bonuses in the back rooms, the champagne rooms, of strip clubs, I start to picture what exactly had gone down in those mysterious havens of sexuality. Immediately, I get an image in my mind: my big, strapping man sitting down against a plush leather seat, while a beautiful, petite (except for her breasts) naked girl, glistening with sweat and desire, and maybe some glitter, writhes against him. Sometimes in my fantasies she’s bottle-blonde, sometimes brunette like me, but with shiny, glossy, gorgeous hair, sometimes a wild redhead. I can practically see her bare pussy pressing its heat against his thigh, her perfect nipples bouncing in the air while he restrains himself from taking a lick. The more I think about it, the more turned on I am, the momentary flickers of jealousy fading into a throbbing deep inside. I wonder if she teased him, running her finger along his cheek, or maybe his arm, or even, if she were the extra-naughty type, along his cock, knowing he couldn’t touch her. That’s what I would do if I were in her incredibly tall, probably clear Lucite shoes. The more I think about it, the more I realize I don’t just want to see the girl shaking her moneymaker for my man; I want to be that girl in all her hedonistic glory. I keep these visions to myself, though, because I’m still not quite sure what to make of them. I chat with him nonchalantly, and smile as best I can, but as soon as Derek leaves for his boys’ weekend, I’m not sure what to do. Tell a friend? Get wasted? Go to a strip club full of men myself? More than anything, I wish I were there with him, watching him, enjoying his sexy fun by proxy.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Serm. in Mont. 1.22.) Otherwise, The Apostle John says, There is a sin unto death; I do not say that he shall pray for it. This sin of the brother unto death I judge to be, when any one having come to the knowledge of God, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, opposes Himself against the brotherhood, or is roused by the fury of jealousy against that grace by which he was reconciled to God. (1 John 5:16) The stain of this sin is so great, that it may not submit to the humility of prayer, even when the sinful conscience is driven to acknowledge and proclaim its own sin. Which state of mind because of the greatness of their sin we must suppose some may be brought to; and this perhaps may be to sin against the Holy Ghost, that is through malice and jealousy to assail brotherly charity after having received the grace of the Holy Spirit; and this sin the Lord declares shall be forgiven neither in this world, nor in that to come. Whence it may be enquired whether the Jews sinned this sin against the Holy Ghost when they said that the Lord cast out dæmons by Beelzebub the Prince of the dæmons. Are we to suppose this spoken of our Lord Himself, because He said in another place, If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more they of his household? (Mat. 10:24) Seeing they thus spoke out of jealousy, ungrateful for so great present benefits, are they, though not Christians, to be supposed by the very greatness of that jealousy to have sinned the sin against the Holy Spirit? This cannot be gathered from the Lord’s words. Yet He may seem to have warned them that they should come to grace, and that after that grace received they should not sin as they now sinned. For now their evil word had been spoken against the Son of Man, but it might be forgiven them, if they should be converted, and believe on Him. But if after they had received the Holy Spirit, they should be jealous against the brotherhood, and should fight against that grace which they had received, it should not be forgiven them neither in this world, nor in the world to come. For if He had there condemned them in such sort that no hope remained for them, He would not have added au admonition, Either make the tree good, &c. AUGUSTINE. (Retract. i. 19.) But I do not affirm this for certain, by saying that I think thus; yet thus much might have been added; If he should close this life in this impious hardness of heart, yet since we may not utterly despair of any however evil, so long as he is in this life, so neither is it unreasonable to pray for him of whom we do not despair.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  possessions, skills, and status in whatever way you can. The Attacher: In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration but out of secret envy. They find a way to attach themselves as friends or assistants. They make themselves useful. They may admire their boss for some qualities, but deep down they believe they are entitled to have some of the attention he or she is getting, without all the hard work. The longer they are around the high achiever, the more this feeling gnaws at them. They have talent, they have dreams—why should the person they work for be so favored? They are good at concealing the undercurrent of envy through excessive fawning. But these types attach themselves because it gives them some kind of satisfaction to spoil and wound the person who has more. They are drawn to the powerful out of a desire to harm them in some way. Yolanda Saldivar (b. 1960) is an extreme example of the type. She started a major fan club for the popular Tejano singer Selena, then ingratiated herself into Selena’s business by becoming manager of her clothing stores and accumulated more power. No one was more sycophantic to the singer. But feeling deeply envious of the fame of Selena and turning quite hostile, she began to embezzle funds from the business, which she felt more than justified in doing. When confronted about this by Selena’s father, her response was to plot to murder Selena herself, which she finally did in 1995. These types have a trait that is quite common to all enviers: they lack a clear sense of purpose in their life (see chapter 13 for more on this). They do not know their calling; they could do many things, they think, and often try different jobs. They wander around and feel empty inside. They naturally envy those who act with a sense of purpose, and will go so far as to attach themselves to such a person’s life, partly wishing to get some of what they themselves are missing and partly desiring to harm the other person. In general, be wary of those who are too eager to attach themselves to your life, too impatient to make themselves useful. They try to draw you into a relationship not by their experience and competence but by the flattery and attention they give you. Their form of attack is to gather information on you that they can leak out or spread as gossip, harming your reputation. Learn to hire and work with those who have experience rather than just a pleasing manner. The Insecure Master: For some people, reaching a high position validates their self-opinion and boosts their self-esteem. But there are some who are more anxious. Holding a high position tends to increase their insecurities, which they are careful to conceal. Secretly they doubt whether they are worthy of the responsibility.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  They look at others who might have more talent, even those below them, with an envious eye. You will work for such bosses under the assumption that they are self-assured and confident. How else could they have become the boss? You will work extra hard to impress them, show them you’re a person on the way up, only to find yourself after several months suddenly demoted or fired, which makes little sense, since you had clearly delivered results. You did not realize you were dealing with the insecure variety and had inadvertently triggered their self-doubts. They secretly envy your youth, your energy, your promise, and the signs of your talent. Even worse if you are socially gifted and they are not. They will justify the firing or demotion with some narrative they have concocted; you will never discover the truth. Michael Eisner, all-powerful CEO of Disney for twenty years, is just such a type. In 1995 he fired his number two man, Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of the film studio, ostensibly because of his abrasive personality, saying he was not a team player. In truth, Katzenberg had had far too much success in his position; the films he oversaw became the main source of Disney’s revenue. He had the golden touch. Never admitting this to himself, Eisner clearly envied Katzenberg for his talent and transmuted this into hostility. This pattern repeated itself time and again with new creative people he brought in. Pay attention to those above you for signs of insecurity and envy. They will inevitably have a track record of firing people for strange reasons. They will not seem particularly happy with that excellent report you turned in. Always play it safe by deferring to bosses, making them look better, and earning their trust. Couch your brilliant ideas as their ideas. Let them get all the credit for your hard work. Your time to shine will come, but not if you inadvertently stimulate their insecurities. Envy Triggers Although certain types are more prone to envy, you must also be aware that there are circumstances that will tend to trigger envy in almost anyone. You must be extra alert in such situations. The most common trigger is a sudden change in your status, which alters your relationship to friends and peers. This is particularly true among people in your own profession. This has been known for a long time. As Hesiod noted in the eighth century BC, “The potter envies the potter, the craftsman the craftsman, the writer the writer.” If you experience success, those in your field who have similar aspirations but who are still struggling will naturally feel envious. You should be reasonably tolerant of this because if the tables were reversed, you would probably feel the same. Do not take so personally their faint praise and veiled criticisms. But be aware that among some of these peers envy can turn active and dangerous. Renaissance artists who suddenly got commissions became

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  targets for envious rivals, who could turn quite vicious. Michelangelo clearly envied the younger and talented Raphael and did what he could to sully his reputation and block his commissions. Writers are notoriously envious of other writers, particularly those with more lucrative deals. The best you can do in such situations is to have some self- deprecating humor and to not rub people’s faces in your success, which, after all, might contain some elements of luck. In fact, when discussing your success with others who might envy you, always emphasize or play up the element of luck. For those closest to you, offer to help them in their struggles as best you can, without appearing patronizing. In a similar vein, never make the mistake of praising a writer in front of another writer, or an artist in front of an artist, unless the person being praised is dead. If you detect signs of a more active envy in peers, get as far away from them as possible. Keep in mind that people who are getting older, with their careers on the decline, have delicate egos and are quite prone to experiencing envy. Sometimes it is people’s natural gifts and talents that will stir up the most intense forms of envy. We can strive to become proficient in a field, but we cannot reengineer our physiology. Some people are born with better looks, more raw athletic skill, an unusually vivid imagination, or an open and generous nature. If people with natural gifts also possess a good work ethic and have some luck in life, envy will follow them wherever they go. Often making it worse for such types, they also tend to be quite naive. They themselves do not feel envy toward others, so they cannot understand the emotion at all. Unaware of the dangers, they naturally display their talents and attract even more envy. Mary Shelley was all of this—gifted with a brilliant imagination and superior intellectual capabilities, and also quite naive. What is worse, envying types secretly loathe those who are immune to feeling envy. It makes their envious nature doubly apparent to themselves and stirs the desire to hurt and wound. If you have any natural gifts that elevate you above others, you must be aware of the dangers and avoid flaunting such talents. Instead you want to strategically reveal some flaws to blunt people’s envy and mask your natural superiority. If you are gifted in the sciences, make it clear to others how you wish you had more social skills. Show your intellectual clumsiness at subjects outside your expertise. John F. Kennedy seemed almost too perfect to the American public. So handsome, intelligent, and charismatic, and with such a beautiful wife—it was hard to identify with or like him. As soon as he made his big mistake in the failed invasion of Cuba (known as the Bay of Pigs) early on in his administration, and took full responsibility

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  for the debacle, his poll numbers skyrocketed. The mistake had humanized him. Although this was not done by design, you can have a similar effect by discussing the mistakes you have made in the past and showing some selective awkwardness in certain areas that do not diminish your overall reputation. Women who achieve success and fame are more prone to attracting envy and hostility, although this will always be veiled as something else—such women are said to be too cold, or ambitious, or unfeminine. Oftentimes we choose to admire people who achieve great things, admiration being the opposite of envy. We do not feel personally challenged or insecure in the face of their excellence. We might also emulate them, use them as spurs toward trying to achieve more. But unfortunately this is rarely the case with successful women. A high-achieving woman inflicts greater feelings of inferiority in both other women and men (“I’m inferior to a woman?”), which leads to envy and hostility, not admiration. Coco Chanel, the most successful businesswoman of her era, especially considering her origins as an orphan (see chapter 5), suffered from such envy her entire life. In 1931, at the height of her power, she met Paul Iribe, an illustrator and designer whose career was on the decline. Iribe was an expert seducer and they had much in common. But several months into their relationship, he began to criticize her for her extravagance and torment her about her other flaws as he saw them. He wanted to control all aspects of her life. Lonely and desperate for a relationship, she hung on, but she later wrote of Iribe, “My growing celebrity eclipsed his declining glory. . . . Iribe loved me with the secret hope of destroying me.” Love and envy are not mutually exclusive. Successful women will have to bear this burden until such entrenched underlying values are changed. In the meantime, they will have to be even more adept at deflecting envy and playing the humble card. Robert Rubin (b. 1938), two-term secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, was a grand master when it came to masking his excellence and defusing envy. He had begun his career at Goldman Sachs in 1966, slowly rising through the ranks to become its cohead in 1990. He was one of the key figures who transformed Goldman Sachs into the most powerful investment bank on Wall Street. He was a hard worker and brilliant at finance, but as he became more powerful within Goldman, he also became more deferential in all of his interactions. In meetings in which he was clearly the most knowledgeable person, he would make a point of asking for the opinions of the most junior associate in attendance, and of listening to what he or she had to say with rapt attention. When people who worked for him asked him what should be done in relation to some crisis or problem, he would look at them calmly and ask first, “What

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  love of Shelley’s life, that he had never loved his wife, and that Mary had driven him to suicide. Telling such lurid stories in London would do maximum damage to Mary’s reputation. It is hard to calculate the pain she inflicted over the years on Mary —the quarrels with Mary’s husband exacerbated by Jane, the sudden mysterious coldness of Mary’s closest friends, the push and pull Jane played on Mary, always stepping back when Mary wanted more closeness, and finally the revelation of the ultimate betrayal, and the thought, which would haunt Mary for years, that so many had believed Jane’s story. Such can be the hidden pain inflicted by one great envier. Understand: Envy occurs most commonly and painfully among friends. We assume that something in the course of the relationship caused the friend to turn against us. Sometimes all we experience is the betrayal, the sabotage, the ugly criticisms they throw at us, and we never understand the underlying envy that inspired these actions. What we need to grasp is something paradoxical: people who feel envy in the first place are often motivated to become our friends. Like Jane, they feel a mix of genuine interest, attraction, and envy, if we have some qualities that make them feel inferior. Becoming our friend, they can disguise the envy to themselves. They will often go even further, becoming extra attentive and impatient to secure our friendship. But as they draw closer, the problem gets worse. The underlying envy is continually stirred. The very traits that might have stimulated feelings of inferiority—the good position, the solid work ethic, the likability—are now being witnessed on a daily basis. And so as with Jane, a narrative is gradually constructed: the envied person is lucky, overly ambitious, not nearly so great. As our friends, enviers can discover our weak points and what will wound the most. From within a friendship they are better positioned to sabotage us, steal our spouse, spread mayhem. Once they attack us, we tend to feel guilty and confused: “Perhaps I deserve some of their criticisms.” If we respond angrily, this only feeds the narrative of our unlikable nature. Because we were friends, we feel doubly wounded and betrayed, and the deeper the wound, the greater the satisfaction for the envier. We can even speculate that the envier is unconsciously drawn to befriending the envied person in order to have this wounding power. Although such fatal friends are elusive and tricky, there are always warning signs. Learn to pay deeper attention to your first impressions. (If only Mary had done so.) Often we intuit that the other person is false but then forget this as they make friendly overtures. We always feel better about people who seem to like us, and enviers know this well. Rely upon the opinions of friends and neutral third parties. Many friends of Mary found Jane conniving and even a bit scary. The envy of the friend will also tend to leak out in

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  do you think?” He would take their answer quite seriously. As one colleague at Goldman later said of him, “There is no one better at the humility shtick than Bob. The line, ‘just one’s man opinion’ was something he would utter a dozen times a day.” What is remarkable is how Rubin earned the admiration of so many people and how few had anything bad to say about him, considering the competitive environment within the company. This reveals the power you have to short-circuit envy by placing attention on other people instead of yourself and engaging with them on a meaningful level. If you find yourself under an envy attack, your best strategy is to control your emotions. It is much easier to do this once you realize that envy is the source. The envier feeds upon your overreaction as material to criticize you, justify their actions, and entangle you in some further drama. At all costs, maintain your composure. If possible, get some physical distance as well—fire them, cut off contact, whatever is possible. Do not imagine you can somehow repair the relationship. Your generosity in trying this will only intensify their feelings of inferiority. They will strike again. By all means defend yourself from any public attacks or gossip that they spread, but do not harbor revenge fantasies. The envier is miserable. The best strategy is let to them stew in their “cold poison” from a distance, without any future means of wounding you, as Mary did to Jane. Their chronic unhappiness is punishment enough. Finally, you might imagine that envy is a somewhat rare occurrence in the modern world. After all, it is a primitive, childish emotion, and we live in such sophisticated times. Furthermore, not many people discuss or analyze envy as a major social factor. But the truth is that envy is more prevalent now than ever before, largely because of social media. Through social media we have a continual window into the lives of friends, pseudofriends, and celebrities. And what we see is not some unvarnished peek into their world but a highly idealized image that they present. We see only the most exciting images from their vacations, the happy faces of their friends and children, accounts of their continual self-improvement, the fascinating people they are meeting, the great causes and projects they are involved in, the examples of success in their endeavors. Are we having as much fun? Are our lives as seemingly fulfilled as theirs? Are we perhaps missing out on something? We generally believe, and for good reason, that we are all entitled to share in the good life, but if our peers seem to have more, someone or something must be to blame. What we experience in this case is a generalized feeling of dissatisfaction. Low-grade envy sits inside us, waiting to be triggered into the more acute variety if something we read or see intensifies

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Move closer to what you envy. Envy thrives on relative closeness—in a corporate environment where people see each other every day, in a family, in a neighborhood, in any group of peers. But people tend to hide their problems and to put their best face forward. We only see and hear of their triumphs, their new relationships, their brilliant ideas that will land them a gold mine. If we moved closer—if we saw the quarrels that go on behind closed doors or the horrible boss that goes with that new job—we would have less reason to feel envy. Nothing is ever so perfect as it seems, and often we would see that we are mistaken if we only looked closely enough. Spend time with that family you envy and wish you had as your own, and you will begin to reassess your opinion. If you envy people with greater fame and attention, remind yourself that with such attention comes a lot of hostility and scrutiny that is quite painful. Wealthy people are often miserable. Read any account of the last ten years of the life of Aristotle Onassis (1906– 1975), one of the wealthiest men in history, married to the glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy, and you will see that his wealth brought him endless nightmares, including the most spoiled and unloving of children. The process of moving closer is twofold: on the one hand, try to actually look behind the glittering façades people present, and on the other hand, simply imagine the inevitable disadvantages that go along with their position. This is not the same as leveling them down. You are not diminishing the achievements of those who are great. You are mitigating the envy you might feel for things in people’s personal lives. Engage in downward comparisons. You normally focus on those who seem to have more than you, but it would be wiser to look at those who have less. There are always plenty of people to use for such a comparison. They live in harsher environments, deal with more threats to their lives, and have deeper levels of insecurity about the future. You can even look at friends who have it much worse than you. This should stimulate not only empathy for the many who have less but also greater gratitude for what you actually possess. Such gratitude is the best antidote to envy. As a related exercise, you can write up all the positive things in your life that you tend to take for granted—the people who have been kind and helpful to you, the health that you presently enjoy. Gratitude is a muscle that requires exercise or it will atrophy. Practice Mitfreude . Schadenfreude, the experience of pleasure in the pain of other people, is distinctly related to envy, as several studies have demonstrated. When we envy someone, we are prone to feel excitement, even joy, if they experience a setback or suffer in some way. But it would be wise to practice instead the opposite,

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  home. But Salomé did not stay long: she accepted an invitation of Nietz-herself And in this she succeeded with little effort, sche's to visit him, unchaperoned, in Tautenburg. In her absence Rée was for indeed she was a consumed with doubts and anger. He wanted her more than ever, and was woman more to be wooed prepared to redouble his efforts. When she finally came back, Rée vented than to do the wooing. his bitterness, railing against Nietzsche, criticizing his philosophy, and ques-And now listen to the splendid sequel: not long tioning his motives toward the girl. But Salomé took Nietzsche's side. Rée afterward it happened that was in despair; he felt he had lost her for good. Yet a few days later she sura letter which she had prised him again: she had decided she wanted to live with him, and with written to her lover fell into the hands of another him alone. woman of comparable At last Rée had what he had wanted, or so he thought. The couple set-rank, charm, and beauty; tled in Berlin, where they rented an apartment together. But now, to Rée's and since she, like most women, was curious and dismay, the old pattern repeated. They lived together but Salomé was eager to learn secrets, she courted on all sides by young men. The darling of Berlin's intellectuals, opened the letter and read who admired her independent spirit, her refusal to compromise, she was it. Realizing that it was written from the depths of constantly surrounded by a harem of men, who referred to her as "Her Ex-passion, in the most loving cellency." Once again Rée found himself competing for her attention. and ardent terms, she was Driven to despair, he left her a few years later, and eventually committed at first moved with suicide. compassion, for she knew very well from whom the In 1911, Sigmund Freud met Salomé (now known as Lou Andreas-letter came and to whom it Salomé) at a conference in Germany. She wanted to devote herself to the was addressed; then, psychoanalytical movement, she said, and Freud found her enchanting, al-however, such was the power of the words she though, like everyone else, he knew the story of her infamous affair with read, turning them over in Nietzsche (see page 46, "The Dandy"). Salomé had no background in psy-her mind and considering choanalysis or in therapy of any kind, but Freud admitted her into the in-what kind of man it must be who had been able to ner circle of followers who attended his private lectures. Soon after she arouse such great love, she joined the circle, one of Freud's most promising and brilliant students, Dr. at once began to fall in love Victor Tausk, sixteen years younger than Salomé, fell in love with her. Sa-with him herself; and the lomé's relationship with Freud had been platonic, but he had grown ex-letter was without doubt far more effective than if the