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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  the knightly armor of Junker Georg, his assumed name. The famous ink-spot is seen no more, and the story is not authentic.415 In the Wartburg the German students celebrated, in October, 1817, the third jubilee of the Reformation; in the Wartburg Dr. Merle D’Aubigné of Geneva received the inspiration for his eloquent history of the Reformation, which had a wider circulation, at least in the English translation, than any other book on church history; in the Wartburg the Eisenach Conference of the various Lutheran church-governments of Germany inaugurates its periodical sessions for the consultative discussion of matters of common interest, as the revision of the Luther-Bible. The castle was handsomely restored and decorated in mediaeval style, in 1847. Luther’s sojourn in this romantic solitude extended through nearly eleven months, and alternated between recreation and work, health and sickness, high courage and deep despondency. Considering that he there translated the New Testament, it was the most useful year of his life. He gives a full description of it in letters to his Wittenberg friends, especially to Spalatin and Melanchthon, which were transmitted by secret messengers, and dated from "Patmos," or "the wilderness," from "the region of the air," or "the region of the birds." He was known and treated during this episode as Knight George. He exchanged the monastic gown for the dress of a gentleman, let his hair and beard grow, wore a coat of mail, a sword, and a golden chain, and had to imitate courtly manners. He was served by two pages, who brought the meals to his room twice a day. His food was much better than be had been accustomed to as a monk, and brought on dyspepsia and insomnia. He enjoyed the singing of the birds, "sweetly lauding God day and night with all their strength." He made excursions with an attendant. Sometimes he took a book along, but was reminded that a Knight and a scholar were different beings. He engaged in conversation on the way, with priests and monks, about ecclesiastical affairs, and the uncertain whereabouts of Luther, till he was requested to go on. He took part in the chase, but indulged in theological thoughts among the huntsmen and animals. "We caught a few hares and partridges," he said, "a worthy occupation for idle people." The nets and dogs reminded him of the arts of the Devil entangling and pursuing poor human souls. He sheltered a hunted hare, but the dogs tore it to pieces; this suggested to him the rage of the Devil and the Pope to destroy those whom he wished to preserve. It would be better, he thought, to hunt bears and wolves. He had many a personal encounter with the Devil, whose existence was as certain to him as his own. More than once he threw the inkstand at him—not literally, but spiritually. His severest blow at the archfiend was the translation of the New Testament.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Anna made her daughter sit down beside her, while she talked of how this thing might be accomplished in a way that would cause the least possible scandal: ‘For the sake of your father’s honourable name, I must ask you to help me, Stephen.’ It was better, she said, that Stephen should take Puddle with her, if Puddle would consent to go. They might live in London or somewhere abroad, on the pretext that Stephen wished to study. From time to time Stephen would come back to Morton and visit her mother, and during those visits, they two would take care to be seen together for appearances’ sake, for the sake of her father. She could take from Morton whatever she needed, the horses, and anything else she wished. Certain of the rent-rolls would be paid over to her, should her own income prove insufficient. All things must be done in a way that was seemly—no undue haste, no suspicion of a breach between mother and daughter: ‘For the sake of your father I ask this of you, not for your sake or mine, but for his. Do you consent to this, Stephen?’ And Stephen answered: ‘Yes, I consent.’ Then Anna said: ‘I’d like you to leave me now—I feel tired and I want to be alone for a little—but presently I shall send for Puddle to discuss her living with you in the future.’ So Stephen got up, and she went away, leaving Anna Gordon alone. 2As though drawn there by some strong natal instinct, Stephen went straight to her father’s study; and she sat in the old arm-chair that had survived him; then she buried her face in her hands. All the loneliness that had gone before was as nothing to this new loneliness of spirit. An immense desolation swept down upon her, an immense need to cry out and claim understanding for herself, an immense need to find an answer to the riddle of her unwanted being. All around her were grey and crumbling ruins, and under those ruins her love lay bleeding; shamefully wounded by Angela Crossby, shamefully soiled and defiled by her mother—a piteous, suffering, defenceless thing, it lay bleeding under the ruins. She felt blind when she tried to look into the future, stupefied when she tried to look back on the past. She must go—she was going away from Morton: ‘From Morton—I’m going away from Morton,’ the words thudded drearily in her brain: ‘I’m going away from Morton.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She drove on and left the car at the stables, then walked round to the house, and when she got there she opened the door of the study and went in, feeling terribly lonely without her father. Sitting down in the old arm-chair that had survived him, she let her head rest where his head had rested; and her hands she laid on the arms of the chair where his hands, as she knew, had lain times without number. Closing her eyes, she tried to visualize his face, his kind face that had sometimes looked anxious; but the picture came slowly and faded at once, for the dead must often give place to the living. It was Angela Crossby’s face that persisted as Stephen sat in her father’s old chair. 4In the small panelled room that gave on to the herb-garden, Angela yawned as she stared through the window; then she suddenly laughed out loud at her thoughts; then she suddenly frowned and spoke crossly to Tony. She could not get Stephen out of her mind, and this irritated while it amused her. Stephen was so large to be tongue-tied and frightened—a curious creature, not devoid of attraction. In a way—her own way—she was almost handsome; no, quite handsome; she had fine eyes and beautiful hair. And her body was supple like that of an athlete, narrow-hipped and wide shouldered, she should fence very well. Angela was anxious to see her fence; she must certainly try to arrange it somehow. Mrs. Antrim had conveyed a number of things, while actually saying extremely little; but Angela had no need of her hints, not now that she had come to know Stephen Gordon. And because she was idle, discontented and bored, and certainly not over-burdened with virtue, she must let her thoughts dwell unduly on this girl, while her curiosity kept pace with her thoughts. Tony stretched and whimpered, so Angela kissed him, then she sat down and wrote quite a short little letter: ‘Do come over to lunch the day after to-morrow and advise me about the garden,’ ran the letter. And it ended—after one or two casual remarks about gardens—with: ‘Tony says please come, Stephen!’ CHAPTER 181O n a beautiful evening three weeks later, Stephen took Angela over Morton. They had had tea with Anna and Puddle, and Anna had been coldly polite to this friend of her daughter’s, but Puddle’s manner had been rather resentful—she deeply mistrusted Angela Crossby. But now Stephen was free to show Angela Morton, and this she did gravely, as though something sacred were involved in this first introduction to her home, as though Morton itself must feel that the coming of this small, fair-haired woman was in some way momentous. Very gravely, then, they went over the house—even into Sir Philip’s old study.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Granted, I don’t really want friends. And he’s gorgeous and looks like he is twenty-one.” “Twenty-one!” she squealed. “That’s brilliant.” “But I think he does like me. I mean, with the foot touching there was an indication that he is attracted to me in some way, though maybe not, because the way he touched it was sort of sensual at first but then it was just sort of friendly. The point is—I don’t feel crazy around this one.” “Well, that’s what matters,” she said. “That you’re happy.” “Yeah, I don’t even care that I don’t have his number or email or even know his last name. I just feel like, I don’t know, like the universe put him there to show me—” “The universe?” “Yes, that the universe put him there to show me that I can have some of that male energy in my life without going totally insane.” “The universe is a wanker,” she said. 22. Somehow, at five in the morning, there were three families ahead of me in the ER. Did children only get injured at dawn? One of them was a boy with a soccer uniform on and one sneaker off, crying. I didn’t understand why he was playing soccer at four in the morning. Was he playing in his sleep? His mother and father seemed so concerned about him, comforting him and stroking his hair. I wanted someone to stroke my hair. I thought about texting Annika, who would definitely be awake in Europe, but didn’t want to worry her. I didn’t want her to ask how I got the UTI. Instead I texted Jamie. Hi just seeing what you are doing and how you are? He was an early riser. I saw the dot dot dot of him responding. Then the dots stopped. Nothing. I bet Megan the scientist was in bed with him. Immediately I regretted it. Then I texted Adam the wolf-monkey. I sent him a picture of my hospital bracelet. Look where I am…hospitalized! I needed to feel seen by someone, even someone I barely knew and did not like. I’ve always hated doctors’ offices or anything having to do with medicine, because I’m always afraid they’re going to tell me I’m dying. If I’m going to die, I would rather just die and never know about it in advance. Even at my most suicidal I feared the dying process. I was exhausted so I lay down in my cloth hospital gown on the little bed. It felt like some kind of surrender, a sweet womb or coma. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself a bit. Then I felt a little wetness between my thighs and realized I was dribbling pee. My inner thighs felt chafed and irritated, from the sex and from the urine. But everything was going to be fine. I wanted to just lie here forever. I wanted kind nurses to take care of me. Books were nothing in this world. Academia was nothing.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen had been too sore at heart to reply; but throughout the long journey from Morton to Paris, Puddle’s words had kept hammering in her brain: ‘You’re not working, and yet work’s your only weapon.’ So while Mary lay sleeping in Stephen’s arms on that first blessèd night of their reunion, her lover lay wide-eyed with sleeplessness, planning the work she must do on the morrow, cursing her own indolence and folly, her illusion of safety where none existed. 2They soon settled down to their more prosaic days very much as quite ordinary people will do. Each of them now had her separate tasks—Stephen her writing, and Mary the household, the paying of bills, the filing of receipts, the answering of unimportant letters. But for her there were long hours of idleness, since Pauline and Pierre were almost too perfect—they would smile and manage the house their own way, which it must be admitted was better than Mary’s. As for the letters, there were not very many; and as for the bills, there was plenty of money—being spared the struggle to make two ends meet, she was also deprived of the innocent pleasure of scheming to provide little happy surprises, little extra comforts for the person she loved, which in youth can add a real zest to existence. Then Stephen had found her typing too slow, so was sending the work to a woman in Passy; obsessed by a longing to finish her book, she would tolerate neither let nor hindrance. And because of their curious isolation, there were times when Mary would feel very lonely. For whom did she know? She had no friends in Paris except the kind Mademoiselle Duphot and Julie. Once a week, it is true, she could go and see Buisson, for Stephen continued to keep up her fencing; and occasionally Brockett would come strolling in, but his interest was centred entirely in Stephen; if she should be working, as was often the case, he would not waste very much time over Mary. Stephen often called her into the study, comforted by the girl’s loving presence. ‘Come and sit with me, sweetheart, I like you in here.’ But quite soon she would seem to forget all about her. ‘What . . . what?’ she would mutter, frowning a little. ‘Don’t speak to me just for a minute, Mary. Go and have your luncheon, there’s a good child; I’ll come when I’ve finished this bit—you go on!’ But Mary’s meal might be eaten alone; for meals had become an annoyance to Stephen.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I feel the ache of not having a partner anymore, the only person in my life who would care whether or not the washing machine was fixed or that I had received a phone call from Daisy that afternoon telling me she had made her first two friends at school. My head is spinning – from the passionate sex I just had with #4 to the romantic dinner date to the stinging rejection when we got back to his house to my sitting here with such ease in #3’s kitchen. I feel mercurial, like I’m fostering different personalities to see which one I will ultimately adopt. With #4, I’m the six-years-older MILF who can’t get enough, with #3, I’m the patient end-of-day sounding board, and underlying both of these personas is the memory of the devoted wife I was to my husband, who theoretically I could still go back to if I could find him. I hear a voice urging me to keep going, leap forward, don’t look back, pedal faster, have more sex, learn more, explore more, discover more – more, more, more – and then another voice yelling a command to stop and retreat, don’t abandon the life you know, decamp for safer pastures. If I could clarify whether I am losing or finding myself, I would find the key to the door I am meant to unlock. “I’m so tired,” I say suddenly. #3, wiping down the counter, pauses to glance at me and invites me to sleep over. I nod my head in assent. Upstairs in the narrow bathroom, he loans me toiletries and together we brush our teeth with his natural toothpaste that makes me wish I had a powerful dose of chemical mouthwash, moving around each other in an intimate dance that feels familiar even though it’s our first time doing it. In his bed, naked beneath a cotton sheet, a window fan gently blowing on us, we kiss. I know that I could tell him I’m bone-tired and he would graciously accept it, that the pressure to have sex with him is self-inflicted. I love the physicality of having sex, the way my body tingles and shivers, but I also love how it makes me feel grounded afterwards, how the sharing of intense energy connects me with whomever I happen to be having sex – even if the connection ends the minute we put our clothes back on. Tonight I will get to hold onto that feeling all night since I am sleeping here, so I rally and then drift off to sleep to the whirring of the fan and beyond it the rush of the river. The scene would be pretty close to perfect if not for the cats who jump on the bed throughout the night with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, climbing on top of me to let me know that my presence is not appreciated. In the morning, we rise at dawn, both exhausted after a fitful night.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  This is not exactly what I had in mind: they’re all walking in pairs and they mostly have white hair. I grimace at what an amateur I am, at the quaint notion that I would drive myself into town and find a single man to sweep me off my feet. Unless that man is 70-something and looking for a threesome, I’ve clearly come to the wrong place. But I’ve already put myself together and I’m really looking forward to that cocktail with which I lured myself here, plus I can’t exactly go home now that I’m dolled up and smell like I’m hoping to be devoured, so I park my car and reluctantly walk in on my own. I feel equal parts brave and foolish: less “I am woman, hear me roar,” and more “I am lonely, newly single, timid woman, hear me whisper.” With empty stools on either side of me, I sit down and order a Margarita in a voice the bartender has to lean in close to hear and nurse that drink for all its worth. I can do this , I think, just one drink, some people watching and I’m out . I listen to the young, pig-tailed bartender tell her older, white-bearded counterpart about her visit home to introduce her boyfriend to her parents. I eavesdrop on two women at the end of the bar who are discussing strategies for organic gardening, stopping only when I realize I am nodding along with their suggestions. I watch the tables in front of the bar fill up and wonder if my parents might turn up; they don’t live far and this looks like their crowd. I remember how ill at ease I felt in bars even when I was in college and was supposed to thrive in them, finding them loud and pointless, preferring to snuggle up with my friends in our own apartment where we could talk without yelling and sip our peach wine coolers in a room that didn’t smell like rank beer. A boisterous group files into the bar and fills the seats to my left. My radar goes up. A man whose back is turned to me is tall, muscular and has a full head of dark hair. I casually lean forward to check his ring finger and raise my eyebrows when I see that it is bare. The group seems to be his family, so I assume a girlfriend will soon appear and I can then relax my lifted eyebrows and go back to feeling sorry for myself. I impatiently wait a few more minutes, closely monitoring the group dynamics. When a girlfriend does not appear, I slide my stool back noisily, hop off it and make a big show of moving it away from him to try and grab his attention. It works. “Oh, hey, sorry,” he says, turning his warm brown eyes to me. “I didn’t mean to crowd you.’” “No, no,” I say, smiling.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  To fully understand the boy-mode/girl-mode dichotomy and the fascination surrounding women’s clothing that typifies the MTF crossdressing experience, we must first take into account how the marginalization of women in our society affects those who are raised male.Enforced Ignorance and the Mystification of FemininityWhen we talk about marginalization, we refer to the way that “those perceived as lacking desirable traits or deviating from the group norms tend to be excluded by wider society.”4 One of the most lucid descriptions of marginalization that I’ve read comes from bell hooks’s book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, in which she focuses on how most prominent feminists of the 1960s and 1970s tended to ignore the viewpoints and concerns of economically and racially marginalized women such as herself. This was because, being predominantly white and middle-class, these feminists existed in the center with regard to race and class, so they had little awareness or understanding of lives and perspectives on the margins. However, the reverse is not true: People at the margins must understand life at the center in order to survive. As hooks explains: “Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the center as well as on the margin. We understood both.”5While hooks is referring here to her experiences growing up as a person of color in white America, her observations about margins and centers can readily be applied to other class issues. For example, those who are marginalized for being lesbian tend to have a thorough understanding of the assumptions and experiences of the heterosexual center—after all, they grow up in a predominantly heterosexual world and constantly have to navigate other people’s heterosexual assumptions. In contrast, most heterosexuals understand very little about lesbians and lesbian culture, as such knowledge has been systematically shut out of dominant society. Similarly, while I understand cissexual culture (as I was raised as, and generally assumed to be, cissexual), most cissexuals tend to have an extraordinarily limited understanding of transsexuality.It is important to note that the lack of understanding that those at the center have of those at the margin is not solely due to their lack of exposure (such as the fact that they’ve never been to a lesbian bar or to a transsexual support group). Rather, ignorance about marginalized people is often enforced from within the center. For example, if a straight woman decided to go to a lesbian bar (where she might have the opportunity to learn more about lesbian people and perspectives), she risks having her straight friends and family members assume that she is lesbian.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  His blanketed tail jutted off the wagon, but it wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in Venice. No one seemed to notice or care. It wasn’t like I was smuggling a dead body. 38. I walked Dominic and then kept him shut up in the pantry the rest of the night. In him I saw a symbol of everything standing in the way of Theo and me being together freely. It wasn’t a problem with the sea but a problem with the land. I went to Abbot Kinney to try to distract myself. If I could be light about this, like the way I felt shopping for those other dates, maybe I could fool myself into thinking there would be life on the other side. But as I stood in the sun, each of the boutiques looked like fake storefronts—empty, like a film set. At one of the cheaper boutiques, I decided I was going to steal something: an adjustable ring with a blue stone in it. I brought it into the dressing room with me and stuck it in my bra, then walked out. It made me feel high for a minute, an adrenaline rush, but then the doom set in again. I felt sick and sad. Under a pair of palm trees on the street corner I threw up on a grate. I couldn’t believe how physical or immediate my loneliness was. I needed help, some kind of comfort, to get through until I could see him again, a place to vent. I needed someone warm who might not judge me. I called Claire and left her a long message on her voicemail. “Hi, it’s me. I’m over my head with the swimmer and fucked up. I think I might be dying. Have you ever felt like you are dying from your experiences with these guys? I mean, I know you have. But what about, really dying? Like, in a totally physical way? I think I’m actually sick, Claire. I puked in front of a bunch of Euro tourists on Abbot Kinney. I hate people and their normal lives. Anyway, can you call me back? Please? I’m sorry if I have been horrible.” I threw up again in front of a boutique called Safe Sox that sold expensive patterned socks: argyle, stripes, superheroes, marijuana leaves. I didn’t give a fuck if anyone saw, what anyone thought. Fuck them and their stupid socks. Why were people personalizing their feet with something no one else would ever see? Didn’t they know their socks were futile?! Could you get any more Sisyphean than a pair of socks emblazoned with sushi rolls? I wandered in and out of stores, like a ghost. I looked at all the people and they seemed inconsequential: deluded and interchangeable. Anything I used to worry about meant nothing now.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Also by Melissa Broder So Sad Today Last Sext Scarecrone Meat Heart When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2018 by Melissa Broder All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. crownpublishing.com HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 9781524761554 Ebook ISBN 9781524761578 Cover design by Rachel Willey Cover photograph by Tim O’Brien v5.2 ep Contents Cover Also by Melissa Broder Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Acknowledgments About the Author To Nicholas These things never happened but always are. —Sallust 1. I was no longer lonely but I was. I had Dominic, my sister’s diabetic foxhound, who followed me from room to room, lumbering onto my lap, unaware of his bulk. I liked the smell of his meaty breath, which he didn’t know was rancid. I liked the warmth of his fat belly, the primal way he crouched when he took a shit. It felt so intimate scooping his gigantic shits, the big hot bags of them. I thought, This is the proper use of my love, this is the man for me, this is the way. The beach house was a contemporary glass fortress, sparse enough to remind me nothing of my life back home. I could disappear in a good way: as if never having existed, unlike the way I felt I was disappearing all fall, winter, and spring in my hot, cluttered apartment in Phoenix, surrounded by reminders of myself and Jamie, suffocating in what was mine. There are good and bad ways of vanishing.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But nothing terrible had happened. In fact something beautiful had occurred—or, at least, it was supposed to be beautiful. Would the pain begin to outweigh the beauty? How much pain would I have to get into before I gave up on pursuing beauty? And what would I do then anyway? No, I wouldn’t stop. Even if the experience became only pain, eclipsing the beauty entirely, I would wait at those rocks. I would wait for that little bit of relief that fed the pain in the first place. And what if I really were to stay in Venice and not return to Phoenix? Would it even be possible? Would Theo even want me here? I knew nothing about his patterns of migration or anything about his life. Maybe he took off for other places at other times of the year. How did I know that he wouldn’t be leaving? And what about Annika? Her love had always been across a distance. Even in her act of kindness this summer we were never together in the same space. How would she feel about me taking root where she lived? Would it expose a less geographic, more profound internal distance in our relationship? I was scared to need her, to ask for more than she could give. I didn’t want to be rejected by her again. Venice looked like nothingness to me now—the same nothingness that I had fled Phoenix to escape. The only difference was that I still had Theo. He hadn’t gone anywhere. I would see him tomorrow night. In the past the emptiness came when the person rejected me and would not be coming back, like Jamie or Garrett. But I was going to see Theo again, this I pretty much knew. We were connected. So how, in spite of this, had the emptiness made its way in anyway? I wandered into a fancy convenience store, crying next to the chips. I realized that I hadn’t eaten all day. I got a pint of strawberry ice cream and sat on a bench outside the store, watching people walk by. I wasn’t sure what time it was. There were a lot of couples, hand-in-hand. I imagined that when these couples broke apart for a time, when they took a day apart, they didn’t crumble and get sick like me. I was different from most people. Whatever this thing was, I definitely had it and it was only getting worse. 34. Buying the wagon wasn’t sexy like shopping for makeup and clothes. I wondered if real love always devolved into this: moments of non-sexiness.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “Chasing the weekend down, I love it. Go, Mama, go!” At home, I jump in the shower and speed through some last-minute grooming. I start to get dressed but realize it’s all about to come off anyway, so instead wrap myself in a short silk bathrobe and a pair of leggings, zip a long puffy parka over it and walk the ten blocks to #6’s apartment. He texts to ask what’s taking me so long. “Sorry, I was saving time on the back end,” I write. “What does that mean?” he asks. “You’ll find out soon enough.” When he opens the door, I unzip my coat, throw it on the floor and then unwrap my robe and let it fall open. “See how much time I saved? I’ve already cleaned myself up and done all the necessary preamble. Now I’m ready for you,” I say. He drops to his knees and pulls down my leggings, pressing his face against my stomach and then working his way down. “I love how efficient you are with your time,” he says laughing, and after a few minutes of his inhaling me in the foyer I confess that I’m freezing and would love to get under the covers with him. I am a little bit drunk and more than a little excited to be kid-free for the whole night, so I do not hold back. I come over and over again and each time accompany the physical release with satisfied cries and then screams of joy. When we quiet down and start to fall asleep, he lies curled on his side of the bed facing away from me. I am unsure what to do. I have always been a solitary sleeper and barely move in my sleep, but this is our first sleepover and I want him to curl around me, not to be able to get enough of me. I settle for placing my hand on his back so that we have a particle of physical connection. I awaken early in the morning when he rises from the bed. I assume he will come right back, but I hear water running in the bathroom and a few minutes later he sits next to me on the side of the bed where I am lying. He is fully dressed. “Hey,” he says softly, and I gaze at him with sleepy morning eyes. “I’m going to the farmers’ market and then to yoga. Stay as long as you want, the door will lock behind you when you leave,” he says. My eyes widen and I grimace. “In other words, don’t let the door hit me on the way out,” I say. ‘”No, not at all. I like to get an early start on Saturdays but that doesn’t mean you have to. We’ll talk later, OK?” he says. “Sure, OK, bye,” I say, closing my eyes. A moment later I hear the front door close behind him.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I pleaded. “I don’t think that’s a great idea right now,” he said. “Maybe in a few weeks?” “A few weeks?!” I said. “How much longer is this going to go on for?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I love you.” “Fuck you!” I yelled, and hung up the phone. Then I texted him. i’m sorry i’m just hurt and scared forgive me? i love you too He wrote: let’s just take this time 1. I was no longer lonely but I was. I had Dominic, my sister’s diabetic foxhound, who followed me from room to room, lumbering onto my lap, unaware of his bulk. I liked the smell of his meaty breath, which he didn’t know was rancid. I liked the warmth of his fat belly, the primal way he crouched when he took a shit. It felt so intimate scooping his gigantic shits, the big hot bags of them. I thought, This is the proper use of my love, this is the man for me, this is the way. The beach house was a contemporary glass fortress, sparse enough to remind me nothing of my life back home. I could disappear in a good way: as if never having existed, unlike the way I felt I was disappearing all fall, winter, and spring in my hot, cluttered apartment in Phoenix, surrounded by reminders of myself and Jamie, suffocating in what was mine. There are good and bad ways of vanishing. I wanted no more belongings. On the second-story deck of the beach house I escaped the hell of my own smelly bathrobe, wearing one of the silk kimonos my sister had left behind. I fell asleep out there every night, tipsy on white wine, under the Venice stars, with my feet tucked under Dominic’s gut, belonging to nothing familiar. I felt no pressure to fall asleep, and so, after nine months of insomnia, I was finally able to drift off easily every night. Then at three a.m. I would wake gently and traipse to the bed with the Egyptian cotton sheets, kicking my legs all over them in celebration, rolling around and touching my own skin as though I were a stranger touching someone foreign, or cradling the big back of the dog to my front to die to the world for another eight hours. I might have even been happy. — And yet, walking on Abbot Kinney Boulevard one night at the end of my first week there, passing the windows of the yuppie shops—each their own white cube gallery—I saw two people, a man and a woman, early twenties maybe, definitely on a first or second date, and I knew I still wasn’t okay.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  As for the letters, there were not very many; and as for the bills, there was plenty of money —being spared the struggle to make two ends meet, she was also deprived of the innocent pleasure of scheming to provide little happy surprises, little extra comforts for the person she loved, which in youth can add a real zest to existence. Then Stephen had found her typing too slow, so was sending the work to a woman in Passy; obsessed by a longing to finish her book, she would tolerate neither let nor hindrance. And because of their curious isolation, there were times when Mary would feel very lonely. For whom did she know? She had no friends in Paris except the kind Mademoiselle Duphot and Julie. Once a week, it is true, she could go and see Buisson, for Stephen continued to keep up her fencing; and occasionally Brockett would come strolling in, but his interest was centred entirely in Stephen; if she should be working, as was often the case, he would not waste very much time over Mary. Stephen often called her into the study, comforted by the girl’s loving presence. ‘Come and sit with me, sweetheart, I like you in here.’ But quite soon she would seem to forget all about her. ‘What . . . what?’ she would mutter, frowning a little. ‘Don’t speak to me just for a minute, Mary. Go and have your luncheon, there’s a good child; I’ll come when I’ve finished this bit—you go on!’ But Mary’s meal might be eaten alone; for meals had become an annoyance to Stephen. Of course there was David, the grateful, the devoted. Mary could always talk to David, but since he could never answer her back the conversation was very one-sided. Then too, he was making it obvious that he, in his turn, was missing Stephen; he would hang around looking discontented when she failed to go out after frequent suggestions. For although his heart was faithful to Mary, the gentle dispenser of all salvation, yet the instinct that has dwelt in the soul of the male, perhaps ever since Adam left the Garden of Eden, the instinct that displays itself in club windows and in other such places of male segregation, would make him long for the companionable walks that had sometimes been taken apart from Mary. Above all would it make him long intensely for Stephen’s strong hands and purposeful ways; for that queer, intangible something about her that appealed to the canine manhood in him. She always allowed him to look after himself, without fussing; in a word, she seemed restful to David.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It seems silly to me now that I had felt hopeful, lying in bed with the man I was hoping would be #1 on a long list of men. It seemed effortless to feel a spark of confidence in my potential to find happiness as I came down from the high of my first orgasm in who knows how long – but now, in the quiet of my day-to-day life, I feel abandoned by both Michael and my own burgeoning self. Georgia and I walk through the market that’s part of the farm where she attends day camp. We come in here every afternoon after camp to inhale the scent of freshly baked bread and choose an ice pop for a treat. I notice a familiar-looking man standing by the salad bar and my gaze lingers a moment too long so that he catches and returns it as we try to figure out if we know each other. He is maybe ten years older than me, with a salt and pepper goatee, deep lines around his eyes and tattoos creeping beyond the short sleeves of his T-shirt. I squint trying to place him and then, having no choice but to follow Georgia who is making a beeline for the salad bar, walk toward him. “Oh, Johnny!” I loudly exclaim, relieved to have finally made the connection. “Hey Laura, I thought that might be you. It’s been so long.” We smile warmly at each other and embrace in a quick hug. Johnny had been my contractor years earlier when we were in the midst of a house renovation. He had been in and out of my house for weeks, and one night showed up at about 9pm in his pickup truck with his German Shepherd hanging out the passenger window. He said he wanted to see how the outdoor lights looked after dark, so we turned them all on and stood outside while my son threw sticks for his dog to fetch. I had suspected that he had a crush on me as the night-time visit seemed odd, and often he had idled in the house for what seemed a little longer than necessary to chat with me after he was done for the day. Now he expresses surprise at how big Georgia has gotten and tells me he’s been working at a job close by. When I ask how he’s doing, he shakes his head, saying this has been a terrible year, that he’d been in a near-fatal motorcycle accident and recovered to find out that he had lung cancer, so surgery and treatments and a difficult recovery ensued. “Yikes, what a year, I’m sorry. You look healthy but thinner, which is why I guess I didn’t recognize you right away. You’re so tough, I have no doubt you’ll be back to your robust self soon.” “Well, Laura, I’m getting better and stronger every day. God is good, and I’m grateful. How are you?

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Tourists flock today to Turkey’s seaside resorts and turquoise beaches or Istanbul’s covered bazaars, historic palaces, and magnificent mosques. But although around fifty tourist buses wait at the exit from Ephesus, none usually waits at the gate of Pisidian Antioch, and if one drives through the country town of Yalvaç, it is usually on its way to somewhere else. You make the three-hour drive north from the coastal city of Antalya, Paul’s Attalia, and its adjacent ancient Perge, inland along the route of the Augustan Via Sebaste through the western Taurus Mountains, the rough terrain of Isparta, the lakeside town of Egirdir, to the ruins of Pisidian Antioch about half a mile up a slope from modern Yalvaç. The great Pauline scholar Sir William Ramsay said after a visit to that onetime Roman city in 1905, “The situation of Antioch is very fine, but the locality is now deserted, forlorn, and devoid of ruins that possess any interest or beauty.” Today, the situation is as fine as ever, the locality is not exactly deserted, and the ruins may not as such possess much beauty, but surely their interest is a very different matter. In spite of on-and-off excavations before and after World War I, the latter with the aid of Francis W. Kelsey of the University of Michigan and under the direction of David M. Robinson of Johns Hopkins University, not much seems to have changed except for some scattered yellow rusting signs in German and Turkish. Tall brown weeds and charcoal gray dirt engulf the few protruding stones and surround the few excavated areas, but, on this sunny August day in 2002, you are privileged to have the young and energetic Ünal Demirer, newly appointed director of the Yalvaç Museum, as your very special guide. You walk past the site’s gate, guards, and the inevitable kiosk selling books, trinkets, and sodas. You stay carefully clear of a bulldozer hoisting a newly cut limestone block to reconstruct the Roman city gate and, it is hoped, bring more tourists to the site. Ünal leads you along a wire fence to one church and then up the hill to another. The first one’s outlines are clearly visible. It is a large fourth-century basilica with some damaged mosaics near which was found a font inscribed with the words “Saint Paul.” The second church is a much smaller one, but there is no evidence for the speculation that it was built atop the synagogue where Paul preached in Acts 13. “Maybe Paul’s synagogue is under this small church,” Ünal says, shrugging his shoulders. “Who knows?” In any case, you are not there for what Christianity later made of Paul, but for what Augustus earlier made of Galatia through cities like Pisidian Antioch, and for what Paul confronted in that world with his gospel of Christ.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then something would draw her, not back to her bedroom, but on up the stairs to the room of their daughter. She would open that door very gently—by inches. She would hold her hand so that it shaded the candle, and would stand looking down at the sleeping Stephen as she and her husband had done long ago. But now there would be no little child to look down on, no small helplessness to arouse mother-pity. Stephen would be lying very straight, very large, very long, underneath the neatly drawn covers. Quite often an arm would be outside the bedspread, the sleeve having fallen away as it lay there, and that arm would look firm and strong and possessive, and so would the face by the light of the candle. She slept deeply. Her breathing would be even and placid. Her body would be drinking in its fill of refreshment. It would rise up clean and refreshed in the morning; it would eat, speak, move—it would move about Morton. In the stables, in the gardens, in the neighbouring paddocks, in the study—it would move about Morton. Intolerable dispensation of nature, Anna would stare at that splendid young body, and would feel, as she did so, that she looked on a stranger. She would scourge her heart and her anxious spirit with memories drawn from this stranger’s beginnings: ‘Little—you were so very little!’ she would whisper, ‘and you sucked from my breast because you were hungry—little and always so terribly hungry—a good baby though, a contented little baby—’ And Stephen would sometimes stir in her sleep as though she were vaguely conscious of Anna. It would pass and she would lie quiet again, breathing in those deep, placid draughts of refreshment. Then Anna, still ruthlessly scourging her heart and her anxious spirit, would stoop and kiss Stephen, but lightly and very quickly on the forehead, so that the girl should not be awakened. So that the girl should not wake and kiss back, she would kiss her lightly and quickly on the forehead. 3The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments and keen intuition, even normal youth—but the intuition of those who stand midway between the sexes, is so ruthless, so poignant, so accurate, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge; and by such an intuition did Stephen discover that all was not well with her parents.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  1.I was no longer lonely but I was. I had Dominic, my sister’s diabetic foxhound, who followed me from room to room, lumbering onto my lap, unaware of his bulk. I liked the smell of his meaty breath, which he didn’t know was rancid. I liked the warmth of his fat belly, the primal way he crouched when he took a shit. It felt so intimate scooping his gigantic shits, the big hot bags of them. I thought, This is the proper use of my love, this is the man for me, this is the way. The beach house was a contemporary glass fortress, sparse enough to remind me nothing of my life back home. I could disappear in a good way: as if never having existed, unlike the way I felt I was disappearing all fall, winter, and spring in my hot, cluttered apartment in Phoenix, surrounded by reminders of myself and Jamie, suffocating in what was mine. There are good and bad ways of vanishing. I wanted no more belongings. On the second-story deck of the beach house I escaped the hell of my own smelly bathrobe, wearing one of the silk kimonos my sister had left behind. I fell asleep out there every night, tipsy on white wine, under the Venice stars, with my feet tucked under Dominic’s gut, belonging to nothing familiar. I felt no pressure to fall asleep, and so, after nine months of insomnia, I was finally able to drift off easily every night. Then at three a.m. I would wake gently and traipse to the bed with the Egyptian cotton sheets, kicking my legs all over them in celebration, rolling around and touching my own skin as though I were a stranger touching someone foreign, or cradling the big back of the dog to my front to die to the world for another eight hours. I might have even been happy. —And yet, walking on Abbot Kinney Boulevard one night at the end of my first week there, passing the windows of the yuppie shops—each their own white cube gallery—I saw two people, a man and a woman, early twenties maybe, definitely on a first or second date, and I knew I still wasn’t okay. They were discussing intently where they should go to eat and drink, as though it really mattered. He had an accent, German, I think, and was handsome and fuckable: hair close-cropped and boyish, strong arms, an Adam’s apple that protruded and made me think of sucking on it. The woman was, as the undergrads at the Arizona university where I worked as a librarian might say, a butterface.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I had known that Michael would be back soon and for good, so it felt a bit like when my parents used to leave us in the house as teens when they went on tropical vacations. It had felt like I was playing an adult living on her own more than I really was one, but I understand now that my current state of aloneness is permanent. It doesn’t feel exciting to me, just scary and lonely. Early Tuesday morning, I drive to Pennsylvania to meet my childhood friend Jessica, who is treating me to a few nights at a spa. For years, she has tried to convince me to go away for a few days, but she knew that much as I craved a break from my kids, I would never take one. Partly out of anxiety from being away from them, partly from the difficulty of getting childcare since Michael worked such long and erratic hours, and partly because I would not give up control of their care for even a day if it wasn’t imperative. First and foremost, I was at all times a mother, and stepping away from that role to do something just for myself was inconceivable; even thinking about it used to flood me with guilt. Our first afternoon at the spa, we throw ourselves into the Zen spirit of the place and take a mala bead meditation class. The instructor says we will go around in a circle and express what we are hoping to achieve with this meditation. She starts the circle by sharing that she is grappling with a huge loss that’s been very difficult for her to talk about, the recent passing of her tabby cat. As soon as the words leave her mouth, I panic that I will burst into uncontrollable nervous laughter if I look at Jess. This is your pain? I want to snort. I know we’re not having a contest, but come on, I’m obviously the winner. There are fifteen women before it’s my turn and each says what she wants – serenity, love, patience, emotional connectedness. When it’s my turn I surprise myself and try to set the record straight of who is ahead in this grief game by blurting out that I am reeling from the sudden rupture of a decades-long marriage and I am looking for clarity as to what to do next and how to begin my recovery. The instructor looks at me with such genuine warmth and compassion that my eyes fill with tears and I scold myself for not having taken the loss of her cat seriously. I have recently become aware of how often I make hasty, biting judgments about people I don’t know; I am determined to change that. Being in the throes of grief does not make me the owner of it or give me the right to make light of others’ sorrow that I have blithely determined is less than mine.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “I just realized that I have a football field open to the right of me and you’re crammed in here with a big group, so I was giving you more room.” And that’s it. Clearly, I don’t know how this is done, but I do now know that dragging your stool away from the man you’re trying to get to pay attention to you is not effective in the long run. His back is turned again and now I’m not only alone but adrift at sea, gaping spaces to my right and left. I did not know it was possible to feel both conspicuous and invisible at the same time and I squeeze my eyes shut as if that could make me disappear altogether. Sip, breathe, sip, breathe , I instruct myself. “That’s an interesting bag,” a deep voice says, interrupting my one-woman pity party. “Sorry, what?” I ask, startled and looking around to see if this handsome stranger is speaking to me or someone near me. “Your bag. What’s it made of?” he asks, nodding his head towards my clutch purse resting on the bar. “Cork,” I say, testing out my voice, and I hand it to him to touch. “Very fancy.” “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s from one of the outlet stores over in Lee. But thanks,” I foolishly say and cringe, thinking about how I am always quick to deflect a compliment – learn how to just say thank you , I think to myself. “I passed those stores earlier today on my bike,” he says. “That’s a hilly bike ride.” “No, not a bicycle, I mean my motorcycle. I’m on a quick getaway trip, just checking out this area. I’m Jack,” he says, sticking out his hand toward me. “And this is Don,” he says of the short, balding man next to him. They continue talking, but include me in their conversation. I’m the only one from around here, so I give them tips for local restaurants and scenic highways. Jack gestures to my nearly empty glass and asks what I’m drinking. I tell him a Margarita and he asks if I’ve ever had a Cadillac. When I say no, he calls over the bartender and orders one for himself and one for me, asking the bartender to put it on his tab. The bartender’s eyes flicker over to me and he gives me a small smile and nod, as if relieved that I seem to have made a friend. I suppress a laugh. A man is buying me a drink? The last time I went on a date I was still using a fake ID, not even of legal drinking age yet. Don tells us that he traveled here from hours away to hear the singer tonight, then he drifts off to his wife and friends, leaving Jack and me alone.