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.

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• From The Case for God (2009)

  But it was extremely difficult to think about God or even to work up any enthusiasm for contemplation. Anselm was acutely aware of the torpor that made prayer so difficult. In the opening verses of the Proslogion, which takes the form of a highly wrought poem, he laments his sense of alienation from the divine. The image of God within him was so obscured by his imperfections that, try as he would, he could not perform the task for which he had been created. He must, therefore, shake off this mental sloth, using his intellect, reason, imagination, and emotion to stir up and excite his mind; his newfound rational powers in particular were a God-given tool for rousing and kindling the spirit. But he had no illusions about human reason, which he knew was incapable of understanding the unknowable God. “Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height,” he prayed, “for my understanding is in no way equal to that.”6 He simply wanted to grasp a little of your truth, to which my heart is already loyal and which it loves [quem credit et amat cor meum]. For I do not seek to understand in order that I may have faith [intellegere ut credam], but I commit myself in order that I may understand [credo ut intellgam]; and what is more, I am certain that unless I so commit myself I shall not understand.7 Anselm is still using the verb credere in its original sense: it is an affair of the “heart,” the center of the human being, rather than a purely notional act and, as for Augustine, inseparable from love. Because the word “belief” has changed its meaning since Anselm’s day, it is misleading to translate, as is often done, credo ut intellgam as: “I believe in order that I may understand.” This gives the impression that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one’s mind to accept blindly a host of incomprehensible doctrines. Anselm is saying something quite different: religious truth made no sense without practically expressed commitment. Perhaps a better translation is “I involve myself in order that I may understand.” Anselm was trying to shake off his lethargy in prayer by engaging all his faculties, and was certain that “unless I so involve myself, I shall not understand.” So to spark his reader’s interest, he invites him to consider what has been called the “ontological proof” for the existence of God.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Oh, sure!” He laughed. “And thats all he digs, spote. He dresses everyone he goes with in that motorcycle drag—and it bugs him for me to call it that. Then he walks around with them. Hardly anybody ever walks away with his clothes—theyre too curious. Hes hung up on that drag, thats how he gets his Kicks.... Oh, sure, I been with him.” Then proudly—his gaze shifting back and forth from me to the street, pegging people—he adds. “Im the only cat he walked around with two nights— in a row!” 2 Pete was a familiar figure in that world of Times Square. With his slouched army fatigue cap and his thick shaggy army jacket which he had dyed brown, his bouncing walk—it was easy to spot him in any crowd. After that first night, I would meet him often, never by arrangement, but always at about the same time, around the same place. We would hang around together for a while, and then, compulsively, we’d split. Often, minutes later, we would meet again standing in the same place. Although he wasn’t much older than I—but because, as he told me, he’d been hustling the streets since he was 16—Pete liked to play the jaded, all-knowing street hustler, explaining to me how to make out. He had a series of rules: Walk up to people, dont wait to be asked; if you do, you may wait all day. Forget about the vice squad, and you’ll never get caught. A quick score in a toilet for a few bucks can be worth more than a big one that takes all day. Stand at the urinal long after youre through pissing. At the slightest indication of interest from someone in one of the cubicles, go up to him quickly before he gets any free ideas and say. “Ill make it with you for twenty.” But go for much less if you have to. As we sat in Bickford’s in the cold light, he told me without embarrassment that once he’d gone for 75¢. “It was a slow day”, he explained, “and I had only four bits, just enough to make the flix. I thought, Do I buy a Hotdog or make the flix and try to score? It was raining—no one on the streets. So I made the flix. No scores. Then someone wants to give me 75¢, and Im in the balcony anyway, so I let him. Hell, man,” he adds pragmatically, “I was a quarter ahead—I could still have that Hotdog.” And he goes on: “Youll learn; sometimes youll stand around all day and wait for a 15-buck score, a 10-buck score, even a deuce—all day—so, hell, take what comes, spote—so long as it dont louse up all your time—but always ask for the highest. Ask for Twenty. That way they think they got a Bargain.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  “Oooee...” she squealed. “I wondered where you were, baby, and I have thought about you—and thought, why hes gone already— Escaped! —and oh Im so glad youre not, and come here, I want you to meet my dear sistuhs and their boyfriends—” being, naturally, the downtown queens and hustlers who are Miss Destiny’s friends. And squeezing expertly through the thick crowd, Miss Destiny led me into a cavern of trapped exiles—of painted sallow-faced youngmen, artificial manikin faces like masks; of tough-looking masculine hustlers, young fugitives from everywhere and everything, young lean faces already proclaiming Doom; of jaded old and middle-aged men seeking the former and all-aged homosexuals seeking the latter—all crowded into this long narrow, ugly bar, plaster crumbling in chunks as if it had gnawed its own way into the wall; long benches behind the tables, splintered, decaying; mirrors streaked yellow—a bar without visible windows; cigarette smoke tinged occasionally with the unmistakable odor of maryjane hovering over us almost unmoving like an ominous hand.... And the faces emerge from the thick smoke like in those dark moody photographs which give you the feeling that the subjects have been imprisoned by the camera. “This is Trudi,” Miss Destiny was saying, and Trudi is probably the realest and sweetest-looking queen in L.A., and youd have to be completely queer not to dig her. Her hair is long enough for a woman, short enough for a man. Her eyelashes were painted arched over round blue coquettish eyes, and of all the queens I will meet in L.A., Trudi has most accurately been able to duplicate the female stance so that, unlike most other queens, she has not become the mere parody of a woman. “Hi, baby,” she says, pursing her lips cutely, “welcome to the snakepit.” She indicates the scene about her as if she had been born to reign over it. “And this is Skipper,” Miss Destiny continues, and as if presenting his credentials adds, in a lower tone for me only—and I can barely hear her over the blasting music: “He used to be a physique model, baby, and he became quite famous in Hollywood once—hes even hustled Officer Morgan—and that’s the truth—but hell tell you all about that, Im sure—” And Skipper is restlessly scrutinizing the familiar scene; almost—it seems at times—in bewilderment—as if looking around him each moment, he is newly aware of where he is. Often he squinted as if to cloud the scene from his mind. He is now—and it will turn out is usually—talking about a plan to hit the Bigtime again. “Hi, jack!” he says, and his eyes rake the bar.... And all at once he doesnt look nearly as young as he first appeared.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I felt, one moment, a necessity to convey so much to Jeremy—now, immediately—as if he were my judge, as if I have to explain, to him, before I can free myself. Another moment, I feel that strong animosity toward him for having triggered these new, tumultuous thoughts—and the animosity recurs fiercely, inexplicably, when I hear him say now: “And so, at last, youve acknowledged that love might be possible.” I turned away from him, toward the window. The sounds outside are growing in volume, welling like a river preparing to flood. The forced merriment. Discordantly, some voices are singing within that great Outside. All those sounds are hugely unreal—as if they come from a radio, their true origin miles and miles away. The insidious, searching sunlight is seeping through the shutters, spilling on the floor, summoning both of us into an awareness of that Outside, where, soon, the Parade will begin.... But, inside, this room includes the World—which right now is my world and Jeremy’s. And what is his world—his own reality? my mind questions insistently, knowing that the answer may be important if the drawing out of my reality is to be justified. What lies buried beneath the poise; the calm softly modulated knowing words as he digs beneath what he had overheard me say earlier at that bar? What lies beyond the declared lack of inhibitions? Is it all real? Or is it too a mask? Why is he in the carnival arena of New Orleans, during the naked sexual hunt? I asked him the question which I had withheld so long: “And what about yourself? Where do you fit? If you know all the things youve been saying, why are you here, for the Hunt?” He sighed, as if he had known all along that that would be the inevitable question. He answered slowly: “Because knowing it doesnt keep me from being a part of it—of all of it. It’s because Im a part of it that I do know it.... Yes,” he finished, “Im still hunting.” For the first time, he seems disturbed, deeply.... “And you see,” he continued after a pause, “because Im still hunting, I cant help feeling—or wanting to feel—that theres something in you beyond all the earlier words and rationalizations. I felt it in that bar, when you wanted to strip your own mask. You wanted to be known for something inside of you—beyond the pose, the ‘appearing’—the not-caring. You revealed yourself to be just as lonesome—... as lonesome... as I am.... And I sensed it,” he went on even more slowly, “when I heard you, just now, at last reaching for your own definition of...” and now curiously it was he who paused before he finished: “love.” Now he said quickly: “I’ll be leaving New Orleans, right after Mardi Gras.... Back to New York. If you want, you can come with me. We can even leave now, before the Carnival is over.” He paused very long.

• From City of Night (1963)

  When he had finished, he leaned back on the bed. “Our first interview is over.... Larry!” he called, and instantly, the malenurse appeared. “Our young friend is leaving.” Then to me: “Do you have a telephone where you can be reached?” There was one in the hallway, but I said no. “A permanent address, then?” he asked me. “Yes? Marvelous. Please leave it with me,” he said, “and let me give you my number (we must observe the rules of Society).... I will see you tomorrow, then—tomorrow at this time. Please, please come—I will look forward to it. I shall listen to my heart until you come. And you must listen to yours and not deprive Tante Goulu of your company.... Larry—you will—please give—this youngman—a check.” The malenurse had a checkbook in his hand, he glanced at his watch, began to write. I looked at the check suspiciously. The nurse flashed a look of huge contempt at me. “Dont worry,” he snapped, “it’s all right.” The man in bed turned his bulging eyes toward me and smiled, the flesh spreading as if he were getting larger by the moment, as if the balloon shape was being inflated. “Child—dont stand me up—I couldnt take it. Tomorrow—tomorrow—And remember—” He waved his fat hand in an airy benediction, his face rolling to one side like a stone, the tape-measure dropping toward the floor. He reached for it quickly, wound it securely about his hand.... “And remember,” he finished, “remember: God Is Love....” 3 I had been home only a few minutes that night when I received a telegram: ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY THAT YOU COMMUNICATE WITH ME TOMORROW. I KNOW YOU WILL NOT DENY ME THIS HELP ASKED OF YOU IN ALL HUMILITY. I BANK UPON YOUR GOOD WILL AND THE SENSE OF SUPPORT THIS CONTACT NOW WILL MEAN TO ME. COME AS EARLY AS YOU CAN. REMEMBER G IS L. “Who is it from, sweetie?” said Gene de Lancey, following me into the room. (“I cant sleep,” she had explained in the hallway. “I just gotta have one little cigarette with you, lambie.”) She peered at the telegram. “It’s from someone I just met,” I told her. I knew it would be a very long time now before I got to sleep. “Everyone’s so Lonesome,” Gene de Lancey sighed. Early the next morning I went for my second “interview” with the Professor. The malenurse opened the door. “The Professor is asleep right now,” he said, eyeing me coldly. “He had a very bad night.... Youll have to wait out here,” he said. I was about to sit down when I heard the Professor’s voice from the half-opened door leading to his room. “Larry? Larry, who is there?” The malenurse eyes me with hatred, goes to the room. He returned: “Hes awake now; go in.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  But once again I was thinking of Lance and Skipper, of Esmeralda Drake, the Professor, the fatman in that bar on Main Street.... “Who was the giver, who the taker?” the Professor had asked—and even as he eulogized them, he had discovered that it had been the voracious angels who had destroyed him. Yet Skipper (drunk somewhere in downtown Los Angeles... remembering the deceptive past) had discovered that it was the scores who had swallowed him.... “Angel” and score like intimate enemies, each mortally wounded by the other, hating the other, needing the other.... Is it possible that there is no real difference in the two roles? Is that something of what Jeremy is trying to point out?—that the common denominator is loneliness.... A momentary sharing of sex. And beyond that the infinite separation, the alienation.... Both give, both take.... All. Or is it, rather, nothing? “I have a feeling,” Jeremy had gone on, slowly at first, as if again to test how far I’ll listen, “that sex isnt even sex any more for people like you. That you actually come to loathe it.” “Sure,” I aimed at him. “You saw it earlier.” “A compulsion to reach orgasm,” he accused me, “to get it over with. Not sex. Something else that youve got to cram your life with—some kind of revenge for what youre convinced is the lack of love.... But what a short rebellion which relies exclusively on how long you can look young!... Afterwards,” came the inevitable words, “after the youth is played out—when youre ghosts, with painful memories of being young—when they no longer want you—what form will the rebellion take then?” And he stared at me relentlessly in that way that makes me retreat from him on the bed, turn my face from him; that glaring uncompromising look which makes me think: He knows things Ive never spoken. And his words conjure phantoms of that insidious empty tomorrow; and I think of youth ebbing out, of youth equated with rebellion, rebellion with orgasm.... “Now it’s you who arent supposed to care,” he said. “But, later, theyll be the ones who wont care.... In a way we’re all phonies, pretending sometimes not to care—out of fear; other times pretending to care more than we really do.” “I hate that word ‘phony,’” I told him. “After all, we only see what ‘appears.’” “I agree with that—but underneath, we know,” he said. “Certainly the hustler knows he hasnt created the legend of what he is in our world. Like all other legends, it’s already there, made by the world, waiting for him to fit it. And he tries to live up to what hes supposed to be: And, mainly, hes not supposed to care.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  Shall I amuse you?... Well! These boys were not that kind —they were very quiet lovers—and I do not mean any trace of contempt when I say ‘that kind’—it is a most extraordinary kind, that kind. Anyway, the assistant was so insistent (The Insistent Assistant!) that they decided to ‘stage’ a wild party for him. And they did. It was incredible! The good assistant kept moving from room to room, watching—and, child, it was more than the glimmer of scientific discovery that shone in the good assistant’s eyes!... He asked to interview me, for The Book, but I told him my affairs with the angels are too precious to reduce them to lines on a graph! For example, how could he have indicated on a graph what Joe Jones (it was part of his distinction that he had such a common name—at first)—what Joe Jones meant to me? He was definitely an earthangel—and is there a graph for such a breed?... He was an Oklahoma cowboy, discovered on the range—who came to the newyork Rodeo (I am not referring to the one in Madison Square Garden: Im referring to the Rodeo of this city itself), and whom I was able—my lucky star was shining—to corral in my own small patio—sadly not large enough for him who was used to The Plains—but briefly, briefly, I had that earthangel, but the bronco god called him, and off he galloped: to the vaster plains of Broadway—and I heard later he changed his name to Cam Rider—rather, the agent who Sponsored him changed it; the agent was fond of saying: ‘He jes cam’ ridin into my life.’... How could the good assistant, with all his science, have indicated Cam Rider, née Joe Jones, on his graph? Impossible!... And at the party which these two youngmen gave to entertain the assistant (although he would not have called it ‘entertainment’—it was always Material! Research! Study! Science!)—at that party, he would ask for specific performances. I must say the boys in the group had never had such a marvelous time—with no fear of a raid, since the assistant was well protected: And thus, in the future, you will see life imitating science!... It was after Robbie had left that I went to that party. I saw Robbie after that magic first night, at different places, but I could not afford him. Once I had given him $25.00, I couldnt give him less. I wasnt—let me again remind you—doing well—uh—‘breadwise,’ then: It was a dry period: And I thought that Heaven had allowed me only that brief time with Robbie. And then one day he called me: My Robbie!

• From City of Night (1963)

  “They will bust you again for sure if you have that wedding, Miss Destinée,” said Chuck gravely. “It would be worth it,” sighed Miss Destiny. “Oh, it would be worth it.” Then we noticed a welldressed man standing a few feet from us in the shadows, staring at us intently until he saw us looking back and he shifted his gaze, began to smoke, looked up furtively again. Miss Destiny smiled brightly at him, but he didnt smile back at her, and Miss Destiny said obviously he is a queer and so he must want a man. “So darlings, I will leave you to him and him to whomevuh eenie-meenie-miney he wants. But let me tell you, my dear—” me—confidentially “—that when they dress that elegantly around here, why, they will make all kinds of promises and give you oh two bucks,” and Chuck said oh no the score was worth at least twenty, and Miss Destiny laughs like Tallulah Bankhead, who is the Idol of all queens, and says in a husky voice, “Dalling, this is not your young inexperienced sistuh you are talkin to, this is your mothuh, who has been a-round.... Why, Miss Thing told me about this sweet stud kid going for a dollar!—... Ah, well, as my beloved sweet Juliet said, Parting is: such—sweet—sorrow—...” And she sighed now, being Juliet, then whispered to me loud enough for Chuck to hear, “There will be other times, my dear—when you are not Working.” And she moved away with peals of queenly laughter, flirting again, fluttering again, flamboyantly swishing, just as she had come on, saying hello to everyone: “Good evening, Miss Saint Moses, dear—...” spreading love, throwing kisses, bringing her delicate hands to her face, sighing, “Too Much!” after some goodlooking youngman she digs, glancing back at Chuck and me as the man moved out of the shadows, closer to us, jingling money. So there goes Miss Destiny leaving Pershing Square, all gayety, all happiness, all laughter. “I love you too, dear, ummmm, so much....” 2 Those first days in Los Angeles, I was newly dazzled by the world into which my compulsive journey through submerged lives had led me—newly hypnotized by the life of the streets. I had rented a room in a hotel on Hope Street—on the fringes of that world but still outside of it (in order always to have a place where I could be completely alone when I must be). Thus the daulity of my existence was marked by a definite boundary: Pershing Square: east of there when the desire to be with people churned within me; west of there to the hotel when I had to be alone.... At times, after having combed the bars, the streets, the park, I would flee as if for protection to that hotel room. Yet other times I needed people fiercely—needed the anarchy of the streets.... And Main Street in Los Angeles is such an anarchy.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Sitting there with Pete, a great Loneliness overwhelmed me. Was it the sky? So like a Texas sky at night—the stars flung prodigiously in the expansive blackness. Or the sudden breathtaking memory of my Mother miles away? Her love radiates that great distance toward me stifling me.... Or was it the sudden change in the park? The youngmen and girls had left—the older people were gone from the benches too. Now there remain only the hunting young homosexuals looking for a partner. They sit momentarily on benches, move away, stand restlessly. One sat near us. “You figure he thinks we’re queer?” Pete asked me indignantly—and then he stared him away.... I wondered if the franticness of their search was overwhelming Pete as it was me; he was strangely silent... Two youngmen walked by. Previously I had seen them standing a few feet apart, on the walk, moving slowly closer to each other. Then they had talked briefly—now they walked away together, speaking softly. They were both young, both goodlooking. I saw them smile at each other: For them, this night’s search was over—not for money—but for a mutual, if fleeting, sharing. Staring after them, Pete says: “They coulda fooled me, even. They look like hustlers, dont they? And I bet theyre gonna make it with each other.” We move along Fifth Avenue, past a dimlit bar in a hotel. Through the windows we see a woman playing the piano. A man is leaning over her, her lips move in a song, she slides closer to him.... We pause for a while, and then we continue walking—into Union Square now, were we stand listening to a man in a tight suit heatedly hollering about what a blight Union Square is. “Perverts and tramps!” he yells. And a little old tramp staggers up to him, he reeks of wine, his nose like a red lightbulb—and he shakes his old finger unsteadily at the man yelling out damnation and says: clearly: “Listenere, you—you jes listenere: Theres gonna be hobos! homos! and momos! in Our Park long after youve grown deaf and dumb!” “Hey, spote,” says Pete to me, “whats a momo?” “I dont know, I guess he just made it up.” “Thats cute,” says Pete. “Homos, hobos and—and—what?” “Momos,” I said. “Yeah: Momos. Hey! Maybe we’re momos!” he laughs. Weve reached the 34th Street, the corner of the Armory on Park Avenue. “Heres where I live,” I told Pete now. “Can I come up and talk a while?” he asked me, rushing the words together. “Im tired,” I said quickly. “Cummon,” he insisted, “it’s early yet—or you can come up with me Im still staying at Al’s with all the motorcycle jackets. Come up there, I got a pint of juice, well kill it.” “It’s too far,” I told him. He looked hurt. “Okay. Lets go to my place,” I said hurriedly.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Carl’s transformation has become complete: All the masculinity has been drained out of him as if by the liquor. His legs are curling one over the other. The once rigidly held shoulders have softened. The hand that had held the wineglass tightly, now balanced it delicately with two dainty fingers, the others sticking out gracefully curved. His look liddedly mellowed, and he began to thrust flirtatious glances in my direction. “Im Unhappy,” he drooled in wine-tones. “Strength!” Neil shouted, trying to square his shoulders. “Remember, Carl: Strength Is The Only Answer!” “Strength?” Carl asked dazedly. “You know—know wotlwan, Neil? Wanna know why Im Unhappy, baby?” he said to me. “Because Ive sunk too far into a world where sex aint even sex no more.... They talk about sex without love. What about sex with hatred?... Oh, it’s perfackly—perfuckly—per-fect-ly All Right—per-fect-ly—... Start again: It’s perfectly okay to be homosexual—... Oh, sure. But your world, Neil—your world! Whew!” He stopped; he stared very long at Neil. The drunk hatred melts into an abject smile. “Your world, Neil, where sex and love—... Well—love—... Forgot what I was gonna say,” he said. “Oh, yes—but you know why Im Unhappy?” he repeated. “Because—” he said, enunciating slowly, “because—I—wanna—wanna—lover. Yes! A Lover! And all this—this motorcycle drag—it doesnt mean shit to me. I’d wear a woman’s silk nightie if it got me a Lover,” he said. Neil winced at the blasphemy, as if Carl’s remarks had physically wounded him. “Be careful, Carl! Youre talking to Me!” he said. “I know. The Saint.” Carl went on: “Yes, I wanna Lover,” he said, downing another glass of wine. “If he wants me to be a woman, I’ll be the greatest lady since Du Barry. I’ll be all things to One man!... I—am—lonely.” He turned drooping eyes toward me and sighed lonesomely: “Will you join me in a toast?” He lifted the glass of wine; and holding it toward Neil, he said: “To Saint Neil—from one of his—most—de—de—... Devoted—... Converts!” The glass smashed on the floor. He was still passed out on the couch when I left. 3 When the inevitable happened (which had lurked in my mind, and which at the same time—I am now sure, looking back on it—I had thought to thwart through that very contact with Neil: although I was becoming aware of perhaps the most elaborate of seductions—or, rather, I would become aware of it in retrospect: a seduction, through ego and vanity, of the very soul), when that inevitable happened, it happened swiftly like this:

• From City of Night (1963)

  Still later, the third and more comfortable wave of this exodus (the tired richmen, the tired richwomen, the not-so-rich but tired men and the not-so-rich but equally tired women—and the other Young men and women—equally curious but not as defiant as the vagrants of the first and second waves) will feel the call of Shrove Tuesday. And now! Airplanes will zoom across the heavens. Telegraph wires will buzz for hotel reservations. Into this old, old city, trains will grind past backyards and waiting impatient lines of cars... will dash past the awesome scenery of America. In comfortable automobiles, in busloads of carefully chartered tours—along the whooshing winter-purified highways, they will come to join this determined pilgrimage to Frantic Happiness. Now the exodus will be complete. With the clamor of this strange invasion, New Orleans will awaken from its feudal memories of Romance to become the center of our desperate Today: a microcosmic arena of the electric nightworld Aware of the triumph of loneliness and death. A religious ritual will take place in this rotting Southern city. To New Orleans: Riding on a sea of faces in an army of cars and buses—away from Chicago and the mortally bleeding streets (with stops in St. Louis and Dallas, again—briefly) and hanging in haggard busstations inevitably in the starless dawnhours.... Now at last in New Orleans, in the bright sun of this winter-warm city, I stand outside the Greyhound station where Ive left my bag, and I wonder where to go. Canal Street lengthens before me—perhaps the widest street I have ever seen. The day was clear. I walked along that wide, store-crowded street, hearing the drawls of the people. The day became slowly grayer—the Southern pall of clouds enshrouding the sky. I have to find a place to stay—alone—to separate myself when, predictably, the seething world will become intolerable: a place where I can find a lone symbolic Mirror. I pass through the open door of one of the walls shutting in a courtyard—to ask about a room. The building, constructed like a tenement about the small square yard—which is paradoxically green with plants and trees—is all small balconies, like wooden hammocks sagging resignedly in the middle. The apartments huddle about the garden as if possessively claiming it from the gray streets. The landlady wasnt in. I knocked at the neighboring door, which was open. A man is painting inside on an enormous canvas: color-smeared, savagely Red, yellow; swatches of black, inkily smeared at the edges, creating tentacles from a solidly dark body—a hungry giant insect groveling on a violent vortex of colors. “Y’ant gonna fine a place now,” he tells me. “Too close to Mardi Gras. Shoot, man, rents go up to fifty bucks a day. People sleepin in cars, on the streets. Better fine you someone to shack with,” he advises me. Aware that I was staring at the savage painting, he drawled: “This heres a picture of Nawleans.”... And he slashed at the canvas in a purple, dripping stroke....

• From The Case for God (2009)

  [image file=image_rsrc4UP.jpg] GodAt the beginning of time, the first human being (Hebrew: adam) found himself alone in Eden, the Land of Pleasure. This garden had been planted by the god Yahweh, who had caused a spring to gush forth in the eastern desert to create a paradisal oasis. There it divided into four separate rivers—the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates—that flowed from this sacred center to give life to the rest of the world. Yahweh had molded Adam from the soil (adama), blown the breath of life into his nostrils, and put him in charge of the garden. Eden was indeed a land of delights, and Adam could have led a blissful life. Yahweh had brought forth all the birds and animals from the ground to be his companions; there were two sacred trees marking the center of the world—the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—and there was even a talking snake to initiate him into the secret lore of the garden. But Adam was lonely. So while he was asleep, Yahweh extracted one of his ribs and constructed a female. Adam was delighted: “This-time, she-is-it! Bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh! She shall be called Woman [Isha], for from Man [Ish] she was taken!”1 Adam named her Havva (Eve), the “Life-giver.” This immediately recalls the Upanishadic story of the lonely human person who splits in two to become male and female, but it is obviously a Middle Eastern tale and full of traditional motifs: the crafting of adam from clay, the river irrigating the four corners of the earth, the sacred trees and the talking animal. It is a typical lost-paradise myth. Yahweh forbids Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the snake persuades them to disobey, and they are cast out of the garden forever. Henceforth they must toil painfully to scratch a living from the hostile earth and bring forth their children in sorrow. Like any myth, its purpose is to help us to contemplate the human predicament. Why is human life filled with suffering, back-breaking agricultural labor, agonizing childbirth, and death? Why do men and women feel so estranged from the divine?

• From City of Night (1963)

  Suddenly I brought out some change from my pocket, dropped it into the queen’s hat. And with an almost mortal groan, she rose from the table, her long legs thrust out into the clearing on the floor; and she swept the feathered hat in a loop. And with a peal of piercing laughter which seemed to emanate from the very depths of her slaughtered being, she placed the sacrificial hat on the floor. And in an insane gesture—hissing demoniacally—she shook her beaded arms fatally before the man’s face—and disappeared in a flash of tawdry colors beyond the door. I surrender to the sounds about us, now released. The man’s hand holds the bottle of beer before him as if for some kind of futile, transferred protection. The vein on his neck has begun to pulsate again. “Lets go,” he said. The sky is black. We walked along the beach, wordlessly. An old bent man combs the sand for lost coins. The fog hangs gray and ragged over the ocean.... We walk through Pacific Ocean Park—the gay sounds of the many people still on that candy-colored strip only emphasizing the thundering silence between us. We’re on Crystal Beach now. Inside Sally’s bar, there are only about seven people. Two youngmen play the pinball machine, rainbow-shattered, tap-tapping the players’ scores in colored numbers. The teeming screaming crowds have already left, but the beach seems somehow haunted, as if a part of their lives had been left buried in the sand, which will be carried into the ocean by the water and the wind which will rise. The desolate beach was purplish before us. Where, earlier, the desperate people had strained to look at each other and the false laughter had risen into a crescendo that rivaled the beating of the ocean, now I see only one lone figure—a youngman in white shorts—walking the sandy lonesomeness. I sat with the man on the concrete ledge—where I had first talked to him, only yesterday: trapped almost physically now by the roaring sound of the waves against the sand and by the silence shouting between us. Now there was another figure on the beach—a shadow obviously pursuing the youngman in the white shorts. Soon, another lonesome figure appeared. The three formed a kind of strategic triangle on the sand—the focal point being the youngman in the white shorts. They disappeared toward the water.... In the light along the bridge as we walk to the car, the man looks much older. The wrinkles on his face are sharply etched—or perhaps I notice them for the first time. Still wordlessly, we got into the car. He drove a short distance, along the quiet park. Then, brakes screeching, he stopped the car suddenly. “Ive decided to go back tonight,” he said. “Where shall I leave you?” “I’ll stay here,” I said. He was looking intently into his hands, as he had done—only yesterday—when he had told me about his son. I opened the door, got out.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  In part 1 of Sula, she and her best friend, Nel Wright, are cognizant at young ages of the limited roles ascribed to black women. Having "discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they set about creating something else to be."15 In their search for "something else," they create identities that extend beyond that of their female progenitors and challenge oppressive forces that infringe on their agency and threaten to relegate them to an inferior status. Sula grows up in a household marked by seeming "dysfunction" and chaos, the structural material embodiment of unconventionality. She is the granddaughter of Eva Peace, a one-legged woman who dominates the lives of her children, friends, strays, and boarders (30), inculcating in her offspring "manlove": "simply [loving] maleness, for its own sake." Her questionable and ambivalent behavior as a mother eventually leads her daughter Hannah Peace, Sula's own mother, to inquire, "Mamma, did you ever love us?" (66). And yet, it is with a similar intergenerational "distant eye" and insatiable love of men, coupled with maternal ambivalence, that Hannah raises Sula. After the death of her husband, Hannah, who "rippled with sex" and refused to live without the "attentions of a man," immersed herself in "free love" and required some "touching" every day (42, 44). She exercises utmost discretion, however, when it comes to the location wherein she has sex: her bedroom is her least favorite place. This is not "because Sula slept in the room with her but because her love mate's tendency was always to fall asleep afterward and Hannah was fastidious about whom she slept with. She would [have sex with] practically anything, but sleeping with someone implied for her a measure of trust and a definite commitment" (43-44).

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  From Onitsuka I went straight to the nearest American Express office and sent a letter to my father. Dear Dad: Urgent. Please wire fifty dollars right away to Onitsuka Corp of Kobe. Ho ho, hee hee… strange things are happening. BACK IN MY hotel I walked in circles around my tatami mat, trying to decide. Part of me wanted to race back to Oregon, wait for those samples, get a jump on my new business venture. Also, I was crazed with loneliness, cut off from everything and everyone I knew. The occasional sight of a New York Times, or a Time magazine, gave me a lump in my throat. I was a castaway, a kind of modern Crusoe. I wanted to be home again. Now. And yet. I was still aflame with curiosity about the world. I still wanted to see, to explore. Curiosity won. I went to Hong Kong and walked the mad, chaotic streets, horrified by the sight of legless, armless beggars, old men kneeling in filth, alongside pleading orphans. The old men were mute, but the children had a cry they repeated: Hey, rich man, hey, rich man, hey, rich man. Then they’d weep or slap the ground. Even after I gave them all the money in my pockets, the cry never stopped. I went to the edge of the city, climbed to the top of Victoria Peak, gazed off into the distance at China. In college I’d read the analects of Confucius—The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones—and now I felt strongly that I’d never have a chance to move this particular mountain. I’d never get any closer to that walled-off mystical land, and it made me feel unaccountably sad. Incomplete. I went to the Philippines, which had all the madness and chaos of Hong Kong, and twice the poverty. I moved slowly, as if in a nightmare, through Manila, through endless crowds and fathomless gridlock, toward the hotel where MacArthur once occupied the penthouse. I was fascinated by all the great generals, from Alexander the Great to George Patton. I hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit. I hated the sword, but loved the samurai. And of all the great fighting men in history I found MacArthur the most compelling. Those Ray-Bans, that corncob pipe—the man didn’t lack for confidence. Brilliant tactician, master motivator, he also went on to head the U.S. Olympic Committee. How could I not love him? Of course, he was deeply flawed. But he knew that. You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break. I wanted to book a night in his former suite. But I couldn’t afford it. One day, I vowed. One day I shall return.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  cuando me di cuenta que había estado esperando que mi vida comenzara —mi vida real— solo para darme cuenta que ya había ocurrido cuando no estaba prestando atención. Ese tren que estaba esperando para abordar, pasó a mi lado sin detenerse. Probablemente no habría una esposa, y nunca sabría lo que sería criar a mis hijos todos los días. En este punto, estoy demasiado acostumbrado a estar solo que soy como un hijo único. Y un hijo único no sabe cómo compartir sus cosas. Todd apuesta otro dólar, y yo salgo, seguido por Lin, Dutch y Eddie. Todd recoge el bote, y Dutch mezcla todas las cartas, repartiendo nuevamente. La música del piso de arriba, de repente, resuena cada vez más fuerte, y escucho pisadas en las escaleras seguidas por una puerta que se cierra. Los pies descalzos aparecen en el hueco de la escalera, las piernas se hacen más visibles a medida que descienden. Jordan se agacha, mirando debajo del techo del sótano. —Oye, ¿te importa si saco los Otter Pops 7 del congelador? Todos la miran, girando sus cabezas, y hago un gesto, apenas apartando la mirada de mis cartas. —Sí, adelante —respondo rápidamente. Un calor líquido corre por mis brazos, y me miro la mano, luchando por concentrarme, porque ella es de lo único que estoy consciente ahora. Baja apresuradamente el resto de las escaleras, con pasos ligeros y rápidos como si tratara de no ser vista o escuchada mientras se lanza hacia la pared a mi derecha y levanta la tapa del gran congelador. La habitación se ha vuelto silenciosa, y no estoy seguro si los muchachos tienen miedo de hablar normalmente, porque hay una mujer en la habitación o si están distraídos. Miro mis cartas y busco en mi cerebro. ¿De qué estábamos hablando hace un minuto? Oh, niños. Claro. Escucho cosas que se mueven en el congelador y echo un vistazo, mi mirada inmediatamente cae a sus pies. Está de puntillas e inclinada, sosteniendo la tapa con una mano mientras rebusca en el enorme contenedor. Parece ser consciente de sus 7 Helados

• From City of Night (1963)

  In Washington Square there were many people. In the center, around the fountain, the young painters and their girlfriends clustered; some had baby carriages. They seemed very happy. And I felt the same. I was sure it was the approaching warm weather.... One youngman with a beard played a guitar and sang softly in Spanish. Pete and I sat by the fountain, listening. Soon, we got up, walked around the west side—toward the “meat rack”—the gay part of the park. There, it was as if someone had hung a line of marionettes on the railing: the lonesome young homosexuals, legs dangling, looking, waiting for that one-night’s sexual connection.... “This wouldnt be a good place for scoring tonight anyway,” Pete says, “theres too many out for free fun.” But we sit there too, silently. Next to us, a Negro queen has nervously stationed herself—a screamingly effeminate youngman in a candy-striped shirt: twisting her neck haughtily, looking around her in pretended disdain. Soon a couple of her white “sisters” swish by, two equally effeminate youngmen. They stand talking to the Negro queen, gossiping breathlessly. Now theyre talking about gowns. “It was Fabulous!” said the Negro queen, “I dressed like the Queen of Sheba, and honey, I Mean To Tell You, I looked Real!” “Wasnt thuh Queen of Shayba white?” says one of the white queens, a fiercely blond one, affecting a thick Southern accent The Negro queen’s eyes open Wide. “Are you trying to dish me, Mary?” she says angrily. “Honey,” said the blond one, “all Ah asked was a simple question. Wasnt thuh Queen of Shayba White? For all Ah know, you painted youhself White.” “Mary,” says the Negro queen, ready to spring from the railing, “I may not be the Queen of Sheba, exactly, but I am The Queen of This Meat Rack—and I’ll prove it to any nellyassed queen that wants to try me.” “Youre too much,” says the blond one airily. “Why! who-evuh heard of a nigguh Queen?” In one instant, the Negro queen jumps off the railing, grabs the blond one by her thin shoulders and shakes her back and forth until she begins to sob, trying tearfully to tear herself away from the Negro queen. Finally, the Negro queen lets go, and the blond one rushes off wailing: “Mothuh-fuckuh, if we wuz in The South, Ahd show you whos Queen of thuh Meat Rack!”... Pete said moodily: “She shoudnuh called her a nigger.” A fat zero-policeman comes by swinging his stick like a baton: “Move on, move on,” he says. “Yes, sir, officer, sir,” Pete says, raising his middle finger up at the cop as he passes by.... We move on, and it was beginning to get cool—the hint of spring withdrawing teasingly. We walk again through Washington Square. The guitarist with the beard has left, and we sit on a bench.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  A graduate of Tokyo University, the Harvard of Japan, Sumeragi looked strikingly like the great film actor Toshiro Mifune, who was famous for his portrayal of Miyamoto Musashi, the epic samurai duelist and author of a timeless manual on combat and inner strength, The Book of Five Rings. Sumeragi looked most like the actor when lipping a Lucky Strike. And he lipped them a lot. Twice as much when he drank. Unlike Hayes, however, who drank because he liked the way booze made him feel, Sumeragi drank because he was lonely in America. Almost every evening after work he’d head to the Blue House, a Japanese bar-restaurant, and talk in his native tongue with the mama-san, which just made him lonelier. He told me that Nissho was willing to take a second position to the bank on their loans. That would certainly quell my bankers. He also offered this nugget of information: Nissho had recently dispatched a delegation to Kobe, to investigate financing shoes for us, and to convince Onitsuka to let such a deal go through. But Onitsuka had thrown the Nissho delegation out on their asses. A $25 million company throwing out a $100 billion company? Nissho was embarrassed, and angry. “We can introduce you to many quality sports shoe manufacturers in Japan,” Sumeragi said, smiling. I pondered. I still held out some hope that Onitsuka would come to its senses. And I worried about a paragraph in our written agreement that forbade me from importing other brands of track-and-field shoes. “Maybe down the road,” I said.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Come up there, I got a pint of juice, well kill it.” “It’s too far,” I told him. He looked hurt. “Okay. Lets go to my place,” I said hurriedly. There is still a doorman in the building where I lived: a Negro from Jamaica: a clinging relic, like the mirrored lobby, of its sadly gone elegance: Beyond the lobby and the doorman—who sits in a little room, nodding asleep through the night—the building is seedy two-room apartments and gray rooms—layers of wallpaper make the walls soft like quilts; the plumbing rattles; steam gives out on the coldest days.... We went up in the complaining elevator, into the apartment, broken up, in turn, into smaller apartments, tiny rooms. I turned on the light. “This is nice,” Pete said, looking at the dingy room. One thing was colorful: a Mexican blanket which my mother had sent me.... “I wish I had a place of my own,” Pete says. “You know, I actually been thinking of getting a small apartment—with someone, maybe—you know, split the rent—it wouldnt be much that way.... You like living alone, spote?” I pretended I hadnt heard him.... But long before that night when I had resolved to explore this world not with one person but with many, I had become aware that there was something about someone getting too close to me which suffocated me.... “Maybe,” Pete says, going on, “maybe—you know—I was just thinking—shacking up with another guy for a while—we could hustle together, really make the scores. It wouldnt be hard: I know lots of scores. Theyd stop digging me; dig you; so on—I mean, whoever it was, we would keep going like that.... I was even thinking—Christ—well—that fuckin street—it bugs me—sometimes I get nightmares about those toilets—I mean, all those fags—and—well, if I got a job, even—and split the rent with someone—well—” “It’s past midnight,” I said interrupting him. For a long while there seems to be nothing to say. Im aware of a smothering self-consciousness between us. I wanted him to leave. It was the first time anyone other than the curious men and women in the other rooms had been in this room with me. “Can I stay here tonight?” I heard him ask clearly. In a kind of panic, I want to say no. “Yes,” I answered. The lights are out now. The darkness seems very real, like a third person waiting. I lay on the very edge of one side of the bed, and he lay on the very edge of the other. A long time passed. Hours. “Are you asleep?” he asked me. “No—I cant sleep.” “Me neither,” he says. “Maybe I should go.” But he didnt move. More silence. And then I felt his hand, lightly, on mine. Neither of us moved.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  His tragic death, moreover, marks a consequential turning point in the lives of Sula and Nel. While Nel subsequently chooses a life of conformity, Sula becomes all the more radical. Chicken drowns in 1922, yet the reader's next encounter with Nel does not occur until 1927, when she-though "never [...] hell-bent to marry" (82-83)-accepts Jude's marriage proposal. Forsaking her childhood "resilience" with Sula, Nel marries, immerses herself in family life, integrates into the community, and leads an ostensibly conventional middle-class existence. Sula, conversely, leaves the Bottom-the night of Nel's marriage, a heterosexist institution intervening on her and Nel's unionfor ten years, during which time she attends college in Nashville and travels to Detroit, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Macon, and San Diego (120). Upon her return she sleeps with Nel's husband, Jude-accounting for the demise of their marriage and the "extrication" of Jude, another male presence and infringement (like Chicken Little) on her "one-ness," womanfreedom, and intimate friendship with Nel. While characterological in nature, one might ask why Sula would leave the Bottom, curiously during the celebration following Nel's wedding, and go off to college? Sula's leaving to attend college and refusal to work or "give back" to her community afterward animates some of the early debates regarding black women's positionality, education, and racial uplift. Women's education and enfranchisement in the early twentieth century were consequential issues engaged among race men and women. Women's education, as some race men and even women conjectured, might, so their logic went, violate gender dynamics and conventions, devastate traditional gender roles and "natural" sexual differences, and compromise the black family, as historian Kevin Gaines posits. Virtually "desexualizing" black women, education and suffrage would ostensibly make them no longer suitable for or desiring of marriage and motherhood, putatively creating racialized gender mayhem wherein women would pose a threat to male leadership, the roles/occupations of black men, and the overall system of male hegemony and patriarchal authority.26