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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Losing command over myself, I threw my arms about her and clung to her lips, and she—she drew me close to her heaving breast. “Are you angry?” I then asked her. “I am never angry at anything that is natural—” she replied, “but I am afraid you suffer.” “Oh, I am suffering frightfully.” “Poor friend!” she brushed my disordered hair back from my fore-head. “I hope it isn’t through any fault of mine.” “No—” I replied,—“and yet my love for you has become a sort of madness. The thought that I might lose you, perhaps actually lose you, torments me day and night.” “But you don’t yet possess me,” said Wanda, and again she looked at me with that vibrant, consuming expression, which had already once before carried me away. Then she rose, and with her small transparent hands placed a wreath of blue anemones upon the ringletted white head of Venus. Half against my will I threw my arm around her body. “I can no longer live without you, oh wonderful woman,” I said. “Believe me, believe only this once, that this time it is not a phrase, not a thing of dreams. I feel deep down in my innermost soul, that my life belongs inseparably with yours. If you leave me, I shall perish, go to pieces.” “That will hardly be necessary, for I love you,” she took hold of my chin, “you foolish man!” “But you will be mine only under conditions, while I belong to you unconditionally—” “That isn’t wise, Severin,” she replied almost with a start. “Don’t you know me yet, do you absolutely refuse to know me? I am good when I am treated seriously and reasonably, but when you abandon yourself too absolutely to me, I grow arrogant—” “So be it, be arrogant, be despotic,” I cried in the fulness of exaltation, “only be mine, mine forever.” I lay at her feet, embracing her knees. “Things will end badly, my friend,” she said soberly, without moving. “It shall never end,” I cried excitedly, almost violently. “Only death shall part us. If you cannot be mine, all mine and for always, then I want to be your slave, serve you, suffer everything from you, if only you won’t drive me away.” “Calm yourself,” she said, bending down and kissing my forehead, “I am really very fond of you, but your way is not the way to win and hold me.” “I want to do everything, absolutely everything, that you want, only not to lose you,” I cried, “only not that, I cannot bear the thought.” “Do get up.” I obeyed. “You are a strange person,” continued Wanda. “You wish to possess me at any price?” “Yes, at any price.” “But of what value, for instance, would that be?”—She pondered; a lurking uncanny expression entered her eyes—“If I no longer loved you, if I belonged to another.” A shudder ran through me.

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

  Don’t Trust Your Computer Today at school, I was really missing Rowdy, so I walked over to the computer lab, took a digital photo of my smiling face, and e-mailed it to him. A few minutes later, he e-mailed me a digital photo of his bare ass. I don’t know when he snapped that pic. It made me laugh. And it made me depressed, too. Rowdy could be so crazy-funny-disgusting. The Reardan kids were so worried about grades and sports and THEIR FUTURES that they sometimes acted like repressed middle- aged business dudes with cell phones stuck in their small intestines. Rowdy was the opposite of repressed. He was exactly the kind of kid who would e-mail his bare ass (and bare everything else) to the world. “Hey,” Gordy said. “Is that somebody’s posterior?” Posterior! Did he just say “posterior”? “Gordy, my man,” I said. “That is most definitely NOT a posterior. That is a stinky ass. You can smell the thing, even through the computer.” “Whose butt is that?” he asked. “Ah, it’s my best friend, Rowdy. Well, he used to be my best friend. He hates me now.” “How come he hates you?” he asked. “Because I left the rez,” I said. “But you still live there, don’t you? You’re just going to school here.” “I know, I know, but some Indians think you have to act white to make your life better. Some Indians think you become white if you try to make your life better, if you become successful.” “If that were true, then wouldn’t all white people be successful?” Man, Gordy was smart. I wished I could take him to the rez and let him educate Rowdy. Of course, Rowdy would probably punch Gordy until he was brain-dead. Or maybe Rowdy, Gordy, and I could become a superhero trio, fighting for truth, justice, and the Native American way. Well, okay, Gordy was white, but anybody can start to act like an Indian if he hangs around us long enough. “The people at home,” I said. “A lot of them call me an apple.” “Do they think you’re a fruit or something?” he asked. “No, no,” I said. “They call me an apple because they think I’m red on the outside and white on the inside.” “Ah, so they think you’re a traitor.” “Yep.” “Well, life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.” Can you believe there is a kid who talks like that? Like he’s already a college professor impressed with the sound of his own voice? “Gordy,” I said. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me.” “Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against starvation.

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

  But it also reminded me of the people who were not going to be okay. It made me think of Rowdy. I missed him so much. I wanted to find him and hug him and beg him to forgive me for leaving. Discover Your Next Great Read Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors. Tap here to learn more . Contents A NOTE FROM SHERMAN ALEXIE PERSONAL PHOTOS FROM SHERMAN ROWDY, ROWDY, ROWDY A LETTER FROM AN EDUCATOR FAN ARTWORK WATER ON THE BRAIN JESS WALTER INTERVIEWS SHERMAN ALEXIE INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN FORNEY DISCUSSION GUIDE Personal Photos from Sherman Arnold, my big brother; my younger sisters, twins Kim and Arlene; and me piling on my father, Sherman Alexie Sr. It was taken by my mother in 1971 in our nineteenth-century house on the Spokane Indian Reservation. At this point, we lived in our one-bedroom house with our big sister, Mary; my father’s grandmother Lizzie and his great-uncle Stubby; and five adult cousins, Johnny, Tinker, Bill, Eugene, and Sam. Me, my big brother, and my father pretending to be Bruce Lee. It was taken by my mother in 1975 in our house constructed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. My father had just returned from a ten-day drinking binge, and we were happy to have him home. Reardan High School Annual, 1985 This is me, six feet two inches and 145 pounds, hitting a jumper against Harrington High School during my senior year. We were an undersized and underdog team that year but won our district playoffs by defeating Ritzville and Davenport, who finished second and third in the Class B state tournament. We lost our two games in the state tourney, and I still have nightmares about those losses. Springdale High School Annual, 1985 The late Randy J. Peone, my childhood best friend and the inspiration for Rowdy. I will miss him forever. This is the day of my graduation from Reardan High School with my best friends, Rick Williams, Tom Beitey, Doug Fiess, and Gordon Tyus. We all graduated from high school and college with academic honors. You could say I was best friends with four white boy geniuses. Tom died in 1991, but the other three are doing well. I don’t have much contact with them, but I remember them with love and respect. A never-before-seen , unedited excerpt from an unfinished and unpublished sequel to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian , from Rowdy’s point of view .

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

  I saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared behind the green wall. An hour full of torments. Finally there was a rustling in the bushes to one side, and they returned. The man accompanied her to the carriage. The light of the lamp fell full and glaringly upon an infinitely young, soft and dreamy face which I had never before seen, and played in his long, blond curls. She held out her hand which he kissed with deep respect, then she signaled to me, and immediately the carriage flew along the leafy wall which follows the river like a long green screen. * * * * * The bell at the garden-gate rings. It is a familiar face. The man from the Cascine. “Whom shall I announce?” I ask him in French. He timidly shakes his head. “Do you, perhaps, understand some German?” he asks shyly. “Yes. Your name, please.” “Oh! I haven’t any yet,” he replies, embarrassed—“Tell your mistress the German painter from the Cascine is here and would like—but there she is herself.” Wanda had stepped out on the balcony, and nodded toward the stranger. “Gregor, show the gentleman in!” she called to me. I showed the painter the stairs. “Thanks, I’ll find her now, thanks, thanks very much.” He ran up the steps. I remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor German. Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad. * * * * * It is a sunny winter’s day. Something that looks like gold trembles on the leaves of the clusters of trees down below in the green level of the meadow. The camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in their abundant buds. Wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing. The German painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in adoration, and looks at her. No, he rather looks at her face, and is entirely absorbed in it, enraptured. But she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade in my hand am turning over the flower-bed, solely that I may see her and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like music. * * * * * The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it. I go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda “Do you love the painter, mistress?” She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally even smiles. “I feel sorry for him,” she replies, “but I do not love him. I love no one.

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

  Can you believe that? That’s a lot of towns for one rez! And you know what’s really weird? Some of the towns on the rez are filled with white people. I don’t know how that happened. But the people who live in those white towns don’t always like Indians much. One of those towns, called Polson, tried to secede (that means quit, I looked it up) from the rez. Really. It was like the Civil War. Even though the town is in the middle of the rez, the white folks in that town decided they didn’t want to be a part of the rez. Crazy. But most of the people here are nice. The whites and Indians. And you know the best part? There’s this really great hotel where hubby and I had our honeymoon. It’s on Flathead Lake and we had a suite, a hotel room with its own separate bedroom! And there was a phone in the bathroom! Really! I could have called you from the bathoom. But that’s not even the most crazy part. We decide to order room service, to have the food delivered to our room, and guess what they had on the menu? Indian fry bread! Yep. For five dollars, you could get fry bread. Crazy! So I ordered up two pieces. I didn’t think it would be any good, especially not as good as grandma’s. But let me tell you. It was great. Almost as good as grandma’s. And they had the fry bread on this fancy plate and so I ate it with this fancy fork and knife. And I just kept imagining there was some Flathead Indian grandma in the kitchen, just making fry bread for all the room-service people. It was a dream come true! I love my life! I love my husband! I love Montana! I love you! Your sis, Mary Thanksgiving It was a snowless Thanksgiving. We had a turkey, and Mom cooked it perfectly. We also had mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. It was a feast. I always think it’s funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during that first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians. So I’m never quite sure why we eat turkey like everybody else. “Hey, Dad,” I said. “What do Indians have to be so thankful for?” “We should give thanks that they didn’t kill all of us.” We laughed like crazy. It was a good day. Dad was sober. Mom was getting ready to nap. Grandma was already napping. But I missed Rowdy. I kept looking at the door. For the last ten years, he’d always come over to the house to have a pumpkin-pie eating contest with me.

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

  I replied. “But it also depends on whether I am willing to risk it with you,” she said quietly. “I can easily imagine belonging to one man for my entire life, but he would have to be a whole man, a man who would dominate me, who would subjugate me by his inate strength, do you understand? And every man—I know this very well—as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. He puts himself into the woman’s hands, kneels down before her. The only man whom I could love permanently would be he before whom I should have to kneel. I’ve gotten to like you so much, however, that I’ll try it with you.” I fell down at her feet. “For heaven’s sake, here you are kneeling already,” she said mockingly. “You are making a good beginning.” When I had risen again she continued, “I will give you a year’s time to win me, to convince me that we are suited to each other, that we might live together. If you succeed, I will become your wife, and a wife, Severin, who will conscientiously and strictly perform all her duties. During this year we will live as though we were married—” My blood rose to my head. In her eyes too there was a sudden flame— “We will live together,” she continued, “share our daily life, so that we may find out whether we are really fitted for each other. I grant you all the rights of a husband, of a lover, of a friend. Are you satisfied?” “I suppose, I’ll have to be?” “You don’t have to.” “Well then, I want to—” “Splendid. That is how a man speaks. Here is my hand.” * * * * * For ten days I have been with her every hour, except at night. All the time I was allowed to look into her eyes, hold her hands, listen to what she said, accompany her wherever she went. My love seems to me like a deep, bottomless abyss, into which I subside deeper and deeper. There is nothing now which could save me from it. This afternoon we were resting on the meadow at the foot of the Venus-statue. I plucked flowers and tossed them into her lap; she wound them into wreaths with which we adorned our goddess. Suddenly Wanda looked at me so strangely that my senses became confused and passion swept over my head like a conflagration.

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

  We breakfast in my honey-suckle arbor, and have tea in her little sitting-room. I have an opportunity to unfold all my small, very small talents. Of what use would have been my study of all the various sciences, my playing at all the arts, if I were unable in the case of a pretty, little woman— But this woman is by no means little; in fact she impresses me tremendously. I made a drawing of her to- day, and felt particularly clearly, how inappropriate the modern way of dressing is for a cameo-head like hers. The configuration of her face has little of the Roman, but much of the Greek. Sometimes I should like to paint her as Psyche, and then again as Astarte. It depends upon the expression in her eyes, whether it is vaguely dreamy, or half-consuming, filled with tired desire. She, however, insists that it be a portrait-likeness. I shall make her a present of furs. How could I have any doubts? If not for her, for whom would princely furs be suitable? * * * * * I was with her yesterday evening, reading the Roman Elegies to her. Then I laid the book aside, and improvised something for her. She seemed pleased; rather more than that, she actually hung upon my words, and her bosom heaved. Or was I mistaken? The rain beat in melancholy fashion on the window-panes, the fire crackled in the fireplace in wintery comfort. I felt quite at home with her, and for a moment lost all my fear of this beautiful woman; I kissed her hand, and she permitted it. Then I sat down at her feet and read a short poem I had written for her. VENUS IN FURS. “Place thy foot upon thy slave, Oh thou, half of hell, half of dreams; Among the shadows, dark and grave, Thy extended body softly gleams.” And—so on. This time I really got beyond the first stanza. At her request I gave her the poem in the evening, keeping no copy. And now as I am writing this down in my diary I can only remember the first stanza. I am filled with a very curious sensation. I don’t believe that I am in love with Wanda; I am sure that at our first meeting, I felt nothing of the lightning-like flashes of passion. But I feel how her extraordinary, really divine beauty is gradually winding magic snares about me. It isn’t any spiritual sympathy which is growing in me; it is a physical subjection, coming on slowly, but for that reason more absolutely. I suffer under it more and more each day, and she—she merely smiles. * * * * * Without any provocation she suddenly said to me to-day: “You interest me. Most men are very commonplace, without verve or poetry.

• From The Girls (2016)

  My grandmother had told me about getting movie roles—how quickly she was plucked from a group. “That’s the difference,” she’d told me. “All the other girls thought the director was making the choice. But it was really me telling the director, in my secret way, that the part was mine.” I wanted that—a sourceless, toneless wave carried from me to Russell. To Suzanne, to all of them. I wanted this world without end. —The night began to show ragged edges. Roos was naked from the waist up, her heavy breasts flushed from the heat. Falling into long silences. A black dog trotted into the darkness. Suzanne had disappeared to find more grass. I kept searching for her, but I’d get distracted by the flash and shuffle, the strangers who danced by and smiled at me with blunt kindness. Little things should have upset me. Some girl burned herself, raising a ripple of skin along her arm, and stared down at the scorch with idle curiosity. The outhouse with its shit stench and cryptic drawings, walls papered in pages torn from porno mags. Guy describing the warm entrails of the pigs he’d gutted on his parents’ farm in Kansas. “They knew what was coming,” he said to a rapt audience. “They’d smile when I brought food and flip out when I had the knife.” He adjusted his big belt buckle, cackling something I couldn’t hear. But it was the solstice, I explained to myself, pagan mutterings, and whatever disturbance I felt was just a failure to understand the place. And there was so much else to notice and favor—the silly music from the jukebox. The silver guitar that caught the light, the melted Cool Whip dripping from someone’s finger. The numinous and fanatic faces of the others. Time was confusing on the ranch: there were no clocks, no watches, and hours or minutes seemed arbitrary, whole days pouring into nothing. I don’t know how much time passed. How long I was waiting for Suzanne to return before I heard his voice. Right next to my ear, whispering my name. “Evie.” I turned, and there he was. I twisted with happiness: Russell had remembered me, he’d found me in the crowd. Had maybe even been looking for me. He took my hand in his, working the palm, my fingers. I was beaming, indeterminate; I wanted to love everything. —The trailer he brought me to was larger than any of the other rooms, the bed covered with a shaggy blanket that I’d realize later was actually a fur coat. It was the only nice thing in the room—the floor matted with clothes, empty cans of soda and beer glinting among the detritus. A peculiar smell in the air, a cut of fermentation. I was being willfully naïve, I suppose, pretending like I didn’t know what was happening. But part of me really didn’t. Or didn’t fully dwell on the facts: it was suddenly difficult to remember how I’d gotten there.

• From The Girls (2016)

  He fussed with the tuning pegs before letting loose a jangle of strums. I tried to catch Suzanne’s eye, but she was trained on Russell. “This is the future of music,” he said over the din. “They think they know what’s good ’cause they got songs on the radio, but that’s not shit. They don’t have true love in their hearts.” No one seemed to notice his words unraveling around the borders: they all echoed what he said, their mouths twisting in shared feeling. Russell was a genius, that’s what I’d told Tom—and I could picture how Tom’s face would have moved with pity if he were there to see Russell, and it made me hate Tom, because I could hear it, too, all the space in the songs for you to realize they were rough, not even rough, just bad: sentimental treacle, the words about love as blunt as a grade-schooler’s, a heart drawn by a chubby hand. Sunshine and flowers and smiles. But I could not fully admit it, even then. The way Suzanne’s face looked as she watched him—I wanted to be with her. I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they’d understand the scale and intensity of your feelings and act accordingly. That seemed fair to me, as if fairness were a measure the universe cared anything about. —There were dreams I had sometimes, and I’d wake from the tail end assuming some image or fact to be true, carrying forward this assumption from the dreamworld into my waking life. And how jarring it would be to realize that I was not married, that I had not cracked the code to flight, and there would be a real sorrow. The actual moment Russell told Suzanne to go to Mitch Lewis’s house and teach him a lesson—I kept thinking I had witnessed it: the black night, the cool flicking chirps of crickets, and all those spooky oaks. But of course I hadn’t. I’d read about it so much that I believed I could see it clearly, a scene in the exaggerated colors of a childhood memory. I’d been waiting in Suzanne’s room at the time. Irritable, desperate for her return. I’d tried to talk to her at multiple points that night, tugging at her arm, tracking her gaze, but she kept brushing me off. “Later,” she said, and that was all it took for me to imagine her promise fulfilling itself in the darkness of her room. My chest tightened when I heard footsteps enter the room, mind swelling with the thought—Suzanne was here—but then I felt the soft glancing hit and my eyes flew open—it was just Donna. She’d thrown a pillow at me. “Sleeping Beauty,” she said, sniggering. I tried to settle back into pretty repose; the sheet overheated from the nervous shuffle of my body, ears suggestible for any sound of Suzanne’s return. But she didn’t come to the room that night.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “That lady just nabbed you, huh?” she said. “Man. Heavy.” Dark circles made crescents under her eyes, a hollow sink to her features, though these details were overshadowed by the swell of familiarity. She seemed happy enough to see me, but when I introduced Tom, she zipped a look at me. “He gave me a ride,” I supplied helpfully. Donna’s smile teetered, and she hitched the laundry higher in her arms. “Is it cool that I’m here?” Tom whispered to me, as if I had any power at all. The ranch had always welcomed visitors, putting them through their jokey gauntlet of attention, and I couldn’t imagine why that would have changed. “Yeah,” I said, turning to Donna. “Right?” “Well,” Donna said. “I don’t know. You should talk to Suzanne. Or Guy. Yeah.” She giggled absently. She was being odd, though to me it was just the usual Donna rap—I could even feel affection for it. Some movement in the grass caught her attention: a lizard, scuttling in search of shade. “Russell saw a mountain lion a few days ago,” she remarked to no one in particular. Widening her eyes. “Wild, huh?” —“Look who’s back,” Suzanne said, a flounce of anger in her greeting. Like I had disappeared on a little vacation. “Figured you’d forgotten how to get here.” Even though she’d seen Mrs. Dutton stop me, she kept glancing at Tom like he was the reason I’d left. Poor Tom, who wandered the grassy yard with the hesitant shuffle of museumgoers. His nose pricking from the animal smells, the backed-up outhouse. Suzanne’s face was shuttered with the same distant confusion as Donna’s: they could no longer conceive of a world where you could be punished. I was suddenly guilty for the nights with Tamar, the whole afternoons when I didn’t even think of Suzanne. I tried to make my father’s apartment sound worse than it had been, as if I’d been watched at every moment, suffered through endless punishments. “Jesus,” Suzanne snorted. “Dragsville.” —The shadow of the ranch house stretched along the grass like a strange outdoor room, and we occupied this blessing of shade, a line of mosquitoes hovering in the thin afternoon light. The air crackled with a carnival sheen—the familiar bodies of the girls jostling against mine, knocking me back into myself. The quick metal flash through the trees—Guy was bumping a car through the back ranch, calls echoing and disappearing. The drowsy shape of the children, mucking around a network of shallow puddles: someone had forgotten to turn off the hose. Helen had a blanket around herself, pulled up to her chin like a woolly ruff, and Donna kept trying to snap it away and expose the homecoming queen body underneath, the hematoma on Helen’s thigh. I was aware of Tom, sitting awkwardly in the dirt, but mostly I thrilled to Suzanne’s familiar shape beside me. She was talking quickly, a glaze of sweat on her face.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  After a year of this, his parents transferred him to a progressive boys’ school, called Muskoka Lakes College, in northern Ontario, where there was very little system to subvert. Although it was called a college, it was basically a preparatory school. Students were encouraged to study whatever they wanted. Paul discovered a mentor in his art teacher, Max Allen, who was gay and politically radical. Allen produced a show for the Canadian Broadcasting Company called As It Happens . In 1973, while the Watergate hearings were going on in Washington, DC, Allen let Paul sit beside him in his cubicle at CBC while he edited John Dean’s testimony for broadcast. Later, Allen opened a small theater in Toronto to show movies that had been banned under Ontario’s draconian censorship laws, and Paul volunteered at the box office. They showed Ken Russell’s The Devils and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris . In Ted’s mind, his son was working in a porno theater. “I just shut my eyes,” Ted said. Paul left school after he was caught forging a check. He attended art school briefly, and took some film classes at a community college, but he dropped out of that as well. He grew his curly blond hair to his shoulders. He began working in construction full-time for Ted, but he was drifting toward a precipice. In the 1970s, London acquired the nickname Speed City, because of the methamphetamine labs that sprang up to serve its blossoming underworld. Hard drugs were easy to obtain. Two of Haggis’s friends died from overdoses, and he had a gun pointed in his face a couple of times. “I was a bad kid,” he admitted. “I didn’t kill anybody. Not that I didn’t try.” He also acted as a stage manager in the ninety-nine-seat theater his father created in an abandoned church for one of his stagestruck daughters. On Saturday nights, Paul would strike the set of whatever show was under way and put up a movie screen. In that way he introduced himself and the small community of film buffs in London to the works of Bergman, Hitchcock, and the French New Wave. He was so affected by Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up that in 1974 he decided to become a fashion photographer in England, like the hero of that movie. That lasted less than a year, but when he returned he still carried a Leica over his shoulder. Back in London, Ontario, he fell in love with a nursing student named Diane Gettas. They began sharing a one-bedroom apartment filled with Paul’s books on film. He thought of himself then as “a loner and an artist and an iconoclast.” His grades were too poor to get into college. He could see that he was going nowhere. He was ready to change, but he wasn’t sure how. Such was Paul Haggis’s state of mind when he joined the Church of Scientology.

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

  The lad was most graciously received and asked whence he came and what he desired. The king’s kindness made him forget all about the charges he was intending to make. Then, refreshed with the whitest of bread, he descended again to the valley. The following day he firmly believed he had actually been in heaven and eaten at the Lord’s table. This was the story he told after he had ascended the chair of Canterbury. A quarrel with his father led to Anselm’s leaving his home. He set his face toward the West and finally settled in the Norman abbey of Le Bec, then under the care of his illustrious countryman Lanfranc. Here he studied, took orders, and, on Lanfranc’s transfer to the convent of St. Stephen at Caen, 1063, became prior, and, in 1078, abbot. At Bec he wrote most of his works. His warm devotion to the monastic life appears in his repeated references to it in his letters and in his longing to get back to the convent after he had been made archbishop. In 1093, he succeeded Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury. His struggle with William Rufus and Henry I. over investiture has already been described (pp. 88–93). During his exile on the Continent he attended a synod at Bari, where he defended the Latin doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit against the Greek bishops who were present.1328 The archbishop’s last years in England were years of quiet, and he had a peaceful end. They lifted him from the bed and placed him on ashes on the floor. There, "as morning was breaking, on the Wednesday before Easter," April 21, 1109, the sixteenth year of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his life, he slept in peace, as his biographer Eadmer says, "having given up his spirit into the hands of his Creator." He lies buried in Canterbury Cathedral at the side of Lanfranc. Anselm was a man of spotless integrity, single devotion to truth and righteousness, patient in suffering, and revered as a saint before his official canonization in 1494.1329 Dante associates him in Paradise with Nathan, the seer, and Chrysostom, both famous for rebuking vice in high places, and with the Calabrian prophet, Joachim.1330 Writings.—Anselm’s chief works in the departments of theology are his Monologium and Proslogium, which present proofs for God’s existence, and the Cur Deus homo, "Why God became Man," a treatise on the atonement. He also wrote on the Trinity against Roscellinus; on original sin, free will, the harmony of foreknowledge and foreordination, and the fall of the devil. To these theological treatises are to be added a number of writings of a more practical nature, homilies, meditations, and four hundred and twelve letters in which we see him in different relations, as a prelate of the Church, a pastor, as a teacher giving advice to pupils, and as a friend.1331 His correspondence shows him in his human relations. His meditations and prayers reveal the

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

  How that little useless hand would shrink from the touch of the gaunt, horny, clay-coloured, begrimed workman's hand, which hard, unremitting labour has changed into a kind of hoof. Some hands are coy, others paddle you indecently; the grip of some is hypocritical, and not what it pretends to be; there is the velvety, the unctuous, the priestly, the humbug's hand; the open palm of the spendthrift, the usurer's tight-fisted claw. There is, moreover, the magnetic hand, which seems to have a secret affinity for your own; its simple touch thrills your whole nervous system, and fills you with delight. "How can I express all that I felt from the contact of Teleny's hand? It set me on fire; and, strange to say, it soothed me at the same time. How sweeter, softer, it was, than any woman's kiss. I felt his grasp steal slowly over all my body, caressing my lips, my throat, my breast; my nerves quivered from head to foot with delight, then it sank downwards into my reins, and Priapus, re-awakened, uplifted his head. I actually felt I was being taken possession of, and I was happy to belong to him. "I should have liked to have said something polite in acknowledgment for the pleasure he had given me by his playing, still what unhackneyed phrase could have expressed all the admiration I felt for him? "'But, gentlemen,' said he, 'I am afraid I am keeping you away from the music.' "'I, myself, was just going away,' quoth I. "'The concert bores you then, does it?' "'No, on the contrary; but after having heard you play, I cannot listen to any more music to-night.' "He smiled and looked pleased. "'In fact, Réné, you have outdone yourself this evening,' said Briancourt. 'I never heard you play like that before.' "'Do you know why?' "'No, unless it is that you had such a full theatre.' "'Oh, no! it is simply because, whilst I was playing the gavotte, I felt that somebody was listening to me.' "'Oh! somebody!' echoed the young men, laughing. "'Amongst a French public, especially that of a charity concert, do you really think that there are many persons who listen? I mean who listen intently with all their heart and soul. The young men are obliging the ladies, these are scrutinizing each other's toilette; the fathers, who are bored, are either thinking of the rise and fall of the stocks, or else counting the number of gas-lights, and reckoning how much the illumination will cost.' "'Still, among such a crowd there is surely more than one attentive listener,' said Odillot the lawyer.

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

  will in exercise. By the fall this beautiful harmony has been broken, and that antagonism has arisen which Paul describes in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. (Augustine referred this passage to the regenerate state.) The rebellion of the spirit against God involved, as its natural punishment, the rebellion of the flesh against the spirit. Concupiscentia, therefore, is substantially the same as what Paul calls in the bad sense "flesh." It is not the sensual constitution in itself, but its predominance over the higher, rational nature of man.1808 It is true, however, that Augustine, in his longing after an unimpeded life in the spirit, was inclined to treat even lawful appetites, such as hunger and thirst, so far as they assume the form of craving desire, as at least remotely connected with the fall.1809 Julian attributed the strength of animal desire to the animal element in the original nature of man. Augustine answered, that the superiority of man to the brute consists in the complete dominion of reason over the sensual nature, and that therefore his approach to the brute in this respect is a punishment from God. Concupiscence then is no more a merely corporeal thing than the biblical savrx, but has its seat in the soul, without which no lust arises. We must, therefore, suppose a conflict in the soul itself, a lower, earthly, self-seeking instinct, and a higher, god-like impulse. This is the generic sense of concupiscentia: the struggle of the collective sensual and psychical desires against the god-like spirit. But Augustine frequently employs the word, as other corresponding terms are used, in the narrower sense of unlawful sexual desire. This appeared immediately after the fall, in the shame of our first parents, which was not for their nakedness itself, since this was nothing new to them, but for the lusting of the body; for something, therefore, in and of itself good (the body’s, own enjoyment, as it were), but now unlawfully rising, through the discord between body and soul. But would there then have been propagation without the fall? Unquestionably; but it would have left the dominion of reason over the sensual desire undisturbed. Propagation would have been the act of a pure will and chaste love, and would have had no more shame about it than the scattering of seed upon the maternal bosom of the earth. But now lust rules the spirit; and Augustine in his earlier years had had bitter experience of its tyranny. To this element of sin in the act of procreation he ascribes the pains of childbirth, which in fact appear in Genesis as a consequence of the fall, and as a curse from God. Had man remained pure, "the ripe fruit would have descended from the maternal womb without labor or pain of the woman, as the fruit descends from the tree."1810 6.Physical death, with its retinue of diseases and bodily pains.

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

  How ungallant these Jews are, I thought. And their God might choose more becoming expressions when he speaks of the fair sex. “The almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman,” I repeated to myself. What shall I do, so that He may punish me? Heaven preserve us! Here comes the housekeeper, who has again diminished somewhat in size overnight. And up there among the green twinings and garlandings the white gown gleams again. Is it Venus, or the widow? This time it happens to be the widow, for Madame Tartakovska makes a courtesy, and asks me in her name for something to read. I run to my room, and gather together a couple of volumes. Later I remember that my picture of Venus is in one of them, and now it and my effusions are in the hands of the white woman up there together. What will she say? I hear her laugh. Is she laughing at me? It is full moon. It is already peering over the tops of the low hemlocks that fringe the park. A silvery exhalation fills the terrace, the groups of trees, all the landscape, as far as the eye can reach; in the distance it gradually fades away, like trembling waters. I cannot resist. I feel a strange urge and call within me. I put on my clothes again and go out into the garden. Some power draws me toward the meadow, toward her, who is my divinity and my beloved. The night is cool. I feel a slight chill. The atmosphere is heavy with the odor of flowers and of the forest. It intoxicates. What solemnity! What music round about! A nightingale sobs. The stars quiver very faintly in the pale-blue glamour. The meadow seems smooth, like a mirror, like a covering of ice on a pond. The statue of Venus stands out august and luminous. But—what has happened? From the marble shoulders of the goddess a large dark fur flows down to her heels. I stand dumbfounded and stare at her in amazement; again an indescribable fear seizes hold of me and I take flight. I hasten my steps, and notice that I have missed the main path. As I am about to turn aside into one of the green walks I see Venus sitting before me on a stone bench, not the beautiful woman of marble, but the goddess of love herself with warm blood and throbbing pulses. She has actually come to life for me, like the statue that began to breathe for her creator. Indeed, the miracle is only half completed. Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? From her shoulders the dark fur flows. But her lips are already reddening and her cheeks begin to take color.

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

  “Who was that on the bike?” he asked. “Oh, that was my dad’s best friend.” “That was a cool bike,” he said. “Vintage.” “Yeah, he just got it.” “You ride with him a lot?” “Yes,” I said. I lied. “Cool,” Roger said. “Yeah, cool,” I said. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll see you around.” And then he walked away. Wow, he didn’t kick my ass. He was actually nice. He paid me some respect. He paid respect to Eugene and his bike. Maybe Grandma was right. Maybe I had challenged the alpha dog and was now being rewarded for it. I love my grandmother. She’s the smartest person on the planet. Feeling almost like a human being, I walked into the school and saw Penelope the Beautiful. “Hey, Penelope,” I said, hoping that she knew I was now accepted by the dog pack. She didn’t even respond to me. Maybe she hadn’t heard me. “Hey, Penelope,” I said again. She looked at me and sniffed. SHE SNIFFED! LIKE I SMELLED BAD OR SOMETHING! “Do I know you?” she said. There were only about one hundred students in the whole school, right? So of course, she knew me. She was just being a bitch. “I’m Junior,” I said. “I mean, I’m Arnold.” “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You’re the boy who can’t figure out his own name.” Her friends giggled. I was so ashamed. I might have impressed the king, but the queen still hated me. I guess my grandmother didn’t know everything. Tears of a Clown [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] When I was twelve, I fell in love with an Indian girl named Dawn. She was tall and brown and was the best traditional powwow dancer on the rez. Her braids, wrapped in otter fur, were legendary. Of course, she didn’t care about me. She mostly made fun of me (she called me Junior High Honky for some reason I never understood). But that just made me love her even more. She was out of my league, and even though I was only twelve, I knew that I’d be one of those guys who always fell in love with the unreachable, ungettable, and uninterested. One night, at about two in the morning, when Rowdy slept over at my house, I made a full confession. “Man,” I said. “I love Dawn so much.” He was pretending to be asleep on the floor of my room. “Rowdy,” I said. “Are you awake?” “No.” “Did you hear what I said?” “No.” “I said I love Dawn so much.” He was quiet. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I asked. “About what?” “About what I just said.” “I didn’t hear you say anything.” He was just screwing with me. “Come on, Rowdy, I’m trying to tell you something major.” “You’re just being stupid,” he said. “What’s so stupid about it?” “Dawn doesn’t give a shit about you,” he said.

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

  I missed him. So I drew a cartoon of Rowdy and me like we used to be: Then I put on my coat and shoes, walked over to Rowdy’s house, and knocked on the door. Rowdy’s dad, drunk as usual, opened the door. “Junior,” he said. “What do you want?” “Is Rowdy home?” “Nope.” “Oh, well, I drew this for him. Can you give it to him?” Rowdy’s dad took the cartoon and stared at it for a while. Then he smirked. “You’re kind of gay, aren’t you?” he asked. Yeah, that was the guy who was raising Rowdy. Jesus, no wonder my best friend was always so angry. “Can you just give it to him?” I asked. “Yeah, I’ll give it to him. Even if it’s a little gay.” I wanted to cuss at him. I wanted to tell him that I thought I was being courageous, and that I was trying to fix my broken friendship with Rowdy, and that I missed him, and if that was gay, then okay, I was the gayest dude in the world. But I didn’t say any of that. “Okay, thank you,” I said instead. “And Happy Thanksgiving.” Rowdy’s dad closed the door on me. I walked away. But I stopped at the end of the driveway and looked back. I could see Rowdy in the window of his upstairs bedroom. He was holding my cartoon. He was watching me walk away. And I could see the sadness in his face. I just knew he missed me, too. I waved at him. He gave me the finger. “Hey, Rowdy!” I shouted. “Thanks a lot!” He stepped away from the window. And I felt sad for a moment. But then I realized that Rowdy may have flipped me off, but he hadn’t torn up my cartoon. As much as he hated me, he probably should have ripped it to pieces. That would have hurt my feelings more than just about anything I can think of. But Rowdy still respected my cartoons. And so maybe he still respected me a little bit. Hunger Pains Our history teacher, Mr. Sheridan, was trying to teach us something about the Civil War. But he was so boring and monotonous that he was only teaching us how to sleep with our eyes open. I had to get out of there, so I raised my hand. “What is it, Arnold?” the teacher asked. “I have to go the bathroom.” “Hold it.” “I can’t.” I put on my best If-I-Don’t-Go-Now-I’m-Going-To-Explode face. “Do you really have to?” the teacher asked.

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

  The goddess stands as if transfigured, and seems to bathe in the soft moonlight. Once when I was returning from my devotions by one of the walks leading to the house, I suddenly saw a woman’s figure, white as stone, under the illumination of the moon and separated from me merely by a screen of trees. It seemed as if the beautiful woman of marble had taken pity on me, become alive, and followed me. I was seized by a nameless fear, my heart threatened to burst, and instead— Well, I am a dilettante. As always, I broke down at the second stanza; rather, on the contrary, I did not break down, but ran away as fast as my legs would carry me. * * * * * What an accident! Through a Jew, dealing in photographs I secured a picture of my ideal. It is a small reproduction of Titian’s “Venus with the Mirror.” What a woman! I want to write a poem, but instead, I take the reproduction, and write on it: Venus in Furs. You are cold, while you yourself fan flames. By all means wrap yourself in your despotic furs, there is no one to whom they are more appropriate, cruel goddess of love and of beauty!—After a while I add a few verses from Goethe, which I recently found in his paralipomena to Faust. TO AMOR “The pair of wings a fiction are, The arrows, they are naught but claws, The wreath conceals the little horns, For without any doubt he is Like all the gods of ancient Greece Only a devil in disguise.” Then I put the picture before me on my table, supporting it with a book, and looked at it. I was enraptured and at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. Again I took my pen in hand, and wrote the following words: “To love, to be loved, what happiness! And yet how the glamour of this pales in comparison with the tormenting bliss of worshipping a woman who makes a plaything out of us, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who treads us pitilessly underfoot. Even Samson, the hero, the giant, again put himself into the hands of Delilah, even after she had betrayed him, and again she betrayed him, and the Philistines bound him and put out his eyes which until the very end he kept fixed, drunken with rage and love, upon the beautiful betrayer.” I was breakfasting in my honey-suckle arbor, and reading in the Book of Judith. I envied the hero Holofernes because of the regal woman who cut off his head with a sword, and because of his beautiful sanguinary end. “The almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman.” This sentence strangely impressed me.

• From The Girls (2016)

  When my father saw that I had noticed, he laughed a little but seemed embarrassed. My father was amused at our collusion. But it sometimes shook out so we were laughing at him. Once Tamar and I were talking about Spanky and Our Gang, and he chimed in. Like the Little Rascals, he figured. Tamar and I looked at each other. “It’s a band,” she said. “You know, that rock-and-roll music the kids like.” And my father’s confused, orphaned face set us off again. —They had a fancy turntable that Tamar often spoke of moving to another corner or room for varying acoustic or aesthetic reasons. She constantly mentioned future plans for oak flooring and crown moldings and even different dish towels, though the planning itself seemed to satisfy. The music she played was more slick than the ranch racket. Jane Birkin and her froggy old-man husband, Serge. “She’s pretty,” I said, studying the record cover. And she was, tan as a nut with a delicate face, those rabbit teeth. Serge was disgusting. His songs about Sleeping Beauty, a girl who seemed most desirable because her eyes were always closed. Why would Jane love Serge? Tamar loved my father, the girls loved Russell. These men who were nothing like the boys I’d been told I would like. Boys with hairless chests and mushy features, the flocking of blemishes along their shoulders. I didn’t want to think of Mitch because it made me think of Suzanne—that night had happened somewhere else, in a little dollhouse in Tiburon with a tiny pool and a tiny green lawn. A dollhouse I could look onto from above, lifting the roof to see the rooms segmented like chambers of the heart. The bed the size of a matchbox. Tamar was different from Suzanne in a way that was easier. She was not complicated. She didn’t track my attention so closely, didn’t prompt me to shore up her declarations. When she wanted me to move over, she said so. I relaxed, which was unfamiliar. Even so, I missed Suzanne—Suzanne, who I remembered like dreams of opening a door on a forgotten room. Tamar was sweet and kind, but the world she moved around in seemed like a television set: limited and straightforward and mundane, with the notations and structures of normality. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There wasn’t a frightening gap between the life she was living and the way she thought about that life, a dark ravine I often sensed in Suzanne, and maybe in my own self as well. Neither of us could fully participate in our days, though later Suzanne would participate in a way she could never take back. I mean that we didn’t quite believe it was enough, what we were offered, and Tamar seemed to accept the world happily, as an end point. Her planning wasn’t actually about making anything different—she was just rearranging the same known quantities, puzzling out a new order like life was an extended seating chart.

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

  Well did I rest, for a considerable time, and in a state of complete tranquillity; and then, opening my eyes, it was with great pleasure I mused upon the landscape which was visible for a long distance. From out of the middle of a forest that extended upon the right, I thought I could detect, some three or four leagues from where I was, a little bell tower rising modestly into the air.... "Beloved solitude," I murmured, "what a desire I have to dwell a time in thee; and thou afar," said I, addressing the abbey, "thou must be the asylum of a few gentle, virtuous recluses who are occupied with none but God... with naught but their pious duties; or a retreat unto some holy hermits devoted to Religion alone... men who, far removed from that pernicious society where incessant crime, brooding heavily, threatfully over innocence, degrades it, annihilates it... ah! there must all virtues dwell, of that I am certain, and when mankind's crimes exile them out of the world, 'tis thither they go in that isolated place to commune with the souls of those fortunate ones who cherish them and cultivate them every day." I was absorbed in these thoughts when a girl of my age, keeper of a flock of sheep grazing upon the plateau, suddenly appeared before my eyes; I question her about that habitation, she tells me what I see is a Benedictine monastery occupied by four solitary monks of peerless devotion, whose continence and sobriety are without example. Once a year, says the girl, a pilgrimage is made to a miraculous Virgin who is there, and from Her pious folk obtain all their hearts' desire. Singularly eager immediately to go and implore aid at the feet of this holy Mother of God, I ask the girl whether she would like to come and pray with me; 'tis impossible, she replies, for her mother awaits her; but the road there is easy. She indicates it to me, she assures me the superior of the house, the most respectable, the most saintly of men, will receive me with perfect good grace and will offer me all the aid whereof I can possibly stand in need. "Dom Severino, so he is called," continues the girl, "is an Italian closely related to the Pope, who overwhelms him with kindnesses; he is gentle, honest, correct, obliging, fifty-five years old, and has spent above two-thirds of his life in France... you will be satisfied with him, Mademoiselle," the shepherdess concluded, "go and edify yourself in that sacred quiet, and you will only return from it improved."