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 Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I was learned then in science and philosophy, in the history of religions, in inductive and deductive logic, in liver mantic, in the shape and weight of skulls, in pharmacopeia and metallurgy, in all the useless branches of learning which give you indigestion and melancholia before your time. This vomit of learned truck was stewing in my guts the whole week long, waiting for it to come Sunday to be set to music. In between “The Midnight Fire Alarm” and “Marche Militaire” I would get my inspiration, which was to destroy all the existent forms of harmony and create my own cacophony. Imagine Uranus well aspected to Mars, to Mercury, to the Moon, to Jupiter, to Venus. It’s hard to imagine because Uranus functions best when it is badly aspected, when it is “afflicted,” so to speak. Yet that music which I gave off Sunday mornings, a music of well-being and of well-nourished desperation, was born of an illogically well-aspected Uranus firmly anchored in the Seventh House. I didn’t know it then, I didn’t know that Uranus existed, and lucky it was that I was ignorant. But I can see it now, because it was a fluky joy, a phony well-being, a destructive sort of fiery creation. The greater my euphoria the more tranquil the folks became. Even my sister who was dippy became calm and composed. The neighbors used to stand outside the window and listen, and now and then I would hear a burst of applause, and then bang, zip! like a rocket I was off again —Velocity Exercise No. 947½. If I happened to espy a cockroach crawling up the wall I was in bliss: that would lead me without the slightest modulation to Opus Izzit of my sadly corrugated clavichord. One Sunday, just like that, I composed one of the loveliest scherzos imaginable—to a louse. It was spring and we were all getting the sulphur treatment; I had been poring all week over Dante’s Inferno in English. Sunday came like a thaw, the birds driven so crazy by the sudden heat that they flew in and out of the window, immune to the music. One of the German relatives had just arrived from Hamburg, or Bremen, a maiden aunt who looked like a bull-dyker. Just to be near her was sufficient to throw me into a fit of rage. She used to pat me on the head and tell me I would be another Mozart. I hated Mozart, and I hate him still, and so to get even with her I would play badly, play all the sour notes I knew.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I was dumbfounded. I had no idea how to talk to a girl that beautiful. She was shy and didn’t speak much, either. There was a bit of an awkward pause. Luckily Tom’s a guy who just talks and talks. He jumped right in and smoothed everything over. “Trevor, this is Babiki. Babiki, Trevor.” He went on and on about how great I was, how much she was looking forward to the dance, when I would pick her up for the dance, all the details. We hung out for a few, and then Tom needed to get going so we headed out the door. Babiki turned and smiled at me and waved as we left. “Bye.” “Bye.” We walked out of that building and I was the happiest man on earth. I couldn’t believe it. I was the guy at school who couldn’t get a date. I’d resigned myself to never getting a date, didn’t consider myself worthy of having a date. But now I was going to the matric dance with the most beautiful girl in the world. Over the following weeks we went down to Hillbrow a few more times to hang out with Babiki and her sisters and her friends. Babiki’s family was Pedi, one of South Africa’s smaller tribes. I liked getting to know people of different backgrounds, so that was fun. Babiki and her friends were what we call amabhujua. They’re as poor as most other black people, but they try to act like they’re not. They dress fashionably and act rich. Amabhujua will put a shirt on layaway, one shirt, and spend seven months paying it off. They’ll live in shacks wearing Italian leather shoes that cost thousands. An interesting crowd. Babiki and I never went on a date alone. It was always the two of us in a group. She was shy, and I was a nervous wreck most of the time, but we had fun. Tom kept everyone loose and having a good time. Whenever we’d say goodbye, Babiki would give me a hug, and once she even gave me a little kiss. I was in heaven. I was like, Yeah, I’ve got a girlfriend. Cool. — As the dance approached, I started getting nervous. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have any decent clothes. This was my first time taking out a beautiful girl, and I wanted it to be perfect.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Sometimes it was like watching an endurance contest—Ed Bauries and George Neumiller at the grand piano, each trying to wear the other out, changing places without stopping, crossing hands, sometimes falling away to plain chopsticks, sometimes going like a Wurlitzer. And always something to laugh about all the time. Nobody asked what you did, what you thought about, and so forth. When you arrived at Ed Bauries’ place you checked your identification marks. Nobody gave a fuck what size hat you wore or how much you paid for it. It was entertainment from the word go—and the sandwiches and the drinks were on the house. And when things got going, three or four pianos at once, the celesta, the organ, the mandolins, the guitars, beer running through the halls, the mantelpieces full of sandwiches and cigars, a breeze coming through from the garden, George Neumiller stripped to the waist and modulating like a fiend, it was better than any show I’ve ever seen put on and it didn’t cost a cent. In fact, with the dressing and undressing that went on, I always came away with a little extra change and a pocketful of good cigars. I never saw any of them between times—only Monday nights throughout the summer, when Ed held open house. Standing in the garden listening to the din I could scarcely believe that it was the same city. And if I had ever opened my trap and exposed my guts it would have been all over. Not one of these bozos amounted to anything, as the world reckons. They were just good eggs, children, fellows who liked music and who liked a good time. They liked it so much that sometimes we had to call the ambulance. Like the night Al Burger twisted his knee while showing us one of his stunts. Everybody so happy, so full of music, so lit up, that it took him an hour to persuade us he was really hurt. We try to carry him to a hospital but it’s too far away and besides, it’s such a good joke, that we drop him now and then and that makes him yell like a maniac. So finally we telephone for help from a police box, and the ambulance comes and the patrol wagon too. They take Al to the hospital and the rest of us to the hoosegow. And on the way we sing at the top of our lungs. And after we’re bailed out we’re still feeling good and the cops are feeling good too, and so we all adjourn to the basement where there’s a cracked piano and we go on singing and playing. All this is like some period B.C. in history which ends not because there’s a war but because even a joint like Ed Bauries’ is not immune to the poison seeping in from the periphery.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Not only that, but I felt all the books I would one day write myself germinating inside me: they were bursting inside like ripe cocoons. And since up to this time I had written nothing but fiendishly long letters about everything and nothing, it was difficult for me to realize that there must come a time when I should begin, when I should put down the first word, the first real word . And this time was now! That was what dawned on me. I used the word Xanthos a moment ago. I don’t know whether there is a Xanthos or not, and I really don’t care one way or another, but there must be a place in the world, perhaps in the Grecian islands, where you come to the end of the known world and you are thoroughly alone and yet you are not frightened of it but rejoice, because at this dropping off place you can feel the old ancestral world which is eternally young and new and fecundating. You stand there, wherever the place is, like a newly hatched chick beside its eggshell. This place is Xanthos, or as it happened in my case, Far Rockaway. There I was! It grew dark, a wind came up, the streets became deserted, and finally it began to pour cats and dogs. Jesus, that finished me! When the rain came down, and I got it smack in the face staring at the sky, I suddenly began to bellow with joy. I laughed and laughed and laughed, exactly like an insane man. Nor did I know what I was laughing about. I wasn’t thinking of a thing. I was just overwhelmed with joy, just crazy with delight in finding myself absolutely alone. If then and there a nice juicy quim had been handed me on a platter, if all the quims in the world had been offered me for to make my choice, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. I had what no quim could give me. And just about at that point, thoroughly drenched but still exultant, I thought of the most irrelevant thing in the world—carfare! Jesus, the bastard Maxie had walked off without leaving me a sou. There I was with my fine budding antique world and not a penny in my jeans. Herr Dostoevski Junior had now to begin to walk here and there peering into friendly and unfriendly faces to see if he could pry loose a dime. He walked from one end of Far Rockaway to the other but nobody seemed to give a fuck about handing out carfare in the rain. Walking about in that heavy animal stupor which comes with begging I got to thinking of Maxie the window trimmer and how the first time I spied him he was standing in the show window dressing a mannikin.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Daisy leaned back with both hands on her glass as she sucked the straw, her cheeks palpitating gently. There were dainty gurgle noises coming from the bottom of her glass as she slurped the last of her drink. He smiled and took her hand. She squeezed his fingers. He gulped his alcohol, his pulse beating wildly to and fro. He hadn’t really been thrown out of the house when he was sixteen. He had been eighteen when Tom went berserk at the sight of his anti-Vietnam poster and broke his nose. Daisy put her glass on the table with a slurred movement. She leaned against him. He cradled her head and ordered more drinks. “They couldn’t believe it when I got that scholarship to Bennington. I didn’t even tell them I applied. They already felt inferior to me.” “Did you drop out of college to get back at your mother?” Her voice was blurry from his shoulder. “I dropped out because I couldn’t stand the people. I couldn’t stand the idea of art. Art is only good at the moment it’s done. After that it’s dead. It’s just so much dead shit. Artists are like people trying to hoard their shit.” She sat away from him, reaching for her new glass. “I’m an artist. Diane is an artist. Why do you like us?” He kissed the blue vein on her neck and enjoyed the silly beat of his heart. “You’re like a pretty shadow.” Her eyes darted with worry. “You like me because I’m like you.” He smiled tolerantly and stroked her neck. “You’re not like me. No one is like me. I’m a phenomenon.” She looked tired and turned away from him to her drink. “You’re a misfit. So am I. We don’t belong anywhere.” “Aww.” He reached under her shirt and touched her small breast. She put her forehead against his neck, she put her hand between his legs. Her voice fluttered against his skin. “David has a gig out of town next week. Will you come stay with me?” “Maybe.” — Sometimes, though, he thought Daisy was sort of a stupid little thing. He thought it when he looked at Diane and noticed the stern, distinct line of her mouth, her strong nose, the muscles of her bared arms flexing as she furiously picked her nails. She didn’t ask annoying questions about drugs. She never thought about being a misfit, or having a place in society. She loathed society. She sat still as a stone, her heavy-lidded eyes impassively half-closed, the inclination of her head in beautiful agreement with her lean, severe arm and the cigarette resting in her intelligent fingers. But it was too late. Diane wouldn’t talk to him anymore, except to insult him. She changed her medication days so she wouldn’t be on schedule with him. Sometimes she didn’t medicate at all. She said it made her cry.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He talked about his active role in the theater department at Bennington and his classes with André Gregory. He mentioned the karate class he’d taken once, and punched a hole in a box of books. She said, “Joey has done everything!” There was a thrilling note of triumph in her voice. For a long time he just looked at her. That alone made him so happy, he was afraid to try anything else. Maybe it would be better to hold her winglike shadow safe in the lock of his memory than to touch the breathing girl and lose her. He decided to give her a card on Valentine’s Day. He spent days searching for the valentine material. He found what he wanted in an old illustrated children’s book. It was a faded watercolor drawing of three red poppies sharing a field with pink clover and some blameless little weeds. A honey-colored bee with dreamily closed eyes was climbing a stalk. An aqua-green grasshopper was flying through a fuzzy, failing blue sky, its eyes blissfully shut, its hairy front legs dangling foolishly, its hind legs kicking, exultant, through the air. It was a distorted, feverish little drawing. The colors were all wrong. It made him think of paradise. He tore it from the book and covered it with a piece of fragile paper so that the scene, veiled by the yellowing tissue haze, became remote and mysterious. He drew five hearts in misshapen lines and senselessly alternating sizes on the bottom of it. He colored them red. He wrote “Voici le temps des assassins” under them. He carried it to work with him for several days before and after Valentine’s Day. He decided dozens of times to give it to her, and changed his mind every time. He examined it daily, wondering if it was good enough. When he decided it was perfect, he thought perhaps it would be better to keep it in his drawer, where he alone knew it existed for her. Finally, he said, “I have a valentine for you.” She pattered around his desk, smiling greedily. “Where is it?” “In my drawer. I don’t want to give it to you yet.” “Why not? Valentine’s Day was a week ago. Can’t I have it now?” She put her fingers on his shoulders like soft claws. “Give it to me now.” When he handed it to her, she hugged him and pressed against him. He giggled and put his arm around her. He sadly let go of his shadow captive. — That night he couldn’t eat his spinach salad. The radish, gaily flowering red and white, was futile enticement. Diane sat across from him, stonily working her jaws. She sat rigidly straight-backed, her throat drawn so taut it looked as if it would be hard for her to swallow.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Mixed church was Rhema Bible Church. Rhema was one of those huge, supermodern, suburban megachurches. The pastor, Ray McCauley, was an ex-bodybuilder with a big smile and the personality of a cheerleader. Pastor Ray had competed in the 1974 Mr. Universe competition. He placed third. The winner that year was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Every week, Ray would be up onstage working really hard to make Jesus cool. There was arena-style seating and a rock band jamming out with the latest Christian contemporary pop. Everyone sang along, and if you didn’t know the words that was okay because they were all right up there on the Jumbotron for you. It was Christian karaoke, basically. I always had a blast at mixed church. White church was Rosebank Union in Sandton, a very white and wealthy part of Johannesburg. I loved white church because I didn’t actually have to go to the main service. My mom would go to that, and I would go to the youth side, to Sunday school. In Sunday school we got to read cool stories. Noah and the flood was obviously a favorite; I had a personal stake there. But I also loved the stories about Moses parting the Red Sea, David slaying Goliath, Jesus whipping the money changers in the temple. I grew up in a home with very little exposure to popular culture. Boyz II Men were not allowed in my mother’s house. Songs about some guy grinding on a girl all night long? No, no, no. That was forbidden. I’d hear the other kids at school singing “End of the Road,” and I’d have no clue what was going on. I knew of these Boyz II Men, but I didn’t really know who they were. The only music I knew was from church: soaring, uplifting songs praising Jesus. It was the same with movies. My mom didn’t want my mind polluted by movies with sex and violence. So the Bible was my action movie. Samson was my superhero. He was my He-Man. A guy beating a thousand people to death with the jawbone of a donkey? That’s pretty badass. Eventually you get to Paul writing letters to the Ephesians and it loses the plot, but the Old Testament and the Gospels? I could quote you anything from those pages, chapter and verse. There were Bible games and quizzes every week at white church, and I kicked everyone’s ass.

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

  GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Behold she who had come sick to the Physician was healed, but because of her safety others are still sick; for it follows, And they that sat at meat began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also. But the heavenly Physician regards not those sick, whom He sees to be made still worse by His remedy, but her whom He had healed He encourages by making mention of her own piety; as it follows, But he said unto the woman, Thy faith hath made thee whole; for in truth she doubted not that she would receive what she sought for. THEOPHYLACT. But after having forgiven her sins, He stops not at the forgiveness of sins, but adds good works, as it follows, Go in peace, i. e. in righteousness, for righteousness is the reconciliation of man to God, as sin is the enmity between God and man; as if He said, Do all things which lead you to the peace of God. AMBROSE. Now in this place many seem to be perplexed with the question, whether the Evangelists do not appear to have differed concerning the faith. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Severus Antiochenus.) For since the four Evangelists relate that Christ was anointed with ointment by a woman, I think that there were three women, differing according to the quality of each, their mode of action, and the difference of times. John, for example, relates that Mary, the sister of Lazarus, six days before the Passover, anointed the feet of Jesus in her own house; but Matthew, after that the Lord had said, You know that after two days will be the Passover, adds, that in Bethany, at the house of Simon the leper, a woman poured ointment upon the head of our Lord, but did not anoint His feet as Mary. Mark also says the same as Matthew; but Luke gives the account not near the time of the Passover, but in the middle of the Gospel. Chrysostom explains it that there were two different women, one indeed who is described in John, another who is mentioned by the three. AMBROSE. Matthew has introduced this woman as pouring ointment upon the head of Christ, and was therefore unwilling to call her a sinner, for the sinner, according to Luke, poured ointment upon the feet of Christ. She cannot then be the same, lest the Evangelists should seem to be at variance with one another. The difficulty may be also solved by the difference of merit and of time, so that the former woman may have been yet a sinner, the latter now more perfect.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I could see by the way she sat on the edge of her chair and bobbed her head that she was only waiting for him to catch his breath in order to inform him that the pastor—her pastor, who was an Episcopalian—had just returned from Europe and that they were going to have a fair in the basement of the church where she would have a little booth fitted up with doilies from the five-and-ten-cent store. In fact, no sooner had he paused a moment than she let loose—about the canals of Venice, the snow in the Alps, the dog carts in Brussels, the beautiful liverwurst in Munich. She was not only religious, my sister, but she was clean daffy. Grover had just slipped in something about having seen a new heaven and a new earth . . . for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, he said, mumbling the words in a sort of hysterical glissando in order to unburden himself of an oracular message about the New Jerusalem which God had established on earth and in which he, Grover Watrous, once foul of speech and marred by a twisted foot, had found the peace and the calm of the righteous. “There shall be no more death . . .” he started to shout when my sister leaned forward and asked him very innocently if he liked to bowl because the pastor had just installed a beautiful new bowling alley in the basement of the church and she knew he would be pleased to see Grover because he was a lovely man and he was kind to the poor. Grover said that it was a sin to bowl and that he belonged to no church because the churches were godless; he had even given up playing the piano because God needed him for higher things. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things,” he added, “and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.” He paused again to blow his nose in a beautiful white handkerchief, whereupon my sister took the occasion to remind him that in the old days he always had a running nose but that he never wiped it. Grover listened to her very solemnly and then remarked that he had been cured of many evil ways. At this point the old man woke up and, seeing Grover sitting beside him large as life, he was quite startled and for a moment or two he was not sure, it seemed, whether Grover was a morbid phenomenon of dream or an hallucination, but the sight of the clean handkerchief brought him quickly to his wits. “Oh, it’s you!” he exclaimed. “The Watrous boy, what?

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It was at once so public and so intimate. Here I was given my bath, in the big tin tub, on Saturdays. Here the three sisters washed themselves and primped themselves. Here my grandfather stood at the sink and washed himself to the waist and later handed me his shoes to be shined. Here I stood at the window in the winter time and watched the snow fall, watched it dully, vacantly, as if I were in the womb and listening to the water running while my mother sat on the toilet. It was in the kitchen where the secret confabulations were held, frightening, odious sessions from which they always reappeared with long, grave faces or eyes red with weeping. Why they ran to the kitchen I don’t know. But it was often while they stood thus in secret conference, haggling about a will or deciding how to dispense with some poor relative, that the door was suddenly opened and a visitor would arrive, whereupon the atmosphere immediately changed. Changed violently, I mean, as though they were relieved that some outside force had intervened to spare them the horrors of a protracted secret session. I remember now that, seeing that door open and the face of an unexpected visitor peering in, my heart would leap with joy. Soon I would be given a big glass pitcher and asked to run to the corner saloon where I would hand the pitcher in, through the little window at the family entrance, and wait until it was returned brimming with foamy suds. This little run to the corner for a pitcher of beer was an expedition of absolutely incalculable proportions. First of all there was the barber shop just below us, where Stanley’s father practiced his profession. Time and again, just as I was dashing out for something, I would see the father giving Stanley a drubbing with the razor strop, a sight that made my blood boil. Stanley was my best friend and his father was nothing but a drunken Polack. One evening, however, as I was dashing out with the pitcher, I had the intense pleasure of seeing another Polack go for Stanley’s old man with a razor. I saw his old man coming through the door backwards, the blood running down his neck, his face white as a sheet. He fell on the sidewalk in front of the shop, twitching and moaning, and I remember looking at him for a minute or two and walking on feeling absolutely contented and happy about it. Stanley had sneaked out during the scrimmage and was accompanying me to the saloon door. He was glad too, though he was a bit frightened.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “Why don’t I take medicine,” I said, “and then pray to Jesus to thank him for giving us the doctors who invented medicine, because medicine is what makes you feel better, not Jesus.” “You don’t need medicine if you have Jesus. Jesus will heal you. Pray to Jesus.” “But is medicine not a blessing from Jesus? And if Jesus gives us medicine and we do not take the medicine, are we not denying the grace that he has given us?” Like all of our debates about Jesus, this conversation went nowhere. “Trevor,” she said, “if you don’t go to church you’re going to get worse. You’re lucky you got sick on Sunday, because now we’re going to church and you can pray to Jesus and Jesus is going to heal you.” “That sounds nice, but why don’t I just stay home?” “No. Get dressed. We’re going to church.” [image file=image_rsrc2UX.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2UY.jpg] MY MOTHER’S LIFEOnce I had my hair cornrowed for the matric dance, I started getting attention from girls for the first time. I actually went on dates. At times I thought that it was because I looked better. At other times I thought it was because girls liked the fact that I was going through as much pain as they did to look good. Either way, once I found success, I wasn’t going to mess with the formula. I kept going back to the salon every week, spending hours at a time getting my hair straightened and cornrowed. My mom would just roll her eyes. “I could never date a man who spends more time on his hair than I do,” she’d say. Monday through Saturday my mom worked in her office and puttered around her garden dressed like a homeless person. Then Sunday morning for church she’d do her hair and put on a nice dress and some high heels and she looked like a million bucks. Once she was all done up, she couldn’t resist teasing me, throwing little verbal jabs the way we’d always do with each other. “Now who’s the best-looking person in the family, eh? I hope you enjoyed your week of being the pretty one, ’cause the queen is back, baby. You spent four hours at the salon to look like that. I just took a shower.” She was just having fun with me; no son wants to talk about how hot his mom is. Because, truth be told, she was beautiful. Beautiful on the outside, beautiful on the inside. She had a self-confidence about her that I never possessed. Even when she was working in the garden, dressed in overalls and covered in mud, you could see how attractive she was. —

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

  GREGORY. (Mor. xxvii. 13.) He says not’ to the foolish,’ but to babes, shewing that He condemns pride, not understanding. CHRYSOSTOM. (Horn. xxxviii.) Or when He says, The wise, He does not speak of true wisdom, but of that which the Scribes and Pharisees seemed to have by their speech. Wherefore He said not, ‘And hast revealed them to the foolish,’ but, to babes, that is, uneducated, or simple; teaching us in all things to keep ourselves from pride, and to seek humility. HILARY. The hidden things of heavenly words and their power are hid from the wise, and revealed to the babes; babes, that is, in malice, not in understanding; hid from the wise because of their presumption of their own wisdom, not because of their wisdom. CHRYSOSTOM. That it is revealed to the one is matter of joy, that it is hid from the other not of joy, but of sorrow; He does not therefore joy on this account, but He joys that these have known what the wise have not known. HILARY. The justice of this the Lord confirms by the sentence of the Father’s will, that they who disdain to be made babes in God, should become fools in their own wisdom; and therefore He adds, Even so, Father; for so it seemed good before thee. GREGORY. (Mor. xxv. 14.) In which words we have a lesson of humility, that we should not rashly presume to discuss the counsels of heaven concerning the calling of some, and the rejection of others shewing that that cannot be unrighteous which is willed by Him that is righteous. JEROME. In these words moreover He speaks to the Father with the desire of one petitioning, that His mercy begun in the Apostles might be completed in them. CHRYSOSTOM. These things which the Lord spoke to His disciples, made them more zealous. As afterwards they thought great things of themselves, because they cast out dæmons, therefore He here reproves them; for what they had, was by revelation, not by their own efforts. The Scribes who esteemed themselves wise and understanding were excluded because of them-pride, and therefore He says, Since on this account the mysteries of God were hid from them, fear ye, and abide as babes, for this it is that has made you partakers in the revelation. But as when Paul says, God gave them, over to a reprobate mind, (Rom. 1:28), he does not mean that God did this, but they who gave Him cause, so here, Thou hast hid these things from the wise and understanding. And wherefore were they hid from them? Hear Paul speaking, Seeking to set up their own righteousness, they were not subject to the righteousness of God (Rom. 10:3.) 11:2727. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  We were all between twenty-one and twenty-five at the time; we never brought any women along and we hardly ever mentioned the subject of woman during these sessions. We had plenty of beer to drink and a whole big house at our disposal, for it was in the summertime, when his folks were away, that we held our gatherings. Though there were a dozen other homes like this which I could speak of, I mention Ed Bauries’ place because it was typical of something I have never encountered elsewhere in the world. Neither Ed Bauries himself nor any of his friends suspected the sort of books I was reading then nor the things which were occupying my mind. When I blew in I was greeted enthusiastically—as a clown. It was expected of me to start things going. There were about four pianos scattered throughout the big house, to say nothing of the celesta, the organ, guitars, mandolins, fiddles and what not. Ed Bauries was a nut, a very affable, sympathetic and generous one too. The sandwiches were always of the best, the beer plentiful, and if you wanted to stay the night he could fix you up on a divan just as pretty as you liked. Coming down the street—a big, wide street, somnolent, luxurious, a street altogether out of the world—I could hear the tinkle of the piano in the big parlor on the first floor. The windows were wide open and as I got into range I could see Al Burger or Connie Grimm sprawling in their big easy chairs, their feet on the window sill, and big beer mugs in their hands. Probably George Neumiller was at the piano, improvising, his shirt peeled off and a big cigar in his mouth. They were talking and laughing while George fooled around, searching for an opening. Soon as he hit a theme he would call for Ed and Ed would sit beside him, studying it out in his unprofessional way, then suddenly pouncing on the keys and giving tit for tat. Maybe when I’d walk in somebody would be trying to stand on his hands in the next room—there were three big rooms on the first floor which opened one on to the other and back of them was a garden, an enormous garden, with flowers, fruit trees, grape vines, statues, fountains and everything. Sometimes when it was too hot they brought the celesta or the little organ into the garden (and a keg of beer, naturally) and we’d sit around in the dark laughing and singing—until the neighbors forced us to stop. Sometimes the music was going on all through the house at once, on every floor. It was really crazy then, intoxicating, and if there had been women around it would have spoiled it.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Here is your nourishment glowing in the sickening emptiness you have created! You will come back to perish once more in the black hole; you will come back again and again, for you have not the wings to carry you out of the world. This is the only world you can inhabit, this tomb of the snake where darkness reigns. And suddenly for no reason at all, when I think of her returning to her nest, I remember Sunday mornings in the little old house near the cemetery. I remember sitting at the piano in my nightshirt, working away at the pedals with bare feet, and the folks lying in bed toasting themselves in the next room. The rooms opened one on the other, telescope fashion, as in the good old American railroad flats. Sunday mornings one lay in bed until one was ready to screech with well-being. Toward eleven or so the folks used to rap on the wall of my room for me to come and play for them. I would dance into the room like the Fratellini Brothers, so full of flame and feathers that I could hoist myself like a derrick to the topmost limb of the tree of heaven. I could do anything and everything singlehanded, being double-jointed at the same time. The old man called me “Sunny Jim,” because I was full of “Force,” full of vim and vigor. First I would do a few handsprings for them on the carpet before the bed; then I would sing falsetto, trying to imitate a ventriloquist’s dummy; then I would dance a few light fantastic steps to show which way the wind lay, and zoom! like a breeze I was on the piano stool and doing a velocity exercise. I always began with Czerny, in order to limber up for the performance. The old man hated Czerny, and so did I, but Czerny was the plat du jour on the bill of fare then, and so Czerny it was until my joints were rubber. In some vague way Czerny reminds me of the great emptiness which came upon me later. What a velocity I would work up, riveted to the piano stool! It was like swallowing a bottle of tonic at one gulp and then having someone strap you to the bed. After I had played about ninety-eight exercises I was ready to do a little improvising. I used to take a fistful of chords and crash the piano from one end to the other, then sullenly modulate into “The Burning of Rome” or the “Ben Hur Chariot Race” which everybody liked because it was intelligible noise. Long before I read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus I was composing the music to it, in the key of sassafras.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Hearing the racket some of the other neighbors came in and there was more wine and then beer and then schnapps and soon everybody was happy and singing and whistling and even the kids got drunk and then crazy Willie got drunk and again he got down on the floor like a billy goat and he yelled Bjork! Bjork! and Alfie Betcha, who was very drunk though only eight years old, bit crazy Willie Maine in the backside and then Willie bit him and then we all started biting each other and the parents stood by laughing and screaming with glee and it was very very merry and there were more fried bananas and everybody ate them this time and then there were speeches and more bumpers downed and crazy Willie Maine tried to sing for us but could only sing Bjork! Bjork! It was a stupendous success, the birthday party, and for a week or more no one talked of anything but the party and what good Polacks Stanley’s people were. The fried bananas, too, were a success and for a time it was hard to get any rotten bananas from Louis Pirossa’s old man because they were so much in demand. And then an event occurred which cast a pall over the entire neighborhood—the defeat of Joe Gerhardt at the hands of Joey Silverstein. The latter was the tailor’s son; he was a lad of fifteen or sixteen, rather quiet and studious looking, who was shunned by the other older boys because he was a Jew. One day as he was delivering a pair of pants to Fillmore Place he was accosted by Joey Gerhardt who was about the same age and who considered himself a rather superior being. There was an exchange of words and then Joe Gerhardt pulled the pants away from the Silverstein boy and threw them in the gutter. Nobody had ever imagined that young Silverstein would reply to such an insult by recourse to his fists and so when he struck out at Joe Gerhardt and cracked him square in the jaw everybody was taken aback, most of all Joe Gerhardt himself. There was a fight which lasted about twenty minutes and at the end Joe Gerhardt lay on the sidewalk unable to get up. Whereupon the Silverstein boy gathered up the pair of pants and walked quietly and proudly back to his father’s shop. Nobody said a word to him. The affair was regarded as a calamity. Who had ever heard of a Jew beating up a Gentile? It was something inconceivable, and yet it had happened, right before everyone’s eyes.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The highway sliced between our projects and a huge field. It was against the rules to cross that road. There wasn’t much traffic on it. You'd have to stand in the middle of a lane for a long time in order to get hit. But I wasn’t supposed to cross that road. I did though, and no one seemed to notice. I parted the long brown grass that bordered the road. Once I passed through it I was in my own world. On the way to the pond I stopped to visit the puppies and dogs in the outside kennels connected to the back of the ASPCA building. The dogs barked and stood on their hind legs as I approached the fence. “Shhh!” I warned them. I knew no one was supposed to be back here. A spaniel pushed his nose through the chain- link fence. I rubbed his head. I looked around for the terrier I loved. He had only come to the fence once to greet me, sniffing cautiously. Usually, no matter how I coaxed, he’d lay with his head on his paws, looking at me with mournful eyes. I wished I could take him home. I hoped he went to a kid who loved him. “Are you a boy or a girl?” I asked the mongrel. “Ruff, ruff!” I didn’t see the ASPCA man until it was too late. “Hey, kid. What are you doing there?” Caught. “Nothing,” I said. “I wasn’t doing anything bad. I was just talking to the dogs.” He smiled a little. “Don’t put your fingers inside the fence, son. Some of ’em bite.” I felt the tips of my ears grow hot. I nodded. “I was looking for that little one with the black ears. Did a nice family take him?” Stone Butch Blues TN The man frowned for a moment. “Yes,” he said quietly. “He’s real happy now.” I hurried out to the pond to catch pollywogs in a jar. I leaned on my elbow and looked up close at the little frogs that climbed up on the sun-baked rocks. “Caw, caw!” A huge black crow circled above me in the air and landed on a rock nearby. We looked at each other in silence. “Crow, ate you a boy or a girl?” “Caw, caw!” I laughed and rolled over on my back. The sky was crayon blue. I pretended I was lying on the white cotton clouds. The earth was damp against my back. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool. I felt happy. Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me. On my way back from the fields I passed the Scabbie gang. They had found an unlocked truck parked on an incline. One of the older boys disengaged the emergency brake and made two of the younger boys from my side of the projects run under the truck as it rolled. “Jessy, Jessy {?? they taunted as they rushed toward me.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  The week before Valentine’s, Maylene and I were walking home together, and I was trying to get up the courage to ask her. I was so nervous. I’d never done anything like it. I already knew the answer; her friends had told me she’d say yes. It’s like being in Congress. You know you have the votes before you go to the floor, but it’s still difficult because anything could happen. I didn’t know how to do it, all I knew was I wanted it to be perfect, so I waited until we were standing outside McDonald’s. Then I mustered up all of my courage and turned to her. “Hey, Valentine’s Day is coming up, and I was wondering, would you be my valentine?” “Yes. I’ll be your valentine.” And then, under the golden arches, we kissed. It was my first time ever kissing a girl. It was just a peck, our lips touched for only a few seconds, but it set off explosions in my head. Yes! Oh, yes. This. I don’t know what this is, but I like it. Something had awakened. And it was right outside McDonald’s, so it was extra special. Now I was truly excited. I had a valentine. I had a girlfriend. I spent the whole week thinking about Maylene, wanting to make her Valentine’s Day as memorable as I could. I saved up my pocket money and bought her flowers and a teddy bear and a card. I wrote a poem with her name in the card, which was really hard because there aren’t many good words that rhyme with Maylene. (Machine? Ravine? Sardine?) Then the big day came. I got my Valentine’s card and the flowers and the teddy bear and got them ready and took them to school. I was the happiest boy on earth. The teachers had set aside a period before recess for everyone to exchange valentines. There was a corridor outside our classrooms where I knew Maylene would be, and I waited for her there. All around me, love was in bloom. Boys and girls exchanging cards and gifts, laughing and giggling and stealing kisses. I waited and waited. Finally Maylene showed up and walked over to me. I was about to say “Happy Valentine’s Day!” when she stopped me and said, “Oh, hi, Trevor. Um, listen, I can’t be your girlfriend anymore. Lorenzo asked me to be his valentine and I can’t have two valentines, so I’m his girlfriend now and not yours.” She said it so matter-of-factly that I had no idea how to process it. This was my first time having a girlfriend, so at first I thought, Huh, maybe this is just how it goes. “Oh, okay,” I said. “Well, um…happy Valentine’s Day.” I held out the card and the flowers and the teddy bear. She took them and said thanks, and she was gone.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The deputies didn’t handcuff Walter or shackle him, so he walked into court waving to family and friends. His family had not seen him dressed in anything but his white prison uniform since the trial six years earlier, and many in the crowd gasped when he walked into the courtroom in a suit. For years Walter’s family members and supporters had been confronted with menacing stares and threats of expulsion whenever they expressed some spontaneous opinion during court proceedings, but today the deputies accepted their expressive cheerfulness in silence. The judge took the bench, and I stepped forward to speak. I gave a brief history of the case and informed the court that both the defendant and the State were moving the court to dismiss all charges. The judge quickly granted the motion and asked if there was anything further. All of sudden, I felt strangely agitated. I’d expected to be exuberant. Everyone was in such a good mood. The judge and the prosecutor were suddenly generous and accommodating. It was as if everyone wanted to be sure there were no hard feelings or grudges. Walter was rightfully ecstatic, but I was confused by my suddenly simmering anger. We were about to leave court for the last time, and I started thinking about how much pain and suffering had been inflicted on Walter and his family, the entire community. I thought about how if Judge Robert E. Lee Key hadn’t overridden the jury’s verdict of life imprisonment without parole and imposed the death penalty, which brought the case to our attention, Walter likely would have spent the rest of his life incarcerated and died in a prison cell. I thought about how certain it was that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people were just as innocent as Walter but would never get the help they need. I knew this wasn’t the place or time to make a speech or complain, but I couldn’t stop myself from making one final comment. “Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.” I sat down and the judge pronounced Walter free to go. Just like that he was a free man. Walter hugged me tightly, and I gave him a handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes. I led him over to Chapman, and they shook hands. The black deputies who had hovered nearby ushered us toward a back door that led downstairs, where a throng of reporters waited.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  she slid into a deep bass B/we Moooonnn. I emerged from behind the bar. It was the look on Theresa’s face that gave me the courage to raise my voice: You saw me standing alone. My voice cracked and pitched with embarrassment and emotion. Theresa chewed her lower lip and cried. Do-wah-do, my friends backed me up. Peaches stood behind me, waving the painted blue moon back and forth in a wide arc over my head. But then you suddenly appeared before me, | extended my hand toward Theresa. And when I looked the moon had turned to gold! Peaches flipped the moon to the gold side. Everyone cheered. Peaches curtsied and continued swaying with the moon. Theresa reached for me. I finished the song dancing in her arms. I realized it was true, I wasn’t alone. I had love of my own. Do-wah-do, the chorus was soft and smooth. I pulled the handkerchief from my breast pocket and opened it carefully. Theresa lost it when she saw the ring. I cried, too. The moment really was perfect. I slid the ring on her finger. I had a speech all prepared about how much she meant to me but I couldn’t remember the words. “I love you,” I told her. “I love you so damn much.” “You're the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Theresa whispered. She took my left hand in hers and ran her thumb lightly over the scar on my ring finger. “I want you to wear a band, too.” I shook my head sadly. “I thought about it, but I'd be too scared. I think if the cops ever took that ring from me I'd just go berserk.” Theresa touched her cheek. “If you’re afraid to lose what you love, you’ll never be able to let go and feel it. Pl put all my love for you in a ring if you'll wear it. And if someone ever takes it from you, all they'll be able to steal is a metal band. Then Pll go out and get you another ring and put all my love in that one. That way you'll never lose it, Jess. OK?” I nodded and buried my face in her neck. Do- wah-do, everyone in the whole bar sang to us as we swayed to their music. It was the sweetest moment of my life. Stone Butch Blues 143 THE POLICE REALLY STEPPED UP their harassment after the birth of gay pride. Cops scribbled down our license plate numbers and photographed us as we entered the bars. We held regular dances at a new gay bar, using police radios to alert everyone when the cops were about to raid us. We heard about weekly gay liberation and radical women’s meetings at the university, but Theresa was the only one in our crowd who knew her way around campus. It was still another world to the rest of us. Everything was changing so fast. I wondered if this was the revolution.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  One wintry Friday night, before we punched out, Muriel invited me to go to an indoor pow-wow on Sunday. I said yes, of course. I felt honored. There were a few other Black and white workers at the social—friendships too valuable to explore solely on company time. I began to go regularly and 82 Leslie Feinberg got strung out on fry bread and corn soup. Once or twice I was cajoled to get up and join a round dance. I must say that although the pounding of the drum resounded in my heart, it never got as far down as my feet. I felt awkward dancing and self- conscious about being so butch. Of course, Muriel’s daughter Yvonne being there made me self-conscious too. I had a fierce crush on Yvonne. She worked in the front office of the same factory. Everyone knew she was the girlfriend of a local organized crime boss. That didn’t stop us from knowing where each other was in the room during those socials. I think all the women noticed right away. I'd already decided I wasn’t even going to think about approaching Yvonne, even though she seemed to like me. Some of the older butches had warned me that sometimes on a job the guys would pressure one of the women to sleep with a he-she, as a joke, and then come back and tell everyone about it. That was the last day on the job for the butch, who usually left in shame. But sooner or later the stigma also came back around and stuck on the woman who slept with one of us, and she had to leave too. I was afraid of this at first with Yvonne, but she wasn’t like that at all. One night when a group of us went out after work and got drunk, she told me her boyfriend had suggested he wanted to watch us make love and she had told him to fuck off. Once that had been said out loud, however, it was hard not to think about making love with Yvonne. Just before Christmas the crew from work went to a bar near the plant for a few beers. There was a heavy snowstorm outside. Inside, we drank and laughed. By the time we left, the snow had nearly coveted the cars. I heated the car door key to Muriel’s old Dodge with my lighter to defrost it. When I finally got the car door open, Yvonne kissed me right on the mouth. She left me in that parking lot, stunned and excited. The next night I went to the Malibou and wondered the whole time what it would be like to bring Yvonne there. I was happy at the plant, flirting with Yvonne, listening to Muriel’s stories, waiting for the next social. On Friday nights we drank at the bar where we cashed our checks. Saturday nights I spent at the gay bar. I was feeling just fine.