Longing

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 Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They would sometimes go far afield in the car, and one night they stopped at an inn and had dinner—Angela ringing up her husband with the old and now threadbare excuse of a breakdown. They dined in a quiet little room by themselves; the scents of the garden came in through the window—warm, significant scents, for now it was May and many flowers multiplied in that garden. Never before had they done such a thing as this, they had never dined all alone at a wayside inn miles away from their homes, just they two, and Stephen stretched out her hand and covered Angela’s where it rested very white and still on the table. And Stephen’s eyes held an urgent question, for now it was May and the blood of youth leaps and strains with the sap in early summer. The air seemed breathless, since neither would speak, afraid of disturbing the thick, sweet silence—but Angela shook her head very slowly. Then they could not eat, for each was filled with the same and yet with a separate longing; so after a while they must get up and go, both conscious of a sense of painful frustration. They drove back on a road that was paved with moonlight, and presently Angela fell fast asleep like an unhappy child—she had taken her hat off and her head lay limply against Stephen’s shoulder. Seeing her thus, so helpless in sleep, Stephen felt strangely moved, and she drove very slowly, fearful of waking the woman who slept like a child with her fair head against her shoulder. The car climbed the steep hill from Ledbury town, and presently there lay the wide Wye valley whose beauty had saddened a queer little girl long before she had learnt the pain of all beauty. And now the valley was bathed in whiteness, while here and there gleamed a roof or a window, but whitely, as though all the good valley folk had extinguished their lamps and retired to their couches. Far away, like dark clouds coming up out of Wales, rose range upon range of the old Black Mountains, with the tip of Gadrfawr peering over the others, and the ridge of Pen-cerrigcalch sharp against the skyline. A little wind ruffled the bracken on the hillsides, and Angela’s hair blew across her closed eyes so that she stirred and sighed in her sleep. Stephen bent down and began to soothe her.

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

  Is there diadem, as Monarch, That His brow adorns? "Yea, a crown in very surety, But of thorns!" If I find Him, if I follow, What His guerdon here? "Many a sorrow, many a labor, Many a tear." If I still hold closely to Him, What hath He at last? Sorrow vanquished, labor ended, Jordan past!" If I ask Him to receive me, Will He say me nay? Not till earth, and not till heaven Pass away!" Finding, following, keeping, struggling Is He sure to bless? Angels, martyrs, prophets, virgins, Answer, Yes!" § 95. Latin Hymnody. Literature. See vol. III. 585 sqq. The following list covers the whole mediaeval period of Latin hymnody. I. Latin Collections. The Breviaries and Missals. The hymnological collections of Clichtovaeus (Paris 1515, Bas. 1517 and 1519.), Cassander (Col. 1556), Ellinger (Frankf. a. M. 1578), Georg Fabricius (Poetarum Veterum ecclesiasticorum Opera, Bas. 1564). See the full titles of Breviaries and these older collections in Daniel, vol. I. XIII-XXII. and vol. II. VIII-XIV. Cardinal Jos. Maria Thomasius (Tomasi, 1649–1713, one of the chief expounders of the liturgy and ceremonies of the Roman church): Opera Omnia. Rom. 1741 sqq., 7 vols. The second volume, p. 351–403, contains the Hymnarium de anni circulo, etc., for which he compared the oldest Vatican and other Italian MSS. of hymns down to the eighth century. The same vol. includes the Breviarium Psalterii. The fourth (1749) contains the Responsorialia et antiphonaria Romanae ecclesia, and the sixth vol. (1751) a collection of Missals. Thomasius is still very valuable. Daniel calls his book "fons primarius." Aug. Jak. Rambach (Luth. Pastor in Hamburg, b. 1777, d. 1851): Anthologie christlicher Gesänge aus alien Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona and Leipzig 1817–1833, 6 vols. The first vol. contains Latin hymns with German translations and notes. The other volumes contain only German hymns, especially since the Reformation. Rambach was a pioneer in hymnology. Job. Kehrein (R.C.): Lat. Anthologie aus den christl. Dichtern des Mittelalters. Frankfurt a. m. 1840. See his larger work below. [John Henry Newman, Anglican, joined the Rom. Ch. 1845]: Hymni Ecclesiae. Lond. (Macmillan) 1838; new ed. 1865 (401 pages). Contains only hymns from the Paris, Roman, and Anglican Breviaries. The preface to the first part is signed "J. H. N." and dated Febr. 21, 1838, but no name appears on the title page. About the same time Card. N. made his translations of Breviary hymns, which are noticed below, sub. III. H. A. Daniel (Lutheran, d. 1871): Thesaurus Hymnologicus. Lips. 1841–1856, 5 Tomi. The first, second, fourth and fifth vols. contain Lat. hymns, the fourth Greek and Syrian h. A rich standard collection, but in need of revision P. J. Mone (R. Cath. d. 1871): Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters. Freiburg i. B. 1853–’55, 3 vols. From MSS with notes. Contains in all 1215 hymns divided into three divisions of almost equal size; (1) Hymns to God and the angels (461 pages); (2) Hymns to the Virgin Mary, (457 pages); (3) Hymns to saints (579 pages). D.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And yet she was utterly helpless, and she knew it. All that she did seemed inadequate and childish: ‘When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.’ Remembering Saint Paul, she decided grimly that surely she had remained as a child. She could sit and stare at them—these poor, stricken lovers—with eyes that were scared and deeply reproachful: ‘You must not let anything spoil your loving, I need it,’ her eyes could send them that message. She could love them in her turn, possessively, fiercely: ‘You’re mine, mine, mine, the one perfect thing about me. You’re one and you’re mine, I’m frightened, I need you!’ Her thoughts could send them that message. She could start to caress them, awkwardly, shyly, stroking their hands with her strong, bony fingers—first his hand, then hers, then perhaps both together, so that they smiled in spite of their trouble. But she dared not stand up before them accusing, and say: ‘I’m Stephen, I’m you, for you bred me. You shall not fail me by failing yourselves. I’ve a right to demand that you shall not fail me!’ No, she dared not stand up and speak such words as these—she had never demanded anything from them. Sometimes she would think them quietly over as two fellow creatures whom chance had made her parents. Her father, her mother—a man, a woman; and then she would be amazed to discover how little she knew of this man and this woman. They had once been babies, and later small children, ignorant of life and utterly dependent. That seemed so curious, ignorant of life—her father utterly weak and dependent. They had come to adolescence even as she had, and perhaps at times they too had felt unhappy. What had their thoughts been, those thoughts that lie hidden, those nebulous misgivings that never get spoken? Had her mother shrunk back resentful, protesting, when the seal of her womanhood had been stamped upon her? Surely not, for her mother was somehow so perfect, that all that befell her must in its turn, be perfect—her mother gathered nature into her arms and embraced it as a friend, as a well loved companion.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I wanted to build a tent of it in the warmth of my sister’s house: a container where I could bottle the feeling, like a little ship, and hold the glow. Here was a bit of magic that could happen in my life. After all the nothingness, maybe this fantasy was worth living for. I suppose that whenever you’re addicted to something, this is what they mean when they say you forget about the consequences and don’t care about the other side. All I cared about was my plan. 35. Claire called, but I didn’t pick up. Then she texted: What’s your favorite suicide method? Where are you what are you doing? I hate to be needy so I’m going to pretend I don’t need you but seriously where are you? Lucy, I am so on edge and hate everything namely me I couldn’t get out of bed to drive my kids to school do you think I am an awful person? Don’t have children they destroy everything Do you want to go shopping? I didn’t mean to be cold, but something about her really scared me now. She’d passed over to the darkness, the edge of nothingness, and she’d done it by trying to access the light, the glitter. Those highs, even if they were fake and we knew that they wouldn’t last forever, felt so real when we were in them. That’s where I was now. I just couldn’t discern the ephemeral nature of what I was experiencing, and didn’t want to. Perhaps what I had with Theo was as synthetic as what Claire had with her men, but it felt so good—how could we ever even care when we were in it? Craving the fake light was a completely real feeling, even if those around you could see that you were just another junkie. I think this is what was most frightening: me and my Theo haze and Claire and her druglike need were the same thing. I didn’t want to look at it; I didn’t want to look at her. To look at her would be to see the danger that I was facing on the other side of Theo’s visit, the darkness that inevitably fell when you spent too much time basking in the sun of a man. To look at her was to know that I was inevitably the cause of my own darkness, my own nothingness. The more you went for the ephemeral light, the more the void opened on the other side. It was waiting for me right there. I set my alarm for five. I wanted time to try to look beautiful, even though the wind and salt air always washed away anything I did to my hair or face. Dominic, never an early riser, was still asleep—sprawled in the bed where I had been, one ear above the sheets.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “I want to do it,” he said. “But I’m scared.” “Okay, I understand.” “But I really want to.” “Well, then listen to my plan. Just hypothetically, this is how we would do it. I would go to the hardware store, or maybe the toy store. And buy a wagon. Something big enough that we could get most of you in there without too much dangling. I could come tomorrow morning at dawn with the wagon. Or not tomorrow, this dawn, but the next day. You could come up onto the rock as usual. And then just slide right down, right into the wagon. I would bring a blanket, maybe even a couple of them. We would make sure that you would be totally and completely covered. We wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. We could just see how you felt. See how it worked. It would be like practice.” “Okay,” he said. “I think I could possibly do that. Just practice.” “That’s all it would be.” 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. Maybe the moments of non-sexiness gradually moved together to become one solid thing, like the way that Theo’s scales started as almost freckles or moles and eventually raised and congealed. I went to three hardware stores before I found a wagon that was big enough. It was tin and red and looked like an antique child’s wagon. I pretended for a moment that I had a child, and was buying the wagon as a gift for him or her. Was the child’s name Theo? I imagined myself hand-in-hand with a little brunette boy and wondered what it would be like. Would I feel as deeply for him as I did for my Theo? Maybe I was only fooling myself with my romantic adventures, looking to fill a hole that could only truly be satisfied by the love that women said they felt for their kids. If you didn’t have children, they liked to remind you that you were missing out—and that there was no greater love. No, fuck all those childbearers and their “fulfilling” lives, never getting to have adventures like mine. I was glad that this wagon wasn’t for some snot-nosed kid that I felt I had to pretend to be all excited about but secretly loathed for destroying my body, my freedom. It seemed depressing.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  On the days when I would be seeing Theo in the evening, I worked on my book. Its whole contention had changed. I no longer wrote about the blank spaces in any theoretical way or tried to convince anyone that the only way to understand Sappho was to perceive the spaces as though they were always there. I no longer argued with past scholars about their biographical projections on the texts. I wrote, instead, about Eros in the text itself and its relationship to the spaces. The verb eratai less closely meant “to love” than it did “to desire.” Yet despite the best attempts of history, time, weather, and churchmen, the desire in Sappho’s poems had survived as though it were love eternal. Perhaps desire was not so ephemeral after all. Was a feeling the only eternal thing, despite the fact that everyone said it would pass? Could you get away with academic discourse about a feeling? I was going to try. I informed the advisory committee by email of my changes. They asked me to send an outline of the project and a sample. I bullshitted an outline and sent it over to them. At the same time, it wasn’t bullshit at all, because I was already living it. The book was me. On the in-between days, after returning Theo to the ocean, I mostly hid from feeling. I stayed deep under the covers and slept. I tried to ignore the rest of the world. I was like a hungover person, biding time until she could have more alcohol. The hair of the dog alone would fix me. I was a drunk waiting only for her next drink. I felt I loved him, yet I kept my secret from him. To contain the answer as to how this would all end—to withhold that knowledge, as well as the lie that I would continue to live here alone—felt strange. I was so close to him, it was odd that I could keep a secret that might upset him. It was as though we were one person who was able to completely compartmentalize different elements of themself in different parts of their mind, and the two parts never intersected. They were not allowed to meet. When living in the illusion of our eternality (which was perhaps not an illusion if the feeling rather than the facts were to be believed), I prevented the truth from entering. Actually, it was as though the truth didn’t even knock. But when I was alone, I would wake in a panic from my daytime naps and there it would be: my impending departure.

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

  He has recently passed away after a long illness, and I think it might be cathartic for her to talk about him in his younger and healthier years. “I lived in a decrepit walk-up on St. Mark’s Place and one day I bumped into this guy who had just spilled groceries all over the hallway. He had brought them for a friend but it was pouring out and the bag had gotten wet and ripped and his friend wasn’t home, but he couldn’t just leave the food in the hallway, so he gave it to me. We started talking and he invited me to a party that was being thrown by his friend, an artist named Stephen who lived uptown with his girlfriend. I went and there was this interesting group of artists and writers who threw parties all the time. I became close with them over the next few months. One day, I heard loud banging on my door and when I opened it, Stephen was there, looking wretched. He rushed in and said he couldn’t wait another minute to tell me that he was in love with me. Well, I was in love with him too but he lived with his girlfriend, who had become my friend. He said he had to be with me and was going home to get his things and would come back to stay with me.” I think sadly of the unnamed girlfriend, knowing well what it feels like when the love you rely on is redirected to another woman. “To spend the night or to move in with you?” I asked. “To move in, because he couldn’t stay with the girlfriend once he told her about me. So he left to go back uptown,” she continues. “Wait, so he comes, declares his love for you, you say yes same and then he just leaves?” I ask. “Yes, I guess so,” she says. “You didn’t sleep with him first? This man appears at your door, you admit your feelings for each other and then nothing else?” I ask dubiously. “I guess I slept with him,” she says contemplatively. Alexandra and I howl with laughter. I ask if she’s being coy or if she really can’t recall. “OK fine, I slept with him. But then he left and was supposed to come right back and he didn’t. He was gone for hours. I was crushed but of course I had no way to reach him because I couldn’t call his apartment. I assumed he had decided to stay with his girlfriend. Well, he finally appeared and do you know where he had been?” she asks. “Outside on the street collecting his things after his girlfriend threw them out the window?” I ask. “No, he had stopped at a bar to watch the Super Bowl. It was the first year of the Super Bowl and a very big deal. He came over after it ended,” she says triumphantly.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I could be taken to the Venice freak show. I can’t exactly run. So it’s always dangerous for me to be out of the water.” “Will I see you tomorrow?” “Not tomorrow, but how about the following night? You should wear a skirt again like that.” “Ha-ha. Okay.” Two nights sounded so far away. It seemed endless. “Also, you shouldn’t tell anyone about me,” he said. “As we discussed. Mostly I say that for you. I don’t want you ending up in a psychiatric hospital or in rehab and that’s what people will think if you tell them you met a man who lives under the sea.” “But you’re just a boy,” I said. “I’m not Sappho-old but I’m older than you think. The salt has preserved me. Also, maybe I’m immature.” He kissed me on the forehead and on the hand. Then he dove back into the water, parting the seaweedy murk. “Wait!” I called. “What time in two nights from now?” But he was already swimming out into the sunlit waves. I saw a few flicks of his tail on the surface, like a dolphin fin in the distance. Then he disappeared completely, fully submerged under the water. He was showing me what he was, no longer afraid for me to see that he could go under and not come up for breath. I waited a long time in silence. But he never resurfaced. 36. I wheeled him up to the side gate of Annika’s house. “Wow,” he said, gaping up at the glass structure. “The other place I was in was just a wooden shack.” “Yeah,” I said. “My sister’s place is really nice.” I could hear Dominic barking from inside. I had never heard him sound so loud and unhinged. “Oh God,” he said. “I forgot you had a dog. I’m very frightened of them.” “Dominic is really sweet,” I said. “But I can put him in another room if you want.” “Please,” he said. I went inside. Dominic was baring his fangs. “Okay, chill,” I told him. But he growled and showed his gums to me. I also saw that his penis was out, the red lipstick of it extended from its sheath. I knew this happened to dogs when they were angry or excited. Why was he so agitated? “Come here,” I said, and he began to whimper. “You’re going to go in this room.” I opened the door to my sister’s pantry and put in his food dish and water. Then I dragged him in there by the collar. He put his head on his paws and his tail between his legs, but when I went back outside he began barking maniacally again. I didn’t know what to do. This was not the glowing bubble I had envisioned. “How scared are you?”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I felt like I was part of the rock and part of the ocean, and I wondered if this is how Sappho felt, even in her deepest desperation, part of the earth, like that desperation or longing or eternal cosmic want was something to be celebrated—something natural—holy even, or at least, not just something to be endured. What if everything was natural? What if there was no wrong or right action in terms of who you loved, who you wanted, or who you were drawn to? If the will of the universe was the will of the universe, and if everything was happening as it was, then wasn’t everything you could possibly do all right? I was almost ready to give up, when I saw him in the distance swimming toward me. I started laughing and some tears came to my eyes. “Hi!” he called. “Hello!” I giggled. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid you weren’t coming back.” I felt emboldened by how excited he seemed to see me. “Do you want to get out of the water and sit on the rock with me?” I asked. “No, you come closer to the water,” he said. “If I get out it will be too cold for me to get back in again.” “I can’t sit on the water,” I said. “No, just come closer to the edge. Put that blanket down on the rock. Lie down on it and just face me. Please? If you don’t mind.” I did what he said. I watched myself. Was this natural, what I should be doing? Or was I so sick that I would do anything that this strange boy asked? He couldn’t even bother to get out of the water to meet me. Was that a bad sign? But he was so kind in other ways, so attentive and present. “Now what? “Do you want to hug me?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I do want to hug you.” This seemed even weirder than him touching my foot. He was holding on to the rock and I leaned against him. I put my head over his shoulder, the way Dominic liked to support his neck on one of my limbs. He was cold and his skin was very soft. I felt like I was hugging a strange baby, but also like we had always known each other. We hugged and I felt like I dissolved into him, like I was diving into the ocean itself. I looked over his shoulder and saw the cresting waves, the whole ocean suddenly turning white, as though I were on the threshold of heaven.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  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. Mary, slipping noiselessly out of the study, might whisper: ‘We’ll go to the Tuileries Gardens.’ But when they arrived there, what was there to do? For of course a dog must not dive after goldfish—David understood this; there were goldfish at home—he must not start splashing about in ponds that had tiresome stone rims and ridiculous fountains. He and Mary would wander along gravel paths, among people who stared at and made fun of David: ‘Quel drôle de chien, mais regardez sa queue!’ They were like that, these French; they had laughed at his mother. She had told him never so much as to say: ‘Wouf!’ For what did they matter? Still, it was disconcerting. And although he had lived in France all his life—having indeed known no other country—as he walked in the stately Tuileries Gardens, the Celt in his blood would conjure up visions: great beetling mountains with winding courses down which the torrents went roaring in winter; the earth smell, the dew smell, the smell of wild things which a dog might hunt and yet remain lawful—for of all this and more had his old mother told him. These visions it was that had led him astray, that had treacherously led him half starving to Paris; and that, sometimes, even in these placid days, would come back as he walked in the Tuileries Gardens. But now his heart must thrust them aside—a captive he was now, through love of Mary. But to Mary there would come one vision alone, that of a garden at Orotava; a garden lighted by luminous darkness, and filled with the restless rhythm of singing.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  For the Celtic soul is the stronghold of dreams, of longings come down the dim paths of the ages; and within it there dwells a vague discontent, so that it must for ever go questing. And now as though drawn by some hidden attraction, as though stirred by some irresistible impulse, quite beyond the realms of her own understanding, Mary turned in all faith and all innocence to Stephen. Who can pretend to interpret fate, either his own fate or that of another? Why should this girl have crossed Stephen’s path, or indeed Stephen hers, if it came to that matter? Was not the world large enough for them both? Perhaps not—or perhaps the event of their meeting had already been written upon tablets of stone by some wise if relentless recording finger. An orphan from the days of her earliest childhood, Mary had lived with a married cousin in the wilds of Wales; an unwanted member of a none too prosperous household. She had little education beyond that obtained from a small private school in a neighbouring village. She knew nothing of life or of men and women; and even less did she know of herself, of her ardent, courageous, impulsive nature. Thanks to the fact that her cousin was a doctor, forced to motor over a widely spread practice, she had learnt to drive and look after his car by filling the post of an unpaid chauffeur—she was, in her small way, a good mechanic. But the war had made her much less contented with her narrow life, and although at its outbreak Mary had been not quite eighteen, she had felt a great longing to be independent, in which she had met with no opposition. However, a Welsh village is no field for endeavour, and thus nothing had happened until by a fluke she had suddenly heard of the Breakspeare Unit via the local parson, an old friend of its founder—he himself had written to recommend Mary. And so, straight from the quiet seclusion of Wales, this girl had managed the complicated journey that had finally got her over to France, then across a war-ravaged, dislocated country. Mary was neither so frail nor so timid as Mrs. Breakspeare had thought her.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  After all these years I am sending you a letter, just in case you have not completely forgotten the existence of a man called Martin Hallam. ‘I’ve been in Paris for the past two months. I had to come across to have my eye seen to; I stopped a bullet with my head here in France—it affected the optic nerve rather badly. But the point is: if I fly over to England as I’m thinking of doing, may I come and see you? I’m a very poor hand at expressing myself—can’t do it at all when I put pen to paper—in addition to which I’m feeling nervous because you’ve become such a wonderful writer. But I do want to try and make you understand how desperately I’ve regretted our friendship—that perfect early friendship of ours seems to me now a thing well worth regretting. Believe me or not, I’ve thought of it for years; and the fault was all mine for not understanding. I was just an ignorant cub in those days. Well, anyhow, please will you see me, Stephen? I’m a lonely sort of fellow, so if you’re kind-hearted you’ll invite me to motor down to Morton, supposing you’re there; and then if you like me, we’ll take up our friendship just where it left off. We’ll pretend that we’re very young again, walking over the hills and jawing about life. Lord, what splendid companions we were in those early days—like a couple of brothers! ‘Do you think it’s queer that I’m writing all this? It does seem queer, yet I’d have written it before if I’d ever come over to stay in England; but except when I rushed across to join up, I’ve pretty well stuck to British Columbia. I don’t even know exactly where you are, for I’ve not met a soul who knows you for ages. I heard of your father’s death of course, and was terribly sorry—beyond that I’ve heard nothing; still, I fancy I’m quite safe in sending this to Morton. ‘I’m staying with my aunt, the Comtesse de Mirac; she’s English, twice married and once more a widow. She’s been a perfect angel to me. I’ve been staying with her ever since I came to Paris. Well, my dear, if you’ve forgiven my mistake—and please say you have, we were both very young—then write to me at Aunt Sarah’s address, and if you write don’t forget to put “Passy.” The posts are so erratic in France, and I’d hate to think that they’d lost your letter. Your very sincere friend, Martin Hallam.’ Stephen glanced through the window.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  2.I have always felt that it would be good to be a man. Not only have I always wanted to have my own dick—just to walk around feeling that weight between my legs, that power—but I have longed to escape the time pressures that my body has put on me. I hated the German man on Abbot Kinney for having that, no time pressure. I hated the woman too, for being so young, for having so much time left to be hot and maybe someday have a baby. I had never wanted a baby. I never felt the desire so many women describe that suddenly hits them. Having just turned thirty-eight, I had been waiting and waiting for that desire to overtake me, but it didn’t. So I always looked on it casually, like something mildly distasteful: a piece of onion I would prefer not to put on my plate. But I loved having the option of having a baby if I still wanted one. I liked having the future ahead of me. People say that youth is wasted on the young, and I agree in so many respects that it was wasted on me, but in one way I had appreciated it. I always had a sense of my privilege with time. Part of my casualness with the question of having children was that I sensed how lucky I was that I could one day have the choice if I wanted. I liked that that day was very far off. The distance felt luxurious. I had secretly judged women who regretted never having children and were now no longer of the age at which they could have them. I judged them, perhaps, because I feared becoming one of them. But now at thirty-eight, my time was beginning to run out. I still didn’t want a child. I didn’t know what I would do with a child if I had one. But I missed having that open space before me in which to decide. And if the ass-cheeks woman had been paying attention to me, I knew she would have judged me as I had judged others my age.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” I said. He seemed so excited by the idea that I didn’t feel weird letting him know that this was something I had spent a lot of time thinking about. It was like I had let go now and decided to trust him. Something in me had suddenly decided that it didn’t really matter what would happen. Either I was going to scare him off or I wasn’t, but if it was going to happen, it would happen. I didn’t have to stifle my fears and desires. Just being around him, inside his supernatural aura, gave me the confidence to speak, like the way wine gives you confidence. I was languid and casual. Later I would likely replay everything and pick apart what I had said. Had I been too forward? And God forbid it ended that night when we said goodbye. If he disappeared and I never saw him again, I would blame myself for pushing him away with my omnivorous need. But for now I didn’t feel at risk of losing him, since he was very much here with me. “What if I took a shopping cart and brought it to the ocean?” I asked. “It’s Venice and there are so many people with shopping carts. We could hoist you into it and cover you up with a blanket. I could wheel you across the beach and you would be my secret. To everyone else I would look like any of the other bums who live here.” “But are the street people allowed on the beach at night?” he asked. “The boardwalk people? It’s one thing when you come to me alone at night, looking as you do. You’re one body, a woman in a dress. Coast Guard, the police, none of them are looking for you. And even if they were to come over, when we are on the rocks I can go right back into the water. I can go under the water and they would never see me again! But if I was in a shopping cart, far from the water, and they found us, how could I get free? They would lock me up or make me into some kind of terrible show. Remember that on land I am helpless.” “What if it wasn’t a shopping cart?” I asked. “What about…a child’s wagon? And what if it wasn’t at night but at dawn? It’s legal to be on the beach then, but no one is around except maybe a few surfers. What if we loaded you onto the wagon and covered your bottom half in a blanket? People would just think you were my child. Only grown.” “I feel that there would still be a danger if I was seen getting into the wagon.” “They might just think you were wearing a wet suit. Haven’t others thought it was a wet suit? I did at first.” “Yes,” he said. “Others have.” “See!” I said.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  4.Then came the obsession. I started reading my weekly horoscopes and his (Sagittarius), parsing every word for a sign that the universe was going to bring us back together. If there was nothing about love I would read a different horoscope. I would read them until I found one that suited me—until it said this was my lucky day or week or month. I consulted a psychic, an old woman in Tempe who worked in the back of a Mediterranean restaurant. She said that I needed to focus on me, do work on myself and my “blocks” and more would be revealed. She suggested a powder made of quartz crystal to put in my bath. She said it would serve as a clearing of negativity. I bought it for $250 and soaked in it. Nothing happened. So I called more psychics. I realized how much time I had spent with Jamie. Or maybe not how much time I’d spent with him, but how much time I spent alone but knowing, at least, that he was there. It was different now, being totally alone, with no one person in the back of my mind—that little figure, like a cushion. I’d never had many friends in Phoenix to begin with. There was Rochelle, a professor of anthropology, who had introduced me to Jamie. Rochelle had been married since before I met her. Mid-forties with wiry, pubic-looking hair that she kept cut very short, in a style I secretly called “the Brillo,” she wore no makeup and was deeply okay with herself. I thought it was nice that there was a man on Earth who was happy to fuck her—not only to fuck her but to marry her. I wondered if this was where she got her confidence or if it was her confidence that had drawn her husband to her. When Rochelle first introduced me to Jamie, I was barely thirty, and had the luxury of time, a cool air about my future, zero apparent desperation. She probably thought I was normal. Through the years we would meet every six months or so at the same Colombian restaurant and make the same jokes about how her husband and Jamie both snored, the way they both acted like babies when they got a cold. There was an affected comfort in these casual insults, as if to say, I know this man is mine. He isn’t going anywhere. I could take him or leave him. I pretended to her that I didn’t want to marry Jamie, didn’t want to move in together, and had more than enough time with him. I was a woman contented with what she had and did not need more of anyone or anything. But now I became clingy with Rochelle, besieged her with a barrage of compulsive questioning about Jamie’s whereabouts. The questions were coupled with a series of neurotic affirmations on my part that he would be coming back, it was only a matter of when.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Maybe he was Aphrodite herself. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s get you back to the house. Then I can kiss all your wounds.” 43. Every other day at dawn it started again: me pulling up to the rock with my wagon, Theo dragging himself up and in, the return to my sister’s house, where he assumed I would continue to live long after the summer. He didn’t ask when my sister would be coming back and I stopped worrying if I would see him again. We now had just enough permanence for me to have faith—a sense of knowing that he would be there. Yet there was still a feeling of wonder and mystery brought on by the gaps in between visits and my knowledge that in a month I could be gone. It was the perfect balance of love and longing, or lust and longing, or lust and love: what I had always sought. I felt more at ease, because I knew that it could be me who would create the ending if I wanted. I would be the one returning to the desert if I chose. I would never be left. Only leaving. I already contained the answer. When I thought of the thing itself—the actual end—I felt a sense of impending dread. I didn’t want to go. But I made no plans to stay either. I lived in what was there—keeping the date of my supposed departure in a corner of my mind, like a little magic peach pit. It radiated just enough control as to the way our future could unfold that I no longer feared rejection or his retreat. On the days when I would be seeing Theo in the evening, I worked on my book. Its whole contention had changed. I no longer wrote about the blank spaces in any theoretical way or tried to convince anyone that the only way to understand Sappho was to perceive the spaces as though they were always there. I no longer argued with past scholars about their biographical projections on the texts. I wrote, instead, about Eros in the text itself and its relationship to the spaces. The verb eratai less closely meant “to love” than it did “to desire.” Yet despite the best attempts of history, time, weather, and churchmen, the desire in Sappho’s poems had survived as though it were love eternal. Perhaps desire was not so ephemeral after all. Was a feeling the only eternal thing, despite the fact that everyone said it would pass? Could you get away with academic discourse about a feeling? I was going to try. I informed the advisory committee by email of my changes. They asked me to send an outline of the project and a sample. I bullshitted an outline and sent it over to them.

• 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 2. I have always felt that it would be good to be a man. Not only have I always wanted to have my own dick—just to walk around feeling that weight between my legs, that power—but I have longed to escape the time pressures that my body has put on me. I hated the German man on Abbot Kinney for having that, no time pressure. I hated the woman too, for being so young, for having so much time left to be hot and maybe someday have a baby. I had never wanted a baby. I never felt the desire so many women describe that suddenly hits them. Having just turned thirty-eight, I had been waiting and waiting for that desire to overtake me, but it didn’t. So I always looked on it casually, like something mildly distasteful: a piece of onion I would prefer not to put on my plate. But I loved having the option of having a baby if I still wanted one.

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

  The little treatise, called the German Theology, at the outset marks the difference between the Friends of God and the false, free spirits, especially the Beghards.487 A letter written by a Friend to another Friend488 represents as succinctly as any statement their aim when it says, "The soul that loves God must get away from the world, from the flesh and all sensual desires and away from itself, that is, away from its own self-will, and thus does it make ready to hear the message of the work and ministry of love accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ." The house which Rulman Merswin founded in Strassburg was declared to be a house of refuge for honorable persons, priests and laymen who, with trust in God, choose to flee the world and seek to improve their lives. The Friends of God regarded themselves as holding the secret of the Christian life and as being the salt of the earth, the instructors of other men.489 Among the leading Friends of God were Henry of Nördlingen, Nicolas of Löwen, Rulman Merswin and "the great Friend of God from the Oberland." The personality of the Friend of God from the Oberland is one of the most evasive in the religious history of the Middle Ages. He is presented as leader of great personal power and influence, as the man who determined Tauler’s conversion and wrote a number of tracts, and yet it is doubtful whether such a personage ever lived. Rulman Merswin affirms that he had been widely active between Basel and Strassburg and in the region of Switzerland, from which he got his name, the Oberland. In 1377, according to the same authority, he visited Gregory XI. in Rome and, like Catherine of Siena, petitioned the pontiff to set his face against the abuses of Christendom. Rulman was in correspondence with him for a long period, and held his writings secret until within four years of his (Rulman’s) death, when he published them. They were 17 in number, all of them bearing on the nature and necessity of a true conversion of heart.490 This mystic from the Oberland, as Rulman’s account goes, led a life of prayer and devotion, and found peace, performed miracles and had visions. He is placed by Preger at the side of Peter Waldo as one of the most influential laymen of the Middle Ages, a priest, though unordained, of the Church. After Rulman’s death, we hear no more of him. Rulman Merswin, the editor of the Oberland prophet’s writings, was born in Stra6sburg, 1307, and died there, 1382. He gave up merchandise and devoted himself wholly to a religious life. He had undergone the change of conversion—Kehr. For four years he had a hard struggle against temptations, and subjected himself to severe asceticisms, but was advised by his confessor, Tauler, to desist, at least for a time. It was towards the end of this period that he met the man from the Oberland.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Let’s sleep on it,” said Jamie, after the spare had been put on my wheel. “We don’t have to decide anything right away.” “Together or separate?” I asked. Together or separate was always a big question for us. He wanted no more than two nights a week together. I pushed for four. When I was in my apartment alone, I longed to be in his fold. I hinted and alluded to having free time. I got drunk on white wine, then begged. I wanted the access, the invitation, to feel that I was always welcome. It was a need based on his absence of need. So I pushed for more togetherness. But once I was with him, the closeness was never what I wanted it to be. I suffocated in his presence. When he wasn’t pushing me away, the closeness was cloying. “Maybe separate would be better for tonight. Tomorrow and Tuesday too? Maybe for the week. I have a lot of work and it would be good to maybe just try this on, the space, see how it feels?” “Sure,” I said, though I was scared. He kissed me on the forehead. “I love you,” he said. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Oh, come on, Lucy,” he said. He opened my car door, climbed out, and slammed it shut. “I’m sorry!” I said, my voice trailing after him. 3.That night I called him. “So we aren’t really taking a break, are we?” I asked. “I actually think it’s a good idea,” he said. “I know you were the one who brought it up, but I’d actually like to.” “But what does that mean? For how long? Is it just temporary and then will we get back together at the end?” “Let’s just take it one step at a time,” he said. I could no longer conjure the image of Jamie as I had seen him earlier in the day: overweight, unable to solve my problem, shut down. Now I saw him only as I had seen him when we were first together: strong in the jaw, self-contained in a sexy way, Gore-Tex handsome. I saw him again as a separate person, not an extension of me or something to be coaxed or endured, but his own entity: dry-humored, capable, a real man—whatever that meant. I saw my loss, felt the weight of it, and sat down on my bed. My mouth twitched downward and my stomach heaved. I felt tears rise up. I had not cried in years.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  39.That night I went out to the rocks even though he said he wouldn’t be there. Where was he in the ocean? I pictured him breathing under the waves. I imagined him lying in a sand bed on the seafloor in pure, total darkness. He was sleeping. His eyes were closed and he was faintly smiling. I wanted to be there with him, in quietude, a better abyss than the one up here. I wanted to swim to the bed and curl up beside him, kiss him on the forehead, the water rippling out around us, brining us both. A passing submarine rang above us. It was my phone. I looked at it. I didn’t recognize the number so I didn’t answer. But I held it up to my ear and pretended that I could talk to Theo through the waves. What would I say to him? How are you? Who are you? Are you me? There were so many questions I had for him that I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to puncture what we had. I feared chasing him away with curiosity and neediness—too much of a desire to pin him down—when he was already giving me so much. I didn’t want to know his limits, where his dimensions—both physical and emotional—began and ended. I wondered who else could see him as I saw him. I didn’t know the exact constraints of his world or his existence and I didn’t want to fracture it. My greatest fear was that I would make him disappear. Was this how it was with all men? Did they all exist in a totally different reality—one in which you couldn’t ask certain questions or the spell would be broken? But it was the same for me. When a man held me at arm’s length I wanted him. But if he came closer, stayed too close for too long, the spell was broken for me: the myth dissolved. He wasn’t who I thought he was. What was love without the spell? The spell was broken for me around Jamie. It broke twice: once before the breakup, re-congealing in my need for him, and again now. He’d been frantically texting me every day. This contact, his pursuit, which had gotten me so high just weeks before, only bored me now. I no longer felt excited by being chosen by him. Even the prospect of being the other woman, a hot escape from Megan the scientist, did nothing for me. It only hammered home my feelings around the need for distance in love. He only wanted me because I was far.