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.

Page 41 of 47 · 20 per page

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  On my bedroom wall back home I had assembled her graven image. Craven, distorted collage: breast, hipbone, elbow, knuckle, snapshots in skewed angles captured through windows and doors. I staple gunned pieces of her to the plaster. It took me years to acquire the surreal whole, every inch of her, nude, life-size. Four walls: front, back, both her sides. I see her through a fly’s eyes, compound images multiplied densely and divided into myriad squares — right side up, of course. I studied it as I fell asleep and awoke. Not my bedroom, but my laboratory, my own psyche pinned to the plaster. In the hazy state of half-sleep, I started to see things. Another face. Not hers. ‘Then: another. My own jealousy, I thought, of the men who’d been inside her, while ’'m perennially outside, always her surface: skin, curl of hair, lay of a dress. To touch her nostril or earlobe would be enough, but they’ve been inside the chalice of her. Don’t say the vulgar word youre thinking, the clinical word. This she does not have. What she has is holy. If I stood back and looked, as at a museum painting, they weren’t there. Only as I looked away, or fell asleep, did I see them. Like the Rorschach images burned into the eyelids when you close your eyes after staring into the sun. Like the green flash as the sun sets on the horizon that you’re never sure you’ve actually seen. Glaring magenta screams behind my Kiara. I began to test new methods. Infrared lenses. Sun filters at dusk. Noontime ASA film at midnight. A flash at noon. Millisecond or The Strangler Fig 93 32-minute exposures. Pinpoint cameras and coated lenses. Dodging and push processing. Half-developing negatives. Reciprocity effects and reticulation. I’ve never tried completely exposing the film like this, leaving not a trace of her latent image. But the trapped lovers remain, unwilling ghosts nattering at her back. More clear than I’ve ever seen them. Maybe it’s this place and not the process. The graveyard sulked behind her. Long ago, I gave her a photo of herself. A gift left outside her dressing room, shared with other nameless backup singers, a black and white she could use to promote herself, still plain Kara Grealy. I included a caption: Kara’s Chiaroscuro. Love, Click. | heard her asking someone for a dictionary. I gave her the negative, too, one of the few no-nos in my line of work. I'd like that negative back, because I know what I’d see behind her: nothing. Just my Kiara. No stains. Then she disappeared. Poof. I hit the bottle. She reemerged a year later as simply Kiara. So you see, I named her, too. Exotic creature, her own fabulous tapestry woven from the frayed threads of her mixed and murky lineage. Hér name needed no further appellation. Like Jesus. Mary. Lucifer. *

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Racey,” she answered. “Racey!” Connor laughed. “Of course.” A waitress in a white dirndl dress asked for their order. “The steaks here are splendid,’ Connor said. “Shall we order, once and all around?” Locan nodded. Rachel assented. “Very good.” Connor smiled at the waitress. “Make mine very rare.” “Bloody rare,” Clare added. The waitress, shaken, retreated a step when she noticed Clare’s eyes. “Um, medium, please,” Rachel said. “Medium well for me, dear.” Locan nodded. Rachel tried not to stare at Clare, but her eyes were mesmerizing. Clare looked right back, a smile, or perhaps a sneer curling her lips. “Your accent,” Rachel asked, her voice suddenly timid. “Are you French?” Breton. SOnhe “So, Locan,” Connor said, lifting a glass of dark red wine to his lips. “How’s the fiend-hunting business treating you?” “So far; so good. And the benefits . “Ah yes, traveling in the company of charming young women.” He nodded toward Rachel. “Seems to me you normally worked alone.” Locan nodded and smiled. “Maybe they think I’m getting too old . out of this world.” . for the job and I need someone to watch out for me.” “Old? You'll excuse me of course, old is a concept I have trouble grasping.” The men laughed. An invisible nod passed between them, an inside joke Rachel was not privy to. “And Rome?” Connor asked. “Still fervent about their crusades.” “Fervent °.> fervent tora fault,” “IT miss Rome,” Connor mused, swirling his wine in the glass. “I used to know a girl there, the youngest sister of senator ... oh, the name escapes me. A sweet girl...” ~ Paladins 233 Rachel’s head turned slowly toward Clare, the source of a low frequency rumble that grew louder as Connor spoke. Was she growling? God, Rachel thought, she is growling. The waitress returned with the steaks, putting a period to Connor’s story of the girl in Rome. Dinner conversations continued, just normal small talk that Connor would punctuate with a historical anecdote. After dinner, Connor ordered a round of dessert liqueurs. Rachel sensed an intimacy, as if a veil of shadow had been drawn around their table. “Rachel,” Connor said. His voice was deep, calming. “Locan has asked my assistance and I cannot refuse because I owe him a debt that cannot be repaid in one lifetime. But even if I did not, I am glad to help, that is, Clare and I are glad to help ... you, to understand.” reso. “Do you believe in God?” “T ... Where have I heard that before?” Connor smiled. “It doesn’t matter, whether you believe in God or Mr Darwin. But let’s keep this simple. The human family tree came into being; it split off into various branches. Some withered, others thrived. So now we have the human species as we know it, ostensibly alone, but what if that species is not alone; it has . . cousins it is not even aware of. .

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Gerry knows. He’s watching Pamela, who is as unaware of his presence as they both are of mine. So much for sensing the love of your life even ten feet away. She never was too bright. I don’t know what he saw in her, beyond the luscious body and perky Sandra Dee looks. Even through the watery distortion I can see his eyes gleam. I can feel what he’s thinking. It’s stronger than the electrical charges of the lightning flashes. Oh, yes, this storm is bringing out the very best in Gerry. I chose well tonight. He’s still wearing his work slacks, but the belt is unbuckled and the ends are hanging on either-side of his zipped fly. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled part way‘up his muscular forearms, and the front is unbuttoned, revealing the dark hair on his tanned chest. In a few short strides he is behind Pamela, grabbing her around the waist. She jumps and screams then laughs and wiggles against him. I can hear her exclamation over the drumming of the rain and my heart. “You crazy nut, you scared me half to death.” I can’t hear him, but I can see that he mutters something close to her ear as he pulls her tighter against him. Her mmmmmm is theatrically loud, as if she’s doing it for an audience. There is no way she can know I’m standing here, yet she does it in the same way that a clique of school girls laughs louder, amongst themselves, when they want to make it clear to the outcast that she’s missing out on all the fun. I saw her do that, she and her gaggle of silly-goose friends, trying to impress Gerry and his pals, all the while taking sidelong glances at the outsider, who never had a prayer of being one of them. I watched and listened, from deep in the stacks, while Mr Janus gave them a proper tongue-lashing and told them, right in front of the boys, to leave this moment. Mr Janus is a stuffy, old fart, albeit a perverted one, who hasn’t had the decency to retire or die, so that I may become head librarian, but in that moment, I silently applauded him, even though I found S72 Rose B. Thorny the outsider — a mousy, otherwise non-descript girl, who spent hours regularly poring over medical texts — quite repulsive. She deserved to be ridiculed for being such a weak, submissive little worm, but Pamela and her friends deserved, to a much greater degree, the humiliation of being thrown out of the library with the boys as witnesses to the deed. She put on a front of laughing at Mr Janus, too, but left as he directed. Her laugh hasn’t changed. Whether Gerry finds it attractive, or not, I don’t know, and I don’t really care. He finds her desirable and that’s why I’m here.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Besides, he proposed we should occupy the cabin alternate afternoons; for example, he’d take it next day and I mustn’t come near it, and if at any time one of us found the door locked, he was to respect his chum’s privacy. I agreed to it all with enthusiasm and went to sleep in a fever of hope. Would Jessie risk her father’s anger and come to me? Perhaps she would: at any rate I’d write and ask her and I did. In one hour the same sailor came back with her reply. It ran like this: “Dear love, father is mad, we shall have to take great care for two or three days: as soon as it’s safe, I’ll come—your loving Jess”, with a dozen crosses for kisses. That afternoon, without thinking of my compact with Ponsonby, I went to our cabin and found the door locked: at once our compact came into my head and I went quietly away. Had he succeeded so quickly? and was she with him in bed? The half certainty made my heart beat. That evening Ponsonby could not conceal his success but as he used it partly to praise his mistress. I forgave him. “She has the prettiest figure you ever saw”, he declared, “and is really a dear. We had just finished when you came to the door. I said it was some mistake and she believed me. She wants me to marry her but I can’t marry. If I were rich I’d marry quick enough. It’s better than risking some foul disease”, and he went on to tell about one of his colleagues, John Lawrence, who got Black Pox, as he called syphilis, caught from a negress. “He didn’t notice it for three months”, Ponsonby went on, “and it got into his system; his nose got bad and he was invalided home, poor devil. Those black girls are foul”, he continued, “they give everyone the clap and that’s bad enough, I can tell you; they’re dirty devils.” His ruttish sorrows didn’t interest me much, for I had made up my mind never at any time to go with any prostitute. I came to several such uncommon resolutions on board that ship, and I may set down the chief of them here very briefly. First of all, I resolved that I would do every piece of work given to me as well as I could, so that no one coming after me could do it better. I had found out at school in the last term that if you gave your whole mind and heart to anything, you learned it very quickly and thoroughly. I was sure even before the trial that my first job would lead me straight to fortune. I had seen men at work and knew it would be easy to beat any of them. I was only eager for the trial.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  She thought, closing her eyes. When she opened them, she said, “In the pages I gave you, you will see that I suffered from jealousy, too. When Henry told me his wife was coming from New York to join him in Paris, I was consumed with jealousy.” As Anaïs spoke, I could tell she was pulling the memories together. “My way of dealing with it was to defuse the enemy through seduction. But I didn’t expect that June, beautiful, mysterious June, would be even better at the game of seduction than I was. Now I was obsessed with them both, Henry and June. I was jealous of Henry’s relationship with her and of her relationship with him. I projected different aspects of myself onto them. Henry was the writer I wanted to be. June was the woman I wanted to be. Are you attracted to the woman Neal is sleeping with?” “I think it’s more than one woman and I haven’t met any of them.” Then I told her something very private. “I have a fantasy image of his other woman, though. She’s soft and blond and passive, the opposite of me. In my nightmares she is in the shower with Neal, and he loves her.” “She is also a projection of a disowned self.” Anaïs nodded. “How are you even sure Neal really has other lovers, and it isn’t all your imagination?” “Because I pester him with questions, and sometimes he answers them honestly.” “You shouldn’t do that,” Anaïs said. “I know, but I can’t help myself. What can I do? Tell me, please!” I confessed to her how my obsession with him had extinguished my purposefulness and intelligence. “I’m like the professor in The Blue Angel who falls for Marlene Dietrich, and it destroys his life.” She laughed so heartily that the few other people in the café looked up from their copies of Hollywood Reporter. “Be careful of exaggeration,” she said, but seeing my chagrin, she softened her voice. “I hope you are putting this in your diary.” I nodded. “So I’ll remember it someday.” “No, so you can move through it.” I must have looked perplexed because she explained, “It’s a process of addition.” She put down her fork and raised her hands like a conductor with a baton. She pointed to my left shoulder with the imaginary baton. “You feel this”—she pointed to my chest—“and then you feel this”—and to my right shoulder—“and then this. It doesn’t matter if the feelings contradict each other.” She swung her graceful arms, bent at the elbow, as if I were her orchestra. “All that matters is that the feelings are true to their moment.” She lowered her arms and picked up her fork again. “And don’t make judgments on yourself as you write. You have to give yourself that freedom.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  She shook her head: “My fears are prophetic”, she sighed, “I’m willing to believe it hasn’t happened yet though—Ah God, the torturing thought! the mere dread of your going with another drives me crazy; I could kill her, the bitch: why doesn’t she get a man of her own? How dare she even look at you?” and she clasped me tightly to her. Nothing loath, I pushed my sex into her again and began the slow movement that excited her so quickly and me so gradually for even while using all my skill to give her the utmost pleasure, I could not help comparing and I realised surely enough that Kate’s pussy was smaller and firmer and gave me infinitely more pleasure; still I kept on for her delight. And now again she began to pant and choke and as I continued ploughing her body and touching her womb with every slow thrust she began to cry inarticulately with little short cries growing higher in intensity till suddenly she squealed like a shot rabbit and then shrieked with laughter, breaking down in a storm of sighs and sobs and floods of tears. As usual, her intensity chilled me a little; for her paroxysm aroused no corresponding heat in me, tending even to check my pleasure by the funny, irregular movements she made! Suddenly I heard steps going away from the door, light stealing steps: who could it be! The servant? or—? Lorna had heard them too, and though still panting and swallowing convulsively, she listened intently while her great eyes wandered in thought. I knew I could leave the riddle to her: it was my task to reassure and caress her. I got up and went over to the open window for a breath of air and suddenly I saw Lily run quickly across the grass and disappear in the next house: so she was the listener! When I recalled Lorna’s gasping cries, I smiled to myself. If Lily tried to explain them to herself, she would have an uneasy hour, I guessed. When Lorna had dressed, and she dressed quickly, and went downstairs hastily to convince herself, I think, that her darky had not spied on her, I waited in the sitting-room: I must warn Lorna that my “studies” would only allow me to give one day a week to our pleasures. “Oh!” she cried, turning pale as I explained, “didn’t I know it!” “But Lorna,” I pleaded, “didn’t you say you could do without me altogether if ’twas for my good!” “No, no, no! a thousand times no!” she cried, “I said if you were with me always, I could do without passion; but this starvation fare once a week! Go, go!” she cried, “or I’ll say something I’ll regret. Go!” and she pushed me out of the door and thinking it better in view of the future, I went.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Why can I not have what X has? When we love people, we may become possessive and unreasonably angry if they declare independence of us. When we hear of somebody else’s success, our first reaction is often a pang of jealousy or resentment. We feel impaired by a colleague’s beauty or brilliance, waste an inordinate amount of energy worrying about our image and status, and are constantly alert to anything that might threaten our standing and self-esteem. We identify so closely with our opinions that we become disproportionately upset if we lose an argument. We are so anxious to see ourselves in a good light that we find it difficult to apologize wholeheartedly, often emphasizing that the other person was also at fault. The result of all this self-preoccupation is that we not only make ourselves suffer but we also cause pain to other people. Instead of reviling ourselves for our chronic pettiness and selfishness, it is better to accept calmly the fact that the cause of such behavior is our old brain. Geared for survival, the reptilian brain was all about me. Without this ruthless self-preoccupation, our species would not have survived. Yet if we allow it to dominate our lives, we will be miserable and do our best to make other people unhappy. Our egotism gravely limits our view of the world, which we see through the distorting screen of our personal desires and needs. When we hear a piece of news, we immediately wonder how it will affect our own plans and prospects. When we meet somebody new, our first impressions are often colored by such speculations as: Am I attracted to her? Is he a threat? Can I use her in some way? As a result, we rarely see things or people as they are. We are frightened, insecure, and restless creatures, endlessly distressed by our failures and shortcomings, constantly poised against attack, and this can make us hostile and unkind to others. During this step, we begin to practice the Buddha’s meditation on the four immeasurable minds of love, which will be a central part of the program. There is no need to sit in a yogic position to meditate, unless you find it helpful to do so. This meditation can fit easily into your regular routine and be performed while you are walking the dog, exercising, driving the car, or gazing out of the window of your commuter train. The purpose of meditation is not to make contact with a god or a supernatural being; rather, it is a discipline that helps us to take greater control of our minds and channel our destructive impulses creatively. You will recall that while he was working toward enlightenment, the Buddha devised a meditation that made him conscious of the positive emotions of friendship (maitri), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita), and “even-mindedness” (upeksha) that lay dormant in his mind. He then directed this “immeasurable” love to the ends of the earth.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  [21] Many secular rulers joined successive Holy Roman Emperors in resisting papal claims to universal authority, and the Papacy never wholly fulfilled the vision of Gregory and his circle, but, from the eleventh century, Western society was united by an unprecedented expansion of ecclesiastical lawmaking, based on a growing papal bureaucracy in Rome. The stimulus to the legal innovations of the Gregorian revolution was a series of Italian manuscript rediscoveries: encounters with the Digest of Roman imperial law compiled in the systematizing efforts of Justinian half a millennium before. Much else in the imperial legal corpus had not been completely forgotten, but now this rich resource of previously unknown material stimulated a newly intensive study of the imperial system, which came to be known as ‘civil law’. Alongside the recovery of civil law was the development of a legal code to suit the needs of a universal and papal Church: ‘canon law’. This was a fusion of much from the Western Church’s own tradition with borrowings from civil law, and it depended on a compilation of material created in stages through the first half of the twelfth century in Italy’s chief centre of legal study, the university in the city of Bologna. Universities were another new feature of eleventh-century Europe, and one of the institutions that united Western Christendom, providing universally recognized opportunities for advanced study and teaching. Paradoxically they modelled themselves closely on institutions of higher education developed by Muslims, especially the school of Al-Azhar in Cairo – even borrowing customary institutions like lectures, professors, qualifications called degrees marked by formal customs of dress, and methods of pursuing enquiry. It is ironic that one of the expressions of cultural unity in the Latin West was rooted in the culture which the West was trying to destroy. Western Christendom found itself in a position of inferiority in relation to a much more developed and sophisticated Muslim culture, just as once it had been the poor relation to Byzantium. This provoked a complicated mixture of envy, hostility and fascinated emulation which is part of the background to the Crusades. The reason for borrowing the idea of a university is clear: a shared interest in dealing with an explosion of ancient knowledge rediscovered in manuscripts, posing a problem faced by all three ‘Religions of the Book’, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. How did truths revealed by sacred scripture relate to the undoubted wisdom of the Classical past? At the centre of that newly illuminated wisdom was the master of categorization and analysis, Aristotle, hardly known in the West before the eleventh century. [22] First through Muslim libraries looted after the Christian capture of Toledo in 1085, his writings gradually became available, soon in a widening flood of Latin translations from the Greek. Their interpretation became a three-way conversation with Arab and Jewish commentators on the texts and their relevance to Christendom, and the setting of that conversation was the university.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3Stupid with misery and growing more inept every day, Stephen found herself no match for Roger. He was calm, self-assured, insolent and triumphant, and his love of tormenting had not waned with his manhood. Roger was no fool; he put two and two together and his masculine instinct deeply resented this creature who might challenge his right of possession. Moreover, that masculine instinct was outraged. He would stare at Stephen as though she were a horse whom he strongly suspected of congenital unsoundness, and then he would let his eyes rest on Angela’s face. They would be the eyes of a lover, possessive, demanding, insistent eyes—if Ralph did not happen to be present. And into Angela’s eyes there would come an expression that Stephen had seen many times. A mist would slowly cloud over their blueness; they would dim, as though they were hiding something. Then Stephen would be seized with a violent trembling, so that she could not stand any more but must sit with her hands clasped tightly together, lest those trembling hands betray her to Roger. But Roger would have seen already, and would smile his slow, understanding, masterful smile. Sometimes he and Stephen would look at each other covertly, and their youthful faces would be marred by a very abominable thing; the instinctive repulsion of two human bodies, the one for the other, which neither could help—not now that those bodies were stirred by a woman. Then into this vortex of secret emotion would come Ralph. He would stare from Stephen to Roger and then at his wife, and his eyes would be red—one never knew whether from tears or from anger. They would form a grotesque triangle for a moment, those three who must share a common desire. But after a little the two male creatures who hated each other, would be shamefully united in the bond of their deeper hatred of Stephen; and divining this, she in her turn would hate. 4It could not go on without some sort of convulsion, and that Christmas was a time of recriminations. Angela’s infatuation was growing, and she did not always hide this from Stephen. Letters would arrive in Roger’s handwriting, and Stephen, half crazy with jealousy by now, would demand to see them. She would be refused, and a scene would ensue. ‘That man’s your lover! Have I gone starving only for this—that you should give yourself to Roger Antrim? Show me that letter!’ ‘How dare you suggest that Roger’s my lover! But if he were it’s no business of yours.’ ‘Will you show me that letter?’ ‘I will not.’ ‘It’s from Roger.’ ‘You’re intolerable. You can think what you please.’

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Anyone entering Griboedov’s first of all became involuntarily acquainted with the announcements of various sports clubs, and with group as well as individual photographs of the members of Massolit, hanging (the photographs) on the walls of the staircase leading to the second floor. On the door to the very first room of this upper floor one could see a big sign: ‘Fishing and Vacation Section’, along with the picture of a carp caught on a line. On the door of room no. 2 something not quite comprehensible was written: ‘One-day Creative Trips. Apply to M. V. Spurioznaya.’ The next door bore a brief but now totally incomprehensible inscription: ‘Perelygino’. 2 After which the chance visitor to Griboedov’s would not know where to look from the motley inscriptions on the aunt’s walnut doors: ‘Sign up for Paper with Poklevkina’, ‘Cashier’, ‘Personal Accounts of Sketch-Writers’ . . . If one cut through the longest line, which started downstairs at the doorman’s lodge, one could see the sign ‘Housing Question’ on a door which people were crashing every second. Beyond the housing question there opened out a luxurious poster on which a cliff was depicted and, riding on its crest, a horseman in a felt cloak with a rifle on his shoulder. A little lower—palm trees and a balcony; on the balcony—a seated young man with a forelock, gazing somewhere aloft with very lively eyes, holding a fountain pen in his hand. The inscription: ‘Full-scale Creative Vacations from Two Weeks (Story/Novella) to One Year (Novel/Trilogy). Yalta, Suuk-Su, Borovoe, Tsikhidziri, Makhindzhauri, Leningrad (Winter Palace).’ 3 There was also a line at this door, but not an excessive one—some hundred and fifty people. Next, obedient to the whimsical curves, ascents and descents of the Griboedov house, came the ‘Massolit Executive Board’, ‘Cashiers nos. 2, 3, 4, 5’, ‘Editorial Board’, ‘Chairman of Massolit’, ‘Billiard Room’, various auxiliary institutions and, finally, that same hall with the colonnade where the aunt had delighted in the comedy of her genius nephew. Any visitor finding himself in Griboedov’s, unless of course he was a total dim-wit, would realize at once what a good life those lucky fellows, the Massolit members, were having, and black envy would immediately start gnawing at him. And he would immediately address bitter reproaches to heaven for not having endowed him at birth with literary talent, lacking which there was naturally no dreaming of owning a Massolit membership card, brown, smelling of costly leather, with a wide gold border—a card known to all Moscow. Who will speak in defence of envy? This feeling belongs to the nasty category, but all the same one must put oneself in the visitor’s position. For what he had seen on the upper floor was not all, and was far from all. The entire ground floor of the aunt’s house was occupied by a restaurant, and what a restaurant! It was justly considered the best in Moscow.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She would say: ‘I seem to have found two new children,’ and Stephen, who was in the mood to feel touched, grew quite attached to this ageing woman. Agnes was engaged to a Colonel Fitzmaurice who would probably join them that autumn in Paris. If he did so they must all foregather at once, she insisted—he greatly admired Stephen’s book and had written that he was longing to meet her. But Lady Massey went further than this in her enthusiastic proffers of friendship—Stephen and Mary must stay with her in Cheshire; she was going to give a house party at Branscombe Court for Christmas; they must certainly come to her for Christmas. Mary, who seemed elated at the prospect, was for ever discussing this visit with Stephen: ‘What sort of clothes shall I need, do you think? Agnes says it’s going to be quite a big party. I suppose I’ll want a few new evening dresses?’ And one day she inquired: ‘Stephen, when you were younger, did you ever go to Ascot or Goodwood?’ Ascot and Goodwood, just names to Stephen; names that she had despised in her youth, yet which now seemed not devoid of importance since they stood for something beyond themselves—something that ought to belong to Mary. She would pick up a copy of The Tatler or The Sketch, which Lady Massey received from England, and turning the pages would stare at the pictures of securely established, self-satisfied people—Miss this or that sitting on a shooting stick, and beside her the man she would shortly marry; Lady so-and-so with her latest offspring; or perhaps some group at a country house. And quite suddenly Stephen would feel less assured because in her heart she must envy these people. Must envy these commonplace men and women with their rather ridiculous shooting sticks; their smiling fiancés; their husbands; their wives; their estates, and their well cared for, placid children. Mary would sometimes look over her shoulder with a new and perhaps rather wistful interest. Then Stephen would close the paper abruptly: ‘Let’s go for a row on the lake,’ she might say, ‘it’s no good wasting this glorious evening.’ But then she would remember the invitation to spend Christmas with Lady Massey in Cheshire, and would suddenly start to build castles in the air; supposing that she herself bought a small place near Branscombe Court—near these kind new friends who seemed to have grown so fond of Mary? Mary would also have her thoughts, would be thinking of girls like Agnes Massey for whom life was tranquil, easy and secure; girls to whom the world must seem blessedly friendly. And then, with a little stab of pain, she would suddenly remember her own exile from Morton. After such thoughts as these she must hold Stephen’s hand, must always sit very close to Stephen.

• From The Girls (2016)

  And there they were, both of them, splashing in the waves, the water foaming around their legs. Mitch flapping around in his white outfit, now like soggy bedsheets, Suzanne in the dress she called her Br’er Rabbit dress. My heart lurched—I wanted to join them. But something held me in place. I kept standing on the stairs that led to the sand, smelling the sea-softened wood. Did I know what was coming? I watched Suzanne shed her dress, shrugging it off with drunken difficulty, and then he was on her. His head lowering to lick at her bare breast. Both of them unsteady in the water. I watched for longer than seemed right. I was buzzy and adrift by the time I turned my back and wandered into the house. —I turned the music down. Shut the refrigerator door, which Suzanne had left open. The picked-over carcass of the chicken. Kona chicken, as Mitch had insisted: the sight made me a little nauseous. The too-pink flesh emanating a chill. I would always be like this, I thought, the person who closed the refrigerator. The person who watched from the steps like a spook while Suzanne let Mitch do whatever he wanted. Jealousy started to oscillate in my gut. The strange gnaw when I imagined his fingers inside her, how she’d taste of salt water. Confusion, too—how quickly things had changed and I was the one on the outside again. The chemical pleasure in my head had already faded, so all I recognized anymore was the lack of it. I wasn’t tired, but I didn’t want to sit on the couch, waiting for them to come inside. I found an unlocked bedroom that looked like a guest room: no clothes in the closet, a bed with slightly mussed sheets. They smelled like someone else, and there was a single gold earring on the nightstand. I thought of my own home, the weight and feel of my own blankets—then a sudden desire to sleep at Connie’s house. Curled up against her back in our familiar, ritual arrangement, her sheets printed with chubby cartoon rainbows. I lay in the bed, listening for the sound of Suzanne and Mitch in the other room. Like I was Suzanne’s thick-necked boyfriend, the same ratchet of righteous anger. It wasn’t aimed at her, not exactly—I hated Mitch with a fierceness that kept me wide-awake. I wanted him to know how she’d been laughing at him earlier, to know the exact degree of pity I had for him. How impotent my anger was, a surge with no place to land, and how familiar that was: my feelings strangled inside me, like little half-formed children, bitter and bristling. —I was almost certain, later, that this was the same bedroom that Linda and her little boy were sleeping in. Though I know there were other bedrooms, other possibilities.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I affected nonchalance, but here it was: the world I had always suspected existed, the world where you called famous musicians by their first names. “Mitch did a recording session with Russell,” Donna told me. “Russell blew his mind.” There it was again, their wonder at Russell, their certainty. I was jealous of that trust, that someone else could stitch the empty parts of your life together so you felt there was a net under you, linking each day to the next. “Russell’s gonna be famous, like that, ” Helen added. “He has a record deal, already.” It was like she was recounting a fairy tale, but this was even better, because she knew it would happen. “You know what Mitch calls Russell?” Donna spooked her hands dreamily. “The Wizard. Isn’t that a trip?” —After I’d been at the ranch a while, I saw how everyone spoke of Mitch. Of Russell’s imminent record deal. Mitch was their patron saint, sending Clover Dairy shipments to the ranch so the kids could get calcium, supporting the place financially. I wouldn’t hear the whole story until much later. Mitch had met Russell at Baker Beach, at a love-in of sorts. Russell attending in his buckskins, a Mexican guitar strapped to his back. Flanked by his women, begging for change with their air of biblical poverty. The cold, dark sand, a bonfire, Mitch on a break between records. Someone in a porkpie hat tending a pot of steamed clams. Mitch, I’d learn, had been having a crisis—money disputes with a manager who’d been a childhood friend, a marijuana arrest that had been expunged, but still—and Russell must have seemed like a citizen of a realer world, stoking Mitch’s guilt over the gold records, the parties where he covered the pool in Perspex. Russell offered up a mystic salvation, buttressed by the young girls who cast their eyes down in adoration when Russell spoke. Mitch invited the whole group back to his house in Tiburon, letting them gorge on the contents of his refrigerator, crash in his guest room. They drained bottles of apple juice and pink champagne and tracked mud onto the bed, thoughtless as an occupying army. In the morning, Mitch gave them a lift back to the ranch: by then Russell had seduced Mitch, speaking softly of truth and love, those invocations especially potent to wealthy searchers. I believed everything the girls told me that day, their buzzy, swarming pride as they spoke of Russell’s brilliance. How pretty soon he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without getting mobbed. How he’d be able to tell the whole world how to be free. And it was true that Mitch had set up a recording session for Russell. Thinking maybe Mitch’s label would find Russell’s vibe interesting and of the moment. I didn’t know it until much later, but the session had gone badly, the failure legendary. This was before everything else happened.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I waited as long as I could, alert to every creak and jar, before passing into the drowsy patchwork of unwilling sleep. In fact, Suzanne had been with Russell. The air of his trailer probably going stuffy from their fucking, Russell unraveling his plan for Mitch, he and Suzanne staring up at the ceiling. I can imagine how he got right up to the edge before swerving around the details, so maybe Suzanne would start to think she’d had the same idea, that it was hers, too. “My little hellhound,” he had cooed to her, his eyes pinwheeling from a mania that could be mistaken for love. It was strange to think Suzanne would be flattered in this moment, but certainly she was. His hand scratching her scalp, that same agitated pleasure men like to incite in dogs, and I can imagine how the pressure started to build, a desire to move along the larger rush. “It should be big,” Russell had said. “Something they can’t ignore.” I see him twisting a lock of Suzanne’s hair around a finger and pulling, the barest tug so she wouldn’t know if the throb she felt was pain or pleasure. The door he opened, urging Suzanne through. —Suzanne was distracted the whole next day. Going off by herself, face announcing her hurry, or having urgent, whispered conferences with Guy. I was jealous, desperate that I couldn’t compete with the fraction of her that was deeded to Russell. She’d folded herself up and I was a distant concern. I nursed my own confusion, tending hopeful explanations, but when I smiled at her, she blinked with delayed recognition, like I was a stranger returning her forgotten pocketbook. I kept noticing a soldered look in her eyes, a grim inward turning. Later I’d understand this was preparation. Dinner was some reheated beans that tasted of aluminum, the burned scrapings of the pot. Stale chocolate cake from the bakery with a hoary pack of frost. They wanted to eat indoors, so we sat on the splintered floor, plates crooked on our laps. Forcing a primitive caveman hunch—no one seemed to eat very much. Suzanne pressed a finger to the cake and watched it crumb. Their looks at one another across the room were bursting with suppressed hilarity, a surprise-party conspiracy. Donna handing Suzanne a rag with a significant air. I didn’t understand anything, a pitiful dislocation keeping me blind and eager. I’d steeled myself to force a talk on Suzanne. But I looked up from the nasty slop of my plate and saw she was already getting to her feet, her movements informed by information invisible to me. They were going somewhere, I realized when I caught up to her, following the play of her flashlight beam. The lurch, the gag of desperation: Suzanne was going to leave me behind. “Let me come too,” I said. Trying to keep up, following the swift rupture she cut through the grass. I couldn’t see Suzanne’s face.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I ain’t gone be doing this shit much longer, Monique told herself as she humped her hips, even though the chick between her legs was eating her pussy out deliciously. She opened her legs wider, getting bomb-ass head and getting paid for it at the same time. Shit, this bitch was fine as hell too. She had stripped naked and was laying on her stomach, her face buried in Monique’s snatch. Monique moaned and pushed her hips up off the bed, holding the back of the girl’s head and pressing her tongue deeper inside her. She shivered as that hot tongue probed her spots and lapped at her clit. She gazed at the female nestled between her legs and liked what she saw. Monique loved dick, but she also appreciated what a woman could offer her, and this one here had a better-looking ass than any ho in the house, except her of course. But best of all, the girl was licking Monique’s pussy just right, concentrating on that clit so good, that Monique had to force herself not to let go of the dick she was bobbing on and grab the girl’s head and cum all over her face. Instead, she rode the beat that was thumping deep inside her coochie and concentrated on giving this playa his money’s worth. His pockets was deep and his dick was little, so the next two hours was gonna be a breeze. Hell, after tonight, the rest of her life would be a breeze. And she didn’t have nobody but that stupid bitch Juicy to thank for all the good tongue, and the good fortune, that had fallen right in her lap. • • • Monique never could stand Juicy’s ass. She’d known her from 136th Street, and used to tease her retarded brother Jimmy in school all the time. Juicy’s grandmother was sanctified, and used to look down her nose on Monique’s mother because she had ten kids by ten different daddies and couldn’t control none of them. Monique had moved across town in the ninth grade and forgotten all about Juicy, but years later here that bitch came, strutting her shit up in Monique’s territory like she was special or something. Monique had felt herself fill to the top with envy when G brought virgin-ass Juicy up in the Spot, then shut down his whole operation and took her up on the stage and asked if anybody had fucked the bitch or even sucked her. “Who does that bitch think she is?” Monique had fumed to her girl, a stripper called Honey Dew. “I shoulda raised my hand and screamed, ‘Me! Me! Me! I sucked that phony bitch out and I fucked her too!’” Monique laughed hard at the thought. “G woulda dropped her so-called virgin ass so quick she would still be wandering around Harlem trying to find the train station.”

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  You may hear the bells of temple Taiji By raising your head from the pillow, But to see the snows of Mount Koro You must unroll the blind before the door. Sasanosuke had considerable tact and intelligence, and he gave his master great pleasure by imitating this famous lady. From that time he became one of the Lord's favourites. When the Lord departed for Yedo to pay his respects to the Shyôgun, Sasanosuke Stayed in the Province and was free to do as he pleased. One day he went with three other pages to hunt birds in the fields. They walked for a long time without finding even a sparrow for their trouble, and decided to return home. But behind a clump of bamboos there was a hut where the country folk used to shelter their melons from birds and thieves during the summer, and, as the young men passed this, a pheasant flew out from it. With the help of their bamboos the pages caught the bird; and then several more pheasants flew from the hut. The young men were delighted with such a stroke of luck. But one of them was surprised to see so many pheasants, and made his way into the hut. There he saw two men hiding with a big cage full of these birds. He rebuked the men severely.'You are committing a crime against the Lord's law. Do you not know that it is forbidden by edict for a man of the people to catch birds?' While he was questioning the men, one of them escaped, hiding his face with his big rush Straw hat. But the other was seized by the pages and Stood in some danger, for the youths were very angry. But Sasanosuke interceded for the wretched man, saying: 'Perhaps these poor fellows caught the birds for food. Let us have mercy, and pardon him at least this time.' They released the man and returned to their houses, rejoicing at this easy capture. And they tied the birds to plum tree branches. But Sasanosuke, pretending that his foot hurt him, Stayed behind and, when the others were out of sight, insistently questioned the man: 'I shall not let you go until you tell me why you and your accomplice hid yourselves in this place. Be frank, and confess that something Strange underlies the matter.' The terrified man at once confessed: 'I am the slave of Hayemon Banno. My master escaped before you seized me.' 'I know Hayemon. He is, in fad:, known everywhere. Why did he run away? It is very Strange.' The slave answered: 'My master said to me this morning: "To-day Sasanosuke Yamawaki will come this way to hunt birds; but, after all the samurai who have birded here lately, he will find them very scarce and be disappointed. I am going to provide his sport with some of my own birds." That is why my master and I loosed these birds for your pleasure.'

• From The Girls (2016)

  grit fleecing my fingers. The freedom of being so young that no one expected anything from me. I hadn’t seen Tamar since the day she’d dropped me off after school, and I remember feeling disappointed when she arrived—I’d have to act like a grown-up now that she was there as witness. She had a man with her, slightly older. She introduced him around, kissing someone on the cheek, shaking hands. Everyone seemed to know her. I was jealous of how Tamar’s boyfriend rested his hand on her back while she spoke, on the sliver of skin between her skirt and top. I wanted her to see that I was drinking: I made my way to the bar table when she did, pouring myself another glass of sherry. “I like your outfit,” I said, pushed to speak by the burn in my chest. She had her back to me and didn’t hear. I repeated myself and she startled. “Evie,” she said, pleasantly enough. “You scared me.” “Sorry.” I felt foolish, blunt in my shift dress. Her outfit was bright and new looking, wavy diamonds in violet and green and red. “Fun party,” she said, her eyes scanning the crowd. Before I could think of a rejoinder, some crack to show that I knew the tiki torches were stupid, my mother joined us. I quickly put my glass back on the table. Hating the way I felt: all my comfort before Tamar’s arrival had transformed into painful awareness of every object in my house, every detail of my parents, as if I were responsible for all of it. I was embarrassed for my mother’s full skirt, which seemed outdated next to Tamar’s clothes, for the eager way my mother greeted her. Her neck getting blotchy with nerves. I slunk away while they were distracted with their polite chatter. Queasy and sunbaked with discomfort, I wanted to sit in one place without having to talk to anyone, without having to track Tamar’s gaze or see my mother using her chopsticks, announcing gaily that it wasn’t so hard, even as a mandarin orange slithered back onto her plate. I wished Connie were there—we were still friends then. My spot by the pool had been occupied by a gossipy scrum of wives: from across the yard, I heard my father’s booming laugh, the group surrounding him laughing as well. I pulled my dress down, awkwardly, missing the weight of a glass in my hands. Tamar’s boyfriend was standing nearby, eating ribs. “You’re Carl’s daughter,” he said, “right?”

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Hey,” she said cautiously. “What’s going on?” I had expected anger, derision, but Connie was acting normal, even a little glad to see me. We hadn’t spoken in almost a month. I looked at May’s face for a clue, but it was insistently blank. “Nothing much,” I said. I should have been fortified by the last few weeks, the existence of the ranch lessening the stakes of our familiar dramas, and yet how quickly the old loyalties return, the pack animal push. I wanted them to like me. “Us either,” Connie said. My sudden gratitude for Frank—it was good that I had come, good to be around people like Connie who were not complicated or confusing like Suzanne, but just a friend, someone I’d known beyond daily changes. How she and I had watched television until we got blinky headaches and popped pimples on each other’s backs in the harsh light of the bathroom. “Lame, huh?” I said, gesturing in the direction of the parade. “A hundred and ten years.” “There’s a bunch of freaky people around.” May sniffed, and I wondered if she was somehow implicating me. “By the river. They stunk.” “Yeah,” Connie said, kinder. “The play was really stupid, too. Susan Thayer’s dress was pretty much see-through. Everyone saw her underwear.” They shot each other a look. I was jealous of their shared memory, how they must have sat together in the audience, bored and restless in the sun. “We might go swimming,” Connie said. This statement seemed vaguely hilarious to both of them, and I joined in, tentative. Like I understood the joke. “Um.” Connie seemed to silently confirm something with May. “Do you want to come with us?” I should have known that it wouldn’t end well. That it was happening too easily, that my defection wouldn’t be tolerated. “To swim?” May stepped up, nodding. “Yeah, at the Meadow Club. My mom can drive us. You wanna come?” The thought that I might go with them was such a ludicrous anachronism, as if an alternate universe were unfolding where Connie

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “I really don’t see how she could have,” he said. He sat back down and began reading his free paper again. Polly shook her head in exasperation and climbed into the dryer. It was quite hot, but she could breathe okay. She pushed against the back, and she thought she felt it move. She grabbed a T-shirt from the heap of clothes, so that she wouldn’t burn her hand, and she pushed as hard as she could against the back. It made a sound like a tight rusty spring and swung open. She climbed through and fell out on some grass near a lilac bush. She was lying topless on a hill, surrounded by wildflowers. There were women walking around with backpacks and hiking boots on and no shirts on. She thought she could hear murmured sounds of sex in the air: Suck it, pound me, squeeze it, that’s it. Fortunately, she still was holding the long T-shirt she’d used to push out the back of the dryer. She put it on. A minute later, Jeff tumbled out of the hole in the wall behind her. He was wearing just his shirt and underpants. He sat up in the grass and looked around. It was a beautiful day, with one tiny cloud and some bunched trees off in the distance near a creek. “I told you,” said Polly. Jeff looked around. “Lots of interesting seminudity here,” he said, pleased. A woman appeared from behind a bush. She was wearing a very pretty long skirt—an I-want-to-go-out-on-a-wildflower-walk-with-you-and-fuck-you-later skirt—that was in kind of a forties style, with blue polka dots. She had a cute little mouth and friendly but calculating eyes and breasts shaped like breakfast muffins. She said, mostly to Jeff, “Do you need assistance?” Very sweet voice. “Sort of,” Polly said. “We’ve just popped on over from the laundromat.” The woman nodded and smiled, and then she looked down at Jeff, who was still sitting on the grass in his underpants. “You bad boy, you lost your pants, and I can see your dickybird,” she said. Jeff smiled goofily, looking up at her. Polly felt a toxic wave of jealousy and hatred and disgust, and she turned away. And that’s when she saw the most gorgeous cream-colored Cape house she’d ever seen. It had a huge wraparound porch, and it had dormer windows that reflected the sun, and it had big, softly sighing trees in front of it. Polly pointed. “I think we should go up there, Jeff,” she said. “I think I should stay here,” Jeff said dreamily, “so we know how to get back to the other side.” He lay back on the grass and looked up at the sky, smiling. Then he looked over at the girl in the polka-dot skirt. She was cutting bunches of white lilacs. “You sit out here on the grass in your underpants,” said Polly. “I’m going up to that house and investigate. We’ll meet in about an hour and a half.”

• From The Girls (2016)

  The door he opened, urging Suzanne through. — Suzanne was distracted the whole next day. Going off by herself, face announcing her hurry, or having urgent, whispered conferences with Guy. I was jealous, desperate that I couldn’t compete with the fraction of her that was deeded to Russell. She’d folded herself up and I was a distant concern. I nursed my own confusion, tending hopeful explanations, but when I smiled at her, she blinked with delayed recognition, like I was a stranger returning her forgotten pocketbook. I kept noticing a soldered look in her eyes, a grim inward turning. Later I’d understand this was preparation. Dinner was some reheated beans that tasted of aluminum, the burned scrapings of the pot. Stale chocolate cake from the bakery with a hoary pack of frost. They wanted to eat indoors, so we sat on the splintered floor, plates crooked on our laps. Forcing a primitive caveman hunch—no one seemed to eat very much. Suzanne pressed a finger to the cake and watched it crumb. Their looks at one another across the room were bursting with suppressed hilarity, a surprise-party conspiracy. Donna handing Suzanne a rag with a significant air. I didn’t understand anything, a pitiful dislocation keeping me blind and eager. I’d steeled myself to force a talk on Suzanne. But I looked up from the nasty slop of my plate and saw she was already getting to her feet, her movements informed by information invisible to me. They were going somewhere, I realized when I caught up to her, following the play of her flashlight beam. The lurch, the gag of desperation: Suzanne was going to leave me behind. “Let me come too,” I said. Trying to keep up, following the swift rupture she cut through the grass. I couldn’t see Suzanne’s face. “Come where?” she said, her voice even. “Wherever you’re going,” I said. “I know you’re going somewhere.” The teasing lilt. “Russell didn’t ask you to go.” “But I want to,” I said. “Please.” Suzanne didn’t say yes, exactly. But she slowed enough so I could match her stride, a pace new to me, purposeful. “You should change,” Suzanne said. I looked down, trying to discern what had offended her: my cotton shirt, my long skirt. “Into dark clothes,” she said.