Loneliness

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.

Page 45 of 63 · 20 per page

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Me, too, man,” she said. “See, I knew it.... Thats what I meant when I said something about you bugged me. I mean, you look like you belong but—...Why do you hang around this scene?” she asked me. “I dont know,” I answered her. “I dont really know why I hang around either,” she said. From under one bed, she pulls out a cheap record-player, and there was a record already on the turntable. “It’s the only one Ive got,” she said. It begins to play: Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta . Scratchily on the cheap machine—but still beautifully—it plays the haunting, haunted music. I lay beside her on the rumpled bed, and I hold her hand—which is very cold—while the music played; and she pressed herself suddenly against me with a huge lost franticness. “Man,” she said, “I know the scene: Youve got to pretend you dont give a damn and swing along with those that really dont—or you go under....” Startlingly, as I rolled over on her, she gets up suddenly. Suddenly she looks mean. “Why dont you get out of that scene?” she snaps. “All of you keep telling yourselves youre straight—and you make it with chicks to prove it—and when you make it with other guys, you say it’s only for the bread—and besides, with them, you dont do anything back in bed—if you dont!... Sure, maybe it’s true—Now!” She turns the record off. “Why dont you split the scene, man— if you really want to!” she said. Then in a tone that was as much bitter as mean, she challenged: “I bet youve never even clipped a wallet from those guys you go with.” I remember the almost-time.... “No.” “Get out of it—now!” she said. “Get a job!” “I’ve worked more than you think,” I said, strangely defensive. “But you always come back,” she thrust at me quickly. “Yes.” “Then why?” “I dont know,” I said again. She returns to the bed. And now she begins to remove her clothes.... As we clung to each other in a kind of franticness, she said: “My name is Barbara.” I would meet her at Hooper’s after that, and later we’d go to her apartment. Always, she plays that one record. I would hold her while the music played. And yet, always, the meanness would recur. “Cool it,” she said once, when I was coming on with her. She went into the bathroom, returned with a rubber. “You never know what the hell you guys have had your pricks in,” she said brutally. “What about you?” I came back at her just as brutally. “Every hustler in the park’s had you—several times.” I regretted it instantly. “I know,” she sighs almost sadly.... Afterwards, for those times I was with her, she would lie like a lost child, huddled and small and warm now. And somehow terrified....

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Mary was at my side when my father died suddenly, just weeks before my wedding to John Blume, following my junior year of college. She was in pain, too, but we didn’t talk about how his death affected her until recently. Ultimately, it was my marriage—and, just a year or so later, hers—that separated us. Even though we had baby daughters born two months apart, our lives were already very different. She lived in New York and I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey. Her husband, a WASP who came from old money, was an academic; mine was a hustling young lawyer. The men had nothing in common. I felt the loss of that friendship. I was lonely in my marriage and missed the camaraderie of my old friends. I was constantly hoping to find someone with whom I could connect. Each time a moving van brought a new family to our cul-de-sac, I’d be out there, a welcome committee of one, hoping this would be it. It never was. Years Later . Mary and I never stopped being friends, and we never really lost touch. We just didn’t get to spend much time together, and when we tried it as a foursome it never really worked. She became the kindergarten teacher I was trained to be. I started to write, out of loneliness, maybe even desperation. I was the ambitious one, driven and determined, though I didn’t know it at the time. If Mary were writing this it would be entirely different, I’m sure, and even now I know more about us than I’m telling. Our history runs deep. Our genuine feelings for each other, deeper. We are friends for life. We went through puberty together. College. We married, had babies, went to work, lost parents, and are grandmothers. But when we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come? Caitlin and Vix . Is the relationship between Caitlin and Vix in Summer Sisters based on my friendship with Mary? Before I sat down to write these notes I’d have told you absolutely not. Their story is much darker, more seductive, more competitive, and Caitlin and Vix are totally different personalities. Yet it is about two young women from different backgrounds whose friendship begins at twelve and endures. Vix finds Caitlin irresistable—the danger, the daring, the thrill of becoming a part of her eccentric family. From Vix, Caitlin receives unconditional love. But they are also rivals. After all, one marries the other’s first love. Aside from a ninth-grade crush, Mary and I were never in love with the same man. Not that I know of, anyway. Questions and Topics for DiscussionIn Summer Sisters , we get to experience the points of view of almost all of the characters, with the notable exception of Caitlin. Why do you think the author made this choice?

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When I presented them to her - producing them with a flourish, from under my coat, like a conjuror - she would flush with pleasure, and perhaps dip me a playful little curtsey. Mrs Milne would look on, pleased as anything, but shaking her head and pretending to chide. ‘Tut!’ she would say to me. ‘You will turn that girl’s head right round, one of these days, I swear it!’ And I would think for a second how queer it was that she - who had been so careful to keep her daughter from the covetous glances of fresh young men - should encourage Grace and me to play at sweethearts, so blithely, and with such seeming unconcern. But it was impossible to think very hard about anything in that household, where life was so even and idle and sweet. And because, since losing Kitty, thinking was the occupation I cared for least, this suited me best of all. So the months slid by. My birthday arrived: I had not marked its passing at all the year before; but now there were gifts, and a cake with green candles. Christmas came, bringing more presents, and a dinner. I remembered with some small, insistent portion of my brain the two gay Christmases that I had spent with Kitty; and then I thought of my family. Davy, I supposed, would be married by now, and possibly a father - that made me an aunt. Alice would be twenty-five. They would all be celebrating the turning of the year, today, without me - wondering, perhaps, where I was, and how I did; and Kitty and Walter might be doing the same. I thought: Let them wonder. When Mrs Milne raised her glass at the dinner-table, and wished the three of us all the luck of the Season and the New Year, I gave her a smile, and then a kiss upon the cheek. ‘What a Christmas!’ she said. ‘Here I am, with my two best girls beside me. What a lucky day it was for me and Grace, Nance, the day you knocked upon our door!’ Her eyes glistened a little; she had said this sort of thing before, but never so feelingly. I knew what she was thinking. I knew she had begun to look upon me as a kind of daughter — as a sister, anyway, to her real daughter: a kindly older sister who might be relied upon, perhaps, to care for Gracie when she herself was dead and gone ... The idea, at that moment, made me shiver - and yet I had no other plans; no other family, now; no sister of my own; and certainly no sweetheart. So, ‘What a lucky day it was for me,’ I answered. ‘If only everything might stay just as it is, for ever!’

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  When I rose at last, I would call for a bath. Diana’s bathroom was a handsome one: I might spend an hour or more in there, soaking in the perfumed water, parting my hair, applying the macassar, examining myself before the glass for marks of beauty or for blemishes. In my old life I had made do with soap, with cold-cream and lavender scent and the occasional swipe of spit-black. Now, from the crown of my head to the curve of my toe-nails, there was an unguent for every part of me - oil for my eyebrows and cream for my lashes; a jar of tooth-powder, a box of blanc-de-perle; polish for my fingernails and a scarlet stick to redden my mouth; tweezers for drawing the hairs from my nipples, and a stone to take the hard flesh from my heels. It was quite like dressing for the halls again - except that then, of course, I had had to change at the side of the stage, while the band switched tempo; now, I had entire days to prink in. For Diana was my only audience; and my hours, when out of her company, were a kind of blank. I could not talk to the servants - to strange Mrs Hooper, with her veiled and slithering glances; or to Blake, who flustered me by curtseying to me and calling me ‘miss’; or to Cook, who sent me lunch and supper, but never showed her face outside her kitchen. I might hear their voices, raised in mirth or dispute, if I paused at the green baize door that led to the basement; but I knew myself apart from them, and had my own tight beat to keep to: the bedrooms, and Diana’s parlour, and the drawing-room and library.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Ive still got to rent a place to stay tonight,” he said. “Ive been staying at different motels. It’s been about a week since I left—home—and, until today, I havent spoken to anyone.... But, God! how Ive wanted to.... I guess—” he smiled. “—I guess I look too suspicious for anyone to speak to me. I heard someone on the beach say I looked like a plainclothesman.” I wonder why I will stay with him—and I knew I would. At the same time that I feel he needs me—someone—that he is desperately alone—something else in me insists that I leave. “We’ll get a motel here, all right?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. “And we can go to the beach tomorrow.... Will you stay with me the rest of my vacation?” he asked hurriedly. And as if understanding something, as if defensively beating me to it, canceling out the possibility that I would bring it up—which I would not have—he said: “Ive got enough money for both of us. I mean, after all—friends should—...” Friends! I had just met him, such a short time earlier. I wanted to say something that would be very right—to do something: even, I thought cornily, to shake hands with him. But I could find nothing to say, nothing to do. At a motel across from the beach, the man at the desk asked: “Two beds?” “Yes,” the man Im with answers embarrassed. Through the wide window inside the room, I can see the ocean extending to the end of the sky. The man turns the television on. For minutes we remain wordless. Several times I still want to leave. He said as if reading my mind: “Do you want to stay with me?” At any other time I might have interpreted this as a kind of rejection, implied. With him, I was convinced he wants me to stay. “Yes,” I answered. I sat back on one bed, he sat back on the other. For several hours, making occasional forced comments about the programs, we watched television. Outside, the night has shrouded the sky. I can hear the rumble of the ocean—the sound of the wind... speaking its personal language to each person who listens.... The insistent sound... that wind carrying us along.... “This must be very boring for you,” he said. “It’s fine,” I told him. “Are you tired yet?” he asked. “Yes. I like to sleep listening to the ocean.” “I know what you mean,” he said, pulling the blinds, shutting out the night. “It’s the same with the wind, isnt it?—when youre inside and just listening to it.... It used to scare me when I was a kid. You cant stop it” “It scared me too,” I told him. “I even—crazy—used to wish there was something you could draw across the sky to block it.” He laughed. “Nothing can stop it, though,” he said.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Entro en el camino de entrada, balanceando mi cuerpo de lado a lado mientras los faros caen sobre el garaje cerrado al frente. Apretando el embrague, presiono el freno, me estaciono y apago el motor. El bar se vació temprano, Shel y un par de chicas más se quedaron para cerrar, así que esta noche salí antes de las dos. Pike se fue hace solo una hora, pero indudablemente ya está en la cama. No es un ave nocturna. Echo un vistazo, viendo el Challenge de Cole estacionado en el lugar de al lado. Está en casa. Frunzo el ceño, la aprensión me golpea repentinamente. La distancia entre nosotros se está ampliando y siento como si estos días estuviera a kilómetros de distancia. La necesidad que parecía tener por mí hacía unas semanas ahora es casi inexistente y me pregunto por qué sigo aquí. Pero tengo una idea. La culpa se abre paso en mis entrañas cuando recuerdo lo que sucedió en la ducha el otro día y cómo mi cerebro tomó un giro completamente diferente al que yo quería. O no sabía que quería. Solo fue el estrés. El momento se me escapó y Pike fue el punto focal. Ha estado siendo agradable y preocupándose y he estado deseosa de un poco de atención y la centré en él. Eso es todo. Aunque llegados a este punto, casi no tengo razones para permanecer aquí, pero todavía lo hago, incluso con mis problemas y los de Cole, odio la idea de irme. Esta casa se ha vuelto algo familiar y cálido. Un hogar. Y aunque ciertamente algunas veces Pike puede ser un idiota invasivo, me gusta. Se preocupa. No expresa sus preocupaciones con mucha elocuencia, por supuesto, pero sé que sus intenciones están en el lugar correcto. Es agradable tener a alguien que se preocupe por mí y lo que hago. Y odio admitirlo, pero me gusta la forma en que me hace sentir. La forma en que sus ojos me miran como si fuera lo único en el mundo. Saliendo de la camioneta, tomo mi bolso con el corsé en ella. Me cambié a una camiseta antes de dejar el bar y aunque me sentí bastante expuesta durante toda la

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Así que ven aquí y fóllame —exige. Dudo por solo un momento, pero luego sacudo la cabeza. Es tentador. Mi cuerpo lo quiere Y si solo lo admito para mí, me siento un poco solo cuando me detengo lo suficiente como para permitirme sentirlo. Hay tantas mañanas que odio despertar solo. Pero no. Mi orgullo está cansado de recibir un golpe cada vez que cree que estaré listo para ir a su entera disposición. —Tengo que ir a trabajar. —Cuelgo el teléfono antes de tener la oportunidad de pensarlo más, o peor, reconsiderarlo. Deslizo mi celular en mi bolsillo trasero y me acerco al tocador por una camiseta. Mi teléfono vuelve a sonar—.Es implacable —refunfuño y lo saco de mi bolsillo. Pero esta vez, veo el nombre de Dutch en la pantalla. Lo respondo, sosteniéndolo contra mi oreja. —¿Qué? —Está lloviendo. —¿De verdad? ¿No me digas? —Me río entre dientes, tirando de mi camisa sobre mi cabeza—. Eres un genio. —Mira afuera. Me callo, cada músculo se tensa al instante. Maldición. Por su tono, sé lo que voy a ver, pero camino hacia la ventana de todos modos y abro una de las cortinas, mirando la tormenta de la mañana. —Mierda. La calle está bordeada a ambos lados por rápidos de agua de lluvia, todos corriendo hacia los desagües pluviales, la cal estrellándose contra la acera antes de hundirse en las alcantarillas. La calle en sí es una orquesta de ruido blanco, las gotas rebotan en el suelo o los capós de los autos, la lluvia es tan espesa que apenas puedo ver las casas frente a mí. —Me reuniré con los muchachos en la tienda —dice Dutch—. Cargaremos lonas y sacos de arena y nos encontraremos contigo en el sitio. —Estaré allí en veinte —contesto, y los dos colgamos. Saco unos calcetines de mi cajón, me guardo el teléfono en el bolsillo y entro al baño, haciendo un rápido barrido con el cepillo de dientes antes de salir de la habitación. Camino por el pasillo, pasando la habitación vacía, el baño principal, y luego una puerta cerrada, la otra habitación libre, recordando rápidamente que ya no está vacía.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  I didn’t go hungry. Hot lunch at school cost a quarter, and we could usually afford that. When we couldn’t and I told Mrs. Ellis, my fourth-grade teacher, that I had forgotten my quarter, she said her records indicated that someone had already paid for me. Even though it seemed awfully coincidental, I didn’t want to push my luck by asking too many questions about who this someone was. I ate the hot lunch. Sometimes that lunch was all I had to eat all day, but I could get by just fine on one meal. One afternoon when Brian and I had come home to an empty fridge, we went out to the alley behind the house looking for bottles to redeem. Down the alley was the delivery bay of a warehouse. A big green Dumpster stood in the parking lot. When no one was looking, Brian and I pushed open the lid, climbed up, and dived inside to search for bottles. I was afraid it might be full of yucky garbage. Instead, we found an astonishing treasure: cardboard boxes filled with loose chocolates. Some of them were whitish and dried-out-looking, and some were covered with a mysterious green mold, but most of them were fine. We pigged out on chocolates, and from then on, whenever Mom was too busy to make dinner or we were out of food, we’d go back to the Dumpster to see if any new chocolate was waiting for us. From time to time, it was. • • • For some reason, there were no kids Maureen’s age on North Third Street. She was too young to run around with me and Brian, so she spent most of her time riding up and down on the red tricycle Dad had bought for her, and playing with her imaginary friends. They all had names, and she would talk to them for hours. They’d laugh together, carry on detailed conversations, even argue. One day she came home in tears, and when I asked her why she was crying, she said she’d gotten into a fight with Suzie Q., one of the imaginary friends. Maureen was five years younger than Brian, and Mom said that since she didn’t have any allies in the family around her age, she needed special treatment. Mom decided Maureen needed to enroll in preschool, but she said she didn’t want her youngest daughter dressed in the thrift-store clothes the rest of us wore. Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. “Isn’t that a sin?” I asked Mom. “Not exactly,” Mom said. “God doesn’t mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It’s sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.” Mom’s plan was for her and Maureen to go into the dressing room of a store with an armful of new clothes for Maureen to try on. When they came out, Mom would tell the clerk she didn’t like any of the dresses.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  When she asked, using up her question of the week, Caitlin said, “I don’t think he has any friends.” “That’s so sad.” “Pathetic,” Caitlin agreed. “I guess Vix is the shy, quiet type,” Lamb said, still on her case. “Like Sharkey.” “She’s not anything like Sharkey,” Caitlin told him. Suddenly, Sharkey spoke. “How would you know?” he asked Caitlin. “How would any of you know?” SharkeyIT’S ALL SO EASY for them, yakety-yakking all day and half the night! Do they think he doesn’t hear them, doesn’t know they think he’s weird? Jesus! His life is none of their goddamn business. He doesn’t need friends. There’s a difference between lonely and alone. Not that they would know. Alien creatures, if you want his opinion. Beam me up, Scottie … [image file=Image00006.jpg] ANYTHING SHE WANTED to see or do on the island was hers for the asking. Your wish is my command , Lamb told her, like in some fairy tale. So she said, I’d like to see the real ocean . And abracadabra , the next day they were off to the ocean, making a quick stop in Menemsha, an old fishing village, with almost as many boats in the harbor as tourists snapping pictures. Sharkey had opted to skip their outing and stay at home, probably to drive Lamb’s old truck up and down the dirt driveway, or bury himself under the hood of the Volvo, or slide around on his back on the body-size skateboard he’d constructed to get underneath the cars. She and Caitlin followed Lamb way out onto the dock until they came to a rundown wooden sailboat, Island Girl , where Lamb called, “Trisha … hey, Trish …” A deeply tanned woman with a tangle of brown curls, wearing cutoffs and a work shirt, came out from inside the boat, shading her eyes from the sun. She jumped up onto the dock and threw her arms around Lamb, then Caitlin. “Meet my friend Vix,” Caitlin said. Trisha gave her a high five. “We’re on our way out to Gay Head,” Lamb said. “Want to join us?” Vix had just found out that gay and head had meanings she hadn’t known about before, and hearing Lamb say those words aloud made her feel funny. “Be with you in two seconds,” Trisha said. “Just let me grab my stuff.” She jumped down onto her boat and ducked inside the cabin. Lamb followed. “They’re just friends,” Caitlin said, while she and Vix waited. “From the old days … when Lamb lived up here. They might still have sex though. I’m almost sure they do. I wouldn’t mind if they got married. She’s a flake but she loves us.” They picked up lunch along the way—clam dogs and lobster rolls. Vix had never heard of either and ordered french fries with ketchup.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Extiendo las manos, haciendo un gesto hacia la tarea frente a mí. Asiente, comprendiendo. —Bueno... —me mira por un momento, parece inseguro y luego continúa—, tienes que comer también, ¿no? ¿Qué tipo de pizza te gusta? —No, está bien —le digo, negando—. Ya comí. Sus ojos se posan en el plato con el sándwich de mantequilla de maní a medio comer en la cama, y sé lo que está pensando. —Bueno. Se mueve para cerrar la puerta, pero luego se detiene. —Sabes que no necesitas esconderte aquí, ¿verdad? Miro hacia arriba, enderezando mi columna vertebral. —No me estoy escondiendo. —Me río un poco para disimular, pero creo que me ha atrapado. —Estás haciendo los quehaceres —afirma—. Estás pagando por tu derecho a estar en la casa. Entonces, si quieres usar la piscina o traer un amigo o te gusta... salir de la habitación, está bien. Me lamo los labios secos. —Sí, lo sé. —Está bien —dice finalmente—. Supongo que comeré la pizza solo entonces. Tendré sobras durante días, como de costumbre. —Suspira, sonando más patético. —Entonces no pidas una grande —balbuceo, mirando mi libreta de nuevo. Pero su risa silenciosa antes de cerrar la puerta me dice que escuchó mi comentario sabihondo. Estoy segura que ha pedido muchas pizzas en todos los años que ha vivido aquí solo. Solo está tratando de ser amable y hacerme sentir bienvenida. Lo cual es genial por su parte, y lo aprecio, pero aun así no me hace sentir como menos que una vividora. No puedo dejar que me compre pizza también. Y pienso en lo sola que me sentí al crecer en el remolque de mi padre e incluso lo sola que me he sentido con Cole a veces. Tal vez Pike Lawson está cansado de estar solo, de comer solo y de ver televisión solo, soy una invitada en su casa y tal vez le gustaría conocer a las personas que viven bajo su techo, ¿verdad? Es solo razonable. Y tal vez estoy cansada de estar sola mucho, también, y tal vez todavía tengo hambre y la pizza suena bastante bien, en realidad. Suelto un suspiro y aparto la libreta de mi regazo antes de ponerme de pie. Corriendo hacia la puerta del dormitorio, la abro y miro afuera. —¿Pizza de Joe’s? —pregunto, viéndolo justo antes que bajara las escaleras. Se detiene y gira la cabeza para mirarme. —Por supuesto. Es la mejor pizza del pueblo, así que es obvio. Salgo del dormitorio y cierro la puerta. —¿Pedimos por mitades?

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  But so far they have been able to talk one another into sticking it out. For instance, one of the members, the one who’d had the article published, called me last week and told me she was on the verge of giving up because she hadn’t sold anything else in the months since her piece came out. She said in an Eeyore-like voice that she thought she could drink again safely now that she’d been sober for seven years, and she’d decided that I could, too, since I’d also been sober for seven years. Her plan was to come pick me and Sam up, and then we’d drive around until we found a biker bar with child care. I made sounds of empathy and reminded her that she’d been this stuck before. Short assignments, I whispered. Shitty first drafts. She mewled. I asked if there was anyone in her writing group who might be helpful. But she said no, she couldn’t call them, she knew they were all doing well, that they’d all had a great week, and that anyway they probably got together every few days without telling her and exchanged their favorite derisive stories about her and rolled their eyes. I told her to sit down and write about how she felt, and that maybe all her loneliness and paranoia would turn out to be great material. She said she wasn’t paranoid. She just worried that all her friends got together in small groups and talked meanly about her. But right then she got a call on the other line. It turned out to be someone in her writing group who was also really depressed, and she asked me if she could call right back. Then I didn’t hear from her the rest of the day. Finally I called her back, worried that she was sitting in her car in the garage with the engine running and an old Leslie Gore tape on the stereo. But it turned out that the person who’d called her was really on the ward, really depressed, and he is a wonderful, beautiful, funny writer who was badly abused as a child. She deeply believes in him, so she gave him a rousing pep talk, and right after hanging up, she got back to work on her book, and she had in fact been working ever since until I’d called and interrupted her. Someone to Read Your DraftsThere’s an old New Yorker cartoon of two men sitting on a couch at a busy cocktail party, having a quiet talk. One man has a beard and looks like a writer. The other seems like a normal person. The writer type is saying to the other, “We’re still pretty far apart. I’m looking for a six-figure advance, and they’re refusing to read the manuscript.” Now, I’ve been wrong before, but I’d bet you anything that this guy never shows his work to other writers before trying to get someone to buy it.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  It is called “August in Waterton, Alberta”: Above me, wind does its best to blow leaves off the aspen tree a month too soon . No use wind. All you succeed in doing is making music, the noise of failure growing beautiful . Be aware that some conferences and writing programs can be cutthroat and competitive, and you may not need or be ready for the fiercest possible critique of your work. But if you do need feedback, encouragement, benevolent pressure, and the company of other writers, you may want to consider starting a writing group. I’ve had students who met in a class of mine and who then started getting together in groups of three or four every third Thursday, or the last Sunday of the month, or whenever, and who’ve been doing this for years now. The fact that they’re going to meet means that they have to get a certain amount of work finished. Also, an occupational hazard of writing is that you’ll have bad days. You feel not only totally alone but also that everyone else is at a party. But if you talk to other people who write, you remember that this feeling is part of the process, that it’s inevitable. Writers tend to be so paranoid about talking about their work because no one, including us, really understands how it works. But it can help a great deal if you have someone you can call when you need a pep talk, someone you have learned to trust, someone who is honest and generous and who won’t jinx you. When you’re feeling low, you don’t want anyone even to joke that you may be in some kind of astrological strike zone where you’ll be for the next seven years. On a bad day you also don’t need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation. You need to feel once again that other people have confidence in you. The members of your writing group can often offer just that. So how do you start one? One way is to join a creative-writing class and to ask the people whose work you most love and with whom you may have some rapport if they want to begin meeting once a month, to hear and support each other’s work, gossip a little, and talk about writing in general. They may say no. Then you can call Jack Kevorkian and see if he can squeeze you in. Or you can keep trying until you find two or three people who do want to see what a group would be like. Some of my students have put ads on bulletin boards and in small newspapers, announcing the formation of a writing group for beginning writers, or for writers with novels they are trying to get published. Many, if not most, of these people have ended up with functioning groups that bring them a great deal of pleasure and support.

• From City of Night (1963)

  (And as I listened, I remembered—and I felt that strange, numb, helpless, cold fear when you realize you cant change the past—the first time someone had gone down on me in a public restroom. It had been on 42nd Street, in one of the all-night moviehouses. A man had stood smoking on the steps leading down to the toilet. Another had stood by the urinal. After I had finished pissing, I remained standing there with my pants still open, and the man near me approached me, reached quickly for me. The man on the stairs moved lower, watching; and I remember his face—the smiling mouth, and head nodding yes as the other knelt before me now. I remember the bursting excitement at the feel of the other’s mouth on my groin, an excitement doubled by the blazing look in the second one’s eyes; now tripled by the uncaring awareness of the imminent danger of the scene. It was over in a few frantic moments. The man before me stood up. I glance at him. And in that glance I see a look which somehow begs me to say something to him before I leave—something to acknowledge him as other than someone—a nameless anyone—who has merely executed furtively a desperate sexual act in a public toilet. I avoided the look. And he turned away from me quickly and fled. The man on the steps had remained standing there, now resuming his smoking, coldly.... I left the theater, I walked the lonely, crowded, electric streets, trying to forget the face which had turned toward me for acknowledgment after the great anonymous intimacy.... That had been at the beginning of a period in New York when, for days and nights, I hunted that fleeting contact, over and over, from theater to theater, park to park; rushing from one to another, not even coming, merely adding to the numbers. At the end of that period, I had masturbated... feeling completely alone.) For a long time, Jeremy had remained silent. He seems to know instinctively when to retreat, or, rather, when to stand still: when he may have come too dangerously close, too soon. Now he asked me: “Have you been to New York?” “Twice,” I answered, still thinking of the electric island. “I never learned how to swim, though,” I said jokingly, “and each time I realized I was on an island, I panicked.” “Thats were I live,” he said. “But that kind of island never bothered me. Just what I felt when I first went there—the feeling of being alone among so many people.” “I dont mind being alone,” I challenged him. “Then youre very rare—maybe very lucky,” he said. “Most people cant stand to be alone. Theyll do anything to avoid it.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  “And yet,” I said, “those times when you want to be taken as you think you really are, beyond the Mask—like for example earlier, with those two in the bar, before I met you—when you try, then youve exploded their dream of you. Youve shot right out of it, by revealing that you, too, are as terrified by the isolation as they are; and what should bring you together pulls you apart. Not even that other sharing can exist then.” Jeremy said: “I know someone who fell very much in love with an awol marine; he worshiped him, did everything for him. One day the man came home to find the marine ironing the man’s clothes. The man wanted nothing more to do with the marine—just like those two in the bar when you said what you did to them.... I guess you could say they had given up, to indifference—to the emotional masochism of our world, because of the unfair guilt thrust on it. (When I first realized I was homosexual, I prayed to be changed. I felt guilty, as if I had committed a crime—and the only crime had been in making me feel guilty.)... But, yes,” he went on, “with those two, you left their dream, but you entered your own reality. And that can be much more important.” And as I listened to this man’s words over the sounds of the Carnival—the thundering street noises, the steadfast clashing and clamoring—I had a sudden feeling of having been dreaming for very long. Rather, of having been in someone else’s dream. And how many other dreams? How many of all the people I had known had ever begun to know me? Had even wanted to? Perhaps thats why I listen to Jeremy—to words which would ordinarily have sent me away—because he seems to want to know me, because even when the words themselves are cruel, they seem to be spoken in understanding.... Of course, I had hidden purposely from the others. Yes, even from Dave, who might eventually have said the same things, who had in a way prepared me so that Im able to listen to Jeremy now. And it had been at that point—when some of these same words might have been spoken by him—that I had fled from Dave.... No, not even the Professor, certainly, whose obsessive wordhunt “for me” had been merely for himself, by himself, of himself, discovering himself in his own “interviews” (as he measured out his life—or more exactly the length of his sustaining hope... on a tape-measure): no, he had not even vaguely approached me ....

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿A quién le importa? —Selena frunce el ceño, volviendo a apoyarse en el auto—. Yo estaría más preocupada por atrapar algo que no sea un bebé. Ya no salgo de la casa sin condones. Nunca sabes cuándo vas a necesitarlos. Como muy… Todo el mundo se ríe y simulo una media sonrisa en un esfuerzo por no estar incómoda, pero estoy segura que lo estoy, ya que apenas he dicho dos palabras en los últimos diez minutos. Llegamos al A&W hace una hora, y como era de esperarse, el lugar está lleno de adolescentes y familias con camionetas repletas de niños. La luz de la luna y los grillos compiten con todos los faros y los estéreos de los autos, y el olor de las hamburguesas a las brasas y el asfalto caliente llena el aire cuando los motores giran y las puertas de los autos se cierran. No hay una sola persona aquí con la que haya hablado más de dos veces desde que me gradué hace más de un año. —Me encanta esto —le dice alguien a Selena, acercándose y agarrando su pequeño bolso Louis Vuitton—. ¿De dónde lo sacaste? —¿No es lindo? —Selena se pasa la correa sobre la cabeza, mostrándole a la chica el bolso—. Me siento un poco mal. Le debo tanto dinero a mi padre, pero tenía que tenerlo. Dejo caer los ojos al bolso con cantidades iguales de celos y exasperación. Claro, me encantaría tener un bolso como ese, y me encantaría tener sus problemas donde puede vivir a expensas de su familia, porque para eso es una familia cuando tienes diecinueve años. Parte de mí desea poder ser así. Pero incluso después de terminar el colegio, estaré tan ajustada de dinero con los préstamos estudiantiles que frivolidades como bolsos de diseñador seguirán siendo una posibilidad muy remota. Y por extraño que parezca, me parece bien. Prefiero tener un auto decente. Una casa. La capacidad de pagar todas mis cuentas el mismo mes. Selena y yo estamos viviendo problemas completamente diferentes, y me identifico con ella incluso menos ahora que cuando estábamos en el colegio. Estoy segura que el sentimiento es mutuo. Sin inventar alguna excusa para escapar, solo doy la vuelta y me alejo hacia un lado del edifico, saco mi celular. —Hola, Jordan. ¿Estás bien? —Escucho a Carter. Giro mi cabeza, viéndolo de pie con los otros, y asiento. Una vez que llego a un lugar más silencioso, llamo a Cam y sostengo el teléfono contra mi oreja, lanzando mi vaso desocupado en el contenedor de basura. —Hola —dice con voz chillona, sabiendo que soy yo. —Hola —digo, su voz me relaja inmediatamente—. ¿Estás trabajando? ¿Puedes venir y recogerme? —Estoy trabajando —me dice—, pero puedo tomarme un descanso por media hora. ¿Dónde estás? ¿Todo está bien? Noto la música en el fondo y me doy cuenta que está trabajando. —Sí, todo está bien. —Meto mi cabello detrás de mi oreja—. Estoy en el A&W. Solo quiero ir a casa. Casa.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿Necesitas dinero? —dice mientras espero que mi padre se ponga al teléfono—. Porque no tenemos nada. Tu padre se lastimó la espalda y perdió algo de trabajo hace un par de semanas, así que las cosas están apretadas en este momento. Parpadeo. —No, yo… —tartamudeo, agravada por su pregunta—. No necesito dinero. Y si así fuera, serían las últimas personas a las que les pediría. Mi padre nunca tiene efectivo por más de un día antes de quemarle un agujero en el bolsillo. Una de las muchas razones por las que mi madre se fue. Pero al menos mi padre se quedó. —¡¿Chip?! —lo llama otra vez, pero luego gruñe a los perros—. Salgan del camino, ustedes dos. Sacudo la cabeza, la sospecha previa de que un mensaje de texto hubiera sido mejor ahora se solidifica. Si mi papá logra llegar al teléfono, simplemente colgaré sintiéndome enojada porque sea tan cálido como esta mujer. Gracias a Dios que no fue mi madrastra por mucho tiempo bajo ese techo. Me fui tan pronto como pude. —Solo quería que supieran que me mudé —explico—. En caso de que necesiten mi nueva dirección. —Ah, sí, claro. —La escucho inhalar y sé que está fumando—. Te mudaste con Cole a la casa de su padre. Sí, lo hemos oído. —Sí, yo… —¡Chip! —grita de nuevo, interrumpiéndome. Me cubro los ojos, exasperada. —Está bien —le digo—. Eso es todo para lo que llamé, así que no molestes a papá si ya lo sabe. Los llamaré… más tarde. —Está bien. —Sopla humo—. Bueno, cuídate y llamaré dentro de una semana más o menos. Te invito a cenar o algo así. Mi cuerpo tiembla con una risa amarga que contengo. No es gracioso. Es triste, realmente. Pero cuelga sin esperar a que le diga “adiós”, y dejo escapar un suspiro, lanzando mi teléfono sobre la cama. Ni mi padre ni mi madrastra son malas personas, aunque tampoco ninguno me llamó el día de mi cumpleaños. Nunca fui golpeada, matada de hambre o abusada verbalmente. Solo un poco olvidada, supongo. Lucharon por algo bueno en la vida, por lo que era demasiado pedir que dejaran que la responsabilidad o la preocupación por sus hijos interfirieran con el pequeño placer que lograban reunir con sus noches de cerveza y bingo. Después que Cam se fue y consiguió su propio lugar, no tuve a nadie con quien hablar. No era nadie en ese remolque, y nunca más quería volver a sentirme sola. Recojo mi libreta de la cama y reanudo la tarea de mi clase de verano ese día. Mi libro de texto se abre frente a mí y pulso mi lápiz mecánico para obtener más ventaja. Suena un golpe en la puerta de la habitación, y levanto la cabeza, tensándome. —¿Entre? —digo, pero parece una pregunta. Cole no llamaría. Debe ser su padre. ¿Dejé la ropa en la secadora? ¿La estufa encendida? Repaso mi lista mental de verificación.

• From City of Night (1963)

  One among them intrigued me especially. She was the prettiest—about 19, with long ashblonde hair and hypnotic eyes. She always looked at you with a half-smile that was somehow wistful, as if for her the world, though sad, still amused her. I knew from Buddy, who had been with her and who dug her (“But shes kinda strange,” he said, “like she aint always there”), that she lived with three malehustlers in a small downtown apartment—one of them the squarefaced youngman I had been interrogated with that afternoon in Pershing Square.... She was very hip—she talked like all the rest, and very tough. But with her, somehow, it all seemed wrong, incongruous in a way I couldnt really understand. It wasnt only that she was so pretty; some of the others were too. It was something else, something altogether different about her from the others.... A kind of toughmasked lonesomeness. One afternoon, at Hooper’s, I sat near her at the counter. Outside, the cops had stopped a madeup queen. The girl next to me smiles and says: “Oh, oh, another queen busted—for “jay-walking.’” I moved next to her, and for the next few minutes we spoke easily. Then I caught her looking at me very strangely. She says unexpectedly: “You know, man, theres something that bugs me about you. Ive seen you in the park and around here, and you look like all the others—but theres something else.” I was surprised to hear her say about me precisely what I thought about her. At the same time, I panicked: I don’t like people to know me too well.... “I mean,” she went on, “like you never really hang around too much with the others—and you dont talk to anyone too much.”... We left Hooper’s and went into the park, sitting there briefly, listening to the afternoon preachers. It felt good to be sitting here with this girl, to be seen with her by some of the men I had scored from. Abruptly, as if suddenly bugged by the park, she asked me to come up to her place. “I live with three guys,” she said, “but they’re always out here in the afternoon.” The door to the apartment is open. “It’s always unlocked,” she said. “If you ever need a pad, come up—we got lots of room.” The cramped apartment is completely disheveled—unwashed dishes piled in the sink, frozen-food trays and beer cans discarded on the floor—her clothes and those of the others strewn all over the rooms. There were two beds in the one bedroom, a couch, and a mattress on the floor. Again I catch her looking at me in that strange way—and she said—just like this—just as abruptly and unexpectedly at this: “I bet you dig Bartok.” I told her yes.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And while the preachers dash out their damning messages, the winos storm Heaven on cheap wine; hungry-eyed scores with money (or merely with a place to offer the homeless youngmen they desire) gather about the head hunting the malehustlers and wondering will they get robbed if— ...Pickpockets station themselves strategically among the crowds as if listening in rapt attention to the Holy Messages. And male-hustlers (“fruithustlers”/“studhustlers”: the various names for the masculine young vagrants) like flitting birds move restlessly about the park—fugitive hustlers looking for lonely fruits to score from, anything from the legendary $20-up to a pad at night and breakfast in the morning and whatever you can clinch or clip.... And the heat in their holy cop uniforms, holy because of the Almighty Stick and the Almightier Vagrancy Law; the scattered junkies, the smalltime pushers, the teaheads, the sad panhandlers, the occasional lonely exiled nymphos haunting the entrance to the men’s head; more fruits with hungry eyes—the young ones searching for a mutual, unpaid-for partner; the tough teenage girls making it with the lost hustlers.... And—but mostly later at night, youll find, when the shadows will shelter them—queens in colorful shirt-blouses—dressed as much like women as The Law allows that particular moment—will dish each other like jealous bitchy women, commenting on the desirability or otherwise of the stray youngmen they may offer a place for the night. And they giggle constantly in pretended happiness. And on the benches along the inside ledges, the pensioned old men and women sit serenely daily in the sun like retired judges separated now stoically from the world they once judged.... All!—all amid the incongruous music of the Welkian-Lombardian school of corn, piped periodically from somewhere along the ledges! All amid the flowers!—the twin fountains which will gush rainbowcolored verypretty at night.... The world of Lonely-Outcast America squeezed into Pershing Square, of the Cities of Terrible Night, downtown now trapped in the City of Lost Angels.... And the trees hang over it all like some apathetic fate . MISS DESTINY: The Fabulous Wedding 1 THE FIRST TIME I SAW MISS DESTINY was of course in Pershing Square, on the cool, almost cold, moist evening of a warm smoggy day. Im sitting in the park with Chuck the cowboy on the railing facing 5th Street. “Oh oh, here comes Miss Destinée,” says Chuck, a cowboy youngman with widehat and boots, very slim of course, of course very slow, with sideburns of course almost to his chin, and a giant tattoo on his arm that says: DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. “Destinee’s last husband jes got busted pushing hard stuff, man,” Chuck is going on, “an she is hot for a new one, so watch out, man—but if you ain got a pad, you can always make it at Destinee’s—it’s like a gone mission, man!”

• From City of Night (1963)

  “In a way,” he said, unperturbed by the clearly vicious intent of my words—and I have the feeling that he may have purposely exposed himself to them. “If you mean that what I do now, sexually, I do without inhibitions—that I can talk to the people I want instead of waiting to be spoken to—attaching no great symbolic significance to it, well, then, youre right.” “And you think it has a ‘great symbolic significance’ for me?” I asked him. I know that possibly, later, I’ll regret these words. Now, freed by the dormant effects of the liquor and the pills into heightened lucidity and rashness, I dont care. The feeling may not last. While it does, I must go on. “Yes,” he said, “as sure of it as you are.... Im sure youve thought you have a definite advantage of whatever kind over the people youve been with, because theyve wanted you, because theyve paid you —some sort of victory beyond the sex-experience, beyond the money. (But dont you need them just as badly?)... Anyway,” he continued quickly, “I’d say that when you leave, I’ll be less lonely than you. No, not because of the role Ive played (that can be infinitely lonely, too—perhaps lonelier— certainly lonelier); but merely because of that very rejection of those symbols. And it’s not just on your side that the symbols take over and create the elaborate guilt-ridden defenses: The ‘scores’ who brag about what the hustler did back, about how they screwed him. The hustlers who brag about how the score didnt even get to touch them—they clipped him. All the legendary defenses—to be used against that lonely, lonely feeling of the lack of love—on both sides.... An imitation of sharing.” I want to ask him why he paid me—why he went along with the one-sided sex—especially without my having asked for the money, especially because everything about him suggests desirability within that world. I feel certain now that he has purposely emphasized the giving of the money, given perhaps, at least in part, to underscore all these words—which he seems determined to speak, to me. Yet I can feel the gap between us broadening into a chasm as he attempts to come closer to me. Or is this his purpose?—does he want to broaden this gap? This scene.... This man’s words.... So completely incongruous before the Parade.... Still, I feel glued to this room as if all that is being spoken, while seeming incongruous, is somehow related to the ritual of the Carnival—mysteriously. And yet there are times when I cant tell how serious he is. Sometimes, when he speaks most gravely, he smiles immediately after, as if half-mocking himself, half-mocking me.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Strips of sand fleeing from the mainland are cuddled by the distant outlining palmtrees. Like a restless, futile enemy of this sunny stagnation, the ocean invades the passive sand. As it grows late in the day and the bodies cluster away from the water lapping slowly inland, night comes like a blackout. The water, dark, capped by creamy froths, will lash turbulently at the beach, and youll hear that mysterious, disturbing murmuring of the wind and the water like a personal judgment. Those summer afternoons on the beaches, time drifts unreally. Days are measured by the deepening color of your skin. La Jolla.... Semicircling the water, cupped in a handful of sun. And only a short distance beyond it and the navy base: San Diego, a familiar row of tattoo parlors, loan shops, stores—typical of all the lonely servicemen towns in America: sailors roaming the nightstreets—whiteclouds of drifting uniforms. Long Beach.... The amusement park near the beach, the hectic-whirling scene—the rollercoaster plunging ineluctably like a bullet along the murderous rails. The park... the hot public heads... a bar where on Sunday afternoons a mad queen did a dragshow with balloons and feathers. Laguna Beach.... Bordered by squat jagged cliffs.... Homosexuals ritualistically Protectively assembled in one close area—like flotsam on the beach—as if symbolically defying the world that shut them out—a world with so little compassion. And Santa Monica. From a slim green flowered park (a statue of Saint Monica serenely eyeing the long lines of cars turning from Wilshire Boulevard toward the beaches), the sand gleams expansively white—and Pacific Ocean Park gathers itself like a small facsimile pleasure-island: rides, a simulated sea, Neptune holding court over rainbowed fish, make-believe jungles. Between it and the row of fresh-fish restaurants—beyond muscle beach, where the men with balloons for muscles posed for each other with set faces—is “Crystal Beach.”