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 Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I mean, if you look at all the great people in history—Einstein, Michelangelo, Emily Dickinson—then you’re looking at a bunch of weird people.” “I’m going to be late for class,” Gordy said. “You’re going to be late for class. Perhaps you should, as they say, cut to the chase.” I looked at Gordy. He was a big kid, actually, strong from bucking bales and driving trucks. He was probably the strongest geek in the world. “I want to be your friend,” I said. “Excuse me?” he asked. “I want us to be friends,” I said. Gordy stepped back. “I assure you,” he said. “I am not a homosexual.” “Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t want to be friends that way. I just meant regular friends. I mean, you and I, we have a lot in common.” Gordy studied me now. I was an Indian kid from the reservation. I was lonely and sad and isolated and terrified. Just like Gordy. And so we did become friends. Not the best of friends. Not like Rowdy and me. We didn’t share secrets. Or dreams. No, we studied together. Gordy taught me how to study. Best of all, he taught me how to read. “Listen,” he said one afternoon in the library. “You have to read a book three times before you know it. The first time you read it for the story. The plot. The movement from scene to scene that gives the book its momentum, its rhythm. It’s like riding a raft down a river. You’re just paying attention to the currents. Do you understand that?” “Not at all,” I said. “Yes, you do,” he said. “Okay, I do,” I said. I really didn’t, but Gordy believed in me. He wouldn’t let me give up. “The second time you read a book, you read it for its history. For its knowledge of history. You think about the meaning of each word, and where that word came from. I mean, you read a novel that has the word ‘spam’ in it, and you know where that word comes from, right?” “Spam is junk e-mail,” I said. “Yes, that’s what it is, but who invented the word, who first used it, and how has the meaning of the word changed since it was first used?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Well, you have to look all that up. If you don’t treat each word that seriously then you’re not treating the novel seriously.” I thought about my sister in Montana. Maybe romance novels were absolutely serious business. My sister certainly thought they were. I suddenly understood that if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of a life should be taken seriously as well. “I draw cartoons,” I said. “What’s your point?” Gordy asked. “I take them seriously. I use them to understand the world. I use them to make fun of the world. To make fun of people.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  [image "An illustration of an outline of a gorilla holding a test tube with a thought bubble saying ‘So lonely..’ The caption reads ‘Invisible Mountain Gorilla Scientist’." file=image_rsrc4T0.jpg] After I decided to go to Reardan, I felt like an invisible mountain gorilla scientist. My grandmother was the only one who thought it was a 100 percent good idea. “Think of all the new people you’re going to meet,” she said. “That’s the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people. I wish I could go with you. It’s such an exciting idea.” Of course, my grandmother had met thousands, tens of thousands, of other Indians at powwows all over the country. Every powwow Indian knew her. Yep, my grandmother was powwow-famous. Everybody loved her; she loved everybody. In fact, last week, she was walking back home from a mini powwow at the Spokane Tribal Community Center, when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Yeah, you read that right. She didn’t die right away. The reservation paramedics kept her alive long enough to get to the hospital in Spokane, but she died during emergency surgery. Massive internal injuries. At the hospital, my mother wept and wailed. She’d lost her mother. When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents. My father was all quiet and serious with the surgeon, a big and handsome white guy. “Did she say anything before she died?” he asked. “Yes,” the surgeon said. “She said, ‘Forgive him.’ ” “Forgive him?” my father asked. “I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her.” Wow. My grandmother’s last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance. She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her. I think my dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death. I think my mother would have helped him. I think I would have helped him, too. But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer. Even dead, she was a better person than us. The tribal cops found Gerald hiding out at Benjamin Lake. They took him to jail. And after we got back from the hospital, my father went over to see Gerald to kill him or forgive him. I think the tribal cops might have looked the other way if my father had decided to strangle Gerald. But my father, respecting my grandmother’s last wishes, left Gerald alone to the justice system, which ended up sending him to prison for eighteen months. After he got out, Gerald moved to a reservation in California and nobody ever saw him again. But my family had to bury my grandmother. I mean, it’s natural to bury your grandmother.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And then I remember there are a bunch of anorexics who are PROUD to be skinny and starved freaks. They think being anorexic makes them special, makes them better than everybody else. They have their own fricking Web sites where they give advice on the best laxatives and stuff. “What’s the difference between bulimics and anorexics?” I ask. “Anorexics are anorexics all the time,” she says. “I’m only bulimic when I’m throwing up.” Wow. SHE SOUNDS JUST LIKE MY DAD! There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Penelope gorges on her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away. My dad drinks his pain away. So I say to Penelope what I always say to Dad when he’s drunk and depressed and ready to give up on the world. “Hey, Penelope,” I say. “Don’t give up.” Okay, so it’s not the wisest advice in the world. It’s actually kind of obvious and corny. But Penelope starts crying, talking about how lonely she is, and how everybody thinks her life is perfect because she’s pretty and smart and popular, but that she’s scared all the time, but nobody will let her be scared because she’s pretty and smart and popular. You notice that she mentioned her beauty, intelligence, and popularity twice in one sentence? The girl has an ego. But that’s sexy, too. How is it that a bulimic girl with vomit on her breath can suddenly be so sexy? Love and lust can make you go crazy. I suddenly understand how my big sister, Mary, could have met a guy and married him five minutes later. I’m not so mad at her for leaving us and moving to Montana. Over the next few weeks, Penelope and I become the hot item at Reardan High School. Well, okay, we’re not exactly a romantic couple. We’re more like friends with potential. But that’s still cool. Everybody is absolutely shocked that Penelope chose me to be her new friend. I’m not some ugly, mutated beast. But I am an absolute stranger at the school. And I am an Indian. And Penelope’s father, Earl, is a racist. The first time I meet him, he said, “Kid, you better keep your hands out of my daughter’s panties. She’s only dating you because she knows it will piss me off. So I ain’t going to get pissed. And if I ain’t pissed then she’ll stop dating you. In the meantime, you just keep your trouser snake in your trousers and I won’t have to punch you in the stomach.”

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Never. At least, I hope he’d never hurt me. The next morning, at school, I walked up to Penelope and showed her my empty hands. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry for what?” she asked. “I raised money last night, but then some guys attacked me and stole it.” “Oh, my God, are you okay?” “Yeah, they just kicked me a few times.” “Oh, my God, where did they kick you?” I lifted up my shirt and showed her the bruises on my belly and ribs and back. “That’s terrible. Did you see a doctor?” “Oh, they’re not so bad,” I said. “That one looks like it really hurts,” she said and touched a fingertip to the huge purple bruise on my back. I almost fainted. Her touch felt so good. “I’m sorry they did that to you,” she said. “I’ll still put your name on the money when I send it.” “Wow,” I said. “That’s really cool. Thank you.” “You’re welcome,” she said and walked away. I was just going to let her go. But I had to say something memorable, something huge. “Hey!” I called after her. “What?” she asked. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” “What feels good?” “It feels good to help people, doesn’t it?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does.” She smiled. Of course, after that little moment, I thought that Penelope and I would become closer. I thought that she’d start paying more attention to me and that everybody else would notice and then I’d become the most popular dude in the place. But nothing much changed. I was still a stranger in a strange land. And Penelope still treated me pretty much the same. She didn’t really say much to me. And I didn’t really say much to her. I wanted to ask Rowdy for his advice. “Hey, buddy,” I would have said. “How do I make a beautiful white girl fall in love with me?” “Well, buddy,” he would have said. “The first thing you have to do is change the way you look, the way you talk, and the way you walk. And then she’ll think you’re her fricking Prince Charming.” Slouching Toward Thanksgiving I walked like a zombie through the next few weeks in Reardan. Well, no, that’s not exactly the right description. I mean, if I’d been walking around like a zombie, I might have been scary. So, no, I wasn’t a zombie, not at all. Because you can’t ignore a zombie. So that made me, well, it made me nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact, if you think of everybody with a body, soul, and brain as a human, then I was the opposite of human. It was the loneliest time of my life. And whenever I get lonely, I grow a big zit on the end of my nose. If things didn’t get better soon, I was going to turn into one giant walking talking zit. A strange thing was happening to me.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Her blunt, choppy bangs were plastered to her forehead. She blew out a breath. “Can we go now?” asked the other. She’d moved closer and Robbie could see her now, silhouetted in the moonlight. Trans, but he could only tell by the very slight swelling of her Adam’s apple. With her long, straight nose and narrow jaw—a mandible shave, maybe?—she looked sad and waifish. Hunched. Elbows drawn in. A sudden pang of homesickness closed his throat and brought tears to his eyes. When was the last time you spoke out loud to another human being? When was the last time you touched someone? He watched them for a while as they talked, imagining the things he’d say to them, the places they might go together once they came around to the advantages of strength in numbers. He nearly stood, and then he thought of Midge and the winter after the collapse and the cabin where they’d stayed, rationing canned beans and peanuts and drinking lemon juice because Midge, who loved to read about Franklin and Shackleton and all those other idiots who got themselves and all their men killed exploring the poles, kept insisting they’d get scurvy. The taller woman raked a hand back through her hair. She said something to the shorter one, who looked uncomfortable. Robbie thought of the day the spiro had run out. He thought of the basement and the rusted lock and the handgun buried somewhere in the woods outside of Durham. He thought of those things and watched, and waited, and didn’t move until the sound of the women’s footsteps faded into the soft, humid stillness of the night. VI. Dee Licious VI DEE LICIOUS The day after they found the stranger’s camp, they cut through Middleton, heading northeast toward Seabrook on an arc that kept them well away from Boston’s suburbs. Fran disliked the city. Too many cold stares through the gaps in heavy curtains. Too many empty, gutted buildings where anything might be lurking. It was a hard place, a cis place, and she’d never forgotten her friend Lizzie’s story about seeing a trans girl hustler hanged on New Year’s Eve from the traffic light in front of South Station. Besides, for all she knew the TERFs were there already. There had always been radfems in New England, enclaves of sneering middle-class white women who talked a lot about performing gender roles and appropriating lived experience. They curated incestuous little social media cells where they repeated the same six talking points to the same thirty other women while cis men came sniffing around their hindquarters, venting pent-up hatred on trans women and making sure real women saw them doing it so they could get accredited as feminists and maybe, if they were lucky, catch a whiff of pussy. After T-Day, it got worse. Fran could still picture the viral video of the trans girl succumbing to the virus while under observation at St.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And I didn’t really say much to her. I wanted to ask Rowdy for his advice. “Hey, buddy,” I would have said. “How do I make a beautiful white girl fall in love with me?” “Well, buddy,” he would have said. “The first thing you have to do is change the way you look, the way you talk, and the way you walk. And then she’ll think you’re her fricking Prince Charming.” Slouching Toward Thanksgiving I walked like a zombie through the next few weeks in Reardan. Well, no, that’s not exactly the right description. I mean, if I’d been walking around like a zombie, I might have been scary. So, no, I wasn’t a zombie, not at all. Because you can’t ignore a zombie. So that made me, well, it made me nothing . Zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact, if you think of everybody with a body, soul, and brain as a human, then I was the opposite of human. It was the loneliest time of my life. And whenever I get lonely, I grow a big zit on the end of my nose. If things didn’t get better soon, I was going to turn into one giant walking talking zit. A strange thing was happening to me. Zitty and lonely, I woke up on the reservation as an Indian, and somewhere on the road to Reardan, I became something less than Indian. And once I arrived at Reardan, I became something less than less than less than Indian. Those white kids did not talk to me. They barely looked at me. Well, Roger would nod his head at me, but he didn’t socialize with me or anything. I wondered if maybe I should punch everybody in the face. Maybe they’d all pay attention to me then. I just walked from class to class alone; I sat at lunch alone; during PE I stood in the corner of the gym and played catch with myself. Just tossed a basketball up and down, up and down, up and down. And I know you’re thinking, “Okay, Mr. Sad Sack, how many ways are you going to tell us how depressed you were?” And, okay, maybe I’m overstating my case. Maybe I’m exaggerating. So let me tell you a few good things that I discovered during that awful time. First of all, I learned that I was smarter than most of those white kids. Oh, there were a couple girls and one boy who were little Einsteins, and there was no way I’d ever be smarter than them, but I was way smarter than 99 percent of the others. And not just smart for an Indian, okay? I was smart, period. Let me give you an example. In geology class, the teacher, Mr. Dodge, was talking about the petrified wood forests near George, Washington, on the Columbia River, and how it was pretty amazing that wood could turn into rock. I raised my hand. “Yes, Arnold,” Mr. Dodge said.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Of course, Rowdy would probably punch Gordy until he was brain-dead. Or maybe Rowdy, Gordy, and I could become a superhero trio, fighting for truth, justice, and the Native American way. Well, okay, Gordy was white, but anybody can start to act like an Indian if he hangs around us long enough. “The people at home,” I said. “A lot of them call me an apple.” “Do they think you’re a fruit or something?” he asked. “No, no,” I said. “They call me an apple because they think I’m red on the outside and white on the inside.” “Ah, so they think you’re a traitor.” “Yep.” “Well, life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.” Can you believe there is a kid who talks like that? Like he’s already a college professor impressed with the sound of his own voice? “Gordy,” I said. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me.” “Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against starvation. We survived because we trusted one another.” “So?” “So, back in the day, weird people threatened the strength of the tribe. If you weren’t good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.” “But we’re not primitive like that anymore.” “Oh, yes, we are. Weird people still get banished.” “You mean weird people like me,” I said. “And me,” Gordy said. “All right, then,” I said. “So we have a tribe of two.” I had the sudden urge to hug Gordy, and he had the sudden urge to prevent me from hugging him. “Don’t get sentimental,” he said. Yep, even the weird boys are afraid of their emotions. My Sister Sends Me a Letter Dear Junior, I am still looking for a job. They keep telling me I don’t have enough experience. But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience? Oh, well. I have a lot of free time, so I have started to write my life story. Really! Isn’t that crazy? I think I’m going to call it HOW TO RUN AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE AND FIND YOUR HOME. What do you think? Tell everybody I love them and miss them! Love, your Big Sis! P.S. And we moved into a new house. It’s the most gorgeous place in the world! Reindeer Games I almost didn’t try out for the Reardan basketball team. I just figured I wasn’t going to be good enough to make even the C squad. And I didn’t want to get cut from the team. I didn’t think I could live through that humiliation.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really cool. Thank you.” “You’re welcome,” she said and walked away. I was just going to let her go. But I had to say something memorable, something huge. “Hey!” I called after her. “What?” she asked. “It feels good, doesn’t it?” “What feels good?” “It feels good to help people, doesn’t it?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does.” She smiled. Of course, after that little moment, I thought that Penelope and I would become closer. I thought that she’d start paying more attention to me and that everybody else would notice and then I’d become the most popular dude in the place. But nothing much changed. I was still a stranger in a strange land. And Penelope still treated me pretty much the same. She didn’t really say much to me. And I didn’t really say much to her. I wanted to ask Rowdy for his advice. “Hey, buddy,” I would have said. “How do I make a beautiful white girl fall in love with me?” “Well, buddy,” he would have said. “The first thing you have to do is change the way you look, the way you talk, and the way you walk. And then she’ll think you’re her fricking Prince Charming.” Slouching Toward Thanksgiving [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] I walked like a zombie through the next few weeks in Reardan. Well, no, that’s not exactly the right description. I mean, if I’d been walking around like a zombie, I might have been scary. So, no, I wasn’t a zombie, not at all. Because you can’t ignore a zombie. So that made me, well, it made me nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact, if you think of everybody with a body, soul, and brain as a human, then I was the opposite of human. It was the loneliest time of my life. And whenever I get lonely, I grow a big zit on the end of my nose. If things didn’t get better soon, I was going to turn into one giant walking talking zit. [image "An illustration of a skin cross-section showing a large pimple labeled ‘big zit’, with arrows pointing to ‘skin surface’ and ‘hair follicle.’" file=image_rsrc4SB.jpg] A strange thing was happening to me. Zitty and lonely, I woke up on the reservation as an Indian, and somewhere on the road to Reardan, I became something less than Indian. And once I arrived at Reardan, I became something less than less than less than Indian. Those white kids did not talk to me. They barely looked at me. Well, Roger would nod his head at me, but he didn’t socialize with me or anything. I wondered if maybe I should punch everybody in the face. Maybe they’d all pay attention to me then.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She kissed the pink bud of Sophie’s clit and imagined sucking it out of its hood of tender skin, drawing it like a snail from its shell into her own body where it might take root and change, drawing her cock up into her flesh, parting the soft curtains of her sex. She drank from Sophie. Greedy mouth on fluttering lips. The dream of a cunt growing like a seedling in strange soil. Robbie came back to an empty room. For a moment after he flicked on the fluorescents and found the bed still unmade, her flannel still hanging from the footboard’s post, before loneliness washed over him, he felt almost relieved. Part of him had missed sleeping alone. Part of him missed killing in a white haze of dissociation, missed the slippery feel of bark underfoot as he stepped from branch to branch, firing his handgun down between his feet at the men climbing toward him. That was a life without questions. Without fear. Now he didn’t even have his guns; they were locked away in an armory somewhere with Beth’s bow and all their knives and the rifles Sophie’s people had taken out of Indi’s attic. The only armed women in the Screw were the guards and a few of Sophie’s closest. Long-limbed Doe with her greasy red-gold hair and puffy lips. Nam-joo Kim, lined and humorless. The sleek, tanned twins Corinne and Sylvia with their gray eyes and catlike smiles. He sighed and began to undress, suddenly bone-tired. It was getting late. Fran wasn’t coming back. There was something in the right-hand pocket of his jeans. He tried to remember if he’d had anything in there, a notebook page or a bandana. No. He slipped two fingers in and found a tight, folded square of some rough fabric. I didn’t have anything. He drew it out. It was pale and grubby, stained by sweat and ground-in dirt. It might have been a part of an old sheet, or of someone’s summer slacks. He unfolded the scrap of cotton. Inside, someone had inked a few spidery, jagged words. Midnight tomorrow. 11-E. Come alone. He thought of the kids in the camp, barefoot and wild, plucking at his sleeves as they ran beside him. “You have such a pretty cunt,” Fran whispered against Sophie’s shoulder. The Molly’s dazzling tide had started to recede, lukewarm gray water washing over her scattered thoughts. She squirmed closer to the other girl, sliding an arm over her belly. “It looks just like a flower.” “There’s a woman in Tampa who still does that,” said Sophie, who was sitting up with her head lolling on a heap of satin pillows, an unlit joint between her candy-apple lips, and one hand toying with a lock of Fran’s dark chestnut hair. “I can bring her up here, have her do you. I mean, not, like, do you.” She swatted Fran playfully on the arm. “Give you a vagina .”

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  They think being anorexic makes them special, makes them better than everybody else. They have their own fricking Web sites where they give advice on the best laxatives and stuff. “What’s the difference between bulimics and anorexics?” I ask. “Anorexics are anorexics all the time,” she says. “I’m only bulimic when I’m throwing up.” Wow. SHE SOUNDS JUST LIKE MY DAD! [image "A hand-drawn illustration of a girl with long hair holding up their hands. The speech bubble reads, “I’m only an alcoholic when I get drunk.’ A label adds, WTF, Dad?!" file=image_rsrc4SJ.jpg] There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Penelope gorges on her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away. My dad drinks his pain away. So I say to Penelope what I always say to Dad when he’s drunk and depressed and ready to give up on the world. “Hey, Penelope,” I say. “Don’t give up.” Okay, so it’s not the wisest advice in the world. It’s actually kind of obvious and corny. But Penelope starts crying, talking about how lonely she is, and how everybody thinks her life is perfect because she’s pretty and smart and popular, but that she’s scared all the time, but nobody will let her be scared because she’s pretty and smart and popular. You notice that she mentioned her beauty, intelligence, and popularity twice in one sentence? The girl has an ego. But that’s sexy, too. [image "Book cover of ‘The Other Side of the Fence.’ The cover image features a drawing of a man and a woman in an intimate pose, with text quotes and exclamations." file=image_rsrc4SK.jpg] How is it that a bulimic girl with vomit on her breath can suddenly be so sexy? Love and lust can make you go crazy. I suddenly understand how my big sister, Mary, could have met a guy and married him five minutes later. I’m not so mad at her for leaving us and moving to Montana. Over the next few weeks, Penelope and I become the hot item at Reardan High School. Well, okay, we’re not exactly a romantic couple. We’re more like friends with potential. But that’s still cool. Everybody is absolutely shocked that Penelope chose me to be her new friend. I’m not some ugly, mutated beast. But I am an absolute stranger at the school. And I am an Indian. And Penelope’s father, Earl, is a racist. The first time I meet him, he said, “Kid, you better keep your hands out of my daughter’s panties. She’s only dating you because she knows it will piss me off. So I ain’t going to get pissed. And if I ain’t pissed then she’ll stop dating you. In the meantime, you just keep your trouser snake in your trousers and I won’t have to punch you in the stomach.” And then you know what he said to me after that?

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  ipso facto, is devoid of sacred qualities. Between them lies an altogether “natural” universe, God’s creation to be sure, but in itself bereft of numinosity. In other words, the radical transcendence of God confronts a universe of radical immanence, of “closedness” to the sacred. Religiously speaking, the world becomes very lonely indeed. The Catholic lives in a world in which the sacred is mediated to him through a variety of channels—the sacraments of the church, the intercession of the saints, the recurring eruption of the “supernatural” in miracles—a vast continuity of being between the seen and the unseen. Protestantism abolished most of these mediations. It broke the continuity, cut the umbilical cord between heaven and earth, and thereby threw man back upon himself in a historically unprecedented manner. Needless to say, this was not its intention. It only denuded the world of divinity in order to emphasize the terrible majesty of the transcendent God and it only threw man into total “fallenness” in order to make him open to the intervention of God’s sovereign grace, the only true miracle in the Protestant universe. In doing this, however, it narrowed man’s relationship to the sacred to the one exceedingly narrow channel that it called God’s word (not to be identified with a fundamentalist conception of the Bible, but rather with the uniquely redemptive action of God’s grace—the sola gratia of the Lutheran confessions). As long as the plausibility of this conception was maintained, of course, secularization was effectively arrested, even though all its ingredients were already present in the Protestant universe. It needed only the cutting of this one narrow channel of mediation, though, to open the floodgates of secularization. In other words, with nothing remaining “in between” a radically transcendent God and a radically immanent human world except this one channel, the sinking of the latter into 131

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Completely, I do.” “You’re lying.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “How can you tell?” “Because your eyes dilated, your breathing rate increased a little bit, and you started to sweat.” Okay, so Gordy was a human lie detector machine, too. “All right, I lied,” I said. “What is a tautology?” Gordy sighed again. I HATED THAT SIGH! I WANTED TO PUNCH THAT SIGH IN THE FACE! “A tautology is a repetition of the same sense in different words,” he said. “Oh,” I said. What the hell was he talking about? “It’s a redundancy.” “Oh, you mean, redundant, like saying the same thing over and over but in different ways?” “Yes.” “Oh, so if I said something like, ‘Gordy is a dick without ears and an ear without a dick,’ then that would be a tautology.” Gordy smiled. “That’s not exactly a tautology, but it is funny. You have a singular wit.” I laughed. Gordy laughed, too. But then he realized that I wasn’t laughing WITH him. I was laughing AT him. “What’s so funny?” he asked. “I can’t believe you said ‘singular wit.’ That’s sounds like fricking British or something.” “Well, I am a bit of an Anglophile.” “An Anglophile? What’s an Angophile?” “It’s someone who loves Mother England.” God, this kid was an eighty-year-old literature professor trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old farm boy. “Listen, Gordy,” I said. “I know you’re a genius and all. But you are one weird dude.” “I’m quite aware of my differences. I wouldn’t classify them as weird.” “Don’t get me wrong. I think weird is great. I mean, if you look at all the great people in history—Einstein, Michelangelo, Emily Dickinson—then you’re looking at a bunch of weird people.” “I’m going to be late for class,” Gordy said. “You’re going to be late for class. Perhaps you should, as they say, cut to the chase.” I looked at Gordy. He was a big kid, actually, strong from bucking bales and driving trucks. He was probably the strongest geek in the world. “I want to be your friend,” I said. “Excuse me?” he asked. “I want us to be friends,” I said. Gordy stepped back. “I assure you,” he said. “I am not a homosexual.” “Oh, no,” I said. “I don’t want to be friends that way. I just meant regular friends. I mean, you and I, we have a lot in common.” Gordy studied me now. I was an Indian kid from the reservation. I was lonely and sad and isolated and terrified. Just like Gordy. And so we did become friends. Not the best of friends. Not like Rowdy and me. We didn’t share secrets. Or dreams. No, we studied together. Gordy taught me how to study. Best of all, he taught me how to read. “Listen,” he said one afternoon in the library. “You have to read a book three times before you know it. The first time you read it for the story. The plot.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Zitty and lonely, I woke up on the reservation as an Indian, and somewhere on the road to Reardan, I became something less than Indian. And once I arrived at Reardan, I became something less than less than less than Indian. Those white kids did not talk to me. They barely looked at me. Well, Roger would nod his head at me, but he didn’t socialize with me or anything. I wondered if maybe I should punch everybody in the face. Maybe they’d all pay attention to me then. I just walked from class to class alone; I sat at lunch alone; during PE I stood in the corner of the gym and played catch with myself. Just tossed a basketball up and down, up and down, up and down. And I know you’re thinking, “Okay, Mr. Sad Sack, how many ways are you going to tell us how depressed you were?” And, okay, maybe I’m overstating my case. Maybe I’m exaggerating. So let me tell you a few good things that I discovered during that awful time. First of all, I learned that I was smarter than most of those white kids. Oh, there were a couple girls and one boy who were little Einsteins, and there was no way I’d ever be smarter than them, but I was way smarter than 99 percent of the others. And not just smart for an Indian, okay? I was smart, period. Let me give you an example. In geology class, the teacher, Mr. Dodge, was talking about the petrified wood forests near George, Washington, on the Columbia River, and how it was pretty amazing that wood could turn into rock. I raised my hand. “Yes, Arnold,” Mr. Dodge said. He was surprised. That was the first time I’d raised my hand in his class. “Uh, er, um,” I said. Yeah, I was so articulate. “Spit it out,” Dodge said. “Well,” I said. “Petrified wood is not wood.” My classmates stared at me. They couldn’t believe that I was contradicting a teacher. “If it’s not wood,” Dodge said, “then why do they call it wood?” “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t name the stuff. But I know how it works.” Dodge’s face was red. Hot red. I’d never seen an Indian look that red. So why do they call us the redskins? “Okay, Arnold, if you’re so smart,” Dodge said, “then tell us how it works.” “Well, what happens is, er, when you have wood that’s buried under dirt, then minerals and stuff sort of, uh, soak into the wood. They, uh, kind of melt the wood and the glue that holds the wood together. And then the minerals sort of take the place of the wood and the glue. I mean, the minerals keep the same shape as the wood.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The doors to the hospital slide open, and I take a moment to look around. Nothing has changed. It’s still too cold in here; the fountain still sprays a crooked stream into air that smells deeply of antiseptic. Nurses and doctors cross paths, charts clutched against chests or hanging droopy from their hands. It all stayed the same while I was changing. I turn my face toward the parking lot. I want to leave, stay out of this world. No one but Isaac knows what it was like. It makes me feel like the only person on the planet. It makes me angry. I need to talk to him. He’s the only one. I walk. Then I’m in the elevator, sliding slowly up to his floor. He is probably doing rounds, but I’ll wait in his office. I just need a few minutes. Just a few. I walk quickly once the doors open. His office is just around the corner and past the vending machine. “Senna?” I spin. Daphne is standing a few feet away. She is wearing black scrubs and a stethoscope is hanging around her neck. She looks tired and beautiful. “Hello,” I say. We stand looking at each other for a minute, before I break the silence. I wasn’t expecting to see her. It was stupid. An oversight. I didn’t come here to make her uncomfortable. “I came to see—” “I’ll get him for you,” she says, quickly. I am surprised. I watch as she turns on her heel and trots down the hallway. Maybe he didn’t tell her everything. He won’t speak to the news stations either. My agent called me days after I got back, wanting to know if I could write a book detailing what happened to me—to us. The truth is I don’t know that I’ll ever write another book. And I’ll never tell about what happened in that house. It’s all mine. When I see him I hurt. He looks great. Not the skeleton man I kissed goodbye. But there are more lines around his eyes. I hope I put a few there. “Hello, Senna,” he says. I want to cry and laugh. “Hi.” He motions for his office door. He has to open it with a key. Isaac steps inside first and turns on the light. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder before walking in to see if Daphne is lurking anywhere. Thankfully, she’s not. I can’t bear her burdens on top of the ones I’m already carrying. We sit. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not entirely tea and cookies either. Isaac sits behind his desk, but after a minute he comes and sits in the chair next to me. “You’re back to work,” I say. “Couldn’t stay away.” “I tried.” He shakes his head. “I went to Hawaii and saw a shrink.” I sort of laugh at that one. “Brave.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I asked him who she was and he told me, “Julia Stone.” It was a literary name. I liked it. He played her entire album, tossing things into a pot he found by himself. The house was dark aside from the kitchen light he stood underneath. It felt quaint, like a life that didn’t belong to me, but I enjoyed watching. When was the last time I had someone over? Not since I bought the house. That was three years ago. There was a long window above my sink that stretched the length of the room. My appliances were all on the same wall, so no matter what you were doing you had a panoramic view of the lake. Sometimes when I was washing dishes I’d get so caught up looking outside, my hand would still and the water would turn cold before I realized that I’d been staring for fifteen minutes. I saw him peering into the darkness as he stood at the stove. The lights from the houses floated like fireflies in ink behind him. I let my eyes leave him and I watched the darkness instead. The darkness comforted me. “Senna?” I jumped. Isaac was next to me. He put a placemat and utensils in front of me, along with a bowl of steaming food, and a glass of something bubbly. I never even noticed. “Soda,” he said, when he saw me looking. “My vice.” “I’m not hungry,” I said pushing the bowl away. He pushed it back and tapped his forefinger on the counter. “You haven’t eaten in three days.” “Why do you care?” It came out harsher than I intended. Everything I said did. I watched his face for a lie, but he just shrugged. “It’s who I am.” I ate his soup. Then he made himself comfortable on my couch and went to sleep. In his clothes. I stood on the stairs and watched him for a long time, his socked feet sticking out of the bottom of the blanket he was using. Eventually I crawled into my bed. I reached out before I closed my eyes, and touched the book on the nightstand. Just the cover.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Find me a room in a quiet street, somewhere near here. I’ve got to stay around here… I’ve got credit here. Listen, promise me you’ll do that for me. I’ll buy you a meal now and then. Come around anyway, because I go nuts talking to these foolish cunts. I want to talk to you about Havelock Ellis. Jesus, I’ve had the book out for three weeks now and I haven’t looked at it. You sort of rot here. Would you believe it, I’ve never been to the Louvre—nor the Comédie-Française. Is it worth going to those joints? Still, it sort of takes your mind off things, I suppose. What do you do with yourself all day? Don’t you get bored? What do you do for a lay? Listen… come here! Don’t run away yet… I’m lonely. Do you know something—if this keeps up another year I’ll go nuts. I’ve got to get out of this fucking country. There’s nothing for me here. I know it’s lousy now, in America, but just the same. … You go queer over here… all these cheap shits sitting on their ass all day bragging about their work and none of them is worth a stinking damn. They’re all failures—that’s why they come over here. Listen, Joe, don’t you ever get homesick? You’re a funny guy… you seem to like it over here. What do you see in it?… I wish you’d tell me. I wish to Christ I could stop thinking about myself. I’m all twisted up inside… it’s like a knot in there. … Listen, I know I’m boring the shit out of you, but I’ve got to talk to someone. I can’t talk to those guys upstairs… you know what those bastards are like… they all take a byline. And Carl, the little prick, he’s so goddamned selfish. I’m an egotist, but I’m not selfish. There’s a difference. I’m a neurotic, I guess. I can’t stop thinking about myself. It isn’t that I think myself so important. … I simply can’t think about anything else, that’s all. If I could fall in love with a woman that might help some. But I can’t find a woman who interests me. I’m in a mess, you can see that can’t you? What do you advise me to do? What would you do in my place? Listen, I don’t want to hold you back any longer, but wake me up tomorrow—at one-thirty—will you? I’ll give you something extra if you’ll shine my shoes. And listen, if you’ve got an extra shirt, a clean one, bring it along, will you? Shit, I’m grinding my balls off on that job, and it doesn’t even give me a clean shirt. They’ve got us over here like a bunch of niggers. Ah, well, shit! I’m going to take a walk… wash the dirt out of my belly. Don’t forget, tomorrow!” For six months or more it’s been going on, this correspondence with the rich cunt, Irene.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  He is all warm now and helpless. His belly glistens like a patent- leather shoe. In the sockets of his eyes a pair of fancy vest buttons. “Unbutton my eyes, Fanny, I want to see you better!” Fanny carries him to bed and drops a little hot wax over his eyes. She puts rings around his navel and a thermometer up his ass. She places him and he quivers again. Suddenly he’s dwindled, shrunk completely out of sight. She searches all over for him, in her intestines, everywhere. Something is tickling her—she doesn’t know where exactly. The bed is full of toads and fancy vest buttons. “Fanny, where are you?” Something is tickling her—she can’t say where. The buttons are dropping off the bed. The toads are climbing the walls. A tickling and a tickling. “Fanny, take the wax out of my eyes! I want to look at you!” But Fanny is laughing, squirming with laughter. There is something inside her, tickling and tickling. She’ll die laughing if she doesn’t find it. “Fanny, the trunk is full of beautiful things. Fanny, do you hear me?” Fanny is laughing, laughing like a fat worm. Her belly is swollen with laughter. Her legs are getting blue. “O God, Morris, there is something tickling me. ... I can’t help it!” Sunday! Left the Villa Borghese a little before noon, just as Boris was getting ready to sit down to lunch. I left out of a sense of delicacy, because it really pains Boris to see me sitting there in the studio with an empty belly. Why he doesn’t invite me to lunch with him I don’t know. He says he can’t afford it, but that’s no excuse. Anyway, I’m delicate about it. If it pains him to eat alone in my presence it would probably pain him more to share his meal with me. It’s not my place to pry into his secret affairs. Dropped in at the Cronstadts’ and they were eating too. A young chicken with wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the chicken from the baby’s hands. This is not just false modesty—it’s a kind of perversion, I’m thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn’t join them. No! No! Wouldn’t even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I’m delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones lying on the baby’s plate—there was still meat on them. Prowling around aimlessly. A beautiful day—so far. The Rue de Buci is alive, crawling. The bars wide open and the curbs lined with bicycles. All the meat and vegetable markets are in full swing. Arms loaded with truck bandaged in newspapers. A fine Catholic Sunday—in the morning, at least.

• From Between Us

  The idea that omoiyari has to be cultivated, but cannot be forced onto kids until they are ready, prevails in Japanese preschool practices. Teachers show great restraint, even if the interactions between preschoolers are conflictual, and at times aggressive. Witness an episode between Nao, the newest child at a preschool, and several of her classmates: Nao pulls a stuffed bear away from another girl, Reiko. [ . . . The teacher] Morito tells them to “junken” (to do the game “paper, rock, scissors”) to settle their dispute. Reiko’s scissors beat Nao’s paper. Morito says to Nao, “We’ll let Reiko put the bear away today, right.” Nao defiantly says, “No!” Morita replies, firmly, “We did ‘junken.’” Nao sits on the floor and sulks. Reiko and her twin sister and constant companion, Seiko, approach Nao and tell her that she should not have tried to grab the bear away from them. Nao replies, “Seiko-chan and Reiko-chan are stupid.” Seiko replies, “Well it is your fault. You put the bear down. That’s why we took it.” After an interruption by some structured class activities, the bear saga continues, with Nao and the other girls grabbing the bear from each other. In the end, the other girls explain to Nao once again that her turn was over when she put the bear down. Nao, pouting, is led away to the other side of the room by Seiko, who says to her: “You cannot do that. Do you understand? Promise?” Linking little fingers with Nao, the two girls swing their arms back and forth as they sing, “Keep this promise, or swallow a thousand needles.” All the while Morita-sensei, the teacher, watches what is going on, but does not interfere. She stays back and observes. She interprets the episode as Nao expressing amae, in a whiny and aggressive way, and the others girls giving her attention and in the end including her, and thus showing omoiyari. Interestingly, amae and omoiyari, but also loneliness, are valued emotions in Japan because they “fuel the desire of sociality.” Loneliness motivates people to seek the company of others, and when relayed to others through amae, provokes the empathetic response of others inviting the person to join the group. Most Japanese teachers would agree with Morita-sensei and not interfere; in this way children learn to interpret amae, and give omoiyari. In contrast, U.S. teachers who see the interaction on tape think the teacher should have interfered. They see the teacher’s nonintervention as a failure to protect children from harming each other, and they also suspect that the teacher has not been paying attention (or she would have interfered!). But Morita-sensei does pay attention: her goal—different from that of her American colleagues—is to create room for the development of omoiyari, not to make sure her preschoolers feel good.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It was stupid. An oversight. I didn’t come here to make her uncomfortable. “I came to see—” “I’ll get him for you,” she says, quickly. I am surprised. I watch as she turns on her heel and trots down the hallway. Maybe he didn’t tell her everything. He won’t speak to the news stations either. My agent called me days after I got back, wanting to know if I could write a book detailing what happened to me—to us. The truth is I don’t know that I’ll ever write another book. And I’ll never tell about what happened in that house. It’s all mine. When I see him I hurt. He looks great. Not the skeleton man I kissed goodbye. But there are more lines around his eyes. I hope I put a few there. “Hello, Senna,” he says. I want to cry and laugh. “Hi.” He motions for his office door. He has to open it with a key. Isaac steps inside first and turns on the light. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder before walking in to see if Daphne is lurking anywhere. Thankfully, she’s not. I can’t bear her burdens on top of the ones I’m already carrying. We sit. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not entirely tea and cookies either. Isaac sits behind his desk, but after a minute he comes and sits in the chair next to me. “You’re back to work,” I say. “Couldn’t stay away.” “I tried.” He shakes his head. “I went to Hawaii and saw a shrink.” I sort of laugh at that one. “Brave.” “I know,” he smiles. “The entire session was me trying not to tell her things that could get me kidnapped.” We get serious. “How are you?” he asks cautiously. I appreciate the way he’s tiptoeing around my feelings, but we are a little too crushed for such gentle sentiments. For the first time, I answer him. “Shitty.” The corner of his mouth turns up. Just one corner. It’s his trademark. “That’s better than being closed off, I guess,” he says. I feel emotion rush me—the intimacy, the awkwardness. I want to revolt against it, but I don’t. It takes an awful toll on a person to fight down everything they’re feeling. Elgin tried to tell me that once. The bitch. “I heard about your prognosis…” “I’m okay with it,” I say quickly. “It just … is.” He looks like he has a million things to say, and he can’t. “I wanted to come see you, Senna. I just didn’t know how.” “You didn’t know how to come see me?” I ask, partially amused. He looks at my eyes, in them. So sadly. “It’s okay,” I say, slowly. “I get it.” “What do we do now?” he asks.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This gentleman, during almost all the journey thus far, had entered into conversation with no fellow-traveller, as if he carefully avoided all acquaintance. When spoken to, he answered curtly and decisively, and began to look out of the car window obstinately. Yet it seemed to me that the solitude weighed upon him. He seemed to perceive that I understood this, and when our eyes met, as happened frequently, since we were sitting almost opposite each other, he turned away his head, and avoided conversation with me as much as with the others. At nightfall, during a stop at a large station, the gentleman with the fine baggage—a lawyer, as I have since learned—got out with his companion to drink some tea at the restaurant. During their absence several new travellers entered the car, among whom was a tall old man, shaven and wrinkled, evidently a merchant, wearing a large heavily-lined cloak and a big cap. This merchant sat down opposite the empty seats of the lawyer and his companion, and straightway entered into conversation with a young man who seemed like an employee in some commercial house, and who had likewise just boarded the train. At first the clerk had remarked that the seat opposite was occupied, and the old man had answered that he should get out at the first station. Thus their conversation started. I was sitting not far from these two travellers, and, as the train was not in motion, I could catch bits of their conversation when others were not talking. They talked first of the prices of goods and the condition of business; they referred to a person whom they both knew; then they plunged into the fair at Nijni Novgorod. The clerk boasted of knowing people who were leading a gay life there, but the old man did not allow him to continue, and, interrupting him, began to describe the festivities of the previous year at Kounavino, in which he had taken part. He was evidently proud of these recollections, and, probably thinking that this would detract nothing from the gravity which his face and manners expressed, he related with pride how, when drunk, he had fired, at Kounavino, such a broadside that he could describe it only in the other’s ear. The clerk began to laugh noisily. The old man laughed too, showing two long yellow teeth. Their conversation not interesting me, I left the car to stretch my legs.