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 The Pisces (2018)

  53.One night, asleep on the rock, I awoke to two hands on my shoulders. They were his hands. I was not dreaming, because they never moved or loosened their grip. I was not dreaming, because I had just dreamed that I was alone, back in the desert, and the dream still vaguely lingered in my mind. I dreamt that I was in a diner outside of Phoenix trying to choose a cake from a glass spinner case of desserts. I was having difficulty seeing the cakes. They were blurry, crumbling, old, and stale. In their staleness they were turning into dust right in front of me. They were turning into nothingness. But the waitresses insisted they were there. The waitresses were all members of the group: Diana, Sara, Dr. Jude. Everyone was urging me to pick a cake. They had formed a circle around me and they were cheering me on. But I couldn’t choose a cake, because I couldn’t see them. And when I tried to explain that I couldn’t see them, the group would echo in unison, “But they’re right there.” When I awoke, I thought that I was still in the diner for a moment. Then I felt his hands and I knew that I was on the rocks, by the ocean in Venice Beach. Immediately I knew whose hands were on me. It was as though I had become the rocks and this was the first time we met, when I saw his hands on them for the first time. Only now, some other part of me was witnessing the whole thing and his hands were on me. Then his face was in front of my face, a wet lock of hair in his eye. “Hi,” he whispered. He had always been there. He kissed my forehead and kissed my mouth. “Hi,” I said. There was a surge of euphoria, a deep peace inside me, but also a return to normalcy, fixed, as though I were supposed to feel this way all the time. This was how junkies described getting well. There had been a missing piece and now the piece was back. It felt good to have the piece back, but also just normal. The sickness that had overwhelmed my head, my heart, my guts was gone. It didn’t matter what nature had intended for me. It didn’t matter that I had ever lived without him. He was not an extra part, but the thing. This was the new nature. He pulled himself up onto the rock and we sat there, hugging. We stayed in total embrace and didn’t speak. I forgot where we were, and that seemed most normal of all: to be nowhere. I could hear the ocean, but forgot that it was the ocean. I forgot that I hadn’t always lived at the ocean or that it was even a separate entity. This was the only life I had known. “I’m so sorry,” I said, but he hushed me.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Complaints about how crossdressers overuse cosmetics are often related to more general critiques that claim that crossdressers exaggerate stereotypically feminine dress and behaviors, thus turning themselves into caricatures of women. Often, these sentiments are rooted in the oppositional sexist assumption that cissexual women are entitled to express and explore femininity while those assigned male are not. Even those critiques that are not downright oppositional sexist are still cissexual-woman-centric, in that they view MTF crossdressing solely in terms of how it portrays cissexual women, rather than viewing it from an MTF spectrum perspective. Back when I crossdressed, I very much enjoyed dressing and acting in a highly feminine manner, but not because I thought that women really were or should be that way. If I indulged in an exaggerated form of femininity, it was only because I never really had the chance to explore that side of myself growing up as a boy. I spent virtually every day of my life wearing T-shirts, jeans, sneakers, and no makeup. So for me, crossdressing represented a rare opportunity to fully indulge my femininity. The other factor at the time that motivated me to try to achieve stereotypical femininity was that I wanted others to gender me as female. Back when I was crossdressing—when I was still physically male—that never would have been possible had I gone out sans makeup or wearing unisex clothing. To a large extent, I purposely chose the clothing and cosmetics I wore when I crossdressed based on their ability to hide or play down my male physique and facial features. In fact, the public stage of my crossdressing was really the one time in my life when I did go out of my way to emulate how some women looked, walked, talked, moved, and so on. I found that this increased the likelihood that I would be gendered female, which was my overall goal, and which also ensured my safety. One question that many queeridentified friends asked me back when I was crossdressing was why it was so important for me to “pass” as a woman. Their concern seemed to stem from the common use of the term “pass” in lesbian and gay communities as a synonym for “hide” (i.e., a gay male who “passes” for straight is typically assumed to be hiding or playing down his queerness). This use of the word “pass” is completely different from its use in the transgender community, where it typically refers to whether one is appropriately gendered as the sex one identifies or presents oneself as. From my perspective as a crossdresser, what gay people call “passing” (i.e., hiding) was what I did every day when I lived as male. In contrast, when I dressed and “passed” (in the transgender sense) as a woman, it was a rare moment of being “out” for me, of having others see and acknowledge a part of me that I normally kept hidden.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: ’Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.’ But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear. The Word is almighty, and takes captive the hearts."494 Eloquence rarely achieved a more complete and honorable triumph. It was not the eloquence of passion and violence, but the eloquence of wisdom and love. It is easier to rouse the wild beast in man, than to tame it into submission. Melanchthon and the professors, the magistrate and peaceful citizens, were delighted. Dr. Schurf wrote to the Elector, after the sixth discourse: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth. It is as clear as the sun, that the Spirit of God is in him, and that he returned to Wittenberg by His special providence." Most of the old forms were restored again, at least for a season, till the people were ripe for the changes. Luther himself returned to the convent, observed the fasts, and resumed the cowl, but laid it aside two years afterwards when the Elector sent him a new suit. The passage in the mass, however, which referred to the unbloody repetition of the sacrifice and the miraculous transformation of the elements, was not restored, and the communion in both kinds prevailed, and soon became the universal custom. The Elector himself, shortly before his death (May 5, 1525), communed with the cup. Didymus openly acknowledged his error, and declared that Luther preached like an angel.495 But the Zwickau Prophets left Wittenberg for ever, and abused the Reformer as a new pope and enemy of spiritual religion. Münzer stirred up the Peasants’ War, and met a tragic fate.496 Carlstadt submitted silently, but sullenly. He was a disappointed and unhappy man, and harbored feelings of revenge against Luther. Ranke characterizes him as "one of those men, not rare among Germans, who with an inborn tendency to profundity unite the courage of rejecting all that is established, and defending all that others reject, without ever rising to a clear view and solid conviction." He resumed his lectures in the university for a time; but in 1523 he retired to a farm in the neighborhood, to live as "neighbor Andrew" with lowly peasants, without, however, resigning the emoluments of his professorship. He devoted himself more fully than ever to his mystical speculations and imaginary inspirations. He entered into secret correspondence with Münzer, though he never fully approved his political movements. He published at Jena, where he established a printing-press, a number of devotional books under the name of "a new layman," instead of Doctor of Theology.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen tried to spring easily out of the saddle as her father had done, but her legs seemed to fail her. To her horror and chagrin her legs hung down stiffly as though made of wood; she could not control them; and to make matters worse, Collins now grew impatient and began to walk off to his loosebox. Then Sir Philip put two strong arms around Stephen, and he lifted her bodily as though she were a baby, and he carried her, only faintly protesting, right up to the door of the house and beyond it—right up indeed, to the warm pleasant nursery where a steaming hot bath was waiting. Her head fell back and lay on his shoulder, while her eyelids drooped, heavy with well-earned sleep; she had to blink very hard several times over in order to get the better of that sleep. ‘Happy, darling?’ he whispered, and his grave face bent nearer. She could feel his cheek, rough at the end of the day, pressed against her forehead, and she loved that kind roughness, so that she put up her hand and stroked it. ‘So dreadfully, dreadfully happy, Father,’ she murmured, ‘so—dreadfully happy—’ CHAPTER 51O n the Monday that followed Stephen’s first day out hunting she woke with something very like a weight on her chest; in less than two minutes she knew why this was—she was going to tea with the Antrims. Her relations with other children were peculiar, she thought so herself and so did the children; they could not define it and neither could Stephen, but there it was all the same. A high-spirited child she should have been popular, and yet she was not, a fact which she divined, and this made her feel ill at ease with her playmates, who in their turn felt ill at ease. She would think that the children were whispering about her, whispering and laughing for no apparent reason; but although this had happened on one occasion, it was not always happening as Stephen imagined. She was painfully hyper-sensitive at times, and she suffered accordingly. Of all the children that Stephen most dreaded, Violet and Roger Antrim took precedence; especially Roger, who was ten years old, and already full to the neck of male arrogance—he had just been promoted to Etons that winter, which added to his overbearing pride. Roger Antrim had round, brown eyes like his mother, and a short, straight nose that might one day be handsome; he was rather a thick-set, plump little boy, whose buttocks looked too large in a short Eton jacket, especially when he stuck his hands in his pockets and strutted, which he did very often.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I feel for her but am practically giddy that I’m not her. The swelling of noise from the toddlers increases and falls and then becomes so intensely high-pitched that even Georgia raises an eyebrow and makes a tsk, tsk face. When we rise from our seats halfway through the flight so Georgia can use the bathroom, I see that one twin is in the window seat four rows behind us with her mother holding the other twin in the middle seat, and there, next to them in the aisle seat, is Michael. Oh, the justice of it all! I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “That’s mean,” she says. “What’s mean? I didn’t put him there,” I say, trying to position my phone surreptitiously to snap a photo of this uncomfortable trio. “It’s mean that you think it’s funny and are taking a picture,” she says. “Well, come on, admit that it’s pretty funny. Anyway, it doesn’t look like he’s struggling, does it?” I say, watching him sleep peacefully through the chaos, his neck encircled by a travel pillow. I know I could have been that mother, trying to contain a squalling baby – his squalling baby, not a random one – and he still would have been as peaceful. I snap the photo. * A few hours later, we are spread on chaise longues by the shimmering blue pool. I want to lie still for a few minutes, soaking in the smoldering heat of the midday sun, but the kids are antsy. Hudson wanders off to get the first frozen mocktail of probably ten that he will drink today, and Georgia begs Michael to walk her down the beach to find Blaze to get a coconut and if she’s lucky, some passionfruit and soursop. Ten minutes later, Georgia comes bounding over, her hands sticky with juice and the skin around her mouth already orange from the mango she’s been eating. “Mommy, Blaze is here! He gave me extra soursop for you! He wants you to come say hi, can we go now?” I pat the spot next to me and promise we will go as soon as she’s done eating. I accept the wedge of dripping fruit she hands me and watch her tear into the array in front of her. Georgia has a voracious appetite and eats with such gusto that I watch with bemusement. She lacks self-consciousness, allowing juice to drip down her face and bits of fruit to stick to her cheeks, even her hair. When she is done, she smears the pulp from her hands and face all over the bright white, plush towel she is sitting on.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  My choice of clothing made them look deceptively smaller: loose, flowy cotton skirts and dresses, wide linen pants that kept them concealed. The rest of me would be swimming in my clothes, giving me a sort of elfin, pixie look, all thanks to my hips. But now my pants were leaving a tight elastic mark around my waist each time I took them off. I also began engaging in weird crafts. I craved creative expression, an artistic order, but did not have the lucidity of mind for Sappho. I went to the nearby crafts store and bought a hot-glue gun, beads, tools for needlepoint. I began hot-gluing beads onto empty wine bottles, making “vases.” Eventually I stopped going to the library entirely. I told them that I needed a week’s hiatus to work on my book. The other librarians agreed to cover for me. My apartment looked like a frat house mixed with an arts fair. I stayed up all night beading. Then one week turned into two. Finally I dragged my ass back, but I still wasn’t sleeping. I hid in the university bathrooms on the toilet with my eyes closed. And then Jamie did come back, for a night anyway. “I feel ready to meet now,” he said, and so we went to our favorite Mexican spot. After a few margaritas he held my hand under the table and we stared into each other’s eyes. I had not remembered being present for a meal like this, together, both fully engaged, neither of us on our phones, in years. After dinner we made out in his car. He tasted different, like a licorice taste had entered his body in the time we’d been apart. Maybe it was the cilantro. He drove me home and then followed me upstairs. I went to get him a glass of water. When I came into the living room he was sitting on the sofa. “Come here,” he said. I walked toward him and sat on his leg. I held the water up to his lips. He drank, then put it on the table and kissed me. He undressed me, still sitting in his lap. Then he laid me down on the sofa and undressed hastily as I watched him in the dark. We fucked on the sofa, quickly, our mouths on each other’s mouths the whole time. I didn’t come. I never did from fucking. Jamie’s lack of initiative in going down on me was a source of contention between us, always. He was willing but not ravenous for it. But his mouth on my mouth as he fucked me felt in a way like he had his mouth on my vagina. He didn’t stay the night.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Luke, telling the story, is keen that we should not miss the point. The one-time, unrepeatable moment will nevertheless serve as a paradigm, a template, for all subsequent Christian experience. He is telling the story of Jesus as the story of the launching of God’s renewed people. The two disciples, in their excited astonishment, at once discuss the way in which this new exposition of the Bible caused their hearts to burn inside them, sending them back to Jerusalem to tell the others that he had been “known to them in the breaking of the bread” (21:35). A glance ahead at Acts 2:42 (where Luke highlights the marks of the church as “the teaching of the apostles and the common life, the breaking of bread and the prayers”) will confirm what we had already guessed. Luke, telling the story of the Emmaus road from one point of view as a unique moment of extraordinary joy and revelation, is telling it from another point of view in such a way as to say that this resurrection appearance of Jesus sets the pattern for the way in which he will be known from now on. Again and again, he will come to surprise, comfort, and commission his puzzled and anxious followers through the opening of the scriptures and the breaking of the bread. Luke is telling the story of Jesus in such a way that his hearers are bound to reflect on these as the central features of the life of the community that celebrates Jesus as its risen Messiah and Lord. When we ponder this, and the many other moments in all four gospels that have the same kind of effect, we realize that the scholars’ instincts were in this way right on target: the four gospels were never meant as “historical reminiscence” for its own sake. Just because we are (in my view) right to insist that, in supporting and sustaining the life of the early church, the gospels are precisely telling the story of Jesus, we are not for that reason to swing the other way and imagine that their writers are not aware, constantly, of their task of writing foundational documents for God’s renewed people. The gospels are, and were written to be, fresh tellings of the story of Jesus designed to be the charter of the community of Jesus’s first followers and those who, through their witness, then and subsequently, have joined in and have learned to hear, see, and know Jesus in word and sacrament.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  So for me, crossdressing represented a rare opportunity to fully indulge my femininity.The other factor at the time that motivated me to try to achieve stereotypical femininity was that I wanted others to gender me as female. Back when I was crossdressing—when I was still physically male—that never would have been possible had I gone out sans makeup or wearing unisex clothing. To a large extent, I purposely chose the clothing and cosmetics I wore when I crossdressed based on their ability to hide or play down my male physique and facial features. In fact, the public stage of my crossdressing was really the one time in my life when I did go out of my way to emulate how some women looked, walked, talked, moved, and so on. I found that this increased the likelihood that I would be gendered female, which was my overall goal, and which also ensured my safety.One question that many queer-identified friends asked me back when I was crossdressing was why it was so important for me to “pass” as a woman. Their concern seemed to stem from the common use of the term “pass” in lesbian and gay communities as a synonym for “hide” (i.e., a gay male who “passes” for straight is typically assumed to be hiding or playing down his queerness). This use of the word “pass” is completely different from its use in the transgender community, where it typically refers to whether one is appropriately gendered as the sex one identifies or presents oneself as. From my perspective as a crossdresser, what gay people call “passing” (i.e., hiding) was what I did every day when I lived as male. In contrast, when I dressed and “passed” (in the transgender sense) as a woman, it was a rare moment of being “out” for me, of having others see and acknowledge a part of me that I normally kept hidden.Eventually, having other people gender me as female became demystified. While I still enjoyed it (as I did with the mirror moments), it was no longer enough in and of itself to ease the gender dissonance that I felt. It was at this point that I moved into the “interactive stage,” when I began to go out with other people while I was crossdressed. While I had come out to a number of friends as a crossdresser during my public stage, I now began cultivating relationships with people who primarily or solely knew me when I was in girl-mode.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now when they climbed the long hill to the town of old Orotava on their way to the mountains, they would pause to examine certain flowers minutely, or to stare down the narrow, shadowy bystreets. And when they had reached the cool upland places, and their mules were loosed and placidly grazing, they would sit hand in hand looking out at the Peak, trying to impress such pictures on their minds, because all things pass and they wished to remember. The goat-bells would break the lovely stillness, together with the greater stillness of their dreaming. But the sound of the bells would be lovely also, a part of their dreaming, a part of the stillness; for all things would seem to be welded together, to be one, even as they two were now one. They no longer felt desolate, hungry outcasts; unloved and unwanted, despised of the world. They were lovers who walked in the vineyard of life, plucking the warm, sweet fruits of that vineyard. Love had lifted them up as on wings of fire, had made them courageous, invincible, enduring. Nothing could be lacking to those who loved—the very earth gave of her fullest bounty. The earth seemed to come alive in response to the touch of their healthful and eager bodies—nothing could be lacking to those who loved. And thus in a cloud of illusion and glory, sped the last enchanted days at Orotava. BOOK FIVE CHAPTER 40 1 E arly in April Stephen and Mary returned to the house in Paris. This second home-coming seemed wonderfully sweet by reason of its peaceful and happy completeness, so that they turned to smile at each other as they passed through the door, and Stephen said very softly: ‘Welcome home, Mary.’ And now for the first time the old house was home. Mary went quickly from room to room humming a little tune as she did so, feeling that she saw with a new understanding the inanimate objects which filled those rooms—were they not Stephen’s? Every now and again she must pause to touch them because they were Stephen’s. Then she turned and went into Stephen’s bedroom; not timidly, dreading to be unwelcome, but quite without fear or restraint or shyness, and this gave her a warm little glow of pleasure. Stephen was busily grooming her hair with a couple of brushes that had been dipped in water. The water had darkened her hair in patches, but had deepened the wide wave above her forehead. Seeing Mary in the glass she did not turn round, but just smiled for a moment at their two reflections. Mary sat down in an arm-chair and watched her, noticing the strong, thin line of her thighs; noticing too the curve of her breasts—slight and compact, of a certain beauty.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Many of the guests at the Florence were English, and not a few scraped an acquaintance with Stephen, since nothing appears to succeed like success in a world that is principally made up of failure. The sight of her book left about in the lounge, or being devoured by some engrossed reader, would make Stephen feel almost childishly happy; she would point the phenomenon out to Mary. ‘Look,’ she would whisper, ‘that man’s reading my book!’ For the child is never far to seek in the author. Some of their acquaintances were country folk and she found that she was in sympathy with them. Their quiet and painstaking outlook on life, their love of the soil, their care for their homes, their traditions were after all a part of herself, bequeathed to her by the founders of Morton. It gave her a very deep sense of pleasure to see Mary accepted and made to feel welcome by these grey-haired women and gentlemanly men; very seemly and fitting it appeared to Stephen. And now, since to each of us come moments of respite when the mind refuses to face its problems, she resolutely thrust aside her misgivings, those misgivings that whispered: ‘Supposing they knew—do you think they’d be so friendly to Mary?’ Of all those who sought them out that summer, the most cordial were Lady Massey and her daughter. Lady Massey was a delicate, elderly woman who, in spite of poor health and encroaching years, was untiring in her search for amusement—it amused her to make friends with celebrated people. She was restless, self-indulgent and not over sincere, a creature of whims and ephemeral fancies; yet for Stephen and Mary she appeared to evince a liking which was more than just on the surface. She would ask them up to her sitting-room, would want them to sit with her in the garden, and would sometimes insist upon communal meals, inviting them to dine at her table. Agnes, the daughter, a jolly, red-haired girl, had taken an immediate fancy to Mary, and their friendship ripened with celerity, as is often the way during idle summers. As for Lady Massey she petted Mary, and mothered her as though she were a child, and soon she was mothering Stephen also. She would say: ‘I seem to have found two new children,’ and Stephen, who was in the mood to feel touched, grew quite attached to this ageing woman. Agnes was engaged to a Colonel Fitzmaurice who would probably join them that autumn in Paris. If he did so they must all foregather at once, she insisted—he greatly admired Stephen’s book and had written that he was longing to meet her.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Finally, when even my head feels like it’s detached from my body and is gently floating in space, I let out an ecstatic sigh, arch back and then collapse forward onto him. I am still, again. Now my other favorite part: I take his hand, place it over my pounding heart, and then I put my hand over his. We stay like this, hand over hand over heart, until my breath calms and I become aware again of where I am. I allow myself these few moments to revel in what feels like an epiphany in my body before turning my attention back to him. He likes to wait to come until I have and the more times I can orgasm before he does, the happier he is, but I have become much more interested in the quality of my orgasms than the quantity. The ones that move up my body and consume it in its entirety – those are the ones I want, not just the ones in which I can feel the release but I’m otherwise largely unmoved. These bodily orgasms are life-affirming and transporting to the degree that when I open my eyes, I am often shocked to find myself in #6’s room or in my own bed with my head hanging off the side across from where I thought I was. I appreciate that he wants to please me all the time, but I also want to please him. I stand up and reach down for his hand, ready to leave the now-chilly water. We quickly pat ourselves dry and land dripping on my bed. I straddle him again and kiss his inner thighs, then move my tongue up the shaft of his penis and flick my tongue against the head, which is a recent trick I’ve picked up from Cosmopolitan magazine. “You’re teasing me again,” he says and I laugh, but – and here’s where a blow job really comes in handy – I don’t have to say anything because my mouth is full and I can’t talk! One of the surprises of sex with #6 is that it’s not linear, it’s not just a means to an end. He loves the process and sometimes wears himself out before he can come; whereas I worry that makes the sex a failure, he doesn’t judge it by this one set of criteria. I am such a goal-oriented person, so have to adjust my thinking: if an orgasm is not the goal, then what is? Touch, words, sensuality, exploration, intimacy, vulnerability. I am learning that there is no bottom line in sex as I thought there was. “You make me crazy, Laura,” he says, as I climb on top of him, his rhythm becoming more persistent until he takes in a deep breath and pulses inside of me. “Thank you,” he says, when we have quieted down.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  All that’s missing is the worry that I will be found out by my parents in their bedroom two flights up from the basement and the nubby wool of the plaid sofa. Being intimate with Jack is surprising in all the best ways: fun, sensual, even transporting. It is liberating to give up control and stop dictating what end of the spectrum between making love and fucking our intercourse will be. The fact that he doesn’t know me and thus has no expectation of how my body will respond allows me to be whoever I want to be sexually at this moment in time. I had worried that I would miss Michael like a stabbing pain during whatever my first encounter would be, but having shed self-consciousness and assumptions of who I am once my clothes come off is profoundly freeing, giving me a reprieve from the sexual identity I steadfastly adhered to over the course of almost three decades with Michael. As Jack works his way back up my body, he places one hand on my stomach and reaches the other hand up to gently place his palm on one of my nipples. His touch on my stomach is the one that feels decidedly intimate; I’ve always equated arousing touches with private parts of the body that are reserved for sex, but his interest in the more mundane parts of my body – my calves, thighs, stomach – enthralls me. “You’re in great shape,” he says. “It’s hard to believe you have three kids.” “Thank you,” I say. “But yes, they’re all mine. I’ve got some stretching and sagging to prove it.” Immediately I regret saying this: learn just to say thank you , I think for the second time tonight. If he’s not noticing where I’ve lost my elasticity, it’s not my job to draw a map for him. He playfully squeezes my arm muscles, admiring them. I feel aglow from these compliments. He’s not saying that I’m lithe or I’m voluptuous, words I associate with sexiness – he’s saying I’m strong. I know that no one can create strength in another person and that you can’t fake strength, which means I can take full credit for this aspect of myself. I realize that’s exactly what I want – to be a little badass, a little unexpected, willing and able to take care of myself. He reaches over for the condom that he had earlier placed on the nightstand, but I catch his forearm and say, “Wait.” I roll over so that I am straddling him and I put my hands on his bare, buff chest. His skin is soft and smooth, not a hair in sight. I take my index finger and trace the tattoo on his left bicep. It’s the size of my fist, a large bird with Latin words underneath. “What does this mean?” I ask. “It’s a long story. I got it during a stint in the military a long time ago,” he says.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “What’s the difference if the woman is single or not?” “I would never date a woman with a dog, that’s all I’m saying,” he says with a bemused smile. This strikes me as an odd and arguably offensive comment, but the expression on his face indicates that he’s overstating for comic effect. He changes the subject and asks me about my involvement in the PTA, commenting that I am different from what he would expect from a PTA mom, that I look like the fantasy version of a PTA mom, not like the ones he’s seen. “Oh, I don’t know about that. The PTA moms I know look a lot like me. Maybe you go to the wrong PTA meetings,” I say. We return to the spot on the river where we started our walk and turn back onto the city streets so he can walk me to the subway. A block from the river, as we wait for the light to change at a busy intersection, he turns toward me, takes off his sunglasses and leans forward to kiss me. I smile when he pulls back and nod toward the light that has changed. “Sorry,” he says, smiling. “I’ve been trying to find the right moment to do that since we got to the river but you didn’t stop talking long enough to give me a chance. Something about that corner seemed just right.” We keep walking and when we pass by the pool where he teaches, we go inside so I can use the restroom before I get on the train. When I emerge, he is looking down at his phone, but he lifts his head and studies me for a minute as I approach before looking back down at his phone. “You know, you’re prettier in person than in your pictures,” he says. Not for the first time today, I find his forthrightness both refreshing and disarming. “Um, thank you?” I respond. At the subway, he stands with his hands deep inside the pockets of his athletic shorts, shifting from foot to foot, asking if we can go on a proper date, and we make a plan for the following evening in Long Island. I’m not thrilled to have to drive to a date, but I like the idea of how anonymous I will be once I am there. He puts his hands on my hips and pulls me in for a longer kiss and then I hold up a hand to wave goodbye, skipping down the subway steps. CHAPTER 22Sunshine and RosesThat evening, I don a long, silky royal blue strapless dress, tie my humidified mane of hair into a loose knot at my neck, and hail a cab to meet Karl, who has reserved a table at a jazz club. I like that he took it upon himself to make a plan without any tentative back-and-forth conversation. From his texts, he seems intelligent and well-traveled with a taste for expensive restaurants.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  When I got back to the house I swore I could still feel his eyes on me. I looked back one more time, but he was gone. I didn’t see him anywhere in the waves. I felt a creepy feeling go up my spine and was glad the dog was waiting for me. “Hi, Domi,” I said, sliding open the glass door. But Dominic didn’t come bounding toward me as usual. Instead he sniffed the air repeatedly and kept his distance. His ears went flat and he growled. I had never seen him like that before and it made me wonder if I was haunted now. He continued to growl, but the sound was cute to me. He was trying to be like a dog in the wild or a wolf. Did dogs still live in the wild? Did anything? Was there any wildness anywhere, or was all of it inhabited by tech dudes now, juice places and blow-dry bars? Had anything been left undiscovered, or did the Internet snatch it all up the moment it existed? Nothing remained untouched. Or maybe some things weren’t completely mapped out yet and there was still a little room for the mystery. Maybe some strange and beautiful boy could still pop out of the sea and surprise you. “Dominic, no,” I said. “Absolutely not. We don’t growl. We never growl at Mama.” Suddenly, I felt giddy and silly. No longer scared, not even at all. I wondered if the gods or maybe the universe had actually heard my amethyst prayer. Everything was so strange. Life was okay, though. Life was maybe even kind of cute. You simply had to expect nothing from it. That’s what the Stoics believed—Zeno and Seneca, those ancient fuckers. The trick, I now agreed, was you had to remain unattached to any future wishes or vision. You had to never get attached to any other person or expect anything good to come to you, and that was how you fell in love with life and how maybe certain fun and good things could happen to you. They only happened as long as you didn’t need anything from anyone. As long as you didn’t take anything from anyone or give any part of yourself away to another person, but you just sort of met the other person in space, good things could happen. You had to fall in love with quiet first.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I had been so afraid of dying, but suddenly I knew that death would be okay and beautiful—and even dying would be okay, because there was a heaven, sort of. Maybe it was not the way religious people imagined it, but I saw it as some kind of luminous womb to which we would all return. And because we would return there, in a way we were already there. I started to cry. All the pain and fear of the past nine months poured out of me. Theo stroked the back of my head with his hand. I didn’t want to ever move. I was floating above myself and I looked down and saw us there on the rock. I wondered how I had been led to this. He pulled back. He didn’t ask why I was crying. “It’s hard, right?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “Life is so oppressive and scary and…oppressive, and the whole time the ocean is right here. It’s like I can’t believe it’s been there this whole time. I feel like I have a new love for it or something.” “Yes,” he said. “I understand.” “Do you want to kiss?” I asked. “I’m not sure if that is how you feel about me? Or maybe you just like me as a friend. I’m not sure.” “Yes,” he said. “I want to kiss you very much.” We kissed on the lips, gently at first. His eyelashes were thick and black and he tasted like the ocean. His lips were chapped from the saltwater, I guess, and it felt like I was kissing a flower. I licked each of them. Then he opened his mouth a little wider and I lightly put my tongue in the front of his mouth. He began to suck on my tongue and I felt that my tongue and the rest of me would go through him, like I was going to be pulled inside him as though he were a big fish. I got dizzy. I took his tongue into my mouth and I felt that I was circling through his body, but also through an entire life cycle of some sort. I felt that I was spinning forward. He kissed my forehead and I laid my head back on his shoulder. “So how old are you anyway?” I asked. “I’m not a teenager,” he said. “If that’s what you’re wondering.” “Will you tell me something about you? About what you were like as a teenager?” “Tomorrow,” he said. “Will you come back tomorrow? I have to go now.” I wanted to ask where. Where could he possibly have to go? We had barely begun kissing.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  What joy it brings me to cede decision-making to another person, even if it is something as inconsequential as where and on what we’ll dine! There are so many decisions to be made every day, for myself and my marriage and my kids, so the way he takes over with a menu brings me a momentary reprieve. I am pleasantly surprised when he remembers all the particulars of my culinary preferences – to be listened to like this, to actually be heard and for someone to care about what I like and don’t like, feels like a true wonder. There’s something old school about him that I find utterly appealing: picking me up for our dates, holding doors for me, helping me with my jacket, ordering for me, insisting on paying the bill as if my even reaching for my wallet offends him. Being treated well, being doted on, having someone make me feel exceptional – a quiet, hopeful part of me dares to believe that maybe I deserve this. Once again, our conversation comes easily and ranges from the mundane to the difficulties of our marriages to the challenges of our childhoods. As dinner continues, we start leaning closer to each other, touching each other’s arms to emphasize a point, and when he returns from the restroom, he approaches from behind so that I don’t see him coming and kisses me on the nape of my neck. I take in a quick, audible breath, my heart quickening. He sits down next to me and continues the conversation without skipping a beat. After he pays the bill, he looks up at me, asking intently, “Shall we go to the jazz club as planned or do you want to go home?” “I think we should go home now,” I say, meeting his gaze. It turns out that the correct subway is about ten steps from the restaurant, and also that this restaurant is not the one he intended to take me to – thus the confusion. We chat as the train barrels downtown, but the tension between us is palpable. I am curious to see how this well-mannered, courteous man will devour me, which is all that I am hoping will happen when we get back to his apartment. He lets his fingers brush against mine as we ride the elevator upstairs, but otherwise maintains a gentlemanly distance. I slip out of my shoes at the door and take my jacket off so that I am down to my skinny jeans and a ruffly silk blouse with spaghetti straps that are easy to slip off. We settle on the couch for a moment, in the same spots as last Saturday night, but it only takes a moment for him to breach the space between us. He kisses me with passion and a lot of tongue so that I pull back a little to get my bearings.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Then one of them, Cleopas by name, answered him. “You must be the only person around Jerusalem,” he said, “who doesn’t know what’s been going on there these last few days.” “What things?” he asked. “To do with Jesus of Nazareth,” they said to him. “He was a prophet. He acted with power and he spoke with power, before God and all the people. Our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. But we were hoping that he was going to redeem Israel! “And now, what with all this, it’s the third day since it happened. But some women from our group have astonished us. They went to his tomb very early this morning, and didn’t find his body. They came back saying they’d seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Some of the folk with us went off to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they didn’t see him.” “You are so senseless!” he said to them. “So slow in your hearts to believe all the things the prophets said to you! Don’t you see? This is what had to happen: the Messiah had to suffer, and then come into his glory!” So he began with Moses, and with all the prophets, and explained to them the things about himself throughout the whole Bible. They drew near to the village where they were heading. Jesus gave the impression that he was going further, but they urged him strongly not to. “Stay with us,” they said. “It’s nearly evening; the day is almost gone.” And he went in to stay with them. As he was sitting at table with them he took the bread and gave thanks. He broke it and gave it to them. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Do you remember how our hearts were burning inside us, as he talked to us on the road, as he opened up the Bible for us?” And they got up then and there and went back to Jerusalem. There they found the eleven, and the people with them, gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord really has been raised! He’s appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. (24:13–35) The story is full of echoes.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I roll off him and head to the bathroom to clean up. When I emerge, I note that he has assembled the clothes that had been thrown with abandon in various parts of the apartment and neatly arranged them on his bed. He pulls on sweatpants while I put my jeans and flouncy top back on. “You don’t have to get dressed. I’m going to walk home, it’ll take me ten minutes,” I say. “No, chivalry is not dead, I’ll put you in a taxi,” he says. I shake my head and insist that I am fine to walk home on my own. He kisses me goodbye, asking me to text when I arrive home, which I do exactly ten minutes later. I also text Lauren to let her know I’m home. “How was it? Please tell me you’re back in action,” she writes. “Indeed I am. Sex was great. He’s very oral and very verbal and I’m not sure how I feel about either, but I do like him so we’ll see.” * Like clockwork, he starts to text me every night around 10 asking, “You awake?” and I write back, “Indeed I am” or “Why yes, how lovely to hear from you,” and within seconds he calls and we talk about our days and kids, articles we’ve read and what we cooked for dinner. He listens with exceedingly fine attention, following up on previous comments I’ve made or issues that have concerned me. On Wednesday nights, he casually asks what my plans are for the weekend and we book Saturday night dates. I love that he takes the game-playing and guessing out of dating. He makes it clear that he wants to talk to me and see me, so that I look forward to getting that daily “You awake?” text without having to worry whether or not it will come. If he hasn’t made a reservation for dinner in advance, he has come up with ideas and we ride the subway from borough to borough on Saturday nights, eating Greek food in Astoria, Russian food in Brighton Beach, and Malaysian food in Chinatown. We are both adventurous eaters who prefer an authentic ethnic meal at a casual dive to a formal, upscale restaurant – though sometimes he takes me to those too. One night he asks if he can cook for me and I arrive at his apartment to find the small table for two set with linen napkins, candles, even a crystal pitcher of water. I try to help in the kitchen but he says no, I should pour myself a glass of wine and keep him company while he cooks. He is apologetic about his cramped kitchen with its peeling counters and ’70s stove, but I tell him he could be cooking in a cave and I would be equally enchanted.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I haven’t hung myself from any silk scarves. So I guess that’s progress?” “Good,” I said. “And you?” “I’ve done it again,” I said. “I’ve fallen hard. Only this time I think it’s real.” “The surfer?” asked Claire. She sounded skeptical, and I wondered what right she had to be skeptical when she had just been in a bottomless pit. “Swimmer,” I said. “All we do is talk. Or all we did was talk until last night when he went down on me for forty-five minutes.” “Nooooo,” she said. “Yes. At least forty-five. What does it mean when a boy goes down on you for forty-five minutes? I feel like it has to be love. Like, I feel like he loves me.” “Either he loves you or he loves pussy. One of the two.” I laughed. “No, he doesn’t seem like that. He isn’t a pussy hound. Well, I can’t tell. I mean, I think he is gorgeous, but he isn’t typically gorgeous. But if I think he is gorgeous then probably a million others do too.” “Usually that’s the way it works,” she said. “Still, I’m glad you’re getting shagged properly. It’s important. I think it’s very important that you be well fucked.” “We haven’t fucked yet,” I said. “I haven’t even seen his dick.” “Oh really?” she said. “Then it could be love on his part.” “That’s what I think,” I said. “But what about you?” “I’m smitten,” I said. “Of course you are. It’s especially intoxicating when there is an expiration date. Aren’t you going back to Phoenix in a month?” “Six weeks,” I said. “Well, there you go. That makes it perfect! A summer romance.” “But what if it’s more? He doesn’t know I’m leaving,” I said. “But you do,” she said. I thought about this. All I imagined I wanted was the love of someone beautiful like Theo—the kind of love where it stayed young and glittery and never got old. One way to keep it shiny was to have an end date on it. I’d thought it was Jamie who didn’t want to commit. But the group was right—it was me who was really the unavailable one. I was picking people with whom I couldn’t have that ultimate intimacy: Jamie, who couldn’t make enough room for me in his life, and now these younger men. Their age made it safe to pine for them, to torture myself, because it ensured I would always be pushing against some sort of friction, an inability to really be together. And no matter what any of them felt for me, I would never have to see it grow old, because I would be returning to Phoenix. Even in the case of Theo, where he seemed to actually like me, I would be leaving. I was in control of the way things would end.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I shower while he shaves in front of the bathroom mirror and we hurriedly dress and say goodbye, as he heads off to a meeting and I go in search of coffee that will be strong enough to wake me up. * I have always thought that my birthday, which falls over Labor Day weekend, is perfectly placed on the calendar, that I am lucky to celebrate another year of my life in synchronicity with summer getting one last hurrah. Usually we are away on our annual summer vacation in Cape Cod and I wake up to handmade cards and gifts from Michael and the kids: rocks and seashells that have been painted, small gifts wrapped in aluminum foil, breakfasts in bed that the kids eat themselves while I sip from a mug of coffee. Michael would let me sleep late and in the afternoon would corral the kids so that I could have an hour or two to read on the beach by myself, and later, as the sun set, we would eat lobsters and drink cheap white wine at a no-frills clam shack. Summer got a proper send-off while I got another year added to my age, awash in the love of the family I had created. This year, as I turn 48 years old, there will be no family holiday. Daisy is away at school and holidays are from the last era of our family life, but Hudson and Georgia pull through. Hudson gives me a deck of playing cards with a note on the front that says “52 things I love about you”, and every card contains a note scrawled in Sharpie: you laugh at all of my jokes, you laugh at all of your own jokes, you make me food when I’m hungry and even when I think I’m not hungry, you let me play my music in the car, you always listen to me, you are strong, I know how much you love me. It is the best gift I’ve ever received, and I embarrass him and worry Georgia when I start crying as I flip through the deck. This is enough , I think to myself, more than enough . My parents arrive later, bearing a cooler filled with food my mother has cooked for me: an Asian shrimp salad with mint and lime juice, a poached salmon with thin lemon slices lining the top, fresh bread and bright red tomatoes from her garden. For dessert, in another cooler, are four pints of ice cream they procured from my favorite farm stand. There is enough food here for at least a dozen people, but there’s just the five of us. I know my mother is worried about me – her forced cheer is determined not to let in one sad thought of the way things used to be on my birthday – and I am matching her efforts with my own so that she doesn’t have to worry.