Joy

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 My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  She got up, leaving little bits of red fuzz on the bed where she’d been sitting. I got out of bed and looked inside the bag from Bloomingdale’s. The suit was made of stiff rayon. The necklace was nothing I’d ever wear. The Infermiterol seemed to ruin my usual good taste in things, although the white fur coat was interesting to me. It had personality. How many foxes had to die, I wondered. And how did they kill them so that their blood didn’t stain their fur? Maybe Ping Xi could have answered that question, I thought. How cold would it have to be to freeze a live white fox? I tore the tags off the bra and panties and put them on. My pubic hair puffed out the panties. It was a good joke—sexy underwear with a huge bush. I wished I had my Polaroid camera to capture the image. The lightheartedness in that wish struck me, and for a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted. When Reva came back with her arms full of shoes and shirts and an unopened package of flesh-colored nylons from the eighties, I handed her the necklace. “I got you something,” I said, “to condole you.” Reva dropped everything on the bed and opened the box. Her eyes filled with tears—just like in a movie—and she embraced me. It was a good hug. Reva had always been good at hugs. I felt like a praying mantis in her arms. The fleece of her robe was soft and smelled like Downy. I tried to pull away but she held me tighter. When she finally let go, she was crying and smiling. She sniffed and laughed. “It’s beautiful. Thanks. That’s really sweet. Sorry,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She put the necklace on and pulled the collar of her robe away and studied her neck in the mirror. Her smile turned a little phony. “You know, I don’t think you can use ‘condole’ that way. I think you can ‘condole with’ someone. But you can’t ‘condole’ someone.” “No, Reva. I’m not condoling you. The necklace is.” “But that’s not the right word, I think. You can console someone.” “No, you can’t,” I said. “Anyway, you know what I mean.” “It’s beautiful,” Reva said again, flatly this time, touching the necklace. She pointed to the mess of black stuff she’d brought down. “This is all I found. I hope it’s okay.” She took her dress out from the closet and went into the bathroom to change. I put the pantyhose on, picked through the shoes, found a pair that fit. From the tangle of shirts I pulled out a black turtleneck. I put it on, and put the suit on. “Do you have a brush I can borrow?”

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  SEIDENSTICKER 62 • The Art of Seduction was the latest fashion, and the Broadway dancers and performers who made up the Revue Nègre were African-American. On opening night, artists and high society packed the hall. The show was spectacular, as they ex- pected, but nothing prepared them for the last number, performed by a somewhat gawky long-legged woman with the prettiest face: Josephine Baker, a twenty-year-old chorus girl from East St. Louis. She came onstage bare-breasted, wearing a skirt of feathers over a satin bikini bottom, with feathers around her neck and ankles. Although she performed her number, called "Danse Sauvage," with another dancer, also clad in feathers, all eyes were riveted on her: her whole body seemed to come alive in a way the au- dience had never seen before, her legs moving with the litheness of a cat, her rear end gyrating in patterns that one critic likened to a hummingbird's. As the dance went on, she seemed possessed, feeding off the crowd's ecsta- tic reaction. And then there was the look on her face: she was having such fun. She radiated a joy that made her erotic dance oddly innocent, even slightly comic. By the following day, word had spread: a star was born. Josephine be- came the heart of the Revue Nègre, and Paris was at her feet. Within a year, her face was on posters everywhere; there were Josephine Baker per- fumes, dolls, clothes; fashionable Frenchwomen were slicking their hair back a la Baker, using a product called Bakerfix. They were even trying to darken their skin. Such sudden fame represented quite a change, for just a few years ear- lier, Josephine had been a young girl growing up in East St. Louis, one of America's worst slums. She had gone to work at the age of eight, cleaning houses for a white woman who beat her. She had sometimes slept in a rat- infested basement; there had never been heat in the winter. (She had taught herself to dance in her wild fashion to help keep herself warm.) In 1919, Josephine had run away and become a part-time vaudeville performer, landing in New York two years later without money or connections. She had had some success as a clowning chorus girl, providing comic relief with her crossed eyes and screwed-up face, but she hadn't stood out. Then she was invited to Paris. Some other black performers had declined, fearing things might be still worse for them in France than in America, but Josephine jumped at the chance. Despite her success with the Revue Nègre, Josephine did not delude herself: Parisians were notoriously fickle. She decided to turn the relation- ship around. First, she refused to be aligned with any club, and developed a reputation for breaking contracts at will, making it clear that she was ready to leave in an instant.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  What is most intriguing of all to me is that she has made a British shrink, who is really a first-class scoundrel, a delightful character. He makes an awful lot of sense, despite his propensity for handing out one-liners, like Henny Youngman. This lousy bastard turns out to be the savior of Isadora Zelda, though he may not have meant to be. It’s he who, by his unabashed treachery, opens her eyes, makes her face herself, makes her accept reality. He is certainly an “antihero.” Bastard though he is, he knows how to get along, or, I suppose I should say, “he knows on which side his bread is buttered”. I dwell on this character because too few of us are ready to acknowledge that we can learn (as much or more) from an evil character as from a good one. We know that the do-gooders wreak a lot of havoc, but we do not seem to know that the evil-doers can work a lot of good in this fucked-up world. If they accomplish nothing more than to shatter our idealistic dreams, they have done enough. But I am exaggerating somewhat, as regards Adrian, the British shrink and no. 1 bastard. He is not truly evil; he just doesn’t give a fuck if he happens to ruin a few lives in the course of his having his way. I had a most intense feeling of joy, of liberation, when the bandages finally fell from Isadora’s eyes. Though it was a bit of a letdown to see her return to her husband (another shrink, but an Oriental one), I felt that she would remain on her own two feet. Once the bandages are removed you don’t put them on again. Maybe she, author or protagonist, still has a fear of flying—who hasn’t?—but she can cope with it. I feel like predicting that this book will make literary history, that because of it women are going to find their own voice and give us great sagas of sex, life, joy and adventure. —Henry Miller

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Before she knew what was happening, he had invited her to join him in Acapulco, where he was vacationing. The Davises, their mutual friends, could come along as chaperones. That would be wonderful, she said, but her mother would never agree. Don't worry "How do you attract a man," the Paris correspondent of the Stockholm Aftonbladet asked La Belle on July 3, 1910. • "Make yourself as feminine as possible; dress so that the most interesting portions of your anatomy are emphasized; and subtly allow the gentleman to know you are willing to yield at the proper time. . . ." • "The way to hold a man" Otero revealed a little later to a staff writer from the Johannesburg Morning Journal, "is to keep acting as though every time you meet him you are overcome with fresh enthusiasm and, with barely restrained eagerness, you await his impetuosity." —ARTHUR H. LEWIS, LA BELLE OTERO "I missed the mental stimulation when I was younger," he answered. "But from the time I began to have women, shall we say, on the assembly-line basis, I discovered that the only thing you need, want, or should have is the absolutely physical. Simply the physical. No mind at all. A woman's mind will get in the way." • "Really?" • "For me . . . I am speaking of myself. I don't speak for male humankind. I am speaking for what I've discovered or what I need: the body, the face, the physical motion, the voice, the femaleness, the female presence . . . totally that, nothing else. That's the best. There's no possessiveness in that." • I watched him closely. • "I'm serious," he said. "That's my view and feeling. Just the elementary Use Physical Lures • 399 about that, Flynn replied; and the following day he showed up at their house with a beautiful gift for Blanca, a ring with her birthstone. Melting under his charming smile, Blanca's mother agreed to his plan. Later that day, Blanca found herself on a plane to Acapulco. It was all like a dream. The Davises, under orders from Blanca's mother, tried not to let her out of their sight, so Flynn put her on a raft and they drifted out into the ocean, far from the shore. His flattering words filled her ears, and she let him hold her hand and kiss her cheek. That night they danced together, and when the evening was over he escorted her to her room and serenaded her with a song as they finally parted. It was the end of a perfect day. In the middle of the night, she woke up to hear him calling her name, from her hotel-room balcony. How had he gotten there? His room was a floor above; he must have somehow jumped or swung down, a dangerous ma- neuver. She approached, not at all afraid, but curious. He pulled her gently into his arms and kissed her.

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

  Or if need be, your brain will make the prediction match the sensory input, and you will mistakenly perceive someone else to be your Uncle Kevin, as Sophia did in the shopping mall that day. So there you are, standing in the mall, and your brain must determine whether its prediction of Uncle Kevin ultimately becomes your perception and directs your action, or whether a course correction is required. To determine the details, the brain unpacks the summary of all the sensory input into a gigantic cascade of more detailed predictions, like uncompressing a YouTube video for viewing, or adding water to dehydrated food to make it edible. This process, shown in figure 6-1 , is the same one that builds up a concept from details, but in reverse. For example, when the prediction of “Happiness” reaches the upper portions of the visual system, the prediction might unpack into details of Uncle Kevin’s appearance, say, whether he is facing toward you or away from you, and what clothing he is wearing. These details are themselves predictions based on probabilities (e.g., Uncle Kevin never wears plaid), so your brain can compare the simulation to actual sensory input and compute and resolve any prediction error. This resolution does not happen in a single step but in millions of bits and pieces (as the prediction loops discussed in chapter 4 ). Each visual detail is unpacked into even more detailed predictions in turn, for (say) colors, shirt texture, and so on, each of which involves more prediction loops and cascading and unpacking. The cascade ends in the brain’s primary visual cortex, which represents your lowest-level visual concepts in a tornado of ever-changing lines and edges. Figure 6-1: The concept cascade. When you develop a concept (right to left), sensory input is compressed into efficient, multisensory summaries. When you construct an instance of a concept by prediction (left to right), those efficient summaries unpack into ever more detailed predictions, which are checked against actual sensory input at each stage. Cascades begin—of all places—within our old friend the interoceptive network. * That’s where multisensory summaries are constructed in your brain. Cascades end in your primary sensory regions, where the tiniest details of your experience are represented, not just for vision as in our example but also for sound, touch, interoception, and the rest of your senses. If one cascade of predictions accounts for the incoming sensory input —Uncle Kevin is indeed in front of you, his hair pulled back in a particular way, wearing a particular shirt, his voice sounding a particular way, your body in a particular state, and so on—then you have constructed an instance of “Happiness” having to do with feeling connected to friends. That is, the entire cascade is that instance of the concept “Happiness” as you glimpse your uncle.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  She got up, leaving little bits of red fuzz on the bed where she’d been sitting. I got out of bed and looked inside the bag from Bloomingdale’s. The suit was made of stiff rayon. The necklace was nothing I’d ever wear. The Infermiterol seemed to ruin my usual good taste in things, although the white fur coat was interesting to me. It had personality. How many foxes had to die, I wondered. And how did they kill them so that their blood didn’t stain their fur? Maybe Ping Xi could have answered that question, I thought. How cold would it have to be to freeze a live white fox? I tore the tags off the bra and panties and put them on. My pubic hair puffed out the panties. It was a good joke—sexy underwear with a huge bush. I wished I had my Polaroid camera to capture the image. The lightheartedness in that wish struck me, and for a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted. When Reva came back with her arms full of shoes and shirts and an unopened package of flesh-colored nylons from the eighties, I handed her the necklace. “I got you something,” I said, “to condole you.” Reva dropped everything on the bed and opened the box. Her eyes filled with tears—just like in a movie—and she embraced me. It was a good hug. Reva had always been good at hugs. I felt like a praying mantis in her arms. The fleece of her robe was soft and smelled like Downy. I tried to pull away but she held me tighter. When she finally let go, she was crying and smiling. She sniffed and laughed. “It’s beautiful. Thanks. That’s really sweet. Sorry,” she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She put the necklace on and pulled the collar of her robe away and studied her neck in the mirror. Her smile turned a little phony. “You know, I don’t think you can use ‘condole’ that way. I think you can ‘condole with’ someone. But you can’t ‘condole’ someone.” “No, Reva. I’m not condoling you. The necklace is.” “But that’s not the right word, I think. You can console someone.” “No, you can’t,” I said. “Anyway, you know what I mean.” “It’s beautiful,” Reva said again, flatly this time, touching the necklace. She pointed to the mess of black stuff she’d brought down. “This is all I found. I hope it’s okay.” She took her dress out from the closet and went into the bathroom to change. I put the pantyhose on, picked through the shoes, found a pair that fit. From the tangle of shirts I pulled out a black turtleneck. I put it on, and put the suit on. “Do you have a brush I can borrow?”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Moreover, we inspected: Little Iceberg Lake, somewhere in Colorado, and the snow banks, and the cushionets of tiny alpine flowers, and more snow; down which Lo in red-peaked cap tried to slide, and squealed, and was snowballed by some youngsters, and retaliated in kind comme on dit. Skeletons of burned aspens, patches of spired blue flowers. The various items of a scenic drive. Hundreds of scenic drives, thousands of Bear Creeks, Soda Springs, Painted Canyons. Texas, a drought-struck plain. Crystal Chamber in the longest cave in the world, children under 12 free, Lo a young captive. A collection of a local lady’s homemade sculptures, closed on a miserable Monday morning, dust, wind, witherland. Conception Park, in a town on the Mexican border which I dared not cross. There and elsewhere, hundreds of gray hummingbirds in the dusk, probing the throats of dim flowers. Shakespeare, a ghost town in New Mexico, where bad man Russian Bill was colorfully hanged seventy years ago. Fish hatcheries. Cliff dwellings. The mummy of a child (Florentine Bea’s Indian contemporary). Our twentieth Hell’s Canyon. Our fiftieth Gateway to something or other fide that tour book, the cover of which had been lost by that time. A tick in my groin. Always the same three old men, in hats and suspenders, idling away the summer afternoon under the trees near the public fountain. A hazy blue view beyond railings on a mountain pass, and the backs of a family enjoying it (with Lo, in a hot, happy, wild, intense, hopeful, hopeless whisper—“Look, the McCrystals, please, let’s talk to them, please”—let’s talk to them, reader!—“please! I’ll do anything you want, oh, please …”). Indian ceremonial dances, strictly commercial. ART: American Refrigerator Transit Company. Obvious Arizona, pueblo dwellings, aboriginal pictographs, a dinosaur track in a desert canyon, printed there thirty million years ago, when I was a child. A lanky, six-foot, pale boy with an active Adam’s apple, ogling Lo and her orange-brown bare midriff, which I kissed five minutes later, Jack. Winter in the desert, spring in the foothills, almonds in bloom. Reno, a dreary town in Nevada, with a nightlife said to be “cosmopolitan and mature.” A winery in California, with a church built in the shape of a wine barrel. Death Valley. Scotty’s Castle. Works of Art collected by one Rogers over a period of years. The ugly villas of handsome actresses. R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano. Mission Dolores: good title for book. Surf-carved sandstone festoons. A man having a lavish epileptic fit on the ground in Russian Gulch State Park. Blue, blue Crater Lake. A fish hatchery in Idaho and the State Penitentiary. Somber Yellowstone Park and its colored hot springs, baby geysers, rainbows of bubbling mud—symbols of my passion. A herd of antelopes in a wildlife refuge. Our hundredth cavern, adults one dollar, Lolita fifty cents. A chateau built by a French marquess in N.D. The Corn Palace in S.D.; and the huge heads of presidents carved in towering granite. The Bearded Woman read our jingle and now she is no longer single. A zoo in Indiana where a large troop of monkeys lived on concrete replica of Christopher Columbus’ flagship. Billions of dead, or halfdead, fish-smelling May flies in every window of every eating place all along a dreary sandy shore. Fat gulls on big stones as seen from the ferry City of Sheboygan, whose brown woolly smoke arched and dipped over the green shadow it cast on the aquamarine lake. A motel whose ventilator pipe passed under the city sewer. Lincoln’s home, largely spurious, with parlor books and period furniture that most visitors reverently accepted as personal belongings.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  It curved in from under an archway of huge shade trees, then sped towards us down, down, quite sharply, past old Miss Opposite’s ivied brick house and high-sloping lawn (much trimmer than ours) and disappeared behind our own front porch which I could not see from where I happily belched and labored. The dandelions perished. A reek of sap mingled with the pineapple. Two little girls, Marion and Mabel, whose comings and goings I had mechanically followed of late (but who could replace my Lolita?) went toward the avenue (from which our Lawn Street cascaded), one pushing a bicycle, the other feeding from a paper bag, both talking at the top of their sunny voices. Leslie, old Miss Opposite’s gardener and chauffeur, a very amiable and athletic Negro, grinned at me from afar and shouted, re-shouted, commented by gesture, that I was mighty energetic to-day. The fool dog of the prosperous junk dealer next door ran after a blue car—not Charlotte’s. The prettier of the two little girls (Mabel, I think), shorts, halter with little to halt, bright hair—a nymphet, by Pan!—ran back down the street crumpling her paper bag and was hidden from this Green Goat by the frontage of Mr. and Mrs. Humbert’s residence. A station wagon popped out of the leafy shade of the avenue, dragging some of it on its roof before the shadows snapped, and swung by at an idiotic pace, the sweatshirted driver roof-holding with his left hand and the junkman’s dog tearing alongside. There was a smiling pause—and then, with a flutter in my breast, I witnessed the return of the Blue Sedan. I saw it glide downhill and disappear behind the corner of the house. I had a glimpse of her calm pale profile. It occurred to me that until she went upstairs she would not know whether I had gone or not. A minute later, with an expression of great anguish on her face, she looked down at me from the window of Lo’s room. By sprinting upstairs, I managed to reach that room before she left it. 18 When the bride is a widow and the groom is a widower; when the former has lived in Our Great Little Town for hardly two years, and the latter for hardly a month; when Monsieur wants to get the whole damned thing over with as quickly as possible, and Madame gives in with a tolerant smile; then, my reader, the wedding is generally a “quiet” affair.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Meanwhile, feeling reassured that Genji was no longer chasing her, Tamakazura saw her protector more often. And now she could not help noticing little details: Genji's robes seemed to glow, in pleasing and vibrant colors, as if dyed by unworldly hands. Hotaru's robes seemed drab by comparison. And the perfumes burned into Genji's garments, how intoxicating they were. No one else bore such a scent. Ho- taru's letters were polite and well written, but the letters Genji sent her were on magnificent paper, perfumed and dyed, and they quoted lines of poetry, always surprising yet always appropriate for the occasion. Genji also grew and gathered flowers—wild carnations, for instance—that he gave as gifts and that seemed to symbolize his unique charm. One evening Genji proposed to teach Tamakazura how to play the koto. She was delighted. She loved to read romance novels, and whenever Genji played the koto, she felt as if she were transported into one of her books. No one played the instrument better than Genji; she would be hon- ored to learn from him. Now he saw her often, and the method of his lessons was simple: she would choose a song for him to play, and then would try to imitate him. After they played, they would lie down side by side, their heads resting on the koto, staring up at the moon. Genji would have torches set up in the garden, giving the view the softest glow. The more Tamakazura saw of the court—of Prince Hotaru, the other For years after her entry into the palace, a large number of court-maidens were especially set aside for preparing Kuei-fei 's dresses, which were chosen and fashioned according to the flowers of the season. For instance, for New Year (spring) she had blossoms of apricot, plum and narcissus; for summer, she adopted the lotus; for autumn, she patterned them after the peony; for winter, she employed the chrysanthemum. Of jewelry she was fondest of pearls, and the finest products of the world found their way into her boudoir and were frequently embroidered on her numerous dresses. • Kuei- fei was the embodiment of all that was lovely and extravagant. No wonder that no king, prince, courtier or humble attendant who ever met her could resist the allurement of her charms. Besides, she was the most artful of women and knew how to use her natural gifts to the best purpose. . . . The Emperor Ming Huang, supreme in the land and with thousands of the most handsome maidens to choose from, became a complete slave to her magnetic powers . . . spending day and night in her company and giving up his whole kingdom for her sake. —SHU-CHIUNG, YANG KUEI- FEI: THE MOST FAMOUS BEAUTY OF CHINA Then [Pao-yu] called Bright Design to him and said to her, "Go and see what [Black Jade] is doing.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In walking she seemed to float, her tiny steps invisible beneath her gown. She surprised that Black Jade did not take offense at what seemed to her a crude joke. • As Black Jade thought over the signif- icance of the handkerchiefs she was happy and sad by turns: happy because Pao- yu read her innermost thoughts and sad because she wondered if what was uppermost in her thoughts would ever be fulfilled. Thinking thus to herself of the future and of the past, she could not fall asleep. Despite Purple Cuckoo's remonstrances, she had her lamp relit and began to compose a series of quatrains, writing them directly on the handkerchiefs which Pao-yu had sent. —TSAO HSUEH CHIN, DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, TRANSLATED BY CHI-CHEN WANG Pay Attention to Detail • 273 danced to perfection, wrote songs in his honor that she sang magnificently, had a way of looking at him that made his blood boil with desire. She quickly became his favorite. Yang Kuei-fei drove the emperor to distraction. He built palaces for her, spent all his time with her, satisfied her every whim. Before long his king- dom was bankrupt and ruined. Yang Kuei-fei was an artful seductress who had a devastating effect on all of the men who crossed her path. There were so many ways her presence charmed—the scents, the voice, the movements, the witty conversation, the artful glances, the embroidered gowns. These pleasurable details turned a mighty king into a distracted baby. Since time immemorial, women have known that within the most ap- parently self-possessed man is an animal whom they can lead by filling his senses with the proper physical lures. The key is to attack on as many fronts as possible. Do not ignore your voice, your gestures, your walk, your clothes, your glances. Some of the most alluring women in history have so distracted their victims with sensual detail that the men fail to notice it is all an illusion. From the 1940s on into the early 1960s, Pamela Churchill Harriman had a series of affairs with some of the most prominent and wealthy men in the world—Averill Harriman (whom years later she married), Gianni Agnelli (heir to the Fiat fortune), Baron Elie de Rothschild. What attracted these men, and kept them in thrall, was not her beauty or her lineage or her viva- cious personality, but her extraordinary attention to detail. It began with her attentive look as she listened to your every word, soaking up your tastes. Once she found her way into your home, she would fill it with your favorite flowers, get your chef to cook that dish you had tasted only in the finest restaurants. You mentioned an artist you liked?

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Make the harmony of the universe and union with God seem to confuse with physical harmony and the union between two people. If you can make the endgame of your seduction appear as a spiri- tual experience, you will heighten the physical pleasure and create a seduc- tion with a deep and lasting effect. he conveyed the girl to one of their beds, where he instructed her in the art of incarcerating that accursed fiend. • Never having put a single devil into Hell before, the girl found the first experience a little painful, and she said to Rustico: • "This devil must certainly be a bad lot, Father, and a true enemy of God, for as well as plaguing mankind, he even hurts Hell when he's driven back inside it. " • "Daughter," said Rustico, "it will not always be like that." And in order to ensure that it wouldn't, before moving from the bed they put him back half a dozen times, curbing his arrogance to such good effect that he was positively glad to keep still for the rest of the day. • During the next few days, however, the devil's pride frequently reared its head again, and the girl, ever ready to obey the call to duty and bring him under control, happened to develop a taste for the sport, and began saying to Rustico: • "I can certainly see what those worthy men in Gafsa meant when they said that serving God was so agreeable. I don't honestly recall ever having done anything that gave me so much pleasure and satisfaction as I get from putting the devil back in Hell. To my way of thinking, anyone who devotes his energies to anything but the service of God is a complete blockhead." • . . . And so, young ladies, if you stand in need of God's grace, see Use Spiritual Lures • 367 Symbol: The Stars in the sky. Objects of worship for cen- turies, and symbols of the sublime and divine. In contemplat- ing them, we are momentarily distracted from everything mundane and mortal. We feel lightness. Lift your tar- gets' minds up to the stars and they will not notice what is happening here on earth. Reversal L etting your targets feel that your affection is neither temporary nor superficial will often make them fall deeper under your spell. In some, though, it can arouse an anxiety: the fear of commitment, of a claustro- phobic relationship with no exits. Never let your spiritual lures seem to be leading in that direction, then. To focus attention on the distant future may implicitly constrict their freedom; you should be seducing them, not offer- ing to marry them. What you want is to make them lose themselves in the moment, experiencing the timeless depth of your feelings in the present tense.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  What would come later would be only airy remembrances of the thing called love she used to give me. I felt a kind of peace about Reva seeing her off that day. I’d cost her so much dignity, but the bounty she was now shoving into the trunk of the cab seemed to make up for it. I was absolved. She gave me a hug, kissed my cheek. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “I know you can get through this.” When she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes, maybe just from the cold. “I feel like I won the lottery!” She was happy. I watched her through the tinted glass, smiling and waving as she drove off. • • • AT THE BODEGA, I got two coffees and a piece of prepackaged carrot cake, bought all the garbage bags the Egyptians had in stock, then went back upstairs and packed everything up. Every book, every vase, every plate and bowl and fork and knife. All my videos, even the Star Trek collection. I knew I had to do it. The deep sleep I would soon enter required a completely blank canvas if I was to emerge from it renewed. I wanted nothing but white walls, bare floors, lukewarm tap water. I packed up all my tapes and CDs, my laptop, unmelted candles, all my pens and pencils, all my electric cords and rape whistles and Fodor’s guides to places I never went. I called the Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop and told them my aunt had died. Two guys came with a van an hour later, lugging the garbage bags four at a time into the hallway and out of my life forever. They took most of the furniture, too, including the coffee table and the bed frame. I got them to carry out the sofa and the armchair and leave them on the curb. The only pieces of furniture I kept were the mattress, the dining table, and a single aluminum folding chair with a cushion whose stained gray linen cover I threw down the trash chute. Ta-ta. What I kept for myself amounted to one set of towels, two sets of sheets, the duvet, three sets of pajamas, three pairs of cotton underpants, three bras, three pairs of socks, a comb for my hair, a box of Tide laundry detergent, a large bottle of Lubriderm moisturizing lotion. I bought a new toothbrush and four months’ worth of toothpaste and Ivory soap and toilet paper at Rite Aid. A four months’ supply of iron supplements, a women’s daily vitamin, aspirin. I bought packages of plastic cups and plates, plastic cutlery.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Thought to be a literary first novel by a poet, it was given an arty cover and printed in a rather small edition. If it had not been for the enthusiasm of the paperback editor—Elaine Koster, now a literary agent—who fell in love with the novel and bought it to reprint the following year, it might not have been given more than a token hardcover printing. Early reviews were mixed. Reviews were either wildly enthusiastic or horrified that a woman would “talk like that.” There were never enough copies in the pipeline. Whenever word of mouth took hold—for the novel was hotly debated from the time it appeared in galley proofs—it would go out of stock and be unavailable. There was a period of months when it clung to the lower reaches of the bestseller list and went out of stock again and again. Then John Updike praised it in the New Yorker and things began to shift. But unbeknownst to me, my publisher was preparing to leave the company. For several months his job as editor in chief and publisher was vacant while Fear of Flying became the book everyone had heard of but no one could obtain. At some point during that agonizing period, Henry Miller discovered Fear of Flying and wrote an enthusiastic essay about it in the New York Times. He called the novel the female version of Tropic of Cancer and predicted that it would change American writing. As a result of his generosity, he and I began a voluminous correspondence about writing. I discovered in Miller a literary soul mate whose friendship nurtured me in a chaotic time. When the paperback of Fear of Flying came out in November 1974, millions of copies were sold in the first few months. Eventually, Fear of Flying sold seven million copies in the U.S. alone and went on to become a bestseller all over the world. In the thirty years that have zoomed by, I have been struck by how similar the responses to the novel have been in vastly different cultures. Japanese, Chinese and Korean readers have been as enthusiastic about the book as French, Spanish, German, Italian and Yugoslavian readers. With the fall of communism, the novel became available in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union. It has fascinated me to see how alike are the issues of sexual politics all over the world.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  His actis et rebus meis in illo cubiculo conditis pergens ipse ad balneas, ut prius aliquid nobis cibatui prospicerem, forum cupidinis peto inque eo piscatum opiparem expositum video et percontato pretio, quod centum nummis indicaret, aspernatus viginti denariis praestinavi. Inde me commodum egredientem con- tinuatur Pythias condiscipulus apud Athenas Atticas meus, qui me post aliquam multum temporis amanter agnitum invadit, amplexusque ac comiter deosculatus 40 j THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I hard by is at your commandment, use it as your own ; then you shall both magnify our house by your deigning and shall gain to yourself good report, if, being contented with a humble lodging, you shall resemble and follow the virtuous qualities of your good father’s namesake Theseus, who disdained not the slender and poor cottage of old Hecale.” And then he called his maid, which was named Fotis, and said : * Carry this gentleman’s packet into the cham- ber and lay it up safely, and bring quickly from the cupboard oil to anoint him, and a towel to rub him, and other things necessary ; and then bring my guest to the nearest baths, for I know he is very weary of so long and difficult travel." These things when I heard, I partly perceived the manners and parsimony of Milo, and (endeavouring to bring myself further in his favour) I said: ** Sir, there is no need of any of these things, for they are everywhere my com- panions by the way ; and easily I shall enquire my way unto the baths, but my chief care is that my horse be well looked to, for he brought me hither roundly, and therefore, I pray thee, Fotis, take this money and buy some hay and oats for him." When this was done and all my things brought into the chamber, I walked towards the baths, but first I went to the provision market to buy some victuals for my supper, whereas I saw great plenty of fish set out to be sold, and so I cheapened part thereof, and that which they first held at an hundred pieces, I bought at length for twenty pence: which when I had done and was departing away, Pythias, one of mine old companions and fellow at Athens, fortuned to pass by, and viewing me a good space, in the end brought me kindly to his remembrance, and gently came and 4l LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Her body convulsed; overwhelmed with new sensations, totally at sea, she began to cry—out of happiness, she said. Flynn comforted her with a kiss and returned to his room above, in the same inexplicable way he had arrived. Now Blanca was hopelessly in love with him and would do anything he asked of her. A few weeks later, in fact, she followed him to Hollywood, where she went on to become a suc- cessful actress, known as Linda Christian. In 1942, an eighteen-year-old girl named Nora Eddington had a tem- porary job selling cigarettes at the Los Angeles County courthouse. The place was a madhouse at the time, teeming with tabloid journalists: two young girls had charged Errol Flynn with rape. Nora of course noticed Flynn, a tall, dashing man who occasionally bought cigarettes from her, but her thoughts were with her boyfriend, a young Marine. A few weeks later Flynn was acquitted, the trial ended, and the place settled down. A man she had met during the trial called her up one day: he was Flynn's right-hand man, and on Flynn's behalf, he wanted to invite her up to the actor's house on Mulholland Drive. Nora had no interest in Flynn, and in fact she was a little afraid of him, but a girlfriend who was dying to meet him talked her into going and bringing her along. What did she have to lose? Nora agreed to go. On the day, Flynn's friend showed up and drove them to a splendid house on top of a hill. When they arrived, Flynn was standing shirtless by his swimming pool. He came to greet her and her girlfriend, moving so gracefully—like a lithe cat—and his manner so relaxed, she felt her jitters melt away. He gave them a tour of the house, which was full of artifacts of his various sea voyages. He talked so delightfully of his love of adventure that she wished she had had adventures of her own. He was the perfect gentleman, and even let her talk about her boyfriend without the slightest sign of jealousy. Nora had a visit from her boyfriend the next day. Somehow he didn't seem so interesting anymore; they had a fight and broke up on the spot.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He would establish a capital on the Dnieper River, Ekaterinoslav ("To the glory of Catherine"), that would rival St. Petersburg and would house a university outshining anything in Europe. The countryside would hold endless fields of corn, or- chards with rare fruits from the Orient, silkworm farms, new towns with bustling marketplaces. On a visit to the empress in 1785, Potemkin talked of these things as if they already existed, so vivid were his descriptions. The empress was delighted, but her ministers were skeptical—Potemkin loved to talk. Ignoring their warnings, in 1787 Catherine arranged for a tour of the area. She asked Joseph II to join her—he would be so impressed with the modernization of the Crimea that he would immediately sign on for the war against Turkey. Potemkin, naturally, was to organize the whole affair. And so, in May of that year, after the Dnieper had thawed, Catherine prepared for a journey from Kiev, in the Ukraine, to Sebastopol, in the Crimea. Potemkin arranged for seven floating palaces to carry Catherine and her retinue down the river. The journey began, and as Catherine, Joseph, and the courtiers looked at the shores to either side, they saw tri- umphal arches in front of clean-looking towns, their walls freshly painted; healthy-looking cattle grazing in the pastures; streams of marching troops on the roads; buildings going up everywhere. At dusk they were enter- tained by bright-costumed peasants, and smiling girls with flowers in their hair, dancing on the shore. Catherine had traveled through this area many years before, and the poverty of the peasantry there had saddened her—she had determined then that she would somehow change their lot. To see be- fore her eyes the signs of such a transformation overwhelmed her, and she berated Potemkin's critics: Look at what my favorite has accomplished, look at these miracles! They anchored at three towns along the way, staying in each place in a magnificent, newly built palace with artificial waterfalls in the English-style gardens. On land they moved through villages with vibrant marketplaces; the peasants were happily at work, building and repairing. Everywhere they spent the night, some spectacle filled their eyes—dances, parades, mytho- logical tableaux vivants, artificial volcanoes illuminating Moorish gardens. Finally, at the end of the trip, in the palace at Sebastopol, Catherine and express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations— standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break. She knows how to arrange the folds of her veil to match each mood, and has a hundred ways of turning it into a headdress. The old knight idolizes her and is quite enthusiastic about everything she does.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  at their tastes and predilections. Genji knew he was dealing with a young that he happened to have around. " Black Jade was girl who loved romantic novels; his wild flowers, koto playing, and poetry even more puzzled, and brought their world to life for her. Attend to your targets' every move and then it suddenly dawned desire, and reveal your attentiveness in the details and objects you surround upon her: Pao-yu knew them with, filling their senses with the mood you need to inspire. They can that she would weep for him and so sent two argue with your words, but not with the effect you have on their senses. handkerchiefs of his own. • "You can leave them, then," she said to Bright Design, who in turn was 272 • The Art of Seduction surprised that Black Jade Therefore in my view when the courtier wishes to declare did not take offense at his love he should do so by his actions rather than by what seemed to her a crude speech, for a man's feelings are sometimes more clearly re-joke. • As Black Jade vealed by . . . a gesture of respect or a certain shyness than thought over the significance of the handkerchiefs by volumes of words. she was happy and sad by —BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE turns: happy because Pao- yu read her innermost thoughts and sad because she wondered if what was Keys to Seduction uppermost in her thoughts would ever be fulfilled. Thinking thus to herself of the future and of the past, When we were children, our senses were much more active. The colors of a new toy, or a spectacle such as a circus, held us in thrall; a she could not fall asleep. smell or a sound could fascinate us. In the games we created, many of them Despite Purple Cuckoo's remonstrances, she had her reproducing something in the adult world on a smaller scale, what pleasure lamp relit and began to we took in orchestrating every detail. We noticed everything. compose a series of As we grow older our senses get dulled. We no longer notice as much, quatrains, writing them for we are constantly hurrying to get things done, to move on to the next directly on the handkerchiefs which task. In seduction, you are always trying to bring the target back to the Pao-yu had sent. golden moments of childhood. A child is less rational, more easily de- — T S A O H S U E H C H I N , ceived. A child is also more attuned to the pleasures of the senses. So when DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, your targets are with you, you must never give them the feeling they nor-TRANSLATED BY C H I - C H E N WANG

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A few weeks later the king was inspecting the royal stables when he caught sight of a young man who was new to the court: the twenty-two-year-old George Villiers, a member of the lower nobility. The courtiers who accompanied the king that day watched the king's eyes following Villiers, and saw with what interest he asked about this young man. Indeed everyone had to agree that he was a most handsome youth, with the face of an angel and a charmingly childish manner. When news of the king's interest in Villiers reached the conspirators, they instantly knew they had found what they had been looking for: a young man who could seduce the king and supplant the dreaded favorite. Left to nature, though, the seduction would never happen. They had to help it along. So, without telling Villiers of their plan, they befriended him. King James was the son of Mary Queen of Scots. His childhood had been a nightmare: his father, his mother's favorite, and his own regents had all been murdered; his mother had first been exiled, later executed. When James was young, to escape suspicion he played the part of a fool. He hated the sight of a sword and could not stand the slightest sign of argument. When his cousin Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, leaving no heir, he became king of England. James surrounded himself with bright, happy young men, and seemed to prefer the company of boys. In 1612, his son, Prince Henry, died. The king was inconsolable. He needed distraction and good cheer, and his favorite, the Earl of Somerset, was no longer so young and attractive. The timing for a seduction was perfect. And so the conspirators went to work on Villiers, under the guise of trying to help him advance within the court. They supplied him with a magnificent wardrobe, jewels, a glittering carriage, the kind of things the king noticed. They worked on his riding, Effect a Regression • 347 fencing, tennis, dancing, his skills with birds and dogs. He was instructed in the art of conversation—how to flatter, tell a joke, sigh at the right moment. Fortunately Villiers was easy to work with; he had a naturally buoyant manner and nothing seemed to bother him. That same year the conspirators managed to get him appointed the royal cup-bearer: every night he poured out the king's wine, so that the king could see him up close. After a few weeks, the king was in love. The boy seemed to crave attention and tenderness, exactly what he yearned to offer. How wonderful it would be to mold and educate him. And what a perfect figure he had!

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  CR: To be honest, we’re surprised and thrilled at the reception. Of course, I’ve got a Google alert set to the title, so I see most of the blog discussions, reviews on Amazon.com and GoodReads, etc. Overall, people seem to be very positive about the book. Much more than we’d expected. We figured we’d get about 50 percent hate mail and 50 percent non-hate mail, but probably 90 percent of the people who’ve written to us have been very, very kind in their comments. Some of the emails are heartbreaking. A lot of them along the lines of, “Damn, I wish I’d known all this when I was young!” One I’ll never forget said, simply, “I’m a sixty-three-year-old widow and I consider this one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I wish I could live my life over with this information.” We get a lot of messages that relate to what you said earlier, about how people feel better when they can understand why they feel as they do. Why they can honestly love their partner but still feel attracted to other people. Seriously, the response from readers has been mind-blowing. DS: But surely not all positive. CR: No, and maybe this is still the calm before the storm. There hasn’t been much negative response from the academic community—at least not the evolutionary psychology crowd we critique in our book: Pinker, Buss, Chagnon, and those guys. We’ve received lovely messages from people like Frans de Waal and Sarah Hrdy—certainly two of the most prominent authorities in the evolution of human sexuality—although they don’t necessarily agree with everything we wrote. On the other hand, Alan Dixson, a prominent primatologist we quote extensively, trashed us in an interview he gave to a paper in New Zealand, but he admitted he hadn’t read the book, he was just responding to what he’d heard about it. That’s been sort of typical of the most negative critical responses so far. They admit they haven’t read Sex at Dawn, but they dismiss it anyway. Megan McArdle, the business and economics editor at The Atlantic, wrote what is probably the most negative review to date, and she openly admitted she was only halfway through the book when she wrote it. DS: I saw that! “Humans aren’t like bonobos…because we’re not like bonobos!” CR: Right. Rock-solid logic there, no? She apparently felt so threatened by the book that she couldn’t think straight. I mean, she accused us of leaving out any discussion of jealousy as it didn’t fit our model, somehow missing Chapter 10, which is called “Jealousy: A Beginner’s Guide to Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Spouse.” But as I said, the negative response has been much less than we were expecting, and is understandable; lots of people feel threatened by the arguments we’ve made.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We squeaked the springs of the secondhand bed which Brian, with trembling anticipation, had bought two weeks earlier from a Puerto Rican junk dealer on Columbus Avenue. In the end, of course, I had to seduce him. I’m sure that from Eden onward it has never been any different. Afterward I cried and felt guilty and Brian comforted me as men have probably comforted the virgins who seduced them throughout the centuries. We lay there in the candlelight (in his romanticism or perhaps innate sense of symbolism, Brian lit a taper on the night table before we undressed each other) and listened to the whining of alley cats in the cement well beyond the soot-blackened window. Sometimes one of the cats would leap on an overfull can of garbage and knock an empty beer can to the ground, and the sound of the hollow tin on the pavement would echo through the room. In the beginning our romance was fine and spiritual and adolescent. (In later times we were to sound more like the dialogue from a Strindberg play.) We used to read poetry to each other in bed, discuss the difference between life and art, ponder whether or not Yeats would have become a great poet if Maud Gonne had, in fact, married him. Spring found us taking a Shakespeare course together as I suppose all young lovers should. One brilliant but slightly chilly day in April we read The Winter’s Tale aloud to each other sitting on a bench in Riverside Park. When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! The doxy over the dale— Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year, For the red blood peers in the winter’s pale… The lark that tirra-lyra chants— With heigh! With heigh! The thrush and the jay— Are the summer songs for me and my aunts, While we lie tumbling in the hay. Brian was busy playing Florizel to my Perdita (“These your unusual weeds to each part of you/Do give a life—no shepherdess, but Flora/Peering in April’s front…”) when a whole tribe of urchins—black and Puerto Rican kids about eight or nine years old—were attracted by our reading and distributed themselves on the bench and the grass near us, seemingly entranced by our performance. One of the kids sat at my feet and looked up at me worshipfully. I was thrilled. So poetry was, after all, the universal voice! There was something in Shakespeare which could appeal to even the most naive, untutored ear. All my beliefs seemed vindicated. I read with new inspiration: Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean. So o’er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of noble race. This is an art Which does mend nature—change it rather; but The art itself is nature.