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 Middlesex (2002)

  in a reprise of Desdemona's gender prognostications, began wearing a tiny silver spoon around his neck. He got out before the draining of bank accounts and the jacking up of credit cards. Before Tessie was forced to sell Middlesex and move down to Florida with Aunt Zo. And he got out three months before Cadillac, in April 1975, intro- duced the Seville, a fuel-efficient model that looked as though it had lost its pants, after which Cadillacs were never the same. Milton got out before many of the things that I will not include in this story, be- cause they are the common tragedies of American life, and as such do not fit into this singular and uncommon record. He got out before the Cold War ended, before missile shields and global warming and September 11 and a second President with only one vowel in his name. Most important, Milton got out without ever seeing me again. That would not have been easy. I like to think that my father's love for me was strong enough that he could have accepted me. But in some ways it's better that we never had to work that out, he and I. With respect to my father I will always remain a girl. There's a kind of purity in that, the purity of childhood. 512 THE LAST STOP t sort of still applies," said Julie Kikuchi. "It does not," I said. "It's in the same ballpark." "What I told you about myself has nothing whatsoever to do with being gay or closeted. I've always liked girls. I liked girls when I was a girl." "I wouldn't be some kind of last stop for you?" "More like a first stop." Julie laughed. She still had not made a decision. I waited. Then at last she said, "All right." "All right?" I asked. She nodded. "All r&ht? I said. So we left the museum and went back to my apartment. We had another drink; we slow-danced in the living room. And then I led Julie into the bedroom, where I hadn't led anyone in quite a long time. She switched off the lights. "Wait a minute," I said. "Are you turning off the lights because of you or because of me?" "Because of me." "Why?" "Because I'm a shy, modest Oriental lady. Just don't expect me to bathe you." 513 "No bathing?" "Not unless you do a Zorba dance." "Where did I put that bouzouki of mine, anyway?" I was trying to keep up the banter. I was also taking off my clothes. So was Julie. It was like jumping into cold water. You had to do it without thinking too much. We got under the covers and held each other, petrified, happy. "I might be your last stop, too," I said, clinging to her. "Did you ever think of that?" And Julie Kikuchi answered, "It crossed my mind."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  shiver and give the sign of the cross. Even so, Sir Lancelot accosted the not be seen. • Her poor cart's driver, a dwarf: "In the name of God, tell me if you've seen my lady lover, thinking to find her the queen pass by this way?" "If you want to get into this cart I'm driving," according to her promise, failed not to enter the room said the dwarf, "by tomorrow you'll know what has become of the queen." as softly as he could, at the Then he drove the cart onward. Lancelot hesitated for but two of the appointed hour; and after horse's steps, then ran after it and climbed in. he had shut the door and put off his garments and Wherever the cart went, townspeople heckled it. They were most curi- fur shoes, he got into the ous about the knight among the passengers. What was his crime? How will bed, where he looked to he be put to death—flayed? Drowned? Burned upon a fire of thorns? Fi- find what he desired. But nally the dwarf let him get out, without a word as to the whereabouts of no sooner did he put out his arms to embrace her the queen. To make matters worse, no one now would go near or talk to whom he believed to be his Lancelot, for he had been in the cart. He kept on chasing the queen, and all mistress, than the poor girl, along the way he was cursed at, spat upon, challenged by other knights. He believing him entirely her 330 • The Art of Seduction own, had her arms round had disgraced knighthood by riding in the cart. But no one could stop him his neck, speaking to him or slow him down, and finally he discovered that the queen's kidnapper was the while in such loving the wicked Meleagant. He caught up with Meleagant and the two fought a words and with so beautiful a countenance, duel. Still weak from the chase, Lancelot seemed to be near defeat, but that there is not a hermit when word reached him that the queen was watching the battle, he recov-so holy but he would have ered his strength and was on the verge of killing Meleagant when a truce forgotten his beads for love of her. • But when the was called. Guinevere was handed over to him. gentleman recognized her Lancelot could hardly contain his joy at the thought of finally being in with both eye and ear, and his lady's presence. But to his shock, she seemed angry, and would not look found he was not with her at her rescuer. She told Meleagant's father, "Sire, in truth he has wasted his for whose sake he had so

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  victory that would be for God. And so the Présidente took note of Val- Argos, was brought up in mont's comings and goings, trying to understand what was happening in Arcadia by Temenus, sou his head. It was strange, for instance, that he would often leave in the of Pelasgus. The Seasons were her nurses. After morning to go hunting, yet would never return with any game. One day, banishing their father she decided to have her servant do a little harmless spying, and she was Cronus, Hera's twin amazed and delighted to learn that Valmont had not gone hunting at all; he brother Zeus sought her had visited a local village, where he had doled out money to a poor family out at Cnossus in Crete or, some say, on Mount about to be evicted from their home. Yes, she was right, his passionate soul Thornax (now called was moving from sensuality to virtue. How happy that made her feel. Cuckoo Mountain) in That evening, Valmont and the Présidente found themselves alone for Argolis, where he courted her, at first unsuccessfully. the first time, and Valmont suddenly burst out with a startling confession. She took pity on him only He was head-over-heels in love with the Présidente, and with a love he had when he adopted the 287 288 • The Art of Seduction disguise of a bedraggled never experienced before: her virtue, her goodness, her beauty, her kind cuckoo and tenderly ways had completely overwhelmed him. His generosity to the poor that warmed him in her bosom. afternoon had been for her sake—perhaps inspired by her, perhaps some-There he at once resumed his true shape and ravished thing more sinister: it had been to impress her. He would never have con-her, so that she was fessed to this, but finding himself alone with her, he could not control his shamed into marrying him. emotions. Then he got down on his knees and begged for her to help him, — R O B E R T GRAVES, to guide him in his misery. THE GREEK MYTHS The Présidente was caught off guard, and began to cry. Intensely embarrassed, she ran from the room, and for the next few days pretended to be ill. She did not know how to react to the letters Valmont now began to In a strategy (?) of send her, begging her to forgive him. He praised her beautiful face and her seduction one draws the other into one's area of beautiful soul, and claimed she had made him rethink his whole life. These weakness, which is also his emotional letters produced disturbing emotions, and Tourvel prided herself or her area of weakness. A on her calmness and prudence. She knew she should insist that he leave the calculated weakness, an

• From Middlesex (2002)

  The personnel manager looked both ways. "Old Log Cabin?" "Only the best." The chief jutted out his lower lip, examining my grandfather. "How's his English?" "Not as good as mine. But he learns fast." "He'll have to take the course and pass the test. Otherwise he's out." "It's a deal. Now, if you'll write down your home address, we can schedule a delivery. Would Monday evening, say around eight-thirty, be suitable?" "Come around to the back door." My grandfather's short employ at the Ford Motor Company marked the only time any Stephanides has ever worked in the auto- mobile industry. Instead of cars, we would become manufacturers of hamburger platters and Greek salads, industrialists of spanakopita and grilled cheese sandwiches, technocrats of rice pudding and banana cream pie. Our assembly line was the grill; our heavy ma- chinery, the soda fountain. Still, those twenty-five weeks gave us a personal connection to that massive, forbidding, awe-inspiring com- plex we saw from the highway, that controlled Vesuvius of chutes, tubes, ladders, catwalks, fire, and smoke known, like a plague or a monarch, only by a color: "the Rouge." On his first day of work, Lefty came into the kitchen modeling his new overalls. He spread his flannel-shirted arms and snapped his fin- gers, dancing in work boots, and Desdemona laughed and shut the kitchen door so as not to wake up Lina. Lefty ate his breakfast of prunes and yogurt, reading a Greek newspaper a few days old. Des- demona packed his Greek lunch of feta, olives, and bread in a new American container: a brown paper bag. At the back door, when he turned to kiss her she stepped back, anxious that people might see. But then she remembered that they were married now. They lived in a place called Michigan, where the birds seemed to come in only one color, and where no one knew them. Desdemona stepped forward again to meet her husband's lips. Their first kiss in the great American outdoors, on the back porch, near a cherry tree losing its leaves. A 93 brief flare of happiness went off inside her and hung, raining sparks, until Lefty disappeared around the front of the house. My grandfather's good mood accompanied him all the way to the trolley stop. Other workers were already waiting, loose-kneed, smok- ing cigarettes and joking. Lefty noticed their metal lunch pails and, embarrassed by his paper sack, held it behind him. The streetcar showed up first as a hum in the soles of his boots. Then it appeared against the rising sun, Apollo's own chariot, only electrified. Inside, men stood in groups arranged by language. Faces scrubbed for work still had soot inside the ears, deep black. The streetcar sped off again. Soon the jovial mood dissipated and the languages fell silent. Near downtown, a few blacks boarded the car, standing outside on the runners, holding on to the roof.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  and then, to the applause already starting up, dizzy acceptance. The ceremony took place on deck. In lieu of a wedding dress, Desde- mona wore a borrowed silk shawl over her head. Captain Kontoulis loaned Lefty a necktie spotted with gravy stains. "Keep your coat buttoned and nobody will notice," he said. For Stephana^ my grand- parents had wedding crowns woven with rope. Flowers weren't available at sea and so the koumbams, a guy named Pelos serving as best man, switched the king's hempen crown to the queen's head, the queen's to the king's, and back again. Bride and bridegroom performed the Dance of Isaiah. Hip to hip, arms interwoven to hold hands, Desdemona and Lefty circumambu- lated the captain, once, twice, and then again, spinning the cocoon of their life together. No patriarchal linearity here. We Greeks get mar- ried in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial 68 facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began. Or, in my grandparents' case, the circling worked like this: as they paced around the deck the first time, Lefty and Desdemona were still brother and sister. The second time, they were bride and bride- groom. And the third, they were husband and wife. The night of my grandparents' wedding, the sun set directiy before the ship's bow, pointing the way to New York. The moon rose, cast- ing a silver stripe over the ocean. On his nighdy tour of the deck, Captain Kontoulis descended from the pilothouse and marched for- ward. The wind had picked up. The Giulia pitched in high seas. As the deck tilted back and forth, Captain Kontoulis didn't stumble once, and was even able to light one of the Indonesian cigarettes he favored, dipping his cap's braided brim to cut the wind. In his not terribly clean uniform, wearing knee-high Cretan boots, Captain Kontoulis scrutinized running lights, stacked deck chairs, lifeboats. The Giulia was alone on the vast Atiantic, hatches battened down against swells crashing over the side. The decks were empty except for two first-class passengers, American businessmen sharing a night- cap under lap blankets. "From what I hear, Tilden doesn't just play tennis with his proteges, if you get my drift." "You're kidding." "Lets them drink from the loving cup." Captain Kontoulis, understanding none of this, nodded as he passed . . . Inside one of the lifeboats, Desdemona was saying, "Don't look." She was lying on her back. There was no goat's -hair blanket between

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  kind of afterglow. Do everything you can to keep the target thinking about was becoming too fond of a handsome young man of you. Letters, mementos, gifts, unexpected meetings—all these give you an the same age, who used to omnipresence. Everything must remind them of you. make a practice of passing Finally, if your targets should see you as elevated and poetic, there is beneath her window every much to be gained by making them feel elevated and poeticized in their evening at nightfall. Her mother invited him to turn. The French writer Chateaubriand would make a woman feel like a spend a week with them goddess, she had such a powerful effect on him. He would send her poems in the country. It was a that she supposedly had inspired. To make Queen Victoria feel as if she bold remedy, I admit, but the girl was of a were both a seductive woman and a great leader, Benjamin Disraeli would romantic disposition, and compare her to mythological figures and great predecessors, such as Queen the young man a trifle Elizabeth I. By idealizing your targets this way, you will make them idealize dull; within three days she despised him. you in return, since you must be equally great to be able to appreciate and see all of their fine qualities. They will also grow addicted to the elevated — S T E N D H A L , L O V E , TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND feeling you give them. SUZANNE SALE Symbol: The Halo. Slowly, when the target is alone, he or she begins to imagine a kind of faint glow around your head, formed by all of the possible pleasures you might offer, the radiance of your charged presence, your noble qualities. The Halo separates you from other people. Do not make it disappear by becoming familiar and ordinary. Reversal It might seem that the reverse tactic would be to reveal everything about yourself, to be completely honest about your faults and virtues. This kind of sincerity was a quality Lord Byron had—he almost got a thrill out of disclosing all of his nasty, ugly qualities, even going so far, later on in his life, as to tell people about his incestuous involvements with his half sister. This kind of dangerous intimacy can be immensely seductive. The target will poeticize your vices, and your honesty about them; they will start to see more than is there. In other words, the idealization process is unavoidable. The only thing that cannot be idealized is mediocrity, but there is nothing seductive about mediocrity. There is no possible way to seduce without creating some kind of fantasy and poeticization. Disarm Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability Too much ma- neuvering on your part may raise suspicion. The best way to cover your tracks is to make the other person feel superior and

• From Middlesex (2002)

  ever I rubbed, her skin flushed. I was aware of the blood underneath, coursing and draining. Her underarms were rough like a cat's tongue. Below them the sides of her breasts swelled out, flattened against the mattress. "Okay," I said, after a long while, "my turn." But that night was like all the others. She was asleep. It was never my turn with the Object. They come back to me, the scattered days of that summer with the Object, each encased in a souvenir snow globe. Let me shake them up again. Watch the flakes float down: We are lying in bed together on a Saturday morning. The Object 348 is on her back. I'm fulcrumed on one elbow, leaning over to inspect her face. "You know what sleep is?" I say. "What?" "Snot." "It is not." "It is. It's mucus. It's snot that comes out your eyes." "That's so gross!" "You've got a little sleep in your eyes, my dear," I say in a fake deep voice. With my finger I flick the crust from the Object's eye- lashes. "I can't believe I'm letting you do this," she says. "You're touching my snot." We look at each other a moment. "I'm touching your snot!" I scream. And we writhe around, throwing pillows and screaming some more. On another day, the Object is taking a bath. She has her own bath- room. I'm on the bed, reading a gossip magazine. "You can tell Jane Fonda isn't really naked in that movie," I say. "How?" "She's got a body stocking on. You can see it." I go into the bathroom to show her. In the claw-footed tub, under a layer of whipped cream, the Object lolls, pumicing one heel. She looks at the photograph and says, "You're never naked, ei- ther." I am frozen, speechless. "Do you have some kind of complex?" "No, I don't have a complex." "What are you afraid of, then?" "I'm not afraid." The Object knows this isn't true. But her intentions aren't mali- cious. She isn't trying to catch me out, only to put me at ease. My modesty baffles her. "I don't know what you're so worried about," she says. "You're my best friend." I pretend to be engrossed in the magazine. I can't get myself to look away. Inside, however, I'm bursting with happiness. I'm erupt- 34 9 ing with joy, but I keep staring at the magazine as though I'm mad at it. It's late. We've stayed up watching TV. The Object is brushing her teeth when I come into the bathroom. I pull down my underpants and sit on the toilet. I do this sometimes as a compensatory tactic. The T-shirt is long enough to cover my lap. I pee while the Object brushes. It's then I smell smoke. Looking up, I see, besides a toothbrush in the Object's mouth, a cigarette. "You even smoke while you brush your teeth?" She looks at me sideways. "Menthol," she says.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Later, around evening, the phone rang. The Object's mother an- swered it. "It's Rex," she said. The Object got up from the sofa where we were playing backgammon. I restacked my chips to have some- thing to do. I tidied them up, over and over, while the Object talked to Rex. She had her back to me. She moved around as she talked, playing with the cord. I kept looking down at the chips, moving them. Meanwhile I paid close attention to the conversation. "Noth- ing much, just playing backgammon . . He's making his stupid film ... I can't, we're supposed to have dinner soon ... I don't know, maybe later . . I'm sort of tired, actually." Suddenly she wheeled around to face me. With effort I looked up. The Object pointed at the phone and then, opening her mouth wide, stuck her finger down her throat. My heart brimmed. . with Callie . . . . Night came again. In bed we went through the preliminaries, plumping our pillows, yawning. We tossed around to get comfort- able. And then after an appropriate time of silence the Object made a noise. It was a murmur, a cry caught in the throat, as if she were talk- ing in her sleep. After this, her breathing became deeper. And taking this as the okay, Calliope began the long trek across the bed. So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. 385 Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that's the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize. Think back to your backseats, your pup tents, your beach bonfire parties. Did you ever find yourself, without admitting it, tangled up with your best friend? Or in a dorm room bed with two people instead of one, while Bach played on the chintzy stereo, orchestrating the fugue? It's a kind of fugue state, anyway, early sex. Before the routine sets in, or the love. Back when the grop- ing is largely anonymous. Sandbox sex. It starts in the teens and lasts until twenty or twenty-one. It's all about learning to share. It's about sharing your toys.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  lowed? Like everyone else, instead of judging the final effect of So- phie Sassoon's makeup job, I was impressed by the complexity of it. I knew, as did my mother and the other ladies, that to "put on her face" every morning it took Sophie Sassoon no less than one hour and forty-five minutes. She had to apply eye creams and under- eye creams. She had to lay down various layers, like shellacking a Stradi- varius. In addition to the brick-colored final coat there were others: dabs of green to control redness, pinks to add blush, blues above the eyes. She used dry eyeliner, liquid eyeliner, lip liner, lip conditioner, a frosted highlighter, and a pore minimizer. Sophie Sassoon's face: it was created with the rigor of a sand painting blown grain by grain by Tibetan monks. It lasted only a day and then it was gone. This face now said to us, "Right this way, ladies." Sophie was warm, as always, loving as always. Her hands, treated every night with vanishing cream, fluttered around us, stroking, rubbing. Her earrings looked like something Schliemann had dug up at Troy. She 309 led us past a line of women having their hair set, across a stifling ghetto of hair dryers, and through a blue curtain. In the front of the Golden Fleece, Sophie fixed people's hair; in the back she removed it. Behind the blue curtain half-naked women presented portions of themselves to wax. One large woman was on her back, her blouse pulled up to expose her navel. Another was lying on her stomach, reading a magazine while wax dried on the back of her thighs. There was a woman sitting in a chair, her sideburns and chin smeared with dark golden wax, and there were two beautiful young women lying naked from the waist down, having their bikini lines done. The smell of the beeswax was strong, pleasant. The atmosphere was like a Turk- ish bath without the heat, a lazy, draped feeling to everything, steam curling off pots of wax. "I'm only having my face done," I told Sophie. "She sounds like she's paying," Sophie joked to my mother. My mother laughed, and the other women joined in. Everyone was looking our way, smiling. I'd come from school and was still in my uniform. "Be glad it's just your face," said one of the bikini-liners. "Few years from now," said the other, "you might be heading south." Laughter. Winks. Even, to my astonishment, a sly smile spreading over my mother's face. As if behind the blue curtain Tessie was an- other person. As if, now that we were getting waxed together, she could treat me like an adult. "Sophie, maybe you can convince Callie to get her hair cut," Tessie said. "It's a little bushy, hon," Sophie leveled with me. "For your face shape." "Just a wax, please," I said.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  We were like runners in a frieze. In profile, with pumping thighs and knifing arms, we cut through the shin-whipping grass. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill Jerome seemed to be slowing down. He was waving his hand in defeat. He was waving it and shouting something I couldn't hear . . . The tractor had just made a turn onto the road. High in his seat, the farmer didn't see me. I was looking back to check on Jerome. When I finally turned forward it was too late. Right in front of me was the tractor tire. I hit it dead on. In the terra- cotta dust I was spun upward into the air. At the apex of my arc I saw the raised plow blades behind, the corkscrewing metal covered with mud, and then the race was over. I awoke later, in the backseat of a strange automobile. A rattletrap, with blankets covering the seats. A decal of a hooked, flapping trout was pasted to the rear window. The driver wore a red cap. The little space above die cap's adjustable headband showed the buzzed hair- line of his seamed neck. My head felt soft, as if covered in gauze. I was wrapped in an old blanket, stiff and spoked with hay. I turned my head and looked up and saw a beautiful sight. I saw the Object's face from below. My head was in her lap. My right cheek was flush against the warm up- holstery of her tummy. She was still in her bikini top and cutoffs. Her knees were spread and her red hair fell over me, darkening things. I gazed up through this maroon or oxblood space and saw what I could of her, the dark band of her swimsuit top, her clavicles set for- ward. She was chewing one cuticle. It was going to bleed if she kept it up. "Hurry," she was saying, from the other side of die falling hair. "Hurry up, Mr. Burt." It was the farmer who was driving. The farmer whose tractor I'd run into. I hoped he wasn't listening. I didn't want him to hurry. I 393 wanted this ride to go on for as long as possible. The Object was stroking my head. She'd never done this in daylight before. "I beat up your brother," I said out of the blue. With one hand the Object swept her hair away. The light knifed in. "Callie! Are you okay?" I smiled up at her. "I got him good." "Oh God" she said. "I was so scared. I thought you were dead. You were just ly— ly"— her voice broke—"lying there in the road!"

• From Middlesex (2002)

  is as difficult for me as identifying guests in my parents' wedding al- bum, where all the faces wear the disguise of youth. Lefty had a dif- ferent problem. He paced the concourse, looking for the cousin he'd grown up with, a sharp-nosed girl with the grinning mouth of a comedy mask. Sun slanted in from the skylights above. He squinted, examining the passing women, until finally she called out to him, "Over here, cousin. Don't you recognize me? I'm the irresistible one." "Lina, is that you?" "I'm not in the village anymore." In the five years since leaving Turkey, Sourmelina had managed to erase just about everything identifiably Greek about her, from her hair, which she dyed to a rich chestnut and now wore bobbed and marcelled, to her accent, which had migrated far enough west to sound vaguely "European," to her reading material (Collier's, Har- per's) , to her favorite foods (lobster thermidor, peanut butter), and fi- nally to her clothes. She wore a short green flapper dress fringed at the hemline. Her shoes were a matching green satin with sequined toes and delicate ankle straps. A black feather boa was wrapped around her shoulders, and on her head was a cloche hat that dangled onyx pendants over her plucked eyebrows. For the next few seconds she gave Lefty the full benefit of her sleek, American pose, but it was still Lina inside there (under the cloche) and soon her Greek enthusiasm bubbled out. She spread her arms wide. "Kiss me hello, cousin." They embraced. Lina pressed a rouged cheek against his neck. Then she pulled back to examine him and, dissolving into laughter, cupped her hand over his nose. "It's still you. I'd know this nose any- where." Her laugh completed its follow-through, as her shoulders went up and down, and then she was on to the next thing. "So, where is she? Where is this new bride of yours? Your telegram didn't even give a name. What? Is she hiding?" "She's ... in the bathroom." "She must be a beauty. You got married fast enough. Which did you do first, introduce yourself or propose?" "I think I proposed." "What does she look like?" "She looks . . like you." . 84 "Oh, darling, not that good surely." Sourmelina brought her cigarette holder to her lips and inhaled, scanning the crowd. "Poor Desdemona! Her brother falls in love and leaves her behind in New York. How is she?" "She's fine." "Why didn't she come with you? She's not jealous of your new wife, is she?" "No, nothing like that." She clutched his arm. "We read about the fire. Terrible! I was so worried until I got your letter. The Turks started it. I know it. Of course, my husband doesn't agree." "He doesn't?" "One suggestion, since you'll be living with us? Don't talk politics with my husband." "All right." "And the village?" Sourmelina inquired.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  below these sneakers, I see a street sign. It is full of bullet holes, but I manage to read it: Pingree. All of a sudden I recognize where I am. There is Value Meats! And New Yorker Clothes. I am so happy to see them that for a moment I don't register that both places are on fire. Letting the tanks get away, I ride up a driveway and stop behind a tree. I get off my bike and peek across the street at the diner. The zebra head sign is still intact. The restaurant is not burning. At that moment, however, the figure that has been approaching the Zebra Room enters my field of vision. From thirty yards away I see him lift a bottle in his hand. He lights the rag hanging from the bottle's mouth and with a not terribly good arm flings the Molotov cocktail through the front window of the Zebra Room. And as flames erupt within the diner, the arsonist shouts in an ecstatic voice: "Opa, motherfucker!" I saw him only from the back. It was not yet fully light. Smoke rose from the adjacent burning buildings. Still, in the firelight, I thought I recognized the black beret of my friend Marius Wyxze- wixard Challouehliczilczese Grimes before the figure ran off. "OpaF Inside the diner, my father heard the well-known cry of Greek waiters, and before he knew what was happening the place was going up like a flaming appetizer. The Zebra Room had become a saganakil As the booths caught fire, Milton raced behind the counter to grab the fire extinguisher. Coming out again, he held the hose, like a lemon wedge wrapped in cheesecloth, over the flames, and pre- pared to squeeze . . . . . . when suddenly he stopped. And now I recognize a familiar expression on my father's face, the expression he wore so often at the 249

• From Middlesex (2002)

  ... As I sit here in my Aeron chair, thinking E. O. Wilson thoughts. Was it love or reproduction? Chance or destiny? Crime or nature at work? Maybe the gene contained an override, ensuring its expression, which would explain Desdemona's tears and Lefty's taste in prostitutes; not fondness, not emotional sympathy; only the need for this new thing to enter the world and hence the heart's rigged game. But I can't explain it, any more than Desdemona or Lefty could have, any more than each one of us, falling in love, can separate the hormonal from what feels divine, and maybe I cling to the God business out of some altruism hard-wired to preserve the species; I can't say. I try to go back in my mind to a time before genetics, be- fore everyone was in the habit of saying about everything, "It's in the genes." A time before our present freedom, and so much freer! Des- demona had no idea what was happening. She didn't envision her in- sides as a vast computer code, all Is and Os, an infinity of sequences, any one of which might contain a bug. Now we know we carry this map of ourselves around. Even as we stand on the street corner, it dictates our destiny. It brings onto our faces the same wrinkles and 37 age spots our parents had. It makes us sniff in idiosyncratic, recog- nizable family ways. Genes embedded so deep they control our eye muscles, so that two sisters have that same way of blinking, and boy twins dribble in unison. I feel myself sometimes, in anxious moods, playing with the cartilage of my nose exactly as my brother does. Our throats and voice boxes, formed from the same instructions, press air out in similar tones and decibels. And this can be extrapolated back- ward in time, so that when I speak, Desdemona speaks, too. She's writing these words now. Desdemona, who had no idea of the army inside her, carrying out its million orders, or of the one soldier who disobeyed, going AWOL . . . . . . Running like Lefty away from Lucille Kafkalis and back to his sister. She heard his feet hurrying as she was refastening her skirt. She wiped her eyes with her kerchief and put a smile on as he came through the door. "So, which one did you choose?" Lefty said nothing, inspecting his sister. He hadn't shared a bed- room with her all his life not to be able to tell when she'd been cry- ing. Her hair was loose, covering most of her face, but the eyes that looked up at him were brimming with feeling. "Neither one," he said. At that Desdemona felt tremendous happiness. But she said, "What's the matter with you? You have to choose." "Those girls look like a couple of whores." "Lefty!" "It's true." "You don't want to marry them?"

• From Middlesex (2002)

  We didn't move right away. We remained parked, as if it were enough just to sit in the car, as if now that we owned it, we could forget about our living room and stay in the driveway every night. Milton started the engine. Keeping the transmission in park, he showed us the marvels. He opened and closed the windows by press- ing a button. He locked the doors by pressing another. He buzzed the front seat forward, then tilted it back until I could see the dan- druff on his shoulders. By the time he put the car into gear we were all slightiy giddy. We drove away down Seminole, past our neigh- bors' houses, already saying farewell to Indian Village. At the corner, Milton put the blinker on and it ticked, counting the seconds down to our eventual departure. The '67 Fleetwood was my father's first Cadillac, but there were many more to come. Over the next seven years, Milton traded up al- most every year, so it's possible for me to chart my life in relation to the styling features of his long line of Cadillacs. When tail fins disap- peared, I was nine; when power antennas arrived, eleven. My emo- tional life accords with the designs, too. In the sixties, when Cadillacs were futuristically self-assured, I was also self-confident and forward- looking. In the gas-short seventies, however, when the manufacturer came out with the unfortunate Seville— a car that looked as though it had been rear-ended— I also felt misshapen. Pick a year and I'll tell you what car we had. 1970: the cola-colored Eldorado. 1971: the red sedan DeVille. 1972: the golden Fleetwood with the passenger sun visor that opened up into a starlet's dressing room mirror (in which Tessie checked her makeup and I my first blemishes). 1973: 253 the long, black, dome- roofed Fleetwood that made other cars stop, thinking a funeral was passing. 1974: the canary-yellow, two-door "Florida Special" with white vinyl top, sunroof, and tan leather seats that my mother is still driving today, almost thirty years later. But in 1967 it was the space-age Fleetwood. Once we got going the required speed, Milton said, "Okay. Now get a load of this." He flipped a switch under the dash. There was a hissing sound, like bal- loons inflating. Slowly, as if lifted on a magic carpet, the four of us rose to the upper reaches of the car's interior. "That's what they call the cAir-Ride.' Brand-new feature. Smooth, huh?" "Is it some kind of hydraulic suspension system?" Chapter Eleven wanted to know. "I think so." "Maybe I won't have to use my pillow when I drive," said Tessie. For a moment after that, none of us spoke. We were headed east, out of Detroit, literally floating on air.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  As I walked to Alaska’s room that morning, the frosty grass of the dorm circle crunched beneath my shoes. You don’t run into frost much in Florida—and I jumped up and down like I was stomping on bubble wrap. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Alaska was holding a burning green candle in her hand upside down, dripping the wax onto a larger, homemade volcano that looked a bit like a Technicolor middle-school-science-project volcano. “Don’t burn yourself,” I said as the flame crept up toward her hand. “Night falls fast. Today is in the past,” she said without looking up. “Wait, I’ve read that before. What is that?” I asked. With her free hand, she grabbed a book and tossed it toward me. It landed at my feet. “Poem,” she said. “Edna St. Vincent Millay. You’ve read that? I’m stunned.” “Oh, I read her biography! Didn’t have her last words in it, though. I was a little bitter. All I remember is that she had a lot of sex.” “I know. She’s my hero,” Alaska said without a trace of irony. I laughed, but she didn’t notice. “Does it seem at all odd to you that you enjoy biographies of great writers a lot more than you enjoy their actual writing?” “Nope!” I announced. “Just because they were interesting people doesn’t mean I care to hear their musings on nighttime.” “It’s about depression, dumb-ass.” “Oooooh, really? Well, jeez, then it’s brilliant ,” I answered. She sighed. “All right. The snow may be falling in the winter of my discontent, but at least I’ve got sarcastic company. Sit down, will ya?” I sat down next to her with my legs crossed and our knees touching. She pulled a clear plastic crate filled with dozens of candles out from underneath her bed. She looked at it for a moment, then handed me a white one and a lighter. We spent all morning burning candles—well, and occasionally lighting cigarettes off the burning candles after we stuffed a towel into the crack at the bottom of her door. Over the course of two hours, we added a full foot to the summit of her polychrome candle volcano. “Mount St. Helens on acid,” she said At 12:30, after two hours of me begging for a ride to McDonald’s, Alaska decided it was time for lunch. As we began to walk to the student parking lot, I saw a strange car. A small green car. A hatchback. I’ve seen that car, I thought. Where have I seen the car? And then the Colonel jumped out and ran to meet us. Rather than, like, I don’t know, “hello” or something, the Colonel began, “I have been instructed to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner at Chez Martín.” Alaska whispered into my ear, and then I laughed and said, “I have been instructed to accept your invitation.” So we walked over to the Eagle’s house, told him we were going to eat turkey trailer-park style, and sped away in the hatchback.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  You are only going to kill a man.” I thought back to Simón Bolívar’s last words in García Márquez’s novel—“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!” South American revolutionaries, it would seem, died with flair. I read the last words out loud to Lara. She turned on her side, placing her head on my chest. “Why do you like last words so much?” Strange as it might seem, I’d never really thought about why. “I don’t know,” I said, placing my hand against the small of her back. “Sometimes, just because they’re funny. Like in the Civil War, a general named Sedgwick said, ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from this dis—’ and then he got shot.” She laughed. “But a lot of times, people die how they live. And so last words tell me a lot about who people were, and why they became the sort of people biographies get written about. Does that make sense?” “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah?” Just yeah? “Yeah,” she said, and then went back to reading. I didn’t know how to talk to her. And I was frustrated with trying, so after a little while, I got up to go. I kissed her good-bye. I could do that, at least. — I picked up Alaska and the Colonel at our room and we walked down to the bridge, where I repeated in embarrassing detail the fellatio fiasco. “I can’t believe she went down on you twice in one day,” the Colonel said. “Only technically. Really just once,” Alaska corrected. “Still. I mean. Still. Pudge got his hog smoked.” “The poor Colonel,” Alaska said with a rueful smile. “I’d give you a pity blow, but I really am attached to Jake.” “That’s just creepy,” the Colonel said. “You’re only supposed to flirt with Pudge.” “But Pudge has a giiirrrrlll friend.” She laughed. — That night, the Colonel and I walked down to Alaska’s room to celebrate our Barn Night success. She and the Colonel had been celebrating a lot the past couple days, and I didn’t feel up to climbing Strawberry Hill, so I sat and munched on pretzels while Alaska and the Colonel drank wine from paper cups with flowers on them. “We ain’t drinkin’ out the bottle tonight, hun,” the Colonel said. “We classin’ it up!” “It’s an old-time Southern drinking contest,” Alaska responded. “We’s a-gonna treat Pudge to an evening of real Southern livin’: We go’n match each other Dixie cup for Dixie cup till the lesser drinker falls.” And that is pretty much what they did, pausing only to turn out the lights at 11:00 so the Eagle wouldn’t drop by. They chatted some, but mostly they drank, and I drifted out of the conversation and ended up squinting through the dark, looking at the book spines in Alaska’s Life Library. Even minus the books she’d lost in the miniflood, I could have stayed up until morning reading through the haphazard stacks of titles.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Mo-om!" I shouted, coming home tiiat evening. "I made a fri-end!" I told Tessie about Clementine, the old rugs on the walls, the pretty mother doing exercises, omitting only the kissing lessons. From the beginning I was aware that there was something improper about the way I felt about Clementine Stark, something I shouldn't tell my mother, but I wouldn't have been able to articulate it. I didn't con- nect this feeling to sex. I didn't know sex existed. "Can I invite her over?" "Sure," said Tessie, relieved that my loneliness in the neighbor- hood was now over. "I bet she's never seen a house like ours." And now it is a cool, gray October day a week or so later. From the back of a yellow house, two girls emerge, playing geisha. We have coiled up our hair and crossed take-out chopsticks in it. We wear san- dals and silk shawls. We carry umbrellas, pretending they're parasols. I know bits of The Flower Drum Son0^ which I sing as we traverse the courtyard and mount the steps to the badihouse. We come in the door, failing to notice a dark shape in the corner. Inside, the bath is a bright, bubbling turquoise. Silk robes fall to floor. Two giggling flamingos, one fair-skinned, the other light olive, test the water with one toe each. "It's too hot." "It's supposed to be that way." "You first." "No, you." "Okay." And then: in. Both of us. The smell of red- wood and eucalyptus. The smell of sandalwood soap. Clementine's hair plastered to her skull. Her foot appearing now and then above the water like a shark fin. We laugh, float, waste my mother's bath beads. Steam rises from the surface so thick it obscures the walls, the ceiling, the dark shape in the corner. I'm examining the arches of my 265 . .

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Dockery, the toughest of the tent men, started toward the front to lead her back to her seat, but Brother Terrell waved him off. The woman held a ten-dollar bill by a corner and waved it over her head.“I’m giving my last ten dollars to Brother Terrell. God healed me of a tumor a few months back. Oh hondalie condalie.”Sufis twirl, Hindus chant, Buddhists sit in silence. Holy Rollers and charismatic Christians babble like fools or speak the language of the angels, depending on who describes the experience. Believers lapsed into speaking in “tongues” or glossolalia when their euphoria stretched beyond the bounds of ordinary language.The Woman Who Used To Be Big closed her eyes and began to jerk. Brother Terrell ducked a thrown elbow. When the jerking slowed, he thanked her and reached for the microphone. She backed him off with one hand.“When the doctor checked me out, he said what did the preacher do with the tumor? I said I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just know I was sick and now I’m well. Hondalie condalie. A mighty wind swept down from the top of the tent, and I was healed.”Brother Terrell reached again for the microphone, but she turned away from him.“I’m not done yet, Brother. You’ll know when I’m done.”He dropped the buckets and started laughing. She waved her ten-dollar bill again.“This ten dollars is to prove God for my son. He’s an alcoholic, but if God can bust a tumor, he can heal a drunk. This man is giving us everything he’s got. Y’all help me support him.”As she spoke, the black woman who sat next to Pam and me rose to her feet and waved a bill in the air. The words poured out of her mouth, soft and incessant. “Tell it. Amen. Go on now. Yes. Yes.” A soft alto counterpoint to the solo performance of the Woman Who Used To Be Big.Purses snapped open across the tent and wallets were fished out of pockets. Soon everyone waved bills in the air.The Woman Who Used To Be Big laid the microphone on the prayer ramp. She gripped Brother Terrell by the shoulder with one hand and with the other she motioned for people to come up to the front. Brother Terrell buried his face in his hands and cried as people walked down the aisles and dropped their money in the buckets that stood at his feet.We didn’t have to worry about money again during that revival. Brother Terrell paid the bills and had some money left over to give to my mother and other members of his team on the payroll, as well as the families who traveled with the tent.When the people ran out of money to give, they brought bags of clothes and quilts and grocery sacks filled with vegetables from their gardens: tomatoes, peaches, okra, greens, and squash, bushels and bushels of squash. I hated squash.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  my egg. Nobody touch it until I come back." Upstairs, in the master bedroom, my parents accomplish the act. A child's natural decorum makes me refrain from imagining the scene in much detail. Only this: when they're done, as if topping off the tank, my father says, "That should do it." It turns out he's right. In May, Tessie learns she's pregnant, and the waiting begins. By six weeks, I have eyes and ears. By seven, nostrils, even lips. My genitals begin to form. Fetal hormones, taking chromosomal cues, inhibit Miillerian structures, promote Wolffian ducts. My twenty- three paired chromosomes have linked up and crossed over, spinning their roulette wheel, as my papou puts his hand on my mother's belly and says, "Lucky two!" Arrayed in their regiments, my genes carry out their orders. All except two, a pair of miscreants— or revolution- aries, depending on your view— hiding out on chromosome number 5. Together, they siphon off an enzyme, which stops the production of a certain hormone, which complicates my life. In the living room, the men have stopped talking about politics and instead lay bets on whether Milt's new kid will be a boy or a girl. My father is confident. Twenty-four hours after the deed, my mother's body temperature rose another two tenths, confirming ovu- lation. By then the male sperm had given up, exhausted. The female sperm, like tortoises, won the race. (At which point Tessie handed Milton the thermometer and told him she never wanted to see it again.) All this led up to the day Desdemona dangled a utensil over my 16 mother's belly. The sonogram didn't exist at the time; the spoon was the next best thing. Desdemona crouched. The kitchen grew silent. The other women bit their lower lips, watching, waiting. For the first minute, the spoon didn't move at all. Desdemona's hand shook and, after long seconds had passed, Aunt Lina steadied it. The spoon twirled; I kicked; my mother cried out. And then, slowly, moved by a wind no one felt, in that unearthly Ouija-board way, the silver spoon began to move, to swing, at first in a small circle but each or- bit growing gradually more elliptical until the path flattened into a straight line pointing from oven to banquette. North to south, in other words. Desdemona cried, "Kotos!" And the room erupted with shouts of "Kotos, koms" That night, my father said, "Twenty-three in a row means she's bound for a fall. This time, she's wrong. Trust me." "I don't mind if it's a boy," my mother said. "I really don't. As long as it's healthy, ten fingers, ten toes." "What's this c it.' That's my daughter you're talking about." I was born a week after New Year's, on January 8, 1960. In the wait- ing room, supplied only with pink-ribboned cigars, my father cried out, "Bingo!" I was a girl. Nineteen inches long. Seven pounds four ounces.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  shocked expression to be part of the play. Titters had begun at the way the girl playing Ismene was hamming it up. But Maxine's mother, knowing exactly what pain looked like on her child's face, shot up out of her seat. "No," she cried. "No!" Twenty feet away, ele- vated under a setting sun, Maxine Grossinger was still mute. A gurgle escaped from her throat. With the suddenness of a lighting cue her face went blue. Even in the back rows people could see the oxygen leave her blood. Pinkness drained away, down her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Later, the Obscure Object would swear that Maxine had been looking at her with a kind of appeal, that she had seen the light go out of Maxine's eyes. According to the doctors, however, this was probably not true. Wrapped in her dark robe, still on her feet, Maxine Grossinger was already dead. She toppled forward sec- onds later. Mrs. Grossinger scrambled up onstage. She made no sound now. No one did. In silence she reached Maxine and tore open her robe. In silence the mother began to give the daughter mouth-to-mouth. I froze. I let the curtains untwist and I stepped out and gawked. Sud- denly a white blur filled the arch. The Obscure Object was fleeing the stage. For a second I had a crazy idea. I thought Mr. da Silva had been holding out on us. He was doing things the traditional way af- ter all. Because the Obscure Object was wearing a mask. The mask for tragedy, her eyes like knife slashes, her mouth a boomerang of woe. With this hideous face she threw herself on me. "Oh my God!" she sobbed. "Oh my God, Callie," and she was shaking and needing me. Which leads me to a terrible confession. It is this. While Mrs. Grossinger tried to breathe life back into Maxine's body, while the sun set melodramatically over a death that wasn't in the script, I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through my body. Every nerve, every corpuscle, lit up. I had the Obscure Object in my arms. 339 TIRESIflS in LOVE made a doctor's appointment for you." "I just went to die doctor" "Not with Dr. Phil. With Dr. Bauer." "Who's Dr. Bauer?" "He's ... a ladies' doctor." There was a hot bubbling in my chest. As if my heart were eating Pop Rocks. But I played it cool, looking out at the lake. "Who says I'm a lady?" "Very funny." "I just went to the doctor, Mom." "That was for your physical." "What's this for?" "When girls get to be a certain age, Callie, they have to go get checked." "Why?" "To make sure everything's okay." "What do you mean, everything?"