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 Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Takumi, you gotta stop stealing other people’s problems and get some of your own.” Takumi started up again, but Alaska raised her hand as if to swat the conversation away. I said nothing—I hadn’t known Marya, and anyway, “listening quietly” was my general social strategy. “Anyway,” Alaska said to me. “I thought the way he treated you was just awful. I wanted to cry. I just wanted to kiss you and make it better.” “Shame you didn’t,” I deadpanned, and they laughed. “You’re adorable,” she said, and I felt the intensity of her eyes on me and looked away nervously. “Too bad I love my boyfriend.” I stared at the knotted roots of the trees on the creek bank, trying hard not to look like I’d just been called adorable. Takumi couldn’t believe it either, and he walked over to me, tussling my hair with his hand, and started rapping to Alaska. “Yeah, Pudge is adorable / but you want incorrigible / so Jake is more endurable / ’cause he’s so—damn. Damn. I almost had four rhymes on adorable . But all I could think of was unfloorable, which isn’t even a word.” Alaska laughed. “That made me not be mad at you anymore. God, rapping is sexy. Pudge, did you even know that you’re in the presence of the sickest emcee in Alabama?” “Um, no.” “Drop a beat, Colonel Catastrophe,” Takumi said, and I laughed at the idea that a guy as short and dorky as the Colonel could have a rap name. The Colonel cupped his hands around his mouth and started making some absurd noises that I suppose were intended to be beats. Puh-chi. Puh-puhpuh-chi. Takumi laughed. “Right here, by the river, you want me to kick it? / If your smoke was a Popsicle, I’d surely lick it / My rhymin’ is old school, sort of like the ancient Romans / The Colonel’s beats is sad like Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman / Sometimes I’m accused of being a showman / ICanRhymeFast and I can rhyme slow, man.” He paused, took a breath, and then finished. “Like Emily Dickinson, I ain’t afraid of slant rhyme / And that’s the end of this verse; emcee’s out on a high.” I didn’t know slant rhyme from regular rhyme, but I was suitably impressed. We gave Takumi a soft round of applause. Alaska finished her cigarette and flicked it into the river. “Why do you smoke so damn fast?” I asked. She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  She knew how to get by on next to nothing. She showed us which plants were edible and which were toxic. She was able to find water when no one else could, and she knew how little of it you really needed. She taught us that you could wash yourself up pretty clean with just a cup of water. She said it was good for you to drink unpurified water, even ditch water, as long as animals were drinking from it. Chlorinated city water was for namby-pambies, she said. Water from the wild helped build up your antibodies. She also thought toothpaste was for namby-pambies. At bedtime we’d shake a little baking soda into the palm of one hand, mix in a dash of hydrogen peroxide, then use our fingers to clean our teeth with the fizzing paste. I loved the desert, too. When the sun was in the sky, the sand would be so hot that it would burn your feet if you were the kind of kid who wore shoes, but since we always went barefoot, our soles were as tough and thick as cowhide. We’d catch scorpions and snakes and horny toads. We’d search for gold, and when we couldn’t find it, we’d collect other valuable rocks, like turquoise and garnets. There’d be a cool spell come sundown, when the mosquitoes would fly in so thick that the air would grow dark with them, then at nightfall, it turned so cold that we usually needed blankets. There were fierce sandstorms. Sometimes they hit without warning, and other times you knew one was coming when you saw batches of dust devils swirling and dancing their way across the desert. Once the wind started whipping up the sand, you could only see a foot in front of your face. If you couldn’t find a house or a car or a shed to hide in when the sandstorm started, you had to squat down and close your eyes and mouth real tight and cover your ears and bury your face in your lap until it passed, or else your body cavities would fill with sand. A big tumbleweed might hit you, but they were light and bouncy and didn’t hurt. If the sandstorm was really strong, it knocked you over, and you rolled around like you were a tumbleweed. When the rains finally came, the skies darkened and the air became heavy. Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low-hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through.

• From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)

  We must have brawled off and on for almost an hour, which is a really long time when you’re wrestling or being mauled by two strong young cousins acting out on you the pro-wrestling fantasy they’ve played so often together. Finally, they pinned me. Again. … **I came without touching myself.** I was eighteen too, remember, and this was summer’s end, and nothing, I was certain, would ever be this much fun again.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  “The best thing about casual sex is identifying a want or desire and it being finite. I want to do this with this person—and that being it. Or you can do it again. It’s nice to have a finite thing that you have the power to acknowledge and go for, and it doesn’t have to be tied to a larger connection, a larger dynamic. It can still be super-intimate, important, spiritual.”

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  “The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  I have a few other things to press.” “I don’t mind. Bring them down.” Ruby gathered a pair of shorts, two skirts, and an off-the-shoulder blouse. She ran down the stairs with them just as the doorbell rang. She pulled the door open, expecting to see Aunt Emmy. Instead it was Dana, Ruby’s best friend, another long-legged dancer. Dana burst out laughing. “You look cute,” she said, reminding Ruby her face was still covered in gray clay. “Dana, you’re frozen,” Ruby’s mother said, greeting her daughter’s friend. “A cup of coffee or tea?” “Thanks,” Dana said, “but I’m okay.” Dana followed Ruby up the stairs. They’d met and roomed together on the national tour of Kiss Me, Kate. Ruby wasn’t sure she’d ever have that much fun again. “Looks like you’re all packed,” Dana said. “Almost. I was just finishing wrapping presents for my mom and dad.” “Give me the ribbon. I’ll do it. You get that goo off your face. I can’t take you out for a holiday drink like that.” “We’re going out for drinks?” “We are.” Ruby passed the red and green ribbon to Dana. “Give me ten minutes. So long as I’m back for supper with the family. You should stay. My mother’s making pierogi.” “I love your mother’s pierogi.” “She’ll be happy to have another guest. Aunt Emmy’s driving in from Elizabeth.” “With handsome Uncle Victor?” “Afraid the handsome fireman has to stay at home. He’s on duty. Anyway, he’s old enough to be your father.” “I like older men.” “My uncle is off-limits.” “As if I don’t know.” They laughed as they walked arm in arm to Billy’s, the tavern on the corner, where they sat in a booth. Ruby’s skin was glowing from the facial. Without makeup she could pass for a high school student. “What can I bring you lovely ladies?” Billy asked. Billy was bald, short and round, but he moved fast. “Two hot toddies,” Dana said. “With pleasure, though neither one of you beauties looks old enough to be legal.” He knew they were. Billy had known Ruby’s family since before she was born. Knew she’d turned twenty-two over the summer, just before her father’s surgery. Billy knew almost everything about her family, and he kept it to himself. When they were served, Dana held up her glass. “Cheers. Here’s to a great year for both of us!” Ruby clinked glasses with her. “I’ll second that.” They talked for forty-five minutes over a second hot toddy, taking turns feeding nickels into the jukebox. When they tired of holiday songs they started on Broadway musicals, singing along with “Why Can’t You Behave?,” reminding them of their good times on the road and entertaining the few customers who were seated at the bar. When it was time to leave, Billy called, “Have a good trip, Ruby.” “Thanks, Billy. And don’t let my father have more than one, if anyone brings him in.” “Don’t worry, sweetheart.

• From Naked Ambition

  - [Interviewer] Did you feel like when you did that, it was a brave thing to do? - No, I thought it was just earning money. [pleasant music] - Depending on your looks for a living is intimidating. I wouldn't be caught dead going out to get the mail without my makeup. I enjoyed getting the paycheck every time, and it was very much needed. I was supporting my mother and myself, and had a household to take care of. - I've looked at a lot of pinup photography in my life, and the thing that I've noticed about the photos Bunny Yeager took of her models is that you see so much of their personality. - There's something inherently female about the way that she looks at her subjects, and you can feel it reflected back at you, because the models, they don't look as much like objects. - She's a friend and you see that in the pictures, the way that the women really trusted her, and were hungry for a friendship, you know? [pleasant music] - A lot of these models in a million years wouldn't have worked with a male photographer. - People really responded to her, she had a big personality, and she made people feel like they were a part of her world as soon as they came in. [upbeat music] - She knew how to pose, and she knew just how you were feeling. If you felt awkward or something, she'd say, "Well, relax just a little bit and try this or try that." You just felt like you were with a girlfriend, actually. - That was fun, and I think I looked like I was having fun. She was easy to work for in that way, talking to you and making you laugh and putting you at ease. Bunny was unique in the sense that she was doing, well, cheesecake photography. I mean, a lot of those pictures, for the 50s, we're talking risque. She always seemed to wanna pull it down a little bit on the side, or... Compared to now, they look like, you know, Mickey Mouse. [pleasant music] I don't really remember this picture at all looking at it. There was a chalks on a sea plane, but I do remember Bunny was very creative finding locations. [bright music] - So the 1950s gives us both this virginal view of the woman as domestic goddess, but also this kind of wellspring of teenage rebellion. For women like Bunny Yeager, for women like Marilyn Monroe, you find that they're really willing to put themselves out there, and exploit and explore that friction, that space. - My name is Christy Strong, and I'm the granddaughter of Maria Stinger, who was one of Bunny Yeager's best friends and biggest models back in the day. [pleasant music] Maria was known as being Miami's Marilyn. She won Marilyn Monroe lookalike contests, she was in calendars, she was on the cover of magazines.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  Later, back on the lawn at Lola’s, I countered by lifting her in the air over my head and blowing fierce and wet in her belly button. Then I pretended to take a long time getting the lint out of my mouth. “Louden!” Lola yelled from the door. “You’re too big to be handling her that way. You’ll have her other arm all cut up soon.” I growled something brutish in gorilla language. “Help! Help!” chirped Carla. “Carla, you don’t let him play like that while he’s driving. You’ll have a wreck.” And Lola waved a slab of bacon at us and turned for the kitchen. “I’ll make him ride in back!” Carla yelled, catching me off guard and shoulder-blocking me over the lawn mower flat onto the rhubarb plant. “Aunt Lola!” I yelled. “Can we take enough rhubarb home for a pie?” “Look,” I said to Carla when we were almost out of Colville on the way headed home. “Why don’t we stay another night? I don’t have to work until three thirty tomorrow afternoon. We could camp out on the Little Pend Oreille and have dinner at this big old lodge up there.” “I’ll call Belle and ask her to work tomorrow morning for me,” Carla replied. We found a great campsite right away beneath some cedars just a few feet from the water. If Carla hadn’t opened both sleeping bags and spread them out in the tent we might never have made love. I had cut wood and stacked it for the evening and had begun to identify birds, plants, trees, small animals, and had started on the clouds in the sky when she said, “Louden, why don’t we just lie down awhile?” She took off her shirt and bundled it up for a pillow and lay back in the red haze that the sunlight made through the red nylon tent. She didn’t have much of a tan, really, so she looked pearly in all that soft red light with the bushels of red hair spilled around her head and her nipples sprung up like small flowers. She smiled calmly and turned on her side. I took off my shirt and boots and lay beside her. And then she said, “Let’s wait a long time.” So we did. We were slick with sweat and slipping around the wet sleeping-bag floor like happy seals. “The reason I want to play a long time,” Carla finally said, “is that this will be the first time I’ve made love since I had my baby, and I’m not sure how it’s going to feel.” “How’s it feel so far?” I asked. “It feels fine,” she said. I didn’t believe her about it being the first time since she’d had her baby. I just assumed she’d been making it with Tower, since she spent so much time with him. But I didn’t know if I should say anything. Finally I did. “You don’t have to say that about your lovemaking,” I said.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  I wondered if she would be able to pull it off after she published her diary—keeping her marriages secret. I wondered if other women would respond as I had to reading about her wild, dreamlike life in Paris. It had made me want to move there and live as she had, but now that Rupert had made her forget about Paris by building her the Silver Lake house, I realized I was happy to stay in Los Angeles. Wherever Anaïs was, that place, that time, would be magical; as in that very moment, the three of us driving together on Sunset Boulevard, gliding through the curve at UCLA where college kids lay on the grass making out, the T-bird pulling alongside a VW bus full of long-haired teens bopping up and down to the Beatles’ Help! Anaïs tuned the radio to the same station and raised the volume. The teenagers stuck their hands out the bus windows making peace signs, and Anaïs and Rupert separated hands to make v’s with their fingers, turning to me to join them. The three of us danced our fingers in the air as we drove into the age of Aquarius. CHAPTER 26 Los Angeles, California, 1966-71 TRISTINE THE 1966 PUBLICATION OF THE Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1934) was perfectly in sync with the zeitgeist. Thanks to Anaïs having edited out any mention of Hugo, her diary was perceived as the true record of an openly sexual single woman living on her own in Paris with no need of a husband. I knew Anaïs’s liberated, independent lifestyle was invented, but that didn’t stop me from trying to replicate it along with the young women of the ’60s who took it as fact. The first published volume of Anaïs’s Diary created a new persona for her—not Anaïs Guiler, the privileged wife of an investment banker, nor Anaïs Pole, the bohemian wife of a sexy younger man, but Anaïs Nin, the independent, unmarried woman who had lovers and wrote about them. She positioned herself as a single woman ahead of her time who championed a woman’s right to explore and value her own sexuality. For my generation of early Boomers, Anaïs Nin became the icon for our sexual liberation. Colleges and universities all over the country invited her to speak, accept awards, and attend celebrations in her honor. Anaïs almost always said yes. I had thought she would limit her public exposure given the risks, but she leapt to it with the same abandon and repertoire of tricks that had kept her aloft on her illegal trapeze for over a decade. Radio interviews, TV appearances, auditoriums full of adoring fans—Anaïs appeared before them all as a joyful, free, compassionate, wise, and accomplished exemplar of the new woman. She wasn’t about to let fear of exposure prevent her from reaping the rewards of a literary renown that had so long eluded her.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  “That metaphor she talks about, the little golden color pellet inside the margarine, and kneading it, and feeling like, oh, you’ve been spread all through with actual aliveness. You can’t go back to suffering. I just thought, oh, that’s actually what we need to be doing. That’s what our movements should be doing.”

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Neither love-lust fusions nor splits are compatible with sexual well-being because both result from a destructive and tragic conviction—often vigorously denied—that lust is disgusting and incompatible with love. The capacity to experience genital arousal together with emotional intimacy falls within what I call the zone of interaction, where love and lust overlap. This zone may be large or small and can be visualized like this: [image file=image_rsrc3FG.jpg] Disagreements abound regarding the optimum amount of love-lust overlap. There are those who strongly believe, as a matter of morality or preference, that eros reaches its full potential only to the degree that love and lust are experienced in tandem. Others feel especially alive and vital during experiences of uncomplicated lust. Disputes about the best relationship between love and lust will never be settled because there is no single ideal arrangement. My observations as a therapist have convinced me that erotic health is possible as long as some degree of love-lust interaction exists at least some of the time. Not surprisingly, the convergence of love and lust is normally at its fullest during the limerent period of a romantic involvement. At such times love and lust usually feel totally unified. As intimate relationships develop, however, the zone of interaction normally grows smaller and less consistent. Virtually all long-term couples grapple with this change, and hardly any are pleased about it. In most cases, however, as long as affection and lust continue to interact to some degree, the partners stand a good chance of finding ways to continue enjoying sex with each other. PRISONERS OF PROHIBITIONWe have devoted considerable attention to the naughtiness factor and the way it brings the thrill of the forbidden to all sorts of encounters and fantasies. You’ve probably noticed in your own life how a sense of raunchy fun can add a welcome spark to already satisfying sex. The ability to transform naughtiness into arousal begins as a creative adaptation to the distressing fact that the adults upon whom we depend for survival don’t approve of our sexual curiosity. When you have fun with naughtiness, you acknowledge the restrictions you faced as a child while asserting that, to a significant degree, your desires have triumphed over the forces that tried to suppress you. You have grown sufficiently free to use prohibitions for your own enjoyment and play. Many people, however, grew up in homes so permeated with antisexual restrictions that the drama of violating prohibitions has become the central feature of their eroticism. These people are prisoners of sexual prohibition, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they have been victimized just as surely as if they had been molested.

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

  The appearance of the Messiah upon earth was the beginning of Christian poetry, and was greeted by the immortal songs of Mary, of Elizabeth, of Simeon, and of the heavenly host. Religion and poetry are married, therefore, in the gospel. In the Epistles traces also appear of primitive Christian songs, in rhythmical quotations which are not demonstrably taken from the Old Testament.1230 We know from the letter of the elder Pliny to Trajan, that the Christians, in the beginning of the second century, praised Christ as their God in songs; and from a later source, that there was a multitude of such songs.1231 Notwithstanding this, we have no complete religious song remaining from the period of persecution, except the song of Clement of Alexandria to the divine Logos—which, however, cannot be called a hymn, and was probably never intended for public use—the Morning Song1232 and the Evening Song1233 in the Apostolic Constitutions, especially the former, the so-called Gloria in Excelsis, which, as an expansion of the doxology of the heavenly hosts, still rings in all parts of the Christian world. Next in order comes the Te Deum, in its original Eastern form, or the kaq j eJkavsthn hJmevran, which is older than Ambrose. The Ter Sanctus, and several ancient liturgical prayers, also may be regarded as poems. For the hymn is, in fact, nothing else than a prayer in the festive garb of poetical inspiration, and the best liturgical prayers are poetical creations. Measure and rhyme are by no means essential. Upon these fruitful biblical and primitive Christian models arose the hymnology of the ancient catholic church, which forms the first stage in the history of hymnology, and upon which the mediaeval, and then the evangelical Protestant stage, with their several epochs, follow. § 114. The Poetry of the Oriental Church. Comp. the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus hymnologicus (the Greek section prepared by B. Vormbaum); the works of J. M. Neale, quoted sub § 113; an article on Greek Hymnology in the Christian Remembrancer, for April, 1859, London; also the liturgical works quoted § 98. We should expect that the Greek church, which was in advance in all branches of Christian doctrine and culture, and received from ancient Greece so rich a heritage of poetry, would give the key also in church song. This is true to a very limited extent.

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

  with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (2:4–6). By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory (2:8, 9). Christ is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition (2:14). Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone (2:19, 20). Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach Unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (3:8). That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God (3:17–19). Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:3). There is one body, and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all (4:6). He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints (4:11, 12). Speak the truth in love (4:15). Put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (4:24). Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for as, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell (5:1, 2). Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (5:22). Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it (5:25). This mystery is great; but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church (532). Children, obey your parents in the Lord (6:1). Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (6:11). § 96. Colossians and Ephesians Compared and Vindicated. Comparison. The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians were written about the same time and transmitted through the same messenger, Tychicus. They are as closely related to each other as the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans. They handle the same theme, Christ and his church; as Galatians and Romans discuss the same doctrines of salvation by free grace and justification by faith. But Colossians, like Galatians, arose from a specific emergency, and is brief, terse, polemical; while Ephesians, like Romans, is expanded, calm, irenical.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  In such a relationship-governed by gender egalitarianism and neither masculinist nor patriarchal constructions of heterosexual intimacy-Sula grows even deeper and more intensely, especially in terms of her sexuality. Though Sula had, prior to her relationship with Ajax, gone "to bed with men as frequently as she could" (122), she was filled constantly with "utmost irony and outrage in lying under someone, in a position of surrender" (123). When involved sexually with Ajax, Sula experiences, instead, passion and uninhibited sexual ecstasy. Whereas prior to Ajax Sula had waited impatiently for other sexual partnerswhose names she could not recall during sex-to "disengage," "turn away, and settle into a wet skim of satisfaction," her sexual experiences with Ajax serve as a context and space for her to embrace an intimate, intense, and empowering "postcoital privateness in which she met herself, welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony" (123). If the erotic, to invoke black feminist poet-scholar Audre Lorde, constitutes "a well of replenishing and provocative force" that, as "a source of power," culminates in empowerment, "an internal sense of satisfaction" and "fullness," then, for Sula, sex with Ajax is no longer merely "sex for sex's sake."36 Rather, it operates as a conduit by which she enters a deeper, richer, more powerful and intense relationship with herself, a communion with her self, uninhibited by strictures placed on female sexuality.37 With Ajax, Sula discovers-or, better yet, recovers-the fullness, intensity, self-awareness, and empowerment that erotic and sexual experiences can provide, but that her community-and the rigidity and sexual repressiveness of the script-deny her.38 "In that space of the erotic-the political and the personal-we might be able (if not ready) to revise or even resist," as Sharon Holland insightfully posits, "the object(s) of our critical desire as we come to understand just what it takes to make the erotic such a generative space."39 Holland's illumination of the complex and generative nature of the erotic, as it intersects with agency, personal politics, and desire, has particular purchase. I draw upon Holland (and Lorde), as what I suggest is not at all that women's sexual and erotic gratification, empowerment, pleasure, and/ or identity lie within the parameters of heteronormativity at men's orchestration, or that female sexual liberation is enacted through or predicated on men. Such an assessment would be simplistic, problematic, and counterintuitive to any discourse on female sexuality and especially transgressive behavior. What I suggest is that sex with Ajax is not so much an approximation of sexuality governed by men within a heterosexual, heteropatriarchal, or nationalist-masculinist paradigm but, rather, is the embodiment of the sexual freedom and empowerment, accompanying the erotic, that transcends modalities in which gender conventions and (sexual) power relations are intrinsic.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  In his mutilated chair, Woodell attended the show, ticked off every item on his to-do list, and came home with an ear-to-ear mission-accomplished smile on his face.) At the end of each night’s search for new office space, Woodell and I would always have a big belly laugh about the whole debacle. Most nights we’d wind up at some dive bar, giddy, almost delirious. Before parting we’d often play a game. I’d bring out a stopwatch and we’d see how fast Woodell could fold up his wheelchair and get it and himself into his car. As a former track star, he loved the challenge of a stopwatch, of trying to beat his personal best. (His record was forty-four seconds.) We both cherished those nights, the silliness, the sense of shared mission, and we mutually ranked them among the solid gold memories of our young lives. Woodell and I were very different, and yet our friendship was based on a selfsame approach to work. Each of us found pleasure, whenever possible, in focusing on one small task. One task, we often said, clears the mind. And each of us recognized that this small task of finding a bigger office meant we were succeeding. We were making a go of this thing called Blue Ribbon, which spoke to a deep desire, in each of us, to win. Or at least not lose. Though neither of us was much of a talker, we brought out a chatty streak in each other. Those nights we discussed everything, opened up to each other with unusual candor. Woodell told me in detail about his injury. If I was ever tempted to take myself too seriously, Woodell’s story always reminded me that things could be worse. And the way he handled himself was a constant, bracing lesson in the virtue, and value, of good spirits. His injury wasn’t typical, he said. And it wasn’t total. He still had some feeling, still had hopes of marrying, having a family. He also had hopes of a cure. He was taking an experimental new drug, which had shown promise in paraplegics. Trouble was, it had a garlicky aroma. Some nights on our office-hunting expeditions Woodell would smell like an old-school pizzeria, and I’d let him hear about it. I asked Woodell if he was—I hesitated, fearing I had no right— happy . He gave it some thought. Yes, he said. He was. He loved his work. He loved Blue Ribbon, though he sometimes cringed at the irony. A man who can’t walk peddling shoes. Not sure what to say to this, I said nothing. Often Penny and I would have Woodell over to the new house for dinner. He was like family, we loved him, but we also knew we were filling a void in his life, a need for company and domestic comforts.

• From Nothing Was the Same

  Everywhere there were the defining scents and colors of Southern California: sweet jasmine, pungent eucalyptus; bougainvillea vines with their hooked thorns and papery blossoms of tangerine and fuchsia. The jarring blue hibiscus. Richard particularly loved the camphor trees, as I did the eucalyptus, so we drove the streets of the Palisades with the car windows open, inhaling and happy. On one of our daily drives, Richard mentioned that camphor had been used centuries earlier to treat mania. He insisted we stop to gather some leaves: “Just in case,” he said with a smile. I told him that camphor sounded better to me than an injection of the antipsychotic he carried in his black bag, so I gathered up an armful of glossy leaves. We put these in a basket to ward off madness and, as he pointed out, from that point onward not only madness, but also moths kept their distance. We saw friends and family, visited with colleagues at UCLA, and at night drove up the twisting streets into the hills behind our house and looked out on the lights of Los Angeles and the unfurling of moonlight over Santa Monica Bay. We made time stop for a while, and knew how lucky we were. I fashioned a peace with California during that trip with Richard, one that was long past due. Los Angeles had always nettled me: I loved it, I disavowed it, I tried to put it behind me. I came of age in Los Angeles and, in that sense, it would always be my city: I first knew desire there, and madness; first made love and fell in love. Los Angeles was my original city of passion and disappointment: it was where my mind cracked and where, twenty years after the fact, I still felt a cringing shame for things I had said or done when manic. But it was also where I had first heard Schumann’s piano works and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis; had, on a summer day, watched the first moon landing; first read Yeats and Lowell and Darwin. Nothing about Los Angeles was straightforward to me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  15 This is the urgent campaign version of intimacy, the outcome-oriented work that is aware of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. This may include punishment, but only if you deserve it.16 Capitalist. Patriarch. Hierarch. Monarch. Selfish. King. Daddy. Owning Class.17 In political landscapes, this can be an alliance or coalition. We need to move together for a while—this is not our permanent home, but it does need to be satisfying.18 Ground rules. Community agreements.19 Microaggression.20 We have divergent conditions of satisfaction, but both of us get closer to what we want with this work.21 Political home, the delight of finding a place that can hold all of you, wants to.22 Let’s vision together. I like how you practice consensus. It is a joy to be in this life work with you.The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sexamb. What do you count as casual sex?23 Gary, thirty-eight, Black, gay cis man (name changed). One-night stands. Random hookups. Sex with a “fuck buddy.” Essentially, any sexual activity with a stranger or someone with whom I’m not romantically involved. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, forty-two, nonbinary disabled queer femme mixed Sri Lankan.24 Sex that happens outside of an ongoing relationship or a desire for ongoing relationship. Certain kinds of emotional intimacy or commitment. Sex where the connection is mostly about the sex. Holiday Simmons, thirty-nine, Black Cherokee transmasculine two-spirit person.25 I define casual sex as sex that is either no strings attached—there’s no expectation of continued contact afterward—or that there aren’t necessarily feelings involved at the time or later. Or there might be appreciation/love feelings but not necessarily romance, so, like, friends with benefits can have casual sex because it’s not romantic sex. Mai’a Williams, thirty-seven, Black, queer, cis woman, mama. Really, for me, casual sex is sex I have that doesn’t require other emotional labor. Like, I don’t have to care about your hard day at work or your relationship with your mom or a nightmare you had last week. I might care, I might not care, but I don’t have to care. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, thirty-nine, South Asian, straight, cis woman, author of Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life. I don’t really like the term “casual” next to “sex” because sex is not casual—it’s sex! Sex should be an intimate experience that relies on trust, communication, care, and honesty, which are not casual things, per se. I wish we could just call it, I don’t know, something that might denote both the lack of traditional relationship structures paired with being a sexually responsible adult (not an asshole). Maybe we just call it sex. amb. I love that reframe. So, why do you have casual sex? Samhita. Sex is good and nice—that’s why! I wish I was having more of it, though … Gary. The word “ephemeral” comes to mind, as does the acronym NSA (no strings attached). Casual sex is uncomplicated. Its singular focus is the here and now, indulging in the moment. It demands no commitment beyond the encounter itself.

• From Little Women (1868)

  And speaking of gratitude reminds me to mention that you may thank Hannah for saving your wedding cake from destruction. I saw it going into your house as I came by, and if she hadn't defended it manfully I'd have had a pick at it, for it looked like a remarkably plummy one." "I wonder if you will ever grow up, Laurie," said Meg in a matronly tone. "I'm doing my best, ma'am, but can't get much higher, I'm afraid, as six feet is about all men can do in these degenerate days," responded the young gentleman, whose head was about level with the little chandelier. "I suppose it would be profanation to eat anything in this spick-and-span bower, so as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose an adjournment," he added presently. "Mother and I are going to wait for John. There are some last things to settle," said Meg, bustling away. "Beth and I are going over to Kitty Bryant's to get more flowers for tomorrow," added Amy, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody. "Come, Jo, don't desert a fellow. I'm in such a state of exhaustion I can't get home without help. Don't take off your apron, whatever you do, it's peculiarly becoming," said Laurie, as Jo bestowed his especial aversion in her capacious pocket and offered her arm to support his feeble steps. "Now, Teddy, I want to talk seriously to you about tomorrow," began Jo, as they strolled away together. "You must promise to behave well, and not cut up any pranks, and spoil our plans." "Not a prank." "And don't say funny things when we ought to be sober." "I never do. You are the one for that." "And I implore you not to look at me during the ceremony. I shall certainly laugh if you do." "You won't see me, you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round you will obscure the prospect." "I never cry unless for some great affliction." "Such as fellows going to college, hey?" cut in Laurie, with suggestive laugh. "Don't be a peacock. I only moaned a trifle to keep the girls company." "Exactly. I say, Jo, how is Grandpa this week? Pretty amiable?" "Very. Why, have you got into a scrape and want to know how he'll take it?" asked Jo rather sharply. "Now, Jo, do you think I'd look your mother in the face and say 'All right', if it wasn't?" and Laurie stopped short, with an injured air. "No, I don't." "Then don't go and be suspicious. I only want some money," said Laurie, walking on again, appeased by her hearty tone. "You spend a great deal, Teddy." "Bless you, I don't spend it, it spends itself somehow, and is gone before I know it." "You are so generous and kind-hearted that you let people borrow, and can't say 'No' to anyone. We heard about Henshaw and all you did for him.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I got into the drink dispenser, I played the opening of the “Sleeping Beauty Waltz” with the different soft drinks. “What am I playing?” I asked her. “Be cool,” Niki said. I tried to be cool, but it was too funny. When it was time to pay, I couldn’t remember about the money, how it worked. The cashier looked like a tapioca pudding. She wouldn’t look at us. She said some numbers and I pulled out my money, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I held it open on my hand and let her pick the right combination from the palm. “Danke, chorisho, guten tag, Arigato,” I said. “Dar es Salaam.” Hoping she’d think we were just foreigners. “Dar es Salaam,” Niki said as we took seats on the plaza. This was exactly how I should have been as a child, joyful, light as a toy balloon. Niki and I sat in the shade and drank our drinks, watched the people go by, noticing how much they looked like certain animals. There was a gnu, and a lion, and a secretary bird. Tapir and a curly-haired yak. When had I ever laughed like this before? After we were done, Niki said we should go use the bathroom. “I don’t have to,” I said. “You won’t know until it’s too late,” Niki said. “Come on.” We walked back into the building, found the doors with the ridiculous stick figures in pants or skirt. The ridiculous way we thought male, female, as pants or skirt. Suddenly, the whole sexual universe and its conventions seemed fantastic, contrived. “Don’t look in the mirror,” Niki said. “Look at your shoes.” It was dark gray tile, bad light, dirty floor. I felt the fear return. A metallic taste in my mouth. An old lady in a tan pantsuit, tan face, tan hair, tan shoes, a yellow belt, came out of one of the stalls, stared at us. “She looks like a grilled cheese sandwich,” I said. “My friend’s sick,” Niki said, trying not to laugh out loud. She pushed me into the handicapped toilet, closed the door behind us. She had to unzip my pants and put me on the pot like I was two years old. I couldn’t go, it was too funny. “Shut up and go,” Niki said. I swung my legs. It really felt like I was two. “Make tinkle for Annie,” I said. And I let go. I really had to, after all. The sound made me laugh. “I love you, Niki,” I said. “I love you too,” she said. But on the way out I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked very red-faced, my eyes black as a magpie’s, hair tangled. I looked feral. It scared me. Niki hurried me out. We were in the Contemporary wing. I never went there.

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  Several weeks ago, I came home for lunch. He had the day off, and the house was clean—dishes done, all the clutter picked up!!! I almost thought I walked into the wrong house. I about died. I was walking on air. Why the clean house? I’ve given this a lot of thought. I know that I have been more patient with him and made extra efforts to be nice and not bitchy. I’ve complimented him and let the small things ride. Last night I caught myself three times . . . I was gonna nag him and instead, I let it go. They were little things . . . things not even important enough to mention! Let me tell you, if these are the results I am going to get, I am never going to nag again! I am so happy about this that I just want to burst. And although our sex life had become almost nonexistent, in the last couple of weeks, sex has not only been more intimate and intense, but much more frequent. I am just so happy/thankful. I had to let you know. P.S. Quick update—For lunch today I made love with my husband, or should I say he made love with me. Then to top it off, I no sooner got back to work than he called me just to say he loves me! I am so happy, I don’t know what to do with myself. ————— I am twenty-five. I have been with my husband ten years this October, married for two. About six months ago, things were getting pretty crappy. No abuse—just the typical, “I do everything, he does nothing. I nag, then he withdraws from me” cycle. I had had enough! I started being nicer to him, and now he helps. He even cleans the house. Our sex life on a scale of 1 to 10 went from a 3 to an 8.5! Perhaps as you’re reading this, you’re saying to yourself, “I’m not terribly critical. I’m no more negative to my husband than my friends are to theirs.” Even if you aren’t overly critical or controlling, here’s the $64,000 question: Are you complimentary? Do you let your spouse know when he’s pleasing you, when he’s getting it right? I once led a discussion group with women who were having difficulties in their marriages. As they complained about their relationships, I asked, “If your husbands were here now and you weren’t and I were to ask them, ‘Does your wife tend to be critical or complimentary?’ what would your husbands say?” Instantly, every woman in the room said, “I’m critical.” One woman admitted, “We live on a farm with lots of acreage, and when I came home from work last night, my husband had mowed three acres of grass. And what did I say to him? I pointed to a very small section of grass beneath some trees and said, ‘You missed a spot.’ Nice, huh?”