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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Late evenings and nights were passed in sleep and sex in that transitory little attic room with its picture of Ludlow from the air. Phil would sleep until eleven or so each morning, but the fabulous weather went on and for the heat of the day until we hit the Corry at six, we were up on the roof in the sun. It was a narrow, gravelled island we had to lie on, guarded by glazed brick chimneys and, running along the sides, a prickly little gothic fence of iron finials and terracotta quatrefoils. Beyond this, on either side, the roofs fell steeply away, caught up here and there into dormers, and punctuated with parapets and turretlike protrusions. On the left we looked out into the upper branches of our close neighbours, the plane trees in the square; from here the road, in the gulf between them, was lost to view, though we heard its rumbling and squealing far below, and in the silence between the lights the distant slap and splash of the three fountains in the public garden. On the right we looked down on the bulk of the hotel, its inner wells, ventilation shafts and fire-escapes. Beyond all this we were in the company of other tall buildings—the humourless monoliths of the Senate House and the deserted Centre Point, the green dome of the British Museum Reading Room—beyond which the pretentious corner cupola of the Corinthian Club could just be discerned. There was no one much about on these eminences, on all the surprising secret acres among the water tanks, the escape-ways and the maintenance ladders. The hotel roof itself we always enjoyed alone. We spread towels over the softening asphalt, and lay on them in our swimming-trunks, at first, but later, when no one threatened to disturb us, naked. We fed each other’s bodies with sun lotions—a low-screen one for most of me, but for Phil, who was just starting on his tan, and for my hitherto untanned bum, one with a high protection factor, which needed (I suggested) almost continuous reapplication. We were very happy on the roof, sometimes reading, sometimes stroking and exciting each other, mostly just soaking up the sun. Phil would rub my tits or my cock, or send his fingertips over me more gently than tickling, whilst the sun beat on my closed eyelids like summer lightning over crimson lacquer. When I opened my eyes the sky would be so bright it looked almost dark. Then I would turn over and doze for an hour with my face half-buried between the spread cheeks of his ass. And we talked—hours of particular, loving banalities.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But Eur opeans have lived with the idea of status for a long NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME time. A man can be as proud of being a good waiter as of being a good actor, and, in neither case, feel threate ned. And this means that the actor and the waiter can have a freer and mor e genuinely friendly relationship in Europe than they are likely to have here. The waiter does not feel, with obscur e resentment, that the actor has "made it," and the actor is not tormented by the fear that he may find himself, tom orrow, once again a waiter. This lack of what may roughly be called social paranoia causes the American writer in Eur ope to feel-almo st certainly t<>r the first time in his lite-that he can reach out to ever yone, that he is accessible to everyone and open to every thing. This is an extraordin ary feeling. He feels, so to speak, his own weight, his own value. It is as though he suddenly came out of a dark tunnel and t(mnd himself beneath the open sky. And, in fact, in Paris, I began to sec the sky f(>r what seemed to be the first time. It was borne in on me-and it did not make me feel melan cho ly-t hat this sky had been ther e before I was born and would be there when I was dead. And it was up to me, therc f(>re, to make of my brief opport unity the most that could be made. I was born in New York, but have lived only in pockets of it. In Paris, I lived in all parts of the city-o n the Right Bank and the Left, among the bourgeoisie and among les miserables, and knew all kinds of people, from pimps and prostitutes in Pigalle to Egyptian bankers in Neuilly. This may sound ex tremely unprincipled or even obscurely immoral: I fo und it healthy. I love to talk to people, all kinds of people, and al most every one, as I hope we still know, loves a man who loves to listen. This perpetual dealing with people very different fr om my self caused a shattering in me of preconceptions I scarcely knew I held . The writer is meeting in Eur ope people who arc not American, whose sense of reality is entirely different fr om his own . They may love or hate or admir e or tear or envy this countr y-they sec it, in any case, fr om another point of view, and this ti.>rces the writer to reconsider many things he had always taken t(>r granted. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable. WHA T IT ME ANS TO BE AN AM ERIC AN 141 This freedom, like all freedom, has its dangers and its re sponsibilities.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  It wasn't the treatment I was going to get—I gave a little absolving wave, but he grabbed my hand in mid-air and shook it: it was a bit like jiving. "We'd better leave them to it," said Sibylle. Patrick turned at the door and grinned again; I wondered if I was the subject of some broad joke—but then if I was, Luc must be too. all that mattered was that he wanted to stay for a quarter-hour more, even if only to grouse about his troubles away from his smothering critical friends. It had been a terrible time. I had watched myself trying different gambits, donnish to start with, pursuing the matter of the 1850 Prelude, then holding forth about Milton, Schubert, F. R. Leavis etc etc and clearly being the greatest bore on earth; then I smoked a cigarette (which they hated) and swore a lot (which seemed to displease them too); then gave them maximum charm, which they resented as a puzzling form of satire. At one point I was even nodding about to a song on the juke-box, but Sibylle stilled me with a glance. I was young and lively and clever, I told myself as I blundered like some awful Ronald Strong figure from rebuff to tacit rebuff. And then Luc wanted to stay. There was a lovely sense of cleared space, of spreading calm, like sunlight out to sea, in the gold and copper cabin of the bar, as we drew two stools closer and settled ourselves knee to knee and the song wailed grandly on and then faded out. "Oh dear, Edward, I'm sorry about that. But I'm very glad you were there!" I was astonished. I was gesturing for a drink with one hand, not wanting to miss a moment, a single muscular movement of his face. When he smiled there was a fleck of spinach above a tooth at the side and I hungered to suck it away. "What are you sorry about, and why are you glad? I was going to say sorry for barging in on your drink." "No, no." He sighed and looked down. "We've all been, you know, arguing. Sibylle and Patrick are my dear friends but this is the first time we have been together all week. We went out for our dinner, and it was terrible, and then we had to have a drink, to show we didn't just want to go home, though I think we all did!" "Oh. What were you arguing about?" I was looking at his down-turned head, but also at the veins standing out on his long hands loosely cupped between his thighs; I didn't care what they'd been arguing about, I felt a ridiculous contentment at having him to myself, amazement that we hadn't done this long before. "It's very difficult to explain, I feel very embarrassed." He took a slurp from his fresh drink.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I don't remember the film. A child is far too self -cent ered to relate to any dilemma which does not, somehow, relate to him-to his own evolving dilemma. The child escapes into what he would like his situation to be, and I certainly did not wish to be a fleeing fugitive on a moving train; and, also, with quite another part of my mind, I was aware that Joan Craw ford was a white lady. Yet, I remember being sent to the store sometime later, and a colored woman, who, to me, looked exactly lik e Joan Crawford, was buying something. She was so incredibly beautiful-she seemed to be wearing the sun light, rearranging it around her from time to time, with a movement of one hand, with a movement of her head, and with her smile-that, when she paid the man and started out of the store, I started out behind her. The storekeeper, who knew me, and others in the store who knew my mother's little boy (and who also knew my Miss Crawford!) laughed and called me back. Miss Crawford also laughed and looked down at me with so beautiful a smile that I was not even embar rassed. Which was rare for me. 479 THE DE VIL FINDS WORK Tom Mix, on his white horse. Actually, it was Tom Mix's hat, a shadow in the shadow of the hat, a kind of rocky back ground (which, again, was always moving) and the white horse. Tom Mix was a serial. Every Saturday, then, if memory serves, we left Tom Mix and some bleakly interchangeable girl in the most dreadful dan ger-or, rather, we left the hat and the shadow of the hat and the white horse: for the horse was not interchangeable and the serial could not have existed with out it. The Last of the Mohicans: Randolph Scott (a kind of fif teenth-r ate Gary Cooper) and Binnie Barnes (a kind of funky Geraldine Fitzgerald), Heather Angel (a somewhat more be wildered Olivia de Hav illand ) and Philip Reed (a precursor of Anthony Quinn). Philip Reed was the Indian, Uncas, whose savage, not to say slavish adoration of Miss Angel's fine blonde frame drives her over a cliff , headlong, to her death. She has chosen death before dishonor, which made perfect sense. The erring Uncas eventually pays for his misguided lust with his lif e, and a tremulous, wet-eyed, brave couple, Randolph Scott and Binnie Barnes, eventually, hand in hand, manage to make it out of the wilderness.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I lay propped up beside him, thinking of later days in our affair, unguessed afternoons of sex, drives beside long canals, his cock curving out of his fly in the car, high-summer lulls when we lay like soldiers under Flanders willows and poplars, shirts off, watching clouds drift in the canal, his crude, obsessive demands. I tiptoed out for a drink of water and came back gulping from the glass like a child. I thought he might have vanished, it seemed foolish to let him out of my sight; but there he was, a goldish blur. I half-stumbled on his clothes, and crouched to rifle them—but what did they matter when the boy himself was here? I found every fear answered and calmed by that luminous fact. He was lying in my bed, naked, sleeping—flat out. It was a trulmph. Tears slipped down my face, I didn't really know why—it felt like gratitude, but also they were the tears that register some deep displacement, a bereavement sending up its sudden choking wave. It struck me I must be mourning everything that came before—it was the desolate undertow of success. When we had started to kiss it was what I wanted, he was warm and strong, our cocks, lying opposite ways in our jeans, rubbed and jolted off each other, we were going to fuck, but for a long while I just held him there in a hard, shocked grip. His tongue pushed into my mouth but I blocked it with my own: I felt my tongue was the tip of some passionate organ that was rooted deep inside me, so densely colled, so fiercely self-involved, so hardened to its own darkness and starvation that it reacted with a spasm of bewilderment to the free gift of what it craved. He lifted off my glasses and looked at me as if he found me drolly beautiful. I brushed and moulded his face and neck with incredulous fingers, kissed his eyelids, his long nose, the soft burden of his upper lip. He was squeezing my cock already and still I thought I would be mad to let this happen. I thought once I started I would stifle him, frighten him with my dreadful unconditional needs. He would break away with a sickened laugh. I was reckoning without his own madness. Of course it wasn't just mischief, he wasn't trying to trap me: he wanted fun, experience, anything wild—either you did it with him or you didn't. Somewhere out there was the person he loved, a boy or a girl, but for now he was making do; I felt I was getting the benefit of some stored-up passion intended for someone else, but brimming and spilling; and maybe he liked the switch of power in seducing an older man. It struck me it might even be a kink of his, that he'd done it before—there was the dream I'd had about him and Matt . . .

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  "No thanks required. I think he's hot, as you may remember." "Yeah, he's not so delectable when he's all snotty-nosed. But have him, do what you want with him!" "He's in a serious way about you, you know." I grimaced impatiently. "Anyway, we'll compare notes tomorrow night." And he gave his casual stare, with its usual assurance that the world of fantasy need not stay fantasy for long. I watched Luc's return, he was utterly beautiful, but I didn't feel annihilated by his beauty: he was coming to me, smiling from a distance like a friend who seeks you out where traders gather, on the Caspian shore—I had segued into a forgotten line of Violet Riviere's, from Poets of our Time. He hopped on to the stool with a clear sense of reaching home in a risky game of touch. At the same moment a startling black object obtruded between us and was clonked on to the bar. "Hello, dear," said Gerard in his weary, what-a-fascinating-life-I-lead way. "I haven't seen you for ages." "No, actually I'm just . . ." "Do you want a drink?" It was rare for him to offer—I assumed he'd seen my full glass. Where Matt's haunting scent had been there was the smell of someone busy all day in baggy woollies and a hopeless sort of anorak. I was bewildered to think how I'd wanted to sleep with him. "The animals are going very well," he said. "Oh good, look actually you're just really sort of crushing in between me and my friend's knees here. We're having a rather important conversation." Gerard stood back and looked at Luc with the brief cynical calculation I remembered before when he asked about other people's sex-lives. It struck me he probably didn't have one of his own. "Okay, this is Luc, this is Gerard." I noticed Luc took his cue from me, and merely nodded. And then, my incurable weak politeness: "Gerard plays in the Ghezellen van der whatsit. They're all going to dress up as animals." "Oh!" I watched him ponder this, then reach out and touch the bombard case. "And what is this, please?" "It's his bombard. Now if you don't mind . . ." But Gerard was already pushing back the clasps and revealing the instrument, broken in three and secure in its velveteen hollows. "Splendid, thanks very much," I said. Luc was perversely intrigued. "Is it a kind of oboe?" "Yes, it's actually a bass shawm, which is an early kind of oboe. It's modelled on a fifteenth-century one which you can see in the Town Museum." "So you had it made." "That's right." Luc dawdled his fingers along the thick dark stem, around the flared bell and over the set of reeds, which were long and curved and bleached like an old pipe. "You look as if you enjoy instruments," said Gerard fatuously. "I used to play the oboe," said Luc. "In the school orchestra.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I hoped I might find you there. But I suppose …’ ‘I haven’t been going in while I’ve been looking so hideous, but I hope to make an appearance in the next few days.’ ‘Were you badly hurt?’ ‘Well, I’ve got some cracked ribs, and there’s not much you can do about them, you just have to let them mend. The only permanent defect is a broken nose.’ ‘Oh dear …’ ‘It gives me a sort of pugilistic look—quite like one of Bill’s boys.’ ‘Even so … Who’s been looking after you? Can I send you bouquets?’ ‘I have a wonderful doctor, and a very sweet friend. I’m fine.’ There followed a typical Nantwich pause, which, heard over the telephone, was more disconcerting than when one was with him. I stood expectantly by. Suddenly he was on the air again. ‘Come over to Staines’s tomorrow, if you want to see something really extraordinary.’ ‘I had a fairly extraordinary time there a few weeks ago.’ ‘It may be a bit vulgar. About seven o’clock.’ There were a few seconds of reedy respiration, and then he hung up. I remembered from something he had said before—about Otto Henderson’s cartoons being ‘vulgar’—that this was a word Charles used, as I had used it when a little boy, to mean indecent, in the manner of, say, a rude joke. Of course, anything remoter from the vulgus than the arty pornography of Henderson and Staines would have been hard to imagine; but it was telling that in his euphemism Charles made the connection, as though his taste for them somehow joined him with the crowd. It was the crowd in the sense of the little clan , the gathering of half a dozen queens, that I joined when I went to Ronald Staines’s, feeling for the first time restored and randy, and enjoying the breeze that set the chestnuts and cherry trees along the pavements sighing. Bobby answered the bell. ‘Jolly good,’ he said, letting me in and then conducting me across the hall with a heavy arm around my shoulder, a kind of gentlemanly muffling of eroticism which also disguised his need for support: he was already extravagant and slow with drink. ‘Jolly glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Not brought your little friend this time, then?’ ‘I’m not sure he has a career as a model.’ Bobby laughed tremendously at this. ‘I liked him, I must say,’ he confessed, as if discussing with colleagues an underqualified applicant for a job. In the white, selfconscious drawing-room Staines sprang up when I entered.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  When he reappeared he had the stricken jokey look of someone battling with tension or the unsaid. He didn't meet my eye. I thought of the unfinished confessions of earlier, and how I didn't want to know more. He threw off the cap with a breathy laugh, wandered to where I was standing and put his arms round me in a loose hug. "Bye, my dear," I said. It was a lovely gesture, but I almost wished he hadn't. My head in the crook of his arm, his head on my shoulder, face hidden from me. I raised a hand and ran it lightly, sorrowfully over his suede back. He seemed to want to draw it out, there was a charge of emotion I hadn't allowed for. I felt him press himself against me, nuzzle his chin more snugly at my collar in a final clinch, let out a mumbled sigh. I supposed he must know everything, it was his clumsy way of saying sorry, a rugger-faggoty brush-off from which I would have to break free any second. I felt his lips pressing, lifting, pressing on my neck. I tried to say "Luc", it was just a swallow, a bubble. There was a shriek of laughter through the wall, a spasm of gabbling, the knock of some dropped object shaking the floor. "What was that?" whispered Luc, chuckling, not nervous, standing back, but still holding me, putting both arms more comfortably round my neck, as I stood there, clutching him feebly, with little terrified sighs. He leant his forehead against mine, he was open-mouthed, too close to see. Slowly I shifted, power ran back into my arms—it was as if something had come into the room or something had gone out. We started to kiss. Luc was asleep. I lay propped up beside him, thinking of later days in our affair, unguessed afternoons of sex, drives beside long canals, his cock curving out of his fly in the car, high-summer lulls when we lay like soldiers under Flanders willows and poplars, shirts off, watching clouds drift in the canal, his crude, obsessive demands. I tiptoed out for a drink of water and came back gulping from the glass like a child. I thought he might have vanished, it seemed foolish to let him out of my sight; but there he was, a goldish blur. I half-stumbled on his clothes, and crouched to rifle them—but what did they matter when the boy himself was here? I found every fear answered and calmed by that luminous fact. He was lying in my bed, naked, sleeping—flat out. It was a trulmph. Tears slipped down my face, I didn't really know why—it felt like gratitude, but also they were the tears that register some deep displacement, a bereavement sending up its sudden choking wave. It struck me I must be mourning everything that came before—it was the desolate undertow of success.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  What happened to her between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four? First, she described her decision to leave Nick, a journey that took her to a new life in Washington, D.C., where she stayed with a close friend from college and examined her options. “I realized that I wanted to help children but that to make a difference I’d need a degree, I’d need some expertise,” she said. Working her contacts, Karen soon heard about a masters of public health program at Johns Hopkins that would allow her to combine her interest in child welfare and community organization. Drawing on student loans and what remained from her grandmother’s inheritance, she applied and was accepted into the three-year program, moved to Baltimore, and worked part-time in a pediatric outreach program while attending school. Karen, at last following her own desires, was an outstanding student who soon caught the attention of senior professors who mentored her as she negotiated career opportunities. “I have the best job,” Karen informed me. “I work with severely handicapped children in five southern states where I run a rural outreach program. We’re based in Chapel Hill. I love my work, Judy. I make it my business to spend a lot of time out in the community working with the children. People ask how I can stand it but I don’t find it depressing because I get a lot of gifts from the children. They open up and share things with me, their hopes, their dreams, the things they want to do, and the many things they fear. I realize from being with them how precious life is and how you only have this day.” “Karen, you’ve been helping other people ever since I met you, when you were ten years old. But now it looks like you decided to take a chance on what you want. Maybe the dice will fall your way.” “That’s right. I decided to take a chance and I discovered what I want. And I finally figured out what I don’t want. I don’t want another edition of my relationships with my mom or dad. I don’t want a man who is dependent on me.” “And you do want?” “I want a lover and a husband. I’m no longer frantic to find just anybody because if I have to, I can live alone. I can stand on my own two feet. I’m no longer afraid.” And then the sadness around her eyes returned. “But it’s not really all behind me. Like I told you, part of me is always waiting for disaster to strike. I keep reminding myself that I’m doing this to myself, but the truth is that I live in dread that something bad will happen to me. Some terrible loss that will change my life.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  After that he didn’t call me, so I took up with Mike Zimmer because there was a rumor that Mike’s testicles were as big as lemons. It was true. I sucked those lemons down. I pureed them. I made them into meringue pie and we ate that pie to gether. One time I asked him if he had ever done Greek sex, and he said yes, but only with men. Then I said, “So, if I’m the first woman you ever do it with, and you’re the first man I do it with, we’ll be Greek-sex heterosexual virgins together,” and he said, “Yes, oh yes.” He got the Vaseline out of the bathroom and carried me to the bed. He laid me on my side and coated up my asshole with the Vaseline. He put Vaseline all around and up his index finger and he put it in my asshole. He started an in-out motion and then he leaned over and teased the nip ple of my breast with his tongue until I was so wet, my juices rolled out of me onto the sheet. He pulled me up into doggy position and stuck his cock in my ass. There was a little tear ing, a little blood, enough for a sacrifice, and then the Snake Goddess Kundalini, with her rainbow scales and crown of baby cobras, rose up out of the blood running down my leg. We danced before her as she flicked her fiery, forked tongue over our writhing limbs. The Tree of Life grew out of her sin gle, shining eye, filling Mike’s bedroom with the rustling of Karma Leaves and the fragrance of lotus blossoms. Mike and I stayed together a couple months but we didn’t fall in love, even with the Greek sex; we drifted apart, then we be came pals. He married my friend Melanie from Max’s, and I don’t know what happened to them. Once in a while, a sensi tive, ardent practitioner of Greek sex has crossed my path. It was always icing on the cupcake. Now, because of HIV, no one wants to do Greek sex anymore, even with a condom. I know that’s for the best, but sometimes I lie awake after the man is sleeping. I put my hand between my legs, stroke my anus, and try to remember the face of the Snake Goddess with her bliss- filled, shining eye. NATHAN ENGLANDER From "Peep Show" A/ >llen Fein is on his way to Port Authority when he stubs his toe and scuffs his shoe—puts a nick in a five-hundred- dollar investment. He pulls out a handkerchief and spit-shines his toe cap, cursing with every pass of the cloth.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  All along the pavement in the beating sunshine I kept letting my hands knock him, my fingertips trail over him as they swung. We crossed over Holland Park Avenue and were strolling north up Addison Avenue when there was the slap-slap of running sandalled feet behind us, and my little nephew Rupert was prancing along beside us. ‘Roops—this is a pleasure,’ I said. ‘Are you running off somewhere again? You don’t seem very well kitted out if you are.’ He had on smartly pressed shorts with an elasticated waistband and a T-shirt advertising the previous year’s Proms. ‘No, I’m just going for a walk,’ he said. ‘It’s such a lovely day—one would hate to stay indoors!’ ‘One would indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Roops, this is my friend Phil, who’s staying with me for a bit.’ ‘Hello,’ he said breezily, and then gambolled along backwards in front of us, so as to get a good look at the two of us. I thought it must be like being filmed, walking towards an ever-receding camera, and I put on silly faces to make him laugh. When he decided he liked us he dropped into place between us, and we swung along hand-in-hand. He was as touching and confidential as ever, and I felt we must look like a young couple that by some dazzling agamogenesis had produced this golden-haired offspring. I was keeping an eye out for the house numbers and we were already nearly there. ‘We’re going in here, darling,’ I said, and Phil looked up a shade apprehensively while Rupert, disappointed that our meeting was over so soon, took on a serious air, not quite understanding what was going on, and glancing from one to the other of us, as though some decision had to be taken. ‘Why don’t you come round for tea one day?’ I suggested. ‘If old Pollywog will let you.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. But something else was clearly worrying him and he tugged on my hand and led me off to several parked cars’ length away. He looked around carefully, and I knew what he was going to talk about. For a moment I thought he was going to tell me he had seen Arthur, and I felt that perhaps life would suddenly become quite different. ‘What ever happened to that boy?’ he asked. ‘Oh, he went away a bit ago,’ I said plausibly, as if it were a lie. ‘Did he manage to run away all right, then?’ ‘Oh yes—he got clean away.’ ‘Have you heard where he went to? Did he go abroad?’ ‘Funnily enough, old chap, I don’t know quite where he is. It was all top secret, you know. I hope you didn’t tell anyone about it?’ ‘No,’ he whispered, shocked that I could imagine that. ‘As a matter of fact,’ it struck me, ‘if you should see him I’d quite like to know. It would have to be really hush-hush, though.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  S. & I slid our fingers into the inviting little passages, & lots of woodlice & things came scampering out. At the back we went through an arch into a little dank yard, with ferns lolling from the walls, a heap of old beer-bottles in one corner, & the ash & half-burnt logs of a fire that had been lit there long ago. It was strange that whoever had camped there had not gone inside—we had found it unlocked, & there was a huge blackened chimney-breast in the hall. When S. & I went in the others were already flinging the picnic around as if it were a hare & they were dogs. There were some long trestle-tables, with benches, & at either end colossal Arthurian chairs made out of whole trees. The entire thing was like some mad college hall, except with pigeons flopping around, & more bird-droppings than usual on the tables. There were other bits of furniture too, hideous Victorian things too big to destroy, like a carved cupboard with a ruched scarlet curtain (all torn & stained) & an old S-shaped loving-chair, where 2 people cd sit acceptably side-by-side with a balustrade in between. ‘This is a queer old dive,’ said Chancey to me, in a confidential sort of way. ‘Do you think so?’ I said. ‘I was just thinking how like home it was.’ I cd see he didn’t know quite whether to believe me. It was a lesson in manners at lunch. Hubert & Eddie were particularly abandoned, cramming ham & gherkins into their mouths, slopping drink about, & behaving in a thoroughly aristocratic fashion. When Tim got up, Hubert spread mayonnaise on the bench, hoping he’d sit down in it, but Sandy, of course, who rather grandly partook only of a bread-roll & a glass of champagne, shouted out to him just in time, & earned some sullen gratitude. I ate, I think I can say, in a perfectly decorous fashion, with a slight sprawling over the table in deference to the occasion. But Chancey was a paragon of etiquette, wielding cutlery like a born lady in his rugger-player’s hands. He never relaxes, & seems constantly aware of his inferior station, though everyone else would gladly forget it. ‘Of course, we never had champagne at home,’ he confessed to me—so I made him drink from the bottle till the foam ran down his chin. All the while Tom & his boys sat by the door eating in silence, Tom taking frequent top-ups from a bottle he seemed to have established as his own, & saying ‘None for the boy’ whenever Eddie proffered a glass in his direction.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But I don't know if it would suit me." But Negro men are intimidated in another way altogether, ha,·ing despised women with kinky hair for so long. And they are told, Yott been so brainwashed by the white man, yott even wanted your womm to look white! And this is not quite true, of course, so many of "our" women having been fairly white when they got here, but, on the other hand, it is true enough. And to ward what standard of beauty ought black people now turn, especially as they exemplify, in themselves, so many different standards. The entire scene is rich and funnv and sad, and both bound and free, like the heavy and resp l endent matron wearing a complete Easter outfit, from head almost to toe, OTHER ESSAYS but with her shoes in her hand and her slippers on her fe et. She had the shoes and she wanted everyone to know it; but her fe et hurt. And she didn't care who knew that. The atmosphere of a Harlem nightclub is curiously mis leading � a use of the simplicity of the white world's assump tions. t� fo r anyof}e�vho_us�j�,.QrJ.�__g��g_ by it, is a most ��! nplc�1.£_?,Jcula_!_e�i_�nq __ qang�__r_o us _ _ phen2!!!.£!!Q_n. One will probably find more color in Smalls' Paradise, for example, even on an off night, than I, anyway, have usually managed to encounter in any nightclub downtown. It is not that the music is intrinsically so much better-always-but the people playing it and the people hearing it have more fun with it, and with each other. They know, on one level, everything concerning each other that there is to know: they are all black. And this produces an atmosphere of freedom which is exactly as real as the limits which have made it necessary. And what they don't know about each other, like who works where, or who sleeps with whom, doesn't matter. No one gives a damn, and this allows everyone to be himself-at i:hc club. No one gives a d a m ri-because they know e x ac t ly how rough it is out there, when the club gates close. And while they are dancing and listening to the music and drinking and joking and laugh ing, with all their finery on, and looking so bold and free, they know who enters, who leaves, and on what errands: they are aware of the terrible and unreachable fo rces which yet rule their lives. In years past, and sometimes even now, musicians said fo r them what they themselves could not say, and helped them to endure the unendurable. But nothing is static. Now, unless R.• y Charles or Nina Simone is down the street at the Apollo, one will have to go downtown to hear them.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I went out to the station to greet Edie and had to wait half an hour, pacing the platform systematically and then sitting with a coffee and a cigarette in the nearly empty refreshment hall. It was one of those vacant interludes, when pleasant boredom mixes with anticipation, and six or seven minutes of anonymous sex in the mopped and deserted Gents is what you would like best—You come just as the tannoy chimes and the fast train is competently announced. But there was nothing doing this morning: a few stout minor businessmen in belted macs, an elderly lady with a cart of luggage and a look of foreboding. I was tense but weightless, oddly comforted by the unknown plans and problems of the others. The long hand on a digitless clock-face clunked from minute to minute as the trim red second hand busied round. I gazed through the enormous windows, back towards the city—nearby a little guard-tower with a pointed roof and drooping chequered flag, and beyond it an impression of walls and spires like a city in a book of hours, only blurred and brightened by the gold of horse-chestnuts turning and the paling yellow of limes. It was a good moment for my old friend to see the place. In fact when she arrived she found everything wonderful: the clean, late train, the absence of people, the sleek inter-war grandeur of the station with its fawn marble and redundant spaciousness, all seemed hilarious and entrancing to her. We had a fierce hug and I was carried along for a while on the surge of confidence that came from being with a real old friend, whose friendship outlasted and diminished my other frets and misguided wanderings. I balanced up her several bags like an experienced bellhop, and we set off into town on foot. She was travelling with a hat-box. "I want you to see it this way, as if you were an old pilgrim, or you couldn't afford the tram." "Heavenly." I led her over a bridge, through an escutcheoned gateway and into the first little square; silent houses and a statue of a nineteenth-century man with swooping moustaches—she ran forward to read his name. "I've no idea," I said. "But darling, I thought you'd know everything by now." "Sorry. I do know one or two things, but . . . not that."

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In February 2015, we finally won a unanimous ruling from the United States Supreme Court that compelled prosecutors to reexamine the evidence. The new tests confirmed his innocence and Anthony Ray Hinton became the 152nd person to be exonerated after being wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. His compelling story is the subject of a new book, The Sun Does Shine, and Mr. Hinton now works as a community educator at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. In November 2016, Florida finally released Ian Manuel. Imprisoned since he was thirteen years old, Ian spent most of his incarceration in solitary confinement. Upon his release, Ian was embraced by the woman he was convicted of shooting. They had dinner together before he came to Montgomery and joined our reentry program. A few months later, Ian performed one of his poems at EJI’s annual event in New York City, where he now writes and performs spoken word poetry. On December 1, 2017, an ecstatic Joe Sullivan, laughing and shouting in his wheelchair, was pushed out the door of a different Florida prison, thrilled to be free. Our staff embraced him and brought him to Montgomery, where he gave me five Father’s Day cards because he couldn’t decide which one he liked best. After eighteen months in our residential program, Joe moved to Joseph House, a home for formerly incarcerated people with significant disabilities, where he now resides. Ian and Joe are among dozens of clients sentenced to die in prison as children who are now free. Trina Garnett has been resentenced and is now eligible for parole. She sings with a group of women serving life sentences at Muncy State Prison in Pennsylvania, where they recently performed a song titled “This Is Not My Home.” We hope she will be paroled in the coming year. Soon, Antonio Nuñez will be eligible for release in California, where his reduced sentence has given him access to programming and educational opportunities that are denied to people serving life imprisonment without parole, even if they were arrested at fourteen. In 2012, after I argued Kuntrell Jackson’s case, Jackson v. Hobbs, and its companion case, Miller v. Alabama, at the United States Supreme Court, the Court banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children seventeen and younger. Hundreds of people condemned to die in prison for crimes committed as children have been released across the country. Kuntrell was released in February 2017 and has started his career in the performing arts with an appearance in the film adaptation of Just Mercy. Henry, the man I first met on death row as a law student, is no longer on death row and hopes to be released soon. I am especially excited that we have been able to advance our work confronting America’s history of racial inequality.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was Oxford now—the matriculation photograph, posed in the stony front quad at Corpus, the pelican on top of the sundial appearing to sit on the head of the lanky, begowned chemist at the centre of the back row. I looked rather anonymous in it and once Rupert had identified me we moved to some colour snaps of a summer picnic at Wytham. There I sat, cross-legged on a rug, shirtless, brown, blue-eyed—perhaps the most beautiful I had ever been or ever would be. ‘That’s you,’ cried Rupert, splodging his forefinger down on my face as if recording his fingerprints for the police. ‘And that’s James! Isn’t he funny?’ ‘Yes, isn’t he a scream.’ James had on his panama hat, was quite drunk and had been caught at an unflattering angle (one I had never seen him from in real life), so that he looked lecherously seedy. ‘And is that Robert Carson um Smith?’ ‘Smith-Carson, actually, but jolly good all the same.’ ‘Was he a homosexual?’ ‘Certainly was.’ ‘I don’t like him.’ ‘No, he wasn’t very nice really. Some people liked him, though. He was great friends with James, you know.’ ‘Is James a homosexual, too?’ ‘You know perfectly well he is.’ ‘Yes, I thought he was, but Mummy said you mustn’t say people were.’ ‘You say what you like, sweetheart; as long as it’s true, of course.’ ‘Of course. Is he a homosexual as well?’ he chimed on, pointing to the remaining person in the picture, the blazered, boatered man-mountain, Ashley Child, a wealthy American Rhodes scholar whose birthday, as far as I could remember, we had been celebrating. ‘A bit hard to say, I’m afraid. I should think so, though.’ ‘I mean,’ Rupert looked up at me cogitatively, ‘almost everyone is homosexual, aren’t they? Boys, I mean.’ ‘I sometimes think so,’ I hedged. ‘Is Grandpa one?’ ‘Good heavens no,’ I protested. ‘Am I one?’ Rupert asked intently. ‘It’s a bit early to say yet, old fellow. But you could be, you know.’ ‘Goody!’ he squealed, banging his heels against the front of the sofa again. ‘Then I can come and live with you.’ ‘Would you like that?’ I asked, my avuncular rather than my homosexual feelings deeply gratified by this. And really Rupert’s cult of the gay, his innocent, optimistic absorption in the subject, delighted me even while its origin and purpose were obscure. I was saved from the sexual analysis of the next set of pictures, the Oscar Wilde Society Ball, by the doorbell ringing. (The dressnote that year had been ‘Slave Trade’, and the spectacle of predominantly straight boys camping it up to the eyeballs would have been confusing to the child’s budding sense of role-play.) It was not Philippa but Gavin who had come. ‘Sorry about this, Will,’ he said. ‘Has he been a frightful bother?’ ‘Not a bit, Gavin.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. (non occ.) He wishes to reveal as the Word, not without the exercise of reason; and as Justice, who knoweth rightly both the times for revealing, and the measures of revelation; but He reveals by removing the opposing veil from the heart, (2 Cor. 3:15) and the darkness which He has made His secret place. (Ps. 18:11.) But since upon this men who are of another opinion think to build up their impious doctrine, that in truth the Father of Jesus was sent down to the ancient saints, we must tell them that the words, To whomsoever the Son will reveal him, not only refer to the future time, after our Saviour uttered this, but also to the past time. But if they will not take this word reveal for what is past, they must be told, that it is not the same thing to know and to believe. To one is given by the Spirit the word of knowledge; to another faith by the same Spirit. (1 Cor. 12:8, 9.) There were then those who believed, but did not know. AMBROSE. But that you may know that as the Son revealed the Father to whom He will, the Father also reveals the Son to whom He will, hear our Lord’s words, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 10:23–2423. And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see: 24. For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. THEOPHYLACT. Having said above, No one knoweth who the Father is but the Son, and to whomsoever the Son will reveal him; He pronounces a blessing upon His disciples, to whom the Father was revealed through Him. Hence it is said, And he turned him unto his disciples, and said, Blessed are the eyes, &c.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Her words stumble as she chokes: “It’s hard for me to ask … It feels emotional … I don’t think I have so much experience in asking for help.” This acknowledgment lets me know that the social engagement system is operative, and that deeper exploration is possible. “Yes, I’m glad to give you support,” I respond. When I ask her if she has any ideas of what kind of support might be helpful, she responds that just to do what I’ve been doing is what she wants. I ask her to be more specific. “I’m not sure,” she says. “Actually, I think it has to do with feeling that you’re here, here for me. When you give me feedback, that helps keep me in touch with what I feel … in a way with who I am.” “When you say that,”—I see her face relax—“you seem to let go more deeply.” Miriam smiles, and I continue, “It’s different than a few minutes ago, when you spoke of not having had the experience of asking for help.” “Yes,” she adds, “it’s really different to ask you for support in helping me to learn how to be there for myself … That way I don’t feel less than you, I feel more equal … I like that … I feel like if I didn’t want to do something that you suggested to do, I could tell you that now.” Without prompting, Miriam holds out her arms and hands again and sweeps them around in a horizontal semicircle. “Yes, these are my boundaries. I can set my limits—that feels good … and I can tell you what I need.” We both smile. Miriam closes her eyes and sits quietly for several minutes. While it may seem simplistic, having the actual, kinesthetic, proprioceptive experience of being able to form and hold boundaries gives Miriam a significant physical experience that contradicts the pervasive sense of powerlessness that has driven her perception of the world. Rather than being folded defensively across her chest, her arms now lie resting on her legs—exemplifying a more open stance and a willingness to look inward. Miriam continues, “First I started to feel the shaking again … It became more intense, but then it started to settle down on its own.” She is now beginning to self-regulate by moving through activation/deactivation cycles. “I felt some warmth starting in my belly and then spreading out in waves … That felt really good … I could even feel the warmth flowing into my hands and legs … but then my gut started to knot up. I started feeling a little sick, nauseous and queasy. I realized that I was thinking about Evan, my first husband.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  THEY USED SOME KIND of accelerant, they must have, so that when the three children touched their torches to it (angling their bodies away, keeping the greatest distance between themselves and the fire) the flame leapt up the wood, from the base to the ridiculous crown the whole frog blazed up. And with it there was a huge explosion of sound, air horns and rattlers and little handheld bells children jingled, and above them all human voices, the crowd cheering both the fire and the New Year, which had just struck. There were hundreds of people in the square, pressed tight near the wooden barricades that held them back from the fire but more spread out near the edges, where we were; there was space here for people to toast one another, with wine in plastic cups or little glass bottles like those R. had bought for us, prosecco with a twist-off cap. After we drank I leaned toward him and cupped his face in my palm and we kissed. I moved my mouth in a way he liked, kissing first his upper lip and then his lower before I drew away, hanging my arm around his shoulder. And then, as the statue burned—it was huge, it would take a long time to burn—there was another sound, a salute of drums and a burst of guitars, and then the far corner of the square lit up with floodlights, and there was a new shout from the crowd as it shifted toward the platform where the band had begun to play, four skinny boys bent over their instruments. There was a keyboard as well as the guitars and drums, it was an American sound, I thought, which contrasted with the stone buildings around us, with the pagan fire. R. and I didn’t move as the crowd thinned further; we wouldn’t stay, it was cold and the band wasn’t very good, we would watch the fire a little longer and then go back to the hotel. R. pulled away from me suddenly and reached into his coat pocket, taking from it the packet of raisins he had bought earlier with the wine. I almost forgot, he said, it’s almost too late. He handed me his bottle and took off one of his mittens so he could open the packet. Give me your hand, he said, so I put the bottles on the ground and held it out to him, taking my glove off as he asked, and he counted out twelve raisins, placing them in my palm in a single line from my wrist to the tip of my third finger, then counting another twelve for himself. It was the Portuguese tradition, he had told me, a raisin for each month of the year that had passed, a wish for each month of the year to come. He looked at me and smiled, Skups, he said, feliz ano, and we kissed again. He ate his all at once, tossing them in his mouth and putting his mitten back on before he leaned down for his bottle and turned to watch the fire. But I didn’t watch the fire, I kept my eyes on him, though it was cold and I wanted to be back in the hotel with him, in the warmth of our bed. I took my time, I put the raisins in my mouth one by one, thinking a wish for each, though all my wishes were the same wish.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  I wrap my hands around her head and push her deeper into me. I’m moving her head and every time I look down those eyes are staring at me. My legs are shaking and my cunt starts to clench and I feel my insides begin to boil and I look down and she winks at me. I can’t believe it, I lose my shit. I start to come, shaking and crying I fall over on her. “Please stop, stop, stop,” I cry, but she won’t. That vibrator isn’t moving but it’s still deep inside me. I reach down to grab her hair but then, the bitch, she starts to come and I get off again, just feeling her shaking and moaning under me. It’s too much. She’s done, and finally she pulls out the vibrator. I climb off of her and she turns off the toy and places it down on the little stage. I’m spent, I feel like I’ve been fucked for the first time in a long time, and if the floor wasn’t covered with spent jizz, maybe I could crawl up and go to sleep there. You Know What? 4 ] She’s still looking at me, that smile that’s more like a smirk on her face, and she’s buttoning up her blouse and pulling down her skirt. She stands up, looking like nothing ever hap pened and she walks over and you know what she does? She kisses me. Plants a big wet one right on my mouth while she slides a twenty on the stage then she turns and walks out. I can’t believe her. The nerve of that slut, I know her type, the kind that always needs the last word. I shake my head, some people are just crazy, you know what I mean? I get back onstage and wait for my next show. MATT BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE Sink y eyes rolled back and I was looking in the mirror the way I used to look at people late late late at clubs when the drugs were taking me to that planet I never wanted to leave. But this time it was just me and the bathroom sink. That’s when our relationship began. Two months and still going strong; it’s the second-longest relationship I’ve ever had. And this one doesn’t have any of the drama. He’s kind of falling apart, but he’s dependable. And beauti ful, in the way that only a sink can be beautiful. And he’s got character. This isn’t some Formica mess from the seventies, with square edges and gold glitter. And it’s not one of those sinks that look all glamorous from a distance, but then you get up close and the drain’s rusted shut, the faucets are about to break off. This sink is the real thing, made during the forties. You know, the golden years. Sure, he’s seen a little wear and tear, but haven’t we all. I mean, I’m only twenty-four and I’ve got suitcases under my eyes.