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 Art of Seduction (2001)

  his sash. • Presently he forced to return home and she had had to stay on alone for some while be-raises the lattice, and the fore she could join him. Now she was lonely, and had little money, and was two lovers stand together by depressed by her squalid circumstances—after all, she had been raised as a the side door while he tells her how he dreads the lady. She answered the ad. coining day, which will The gentleman turned out to be Casanova, and what a gentleman he keep them apart; then he was. The room he offered was nice, and the rent was low; he asked only for slips away. The lady watches him go, and this occasional companionship. Miss Pauline moved in. They played chess, went moment of parting will riding, discussed literature. He was so well-bred, polite, and generous. A se-remain among her most rious and high-minded girl, she came to depend on their friendship; here charming memories. • was a man she could talk to for hours. Then one day Casanova seemed Indeed, one's attachment to a man depends largely on changed, upset, excited: he confessed that he was in love with her. She was the elegance of his leave-going back to Portugal soon, to rejoin her lover, and this was not what she taking. When he jumps wanted to hear. She told him he should go riding to calm down. out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens Later that evening she received news: he had fallen from his horse. Feel-his trouser sash, rolls up ing responsible for his accident, she rushed to him, found him in bed, and the sleeves of his court fell into his arms, unable to control herself. The two became lovers that cloak, overrobe, or hunting costume, stuffs his night, and remained so for the rest of Miss Pauline's stay in London. Yet belongings into the breast when it came time for her to leave for Portugal, he did not try to stop her; of his robe and then briskly instead, he comforted her, reasoning that each of them had offered the secures the outer sash— one other the perfect, temporary antidote to their loneliness, and that they really begins to hate him. would be friends for life. — THE PILLOW BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON, TRANSLATED AND Some years later, in a small Spanish town, a young and beautiful girl EDITED BY IVAN M O R R I S

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  RICHARD: Your beauty Now she was more alone than ever, and more dependent on him. was the cause of that effect— \ Your beauty, that Near the end of the trip, Aly Khan proposed to Rita. She turned him did haunt me in my sleep \ down; she did not think he was the kind of man you married. He followed To undertake the death of her to Hollywood, where her former friends were less friendly than be-all the world, \ So I might fore. Thank God she had Aly Khan to help her. A year later she finally live one hour in your sweet bosom. succumbed, abandoning her career, moving to Aly Khan's château, and — W I L L I A M SHAKESPEARE, marrying him. THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD III Interpretation. Aly Khan, like a lot of men, fell in love with Rita Hayworth the moment he saw the film Gilda, in 1948. He made up his mind My child, my sister, dream that he would seduce her somehow. The moment he heard she was coming \ How sweet all things to the Riviera, he got his friend Elsa Maxwell to lure her to the party and would seem \ Were we in seat her next to him. He knew about the breakup of her marriage, and that kind land to live together, \And there love how vulnerable she was. His strategy was to block out everything else in slow and long, \ There love her world—problems, other men, suspicion of him and his motives, etc. and die among \ Those His campaign began with the display of an intense interest in her life— scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather. \ constant phone calls, flowers, gifts, all to keep him in her mind. He set up Drowned suns that the fortune-teller to plant the seed. When she began to fall for him, he in-glimmer there \ Through troduced her to his friends, knowing she would feel alienated among them, cloud-dishevelled air \ Move me with such a and therefore dependent on him. Her dependence was heightened by the mystery as appears \ trip to Spain, where she was on unfamiliar territory, besieged by reporters, Within those other skies \ and forced to cling to him for help. He slowly came to dominate her Of your treacherous eyes \ thoughts. Everywhere she turned, there he was. Finally she succumbed, out When I behold them shining through their tears. of weakness and the boost to her vanity that his attention represented. Un- \ There, there is nothing der his spell, she forgot about his horrid reputation, relinquishing the suspi-else but grace and measure, cions that were the only thing protecting her from him. \ Richness, quietness, and pleasure. . . . \ See, It was not Aly Khan's wealth or looks that made him a great seducer. Isolate the Victim • 315

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We had inquired together about airline tickets to London and found that all the planes were booked for the next two days. I could wait till Wednesday or inquire about boat trains the following day. Or I could go to the airport and wait to be called as a standby. I had options. All I had to do was endure the insane pounding of my heart until I could find Bennett again—or someone. Perhaps myself. — I dragged my suitcase back to the café on the Place St. Michel. Suddenly, being without a man, I realized how heavy it was. I had not packed with the expectation of traveling alone. My suitcase was full of guidebooks, a small tape recorder for the article I’d never written, notebooks, my electric hair-setter, ten copies of my first book of poems. Some of these were to be given to a literary agent in London. Others were simply carried out of insecurity; badges of identity to put on for anyone I might meet. They were designed to prove that I was not just an ordinary woman. They were designed to prove that I was exceptional. They were designed to prove that I was to be given safe conduct. I clung pitifully to my status as an exception, because without it, I would be just another lonely female on the prowl. “Do I have your address?” Adrian asked before he took off in the Triumph. “It’s in the book I gave you. On the last endpaper.” But he’d lost the book. The copy I’d inscribed for him in shocking-pink ink. Needless to say, he’d never finished it. “Here—let me get you another.” And I began unzipping my huge canvas suitcase in the middle of the street. Jars of cosmetics rolled out. Loose papers, notes for poems I was working on, tape cassettes, film, lipsticks, paperback novels, a dog-eared Michelin Guide. I shoved all this junk back into the squashy Italian suitcase and dug out one of my own books. I cracked the virgin spine. To careless Adrian [I wrote] who loses books. With love and many kisses, your friendly social worker from New York— And I wrote my New York address and telephone number on the endpaper again, knowing he’d probably lose this copy too. That was how we parted. Loss piled on loss. My life spilling out into the street, and nothing but a slim volume of verse between me and the void. — In the café, I sat next to my suitcase and ordered another beer. I was dazed and exhausted—almost too exhausted to be as miserable as I knew I ought to be. I would have to look for a hotel. It was getting dark. My suitcase was terribly heavy and I might have to wander the streets dragging it behind me and climb all those spiral staircases to inquire about rooms which would turn out to be occupied. I put my head down on the table.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I remember listening to the stiff dialogue of the opening—the girl played a physical therapist, the guy played a football player with a pain in his groin. Reva cried for a while. When the fucking started, she lowered the volume and told me about her New Year’s the year before. “I just wasn’t in the mood to go to a couples party, you know? Everybody kissing at midnight? Ken was being a dick but I met him at like three in the morning at the Howard Johnson in Times Square.” I was glad to hear she was drunk now. It took some of the tension out of the room. On-screen, there was a knock on the door. The fucking didn’t stop. I was weaving in and out of sleep by then. Reva kept talking. “And so then Ken was like . . . That was the first time . . . I told my mom . . . She said to pretend it never happened . . . Am I nuts?” “Whoa,” I said, pointing at the TV screen. A black girl had entered the scene in a cheerleader’s uniform. “Do you think that’s his jealous girlfriend?” “What’s going on in here?” the cheerleader asked, throwing down her pom-poms. “You know you’re my only single friend?” Reva asked in response. “I wish I had a big sister,” she said. “Someone who could set me up with somebody. Maybe I’ll ask my dad for money to pay a matchmaker.” “No man is worth paying for,” I told her. “I’ll think about it,” Reva said. I was in the fog by then, eyes open just a crack. Through them, I watched the black girl spread the lips of her vagina with long, sharp, pink fingernails. The inside of her glistened. I thought of Whoopi Goldberg. I remember that. I remember Reva setting the empty wine bottle down on the coffee table. And I remember her saying “Happy New Year” and kissing my cheek. I felt myself float up and away, higher and higher into the ether until my body was just an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in another world. “I love you, Reva,” I heard myself say from so far away. “I’m really sorry about your mom.” Then I was gone. Five I WOKE UP ALONE on the sofa a few days later. The air smelled like stale smoke and perfume. The TV was on at low volume. My tongue was thick and gritty, like I had dirt in my mouth. I listened to the world weather report: floods in India, an earthquake in Guatemala, another blizzard approaching the northeastern United States, fires burning down million- dollar homes in Southern California, “but sunny skies in our nation’s capital today as Yasser Arafat visits the White House for talks with President Clinton aimed at reviving the stalled peace process in the Middle East.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She is remarking to herself how all the twenty-franc hotels in Paris have the same imaginary decorator. She cannot say this to him. He will think her spoiled. But she tells herself. She hates the narrow double bed which sags in the middle. She hates the bolster instead of a pillow. She hates the dust which flies into her nose when she lifts the bedspread. She hates Paris. He is taking off his clothes, shivering. You will remark how beautiful his body is, how utterly hairless, how straight his back is, how his calves are lean with long brown muscles, how his fingers are slim. But his body is not for her. He puts on his pajamas reproachfully. She stands in her stocking feet. “Why do you always have to do this to me? You make me feel so lonely.” “That comes from you.” “What do you mean it comes from me? Tonight I wanted to be happy. It’s Christmas Eve. Why do you turn on me? What did I do?” Silence. “What did I do?” He looks at her as if her not knowing were another injury. “Look, let’s just go to sleep now. Let’s just forget it.” “Forget what?” He says nothing. “Forget the fact that you turned on me? Forget the fact that you’re punishing me for nothing? Forget the fact that I’m lonely and cold, that it’s Christmas Eve and again you’ve ruined it for me? Is that what you want me to forget?” “I won’t discuss it.” “Discuss what? What won’t you discuss?” “Shut up! I won’t have you screaming in the hotel.” “I don’t give a fuck what you won’t have me do. I’d like to be treated civilly. I’d like you to at least do me the courtesy of telling me why you’re in such a funk. And don’t look at me that way….” “What way?” “As if my not being able to read your mind were my greatest sin. I can’t read your mind. I don’t know why you’re so mad. I can’t intuit your every wish. If that’s what you want in a wife you don’t have it in me.” “I certainly don’t.” “Then what is it? Please tell me.” “I shouldn’t have to.” “Good God! Do you mean to tell me I’m expected to be a mind reader? Is that the kind of mothering you want?” “If you had any empathy for me…” “But I do. My God, you just don’t give me a chance.” “You tune out. You don’t listen.” “It was something in the movie, wasn’t it?” “What, in the movie?” “The quiz again. Do you have to quiz me like some kind of criminal. Do you have to cross-examine me?…It was the funeral scene…. The little boy looking at his dead mother. Something got you there. That was when you got depressed.” Silence. “Well, wasn’t it?” Silence. “Oh come on, Bennett, you’re making me furious. Please tell me. Please.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Except for the fact that we had no clocks, our apartment was not much different from the typical young officer’s quarters in the compound. The furniture was of the hideous German overstuffed variety made right after the war and given to the Americans as part of the reparation. No doubt it was made even uglier than usual in revenge. It was sickly beige to begin with, but now, after twenty years of hard labor, it had mellowed, stained, and splotched to a mottled urine-yellow which bore the marks of many household pets and children and early-morning beer-barfs. We had done our best to cover these hippopotamuslike couches and elephantine chairs with bright shawls and pillows and tapestries. We had covered the walls with posters and the windowsills with plants. We had filled the shelves with most of our own books (shipped, at great expense, by the government). But still, the place was depressing. Heidelberg itself was dismal. A beautiful town in which it rains ten months of the year. The sun struggles to appear for days, comes out for an hour or so, and then retreats again. And we were living in a prison of sorts. A spiritual and intellectual ghetto which we literally could not leave without being jailed. Bennett was lost in the army and in his own depression. He had no help to offer me. I had none to offer him. I used to walk the streets of the old town alone in the rain. I spent hours wandering through department stores fingering merchandise I knew I’d never buy, dreaming in crowds, overhearing long conversations which at first I understood only snatches of, listening to the demonstration hucksters barking out the virtues of stretch wigs, false fingernails, carving sets, meat grinders, chopping blocks…. “Meine Damen und Heren…” they begin, and every long sentence is interlarded with that phrase. It rings in your ears after a while. All the potato-shaped ladies would stand around me, forming a gray wall of loden cloth. Germany is patrolled by armies of gray-coated ladies in Tyrolean hats and sensible shoes and jowls crimson with exploded capillaries. Up close, their cheeks seem laced with tiny fireworks caught, as in a photograph, at the moment of bursting. These sturdy widows are everywhere: carrying string bags with bananas sticking out, riding broad-assed on narrow bicycle seats, taking the rain-streaked trains from München to Hamburg, from Nürnberg to Freiburg. A world of widows. The final solution promised by the Nazi dream: a Jewless world without men.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  When Trevor dropped me off at school, I called the lawyer and told him that I couldn’t let go of the house. “Not until I’m sure I’ll never get married and have children,” I said. It wasn’t true. And I didn’t care about the housing market or how much money I could get. I wanted to hold on to the house the way you’d hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t. There were moments when I was little, my mother could make me feel very special, stroking my hair, her perfume sweet and light, her pale, bony hands cool and jangling with gold bracelets, her frosted hair, her lipstick, breath woody with smoke and stringent from booze. But the next moment she’d be in a haze, distracted, suffering from some grave fear or worry and struggling to put up with even the thought of me. “I can’t listen to you now,” she’d say in these moments, and she’d move from room to room, away, looking for some piece of paper where she’d scrawled down a phone number. “If you threw it away, I swear,” she’d warn. She was always calling someone—some new friend, I guess. I never knew where she met these women, these new friends—at the beauty parlor? At the liquor store? I could have acted out if I’d wanted to. I could have dyed my hair purple, flunked out of high school, starved myself, pierced my nose, slutted around, what have you. I saw other teenagers doing that, but I didn’t really have the energy to go to so much trouble. I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it. I’d be punished if I showed signs of suffering, I knew. So I was good. I did all the right things. I rebelled in silent ways, with my thoughts. My parents barely seemed to notice I existed. Once I heard them whispering in the hallway while I was using the bathroom. “Did you see she has two blemishes on her chin?” my mother asked my father. “I can’t stand to look at them. They’re so pink.” “Take her to a dermatologist if you’re that concerned,” my father said. A few days later, our housekeeper brought me a tube of Clearasil. It was the tinted kind.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  WHENEVER I WOKE UP, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed. I’d get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again. I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by. When I thought of it, I ordered delivery from the Thai restaurant across the street, or a tuna salad platter from the diner on First Avenue. I’d wake up to find voice messages on my cell phone from salons or spas confirming appointments I’d booked in my sleep. I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people. Early on in this phase, I had my dirty laundry picked up and clean laundry delivered once a week. It was a comfort to me to hear the torn plastic bags rustle in the draft from the living room windows. I liked catching whiffs of the fresh laundry smell while I dozed off on the sofa. But after a while, it was too much trouble to gather up all the dirty clothes and stuff them in the laundry bag. And the sound of my own washer and dryer interfered with my sleep. So I just threw away my dirty underpants. All the old pairs reminded me of Trevor, anyway. For a while, tacky lingerie from Victoria’s Secret kept showing up in the mail—frilly fuchsia and lime green thongs and teddies and baby-doll nightgowns, each sealed in a clear plastic Baggie. I stuffed the little Baggies into the closet and went commando. An occasional package from Barneys or Saks provided me with men’s pajamas and other things I couldn’t remember ordering—cashmere socks, graphic Tshirts, designer jeans. I took a shower once a week at most. I stopped tweezing, stopped bleaching, stopped waxing, stopped brushing my hair. No moisturizing or

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Despite moving around a lot, we always had a darkroom where he developed his precious photos; he’d spend hours in there, but I had strict instructions never to enter. He smelled after being in there, a caustic cologne of chemicals and Benson & Hedges from which I was largely spared because he rarely ever even hugged me. The only time I was close to him was when I helped him do test shots. “Stand there and look straight into the lens, Tracey,” he’d say. “Don’t move.” I would stare at the lens or the tip of his cigarette; I was just a prop, a way to test out new equipment and practice before the occasional big freelance gigs that helped camouflage the fact that he wasn’t the primary breadwinner. The year I was thirteen, my friends and I wanted model-like pictures of ourselves, the Glamour Shots kind that would eventually infiltrate every mid-American strip mall. Our pubescent hearts were set on mature photos—racy even—in our bathing suits, and we’d pinned our hopes for them on the one photographer who captured all the young girls in Pasadena—Tate. I’d already tagged along with another girl from school and witnessed her photo session. I knew the setup. Safety was not my concern. “That old guy in the wheelchair?” said my mother when I asked. “Oh no, no no no. I don’t trust him.” “But, Mom, he takes everyone’s pictures in Pasadena!” “Sharisse,” she said, “you don’t know what that man could do!” At the time, I didn’t get what she was implying, but, yes, he was pretty much Child Pornographer #1 from Central Casting, an aging hippie in a wheelchair, making a living taking pictures of young girls in a dark house. But I never had any problems with him; he’d never said or done anything to me that felt off. “Why not let your daddy take your pictures?” she said. “He takes great photographs.” “Daddy?” I’d never thought of my father. Why would I? I knew he took great pictures but we were talking about Glamour Shots, in swimwear. . . . And he was my father. It wasn’t just modesty, though: my father and I didn’t have a good relationship because I had stubbornly refused to be a son. I would have never thought to ask him for anything remotely supportive; I didn’t ask him for anything. But I took my mother’s suggestion because I was thirteen and impatient: I wanted pictures that made me feel pretty and important (and maybe a little bit sexy), and nothing says lightning-fast delivery quite like a man with a camera and darkroom already in your home. When I asked my father to do something for me for the first time ever, I was alone in the house. He said yes and decided to do it right away: my friends, who had always been more skeptical of my mother’s suggestion than I was, ended up being busy that day, and so it was just me.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I feel very, very alone.” “We’re all alone, Reva,” I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer. “I know I have to prepare for the worst with my mom. The prognosis isn’t good. And I don’t even think I’m getting the full story about her cancer. It just makes me feel so desperate. I wish there was someone to hold me, you know? Is that pathetic?” “You’re needy,” I said. “Sounds frustrating.” “And then there’s Ken. I just can’t stand it. I’d rather kill myself than be all alone,” she said. “At least you have options.” If I was up for it, we’d order salads from the Thai place and watch movies on pay-per-view. I preferred my VHS tapes, but Reva always wanted to see whatever movie was “new” and “hot” and “supposed to be good.” She took it as a source of pride that she had a superior knowledge of pop culture during this period. She knew all the latest celebrity gossip, followed the newest fashion trends. I didn’t give a shit about that stuff. Reva, however, studied Cosmo and watched Sex and the City. She was competitive about beauty and “life wisdom.” Her envy was very self- righteous. Compared to me, she was “underprivileged.” And according to her terms, she was right: I looked like a model, had money I hadn’t earned, wore real designer clothing, had majored in art history, so I was “cultured.” Reva, on the other hand, came from Long Island, was an 8 out of 10 but called herself “a New York three,” and had majored in economics. “The Asian nerd major,” she named it. Reva’s apartment across town was a third-floor walk-up that smelled like sweaty gym clothes and French fries and Lysol and Tommy Girl perfume. Although she’d given me a spare set of keys to the place when she moved in, I’d been over only twice in five years. She preferred coming to my apartment. I think she enjoyed being recognized by my doorman, taking the fancy elevator with the gold buttons, watching me squander my luxuries. I don’t know what it was about Reva. I couldn’t get rid of her. She worshipped me, but she also hated me. She saw my struggle with misery as a cruel parody of her own misfortunes. I had chosen my solitude and purposelessness, and Reva had, despite her hard work, simply failed to get what she wanted—no husband, no children, no fabulous career. So when I started sleeping all the time, I think Reva took some satisfaction in watching me crumble into the ineffectual slob she hoped I was becoming. I wasn’t interested in competing with her, but I resented her on principle, and so we did argue.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  On the other hand, alas, two years of monstrous indulgence had left me with certain habits of lust: I feared lest the void I lived in might drive me to plunge into the freedom of sudden insanity when confronted with a chance temptation in some lane between school and supper. Solitude was corrupting me. I needed company and care. My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ. This is how Rita enters the picture. 26 She was twice Lolita’s age and three quarters of mine: a very slight, dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, an angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back—I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tigermoth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did—and adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion. When I first met her she had but recently divorced her third husband—and a little more recently had been abandoned by her seventh cavalier servant —the others, the mutables, were too numerous and mobile to tabulate. Her brother was—and no doubt still is—a prominent, pasty-faced, suspenders-and-painted-tie-wearing politician, mayor and booster of his ball-playing, Bible-reading, grain-handling home town. For the last eight years he had been paying his great little sister several hundred dollars per month under the stringent condition that she would never never enter great little Grainball City. She told me, with wails of wonder, that for some God-damn reason every new boy friend of hers would first of all take her Grainball-ward: it was a fatal attraction; and before she knew what was what, she would find herself sucked into the lunar orbit of the town, and would be following the flood-lit drive that encircled it—“going round and round,” as she phrased it, “like a God-damn mulberry moth.” She had a natty little coupé; and in it we traveled to California so as to give my venerable vehicle a rest. Her natural speed was ninety. Dear Rita!

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This is a confession: I love you [so the letter began; and for a distorted moment I mistook its hysterical scrawl for a schoolgirl’s scribble]. Last Sunday in church—bad you, who refused to come to see our beautiful new windows!—only last Sunday, my dear one, when I asked the Lord what to do about it, I was told to act as I am acting now. You see, there is no alternative. I have loved you from the minute I saw you. I am a passionate and lonely woman and you are the love of my life. Now, my dearest, dearest, mon cher, cher monsieur, you have read this; now you know. So, will you please, at once, pack and leave. This is a landlady’s order. I am dismissing a lodger. I am kicking you out. Go! Scram! Departez! I shall be back by dinnertime, if I do eighty both ways and don’t have an accident (but what would it matter?), and I do not wish to find you in the house. Please, please, leave at once, now, do not even read this absurd note to the end. Go. Adieu. The situation, chéri, is quite simple. Of course, I know with absolute certainty that I am nothing to you, nothing at all. Oh yes, you enjoy talking to me (and kidding poor me), you have grown fond of our friendly house, of the books I like, of my lovely garden, even of Lo’s noisy ways—but I am nothing to you. Right? Right. Nothing to you whatever. But if, after reading my “confession,” you decided, in your dark romantic European way, that I am attractive enough for you to take advantage of my letter and make a pass at me, then you would be a criminal—worse than a kidnaper who rapes a child. You see, chéri. If you decided to stay, if I found you at home (which I know I won’t—and that’s why I am able to go on like this), the fact of your remaining would only mean one thing: that you want me as much as I do you: as a lifelong mate; and that you are ready to link up your life with mine forever and ever and be a father to my little girl.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Airplane tickets, cars, boats; you felt you were on a pink cloud." —LEONARD SLATER, ALY: A BIOGRAPHY 314 • The Art of Seduction greatest romance of your life," the gypsy told her. "He is somebody you al- ready know. . . . You must relent and give in to him totally. Only if you do that will you find happiness at long last." Not knowing who this man could be, Rita, who had a weakness for the occult, decided to extend her stay. Aly Khan came back; he told her that his château overlooking the Mediter- ranean was the perfect place to escape from the press and forget her trou- bles, and that he would behave himself. She relented. Life in the château was like a fairy tale; wherever she turned, his Indian helpers were there to attend to her every wish. At night he would take her into his enormous ballroom, where they would dance all by themselves. Could this be the man the fortune-teller meant? Aly Khan invited his friends over to meet her. Among this strange company she felt alone again, and depressed; she decided to leave the château. Just then, as if he had read her thoughts, Aly Khan whisked her off to Spain, the country that fascinated her most. The press caught on to the affair, and began to hound them in Spain: Rita had had a daughter with Welles—was this any way for a mother to act? Aly Khan's reputation did not help, but he stood by her, shielding her from the press as best he could. Now she was more alone than ever, and more dependent on him. Near the end of the trip, Aly Khan proposed to Rita. She turned him down; she did not think he was the kind of man you married. He followed her to Hollywood, where her former friends were less friendly than be- fore. Thank God she had Aly Khan to help her. A year later she finally succumbed, abandoning her career, moving to Aly Khan's château, and marrying him. Interpretation. Aly Khan, like a lot of men, fell in love with Rita Hay- worth the moment he saw the film Gilda, in 1948. He made up his mind that he would seduce her somehow. The moment he heard she was coming to the Riviera, he got his friend Elsa Maxwell to lure her to the party and seat her next to him. He knew about the breakup of her marriage, and how vulnerable she was. His strategy was to block out everything else in her world—problems, other men, suspicion of him and his motives, etc. His campaign began with the display of an intense interest in her life— constant phone calls, flowers, gifts, all to keep him in her mind.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  This isolation was experienced as pleasure; the woman did not notice her growing dependence, how the way he filled up her mind with his attention slowly isolated her from her friends and her milieu. Her natural suspicions of the man were drowned out by his intoxi- cating effect on her ego. Aly Khan almost always capped off his seductions by taking the woman to some enchanted place on the globe—a place that he knew well, but where the woman felt lost. Do not give your targets the time or space to worry about, suspect, or resist you. Flood them with the kind of attention that crowds out all other thoughts, concerns, and problems. Remember—people secretly yearn to be led astray by someone who knows where they are going. It can be a plea- sure to let go, and even to feel isolated and weak, if the seduction is done slowly and gracefully. Put them in a spot where they have no place to go, and they will die before fleeing. —SUN-TZU Keys to Seduction T he people around you may seem strong, and more or less in control of their lives, but that is merely a facade. Underneath, people are more brittle than they let on. What lets them seem strong is the series of nests and safety nets they envelop themselves in—their friends, their families, their daily routines, which give them a feeling of continuity, safety, and control. Suddenly pull the rug out from under them, drop them alone into some foreign place where the familiar signposts are gone or scrambled, and you will see a very different person. A target who is strong and settled is hard to seduce. But even the stron- gest people can be made vulnerable if you can isolate them from their nests and safety nets. Block out their friends and family with your constant pres- ence, alienate them from the world they are used to, and take them to places they do not know. Get them to spend time in your environment. De- liberately disturb their habits, get them to do things they have never done. They will grow emotional, making it easier to lead them astray. Disguise all this in the form of a pleasurable experience, and your targets will wake up one day distanced from everything that normally comforts them. Then they will turn to you for help, like a child crying out for its mother when the lights are turned out. In seduction, as in warfare, the isolated target is weak and vulnerable.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Succeed, though, and you can gain great power in turn, for in their loneliness they will come to depend on you. The Seducer's Victims—The Eighteen Types • 159 160 • The Art of Seduction The Floating Gender. All of us have a mix of the masculine and the feminine in our characters, but most of us learn to develop and exhibit the socially acceptable side while repressing the other. People of the Floating Gender type feel that the separation of the sexes into such distinct genders is a burden. They are sometimes thought to be repressed or latent homo- sexuals, but this is a misunderstanding: they may well be heterosexual but their masculine and feminine sides are in flux, and because this may dis- comfit others if they show it, they learn to repress it, perhaps by going to one extreme. They would actually love to be able to play with their gender, to give full expression to both sides. Many people fall into this type without its being obvious: a woman may have a masculine energy, a man a devel- oped aesthetic side. Do not look for obvious signs, because these types often go underground, keeping it under wraps. This makes them vulnera- ble to a powerful seduction. What Floating Gender types are really looking for is another person of uncertain gender, their counterpart from the opposite sex. Show them that in your presence and they can relax, express the repressed side of their char- acter. If you have such proclivities, this is the one instance where it would be best to seduce the same type of the opposite sex. Each person will stir up repressed desires in the other and will suddenly have license to explore all kinds of gender combinations, without fear of judgment. If you are not of the Floating Gender, leave this type alone. You will only inhibit them and create more discomfort. M ost of us understand that certain actions on our part will have a pleasing and seductive effect on the person we would like to seduce. The problem is that we are generally too self-absorbed: We think more about what we want from others than what they could want from us. We may occasionally do something that is seductive, but often we follow this up a with a selfish or aggressive action (we are in a hurry to get what we want); or, unaware of what we are doing, we show a side of ourselves that is petty and banal, deflating any illusions or fantasies a person might have about us. Our attempts at seduction usually do not last long enough to cre- ate much of an effect. You will not seduce anyone by simply depending on your engaging personality, or by occasionally doing something noble or alluring.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  There were rats, and he had nothing to lie upon; yet when the burgomaster's wife finally came, late at night, he did not complain, but qui- etly followed her to her room. They continued their trysts for several days. By day she could hardly wait for night: finally something to live for, an ad- venture. She left him food, books, and candles to ease his long and tedious stays in the chapel—it seemed wrong to use a place of worship for such a purpose, but that only made the affair more exciting. A few days later, however, she had to take a journey with her husband. By the time she got back, Casanova had disappeared, as quickly and gracefully as he had come. Some years later, in London, a young woman named Miss Pauline no- ticed an ad in a local newspaper. A gentleman was looking for a lady lodger to rent a part of his house. Miss Pauline came from Portugal, and was of the nobility; she had eloped to London with a lover, but he had been If at first sight a girl does not make such a deep impression on a person that she awakens the ideal, then ordinarily the actuality is not especially desirable; but if she does, then no matter how experienced a person is he usually is rather overwhelmed. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD, THE SEDUCER'S DIARY, TRANSLATED BY HOWARD V. HONG AND EDNA H. HONG A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: "Come, my friend, it's getting light. You don't want anyone to find you here." He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening 31 32 • The Art of Seduction forced to return home and she had had to stay on alone for some while be- fore she could join him. Now she was lonely, and had little money, and was depressed by her squalid circumstances—after all, she had been raised as a lady. She answered the ad. The gentleman turned out to be Casanova, and what a gentleman he was. The room he offered was nice, and the rent was low; he asked only for occasional companionship. Miss Pauline moved in. They played chess, went riding, discussed literature.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  The moment Pei Pu met Bouriscout, he realized he had found the perfect victim. Bouriscout was lonely, bored, desperate. The way he responded to Pei Pu suggested that he was probably also homosexual, or perhaps bisexual—at least confused. (Bouriscout in fact had had homo- sexual encounters as a boy; guilty about them, he had tried to repress this side of himself.) Pei Pu had played women's parts before, and was quite good at it; he was slight and effeminate; physically it was not a stretch. But who would believe such a story, or at least not be skeptical of it? The critical component of Pei Pu's seduction, in which he brought the Frenchman's fantasy of adventure to life, was to start slowly and set up an idea in his victim s mind. In his perfect French (which, however, was full of interesting Chinese expressions), he got Bouriscout used to hearing stories and tales, some true, some not, but all delivered in that dramatic yet believ- able tone. Then he planted the idea of gender impersonation with his "Story of the Butterfly." By the time he confessed the "truth" of his gen- der, Bouriscout was already completely enchanted with him. Bouriscout warded off all suspicious thoughts because he wanted to be- lieve Pei Pu's story. From there it was easy Pei Pu faked his periods; it didn't take much money to get hold of a child he could reasonably pass off as their son. More important, he played the fantasy role to the hilt, remaining elusive and mysterious (which was what a Westerner would expect from an seducer. . . . After an interval Pauline pulled a hell rope and ordered the woman who answered to prepare a hath which she asked me to share. Wearing bathgowns of the finest linen we remained for nearly an hour in the crystal-clear bluish water. Then we had a grand dinner served in another room and lingered on together until dusk. When I left I had to promise to return again soon and I spent many afternoons with the princess in the same way." —HARRISON BRENT, PAULINE BONAPARTE: A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS The courtesan is meant to be a half-defined, floating figure never fixing herself surely in the imagination. She is the memory of an experience, the point at which a dream is transformed into reality or reality into a dream. The bright colors fade, her name becomes a mere echo—echo of an echo, since she has probably adopted it from some ancient predecessor. The idea of the courtesan is a garden of delights in which the lover walks, smelling first this flower and then that but never understanding whence comes the fragrance that intoxicates him. Why should the courtesan not elude analysis?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  If I had had to choose my place of birth, I would have chosen a state in which everyone knew everyone else, so that neither the obscure tactics of vice nor the modesty of virtue could have escaped public scrutiny and judgment. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1754) Rousseau was born in the wrong time, wrong place. If he’d been born in the same spot twenty thousand years earlier, among the artists sketching life-sized bulls on European cave walls, he’d have known every member of his social world. Alternatively, born into his own era but in one of the many societies not yet altered by agriculture, he’d have found the close-knit social world for which he yearned. The sense of being alone—even in a crowded city—is an oddity in human life, included, like so much else, in the agricultural package. Looking back from his overcrowded world, Thomas Hobbes imagined that prehistoric human life was unbearably solitary. Today, separated from countless strangers by only thin walls, tiny earphones, and hectic schedules, we assume a desolate sense of isolation must have weighed on our ancestors, wandering over their windswept prehistoric landscape. But in fact, this seemingly common-sense assumption couldn’t be more mistaken. The social lives of foragers are characterized by a depth and intensity of interaction few of us could imagine (or tolerate). For those of us born and raised in societies organized around the interlocking principles of individuality, personal space, and private property, it’s difficult to project our imaginations into those tightly woven societies where almost all space and property is communal, and identity is more collective than individual. From the first morning of birth to the final mourning of death, a forager’s life is one of intense, constant interaction, interrelation, and interdependence. In this section, we’ll examine the first element in Hobbes’s famous dictum about prehistoric human life. We’ll show that before the rise of the state, prehistoric human life was far from “solitary.” Societies Mentioned in Text CHAPTER SIX Who’s Your Daddies? In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements. MARVIN HARRIS1 The birds and the bees are different in the Amazon. There, a woman not only can be a little pregnant, most are. Each of the societies we’re about to discuss shares a belief in what scientists call “partible paternity.” These groups have a novel conception of conception: a fetus is made of accumulated semen.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  As I was leaving, leaving voluntarily, Dolores Haze reminded me to bring her next morning ... She did not remember where the various things she wanted were...“Bring me,” she cried (out of sight already, door on the move, closing, closed), “the new gray suitcase and Mother’s trunk”; but by next morning I was shivering, and boozing, and dying in the motel bed she had used for just a few minutes, and the best I could do under the circular and dilating circumstances was to send the two bags over with the widow’s beau, a robust and kindly trucker. I imagined Lo displaying her treasures to Mary ... No doubt, I was a little delirious—and on the following day I was still a vibration rather than a solid, for when I looked out of the bathroom window at the adjacent lawn, I saw Dolly’s beautiful young bicycle propped up there on its support, the graceful front wheel looking away from me, as it always did, and a sparrow perched on the saddle—but it was the landlady’s bike, and smiling a little, and shaking my poor head over my fond fancies, I tottered back to my bed, and lay as quiet as a saint— Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores, On a patch of sunny green. With Sanchicha reading stories In a movie magazine— —which was represented by numerous specimens wherever Dolores landed, and there was some great national celebration in town judging by the firecrackers, veritable bombs, that exploded all the time, and at five minutes to two P.M. I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it. It was big Frank. He remained framed in the opened door, one hand on its jamb, leaning forward a little. Howdy. Nurse Lore was on the telephone. She wanted to know was I better and would I come today? At twenty paces Frank used to look a mountain of health; at five, as now, he was a ruddy mosaic of scars—had been blown through a wall overseas; but despite nameless injuries he was able to man a tremendous truck, fish, hunt, drink, and buoyantly dally with roadside ladies. That day, either because it was such a great holiday, or simply because he wanted to divert a sick man, he had taken off the glove he usually wore on his left hand (the one pressing against the side of the door) and revealed to the fascinated sufferer not only an entire lack of fourth and fifth fingers, but also a naked girl, with cinnabar nipples and indigo delta, charmingly tattooed on the back of his crippled hand, its index and middle digit making her legs while his wrist bore her flower-crowned head. Oh, delicious ... reclining against the woodwork, like some sly fairy. I asked him to tell Mary Lore I would stay in bed all day and would get into touch with my daughter sometime tomorrow if I felt probably Polynesian.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  You teach and your students need you and care about you. You have friends who love you. Even your parents and sisters love you—in their own peculiar way. me : None of that makes a dent in my loneliness. I have no man. I have no child. me : But you know that children are no antidote to loneliness. me : I know. me : And you know that children only belong to their parents temporarily. me : I know. me : And you know that men and women can never wholly possess each other. me : I know. me : And you know that you’d hate to have a man who possessed you totally and used up your breathing space…. me : I know—but I yearn for it desperately. me : But if you had it, you’d feel trapped. me : I know. me : You want contradictory things. me : I know. me : You want freedom and you also want closeness. me : I know. me : Very few people ever find that. me : I know. me : Why do you expect to be happy when most people aren’t? me : I don’t know. I only know that if I stop hoping for love, stop expecting it, stop searching for it, my life will go as flat as a cancerous breast after radical surgery. I feed on this expectation. I nurse it. It keeps me alive. me : But what about liberation? me : What about it? me : You believe in independence? me : I do. me : Well then? me : I suspect I’d give it all up, sell my soul, my principles, my beliefs, just for a man who’d really love me…. me : Hypocrite! me : You’re right. me : You’re no better than Adrian! me : You’re right. me : Doesn’t it bother you to find such hypocrisy in yourself? me : It does. me : Then why don’t you fight it? me : I do. I’m fighting it now. But I don’t know which side will win. me : Think of Simone de Beauvoir! me : I love her endurance, but her books are full of Sartre, Sartre, Sartre. me : Think of Doris Lessing! me : Anna Wulf can’t come unless she’s in love…what more is there to say? me : Think of Sylvia Plath! me : Dead. Who wants a life or death like hers even if you become a saint? me : Wouldn’t you die for a cause? me : At twenty, yes, but not at thirty. I don’t believe in dying for causes. I don’t believe in dying for poetry. Once I worshipped Keats for dying young. Now I think it’s braver to die old. me : Well—think of Colette. me : A good example.