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 Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Mama grabbed the phone and the man, thinking that Brother Terrell was in town and on his way over, ran out of the apartment. According to Mama, God and Brother Terrell saved her from being raped. While she fended off the would-be rapist, Brother Terrell was busy discussing a business proposition with another preacher after a late-night tent service. My mother says the Lord caused Brother Terrell to become so distracted and so uncomfortable that he was compelled to break off conversation with the man midsentence and call her. Gary and I slept through the incident and woke to policemen swarming our apartment and our mother’s shaky voice recounting what had happened. The police advised her not to press charges, telling her the man’s lawyer would try to make her look like a whore. What seems likely, though hardly fair, is that Brother Terrell’s visits to our apartment may have figured into their assessment. A single woman with two kids who allowed a married man to come and go from her apartment would not have been in much of a position to file attempted-rape charges in 1964. I was in third grade when we landed in the Leave It to Beaver house, a white two-bedroom frame job with green shutters, shaded by big trees and surrounded by grass instead of dirt. I began to do well in school, and my teacher moved me to the top reading group. She gave me permission to check out books designated for fourth- and fifth-graders and I did so at every opportunity, even though I had to skip words, paragraphs, and sometimes most of what was on the page. I dreamed of becoming an artist and drew pictures of three-legged horses: one leg at either end and a third, foreshortened, coming out of the rear of the belly. Inexplicably, the girls who lived on our street began to like me. I had been friends with boys, but other than Pam Terrell, I had never had a girl for a friend. They taught me to play Barbies and we gathered in their living rooms to watch The Monkees or sat on the grass and sang Supremes songs as loud as we could.I began to feel a part of instead apart from the world. My mother let it happen, and in some ways she encouraged it. She gave me a hot-pink transistor radio through which poured the satanic sound of rock and roll. The Lovin’ Spoonful. The Monkees. The Beatles. Sam Cooke. I plugged in my earpiece when Mama was around, to keep from aggravating her. It seems odd that my mother would allow me to listen to rock and roll. She wanted Gary and me to fit in, to belong in the communities in which we lived. Or more accurately, she wanted us to avoid the pain of not fitting in. Her childhood stories had always revolved around the theme of being chosen, called by God.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Yes,” the girl said as she wrapped the tape measure around Amy’s chest, “You can wear either a thirty-four or a thirty-six. I’'d recommend a thirty-four because bras stretch as they wear out.” The girl brought her a thirty-four, with silicone breast forms already in the sheer pockets. The silicone gave off a faint chemical odor, but was pleasingly pliable when squeezed. When the curtain dropped, Amy put it on, and the weight, naturally pulling on her chest, triggered something like an endorphin rush. She gave a little hop, to see them bounce, to feel the weight and movement. A giggle slipped out, like a bubble. She opened the curtain. “I’m going to buy this,” she told the girl. “Can I wear it to try on other clothes?” “Sure, of course,” the girl said. “I'll just take the boxes up to the counter.” From behind her, Patrick gave the thumbs-up. “Looking good,” Patrick said, and Amy had the strange urge to cover her fake breasts, her fake nipples strategically visible through the sheer fabric. Amy had expected Patrick to be something quite different than what he turned out to be. She had imagined someone quite masculine: the stereotypical man-in-a-dress. Some cleft-chinned action hero with blue eyeshadow—Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo. That was the best trans she’d seen on TV. Her other options were The Silence of the Lambs or The Bird Cage or maybe The Crying Game. She had no reason to think Patrick would have been any of those things. Look at Amy herself: neither comedy nor horror nor tragedy, neither especially masculine nor overtly striving for femme. Just a skinny blond college kid standing on a curb in a red hoodie that repeated washings and wear had faded close to pink; not exactly a macho style, but passably close to indie rock. When Patrick pulled up, a stab of disappointment came over Amy. Nothing about him struck her as notable: moderately tall, stooped shoulders lost in a knit polo shirt, hair on the top of his head nearly melted away, small neutral eyes peering at her standing on the curb through wire-framed glasses. Even his car: a nineties-era Geo Metro, a car so nondescript she had forgotten the model had ever existed until she saw him in one. She would have thought she might have the wrong guy, except that he rolled down the window and asked, “Tiffany?” The name she’d given him for herself. He hadn’t given her his femme name. I’m just always Patrick, he’d written. She got in, and he looked at her cautiously, then slowly drove down the street, leaning forward and concentrating on the road, giving the impression that the passing surroundings were shrouded in mist and appeared to him only a few feet from the end of his nose. They spoke little as Patrick drove through town, as though they might be overheard through the windows of the car. Out in the Berkshires, though, they began to talk.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  He read the words aloud and everyone went crazy. Once he had quieted the crowd, he invited them to form a prayer line. Sister Coleman knelt on the quilt beside Bug and gently rolled him into a crumpled sitting position. She threw his arms around her neck and struggled to her feet, one arm under his bottom, one cradling his back. She carried him through the line and the preacher laid hands on him. The tent workers helped them down the ramp, Bug’s head lolling on his mother’s shoulder, legs dangling, useless, outlined in the heavy metal braces. Sister Coleman put Bug back on his pallet and sat down. Up on the prayer ramp, Aunt Eunice planted the walker in front of her and pulled one leg and then the other until she was even with the preacher. Her lips moved constantly as Brother Coyne laid hands on her, then it was back down the ramp. When she reached the ground, she took one hand off the walker and raised it into the air, and then she raised the other one. Maybe this would be the night. She lowered her hands to the walker and pulled herself back to her seat. She sat down and leaned over to her niece.“The Lord’s presence was so sweet tonight, Lib. Thank you for bringing me.”Then it was over and we were packing up. Sister Coleman gathered up Bug. “Donna, get the pallet and bring it to the car.”I folded the quilt, tucked it under my arm, and turned to follow her out of the tent. But before I could think twice about it, before Sister Coleman could stop me, I grabbed Gary’s hand and ran toward the back of the platform. I had not known I was going to take off, had not thought about it beforehand. Sister Coleman called after us.“Come back here. Where are you going?”“To visit people,” I called over my shoulder.I pushed the canvas curtain aside and pulled Gary around the tent man who asked us what we were doing back there. I had to find Evelyn before the tent man told us to leave, before Sister Coleman came to get us. I spotted her standing in a small group with her back to us. She was tall and slim like my mother, with brown hair that fell almost to her waist. Like my mother, she wore a long skirt that dragged the ground. I ran up to her and grabbed her arm.“Evelyn. Do you remember me, I mean, us?”She turned and studied us, her brows coming together. My chest heaved. After a moment she knelt down and brought her face close to mine.“Of course I do.” She reached out and hugged me. “You look just like your mama.”I broke into sobs.“What is it? Is your mom here?” She peered over our heads.“No. I mean no, ma’am.”“Where is she?”“I don’t know. We live with Sister Coleman now.”“Who is Sister Coleman?”I felt a hand on my back and looked up.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Someone who feels like this is their last chance.” He walked down one of the two aisles. “You there. The lady with the little boy. Stand up, ma’am. Your son too. The Lord is showing me he’s deaf.”The woman began to cry and Brother Terrell put his arm around her. “I know what it’s like to see your son suffer, to weep and cry for his healing. The Lord of Hosts has heard your prayer today.”He knelt before the boy and cupped his hands over the child’s ears. “In the name of Je-sus. Stretch out your hands and pray with me, people. In the name of Je-sus. Be gone, you foul spirit of deafness. Release this child.”Brother Terrell moved behind the boy and clapped his hands. The boy whirled around and the crowd rose in unison. They moved toward Brother Terrell and the boy from all directions, pressing against them. Yes Lord. Yes Lord. Yes. Brother Terrell asked the boy to repeat what he heard and the mother translated his request in sign language. Again he moved to stand behind the boy.Brother Terrell said the word “baby.” The boy said, “Bah-bah.” Hallelujah.Brother Terrell said, “Mama.” The boy said, “Maaaaaaah.” Amen. Praise God.Brother Terrell said, “Dad-dy.” The boy’s response was lost in a din of praise. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A haze of light seemed to fall on the upturned faces and hands. My husband, an introverted cynic, stood with his hands raised at shoulder level, a tentative posture compared with the outstretched arms of those around us. His eyes were closed and he wore a beatific smile. Tears dripped off his chin. I raised my hands, too, letting go of the questions and the arguments and all the resentments, reaching for a place where everything belonged, even me.That afternoon as my husband and I drove through the parking lot, I saw the woman and her son sitting on a bench beside the road. The boy’s head moved from the right to the left and back again, over and over in a rhythmic pattern. I asked my husband to stop the car so that I could talk to the woman. She smiled as I approached.“That man. He healed him. My son can hear.”I looked at the boy, sitting on the edge of the bench, his head turning from side to side. “What is he doing?”“He’s listening to traffic. He’s never heard it before.” Chapter TwentyNONE OF THE HEALINGS I WITNESSED GROWING UP HAD EVER FELT SO immediate, so personal. Maybe it was having contact with the boy and his mother before and after Brother Terrell prayed for them. Maybe it was because I didn’t know how to live without Brother Terrell and his ministry at the center of everything. Or maybe it was because I was sixteen and longed to go home. With the miracle of the deaf boy, God seemed to beckon me. “You belong here ,” he seemed to say. “Here” was among the Terrellites.My husband agreed.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Gary ran and took a seat on the bottom step as Pam stood and held up a glass of chocolate mud.“Y’all want a milkshake?”The girl didn’t move but her brother nodded eagerly and took the glass. He brought the glass to his face, hesitated, then took a big, greedy drink. Gary and I fell in the mud laughing. Randall laughed so hard he had to lean against the house. The boy began to retch.Pam jumped from the porch and bent over him. “I think he’s really sick, y’all.”The boy’s sister didn’t flinch. Pam glared at her. “Girl, I said your brother’s sick. Get over here and help him.”Randall grabbed a glass and headed for the faucet at the back of the house. He brought back a glass of clear water and held it up to the boy. Pam took the glass and put it to the boy’s lips. He wouldn’t look at her.“Rinse your mouth out. It’s not a trick this time. Really.” He sipped just enough water to wash his mouth out. Pam rubbed his back with her free hand. The girl wedged herself between Pam and her brother. She pulled him up by the hand and they walked across the yard. Randall scurried after them. “Hey. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean nothing. Can’t we be friends? Come on, now.”They walked down the middle of road and turned into their yard. Pam figured if they were going to tell on us, they would head straight into the house. We were relieved when they sank back down on the porch instead. Randall sloshed water from the pail across the steps and washed the mud away.“There’s no telling what some people will do,” he said. “Just no telling.” The Brother Terrell who took the platform that night was a scythe, a blade beveled and honed so that all that remained was the thin quick edge of purpose. He was the will of God personified. He took the microphone from Brother Cotton, clipped it around his neck, and the audience went still. He moved to the pulpit and we moved with him. He inhaled and expectation rose in our chests. He exhaled and we hung there, waiting.The preachers’ heads turned in unison as he paced. They had arrived early to stake out seats on the stage, eager for their congregants to know they were associated with Brother Terrell. Privately, some said his popularity wouldn’t, couldn’t last long. His lack of education caused him to make wild, improbable claims about the nature of God, the Bible, and the world in general. Besides, rumors of marital infidelities had surfaced. It was only a matter of time. Midway across the platform, Brother Terrell stopped and stared at the preachers, without speaking. After a couple of minutes, they began to cross and uncross their legs. A nervous chuckle passed among them.He rubbed his forehead as if trying to banish a particularly troubling thought, then turned to face the audience.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese was the only boy on the ice. She slipped around in her sweatpants and rented skates, arms flailing, a novel curiosity to the giggling girls in their sequined skating dresses. Her tiny heart fluctuated between elation, envy, and the thrill of losing herself in the same activity as all the other girls. On the car ride home, Virginia bought them Happy Meals—the boy Happy Meal that came with a He-Man cup for Reese, and Deb got the girl one, a pastel unicorn cup. Reese brainstormed all the ways she could ask her mother to go back to the skating rink, and in her young weary way, concluded that all of them would end with her mother’s exasperated no. That’s not what happened. Over the next few weeks, her mother continued working late, sending her next door, and the lessons continued. For her birthday, Reese asked for a pair of skates, and got them. They were black, not white as they should have been, but her mother darkened when Reese pointed this out, so she hastened to correct herself: No, no, black is great, really, she loved black skates, she was just thinking about her new skating friends, the girls, and how they would want her to match them, that’s all. She skated for the next four years, largely chaperoned by Virginia. She was the only boy, looked after with a special kind of concern by the ice-skating version of soccer moms, who tended toward an entirely feminine, fussy sort of authority that Reese nestled into with satisfied sighs. The only moments of true pain came during the shows, when the skating rink raised money by having the kids put on a performance of The Nutcracker (at Christmas) or whatever Disney movie could be adapted (in the spring). Reese’s costumes, sewn by the skating mothers, nearly matched those of the girls around her. It was only when she unfolded them that her heart sank: Where the leotard should have ended in a cute little frilled skirt, it instead transitioned awkwardly into a pair of black satin trousers. After some time, Virginia learned to recognize these moments for Reese, and to help her steer clear of them. Reese remembered the ache of never wanting to get out of Virginia’s car to go home, the joyful times when it was her turn to ride in the passenger seat as Virginia shuttled her and a handful of other girls back and forth from local competitions. The way that Virginia included her with the other girls, complimented her on her grace, her form, the same as she did the others, so that eventually her daughter accepted Reese as one of them, and soon all of her friends did as well. The first time that Virginia just “forgot” and ordered five girl Happy Meals, instead of four girl Happy Meals and one boy Happy Meal.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  After the dinner portion of the night, the crowd sifted back into the conference rooms, now darkened and lit with colored lights for the after-party—an adult version of the transformation a high school gym undergoes for prom. Reese suggested they take free drinks and find somewhere quiet in the giant lobby. The lobby turns out to be prime real estate for people watching. Katrina, Reese, and Ames commandeer a bench with a strategic view of the comings and goings. A YouTube star with heavily contoured makeup throws a tantrum to the two pretty boys who make up his entourage. For some reason, former Republican-presidential- candidate John McCain’s daughter has been invited and is now here, looking as straight as humanly possible while talking to some poor hotel employee. On the bright side, the hot butch in the white suit Reese noticed earlier orders a car, while a younger brunette, stupefied with pleasure at having been selected, hangs on her arm. Beside Reese, Ames and Katrina gossip about the man and woman from their agency who had also attended the gala. Their talk turns to an incident that occurred last Monday at a company meeting, when Katrina’s unit announced a new campaign for a dating site for wealthy men. One of the artists in the campaign had animated the announcement with two stick figures falling in love, but had put photos of Ames’s and Katrina’s heads on the stick figures. Ames is sure that this proves that everyone at the office is aware of their relationship. Katrina disagrees. That kind of teasing, she says, has always been part of the agency culture. Although Ames and Katrina talk about their jobs as a matter of course, Katrina has not yet asked Reese what she does, a question for which Reese had prepared. She’s annoyed that it has not come. Ames has accused Reese of class resentments before, but now Reese can’t stop her defensiveness from welling up: She suspects that Ames has warned Katrina that Reese doesn’t have a degree, that money has always been a struggle for her. “Don’t you want the people you work with to know about you two?” Reese asks. She’s tired of dancing around the subject. “I mean, at some point with the baby...” Ames grunts and Katrina shifts uncomfortably. Then Katrina takes a breath. “Yes. We may as well talk about it.” Reese suddenly understands that Katrina means talk about it now, with her, not with the people at work. “I know Ames set this night up as just a get-to- know-each-other, but...” “Right,” agrees Reese. “Let’s just talk about it. I don’t know if this has to be awkward. I’ve been invited to be a third before, and for me, it always feels best when the agenda is up front.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Yeah, you were always graceful, but you used to be so careful to swing your hips. You were a languid boy, who learned to move like a woman, who then learned to move like a boy again, but without wiping your hard drive each time. You’ve got all these glitches in the way you move. I was watching you in the ice cream line—you slither.” “Wow, Reese, just wow.” “No! It’s charismatic. Remember how Johnny Depp pretended to be a drunk Keith Richards pretending to be a fey pirate? You can’t help but be a little drawn in, like: What’s going on with that one?” She smiles at him and takes a lick of ice cream, mock innocent. “I forget what it’s like being around trans women,” he admits. “That for once, I’m not the only one constantly analyzing the gender dynamics of every situation to play my role.” “Welcome back,” she says, seeming considerably cheered. “You must have also forgotten that I taught you everything you know.” “Please. The student surpassed the master long ago.” “Girl, you wish.” It’s like coming home, that quick “girl.” Something warmer and sweeter than the spring sun heating his neck and the ice cream lingering on his tongue. It’s scary-seductive, emphasis on scary. Start looking for that kind of comfort and he’s bound to make a fool of himself. The temptation to beg for inclusion pulled at him every time he spotted a trans woman on the street, on the train. A stab of need for recognition by her. Most apostates must feel similar, whether Amish, Muslim, ex-gay, whatever. Back when he lived as a trans woman, hardly anyone spoke about detransition. It was treated as the purview of conversion therapists and tabloid headlines: He Was a Man, Then a Woman, Then Back to a Man! The topic of detransition was boring—the reasons for it were never complex: Life as a trans woman was difficult and so people gave up. Even worse, to discuss the possibility of detransition gave hope to the lunacy of bigots who wished that trans women would simply detransition (i.e., cease to exist in any kind of visible, and hence meaningful, way). He went two years as a woman before he met a truly detransitioned person. Amy was at a queer dance party with Reese and six other trans women. Defensively, they'd claimed a small corner of the room—a section then promptly quarantined for disinterest by the gays and trans mascs and cis women. So once again, the conversation among the trans women was the same as it always was at queer dance parties: figuring out new ways to complain how “We look fucking hot. Why is everyone ignoring us?” It was a topic that, as the drinks lowered inhibitions and standards, gave way to pairing off and hooking up with each other. Except at that particular dance, halfway through the monologues about being ignored, Amy couldn’t help but notice that they actually weren’t being ignored.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  finally alone, in prison, these poetic images and associations burst forth in physical pleasure. Even the his mind. He idealized her madly; as far as he was concerned, she was no most reserved women blush longer an actress with a tawdry past. She seduced an entire nation the same to the whites of their eyes way. The secret was her dramatic poetic presence, combined with a touch at this moment of hope. The passion is so strong, of elusive distance; over time, you would see whatever you wanted to in and the pleasure so sharp, her. To this day people fantasize about what Eva was really like. that they betray themselves Familiarity destroys seduction. This rarely happens early on; there is so unmistakably. • 4. Love is born. To love is to enjoy much to learn about a new person. But a midpoint may arrive when the seeing, touching, and target has begun to idealize and fantasize about you, only to discover that sensing with all the senses, you are not what he or she thought. It is not a question of being seen too as closely as possible, a lovable object which loves often, of being too available, as some imagine. In fact, if your targets see in return. • 5. The first you too rarely, you give them nothing to feed on, and their attention may crystallization begins. If be caught by someone else; you have to occupy their mind. It is more a you are sure that a woman loves you, it is a pleasure matter of being too consistent, too obvious, too human and real. Your tar- to endow her with a gets cannot idealize you if they know too much about you, if they start to thousand perfections and to see you as all too human. Not only must you maintain a degree of distance, count your blessings with but there must be something fantastical and bewitching about you, sparking infinite satisfaction. In the end you overrate wildly, all kinds of delightful possibilities in their mind. The possibility Eva held and regard her as out was the possibility that she was what in Argentine culture was consid- something fallen from ered the ideal woman—devoted, motherly, saintly—but there are any num- Heaven, unknown as yet, but certain to be yours. • ber of poetic ideals you can try to embody. Chivalry, adventure, romance, Leave a lover with his and so on, are just as potent, and if you have a whiff of them about you, thoughts for twenty four you can breathe enough poetry into the air to fill people's minds with fan- hours, and this is what will happen: • At the salt tasies and dreams. At all costs, you must embody something, even if it is mines of Salzburg, they roguery and evil. Anything to avoid the taint of familiarity and commonness. throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the What I need is a woman who is something, anything; ei-abandoned workings. Two

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  She applied to the job stealth, the first time she had professionally hidden her trans identity. But she wanted no trans panic when it came to her and children. She got the job without incident. Thus, starting at five A.M. the following Monday, Reese found herself sitting in a playroom done up in bright primary colors, replete with games, a foam castle with a ball pit, a corner for art, and all manner of toys. Ambient music from Sesame Street played from hidden speakers. All day long, the count, that purple, vampiric muppet who suffered from a nearly sexual obsession with positive integers, sang of his love —“ONE! Heh-eh-eh-eh, TWO! Heh-eh-eh-eh!”—as mothers came in and handed Reese their children for an hour or two, while they took a spin class or ran on the treadmill. In the corners of the room, cameras surveilled and broadcast everything that occurred there to closed-circuit channels, which the mothers could watch from various angles on channels one and two of the LCD screens mounted to the workout equipment. The second week, two mothers who were friends came in simultaneously, each handing Reese a six-month-old infant, a diaper bag, and a bottle of breast milk. “If she starts to cry,” each mother said of her respective daughter, “just give her the bottle.” Before this moment, the youngest children brought into the daycare had been toddlers, and now, suddenly, Reese found herself entrusted with two infants. Neither mother appeared to doubt Reese’s credentials—a young woman in childcare? Such a luxe gym must have checked out her background, right? Great, here’s a baby! Reese experienced a moment of initial panic when she forgot which bottle of breast milk went with which tiny girl. She pictured the mothers watching her on the surveillance feed while they sweated on their ellipticals. Then something clicked. The tiny soft bodies in her arms, the way they giggled and cooed, triggered some sort of deep oxytocin-laced trance in Reese. She felt she knew instinctively what to do, knew just how much of the breast milk to give each girl so that she didn’t get sick, knew when they needed to be burped, knew when each needed to be picked up and held, when each could be settled back into her baby carrier. The mothers returned to their daughters sleeping and fed. They gushed that Reese had natural mothering instincts, and together began asking at the front desk for Reese’s schedule, planning their workouts to correspond with her shifts, then telling other young mothers about the tall maternal brunette. Within a few weeks, Reese was overwhelmed with children during her shifts, and offers to babysit in her free time, so that management was faced with either hiring a second employee during her shifts or changing the policy to no longer disclose her schedule.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  We walked back to the steps, tied the hems of our dresses around our thighs, then waded back in the water. Randall splashed us and we splashed back. The splashing helped us pretend that we didn’t care if people stared at us, didn’t care that we were in a public pool fully clothed, and after a while we really didn’t care. John took Gary off his shoulders and began to swing him through the water, holding him under his arms. Gary laughed so hard he started to cough. The two tent boys hoisted themselves out of the water and sat on the side of the pool, determined to remain apart or unable to overcome their sense of separateness. The rest of us played sharks, pirates, mermaids, even Marco Polo. Pam figured out how to swim underwater and we had contests to see who could hold her breath for the longest time. She won. Groups of local kids gradually made their way back to the shallows and resumed their games. If they ventured too close, we glared and they backed off. Riding in the back of the truck on the way home, I thought about how happy everyone at the pool seemed. They either didn’t know or didn’t care that they were practically naked and on their way to hell. Chapter EightIN HOT SPRINGS, BROTHER TERRELL OPENED THE LITTLE HALF DOOR AT the back of the platform and walked to the center of the stage with his head slightly down, chin tucked in. After weeks of fasting, his shoulders were coat-hanger thin and his shirt billowed about when he moved, almost as if there were no one inside. Every week his black belt snaked a little farther around his waist. Soon it would touch his back. He took the microphone from Brother Cotton and began to speak in the middle of the chorus.“Y’all ever been tempted? It’s a lonely place to be.”The singing died away and the crowd sat silent.“Bathsheba tempted David and he murdered a man. Delilah seduced Samson and destroyed him. Jezebel caused a king and an entire nation to stray with her painted lips and idols.”Jezebel. The pagan princess who painted her face and seduced the king of Israel into marrying her. Jezebel. Thrown from the castle window and devoured by dogs who left only her skull, hands, and feet. I saw her severed hands lying there in the street, rings stacked on slender fingers that ended in long red nails. The sun reflecting off gold sandals crisscrossing her tiny, unbloodied feet. Her skull rolling to a stop against the curb. She never should have worn all that makeup. I tore the Kleenex Laverne had given me in half and wrapped one piece around each of two small sticks I had fished from the sawdust, glad Pam couldn’t see me making ladies out of sticks and Kleenex.“Seems like every time a man of God falls, there’s a woman in the picture.”“That’s right, there is.”“Uh-huh.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  the queen, the dashing Essex would often chastize her for her sourness. AMERICAN MYTH OF JFK The queen would forgive him—he was so exuberant and spontaneous, he could not control himself. But his comments got under her skin; in the presence of Essex she came to remember all the youthful ideals—spiritedness, feminine charm—that had since vanished from her life. She also felt a little The normal rhythm of life oscillates in general between of that girlish spirit return when she was around him. He quickly became a mild satisfaction with her favorite, and soon she was in love with him. Old age is constantly se- oneself and a slight duced by youth, but first the young people must make it clear what the discomfort, originating in the knowledge of one's older ones are missing, how they have lost their ideals. Only then will they personal shortcomings. We feel that the presence of the young will let them recapture that spark, the should like to be as rebellious spirit that age and society have conspired to repress. handsome, young, strong or clever as other people of our This concept has infinite applications. Corporations and politicians acquaintance. We wish we know that they cannot seduce their public into buying what they want could achieve as much as them to buy, or doing what they want them to do, unless they first awaken they do, long for similar advantages, positions, the a sense of need and discontent. Make the masses uncertain about their same or greater success. To identity and you can help define it for them. It is as true of groups or na- be delighted with oneself is tions as it is of individuals: they cannot be seduced without being made to the exception and, often feel some lack. Part of John F. Kennedy's election strategy in 1960 was to enough, a smoke screen which we produce for make Americans unhappy about the 1950s, and how far the country had ourselves and of course for strayed from its ideals. In talking about the 1950s, he did not mention the others. Somewhere in it is nation's economic stability or its emergence as a superpower. Instead, he a lingering feeling of discomfort with ourselves implied that the period was marked by conformity, a lack of risk and ad- and a slight self-dislike. I venture, a loss of our frontier values. To vote for Kennedy was to embark assert that an increase of 210 • The Art of Seduction this spirit of discontent on a collective adventure, to go back to ideals we had given up. But before renders a person especially anyone joined his crusade they had to be made aware of how much they susceptible to "falling in had lost, what was missing. A group, like an individual, can get mired in love." . . . In most cases

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  My mother flipped a wall switch and a chandelier spilled light over a long dark table with eight tall chairs.“Oh.” The word came out as a soft sigh from all three of us. Off to the side, an empty china cabinet awaited its new charges. It would have to make do with the Harvest Gold dinnerware Mama had bought with green stamps. We pushed through a door into the kitchen with its floor-to-ceiling cabinets, a second table, and a pantry almost as large as Gary’s old bedroom. So much space. Half our trailer would have fit in the kitchen.We rounded the corner and traipsed up the stairs, through the bedrooms fully furnished with beds, dressers, tables, lamps, and a picture or two. Where had all this stuff come from? I peeked in the closets, relieved to find them empty. The dressing room attached to my mother’s bedroom was the only unfurnished room in the house. Mama nodded toward the longest wall. Her voice broke the spell. “The crib will go there.”“Mama, all this furniture, whose is it?”She laughed and handed me the baby. “Ours now. We bought it all from the people who lived here. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.“All those years of sacrifice, and now the Lord is blessing the ministry. Brother Terrell is going to get that divorce from Betty Ann. Things are going to be different.” Her voice sounded like a kid who couldn’t believe her luck. Things were different, and seemingly overnight. Right after we moved in, Brother Terrell had Longbotham Furniture deliver a huge TV to our door. Mama made a weak protest, but she couldn’t say no to Brother Terrell, and the hellevision became a permanent fixture in our living room. Brother Terrell spent every evening after dinner stretched out on the big couch, watching that screen. It wasn’t so much that he liked TV, Mama said. He just needed a break from the pressures of the ministry.In the early to midseventies, the Lord’s work officially took in about a million dollars annually, though since all transactions were made in cash, the accounting was vague at best. Edited versions of Brother Terrell sermons were broadcast on about thirty-five stations across the United States, and his magazine, The Endtime Messenger , went out monthly to over one hundred thousand subscribers. Radio and publishing costs came with an annual price tag of close to a half million dollars. Brother Terrell had purchased a second version of the world’s largest tent, this one in red, white, and blue. His annual missionary trips to India drew hundreds of thousands. He was on the verge of being discovered by a broader audience. The rise of the Charismatic movement brought middle-class tongue-talking Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Catholics to the tent. Someone approached Brother Terrell about a television show. Someone else wanted to write a book about him. A religious film producer wanted to make a movie about his overseas revivals.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Victoria once sent flowers to her prime minister. He later returned the favor, sending primroses, a flower so ordinary that some recipients might have been insulted; but his gift came with a note: "Of all the flowers, the one that retains its beauty longest, is sweet primrose." Disraeli was enveloping Victoria in a fantasy atmosphere in which everything was a metaphor, and the simplicity of the flower of course symbolized the queen—and also the relationship between the two leaders. Victoria fell for the bait; primroses were soon her favorite flower. In fact everything Disraeli did now met with her approval. She allowed him to sit in her presence, an unheard-of privilege. The two began to exchange valentines every February. The queen would ask people what Disraeli had said at a party; when he paid a little too much attention to Empress Augusta of Germany, she grew jealous. The courtiers wondered what had happened to the stubborn, formal woman they had known—she was acting like an infatuated girl. The Charmer • 85 In 1876, Disraeli steered through Parliament a bill declaring Queen Victoria a "Queen-Empress." The queen was beside herself with joy. Out of gratitude and certainly love, she elevated this Jewish dandy and novelist to the peerage, making him Earl of Beaconsfield, the realization of a lifelong dream. Disraeli knew how deceptive appearances can be: people were always judging him by his face and by his clothes, and he had learned never to do the same to them. So he was not deceived by Queen Victoria's dour, sober exterior. Beneath it, he sensed, was a woman who yearned for a man to appeal to her feminine side, a woman who was affectionate, warm, even sexual. The extent to which this side of Victoria had been repressed merely revealed the strength of the feelings he would stir once he melted her reserve. Disraeli's approach was to appeal to two aspects of Victoria's personality that other people had squashed: her confidence and her sexuality. He was a master at flattering a person's ego. As one English princess remarked, "When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England." Disraeli worked his magic with a delicate touch, insinuating an atmosphere of amusement and relaxation, particularly in relation to politics. Once the queen's guard was down, he made that mood a little warmer, a little more suggestive, subtly sexual— though of course without overt flirtation. Disraeli made Victoria feel desirable as a woman and gifted as a monarch. How could she resist? How could she deny him anything?

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  “Colonel Catastrophe, you’re our beat box.” “Dude, I can’t rap,” I pled. “That’s okay. The Colonel can’t drop beats, either. Just try and rhyme a little and then send it over to me.” With his hand cupped over his mouth, the Colonel started to make absurd noises that sounded more like farting than bass beats, and I, uh, rapped. “Um, we’re sittin’ in the barn and the sun’s goin’ down / when I was a kid at Burger King I wore a crown / dude, I can’t rhyme for shit / so I’ll let my boy Takumi rip it.” Takumi took over without pausing. “Damn, Pudge, I’m not sure I’m quite ready / but like Nightmare on Elm Street ’s Freddy / I’ve always got the goods to rip shit up / last night I drank wine it was like hiccup hiccup / the Colonel’s beats are sick like malaria / when I rock the mike the ladies suffer hysteria / I represent Japan as well as Birmingham / when I was a kid they called me yellow man / but I ain’t ashamed a’ my skin color / and neither are the countless bitches that call me lover.” Alaska jumped in. “Oh shit did you just diss the feminine gender / I’ll pummel your ass then stick you in a blender / you think I like Tori and Ani so I can’t rhyme / but I got flow like Ghostbusters got slime / objectify women and it’s fuckin’ on / you’ll be dead and gone like ancient Babylon.” Takumi picked it up again. “If my eye offends me I will pluck it out / I got props for girls like old men got gout / oh shit now my rhyming got all whack / Lara help me out and pick up the slack.” Lara rhymed quietly and nervously—and with even more flagrant disregard for the beat than me. “My name’s Lara and I’m from Romania / thees is pretty hard, um, I once visited Albania / I love riding in Alaska’s Geo / My two best vowels in English are EO / I’m not so good weeth the leetle i ’s / but they make me sound cosmopoleeteen, right? / Oh, Takumi, I think I’m done / end thees game weeth some fun.” “I drop bombs like Hiroshima, or better yet Nagasaki / when girls hear me flow they think that I’m Rocky / to represent my homeland I still drink sake / the kids don’t get my rhymin’ so sometimes they mock me / my build ain’t small but I wouldn’t call it stocky / then again, unlike Pudge, I’m not super gawky / I’m the fuckin’ fox and this is my crew / our freestyle’s infused with funk like my gym shoes. And we’re out.” The Colonel rapped it up with freestyle beat-boxing, and we gave ourselves a round of applause. “You ripped it up, Alaska,” Takumi says, laughing.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  The haggard quality his face had assumed during the fast was softened by an eager, boyish grin. He turned that smile on the women and they giggled and bumped around, placing platters loaded with bacon and sausage, biscuits, eggs, and toast onto the table. Bowls of tomato gravy, cream gravy, and grits oozing with butter followed. The sun streamed through windows and across the table, catching on mason jars filled with honey in the comb, strawberry preserves, and fig preserves, turning them into jewels of light. Pam sat beside her daddy, beaming her big snaggletoothed smile at him. Something bubbled over on the stove and Mama scolded herself. I stood in the doorway, taking it all in: Brother Terrell, the light, all that food.“Well, Miss Priss, are you going to stand there all day or do you think you might eat?” Mama held up a plate. I walked over and sat across from Pam.Brother Terrell waved the women over. “Let’s bow our heads and pray together.”Laverne stood behind Brother Cotton’s chair while Mama and Betty Ann flanked Brother Terrell. Mama bit at her lips and Betty Ann twisted a dish towel. Laverne placed her hands on her husband’s shoulders.Brother Terrell dropped his head and prayed. “Father, we thank thee for this food. Bless it to the nourishment of our bodies, and bless the hands that prepared it. Oh Lord, we ask that you would be with us. We ask that you would enable our bodies to accept and use this food, so that we might be strengthened, Lord, to do the work that thou hast given us to do . . .” His voice grew softer as the prayer progressed until I couldn’t hear him at all.The clock ticked. The coffee perked. Brother Cotton cleared his throat. No one wanted to disturb Brother Terrell’s prayer, even when he wasn’t saying a word. I opened one eye to see what was going on. Mama’s, Betty Ann’s, and Laverne’s heads were bowed. Pam’s eyes were squeezed shut. Brother Cotton’s head was tucked so low his chin almost rested on his chest. Brother Terrell’s eyes were open and he was chewing a biscuit and licking his lips. My mouth fell open and I looked right at him.He winked at me, put the biscuit on his plate, and spoke. “Brother Cotton, when you’re done praying, could you pass the bacon?”It was his old joke. Somehow we had forgotten it, or maybe we were glad to play along again. Betty Ann popped him with the dish towel. “David, you’re a mess.”He spooned a lake of grits onto his platter, flipped three over-easy eggs on top, and stirred it all together. He shoveled a tablespoon into his mouth and didn’t put the spoon down until he scraped the platter.Mama’s brow furrowed. “Maybe you should slow down a bit.”“Jesus released me from the fast and told me to eat. Bless God, I’m eating.”Mama exhaled a long-suffering sigh.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  But then Kathy is half singing, half wailing “Oh my god!” and getting up and embracing Katrina. Then so is the woman in the cream skirt, and others that Reese hasn’t yet been introduced to. Even Sexy-Smart, despite her interrupted sales pitch, is cooing and vying for a hug. “But who’s the father?” Kathy asks, when the cooing dies down. Katrina points at Reese. A room full of confused faces turns to Reese. Kathy tilts her head, as though trying to look under Reese, for whatever father Reese might be sitting on and hiding. There is a second in which Reese instinctively fears that she’s been outed and says suddenly, “We’re co-mothers.” Then she says, “But I’m not the actual father.” Then, aware of how odd that sounds, she concedes another piece of information: “But I am trans.” If an oracle had foretold that Reese would voluntarily come out at a doTERRA Essential Oils direct-sales party, she would have understood it figuratively, a puzzle like the one the witches gave to fool Macbeth—because the literal possibility of a forest traveling up a hill existed beyond the realms of even outlandish farce. A d(OTERRA- party-coming-out is Reese’s Birnam Wood. Yet now, it has happened. She has come out at a dOTERRA party, although she’s not sure what she has come out as, or how much more coming out she still has to go. There is a moment’s silence to take this in. But Kathy, being the hostess, knows exactly what social grace the situation requires and she executes it properly. Which is to say she coos loudly and happily and swoops in at Reese for the congratulatory embrace. The woman in the immaculate cream skirt (whose name Reese has forgotten and can’t bear to ask again, and so she has named her the Empress of Dry Cleaning), Kathy, Katrina, Reese, and two other women have left Kathy’s apartment for a café specializing in Italian desserts. It is an impromptu celebration for Katrina’s pregnancy announcement. They all smell like essential oils. Reese has a healthy droplet of peppermint under her nose that Steve wiped there with his bare finger, and which he said would open up her sinuses. Everything smells like freezing candy canes, but since her sinuses weren’t stuffy to begin with, she can’t opine as to the efficacy of his celebrity medical technique. The Empress of Dry Cleaning knows the proprietor of the dessert place, a darkly handsome man in his midlife. Fireworks of smile lines burst across his face at every small pleasantry uttered by the Empress. Reese sees the effect the Empress has on the poor man, and really, who can blame him? She must be in her thirties, but it is not just her clothes that are perfectly pressed: Everything about her is apple crisp and seems newly made. Her skin, Reese imagines, must smell like dryer sheets.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “Yes, I know it’s a good idea! You should listen to your mother more! Maybe if you put something appealing on the registry, I’ll even approve of it, and generously get it for you.” She winked, and Reese, in that moment, wanted to be her daughter. So now here are Katrina and Reese, scanning bar codes on swaddlers and wearable blankets. Even perusing the socks area had brought them close to choice overload. Who knew infants needed so many styles? Especially since it seemed that a baby would outgrow each sock size in a matter of months. In front of a stand of socks for nine- month-olds, Reese experiences a wave of sentimentality for the impossibly tiny infant socks. Where does the time go; the days when her baby’s feet could be measured by her thumb were so few, so precious, she imagines she will one day lament. “Oh my god,” Reese tells Katrina. “I’m, like, missing the days when our baby was just an infant, and she’s not even born yet.” Reese and Katrina tend to use “she” pronouns for the baby, even though they had yet to find out the sex. Katrina has a pretty solid grasp on the difference between sex and gender and Reese isn’t one to think that sex doesn’t matter. Even if her kid turns out to be trans, it’s helpful to know in which direction that trans will travel. “Premature nostalgia is better than what I’m feeling.” “What are you feeling?” “Consumer fatigue. I knew this shit was going to be expensive, but oh my god, looking at this crap, it’s overwhelming. UGG makes fucking baby shoes! Fifty-five dollars!” “For Sale: Baby UGGs, never worn.” “We are living the saddest short story ever told,” Katrina snorts, then points to the swaddlers. “Can we just dress her in those wearable blankets for the first year? It’s not like she’s going to care if she isn’t in designer clothes, and it'll cost a fortune to have to buy all this every three months. Let’s just put her in blankets, they'll last longer.” Reese shrugs. Now that she has seen that Coach makes little baby shoes, her inner brand whore is crying out to scan them onto the registry. But, really, it would just be in terrible taste to let her first mothering disagreement with Katrina be over whether or not to dress their kid in designer brands. They'd have all of the teenage years for that shit. Downstairs, a glass case displays the breast pumps: sleek electronic affairs that look as though they’ve been designed by Steve Jobs—era Apple. Smooth, white curves, with a minimum of buttons. “Fancy! They even have an app! Can we share one?” Katrina asks. “Or do we each need our own?”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese was the only boy on the ice. She slipped around in her sweatpants and rented skates, arms flailing, a novel curiosity to the giggling girls in their sequined skating dresses. Her tiny heart fluctuated between elation, envy, and the thrill of losing herself in the same activity as all the other girls. On the car ride home, Virginia bought them Happy Meals—the boy Happy Meal that came with a He-Man cup for Reese, and Deb got the girl one, a pastel unicorn cup. Reese brainstormed all the ways she could ask her mother to go back to the skating rink, and in her young weary way, concluded that all of them would end with her mother’s exasperated no. That’s not what happened. Over the next few weeks, her mother continued working late, sending her next door, and the lessons continued. For her birthday, Reese asked for a pair of skates, and got them. They were black, not white as they should have been, but her mother darkened when Reese pointed this out, so she hastened to correct herself: No, no, black is great, really, she loved black skates, she was just thinking about her new skating friends, the girls, and how they would want her to match them, that’s all. She skated for the next four years, largely chaperoned by Virginia. She was the only boy, looked after with a special kind of concern by the ice-skating version of soccer moms, who tended toward an entirely feminine, fussy sort of authority that Reese nestled into with satisfied sighs. The only moments of true pain came during the shows, when the skating rink raised money by having the kids put on a performance of The Nutcracker (at Christmas) or whatever Disney movie could be adapted (in the spring). Reese’s costumes, sewn by the skating mothers, nearly matched those of the girls around her. It was only when she unfolded them that her heart sank: Where the leotard should have ended in a cute little frilled skirt, it instead transitioned awkwardly into a pair of black satin trousers. After some time, Virginia learned to recognize these moments for Reese, and to help her steer clear of them. Reese remembered the ache of never wanting to get out of Virginia’s car to go home, the joyful times when it was her turn to ride in the passenger seat as Virginia shuttled her and a handful of other girls back and forth from local competitions. The way that Virginia included her with the other girls, complimented her on her grace, her form, the same as she did the others, so that eventually her daughter accepted Reese as one of them, and soon all of her friends did as well. The first time that Virginia just “forgot” and ordered five girl Happy Meals, instead of four girl Happy Meals and one boy Happy Meal.