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 Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  His aunt and his mother kissed each other, as he had seen them do a hundred times, and then his aunt turned to look for them, and waved. They waved back, and she started slowly across the street, moving, he thought with wonder, like an old woman. ‘Well, she ain’t going to be out to service this morning, I tell you that,’ said Elisha, and yawned again. ‘And look like you going to be half asleep,’ John said. ‘Now don’t you mess with me this morning,’ Elisha said, ‘because you ain’t got so holy I can’t turn you over my knee. I’s your big brother in the Lord—you just remember that. ’ Now they were on the near corner. His father and mother were saying good-bye to Praying Mother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. The praying woman waved to them, and they waved back. Then his mother and his father were alone, coming toward them. ‘Elisha,’ said John, ‘Elisha.’ ‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘what you want now?’ John, staring at Elisha, struggled to tell him something more—struggled to say—all that could never be said. Yet: ‘I was down in the valley,’ he dared, ‘I was by myself down there. I won’t never forget. May God forget me if I forget.’ Then his mother and his father were before them. His mother smiled, and took Elisha’s outstretched hand. ‘Praise the Lord this morning,’ said Elisha. ‘He done give us something to praise Him for.’ ‘Amen,’ said his mother, ‘praise the Lord!’ John moved up to the short, stone step, smiling a little, looking down on them. His mother passed him, and started into the house. ‘You better come on upstairs,’ she said, still smiling, ‘and take off them wet clothes. Don’t want you catching cold.’ And her smile remained unreadable; he could not tell what it hid. And to escape her eyes, he kissed her, saying: ‘Yes, Mama. I’m coming.’ She stood behind him, in the doorway, waiting. ‘Praise the Lord, Deacon,’ Elisha said. ‘See you at the morning service, Lord willing.’ ‘Amen,’ said his father, ‘praise the Lord.’ He started up the stone steps, staring at John, who blocked the way. ‘Go on upstairs, boy,’ he said, ‘like your mother told you.’ John looked at his father and moved from his path, stepping down into the street again. He put his hand on Elisha’s arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father at his back. ‘Elisha,’ he said, ‘no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there. ’ Elisha grinned, and looked up at his father. ‘He come through,’ cried Elisha, ‘didn’t he, Deacon Grimes? The Lord done laid him out, and turned him around and wrote his new name down in glory.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Praying Mother Washington took him in her arms, and kissed him, and their tears, his tears and the tears of the old, black woman, mingled. ‘God bless you, son. Run on, honey, and don’t get weary!’ ‘Lord, I been introduced, To the Father and the Son, And I ain’t No stranger now! ’ Yet, as he moved among them, their hands touching, and tears falling, and the music rising—as though he moved down a great hall, full of a splendid company—something began to knock in that listening, astonished, newborn, and fragile heart of his; something recalling the terrors of the night, which were not finished, his heart seemed to say; which, in this company, were now to begin. And, while his heart was speaking, he found himself before his mother. Her face was full of tears, and for a long while they looked at each other, saying nothing. And once again, he tried to read the mystery of that face—which, as it had never before been so bright and pained with love, had never seemed before so far from him, so wholly in communion with a life beyond his life. He wanted to comfort her, but the night had given him no language, no second sight, no power to see into the heart of any other. He knew only—and now, looking at his mother, he knew that he could never tell it—that the heart was a fearful place. She kissed him, and she said: ‘I’m mighty proud, Johnny. You keep the faith. I’m going to be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave.’ Then he stood before his father. In the moment that he forced himself to raise his eyes and look into his father’s face, he felt in himself a stiffening, and a panic, and a blind rebellion, and a hope for peace. The tears still on his face, and smiling still, he said: ‘Praise the Lord.’ ‘Praise the Lord,’ said his father. He did not move to touch him, did not kiss him, did not smile. They stood before each other in silence, while the saints rejoiced; and John struggled to speak the authoritative, the living word that would conquer the great division between his father and himself. But it did not come, the living word; in the silence something died in John, and something came alive.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  To these add the book of Acts, in which Paul is the main character in sixteen of its twenty-eight chapters. Thus half of the New Testament is about Paul. Moreover, according to the New Testament, Paul was chiefly responsible for expanding the early Jesus movement to include Gentiles (non-Jews) as well as Jews. The result over time was a new religion, even though Paul (like Jesus) was a Jew who saw himself working within Judaism. Neither intended that a new religion would emerge in his wake. This does not mean that Christianity is a mistake. But it does mean that the two most important foundational figures of Christianity were Jews whose passion was the God and the people of Israel. When Paul spoke to non-Jews, it was to the God of Israel as disclosed in Jesus to whom he called them. Nevertheless, Paul more than any other figure in the New Testament was responsible for the emergence of Christianity as a new religion that, though it included Jews, became increasingly separated from Judaism. Paul’s importance extends beyond the New Testament into the history of Christianity. Many of its most important theologians and reformers were decisively shaped by Paul’s letters. St. Augustine (354–430) was converted to Christianity by a passage from Paul. Before his conversion he was a gifted, brilliant, and troubled young man who fathered a child with a woman to whom he was not married. His spiritual journey led him through philosophy to Manicheanism, a religion that emphasized that the flesh was bad and spirit was good. Then one day, as Augustine tells the story, he heard a child singing, “Pick it up, read it.” He picked up a copy of the New Testament, and his eyes fell upon Romans 13:13–14: Let us live…not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ… In his Confessions, commonly seen as the world’s first spiritual autobiography, he reports: Instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all of the gloom of doubt vanished away. After this experience mediated by Paul, Augustine became the most influential theologian of the first millennium of Christianity. In the more than thousand years from Augustine to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, Paul continued to be revered because his writings were part of Christian sacred scripture. But during the Reformation, he became decisively important for Protestants. Martin Luther (1483–1546) had his transforming experience of radical grace while preparing lectures on Paul. Paul became the foundation of his theology, especially the Pauline contrasts between grace and law, and faith and works, language that has been paradigmatically important for Lutherans ever since. John Calvin (1509–64), the other most important Protestant Reformer, also made Paul central to his theology.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Paul is standing in the prow looking forward. Peter steers. Paul guides. And the boat sails full before the wind. In coauthoring this book in the “Year of Paul,” June 29, 2008, to June 29, 2009, as proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, our common hope is that we can get Paul out of the Reformation world and back into the Roman world, to see him properly as contrasting not Christianity to Judaism or Protestantism to Catholicism, but Jewish covenantal traditions to Roman imperial theology. Even though Protestants agree about Paul’s importance, they see his message very differently. Two visions are especially divergent. For some, Paul has been a mediator of radical grace, unconditional grace—grace without conditions. So it was for Luther. Paul’s message of justification by grace through faith brought about a joyous liberation from his anxious effort to be right with God by meeting God’s requirements, a fear-filled task that tor mented him into his thirties. Radical grace meant for Luther that God accepts us just as we are, and the Christian life is about living more and more fully into this realization, not about measuring up to requirements. For Luther, Paul’s message was about the end of requirements as the basis of our relationship with God. For other Protestants, including even many descendants of Luther, Paul’s theology has been understood not as the abolition of requirements, but as the new requirement—namely, believing his theology is what we must do in order to be saved. In its Lutheran form, despite the emphasis upon God’s grace, “justification by grace through faith” was heard as “justification by faith” and thus as involving a fearful form of works righteousness: the “work” was “to believe.” Faith meant believing in a correct set of doctrines (which happened to be Lutheran), and this was the gateway to salvation. What Luther experienced as joyful liberation from anxiety became the source of deep anxiety. Faith—believing—became the new requirement we are to fulfill and by which we are to measure up. This notion—that we are saved by believing a set of teachings about Jesus, God, and the Bible—continues among many Protestants in our time. It is especially prevalent among those who emphasize “believing the right things” as foundational to being Christian and thus as a requirement for salvation. PAUL THE SPOILER In addition to those with divergent interpretations of Paul that are positive, a growing number of Christians have a negative impression of him. For some, the reason is the difficulty of reading and understanding Paul’s letters. They are very unlike the gospels, which are full of stories and memorable teachings. Rather, as letters written to Christian communities that had already been taught about Jesus, they do not often refer to his message and teaching. They strike many readers as “theological” in the negative sense of the word—as abstract rather than concrete, wordy rather than memorable.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Calvin’s theological descendants include millions of Protestants: Puritans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists (today’s United Church of Christ), and other Reformed denominations. Two centuries later, Paul played a central role in the birth of the Methodist church. Its founder, John Wesley (1703–91), was converted to his mission to reform the Church of England while listening to a reading of Luther’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. His life’s work eventually led to a new denomination, now the second largest Protestant denomination in America. Thus hundreds of millions of Protestants around the world, whether they know it or not, have Paul as their primary theological ancestor. To say the obvious, Paul matters. But how he matters and how much he matters vary greatly among Christians. There are very diverse understandings of Paul’s importance, message, and character. To some extent, the same could be said of Jesus, for he is diversely interpreted as well. But all Christians agree that Jesus was admirable, attractive, and appealing. Not so with Paul. THE CATHOLIC PAUL AND THE PROTESTANT PAUL Catholics and Protestants see Paul’s importance quite differently. For Protestants (at least historically—we’re not sure about the present), an interpretation of Paul’s theology and language is foundational for understanding Christianity. Not so for Catholics. Though they see Paul as a saint and his letters as sacred scripture, they have not made Paul central in the way that Protestants have. This difference can easily be seen in the history of Protestant and Catholic theology since the Reformation. But we illustrate it by speaking autobiographically. Borg: In the Lutheran form of Christianity in which I grew up, Paul was more important than Jesus. Of course, none of my pastors or Sunday school teachers ever said this. Indeed, they would be puzzled by the statement. But as I look back on my experience of growing up Lutheran, it is clear that I was taught to see Jesus, God, and the Christian gospel through a Pauline lens as mediated by Luther. I was blissfully unaware of this, of course. I took it for granted that our way of seeing Jesus, God, and Christianity was not a way of seeing them, but the way. For me as a Lutheran, the foundational Christian message was “justification by grace through faith,” a Pauline and Lutheran phrase often shortened to “justification by faith.” What this meant to me was that I would be accepted by God “by faith”—and faith meant believing in Jesus and God as understood by Paul and Luther. Not until I went to seminary in my early twenties did I realize how Lutheran my way of seeing Paul and the gospel was. Not that the Lutheran view is simply wrong—it’s much better than some. But I learned that there are other vantage points for seeing Paul, some that add greatly to his richness and fullness.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  I’ve also seen the benefits of porn. Sometimes it helps restimulate desire in those whose eroticism has gone into hibernation. For others it facilitates the ability to fantasize, thus boosting arousal and contributing to an overall sense of sexiness. Still others use images gleaned from porn to help them become orgasmic. With the increasing availability of erotic videos, many couples enjoy their stimulating effects together. Most commonly of all, porn is a harmless accompaniment to masturbation. Porn is essentially fantasy and fantasies can be beneficial, destructive, or inocuous. Like most aspects of eroticism, porn is too complex in its meanings and uses to adopt one single attitude toward it. Of course, much of it is deliberately designed to offend traditional morality. A small segment of it is truly horrifying because it gives expression to the darkest impulses of the human psyche. Nonetheless, perceiving porn as the enemy and seeking to eradicate it (a losing proposition) is counterproductive because it diverts our attention from the more realistic goal of forging a societal consensus about acceptable behavior. Although I think the repressive, censoring impulse does a dangerous disservice to the fight against sexual mistreatment, I consider the expressive impulse—the growing willingness of women to speak forcefully about their experiences with male sexuality—to be exactly what’s needed. As women break their long silence they make all of us face the predatory expressions of the erotic impulse. Following the lead of courageous women, some men are now also revealing how they too have been hurt by sexual exploitation. Most important, greater expressiveness helps women become stronger. In the final analysis, only when women possess political and economic powers equal to men will an unambiguous message go out across the land: fantasize whatever you please, but nonconsensual sex will not be tolerated! SELF-ASSESSMENTI’m sure you’ve already learned a great deal about your fantasies, including what they mean and how you use them. Chances are that at least some of your fantasies focus on things you would like to try in the future or have enjoyed in the past. The obvious connection between these images and real life should concern you only if you’re contemplating doing something nonconsensual or genuinely dangerous, such as engaging in unprotected intercourse with a nonmonogamous partner. It is particularly important to make a distinction between thought and action when a fantasy violates your values or would be destructive or hurtful to yourself or others if acted upon. Contemplate these two questions: • How comfortable are you with the knowledge that a dimension of your eroticism exists only in fantasy? • How large a gap can you tolerate between what you imagine and what you choose to do?

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “The look on the son of a bitch’s face, I thought he was gonna shit a bagel.” I’ve just seen this man for the first time five hours ago and already I’m planning how I’d like to decorate my bedroom in his home. Dad , I’d ask him, will you hang a shelf where I can place all my Jesus figurines? He’d install blinds on my bedroom windows and check their locks every night at dark. Then he’d tuck me in, pushing the edge of my comforter between the mattress and box spring to make sure I’m safe and secure. “See that?” Cookie says. “He took one look at your sore ass and left you again. Good thing you have me to care about you.” But nothing she says about my father can bring me down from what I’ve just learned about him: that he exists . There’s someone else in the world with me . . . I’m not alone anymore. I’ve always wondered, Who is this man? Is he even alive? He’s not just alive, he’s handsome . . . and looks normal. My universe has shifted. Paul Accerbi. I had heard those words, but they have new meaning now. In our first apartment in Saint James, Cookie would tie me to the radiator and invoke his name as she beat me. “Paul Accerbi!” she’d scream, yanking my hair to pound my head on the floor or whipping my back with a belt. “He hurt me the MOST,” she’d wail. “So YOU will hurt the most!” I knew this from the first night that I met her when I was four, and she never let me forget it. Cookie shared her stories of who each of our separate fathers were. Some we knew to be true; when she talked about Rosie’s dad and mine, her stories never changed about Vito and Paul. But the details always got blurred with the identity of the fathers of my other siblings—she claimed they ranged from famous pop singers from her go-go dancer days to gas station attendants she met on the rebound. What was shocking for me to learn about Paul is that he lived close enough that stopping in the deli for lunch could have been part of his normal routine. After Cookie’s gone out for a drink, I grab the Suffolk County phone book; my stomach is doing flips as I near the first page of A . I scan the listings . . . until I reach the only name that matches his: Accerbi, Paul & Joan My father and what appears to be his wife live in Riverhead, which, if I’m reading the phone book’s map correctly, is probably a forty-minute drive east of our house. I flip back to the A ’s and close the cover, staring at the no-nonsense yellow and the black text.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  If I were living purely from my mind, I might have become a nun. And I don’t mean a naughty nun with no panties under my habit—I really love routines and quiet. I can get a ton of pleasure from precision, rigor, and discipline (those who have experienced me as a teacher may have an inkling of this). I like being of service. And I feel a thrumming, full aliveness when in conversation with the divine. I think a lot about what god is, how god is, and where we are relating to and running from and surrendering to god. My answers are always shifting, but that conversation has been continuous in my life. But! If I were living purely from my body, I might have achieved some world record for sexual activity, or at least be the belle of some wild bordello. Perhaps a Black Moulin Rouge singer4—I love seduction, I love sex, I love an exposed shoulder, the curves of the hip, the moment of realizing that under the top layer of clothing there’s no bra or boxers containing the body I am observing. I love the unspeakable heat of romance. I love all the ways we are sensual. I like to smell good, taste everything yummy, feel how alive skin is, listen to sounds of breath and pleasure, see the beauty of flesh and bones. Laugh uncontrollably. Play. Feel alive. My body has the capacity to sense immense pleasure, and as I get older I keep intentionally expanding my sensual awareness and decolonizing it so that I can sense more pleasure than capitalism believes in. I am a hermit nudist at heart. It has taken me a while to learn this, but I feel most at home when I am alone and naked. Or with someone where we can be alone/together, naked. I know that my body could never be inappropriate. If I walk around naked all the time, or wear a muumuu slit to the moon to show my big dimpled thighs, or let my tummy hang soft and low, it’s right. I am of nature. I have cycles in my body that reflect the cycles of day and night, of the seasons, of the moon and the tides. My body is a gorgeous miracle. I know it is only conditioning and shame, particularly fat shame, that keeps me covered (especially when I am in places where it’s too hot to wear a top and men are running around shirtless).

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  Markey fell atop me, sending his thick erection down my throat. His cry of pleasure conjured images of another cock, a fat, throbbing column of living flesh I would never again be privileged to take. With a sob, I threw him on his back and examined him. He was larger than Beet…everything that mattered was measured against Warren Borak…but not as thick through the root. I tongued the slit and slipped my lips over the bulbous crown, slowly riding the shaft to his groin, burying my nose in his clean, black bush, drawing cries of astonishment from his cherry lips. I slowly climbed the pole, keeping up a slight suction as I reached the end. Then I tongued the underside down into his testicles. His legs spasmed before opening to my touch. I took the stones in my mouth, testing their firmness. Innocence, I thought. This was what innocence tasted like…firm, strong, clean, pulsing, exciting…fucking wonderful! “Oh, Daniel!” he moaned as I moved a hand over his lean chest. “Oh, man! Oh, Danny! Oh…oh…oh…” I came off him and licked my way to his chest with his excited cock throbbing against my chest. He shivered when I licked a nipple and groaned when I nipped the other. His breath came raggedly, his chest heaved. A fine sheen of sweat on his forehead shone in the gloomy truck. “Do it again,” he begged, his broad hands on my shoulders, pushing me back down his torso. I laughed softly as I tongued him all the way down into his curly bush. I held his bucking cock steady and went to work in earnest, washing the big glans and bobbing up and down on the shaft rhythmically. But it was another cock I took down my throat. A familiar shaft, a loving, comfortable column of flesh. I moaned his name in my head… Beet! Beet! Beet!” “Ohhh, Daniel! I…I didn’t know it would be…be so…so good!” Finally, I began to discern differences. This column was longer, harder to take to the root. The aroma was different, the verbal entreaties not so gruff, the hands cradling my head more gentle. Beet slowly departed, bestowing a crooked smile on his successor. Then, as his thinner, younger baritone vocalized his ecstasy, it was Markey I was pleasuring. I clasped his buttocks and pulled him up, lifting him off the floor of the vehicle. With a groan, he thrust his hips, driving his big cock into me, coming with a mighty roar and a geyser of tangy cum. The force of his contractions drove gouts of semen down my throat, almost strangling me. For a moment, I thought he had gone into convulsions. His body thrashed in my hands. He whined as he tried to force himself farther down my throat. Then he suddenly collapsed back onto the sleeping bag. Had he not been gasping desperately for oxygen, I would have feared he’d died of his efforts.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  A few days later, I'm back in the Old Quarter. I have to duck my head to get through the low concrete passageway to the home and kitchen of Madame Anh Tuyet and family. Up a steep flight of steps, off with the shoes, and I'm ushered into a typical old Hanoi residence: a living area facing the street, with a small balcony, dining table, vanity mirror in the corner, raised platform in front of the family shrine, which is crowded with photographs of departed loved ones, offerings of flowers, fruit, figurines. Overhead, a sleeping loft, and upstairs, a large, covered but open-to-the-street kitchen where Madame Tuyet and daughters prepare her famous ca qua quon thit, snakehead fish stuffed with pork, and ga nuong mat ong, a honey-roasted, hacked chicken that has local patrons lining up and down the street when she's open. Madame Tuyet has won numerous gold medals in countrywide culinary competitions, and she proudly shows me her certificates before hurrying to her upstairs kitchen. She fillets the snakehead fish, deep-fries the carcass and head for garnish in a wok full of simmering oil, then sets it aside. She slices the fillets paper thin on the bias, fills them with a ground pork and mushroom mixture as for paupiettes, then dips them in batter and deep-fries them before arranging around the now leaping, curved fish body—as if reassembling the creature. Her chicken, which she has butterflied up the breast bone and splayed flat, she slowly roasts in one of a row of small, carbon- and grease-blackened old electric ovens, removing them constantly to shellac with a secret honey-sugar-syrup mixture and covering them periodically with bits of lined white index cards strategically placed to prevent scorching. A daughter effortlessly fills spring rolls with shrimp and pork; fills condiment bowls with chili sauce, nuoc mam, vinegar and green papaya, salt, pepper, lime, and chilies. Suddenly there's stir-fried shrimp and vegetables, and spicy beef too, and I'm seated with Linh and the whole family at the dinner table. It being Tet, a chung cake is placed center table. No one touches it. Apparently, the chung cake is the fruitcake or panettone of Vietnam: gotta have it—but no one really eats it. We all know by now that Vietnamese food can be great. And I could describe that sensational meal at Madame Tuyet's using all the words you hear so often from travelers returning from Vietnam: fresh, flavorful, vibrant, crunchy, supernaturally bright looking and tasting. But I won't.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  “The guy told Dad he heard some squeaking in the back of the car, but he didn’t see anything back there. Dad said that when they opened the trunk to see if the spare tire was any good, they found five little kittens. They were very young and very little and four of them were dead. Dad took Katzenburger into his office and put her by the heater and gave her some skim milk. When he brought her home she could hardly walk. We took her to Poodle’s doctor, and he gave us some kitten vitamins and he wouldn’t give Katzen her shots for a few weeks and that for only about five weeks old she is a very healthy Katzen. We have to give her vitamins every two hours. Look!” Carla holds up a plastic dropper bottle filled with a dark bilious substance. “Smell!” Carla commands. I smell. My nasal passages are cleared for eternity. Carla laughs villainously. “Ha!” She bounces up and down on the seat. “Aha! We fixed you. That’s still not as smelly as your wrestling clothes,” she continues gleefully. “But anything worse might be permanently damaging.” “You sure showed me.” The stuff doesn’t smell that bad, actually. I take a cautious whiff. It just surprises you. “Smells very nutritious,” I say, handing it back. Carla is really happy. I confess without too much self-consciousness that seeing her this way really gets me off. My face expands into a smile. I can’t control it. My lips pull back over my gums. Smiling is easier when you don’t have any teeth. Probably not as pretty, though. Carla talks on about the promise of jars and jars of applesauce to be canned and speculates concerning cruelty-to-animals statutes. I guess I’m a little dizzy. The lights make me a little sick. It’s also about 8,000 degrees in this car. I crack my window. Carla brings her speculations to a halt. “Don’t get too much wind on the Katzen,” she warns. “Just need some air,” I respond. “Louden.” She takes my chin in one hand as she guides the DeSoto with the other. “Are you all right?” “Ah’m hungry,” I whimper. “Do you suppose if I called Shute he’d come down to the hotel tonight and wrestle me in one of the banquet rooms? I don’t know if I can last another week and a half.” “You could just forget it. You don’t have to wrestle him.” “Too late,” I say. “I’ve made my bed. Now I’ve got to starve and get hell beat out of me in it. I’ll eat a little something now; then I’ll be okay for work. And maybe you could fix us a snack when I get home. A couple hot fudge sundaes, perhaps? Some rhubarb pie? Two or three double cheeseburgers, maybe?” “Really?” Carla is wide-eyed. “No.” I sigh. “How about some applesauce?” Carla suggests. “Wonderful,” I reply.

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

  Sleeping with Blaze is a fantasy, yes, but it's also proof that I have given myself full permission to have a private life. I have proven in so many ways to myself over the past year that I am strong, resilient, adventurous, curious, passionate and open, but it turns out I have one last thing to prove to myself, that I can be a mother and a fulfilled woman and that the two are not mutually exclusive. Sandy, sticky and freckled from the sun by early evening, I luxuriate in a long shower, scrubbing myself clean with the coconut-scented bath products the resort has provided. I shimmy into my favorite dress, the bright orange Indian-print halter I wore on one of my dates with #4, knowing this is the easiest access piece of clothing I own. I tuck a condom into my small straw clutch purse and then the four of us head out to dinner. […] I have a small smile and am looking not at the camera but sideways at them, cherishing this moment and, as I've done a million times before, feeling gratitude for their extraordinary relationship. […] I think guiltily of the condom hidden inside my purse, trying to persuade myself that it's OK that it's there, that all of this – my thriving and my kids thriving – goes hand in hand.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  The movie, Community Action Center, is pretty great. You liked its frenzied variety and absurdity, though you felt perplexed by its banishment of cock, as you think the category of women should be capacious enough to include it—“like the blob that ate Detroit,” you say. I agreed, but wondered how to make space for the nonphallic if the phallic is always pushing its way back into the room. In whose world are these terms mutually exclusive? you said, justly agitated. In whose world is the morphological imaginary defined as that which is not real? In one of my favorites of your drawings, two Popsicles are talking to each other. One accuses, “You’re more interested in fantasy than reality.” The other responds, “I’m interested in the reality of my fantasy.” Both of the Popsicles are melting off their sticks. After the movie had finished, the screen flashed a parting dedication: “to the queerest of the queer.” The audience applauded, and I applauded too. But inside the dedication felt like a needle zigzagging off the record after a great song. Whatever happened to horizontality? Whatever happened to the difference is spreading? I tried to hold on to what I liked most about the movie, which was watching people hit each other during sex without it seeming violent, the scene of someone jerking off with a chunk of purple quartz down by the water, and the slow sewing of feathers onto a girl’s butt. Really that’s all I remember now. And that the girl having the feathers sewn onto her butt was pretty in an unusual way, and that her sexuality reminded me of mine in ways I couldn’t name but that moved me. Those parts made that little portal swing open for me: I think we have—and can have—a right to be free. I collect these moments. I know they hold a key. It doesn’t matter to me if the key must remain perched in a lock, incipient. The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window … the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window. Out in the lobby, a friend complains that the subtitle of the movie should have been “flip the butch” (presumably an insult), and is seriously grossed out by the sex. Ugh, why did we have to stare at so many hairy pussies? I drift off to the water fountain.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  I held him in my mouth as that magnificent hard-on slowly softened. Giving the slit a final lick, I sat up beside him. His arm was across his eyes; my worst fears were realized. He was repulsed by shame and fear: shame at flaunting convention; fear of deviant longings. Ignoring my own painful erection, I moved back to my own bag. “Danny…uh, Daniel?” A hand caught my arm. I paused. “Yeah, kid?” “Can I try it? I mean, I won’t do it good like you did, but can I try?” “You want to suck me?” I asked, a smile lifting the corners of my mouth. “Blow job. They call it a blow job, don’t they?” He peeked out from beneath his arm. I laughed aloud. “You bet they do! And don’t worry about doing a good job. Touch me with those handsome lips, and I’ll cum all over everything.” He pushed me on my back and hovered over me. Timidly, he tongued a nipple. I shivered in delight. After giving attention to the other one, he laid his head on my chest. “You did this with him, didn’t you?” “Him? You mean Beet?” I considered lying, but this wasn’t the time for it. “Yeah. How did you guess?” “You said his name.” I laughed again. “I had a mouth full of cock at the time, how could you tell?” He shrugged against my chest, sending goose bumps down my frame. “I just could.” I pulled him up to me. “Yeah, I did. I called to him. I had a ghost to lay away, Markey. And do you know what? He approves.” “He does? He approves me?” “Absolutely, you handsome fucker.” “Can I try it now? I’ll probably gag a lot, will that turn you off?” “Gag all you want, my friend—” “Lover,” he interrupted me. “We went way beyond being friends tonight. I’m your lover now.” Amazed at the confidence in his young voice, I tousled his hair. “Lover. I like the sound of that.” “Mmm,” he answered, slipping his lips over my leaking dick. He gagged, tried again and did better the second time. Then he came up and looked at me. “Did you do the other thing, too? You know, doing it to each other?” “Yeah, we did,” I answered, shoving his head down on me. There was some more sucking and gagging. He came up again. “Are we going to do that, too?” “You bet your good-looking ass!” I said. “But first you gotta finish this.” “Okay,” he said with a grin and went back to work. I’ve always had good orgasms, and those with Beet Borak were earth shaking. The first one with Marcus Markey didn’t quite rise to that level, but it would only get better. Even as I exploded, and he valiantly struggled to take everything I could deliver, I fantasized about that other thing he was anxious to try. DADDIES IN DAMIAN Gavin Atlas

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  As an intern in the first year of residency, one is little more than a paper pusher against a backdrop of life and death—though, even then, the workload is enormous. My first day in the hospital, the chief resident said to me, “Neurosurgery residents aren’t just the best surgeons—we’re the best doctors in the hospital. That’s your goal. Make us proud.” The chairman, passing through the ward: “Always eat with your left hand. You’ve got to learn to be ambidextrous.” One of the senior residents: “Just a heads-up—the chief is going through a divorce, so he’s really throwing himself into his work right now. Don’t make small talk with him.” The outgoing intern who was supposed to orient me but instead just handed me a list of forty-three patients: “The only thing I have to tell you is: they can always hurt you more, but they can’t stop the clock.” And then he walked away. I didn’t leave the hospital for the first two days, but before long, the impossible-seeming, day-killing mounds of paperwork were only an hour’s work. Still, when you work in a hospital, the papers you file aren’t just papers: they are fragments of narratives filled with risks and triumphs. An eight-year-old named Matthew, for example, came in one day complaining of headaches only to learn that he had a tumor abutting his hypothalamus. The hypothalamus regulates our basic drives: sleep, hunger, thirst, sex. Leaving any tumor behind would subject Matthew to a life of radiation, further surgeries, brain catheters…in short, it would consume his childhood. Complete removal could prevent that, but at the risk of damaging his hypothalamus, rendering him a slave to his appetites. The surgeon got to work, passed a small endoscope through Matthew’s nose, and drilled off the floor of his skull. Once inside, he saw a clear plane and removed the tumor. A few days later, Matthew was bopping around the ward, sneaking candies from the nurses, ready to go home. That night, I happily filled out the endless pages of his discharge paperwork. I lost my first patient on a Tuesday. She was an eighty-two-year-old woman, small and trim, the healthiest person on the general surgery service, where I spent a month as an intern. (At her autopsy, the pathologist would be shocked to learn her age: “She has the organs of a fifty-year-old!”) She had been admitted for constipation from a mild bowel obstruction. After six days of hoping her bowels would untangle themselves, we did a minor operation to help sort things out. Around eight P.M. Monday night, I stopped by to check on her, and she was alert, doing fine. As we talked, I pulled from my pocket my list of the day’s work and crossed off the last item (post-op check, Mrs. Harvey). It was time to go home and get some rest.

• From Between the World and Me (2015)

  Here is how I take the measure of my progress in life: I imagine myself as I was, back there in West Baltimore, dodging North and Pulaski, ducking Murphy Homes, fearful of the schools and the streets, and I imagine showing that lost boy a portrait of my present life and asking him what he would make of it. Only once—in the two years after your birth, in the first two rounds of the fight of my life—have I believed he would have been disappointed. I write you at the precipice of my fortieth year, having come to a point in my life—not of great prominence—but far beyond anything that boy could have even imagined. I did not master the streets, because I could not read the body language quick enough. I did not master the schools, because I could not see where any of it could possibly lead. But I did not fall. I have my family. I have my work. I no longer feel it necessary to hang my head at parties and tell people that I am “trying to be a writer.” And godless though I am, the fact of being human, the fact of possessing the gift of study, and thus being remarkable among all the matter floating through the cosmos, still awes me. I have spent much of my studies searching for the right question by which I might fully understand the breach between the world and me. I have not spent my time studying the problem of “race”—“race” itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem. You see this from time to time when some dullard—usually believing himself white—proposes that the way forward is a grand orgy of black and white, ending only when we are all beige and thus the same “race.” But a great number of “black” people already are beige. And the history of civilization is littered with dead “races” (Frankish, Italian, German, Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purpose—the organization of people beneath, and beyond, the umbrella of rights. If my life ended today, I would tell you it was a happy life—that I drew great joy from the study, from the struggle toward which I now urge you. You have seen in this conversation that the struggle has ruptured and remade me several times over—in Baltimore, at The Mecca, in fatherhood, in New York. The changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the Dream. But even more, the changes have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what I see, then to question what I see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I also love mushrooms! I think they are truly magical, and I have had some delightful weird experiences of perceiving the world’s aliveness while tripping on mushrooms on multiple continents.6 In general, the role that fungi play in nature is wonderful—they are communicators, they process toxins, they break down dead material and make it serve life. I think fungi are a crucial part of any functional ecosystem, including our human ecosystems. But I also like to imagine mushrooms giving trees and squirrels hallucinations, for kicks. I went through a period in my twenties where I was doing ecstasy all the time, and I believe it saved my life, to be able to buy and swallow happiness when I could not figure it out internally.7 My pleasure goddess self definitely began to burst the seams of my post-sexual-trauma-frumpy-girl disorder during those years. I haven’t gone much further in the realm of drugs—a sniff or tab here, a recreational Vicodin or Percocet there. But I was once hospitalized with vampire bites,8 and they put me on an IV with Benadryl and Dilaudid. Within a day, I was lying about the amount of pain I was in so they would give me more of whichever one was making everything feel like a cloud. When I left the hospital, I understood that I could never play with injection drugs, not if I also wanted to do things with my life. I think of this as harm reduction (which you will learn a lot about in this book), basically reducing or limiting the harmful impact of drug use on my life. I love sex and drugs. I have an addictive personality, a gift and learning edge I inherited from my paternal grandmother, so I’ve learned to only engage those activities in substances I can moderate. Except sugar—so far that one tends to be all or nothing. Beliefs The other thing I want to share with y’all are a few foundational beliefs that shape everything else that will flow from me. I believe that all organizing is science fiction—that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements explores these ideas in depth.9 I believe that we are part of a natural world that is constantly changing, and we need to learn to adapt together and stay in relationship if we hope to survive as a species. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds explores these concepts in depth.10

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  I can lose myself completely in a powerful orgasm. It’s like being ripped out from inside. It’s like planets colliding. Yes, the earth moves, but not before the Milky Way dissolves. Acknowledgments My heartfelt thanks to: Jesse Cougar, Caryn McClosky, Barbara Taylor, Joy Schulenburg, and Victoria Baker for their time, feedback, and support. Barbara, Bonnie, Bluejay, Catrayl, Carolyn, Chris, Cora, D’Arcy, Deborah, Devorah, Diane, Donna, Doris, Jacq, Jana, Judy, Kay, Laurie, Linci, Lisa Halse, Lisa Sacks, Maggie, Maluma, Maria, Marya, Molly, Nancy, Nora, Nyna, Pat, Robin, Sage, Sari, Tine, Tui, Vika, and all the other wonderful women who spent time talking with me or completed a questionnaire; also Bee, Dave, Rayner, and Wolfgang. The following people had private conversations with me and are quoted in the text: Lonnie Barbach, PhD, is the author of For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality, among many other books. Author and sex educator Joani Blank founded Good Vibrations, the first womancentered sex toy store in the U.S. Jwala is a Tantra teacher and the author of Sacred Sex: Ecstatic Techniques for Empowering Relationships. Dorrie Lane is the creator of the Wondrous Vulva Puppet. Anna Marti is an intimacy coach and speaker on bridging esoteric tantric teaching and western psychotherapeutic and somatic practices. Some of her quotes appeared in an interview conducted by the Society for Human Sexuality. NightOwl is a pagan writer and sex activist. Some of her quotes appeared in an interview conducted by the Society for Human Sexuality. Dr. Annie Sprinkle is an artist, sexologist, ecosexual, author, lecturer, and educator. Some of her quotes are from her DVD Sluts and Goddesses. Dr. Joan Spiegel is a sex therapist, psychologist, and homeopath. David Steinberg is the author of Erotic by Nature: A Celebration of Life, of Love, and of Our Wonderful Bodies and Photo Sex: Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age. Deborah Sundahl is the producer of many DVDs on female ejaculation. She is the author of Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot: Not Your Mother’s Orgasm Book! Patricia Huntington Taylor is author of The Enchantment of Opposites: How to Create Great Relationships. The following people are quoted in the text of the book: Carolyn Gage is a lesbian author and playwright. Janet W. Hardy is co-author of The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures. Alex Robboy, L.S.W., is a sex therapist and founder of the Center for Growth Inc. and How to Have Good Sex Inc. Beverly Whipple, PhD, co-author of The G Spot: And Other Discoveries About Human Sexuality, and Janet Lever, PhD, author of The Great Sex Weekend: A 48-Hour Guide to Rekindling Sparks for Bold, Busy, or Bored Lovers, were both very helpful. FOREWORD

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  They keep you real busy but you don’t get tired. You’re never tired. And no medicine either. Everyone’s healthy. Strong. You know? Once a week you got to meet with God. Either him or St. Peter. You got to report on how things are going. But there’s no wrong answers in heaven. There’s no report cards . Me? I’m gonna be a ballet dancer or maybe an ice princess like in the Olympics. Just twirl around all day and eat Fruit Roll-Ups . Zillions of puppies … that’s what they got up in heaven. The softest dogs you’ve ever seen. And no poop. I don’t know what happens to the poop but it’s not in heaven. Because heaven’s clean. All those fluffy white clouds. And these zillions of puppies just jumping from cloud to cloud and you get to run and chase them all day . Abby called Vix. “What can I do to help? Would you like something delivered to the editing room … something besides pizza?” Abby kept her in touch, kept them all in touch. Daniel was doing well in his second year at Yale Law, but not as well as he’d thought. Gus was finishing his master’s in journalism at Columbia and had been offered a job in Albuquerque, of all places. Sharkey was turning into a brilliant scientist. And Caitlin, as she already knew, was a latter-day Zelda Fitzgerald with castanets. “Should we start making plans for graduation?” Abby asked. “Are your parents coming? Can we throw a party or do you and Bru have other plans?” She couldn’t begin to think about graduation. She was consumed by her thesis. She discovered creative energies she didn’t even know she had. She’d fall into bed exhausted after midnight and be up at six to start again. She had to keep up with her regular courses, too. Just because it was senior year she wasn’t off the hook. This was Harvard, after all. And a Harvard degree stood for something. Just ask any graduate. Bru said, “I’ll be glad when it’s done. I don’t like anything that keeps us apart.” He asked her to talk sexy to him over the phone. “Tell me what you want me to do to you. Tell me what you’d do to me.” So she told him. Natalie Ponzo talked up Five Minutes in Heaven . It was suggested she send a copy to WGBH. She had an interview with the producers of Nova who offered a summer internship but not a real job. She thanked them and sent a copy to Jocelyn, who was working at an industrial film production house in New York. Jocelyn showed the tape around but cautioned Vix against taking a job with her company. It was a job leading nowhere, she’d discovered. She had to waitress weekends to make ends meet. She’d already given notice.

• From Little Women (1868)

  My very best go-to-concert-and-theater bonnet." "I beg your pardon, it was so small, I naturally mistook it for one of the flyaway things you sometimes wear. How do you keep it on?" "These bits of lace are fastened under the chin with a rosebud, so," and Meg illustrated by putting on the bonnet and regarding him with an air of calm satisfaction that was irresistible. "It's a love of a bonnet, but I prefer the face inside, for it looks young and happy again," and John kissed the smiling face, to the great detriment of the rosebud under the chin. "I'm glad you like it, for I want you to take me to one of the new concerts some night. I really need some music to put me in tune. Will you, please?" "Of course I will, with all my heart, or anywhere else you like. You have been shut up so long, it will do you no end of good, and I shall enjoy it, of all things. What put it into your head, little mother?" "Well, I had a talk with Marmee the other day, and told her how nervous and cross and out of sorts I felt, and she said I needed change and less care, so Hannah is to help me with the children, and I'm to see to things about the house more, and now and then have a little fun, just to keep me from getting to be a fidgety, broken-down old woman before my time. It's only an experiment, John, and I want to try it for your sake as much as for mine, because I've neglected you shamefully lately, and I'm going to make home what it used to be, if I can. You don't object, I hope?" Never mind what John said, or what a very narrow escape the little bonnet had from utter ruin. All that we have any business to know is that John did not appear to object, judging from the changes which gradually took place in the house and its inmates. It was not all Paradise by any means, but everyone was better for the division of labor system. The children throve under the paternal rule, for accurate, steadfast John brought order and obedience into Babydom, while Meg recovered her spirits and composed her nerves by plenty of wholesome exercise, a little pleasure, and much confidential conversation with her sensible husband. Home grew homelike again, and John had no wish to leave it, unless he took Meg with him. The Scotts came to the Brookes' now, and everyone found the little house a cheerful place, full of happiness, content, and family love. Even Sallie Moffatt liked to go there.