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 Little Women (1868)

  I'll hearten you up in a jiffy." Laurie went off two stairs at a time, and Jo laid her wearied head down on Beth's little brown hood, which no one had thought of moving from the table where she left it. It must have possessed some magic, for the submissive spirit of its gentle owner seemed to enter into Jo, and when Laurie came running down with a glass of wine, she took it with a smile, and said bravely, "I drink— Health to my Beth! You are a good doctor, Teddy, and such a comfortable friend. How can I ever pay you?" she added, as the wine refreshed her body, as the kind words had done her troubled mind. "I'll send my bill, by-and-by, and tonight I'll give you something that will warm the cockles of your heart better than quarts of wine," said Laurie, beaming at her with a face of suppressed satisfaction at something. "What is it?" cried Jo, forgetting her woes for a minute in her wonder. "I telegraphed to your mother yesterday, and Brooke answered she'd come at once, and she'll be here tonight, and everything will be all right. Aren't you glad I did it?" Laurie spoke very fast, and turned red and excited all in a minute, for he had kept his plot a secret, for fear of disappointing the girls or harming Beth. Jo grew quite white, flew out of her chair, and the moment he stopped speaking she electrified him by throwing her arms round his neck, and crying out, with a joyful cry, "Oh, Laurie! Oh, Mother! I am so glad!" She did not weep again, but laughed hysterically, and trembled and clung to her friend as if she was a little bewildered by the sudden news. Laurie, though decidedly amazed, behaved with great presence of mind. He patted her back soothingly, and finding that she was recovering, followed it up by a bashful kiss or two, which brought Jo round at once. Holding on to the banisters, she put him gently away, saying breathlessly, "Oh, don't! I didn't mean to, it was dreadful of me, but you were such a dear to go and do it in spite of Hannah that I couldn't help flying at you. Tell me all about it, and don't give me wine again, it makes me act so." "I don't mind," laughed Laurie, as he settled his tie. "Why, you see I got fidgety, and so did Grandpa. We thought Hannah was overdoing the authority business, and your mother ought to know. She'd never forgive us if Beth... Well, if anything happened, you know. So I got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Hannah most took my head off when I proposed a telegram. I never can bear to be 'lorded over', so that settled my mind, and I did it.

• From Little Women (1868)

  some of us even get our feet set in the right way. Jo had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if she did not, but to do it cheerfully, ah, that was another thing! She had often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard, and now she had her wish, for what could be more beautiful than to devote her life to Father and Mother, trying to make home as happy to them as they had to her? And if difficulties were necessary to increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires, and cheerfully live for others? Providence had taken her at her word. Here was the task, not what she had expected, but better because self had no part in it. Now, could she do it? She decided that she would try, and in her first attempt she found the helps I have suggested. Still another was given her, and she took it, not as a reward, but as a comfort, as Christian took the refreshment afforded by the little arbor where he rested, as he climbed the hill called Difficulty. "Why don't you write? That always used to make you happy," said her mother once, when the desponding fit over-shadowed Jo. "I've no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my things." "We do. Write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world. Try it, dear. I'm sure it would do you good, and please us very much." "Don't believe I can." But Jo got out her desk and began to overhaul her half- finished manuscripts. An hour afterward her mother peeped in and there she was, scratching away, with her black pinafore on, and an absorbed expression, which caused Mrs. March to smile and slip away, well pleased with the success of her suggestion. Jo never knew how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it, for when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it, much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and to her utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested. Letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the appearance of the little story, newspapers copied it, and strangers as well as friends admired it. For a small thing it was a great success, and Jo was more astonished than when her novel was commended and condemned all at once. "I don't understand it. What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered.

• From Wild (2012)

  Ed thought for a moment. “No one,” he said, and boomed with laughter. “None of us bet on you.” I rested Monster on the picnic table, took it off, and left it there, so when I had to put it on again I wouldn’t have to perform my pathetic dead lift from the ground. “Welcome to my humble abode,” Ed said, gesturing to a little pop-up trailer that had a tarp roof extending out its side with a makeshift camp kitchen beneath it. “You hungry?” There were no showers at the campground, so while Ed made lunch for me, I walked to the river to wash as best as I could with my clothes still on. The river felt like a shock after all that dry territory I’d crossed. And the South Fork Kern River wasn’t just any river. It was violent and self-possessed, ice-cold and raging, its might clear evidence of the heavy snows higher up the mountains. The current was too fast to go in even ankle-deep, so I walked down the bank until I found an eddying pool near the river’s edge and waded in. My feet ached from the cold water and eventually went numb. I crouched and wetted down my filthy hair and splashed handfuls of water beneath my clothes to wash my body. I felt electric with sugar and the victory of arriving; filled with anticipation of the conversations I’d have over the next couple of days.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  I joyed also that the old Scriptures of the law and the Prophets were laid before me, not now to be perused with that eye to which before they seemed absurd, when I reviled Thy holy ones for so thinking, whereas indeed they thought not so: and with joy I heard Ambrose in his sermons to the people, oftentimes most diligently recommend this text for a rule, The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life; whilst he drew aside the mystic veil, laying open spiritually what, according to the letter, seemed to teach something unsound; teaching herein nothing that offended me, though he taught what I knew not as yet, whether it were true. For I kept my heart from assenting to any thing, fearing to fall headlong; but by hanging in suspense I was the worse killed. For I wished to be as assured of the things I saw not, as I was that seven and three are ten. For I was not so mad as to think that even this could not be comprehended; but I desired to have other things as clear as this, whether things corporeal, which were not present to my senses, or spiritual, whereof I knew not how to conceive, except corporeally. And by believing might I have been cured, that so the eyesight of my soul being cleared, might in some way be directed to Thy truth, which abideth always, and in no part faileth. But as it happens that one who has tried a bad physician, fears to trust himself with a good one, so was it with the health of my soul, which could not be healed but by believing, and lest it should believe falsehoods, refused to be cured; resisting Thy hands, Who hast prepared the medicines of faith, and hast applied them to the diseases of the whole world, and given unto them so great authority.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  O Lord, I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thy handmaid: Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of Let my heart and my tongue praise Thee; yea, let all my bones say, O Lord, who is like unto Thee? Let them say, and answer Thou me, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Who am I, and what am I? What evil have not been either my deeds, or if not my deeds, my words, or if not my words, my will? But Thou, O Lord, are good and merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the depth of my death, and from the bottom of my heart emptied that abyss of corruption. And this Thy whole gift was, to nill what I willed, and to will what Thou willedst. But where through all those years, and out of what low and deep recess was my free-will called forth in a moment, whereby to submit my neck to Thy easy yoke, and my shoulders unto Thy light burden, O Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet did it at once become to me, to want the sweetnesses of those toys! and what I feared to be parted from, was now a joy to part with. For Thou didst cast them forth from me, Thou true and highest sweetness. Thou castest them forth, and for them enteredst in Thyself, sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more hidden than all depths, higher than all honour, but not to the high in their own conceits. Now was my soul free from the biting cares of canvassing and getting, and weltering in filth, and scratching off the itch of lust. And my infant tongue spake freely to Thee, my brightness, and my riches, and my health, the Lord my God. And I resolved in Thy sight, not tumultuously to tear, but gently to withdraw, the service of my tongue from the marts of lip-labour: that the young, no students in Thy law, nor in Thy peace, but in lying dotages and law-skirmishes, should no longer buy at my mouth arms for their madness. And very seasonably, it now wanted but very few days unto the Vacation of the Vintage, and I resolved to endure them, then in a regular way to take my leave, and having been purchased by Thee, no more to return for sale. Our purpose then was known to Thee; but to men, other than our own friends, was it not known. For we had agreed among ourselves not to let it out abroad to any: although to us, now ascending from the valley of tears, and singing that song of degrees, Thou hadst given sharp arrows, and destroying coals against the subtle tongue, which as though advising for us, would thwart, and would out of love devour us, as it doth its meat.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "She has had a good example before her all her life, my dear," Mr. March whispered back, with a loving look at the worn face and gray head beside him. Daisy found it impossible to keep her eyes off her 'pitty aunty', but attached herself like a lap dog to the wonderful chatelaine full of delightful charms. Demi paused to consider the new relationship before he compromised himself by the rash acceptance of a bribe, which took the tempting form of a family of wooden bears from Berne. A flank movement produced an unconditional surrender, however, for Laurie knew where to have him. "Young man, when I first had the honor of making your acquaintance you hit me in the face. Now I demand the satisfaction of a gentleman," and with that the tall uncle proceeded to toss and tousle the small nephew in a way that damaged his philosophical dignity as much as it delighted his boyish soul. "Blest if she ain't in silk from head to foot; ain't it a relishin' sight to see her settin' there as fine as a fiddle, and hear folks calling little Amy 'Mis. Laurence!'" muttered old Hannah, who could not resist frequent "peeks" through the slide as she set the table in a most decidedly promiscuous manner. Mercy on us, how they did talk! first one, then the other, then all burst out together—trying to tell the history of three years in half an hour. It was fortunate that tea was at hand, to produce a lull and provide refreshment—for they would have been hoarse and faint if they had gone on much longer. Such a happy procession as filed away into the little dining room! Mr. March proudly escorted Mrs. Laurence. Mrs. March as proudly leaned on the arm of 'my son'. The old gentleman took Jo, with a whispered, "You must be my girl now," and a glance at the empty corner by the fire, that made Jo whisper back, "I'll try to fill her place, sir." The twins pranced behind, feeling that the millennium was at hand, for everyone was so busy with the newcomers that they were left to revel at their own sweet will, and you may be sure they made the most of the opportunity. Didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread ad libitum, get a hot biscuit apiece, and as a crowning trespass, didn't they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets, there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human nature and a pastry are frail? Burdened with the guilty consciousness of the sequestered tarts, and fearing that Dodo's sharp eyes would pierce the thin disguise of cambric and merino which hid their booty, the little sinners attached themselves to 'Dranpa', who hadn't his spectacles on. Amy, who

• From Little Women (1868)

  "Shan't I disturb you?" "Not a bit. I only came here because I don't know many people and felt rather strange at first, you know." "So did I. Don't go away, please, unless you'd rather." The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till Jo said, trying to be polite and easy, "I think I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. You live near us, don't you?" "Next door." And he looked up and laughed outright, for Jo's prim manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home. That put Jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, in her heartiest way, "We did have such a good time over your nice Christmas present." "Grandpa sent it." "But you put it into his head, didn't you, now?" "How is your cat, Miss March?" asked the boy, trying to look sober while his black eyes shone with fun. "Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I'm only Jo," returned the young lady. "I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie." "Laurie Laurence, what an odd name." "My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead." "I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?" "I thrashed 'em." "I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it." And Jo resigned herself with a sigh. "Don't you like to dance, Miss Jo?" asked Laurie, looking as if he thought the name suited her.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Then putting my finger between, or some other mark, I shut the volume, and with a calmed countenance made it known to Alypius. And what was wrought in him, which I knew not, he thus showed me. He asked to see what I had read: I showed him; and he looked even further than I had read, and I knew not what followed. This followed, him that is weak in the faith, receive; which he applied to himself, and disclosed to me. And by this admonition was he strengthened; and by a good resolution and purpose, and most corresponding to his character, wherein he did always very far differ from me, for the better, without any turbulent delay he joined me. Thence we go in to my mother; we tell her; she rejoiceth: we relate in order how it took place; she leaps for joy, and triumpheth, and blesseth Thee, Who are able to do above that which we ask or think; for she perceived that Thou hadst given her more for me, than she was wont to beg by her pitiful and most sorrowful groanings. For thou convertedst me unto Thyself, so that I sought neither wife, nor any hope of this world, standing in that rule of faith, where Thou hadst showed me unto her in a vision, so many years before. And Thou didst convert her mourning into joy, much more plentiful than she had desired, and in a much more precious and purer way than she erst required, by having grandchildren of my body. Book IX

• From Another Country (1962)

  Vivaldo came by late the next afternoon to find Rufus still in bed and Leona in the kitchen making breakfast. It was Leona who opened the door. And Rufus watched with delight the slow shock on Vivaldo’s face as he looked from Leona, muffled in Rufus’ bathrobe, to Rufus, sitting up in bed, and naked except for the blankets. Let the liberal white bastard squirm, he thought. “Hi, baby,” he called, “come on in. You just in time for breakfast.” “I’ve had my breakfast,” Vivaldo said, “but you people aren’t even decent yet. I’ll come back later.” “Shit, man, come on in. That’s Leona. Leona, this here’s a friend of mine, Vivaldo. For short. His real name is Daniel Vivaldo Moore. He’s an Irish wop.” “Rufus is just full of prejudice against everybody,” said Leona, and smiled. “Come on in.” Vivaldo closed the door behind him awkwardly and sat down on the edge of the bed. Whenever he was uncomfortable—which was often—his arms and legs seemed to stretch to monstrous proportions and he handled them with bewildered loathing, as though he had been afflicted with them only a few moments before. “I hope you can eat something,” Leona said. “There’s plenty and it’ll be ready in just a second.” “I’ll have a cup of coffee with you,” Vivaldo said, “unless you happen to have some beer.” Then he looked over at Rufus. “I guess it was quite a party.” Rufus grinned. “Not bad, not bad.” Leona opened some beer and poured it into a tumbler and brought it to Vivaldo. He took it, looking up at her with his quick, gypsy smile, and spilled some on one foot. “You want some, Rufus?” “No, honey, not yet. I’ll eat first.” Leona walked back into the kitchen. “Ain’t she a splendid specimen of Southern womanhood?” Rufus asked. “Down yonder, they teach their women-folks to serve.” From the kitchen came Leona’s laugh. “They sure don’t teach us nothing else.” “Honey, as long as you know how to make a man as happy as you making me, you don’t need to know nothing else.” Rufus and Vivaldo looked at each other a moment. Then Vivaldo grinned. “How about it, Rufus. You going to get your ass up out of that bed?” Rufus threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. He raised his arms high and yawned and stretched. “You’re giving quite a show this afternoon,” Vivaldo said, and threw him a pair of shorts. Rufus put on the shorts and an old pair of gray slacks and a faded green sport shirt. “You should have made it to that party,” he said, “after all. There was some pot on the scene that wouldn’t wait.” “Well. I had my troubles last night.” “You and Jane? As usual?” “Oh, she got drunk and pulled some shit. You know. She’s sick, she can’t help it.” “I know she’s sick. But what’s wrong with you?”

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  To conclude, when the hour was come for making profession of his faith (which at Rome they, who are about to approach to Thy grace, deliver, from an elevated place, in the sight of all the faithful, in a set form of words committed to memory), the presbyters, he said, offered Victorinus (as was done to such as seemed likely through bashfulness to be alarmed) to make his profession more privately: but he chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy multitude. “For it was not salvation that he taught in rhetoric, and yet that he had publicly professed: how much less then ought he, when pronouncing Thy word, to dread Thy meek flock, who, when delivering his own words, had not feared a mad multitude!” When, then, he went up to make his profession, all, as they knew him, whispered his name one to another with the voice of congratulation. And who there knew him not? and there ran a low murmur through all the mouths of the rejoicing multitude, Victorinus! Victorinus! Sudden was the burst of rapture, that they saw him; suddenly were they hushed that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all wished to draw him into their very heart; yea by their love and joy they drew him thither, such were the hands wherewith they drew him. Good God! what takes place in man, that he should more rejoice at the salvation of a soul despaired of, and freed from greater peril, than if there had always been hope of him, or the danger had been less? For so Thou also, merciful Father, dost more rejoice over one penitent than over ninety-nine just persons that need no repentance. And with much joyfulness do we hear, so often as we hear with what joy the sheep which had strayed is brought back upon the shepherd’s shoulder, and the groat is restored to Thy treasury, the neighbours rejoicing with the woman who found it; and the joy of the solemn service of Thy house forceth to tears, when in Thy house it is read of Thy younger son, that he was dead, and liveth again; had been lost, and is found. For Thou rejoicest in us, and in Thy holy angels, holy through holy charity. For Thou art ever the same; for all things which abide not the same nor for ever, Thou for ever knowest in the same way.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Yves sighed, and remained in his seat, waiting for the load in the aisle to lighten. He thought, bleakly, Le plus dur reste à faire . Then he joined the line, and moved slowly toward the door. The hostesses stood there, smiling and saying good-bye. The sun was bright on their faces, and on the faces of the disembarking passengers; they seemed, as they turned and disappeared, to be stepping into a new and healing light. He held his newspapers under one arm, shifted his package from hand to hand, straightened his belt, trembling. The hostess with whom he had flirted was nearest the door. “ Au revoir ,” she said, with the bright and generous and mocking smile possessed by so many of his countrywomen. He suddenly realized that he would never see her again. It had not occurred to him, until this moment, that he could possibly have left behind him anything which he might, one day, long for and need, with all his heart. “ Bon courage ,” she said. He smiled and said, “ Merci, mademoiselle. Au revoir !” And he wanted to say, Vous êtes très jolie , but it was too late, he had hit the light, the sun glared at him, and everything wavered in the heat. He started down the extraordinary steps. When he hit the ground, a voice above him said, “Bonjour, mon gar. Soyez le bienvenue.” He looked up. Eric leaned on the rail of the observation deck, grinning, wearing an open white shirt and khaki trousers. He looked very much at ease, at home, thinner than he had been, with his short hair spinning and flaming about his head. Yves looked up joyously, and waved, unable to say anything. Eric . And all his fear left him, he was certain, now, that everything would be all right. He whistled to himself as he followed the line which separated him from the Americans, into the examination hall. But he passed his examination with no trouble, and in a very short time; his passport was eventually stamped and handed back to him, with a grin and a small joke, the meaning but not the good nature of which escaped him. Then he was in a vaster hall, waiting for his luggage, with Eric above him, smiling down on him through glass. Then even his luggage belonged to him again, and he strode through the barriers, more high-hearted than he had ever been as a child, into that city which the people from heaven had made their home. Istanbul, Dec. 10, 1961 JAMES BALDWIN James Baldwin was born in 1924. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986. He died in 1987.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I’d have caught you,” he said, and laughed in that golden boy way that I remembered so vividly, though it was altered now too. He was grittier than he’d been before, slightly more shaken, as if he’d aged a few years in the past months. “You want to hang out while I organize my things and we can leave together?” “Sure,” I said without hesitation. “I’ve got to hike those last days before I get into Cascade Locks alone—you know, just to finish like I started—but let’s hike together to Timberline Lodge.” “Holy shit, Cheryl.” He pulled me in for another hug. “I can’t believe we’re here together. Hey, you still have that black feather I gave you?” He reached to touch its ragged edge. “It was my good luck charm,” I said. “What’s with the wine?” he asked, pointing to the bottle in my hand. “I’m going to give it to the ranger,” I replied, lifting it high. “I don’t want to carry it all the way to Timberline.” “Are you insane?” Doug asked. “Give me that bottle.” We opened it that night at our camp near the Warm Springs River with the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife. The day had warmed into the low seventies, but the evening was cool, the crisp edge of summer turning to autumn everywhere around us. The leaves on the trees had thinned almost undetectably; the tall stalks of wildflowers bent down onto themselves, plumped with rot. Doug and I built a fire as our dinners cooked and then sat eating from our pots and passing the wine back and forth, drinking straight from the bottle since neither of us had a cup. The wine and the fire and being in Doug’s company again after all this time felt like a rite of passage, like a ceremonial marking of the end of my journey. After a while, we each turned abruptly toward the darkness, hearing the yip of coyotes more near than far. “That sound always makes my hair stand on end,” Doug said. He took a sip from the bottle and handed it to me. “This wine’s really good.” “It is,” I agreed, and took a swig. “I heard coyotes a lot this summer,” I said. “And you weren’t afraid, right? Isn’t that what you told yourself?” “It is what I told myself,” I said. “Except every once in while,” I added. “When I was.” “Me too.” He reached over and rested his hand on my shoulder and I put my hand on his and squeezed it. He felt like a brother of mine, but not at all like my actual brother. He seemed like someone I’d always know even if I never saw him again.

• From Little Women (1868)

  Not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of love done up in the few little bundles, and the tall vase of red roses, white chrysanthemums, and trailing vines, which stood in the middle, gave quite an elegant air to the table. "She's coming! Strike up, Beth! Open the door, Amy! Three cheers for Marmee!" cried Jo, prancing about while Meg went to conduct Mother to the seat of honor. Beth played her gayest march, Amy threw open the door, and Meg enacted escort with great dignity. Mrs. March was both surprised and touched, and smiled with her eyes full as she examined her presents and read the little notes which accompanied them. The slippers went on at once, a new handkerchief was slipped into her pocket, well scented with Amy's cologne, the rose was fastened in her bosom, and the nice gloves were pronounced a perfect fit. There was a good deal of laughing and kissing and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward, and then all fell to work. The morning charities and ceremonies took so much time that the rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the evening festivities. Being still too young to go often to the theater, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and necessity being the mother of invention, made whatever they needed. Very clever were some of their productions, pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond shaped bits left in sheets when the lids of preserve pots were cut out. The big chamber was the scene of many innocent revels. No gentleman were admitted, so Jo played male parts to her heart's content and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor. These boots, an old foil, and a slashed doublet once used by an artist for some picture, were Jo's chief treasures and appeared on all occasions. The smallness of the company made it necessary for the two principal actors to take several parts apiece, and they certainly deserved some credit for the hard work they did in learning three or four different parts, whisking in and out of various costumes, and managing the stage besides. It was excellent drill for their memories, a harmless amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society. On Christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  I was at the dentist yesterday, getting impressions taken of my teeth. She inserted a big, cold metal brace in my mouth and filled it with a strange, strangling gummy substance, and all of a sudden I looked around at all the contraptions and appliances and started to laugh, remembering what the prostitute said about hardware stores. I was laughing because I knew from then on, everything in my dentist’s office was going to look double-edged, that my dentist was going to as well, and that the whole world could, and did, in a way. Sex is terribly funny and terribly real and its manifestations are everywhere. I am who I am sexually because of who I was and all that has happened to me and all that has not. The fantasies of rough sex are just children’s fantasies acted out in great big grown-up ways. The real, sadistic, and terrifying nightmares of dreaming children, the real traumas of childhood days, are made flesh today in our adult bodies, to be lived out once again. If I wanted to get started in this world, there are lots of ways. Most cities have clubs, “dungeons,” parties, gay and straight, for women only, for mixed groups. I could take my pick. In San Francisco and a few other cities, I could go to school. I have a catalogue for a kind of adult extension school of S/M and related techniques in San Francisco called QSM: “Beg! Fetch! Heel!: Training Your Human Pet,” “The Civilized Art of Caning,” “Advanced Fisting.” The classes emphasize safety and observation rather than participation, and any exchange of bodily fluids is heavily discouraged. (In fact, sadomasochism is, medically speaking, very safe sex.) Here’s a class in “Interrogation,” another in “Branding for Beginners.” Every game has its rules, its arbitrary code words, tableaus, rituals, and symbols. I could take “Customizing Your Whipping.” There’s a four-part course called “Bondage Potpourri.” Or I could take “Knives,” which really needs no explanation except that it includes shopping tips. S/M is theater, but then, all sex is theater. For a moment as master or slave one lives in the body of another, one pretends something else to be true until it is, briefly, true. These primal dramas and symbols are innate in all sexuality; every sexual act contains them. Says a woman who practices masochism: “The most intense, special moments of dominance or of submission are things that probably could be described as staring into someone else’s eyes.”

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  At Norwalk City Hall there were a bunch of white tents set up outside and a fleet of blue Eyewitness News vans idling in the lot. We started getting cold feet—neither of us was in the mood to become a poster child for queers marrying in hostile territory just prior to Prop 8’s passage. We didn’t want to show up in tomorrow’s paper next to a frothing lunatic in cargo shorts waving a GOD HATES FAGS sign. Inside there was an epic line at the marriage counter, mostly fags and dykes of all ages, along with a slew of young straight couples, mostly Latino, who seemed bewildered by the nature of the day’s crowd. The older men in front of us told us they got married a few months ago, but when their marriage certificate arrived in the mail, they noticed the signatures had been botched by their officiant. They were now desperately hoping for a re-do, so that they could stay officially married no matter what happened at the polls. Contrary to what the Internet had promised, the chapel was all booked up, so all the couples in line were going to have to go elsewhere to get an official ceremony of some kind after finishing their paperwork. We struggled to understand how a contract with the so-called secular state could mandate some kind of spiritual ritual. People who already had officiants lined up to marry them later that day offered to make their ceremonies communal, to accommodate everyone who wanted to get married before midnight. The guys in front of us invited us to join their beach wedding in Malibu. We thanked them, but instead called 411 and asked for the name of a wedding chapel in West Hollywood—isn’t that where the queers are? I have a Hollywood Chapel on Santa Monica Boulevard, the voice said. The Hollywood Chapel turned out to be a hole in the wall at the end of the block where I lived for the loneliest three years of my life. Tacky maroon velvet curtains divided the waiting room from the chapel room; both spaces were decorated with cheap gothic candelabras, fake flowers, and a peach faux finish. A drag queen at the door did triple duty as a greeter, bouncer, and witness. Reader, we married there, with the assistance of Reverend Lorelei Starbuck. Reverend Starbuck suggested we discuss the vows with her beforehand; we said they didn’t really matter. She insisted. We let them stay standard, albeit stripped of pronouns. The ceremony was rushed, but as we said our vows, we were undone. We wept, besotted with our luck, then gratefully accepted two heart-shaped lollipops with THE HOLLYWOOD CHAPEL embossed on their wrappers, rushed to pick up the little guy at day care before closing, came home and ate chocolate pudding all together in sleeping bags on the porch, looking out over our mountain.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  After making love I would lie with my head on Michael’s chest listening to the song of his heart. With our open balcony door letting tropical air waft over us, we’d hear the ripened grapefruit-sized avocados fall from their trees to the ground with the softest, most earthly and comforting thud. We did not tire of one another even though we were together around the clock. And we were asked every day, usually several times, if we were on our honeymoon. “No,” we’d answer, “we’re just very happy to be together.” It was a moment out of time. No Limori to interfere with us, no fellow group members requiring Michael’s spiritual guidance or support. No energy dramas going on. For an all-too-brief moment our relationship existed outside the prison yard it had grown in, and flourished in this glimpse of freedom. I still look back on that vacation as one of the highlights of my life thus far. It was, quite simply, heaven. A week after we returned to Vancouver from Hawaii, Michael mentioned that Limori was passing through town on her way to Arizona. She and her travelling entourage, Alice, Susan and Rosemarie, would be staying for one night at a hotel in Richmond and Limori had invited Michael and me to have lunch with her. During this visit, my eyes would be opened to Michael’s relationship with Limori more than ever before. When I look back, if there ever was a moment that was the beginning of the end for me in Limori’s cult, this was it. We met the four women in the restaurant of the hotel at our appointed time. The six of us sat at a long table and chatted; early on in the conversation Michael mentioned that he and I had just returned from Hawaii but Limori barely acknowledged that he’d spoken. She held court, as ever, and spoke only about the things that mattered to her: energetic changes that were taking place and the challenging work she’d been doing for God lately. This trip she was taking to Arizona was of paramount importance and they were on a tight time schedule to get to Tucson by a certain date because God had said they should. If they didn’t arrive by that date there would be disastrous consequences for the universe. After an hour or so of chatting over coffee we had lunch, and it was during this meal that I woke up to a glimpse of Michael that I was not comfortable with. Limori had a habit of staying at the same hotels over time, and using the same restaurants. Because of her charisma and attention-getting appearance and manner, she usually became well known at these favoured places and was very often treated like royalty. At this particular hotel, she was fond of the Rueben sandwich. When our waiter brought us lunch menus, Limori noticed that the Reuben was not listed, but, being Limori, she ordered it anyway.

• From Another Country (1962)

  They had just come up from the subway and it was perhaps this ascent from darkness to day which made the streets so dazzling. They were on Broadway at Seventy-second Street, walking uptown—for Cass and Richard had moved, they were climbing that well-known ladder, Cass said. The light seemed to fall with an increased hardness, examining and inciting the city with an unsparing violence, like the violence of love, and striking from the city’s grays and blacks a splendor as of steel on steel. In the windows of tall buildings flame wavered, alive, in ice. There was a high, driving wind which brightened the eyes and the faces of the people and forced their lips slightly apart, so that they all seemed to be carrying, to some immense encounter, the bright, fragile bubble of a lifetime of expectation. Bright boys in windbreakers, some of them with girls whose hair, whose fingertips, caught the light, looked into polished delicatessen windows, the windows of shops, paused at the entrances of movie theatres to look at the gleaming stills; and their voices, which shared the harsh quality of the light which covered them, seemed breaking on the air like glass splinters. Children, in great gangs and clouds, erupted out of side streets with the sound of roller skates and came roaring down on their elders like vengeance long prepared, or the arrow released from the bow. “I’ve never seen such a day,” he said to Ida, and it was true. Everything seemed to be swollen, thrusting and shifting and changing, about to burst into music or into flame or revelation. Ida said nothing. He felt, rather then saw her smile, and he was delighted all over again by her beauty. It was as though she were wearing it especially for him. She was more friendly with him today than she had ever been. He did not feel today, as he had felt for so long, that she was evading him, locking herself away from him, forcing him to remain a stranger in her life. Today she was gayer and more natural, as though she had at last decided to come out of mourning. There was in her aspect the flavor of something won, the atmosphere of hard decisions past. She had come up from the valley.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Over a period of ten minutes I laboriously paid out the thread through my callus so that I could walk upstairs and out to the yard. A bird was out there, a robin, paused in the air, about three feet off the lawn—I touched its spread wings, though not hard enough to dislodge it from its pausal locus. I continued to unspool my callus-thread until I had reached the street. A woman was in a station wagon with her elbow on the door. I touched her shoulder with my hand, then reached into her blouse and went under her bra and felt her hot heavy ostrich egg of a breast. Her nipple was amazingly soft. Her hair was motionlessly wind-fluffed; the speedometer said thirty miles an hour. That soft unselfconscious nipple I touched (my very first after infancy, recall) was driving down the street at thirty miles an hour while I, caressing it at leisure, stood in place! When I had learned enough about the weight and highly advanced mobility of her entire Jamaica in my coarse and threaded hand (joggling it reminded me, to my surprise, of the variable heft of a Slinky toy as you let its arched length recoil back and forth from palm to palm), I went back to the sidewalk so that I wouldn’t be run over, and I yanked on the thread until it broke. I pulled it from the hole in my callus. The station wagon sighed promptly by—I saw a flash of the woman in profile, then the back of her car, her meaninglessly specific license plate, then her turn-signal light blinking, then she turned down Southland Street, gone. In the basement, my clothes took up with their spinning as if I were still standing at the washing machine looking in. Nobody in the cars that followed seemed to notice that I had just appeared next to a bushy spray of elm-stump suckers, out of nowhere. My second successful drop-phase ended there, circa August 1969: it, like the time-transformer experiment that helped me into Miss Dobzhansky’s shirt, was apparently induplicable, depending on exactly those particular clothes and towels,those calluses, and that specific new packet of needles from the Needle Man. Tethering oneself to a clothes-washer was in any case a somewhat awkward way of forcing time into remission; although as I thought that period over on the beach towel in the yard I remembered none of the awkwardness—only how leapingly happy I had been for the rest of the day because I knew then, after all my false starts and failed attempts, that there really was more than one way to trip the universal clutch.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I closed my eye and opened it again, and this time I looked only at my glasses, and it seemed to me then that the very best thing about sunbathing was that you could open your eyes at any time and see your own companionable glasses waiting for you there so close to your face, casting their sharp shadow: I could see with extreme clarity the thick opaque ground perimeter of the rimless lenses, and the side-pieces crossed at their kneelike earward ends, and the eyelash hair, whose curve enhanced my appreciation of the curvature of the prescription, and the dust that built up so gradually that I hadn’t noticed it, and the nose-pods that were filthy but whose filth was irrelevant because nobody else could see it, and the paired reflection of some branchy blueness in the faintly scratched surface—all this nineteenth-century precision that I wore on my face every day, and never had the opportunity to study because all I did was take the glasses off at night and fold them automatically and put them by my bed and put them on again in the morning. No matter how often I closed my eyes, my corrective lenses would be there in the sun when I opened them again, waiting to be praised and seen, and seen more exactly and clearly than if I were wearing another pair of glasses to look at them, because my nearsightedness shortened the minimum focal length, making things even two inches away fully contemplable. I saw my own glasses better than anyone who didn’t need glasses could ever see them. The word clarity struck me as very fine. My happiness had a clarity to it. My happiness was optical. My happiness was the direct result of my glasses. Should I do ten pushups to celebrate the innocent clarity of my happiness? Should I do ten pushups naked? I took off my bathing suit and did ten pushups naked, and each time I lowered myself trembling down to earth, and my down-hanging soft-serve nosed unprotestingly into the towel, I turned my head so that I could see my glasses waiting there for me to appreciate them. Possibly they seemed beautiful to me in part because they were hybrids, existing halfway between knower and known, between what I saw and how I saw. I felt as if I were looking at my own sense of sight, even at myself, when I looked at them.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  There are many recurring images in these collections of prime masturbatory material: the two-women-and-one-man fantasy, the two-men-and-one-woman fantasy, the woman-watching-two-men fantasy, the one-woman-and-a-dog fantasy. “Another fantasy has to do with bratwurst …” The books taken as a whole seem to represent a kind of oneupmanship of imagination, a beating-the-bush game. As a window on the American imagination—self-selected as they are—Friday’s fantasies are chock full of the American porn dream: endless sex, repetitive acts of taboo-breaking, huge erections, enormous orgasms, power over and submission under authority figures—in other words, all the American pioneer elements of youth and control, robust health and infinite desirability. They are cocky, knowing, explosively pubescent. It is as though the motto of the American sexual imagination were that old Avis chestnut: We Try Harder. Just as there are many things we want to dream about but don’t actually want to experience in life, there are things we do in sex with great enthusiasm which would make boring fantasies. (They still make good memories, though.) One remembers good sex in the broken way of dreams. Any effective fantasy has to capture that quality of suspension—of sex taking place in a separate, special environment outside the ordinary realm. Or in an ordinary realm made strange by the sudden presence of sex. I am particularly fond of one described by Norma Jean Almodovar, an ex-prostitute in Los Angeles who organizes for COYOTE. She had a client who was crazy about Julia Child, and willing to pay her hundreds of dollars to shop for a good whole chicken, put on an apron and, in Julia’s voice and manner, “cook” it for him. “ ‘Notice its pale pink flesh, tender but firm to the touch,’ ” Norma would say as she pretended to prepare the chicken and he wiggled in delight on a chair nearby. “ ‘Oh, look at that butter! Doesn’t that look good! Let’s stick our impeccably clean finger in there and get a taste of that sweet butter. Mmmm, isn’t that yummy! I just love to lick the juices off my fingers, don’t you?” Inevitably he would reach orgasm as she started to “baste” the cooking chicken. “I always wondered what he did with the chickens after each session.” Bon appétit!