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)

  His feet in place, Maxx swayed his arms to the music, and the crowd erupted with laughter and deafening, sustained applause—the largest ovation by a good measure in Speaker Day history. The Eagle was up in a flash, and as soon as he stood, Maxx stopped dancing, but he flexed his pec muscles so that they jumped up and down quickly in time to the music before the Eagle, not smiling but sucking his lips in as if not smiling required effort, indicated with a thumb that Maxx should go on home, and Maxx did. My eyes followed Maxx out the door, and I saw Takumi standing in the doorway, fists raised in the air in triumph, before he ran back upstairs to cut the music. I was glad he’d gotten to see at least a bit of the show. Takumi had plenty of time to get his equipment out, because the laughing and talking went on for several minutes while the Eagle kept repeating, “Okay. Okay. Let’s settle down now. Settle down, y’all. Let’s settle down.” The senior-class speaker spoke next. He blew. And as we left the gym, nonjuniors crowded around us, asking, “Was it you?” and I just smiled and said no, for it had not been me, or the Colonel or Takumi or Lara or Longwell Chase or anyone else in that gym. It had been Alaska’s prank through and through. The hardest part about pranking, Alaska told me once, is not being able to confess. But I could confess on her behalf now. And as I slowly made my way out of the gym, I told anyone who would listen, “No. It wasn’t us. It was Alaska.” The four of us returned to Room 43, aglow in the success of it, convinced that the Creek would never again see such a prank, and it didn’t even occur to me that I might get in trouble until the Eagle opened the door to our room and stood above us, and shook his head disdainfully. “I know it was y’all,” said the Eagle. We looked at him silently. He often bluffed. Maybe he was bluffing. “Don’t ever do anything like that again,” he said. “But, Lord, ‘subverting the patriarchal paradigm’—it’s like she wrote the speech.” He smiled and closed the door. one hundred fourteen days after A WEEK AND A HALF LATER, I walked back from my afternoon classes, the sun bearing down on my skin in a constant reminder that spring in Alabama had come and gone in a matter of hours, and now, early May, summer had returned for a six-month visit, and I felt the sweat dribble down my back and longed for the bitter winds of January. When I got to my room, I found Takumi sitting on the couch, reading my biography of Tolstoy. “Uh, hi,” I said. He closed the book and placed it beside him and said, “January 10.” “What?” I asked. “January 10.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  “Randall, son, I warn you, I’ve had enough.”My mother yelled, “David!” and Brother Terrell turned around in time to jerk the Falcon back into the right lane and miss an oncoming car. Mama threw her arm over Gary and me and kept it there until we bumped to a stop by a weedy water-filled ditch that ran along the side of the road. We sat there at an angle, breathing hard, the car leaning toward the ditch and all of us leaning with it. Mama put her arm down, sighed, and said, “If you’re not careful, you’ll kill us all.”Brother Terrell gripped the wheel and stared out the windshield. He seemed calm. Close calls on the highway affected him that way. He accelerated and tried to straighten the car a bit before slipping the gearshift into park and turning off the engine. “Son, why do you leave me no alternative but to whip you?” Randall didn’t have an answer.Father and son opened the doors and walked to the back of the car. Randall stretched out his arms and put his hands on the trunk as his daddy unthreaded his belt. Pam mumbled, “He’s gonna get it now.” Mama put her hand on my head and turned my face to the front. My shoulders and neck tensed in anticipation of the first whop of the belt. Brother Terrell pleaded with Randall that he didn’t want to whip him, not today, especially not today. His words receded under the blast of a horn from a passing car. As the horn grew fainter, we heard laughter. No one laughed during a whipping. I whirled around and stared through the rear window. Brother Terrell stood pulling his pants up over his boxers while Randall looked over his shoulder at him, one hand still on the back of the car, the other hand slapping at his thigh over and over. Brother Terrell gripped his pants at the waist and tried to swat Randall with the belt, but he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to take aim. The two of them were laughing as hard as I had ever seen.I tugged at my mother’s sleeve. “What’s going on, Mama?”She arched her eyebrow. “I’d say God just answered Randall’s prayer.”In a moment Brother Terrell and Randall collapsed back into the car, bodies shaking, faces crinkled, wiping tears from their eyes with the backs of their hands. Brother Terrell beat the steering wheel and wheezed. Randall rolled from side to side in the backseat, holding his stomach, gasping for air.“Oh, Daddy . . . oh, Lordy . . . Daddy done fasted so much, when he, when he . . . took his belt off, his pants . . . his pants just slipped down on the road.”Brother Terrell turned to Betty Ann and took up the story. “You should’a seen that carload of people passed by.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  know that Jack would be a great deal happier than Jill even if he had only 2 million today while she has 5. So Bernoulli’s theory must be wrong. The happiness that Jack and Jill experience is determined by the recent change in their wealth, relative to the different states of wealth that define their reference points (1 million for Jack, 9 million for Jill). This reference dependence is ubiquitous in sensation and perception. The same sound will be experienced as very loud or quite faint, depending on whether it was preceded by a whisper or by a roar. To predict the subjective experience of loudness, it is not enough to know its absolute energy; you also need to know the reference sound to which it is automatically compared. Similarly, you need to know about the background before you can predict whether a gray patch on a page will appear dark or light. And you need to know the reference before you can predict the utility of an amount of wealth. For another example of what Bernoulli’s theory misses, consider Anthony and Betty: Anthony’s current wealth is 1 million. Betty’s current wealth is 4 million. They are both offered a choice between a gamble and a sure thing. The gamble: equal chances to end up owning 1 million or 4 million OR The sure thing: own 2 million for sure In Bernoulli’s account, Anthony and Betty face the same choice: their expected wealth will be 2.5 million if they take the gamble and 2 million if they prefer the sure-thing option. Bernoulli would therefore expect Anthony and Betty to make the same choice, but this prediction is incorrect. Here again, the theory fails because it does not allow for the different reference points from which Anthony and Betty consider their options. If you imagine yourself in Anthony’s and Betty’s shoes, you will quickly see that current wealth matters a great deal. Here is how they may think: Anthony (who currently owns 1 million): “If I choose the sure thing, my wealth will double with certainty. This is very attractive. Alternatively, I can take a gamble with equal chances to quadruple my wealth or to gain

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  known or imagined before, a giddying of all my senses. It THE DUKE: A certain was instinctive joy, against which no warning, reasoning disposition of the senses, as unexpected as it is monitor within me availed. It was new and irresistible and involuntary, which a finally overpowering. Seduction— the word implies being woman can conceal, but led— and so gently, so tenderly. which, should it be perceived or sensed by — L I N D A CHRISTIAN someone who might profit from it, puts her in the greatest danger of being a Keys to Seduction little more willing than she thought she ever should or could be. Now more than ever, our minds are in a state of constant distraction, —CRÉBILLON FILS, LE HASARD barraged with endless information, pulled in every direction. Many AU COIN DU FEU, QUOTED IN M I C H E L FEHER, ED., THE of us recognize the problem: articles are written, studies are completed, but LIBERTINE READER they simply become more information to digest. It is almost impossible to turn off an overactive mind; the attempt simply triggers more thoughts— an inescapable hall of mirrors. Perhaps we turn to alcohol, to drugs, to physical activity—anything to help us slow the mind, be more present in When, on an autumn evening, with closed eyes, \ the moment. Our discontent presents the crafty seducer with infinite op- I breathe the warm dark portunity. The waters around you are teeming with people seeking some fragrance of your breast, \ kind of release from mental overstimulation. The lure of unencumbered Before me blissful shores unfold, caressed \ By physical pleasure will make them take your bait, but as you prowl the wa- dazzling fires from blue ters, understand: the only way to relax a distracted mind is to make it focus unchanging skies. \ And on one thing. A hypnotist asks the patient to focus on a watch swinging there, upon that calm and back and forth. Once the patient focuses, the mind relaxes, the senses drowsing isle, \ Grow luscious fruits amid awaken, the body becomes prone to all kinds of novel sensations and sug- fantastic trees: \ There, gestions. As a seducer, you are a hypnotist, and what you are making the men are lithe: the women target focus on is you. of those seas \ Amaze one with their gaze that knows Throughout the seductive process you have been filling the target's no guile. \ Your perfume mind. Letters, mementos, shared experiences keep you constantly present, wafts me thither like a even when you are not there. Now, as you shift to the physical part of wind: \ I see a harbor thronged with masts and the seduction, you must see your targets more often. Your attention must sails \ Still weary from the become more intense. Errol Flynn was a master at this game. When he tumult of the gales; \ And 402 • The Art of Seduction with the sailors' song that

• 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 Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  People who recently married, or are expecting to marry in the near future, are likely to retrieve that fact when asked a general question about their life. Because marriage is almost always voluntary in the United States, almost everyone who is reminded of his or her recent or forthcoming marriage will be happy with the idea. Attention is the key to the puzzle. Figure 16 can be read as a graph of the likelihood that people will think of their recent or forthcoming marriage when asked about their life. The salience of this thought is bound to diminish with the passage of time, as its novelty wanes. The figure shows an unusually high level of life satisfaction that lasts two or three years around the event of marriage. However, if this apparent surge reflects the time course of a heuristic for answering the question, there is little we can learn from it about either happiness or about the process of adaptation to marriage. We cannot infer from it that a tide of raised happiness lasts for several years and gradually recedes. Even people who are happy to be reminded of their marriage when asked a question about their life are not necessarily happier the rest of the time. Unless they think happy thoughts about their marriage during much of their day, it will not directly influence their happiness. Even newlyweds who are lucky enough to enjoy a state of happy preoccupation with their love will eventually return to earth, and their experienced well-being will again depend, as it does for the rest of us, on the environment and activities of the present moment. In the DRM studies, there was no overall difference in experienced well- being between women who lived with a mate and women who did not. The details of how the two groups used their time explained the finding. Women who have a mate spend less time alone, but also much less time with friends. They spend more time making love, which is wonderful, but also more time doing housework, preparing food, and caring for children, all relatively unpopular activities. And of course, the large amount of time married women spend with their husband is much more pleasant for some than for others. Experienced well- being is on average unaffected by marriage, not because marriage makes no difference to happiness but because it changes some aspects of life for the better and others for the worse. One reason for the low correlations between individuals’ circumstances and their satisfaction with life is that both experienced happiness and life satisfaction are largely determined by the genetics of temperament. A disposition for well-being is as heritable as height or intelligence, as demonstrated by studies of twins separated at birth. People who appear equally fortunate vary greatly in how

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The second crystallization, which deposits diamond layers of proof that "she loves me." • Every few minutes throughout the night which follows the birth of doubt, the lover has a moment of dreadful misgiving, and then reassures himself "she loves me"; and crystallization begins to reveal new charms. Then once again the haggard eye of doubt pierces him and he stops transfixed. He forgets to draw breath and mutters, "But does she love me?" Torn between doubt and delight, the poor lover convinces himself that she could give him such pleasure as he could find nowhere else on earth. —STENDHAL, LOVE, TRANSLATED BY GILBERT AND SUZANNE SALE Falling in love automatically tends toward madness. Left to itself, it goes to utter extremes. This is well known by the "conquistadors" of both sexes. Once a woman's Poeticize Your Presence • 283 hard to wax poetic about a person who comes so cheaply. If, after the initial interest, you make it clear that you cannot be taken for granted, if you stir a bit of doubt, the target will imagine there is something special, lofty, and unattainable about you. Your image will crystallize in the other person's mind. Cleopatra knew that she was really no different from any other woman, and in fact her face was not particularly beautiful. But she knew that men have a tendency to overvalue a woman. All that is required is to hint that there is something different about you, to make them associate you with something grand or poetic. She made Caesar aware of her connection to the great kings and queens of Egypt's past; with Antony, she created the fantasy that she was descended from Aphrodite herself. These men were ca- vorting not just with a strong-willed woman but a kind of goddess. Such associations might be difficult to pull off today, but people still get deep pleasure from associating others with some kind of childhood fantasy fig- ure. John F. Kennedy presented himself as a figure of chivalry—noble, brave, charming. Pablo Picasso was not just a great painter with a thirst for young girls, he was the Minotaur of Greek legend, or the devilish trickster figure that is so seductive to women. These associations should not be made too early; they are only powerful once the target has begun to fall under your spell, and is vulnerable to suggestion. A man who had just met Cleopatra would have found the Aphrodite association ludicrous. But a person who is falling in love will believe almost anything. The trick is to as- sociate your image with something mythic, through the clothes you wear, the things you say, the places you go. In Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past, the character Swann finds himself gradually seduced by a woman who is not really his type. He is an aesthete, and loves the finer things in life.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Viewed as a whole, and from afar, those years of war count among my happy years. They were hard at the start, or seemed to me so. At first I held only secondary posts, since Trajan's good will was not yet fully won. But I knew the country, and knew that I was useful. Although barely aware of what was growing within me, winter by winter, encampment after encampment, battle after battle, I began to feel objections to the emperor's policy, objections which at this period it was not my duty, or even my right, to voice; furthermore, nobody would have listened to me. Placed more or less to one side, in fifth or tenth rank, I knew my troops the better for my position; I shared more of their life. I still retained a certain liberty of action, or rather a certain detachment toward action itself, which cannot readily be indulged in once one has attained power, and has passed the age of thirty. There were also advantages special to me: my liking for this harsh land, and my passion for all voluntary (though of course intermittent) forms of privation and discipline. I was perhaps the only one of the young officers who did not regret Rome. The longer the campaign [Hadrian 52a.jpg] Trajan at Middle Age, Rome, Capitoline Museum [Hadrian 52bc.jpg] Roman Troops Crossing the Danube Care of the Wounded, Dacian Wars (Rome, Reliefs on Trajan’s Column) [Hadrian 52d.jpg] Sabina Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Museum years extended into the mud and the snow the more they brought forth my resources. There I lived through an entire epoch of extraordinary exaltation, due in part to the influence of a small group of lieutenants around me who had brought back strange gods from the garrisons deep in Asia. The cult of Mithra, less widespread then than it has become since our expedition in Parthia, won me over temporarily by the rigors of its stark asceticism, which drew taut the bowstring of the will, and by its obsession with death, blood, and iron, which elevated the routine harshness of our military lives to the level of a symbol of universal struggle.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  of Tom W’s description was not highly trustworthy. However, we expected them to focus exclusively on the similarity of the description to the stereotypes—we called it representativeness—ignoring both the base rates and the doubts about the veracity of the description. They would then rank the small specialty— computer science—as highly probable, because that outcome gets the highest representativeness score. Amos and I worked hard during the year we spent in Eugene, and I sometimes stayed in the office through the night. One of my tasks for such a night was to make up a description that would pit representativeness and base rates against each other. Tom W was the result of my efforts, and I completed the description in the early morning hours. The first person who showed up to work that morning was our colleague and friend Robyn Dawes, who was both a sophisticated statistician and a skeptic about the validity of intuitive judgment. If anyone would see the relevance of the base rate, it would have to be Robyn. I called Robyn over, gave him the question I had just typed, and asked him to guess Tom W’s profession. I still remember his sly smile as he said tentatively, “computer scientist?” That was a happy moment—even the mighty had fallen. Of course, Robyn immediately recognized his mistake as soon as I mentioned “base rate,” but he had not spontaneously thought of it. Although he knew as much as anyone about the role of base rates in prediction, he neglected them when presented with the description of an individual’s personality. As expected, he substituted a judgment of representativeness for the probability he was asked to assess. Amos and I then collected answers to the same question from 114 graduate students in psychology at three major universities, all of whom had taken several courses in statistics. They did not disappoint us. Their rankings of the nine fields by probability did not differ from ratings by similarity to the stereotype. Substitution was perfect in this case: there was no indication that the participants did anything else but judge representativeness. The question about probability (likelihood) was difficult, but the question about similarity was easier, and it was answered instead. This is a serious mistake, because judgments of similarity and probability are not constrained by the same logical rules. It is entirely acceptable for judgments of similarity to be unaffected by base rates and also by the possibility that the description was inaccurate, but anyone who ignores base rates and the quality of evidence in probability assessments will certainly make mistakes. The concept “the probability that Tom W studies computer science” is not a simple one. Logicians and statisticians disagree about its meaning, and some would say it has no meaning at all. For many experts it is a measure of

• 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 Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I glance across the aisle at Kate, and she’s still scribbling furiously, five minutes to the finish. This is it, the end of my academic career. I will never have to sit in rows of anxious, isolated students again. Inside, I’m doing graceful cartwheels around my head, knowing that’s the only place I can do graceful cartwheels. Kate stops writing and puts her pen down. She glances across at me, and I catch her Cheshire cat smile, too. We head back to our apartment together in her Mercedes, refusing to discuss our final paper. Kate is more concerned about what she’s going to wear to the bar this evening. When we arrive home, I’m busily fishing around my purse for my keys. “Ana, there’s a package for you,” Kate says, as she joins me on the steps to the front door holding a brown-paper parcel. Odd. I haven’t ordered anything recently. Kate gives me the parcel and takes my keys to open the door. It’s addressed to Miss Anastasia Steele. There’s no sender’s address or name. Perhaps it’s from my mom or Ray. “It’s probably from my folks.” “Open it!” Kate is excited as she heads into the kitchen for our exams-are-finished-hurrah champagne. I open the parcel, and inside, I find a half-leather box containing three seemingly identical old cloth-covered books in mint condition and a plain white card. Written on one side, in black ink and neat cursive handwriting, is: Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks… I recognize the quote from Tess, and I’m stunned by the coincidence as I’ve just spent three hours writing about the novels of Thomas Hardy in my final examination. Perhaps there is no coincidence… Perhaps it’s deliberate. I inspect the books closely, three volumes of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I open the front cover of one of the books. Written in an old typeface on the front plate is: London: Jack R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., 1891. Holy shit—they are first editions. They must be worth a fortune, and I know immediately who’s sent them. Kate is at my shoulder, gazing at the books. She picks up the card. “First editions,” I whisper. “No.” Kate’s eyes are wide with disbelief. “Grey?” I nod. “Can’t think of anyone else.” “What does this card mean?” “I have no idea. I think it’s a warning—honestly, he keeps warning me off. I have no idea why. It’s not like I’m beating his door down.” I frown. “I know you don’t want to talk about him, Ana, but he’s seriously into you. Warnings or no.”

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  She sat down. “What’s your name, dear?” “Lara,” she said. “Now, Lara,” Maxx said, looking down at his paper to remember the line, “what we have here is a very interesting case study—a female objectifying me, a male. It’s so unusual that I can only assume you’re making an attempt at humor.” Lara stood up again and shouted, “I’m not keeding! Take off your clothes.” He nervously looked down at the paper, and then looked up at all of us, smiling. “Well, it is certainly important to subvert the patriarchal paradigm, and I suppose this is a way. All right, then,” he said, stepping to the left of the podium. And then he shouted, loud enough that Takumi could hear him upstairs, “This one’s for Alaska Young.” As the fast, pumping bass of Prince’s “Get Off” started from the loudspeakers, Dr. William Morse grabbed the leg of his pants with one hand and the lapel of his coat with the other, and the Velcro parted and his stage costume came apart, revealing Maxx with two x’s, a stunningly muscular man with an eight-pack in his stomach and bulging pec muscles, and Maxx stood before us, smiling, wearing only briefs that were surely tighty, but not whitey—black leather. His feet in place, Maxx swayed his arms to the music, and the crowd erupted with laughter and deafening, sustained applause—the largest ovation by a good measure in Speaker Day history. The Eagle was up in a flash, and as soon as he stood, Maxx stopped dancing, but he flexed his pec muscles so that they jumped up and down quickly in time to the music before the Eagle, not smiling but sucking his lips in as if not smiling required effort, indicated with a thumb that Maxx should go on home, and Maxx did. My eyes followed Maxx out the door, and I saw Takumi standing in the doorway, fists raised in the air in triumph, before he ran back upstairs to cut the music. I was glad he’d gotten to see at least a bit of the show. Takumi had plenty of time to get his equipment out, because the laughing and talking went on for several minutes while the Eagle kept repeating, “Okay. Okay. Let’s settle down now. Settle down, y’all. Let’s settle down.” The senior-class speaker spoke next. He blew. And as we left the gym, nonjuniors crowded around us, asking, “Was it you?” and I just smiled and said no, for it had not been me, or the Colonel or Takumi or Lara or Longwell Chase or anyone else in that gym. It had been Alaska’s prank through and through. The hardest part about pranking, Alaska told me once, is not being able to confess. But I could confess on her behalf now.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “At one point the Irish lady with dreads playing a steel drum, the one leading the ceremony, instructed us that we should ‘follow the psychic dolphins through the crystalline waters of our minds.” Katrina repeats this phrase in a surprisingly good Irish accent. “This older woman next to me snorted derisively, which broke the spell. She was like, “Really? Mind dolphins?’ and I started giggling and couldn’t stop, for like a half hour. I don’t know when the last time that happened to me was, but that much giggling was totally purifying. I left with a very purified aura.” “Tt’s nice that you support her,” Reese says. “Kathy is a sweetheart.” Katrina shrugs. “She was my friend before she was my real estate agent. We’ve known each other for a long time. Some of her family is still in Taiwan, and when I went on a business trip there two years ago, she even came along and they showed us around.” “So everyone is just doing this for Kathy?” Reese asks, waving a hand at the scene around her. “Just the women I know. I think the others want essential oils. They really do smell nice.” A few moments later, Reese finds herself included in a conversation with Kathy herself, who does not look witchy at all; she looks like a real estate agent—which of course she is—the kind of blandly pretty face that belongs in a headshot beneath a photo of your suburban house. Another youngish woman, who speaks in a husky, honeyed voice—though Reese can’t tell whether from chardonnay or habit—is recounting with excitement that her husband will be away at a bachelor party that weekend. The party is somewhere upstate, and the woman works herself up describing her husband in flannel, drinking whiskey, and tacitly, of the anticipation of his returning home, smelling of woodsmoke and replenished masculinity, to ravish her. The woman wears an immaculate cream skirt, so crisp it looks freshly starched, even though she claims to have come directly from work. There is an audacity in wearing a cream skirt so crisp: Cream is even less forgiving than white; a single stain on cream and the whole skirt looks vaguely dirty, whereas a single stain on white just looks like a single stain. Reese once read in a fashion magazine that, at the turn of the century, the leisure class wore immaculate whites to show that they did no work, the same- classed fashion that gave the feminine gender heels, corsets, and long nails. Thus, Reese has to surmise that this cream-skirted woman has not actually married a ranch hand, so most likely, her husband is another NYC white-collar worker.

• 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 Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I have never seen him like this, and it’s a joy to behold. I find myself walking beside him, hand in hand, with a stupid, goofy grin plastered on my face. It reminds me of when I was ten and spent the day at Disneyland with Ray. It was a perfect day, and this is sure shaping out to be the same. Back in the car, as we head back along Interstate 95 toward Savannah, my phone alarm goes off. Oh yes, my pill. “What’s that?” Christian asks, curious, glancing at me. I fumble in my purse for the packet. “Alarm for my pill.” His lips quirk up. “Good, well done. I hate condoms.” I flush. He’s as patronizing as ever but he’s sweet, too. “I like that you introduced me to Mark as your girlfriend.” “Isn’t that what you are?” He raises an eyebrow. “Am I? I thought you wanted a submissive.” “So did I, Anastasia, and I do. But I’ve told you, I want more, too.” Oh. He’s coming around, and hope surges through me, leaving me breathless. “I’m very happy you want more.” “We aim to please, Miss Steele.” He smirks as we pull into the International House of Pancakes. “IHOP?” I grin back at him. I don’t believe it. Who would have thought? Christian Grey at IHOP. It’s 8:30 a.m. but quiet in the restaurant. It smells of sweet batter, fried food, and disinfectant. Hmm, not such an enticing aroma. Christian leads me to a booth. “I would never have pictured you here,” I say as we slide into a booth. “My dad used to bring us to one of these whenever my mom went away to a medical conference. It was our secret.” He smiles at me, eyes dancing, then picks up a menu, running a hand through his wayward hair. Oh, I want to run my hands through that hair. I pick up a menu and examine it. I realize I’m starving. “I know what I want.” His voice is low and husky. I glance at him, and he’s staring at me in that way that tightens all the muscles in my belly and takes my breath away, his eyes dark and smoldering. Holy shit. My blood sings in my veins, answering his call. “I want what you want,” I whisper. He inhales sharply. “Here?” he asks suggestively, raising an eyebrow and smiling wickedly, his teeth trapping the tip of his tongue. Sex in an IHOP. His expression changes, growing darker. “Don’t bite your lip. Not here, not now.” His eyes harden momentarily, and for a moment, he looks so deliciously dangerous. “If I can’t have you here, don’t tempt me.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  SO DO I. “Ana!” My mother calls me, making me jump. Shit. Why do I feel so guilty? “Just coming, Mom.” From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Moaning Date: May 31 2011 19:39 ET To: Christian Grey Gotta go. Laters, baby. I dash into the hall, where Bob and my mother are waiting. My mother frowns. “Darling, are you feeling okay? You look a bit flushed.” “Mom, I’m fine.” “You look lovely, dear.” “Oh, this is Kate’s dress. You like it?” Her frown deepens. “Why are you wearing Kate’s dress?” Oh…no. “Well, I like this one and she doesn’t,” I improvise quickly. She regards me shrewdly while Bob oozes impatience with his hangdog, hungry look. “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow,” she says. “Oh, Mom, you don’t need to do that. I have plenty of clothes.” “Can’t I do something for my own daughter? Come on, Bob’s starving.” “Too right,” moans Bob, rubbing his stomach and assuming a fake pained expression. I giggle as he rolls his eyes, and we head out the door. Later when I’m in the shower, cooling under the lukewarm water, I reflect on how much my mother has changed. Seeing her at dinner, she was in her element: funny and flirty and among many friends at the golf club. Bob was warm and attentive. They seem so good for each other. I’m really pleased for her. It means I can stop worrying about her and second-guessing her decisions and put the dark days of Husband Number Three behind us both. Bob is a keeper. And she’s giving me good advice. When did that start happening? Since I met Christian. Why is that? When I’m done, I dry myself quickly, eager to get back to Christian. There’s an email waiting for me, sent just after I left for dinner a few hours ago. From: Christian Grey Subject: Plagiarism Date: May 31 2011 16:41 To: Anastasia Steele You stole my line. And left me hanging. Enjoy your dinner. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Who are you to cry thief? Date: May 31 2011 22:18 ET To: Christian Grey Sir, I think you’ll find it was Elliot’s line originally. Hanging how? Your Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Unfinished Business Date: May 31 2011 19:22 To: Anastasia Steele Miss Steele, You’re back. You left so suddenly—just when things were getting interesting. Elliot’s not very original. He must have stolen that line from someone. How was dinner? Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Unfinished Business? Date: May 31 2011 22:26 ET To: Christian Grey Dinner was filling—you’ll be very pleased to hear I ate far too much. Getting interesting? How? From: Christian Grey Subject: Unfinished Business—Definitely Date: May 31 2011 19:30 To: Anastasia Steele Are you being deliberately obtuse? I think you’d just asked me to unzip your dress. And I was looking forward to doing just that. I am also glad to hear you are eating. Christian Grey

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  apply the representativeness heuristic. That is, they assess the likelihood of a sample result, for example, that the average height in a random sample of ten men will be 6 feet, by the similarity of this result to the corresponding parameter (that is, to the average height in the population of men). The similarity of a sample statistic to a population parameter does not depend on the size of the sample. Consequently, if probabilities are assessed by representativeness, then the judged probability of a sample statistic will be essentially independent of sample size. Indeed, when subjects assessed the distributions of average height for samples of various sizes, they produced identical distributions. For example, the probability of obtaining an average height greater than 6 feet was assigned the same value for samples of 1,000, 100, and 10 men. 4 Moreover, subjects failed to appreciate the role of sample size even when it was emphasized in the formulation of the problem. Consider the following question: A certain town is served by two hospitals. In the larger hospital about 45 babies are born each day, and in the smaller hospital about 15 babies are born each day. As you know, about 50% of all babies are boys. However, the exact percentage varies from day to day. Sometimes it may be higher than 50%, sometimes lower. For a period of 1 year, each hospital recorded the days on which more than 60% of the babies born were boys. Which hospital do you think recorded more such days? The larger hospital (21) The smaller hospital (21) About the same (that is, within 5% of each other) (53) The values in parentheses are the number of undergraduate students who chose each answer. Most subjects judged the probability of obtaining more than 60% boys to be the same in the small and in the large hospital, presumably because these events are described by the same statistic and are therefore equally representative of the general population. In contrast, sampling theory entails that the expected number of days on which more than 60% of the babies are boys is much greater in the small hospital than in the large one, because a large sample is less likely to stray from 50%. This fundamental notion of statistics is evidently not part of people’s repertoire of intuitions. A similar insensitivity to sample size has been reported in judgments of posterior probability, that is, of the probability that a sample has been drawn

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  He winks a big blue eye at me, and José and I are out the door, giggling like teenagers. As we stroll down to the bar, I put my arm through José’s. God, he’s so uncomplicated—I hadn’t really appreciated that before. “You’ll still come to the opening of my show, won’t you?” “Of course, José. When is it?” “June 9.” “What day is that?” I suddenly panic. “It’s a Thursday.” “Yeah, I should make that…and you will visit us in Seattle?” He grins. “Try to stop me.” It’s late when I arrive back from the bar. Kate and Elliot are nowhere to be seen, but boy, can they be heard. Holy shit. I hope I’m not that loud. I know Christian isn’t. I flush at the thought and escape to my room. After a brief not-at-all-awkward-thank-goodness hug, José has gone. I don’t know when I’ll see him again—probably his photography show—and once again, I’m blown away that he finally has an exhibition. I will miss him and his boyish charm. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the Beetle. I know he’ll freak when he finds out, and I can only deal with one man at a time freaking out at me. Once in my room, I check the mean machine, and of course, there’s an email from Christian. From: Christian Grey Subject: Where Are You? Date: May 27 2011 22:14 To: Anastasia Steele “I am at work. I will email you when I get home.” Are you still at work or have you packed your phone, BlackBerry, and MacBook? Call me, or I may be forced to call Elliot. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. Crap. José…shit. I grab my phone. Five missed calls and one voice message. Tentatively, I listen to the message. It’s Christian. “I think you need to learn to manage my expectations. I am not a patient man. If you say you are going to contact me when you finish work, then you should have the decency to do so. Otherwise, I worry, and it’s not an emotion I’m familiar with, and I don’t tolerate it very well. Call me.” Double crap. Will he ever give me a break? I scowl at the phone. He is suffocating me. With a deep dread uncurling in my stomach, I scroll down to his number and press call. My heart is in my mouth as I wait for him to answer. He’d probably like to beat seven shades of shit out of me. The thought is depressing. “Hi,” he says softly, and his response knocks me off balance because I am expecting his anger, but if anything, he sounds relieved. “Hi,” I murmur. “I was worried about you.” “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t reply, but I’m fine.” He pauses for a beat. “Did you have a pleasant evening?” He is crisply polite. “Yes. We finished packing, and Kate and I had Chinese takeout with José.” I close my eyes tightly as I say José’s name.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Amy and Patrick nodded, listening carefully. Patrick had touched Amy a few times now, in ways that Amy wasn’t sure how to interpret. Once Patrick held up a dress against Amy’s body and said, “This would look nice on you,” then ran a hand down Amy’s side, pressing the dress against it. A contrail of unease followed Patrick’s touch, but she refused to let anything like that ruin the moment. A vague euphoria wafted over Amy. Here they were: a bunch of girls talking clothes. Initially, she glanced at Jen frequently; worried that Jen might be annoyed by their excitement or laughing at them. But no, she judged Jen’s friendliness as genuine. It had to be boring to work in a place where you have to carefully avoid eye contact so often, like with that golfer. Maybe hers and Patrick’s excitement made them better customers. Amy had read about transsexuals online. She’d even taken a test— the COGIATI (Combined Gender Identity and Transsexuality Inventory), developed by some transsexual woman and based on DSM psychological models to determine if the test takers were true transsexuals who needed to transition, or merely transgenderists— that is, male fetishists for whom transition would be a tragic mistake. She’d read whatever psychology about trans people she could find at her college library and on the Internet. Most of it was decades old. According to what she’d found online, there were two types of male- to-female transsexuals. Those people who had always been girls, who had played with dolls, were attracted to men, and hated their penises. The second kind, the autogynephiles, were men who got turned on by the idea of themselves as women. These were the fetishistic cross-dressers, who conformed to all sorts of male stereotypes, loved their penises, and got turned on wearing women’s clothing. They ought not transition, the psychologists said—they weren't really women, they were fetishists who took their indulgence too far. Amy caught the whiff of moralism in this assessment and understood what it meant. There was something bad and immoral about autogynephilia. In the comments below the psychology articles, a number of trans women irate at this psychology always posted rebuttals. They called the idea of autogynephilia transphobic. They called the psychologists who came up with it chasers.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Aus WOMAN OPENS the door of the apartment. She wears ripped jeans and a loose tank top, woven of some mutant technical performance cotton. Her hair is up in a clip, and perched on a delicate nose are a pair of swoopy black-framed glasses that angle along the same steep slope of her cheekbones. The combination of hair and glasses together gives the impression of a costume chosen for an extremely sexy woman to wear in order to indicate that, no, it’s not what you think, dear viewer: This woman is smart! As is always intended with that disguise, Reese couldn’t help notice that this woman is, in fact, very sexy. “Come in, you two!” cries Sexy-Smart, and she welcomes Reese with a hug that, in its unexpected affection, Reese would put somewhere between suddenly discovered long-lost relative and cult leader thanking you for your impending sacrifice. The woman introduces herself as the host of the party. “T love your place,” Reese says generically, without even yet having fully stepped inside, simply noting how from the door, in the evening angle of the light, the windows made long boxes of illuminated gold that draped diagonally over invitingly feminine living room furniture. Sexy-Smart looks confused. “This is Kathy’s place,” she corrects Reese. “I’m Kathy’s yoga instructor, but she lets me use her apartment for my dOTERRA parties.” She doesn’t give her own name. “Kathy is such a good real estate agent,” Katrina says helpfully. “So of course she has a cute place.” That afternoon, when Katrina called Reese to invite her to a doTERRA party thrown by her real estate agent, who was also one of Katrina’s good friends, Reese agreed to attend without totally understanding the situation. What Reese did understand was that Katrina was extending an invitation for Reese to meet her friends, a variety of invite that almost never came from any of Reese’s usual cis crushes. She never met their families or their friends. Never traveled for holidays. The last two Christmases, she did the same thing: bought a tiny pine tree, set it on her dresser, and decorated it with a string of lights from her local dollar store. Then she spent Christmas Eve alone, thinking about her erstwhile lovers while taking selfies reading beside the tree, as evidence for the trial in which her counsel would plead that no, Reese was not sad, she didn’t care about being alone, like that famous t-shirt said, she was SINGLE AND LOVING IT. Therefore, although Reese played it cool, the lifting of the quarantine between Reese and the rest of Katrina’s friends carried momentous and solemn import. It was only on the way to the party that it occurred to Reese that she had no idea what a doOTERRA party was. “What’s a doTERRA?” Reese asked. “It’s an essential oil company,” Katrina said. “We'll have to sit through a presentation, but at the end, I think we make face scrubs.”