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.

Page 17 of 170 · 20 per page

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Really, being at home for two weeks was just like my entire life before Culver Creek, except my parents were more emotional. They talked very little about their trip to London. I think they felt guilty. That’s a funny thing about parents. Even though I pretty much stayed at the Creek over Thanksgiving because I wanted to, my parents still felt guilty. It’s nice to have people who will feel guilty for you, although I could have lived without my mom crying during every single family dinner. She would say, “I’m a bad mother,” and my dad and I would immediately reply, “No, you’re not.” Even my dad, who is affectionate but not, like, sentimental , randomly, while we were watching The Simpsons , said he missed me. I said I missed him, too, and I did. Sort of. They’re such nice people. We went to movies and played card games, and I told them the stories I could tell without horrifying them, and they listened. My dad, who sold real estate for a living but read more books than anyone I knew, talked with me about the books I was reading for English class, and my mom insisted that I sit with her in the kitchen and learn how to make simple dishes—macaroni, scrambled eggs—now that I was “living on my own.” Never mind that I didn’t have, or want, a kitchen. Never mind that I didn’t like eggs or macaroni and cheese. By New Year’s Day, I could make them anyway. When I left, they both cried, my mom explaining that it was just empty-nest syndrome, that they were just so proud of me, that they loved me so much. That put a lump in my throat, and I didn’t care about Thanksgiving anymore. I had a family. eight days before ALASKA WALKED IN on the first day back from Christmas break and sat beside the Colonel on the couch. The Colonel was hard at work, breaking a land-speed record on the PlayStation. She didn’t say she missed us, or that she was glad to see us. She just looked at the couch and said, “You really need a new couch.” “Please don’t address me when I’m racing,” the Colonel said. “God. Does Jeff Gordon have to put up with this shit?” “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “It’s great. What we need is a pre-prank that coincides with an attack on Kevin and his minions,” she said. I was sitting on the bed, reading the textbook in preparation for my American history exam the next day. “A pre-prank?” I asked. “A prank designed to lull the administration into a false sense of security,” the Colonel answered, annoyed by the distraction.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  on for weeks. She could pry nothing personal out of him. In a way, she scepter, the father and ruler of the gods, whose hand understood—there were the differences in rank (she was far above him) and wields the flaming three-age (she was six years older). Then, a few months later, the wife of the forked bolt, whose nod king's brother died, and King Louis suggested to the Grande Mademoiselle shakes the universe, adopted the guise of a bull; that she replace his late sister-in-law—that is, that she marry his brother. and, mingling with the Anne Marie was disgusted; clearly the brother was trying to get his hands other bullocks, joined in the on her fortune. She asked Lauzun his opinion. As the king's loyal servants, lowing and ambled in the tender grass, a fair sight to he replied, they must obey the royal wish. His answer did not please her, sec. His hide was white as and to make things worse, he stopped visiting her, as if it were no longer untrodden snow, snow not proper for them to be friends. This was the last straw. The Grande Made-yet melted by the rainy moiselle told the king she would not marry his brother, and that was that. South wind. The muscles stood out on his neck, and Now Anne Marie met with Lauzun, and told him she would write on a deep folds of skin hung piece of paper the name of the man she had wanted to marry all along. He along his flanks. His horns was to put the paper under his pillow and read it the next morning. When were small, it is true, but so beautifully made that he did, he found the words "C'est vous" —It is you. Seeing the Grande you would swear they were Mademoiselle the following evening, Lauzun said she must have been jok-the work of an artist, more ing; she would make him the laughing stock of the court. She insisted that polished and shining than any jewel. There was no she was serious. He seemed shocked, surprised—but not as surprised as the menace in the set of his rest of the court was a few weeks later, when an engagement was an-head or in his eyes; he nounced between this relatively low-ranking Don Juan and the second-looked completely placid. • Agenor's daughter highest-ranking lady in France, a woman known for both her virtue and [ Europa] was filled with her skill at defending it. admiration for one so handsome and so friendly. But, gentle though he seemed, she was afraid at Interpretation. The Duke de Lauzun was one of the greatest seducers in first to touch him; then she history, and his slow and steady seduction of the Grande Mademoiselle was went closer, and held out his masterpiece. His method was simple: indirection. Sensing her interest in flowers to his shining lips. The lover was delighted him in that first conversation, he decided to beguile her with friendship.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I turned my head and looked at one of the little blue plastic chairs on its side. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn’t think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory—recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten. I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life? Once, early on in the year, she and I had walked down to the Smoking Hole, and she jumped into Culver Creek with her flip-flops still on. She stepped across the creek, picking her steps carefully over the mossy rocks, and grabbed a waterlogged stick from the creek bank. As I sat on the concrete, my feet dangling toward the water, she overturned rocks with the stick and pointed out the skittering crawfish. “You boil ’em and then suck the heads out,” she said excitedly. “That’s where all the good stuff is—the heads.” She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different. I lit a cigarette and spit into the creek. “You can’t just make me different and then leave,” I said out loud to her. “Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was fine with just me and last words and school friends, and you can’t just make me different and then die.” For she had embodied the Great Perhaps—she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps. I could call everything the Colonel said and did “fine.” I could try to pretend that I didn’t care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can’t just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I’m sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don’t even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can’t remember, because I never knew. And as I stood up to walk home and make my peace with the Colonel, I tried to imagine her in that chair, but I could not remember whether she crossed her legs. I could still see her smiling at me with half of Mona Lisa ’s smirk, but I couldn’t picture her hands well enough to see her holding a cigarette. I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  nothing were happening. "Only fiftymore miles,"Lefty hadsaidone nighton the arduous journey toSmyrna. "Maybe we'llbeluckyto- morrowandget a ride. Andwhenwe getto Smyrna,we'llgeta boat to Athens"—his voice tight, funny- sounding, a fewtones higherthan normal—"and from Athens we'llgetaboat toAmerica. Soundgood? Okay. I thinkthat's good." WhatamI doing? Desdemona thought. He'smybrother!She lookedat the otherrefugees onthequay, expectingtoseethem shak- ing their fingers,saying, "Shameonyou!"But theyonlyshowed her lifelessfaces, emptyeyes. Nobodyknew. Nobodycared.Then she heard herbrother's excitedvoice,ashe loweredthebread beforeher face. "Behold.Manna fromheaven." Desdemona glanced up athim.Her mouthfilledwithsalivaas Leftybroke thechurekiintwo.But herfaceremainedsad."Idon'tsee anyboats coming,"shesaid. "They'recoming.Don'tworry.Eat."Leftysat downonthesuit- casebesideher.Their shoulderstouched.Desdemonamovedaway. "What'sthematter?" "Nothing." "EverytimeIsitdown you move away." HelookedatDesde- mona,puzzled, but thenhisexpressionsoftened andheput hisarm around her.Shestiffened. "Okay, have ityourway."Hestood up again. "Whereare yougoing?" "Tofindmorefood." "Don't go,"Desdemonapleaded. "I'msorry.Idon'tlikesitting hereallalone." ButLefty had stormedoff.Heleftthe quayandwandered thecity streets,muttering tohimself. Hewasangry withDesdemona forre- buffing himand hewasangry athimselffor being angryather,be- causehe knewshe wasright.Buthedidn't stayangrylong.It wasn'tin hisnature. He wastired,half-starved, he hadasorethroat,a wounded hand, but forall thatLeftywas stilltwenty yearsold, onhisfirstreal trip away from home,andalert tothe newnessof things.When you gotaway from the quayyoucould almost forget thattherewasacrisis on. Backhere therewerefancy shops andhigh-toned bars,still operat- ing. He came downthe Rue deFranceandfoundhimselfatthe Sporting Club. Despitethe emergency, twoforeignconsuls wereplay- 49 ing tennison thegrass courts outback. Infadinglighttheymoved back and forth, swatting thebail while a dark-skinned boyinawhite jacket heldatray of ginandtonics courtside. Leftykept walking. He came toa square with a fountain andwashed hisface.Abreezecame up, bringingthe smellofjasmine all thewayinfromBournabat.And while Leftystopsto breatheitin,I'd like totakethisopportunity to resuscitate—for purelyelegiacreasonsandonlyfor a paragraph— that city whichdisappeared,once andforall,in 1922. Smyrnaendurestodayina fewrebetika songsanda stanza from TheWaste Land: Mr.Eugenides,theSmyrnamerchant Unshaven,witha pocketful of currants C.i.f. London:documentsatsight, Askedmein demoticTrench ToluncheonattheCannonStreetHotel Tollowed bya weekendattheMetropole. Everythingyouneed to know about Smyrnaiscontainedinthat.The merchantisrich, andsowasSmyrna.Hisproposalwasseductive, and sowasSmyrna,themostcosmopolitancityintheNearEast. Among itsreputedfounders were, first, the Amazons(whichgoes nicelywith mytheme),andsecond,Tantalushimself.Homerwas bornthere, andAristotieOnassis.InSmyrna,EastandWest,opera andpolitakia^ violin andzourna^pianoand daouliblended astaste- fullyasdid therose petalsandhoneyinthe localpastries. Lefty started walkingagainandsooncameto theSmyrna Casin. Potted palms flanked agrandentrance,but thedoorsstoodwide open.He stepped inside.Noonestopped him.There was noone around.He followed aredcarpet to the secondfloorandintothe gaming room. Thecraps tablewas unoccupied. Nobodywas at the roulettewheel. In thefar corner, however, a group ofmenwereplay- ing cards.They glanced upatLeftybut then returnedtotheirgame, ignoring his dirty clothes. Thatwaswhen he realizedthatthegam- blers weren'tregular club members;they were refugeeslikehim. Each hadwandered through theopen doorin hopesofwinning money tobuy passage out ofSmyrna.Lefty approached the table.A card playerasked,"You in?" 50

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Some of the questions made no sense—but others betrayed by their wording a clumsy trend in the conclusions they would formulate. If you had spatial skills and active sexuality you were clearly a fetishistic man, and if you empathized with people and didn’t care about sex, you might be that rarest of things: a true transsexual, a woman trapped in a man’s body. But Amy wasn’t that. The test showed her to be the autogynephilic creep she already assumed she would be. Jen was obviously a true transsexual. Amy had never met a trans girl in person, and her fascination with Jen bordered on painful. Look at her. She looks like a girl. She sounds like a girl. More than that, Amy thought, she wanted something from Jen. Something like sexual attraction, but shaded differently. Something closer to the thrill she felt when a celebrity passed by. Of a nameless wanting in the direction of that celebrity. The abstract beckoning that celebrities exude. The gravitational pull of their fame that tugged at Amy so that she felt anxious to be close, to be seen, and to be valued. To feel those celebrity eyes move without friction across the smooth surface of a clamoring fandom, then suddenly catch upon her, stop dead, and return her gaze. That moment of mutual recognition, that’s the only way to have your existence stamped valid, to transcend the anonymity of mere fan, of inconsequential gawker. Jen’s was a noncelebrity celebrity that Amy could feel. A pull that maybe only she would feel. Amy kept turning to see where in the store Jen was. Shockingly, Jen seemed to be having a good time. Moreover, she kept saying things that countered what the COGIATI test said a true transsexual should feel. When Patrick asked about French maid outfits, Jen clucked in approval. “Back wall,” she said, pointing. “But also, we have some sexy ones in boxes in the back that we never put out because they take up so much space when they’re unfolded. It’s not the cheap Halloween style, they are the sensual kind with petticoats that actually fluff.” In mock sotto voce she admitted, “I got one myself. I have a thing for that flouncy feel. My boyfriend always wants me to tidy up in it for him. But no way. I just wear it around my apartment for special, uh, personal time.” She giggled at the admission and Amy thought that Jen might spontaneously combust from her own incredible and suddenly revealed transcendent hotness, an attractiveness that had only a tangential relationship to her appearance.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I’m just tired,” she said, kicking off her flip-flops. She pulled her feet onto the foam couch, tucking them behind a cushion, and scooted up to put her head in my lap. My corduroys. My boxers. Two layers. I could feel the warmth of her cheek on my thigh. There are times when it is appropriate, even preferable, to get an erection when someone’s face is in close proximity to your penis. This was not one of those times. So I stopped thinking about the layers and the warmth, muted the TV, and focused on Decapitation. At 8:30, I turned off the game and scooted out from underneath Alaska. She turned onto her back, still asleep, the lines of my corduroy pants imprinted on her cheek. — I usually only called my parents on Sunday afternoons, so when my mom heard my voice, she instantly overreacted. “What’s wrong, Miles? Are you okay?” “I’m fine, Mom. I think—if it’s okay with you, I think I might stay here for Thanksgiving. A lot of my friends are staying”—lie—“and I have a lot of work to do”—double lie. “I had no idea how hard the classes would be, Mom”—truth. “Oh, sweetie. We miss you so much. And there’s a big Thanksgiving turkey waiting for you. And all the cranberry sauce you can eat.” I hated cranberry sauce, but for some reason my mom persisted in her lifelong belief that it was my very favorite food, even though every single Thanksgiving I politely declined to include it on my plate. “I know, Mom. I miss you guys, too. But I really want to do well here”—truth—“and plus it’s really nice to have, like, friends ”—truth. I knew that playing the friend card would sell her on the idea, and it did. So I got her blessing to stay on campus after promising to hang out with them for every minute of Christmas break (as if I had other plans). I spent the morning at the computer, flipping back and forth between my religion and English papers. There were only two weeks of classes before exams—the coming one and the one after Thanksgiving—and so far, the best personal answer I had to “What happens to people after they die?” was “Well, something. Maybe.” The Colonel came in at noon, his thick übermath book cradled in his arms. “I just saw Sara,” he said. “How’d that work out for ya?” “Bad. She said she still loved me. God, ‘I love you’ really is the gateway drug of breaking up. Saying ‘I love you’ while walking across the dorm circle inevitably leads to saying ‘I love you’ while you’re doing it. So I just bolted.” I laughed. He pulled out a notebook and sat down at his desk. “Yeah. Ha-ha. So Alaska said you’re staying here.” “Yeah. I feel a little guilty about ditching my parents, though.” “Yeah, well. If you’re staying here in hopes of making out with Alaska, I sure wish you wouldn’t.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Where’s the kissing?” “Given their position, I don’t think they can kiss right now,” I noted. “That’s my point. Just by virtue of how they’re doing it, it’s objectification. He can’t even see her face! This is what can happen to women, Pudge. That woman is someone’s daughter. This is what you make us do for money.” “Well, not me,” I said defensively. “I mean, not technically. I don’t, like, produce porn movies.” “Look me in the eye and tell me this doesn’t turn you on, Pudge.” I couldn’t. She laughed. It was fine, she said. Healthy. And then she got up, stopped the tape, lay down on her stomach across the couch, and mumbled something. “What did you say?” I asked, walking to her, putting my hand on the small of her back. “Shhhh,” she said. “I’m sleeping.” Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. forty-seven days before ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, I woke up with a stuffy nose to an entirely new Alabama, a crisp and cold one. As I walked to Alaska’s room that morning, the frosty grass of the dorm circle crunched beneath my shoes. You don’t run into frost much in Florida—and I jumped up and down like I was stomping on bubble wrap. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Alaska was holding a burning green candle in her hand upside down, dripping the wax onto a larger, homemade volcano that looked a bit like a Technicolor middle-school-science-project volcano. “Don’t burn yourself,” I said as the flame crept up toward her hand. “Night falls fast. Today is in the past,” she said without looking up. “Wait, I’ve read that before. What is that?” I asked. With her free hand, she grabbed a book and tossed it toward me. It landed at my feet. “Poem,” she said. “Edna St. Vincent Millay. You’ve read that? I’m stunned.” “Oh, I read her biography! Didn’t have her last words in it, though. I was a little bitter. All I remember is that she had a lot of sex.” “I know. She’s my hero,” Alaska said without a trace of irony. I laughed, but she didn’t notice. “Does it seem at all odd to you that you enjoy biographies of great writers a lot more than you enjoy their actual writing?” “Nope!”

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "As long as we're together we'll be okay." He looked at her, in the way of the night before, and Desdemona blushed. He tried to put his arm around her, but she stopped him. "Look." 42 Down below, the smoke had thinned momentarily. They could see the roads now, clogged with refugees: a river of carts, wagons, water buffalo, mules, and people hurrying out of the city. "Where can we get a boat? In Constantinople?" "We'll go to Smyrna," said Lefty. "Everyone says Smyrna's the safest way." Desdemona was quiet for a moment, trying to fathom this new reality. Voices rumbled in the other houses as people cursed the Greeks, the Turks, and started packing. Suddenly, with resolve: "I'll bring my silkworm box. And some eggs. So we can make money." Lefty took hold of her elbow and shook her arm playfully. "They don't farm silk in America." "They wear clothes, don't they? Or do they go around naked? If they wear clothes, they need silk. And they can buy it from me." "Okay, whatever you want. Just hurry." Eleutherios and Desdemona Stephanides left Bithynios on Au- gust 31, 1922. They left on foot, carrying two suitcases packed with clothes, toiletries, Desdemona's dream book and worry beads, and two of Lefty's texts of Ancient Greek. Under her arm Desdemona also carried her silkworm box containing a few hundred silkworm eggs wrapped in a white cloth. The scraps of paper in Lefty's pockets now recorded not gambling debts but forwarding addresses in Athens or Astoria. Over a single week, the hundred or so remaining citizens of Bithynios packed their belongings and set out for main- land Greece, most en route to America. (A diaspora which should have prevented my existence, but didn't.) Before leaving, Desdemona walked out into the yard and crossed herself in the Orthodox fashion, leading with the thumb. She said her goodbyes: to the powdery, rotting smell of the cocoonery and to the mulberry trees lined along the wall, to the steps she'd never have to climb again and to this feeling of living above the world, too. She went inside the cocoonery to look at her silkworms for the last time. They had all stopped spinning. She reached up, plucked a cocoon from a mulberry twig, and put it in her tunic pocket. On September 6, 1922, General Hajienestis, Commander in Chief of the Greek forces in Asia Minor, awoke with the impression that his legs were made of glass. Afraid to get out of bed, he sent the barber away, forgoing his morning shave. In the afternoon he declined to go 43

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Yeah. The whole deal." "Where? At the Grecian Gardens?" Chapter Eleven laughed."Youkidding?Nobodywanted tocome down here." "I like ithere," Isaid."IloveDetroit." "Yeah? Well, welcomehome." He hadturned backonto Jefferson forthe long milesthrough the blighted East Side.Awig shop. VanityDancing,theoldclub,now forrent. Aused-record storewithahand-paintedsignshowing peo- plegroovingamid anexplosion of musicalnotes.Theolddimestores andsweet shopswereclosed,Kresge's,Woolworth's,SandersIce Cream.Itwas coldout.Notmanypeoplewereonthestreets. On one corner a manstoodimpervious,cuttingafinefigureagainstthe wintersky.His leathercoatreached tohisankles.Space funk goggles wrappedaroundhisdignified,long-jawedhead,ontopofwhich sat, orsailed really,theSpanishgalleonofa velvet maroonhat.Notpart ofmy suburban world, this figure;thereforeexotic. But nevertheless familiar, andsuggestiveofthepeculiarcreativeenergiesofmyhome- town.I wasgladtoseehimanyway.I couldn't takemyeyesaway. WhenIwaslittle, street-cornerdudes likethatwould sometimes lowertheir shadestowink,keenongettinga rise outofthewhite girl inthe backseatpassing by. Butnowthedude gaveme a different look altogether. Hedidn'tlowerhissunglasses,buthismouth,his flared nostrils, andthetiltofhishead communicateddefianceand evenhate. That waswhen I realized a shockingthing.Icouldn'tbe- come aman without becomingTheMan. EvenifIdidn'twantto. I made Chapter Eleven go throughIndian Village, passingour old house. I wanted totake a nostalgia bathtocalmmynervesbefore seeing my mother. The streetswerestill fulloftrees,bareinwinter, sothatwe could see all thewayto the frozenriver.I wasthinking how amazing it was that theworld containedso many lives.Outin these streets people were embroiledina thousandmatters,money problems,love problems, schoolproblems. Peoplewerefallingin love,getting married, going todrugrehab, learninghow to ice-skate, gettingbifocals, studying for exams, tryingonclothes,gettingtheir haircut,andgetting born. And insome housespeopleweregetting old and sick and were dying, leavingotherstogrieve.Itwashappen- ing all thetime, unnoticed, andit was thethingthat really mattered. 518 What reallymattered inlife,what gaveitweight,wasdeath. Seenthis way, mybodily metamorphosiswasa smallevent.Onlythe pimp might havebeen interested. Soonwe reachedGrosse Pointe.Thenakedelmsreachedacross our streetfromboth sides,touchingfingertips,andsnow lay crusted inthe flowerbeds beforethewarm,hibernatoryhouses.Mybody was reactingto thesight ofhome. Happysparkswereshootingoff insideme.Itwasa caninefeeling,fullofeagerlove,anddumb to tragedy. Here was myhome,Middlesex. Up thereinthatwindow, onthetiled windowseat,I usedto readforhours,eatingmulberries offthetree outside. Thedriveway hadn't been shoveled.Nobodyhadhad timeto thinkaboutthat. ChapterEleven took the drivewaya littlefastand we bouncedinour seats, thetailpipehitting.After wegotout of the car, heopenedthetrunkandbegancarryingmysuitcase tothehouse. But halfwaytherehe stopped. "Hey, bro,"hesaid."Youcancarrythis yourself."He was smiling with mischief. Youcouldseehe was enjoy- ingtheparadigmshift. Hewas taking mymetamorphosis asa brain teaser,liketheonesin theback ofhis sci-fimagazines. "Let'snot getcarriedaway," I answered."Feelfree to carrymy luggageanytime." "Catch!" shouted ChapterEleven, andheftedthesuitcase.I caughtit,staggeringback.Rightthen thedoorofthehouse opened andmymother,inhouseslippers, steppedoutintothefrost-powdery air. Tessie Stephanides,whoinadifferentlifetime whenspacetravel wasnewhad decidedtogoalongwithherhusband andcreate agirl bydevious means,nowsawbeforeher,in thesnowydriveway, the fruitof that scheme.Notadaughter at all anymore but,atleastby looks, ason.She wastired andheartsick andhad noenergy todeal with thisnew event.It was not acceptablethat Iwasnowliving as a male person. Tessie didn'tthinkitshould beup tome.Shehad given birth tome andnursed meandbrought meup.She hadknown me beforeI knew myselfand nowshehad no say in thematter. Life started out onething andthen suddenlyturned acorner andbecame something else. Tessiedidn'tknow how thishad happened. Though she could still seeCalliope inmyface, eachfeature seemedchanged, thickened, andthere were whiskers onmychin andabove my upper 519

• From Middlesex (2002)

  put ona classical Greekplay. Originally,these playshad beenper- formed inthe MiddleSchool auditorium.But afterMr.da Silvatook his tripto Greece, hegottheideaof convertingthe hockeyfield intoa theater. Withits bleachers set intotheslope anditsnat- uralacoustics, itwasa perfect mini-Epidaurus. The custodial staff brought risersout andsetupastage onthegrass. Theyearofmy infatuation withtheObscureObject,theplay Mr. da Silvaselected wasAntigone. Therewereno auditions.Mr. da Silva filled themajorroles withhispetsfrom AdvancedEnglish.Everyone elsehe stuckinthe chorus.Sothecast listreadlikethis: Joanne MariaBarbara Peracchio as Creon;Tina KubekasEurydice;Maxine Grossingeras Ismene.Intherole ofAntigoneherself—theonlyreal possibility fromevenaphysical standpoint—wastheObscureObject. Hermidtermgradehadbeenonlya C minus.Still,Mr.daSilvaknew astarwhenhesawone. "We have to learnalltheselines?" asked Joanne MariaBarbara Peracchio at ourfirstrehearsal. "Intwoweeks?" "Learnwhatyoucan," said Mr. da Silva."Everyone'sgoingto be wearingarobe.Youcan keep yourscriptunderneath.MissFagles willalsobeourprompter.She'll be in the orchestrapit." "We're goingtohaveanorchestra?"MaxineGrossingerwanted to know. "The orchestra,"Mr. daSilvasaid,pointingtohisrecorder,"isI." "Ihopeitdoesn'train," saidthe Object. "Willitrain theFriday afternext?"saidMr.daSilva."Whydon't we askourTiresias?" And thenheturnedtome. You expected someone else?No,iftheObscureObjectwasper- fect toplay theavenging sister,I wasashoo-intoplaytheold, blind prophet. Mywild hair suggestedclairvoyance. My stoopmademe appearbrittle with age.Myhalf- changedvoicehada disembodied, inspired quality. Tiresias hadalso beenawoman, ofcourse.ButI didn't know that then.Andit wasn'tmentionedinthescript. Ididn't care whatpart Iplayed.All thatmattered, allIcouldthink about, was that nowIwould beneartheObscureObject.Notnear her asIwas during class,whenit wasimpossibletospeak.Notnear her asIwas in thelunchroom, when shewas spittingmilk atanother table. Butnear herinrehearsals for a schoolplay,withall thewaiting around that implied, allthe backstage intimacy, allthe intense, 331 fraught,giddy, emotionalabandonbrought onbyassumingidenti- tiesnot yourown. "Idon't think weshouldusescripts,"the ObscureObjectnow de- clared. She hadarrived forrehearsallooking professional,allherlines highlightedinyellow.Hersweater wastiedaroundhershoulderslike a cloak. "Ithinkweshould allmemorize ourlines."She looked from face toface."Otherwiseit'll betoo fakey." Mr.da Silvawas smiling.Learninglineswouldrequire efforton theObject'spart.Anovelundertaking. "Antigonehasfarandaway themost lines,"hesaid. "SoifAntigonewants tobe offbook,thenI thinktherestofyoushould be offbook, too." The othergirlsgroaned. ButTiresias,alreadyhavingavisionof thefuture,turnedtowardtheObject."I'll goover your lineswith you.Ifyouwant." Thefuture.Itwasalreadyhappening.The Objectwas looking at me.Thenictitatingmembraneswerelifting. "Okay," shesaid,dis- tantly. We agreedtomeetthenext day,a Tuesdayevening.TheObscure ObjectwroteoutheraddressandTessiedroppedmeatthehouse. She was sittingon a greenvelvetsofawhenIwasshownintotheli- brary. Heroxfords were offbutshestillhad heruniformon.Her long redhairwastied back, thebettertodowhatshewas doing, which wastolighthercigarette.Sitting Indianstyle,theObject leanedforward,holdingthecigaretteinhermouth over a green ce- ramiclighter shapedlikeanartichoke.The lighterwaslowon fluid. Sheshookit andflickedthebuttonwith herthumbuntilatlasta smallflame shot out. "Yourparents letyousmoke?"Isaid. Shelooked up,surprised,thenreturnedto theworkathand. She gotthecigarette going, inhaled deeply,andlet itout,slowly, satisfy- ingly."They smoke," shesaid."They'dbe pretty bighypocritesifthey didn'tletme smoke." "But they're adults." "Mummy andDaddy knowI'mgoing to smokeifIwantto. If they don'tlet medoit, I'lljustsneakit." By the looks ofit,this dispensation had beenineffectfor some time.The Object wasnotnew to smoking.She was already a profes- sional.As she sized meup,her eyes narrowing, thecigarettehung 332 aslantfrom her mouth.Smoke driftedcloseto herface.Itwas a strange opposition:the hard-bittenprivate-eye expressiononthe face ofa girlwearing a uniformforprivateschool. Finallyshereachedup and took thecigarette out ofhermouth.Withoutlookingfor the ashtray, sheflicked herash.It fellin. "Idoubtakid likeyou smokes,"shesaid. "Thatwould beagoodguess." "Youinterested in starting?"SheheldoutherpackofTareytons. "Idon't wanttoget cancer." Shetossed thepack down,shrugging."Ifigurethey'llbeableto cureitby thetimeIgetit." "Ihopeso.Foryoursake." Sheinhaledagain,even moredeeply.Sheheldthesmokeinand thenturnedincinematic profileandletit out. "Youdon'thaveanybad habits,I bet," she said. "I'vegottonsofbad habits." "Likewhat?" "LikeIchewmyhair." "Ibite mynails,"shesaidcompetitively.Sheliftedonehandto showme."Mummygotmethisstuffto put onthem.Ittasteslike shit.It's supposedtohelpyouquit." "Doesitwork?" "Atfirstitdid. ButnowIsortoflikethetaste."Shesmiled.I smiled.Then,briefly, tryingitout, we laughedtogether. "That'snotas badaschewingyourhair,"Iresumed. "Whynot?" "Because whenyouchew yourhairitstarts smelling likewhatyou had forlunch." She made a face andsaid, "Bogue." Atschool wewould havefeltfunnytalkingtogether, but here no one could seeus.In thebiggerschemeofthings,outintheworld, we were morealike thandifferent. We were bothteenagers.Wewere both from thesuburbs. Isetdownmybagand cameovertothesofa. The Object putherTareytoninhermouth. Plantingher palmsonei- ther sideof hercrossed legs,sheliftedherself up, like ayogilevitat- ing, and scooted overtomakeroomfor me. "I've got ahistorytesttomorrow," shesaid. "Who doyouhaveforhistory?" 333

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “What?” Reese is incredulous. “Have you ever seen any movie? Have you ever watched TV? Of course they do. But fine, I'll make that an I statement: I think that without a child, Ill forever be a silly whore. And I do have a capacity to love a child. And with no child to love, every day ends with a hunger unsated. Does that work better for you, Ames?” “So much for queer liberation,” Ames says, but he’s bobbing his hands palms down in a gesture for her to calm down. “Would it make you more comfortable if I said there’s nothing wrong with being a silly little whore—it’s just not for me anymore? Or can I answer her question now? Yes?” He rolls his eyes. “Please continue, Reese.” “Thank you.” She pointedly turns to speak to Katrina rather than Ames, and without quite intending, her body language attains a pose of near supplication, even as her tone stays hot. “I have a gift for mothering. All I do is mother people. I want to be a mom so bad that I make everyone my children. Other trans girls. Men too, actually. Sometimes when I think back on Amy—Ames—I think she fell in love with me because I mothered her as much as I dated her.” Ames snorts, but Reese ignores it. “As a child, I needed so badly. When someone could meet that need, it was beautiful. It was the proper place for mothering. Now I need that proper place for myself. My sense of hope, my sense of a future, they are both reliant on having a child. I want to see what I cherish live on. Does that make it clear why I want to be a mom? Is that acceptable?” Katrina pauses, then nods. It is a noncommittal nod, but a nod nonetheless. Ames slumps back and lets out a long breath, audible even in the din of the lobby. “Credit to GLAAD,” he says. “Tonight they have achieved their mission of facilitating yet another hard-hitting discussion on LGBTQ rights.” A short time later, Ames walks Reese to the corner. Reese has her jacket slung over her purse, but at the stoplight, she unfolds it and slips her arms into its sleeves. Katrina waits inside. “Maybe that didn’t go super well,” Reese says quietly. “Kind of stupid to think it would.” Ames shakes his head. “Might’ve gone better than you think.” He reaches out and straightens the collar of Reese’s jacket with absent familiarity. “I know Katrina pretty well. When she’s disinterested or insulted, she avoids engaging. She’ll never bother to challenge someone she doesn’t care about. She’s polite about it, but you can tell. That’s not how she was tonight. She might not have said everything that you, or even I, wanted to hear, but she’s seriously considering it. She must see something in you. She was really mad at me, but she didn’t dismiss this idea.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Is there such a thing as a mom-crush? Certainly there is a friend- crush, and of course, a typical crush-crush, but Reese would call what she feels for Katrina a mom-crush. Every morning for more than a week now, she has woken up thinking about being a co-mom with Katrina, picturing her future self five years hence, in hopeful domestic scenes. For instance, this very day, on the way to Katrina’s, she imagined Katrina and herself in the grocery store, deciding whether or not it is okay to make Kraft mac and cheese for their child. Her own mother often made Kraft mac and cheese, tossing in a half stick of butter and pouring in whole milk, so that the barely curled macaroni noodles shone creamy in their fluorescent-orange glow. Once, her mom made real baked mac and cheese, with white cheddar and breadcrumbs on top. Reese turned her nose up at it, spooked by the pale color of the cheese. Five years from now, Reese imagines, Katrina will argue for making real mac and cheese for their child, and Reese will have to explain that no, Kraft mac and cheese is the pinnacle of food science, and one does not forsake the pinnacle of food science merely because it is unnatural. The imagined scene animates Reese, and helps shush the whispers of a new fear: that Katrina, in her own subtle late-thirties flailing, harbored fantasies that queerness would save her. That in the whirlwind of divorce, pregnancy, and unexpected transsexualism, Katrina had become unmoored, and, drifting and fumbling in the darkened water of a fallen heterosexuality, had brushed against an opportunity for queer parenting and held fast to it. There was a utopic aspect to the way that Katrina talked about co- parenting, the way that recently out queers proclaimed their romantic loves and predilections with the most fervor, still innocent of the thorns inherent to queer life. In her more paranoid, cruel moments, Reese braced herself for Katrina’s coming abandonment, the way that a queer girl tries to moderate her desire for the heterosexual college girl who has been excitedly returning her kisses in the wake of an asshole boyfriend leaving her. But after that adorable little indoor picnic thing? The image of a future together that it conjured? Fine, Reese gives herself permission to stop resisting. She’s never had a mom-crush before! Yes, all her past crushes turned sour and curdled into resentment or addictive limerence, but they weren’t mom-crushes, were they? Maybe a mom- crush was all she ever needed, and if not, who cared that maybe she was lying to herself? Let that hunger—for a family, for a child, for others to make a place in their lives for her—quiet itself a spell in anticipation of a coming satiation. Sometimes the wonder over the object of a crush is indistinguishable from the simple relief that you are still able to leap into one at all.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  She’d been blowing him since the first date, but only took her panties off in front of him at a motel outside Wall, home of Wall Drug, because she had already convinced herself that she was in love with him, and so she had to do it sooner or later. He did not go down on her in return. In the darkness afterward, his arms wrapped around her, big spoon style, she allowed herself one quiet sob at her own weakness when listening to the boring older transsexuals in her support group. They’d advised her to wait on surgery at a time when she had half planned a trip to Thailand to buy herself a pussy with the money her grandma had left her for college—to which she had also not gone. Listening to Sebastian’s slow breathing near her ear, with his one inert hand coming from beneath her body to softly hold her breast and the other resting on the widest part of her hips, she would have so much rather had a pussy than the slowly dwindling balance in her bank account. By the time they'd seen California and headed back East, overshooting Wisconsin to arrive in New York City, she’d put aside her doubts and cultivated the fantasy of life with him. She would be his wife. In Norway, a man could marry a transgender woman, who would be recognized as a woman as long as she had been, as the website Sebastian showed her had translated it, “irreversibly sterilized.” But Reese had also almost run out of money, and news that Sebastian’s swimming stipend had been canceled arrived by email when they were somewhere in Pennsylvania. In New York, they crashed in Astoria with some trans girls she knew from LiveJournal. Their second day in New York, Sebastian sold the LeBaron on Craigslist to pay for a ticket back to Norway. His plans were vague. He’d sort out his military-service problem then send money for her to fly to Oslo. “It won’t be more than three months,” he calculated. He told her to get a job as a waitress again. She got a job nine days and twenty-six applications later, in the East Village, an hour’s commute by subway from the couch in Astoria for which she had begun to pay rent to the other trans girls to sleep upon. The restaurant wanted her for one shift a week. But a waitress there knew the manager at a gym opening up in Chelsea that needed people to run the in-gym daycare.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese would have been delighted with this story—but Reese was the exact person Amy was afraid to tell. Had she not lost, sometime in the last year, the ability to tell Reese exactly what she wanted in bed, she wouldn’t have had to tell the dommes. Early in the relationship, she and Reese had been switchy and kinkier. She’d bought Reese a black latex dress, and Amy could practically orgasm just rubbing the silicone polish on Reese’s curves, never mind when Reese put Amy over her knee for a spanking. That early dynamic fit Amy well: Reese topped in the kinky things that Amy liked, and Amy, who had almost no genital dysphoria, was happy to put Reese on her knees or fuck Reese in the mornings—the kind of vanilla affirmations that Reese needed. But slowly the kink stopped, and Amy, wheedling for more, ramped up her soft boyfriend act, putting in more work to affirm Reese’s gender, while getting less of what she needed. She didn’t just want Reese, she wanted to blush before Reese. But she couldn’t say this to Reese. The words locked themselves in and refused her attempts at eviction. And so the dommes. After the Indian guy, and a tally of her month’s phone sex expenditures, Amy decided it’d just be cheaper to see a domme in person; and for once, she wouldn’t have to convince that domme, sans evidence, that she was more than your average sissy, that the domme was herself lucky to be seeing Amy. Unfortunately, because the trans community and the queer dommes who would have been perfect for Amy overlapped, Amy couldn’t actually hire any of the women that she’d lusted after at parties. Instead, Amy went on Eros. Her first time, she hired a domme who combined mindfulness meditation, acupressure, and BDSM. The woman tied up Amy quite creatively, including braiding a rope through her hair, then pressed on sensitive points on Amy’s body until she cried, stopping if Amy couldn’t maintain the correct breathing patterns and postures through the pain. The experience, while intense, remained clinical, the approach a little too therapeutic. Mindfulness Domme did acknowledge that most of her clients were not, in fact, beautiful transsexuals, but Amy’s beauty didn’t appear to move her one way or another. Some clients were tall, some short, some hairy, some young, and yes, some beautiful. A professional and standardized application of pain made most of them cry the same way. A month later, Amy had reevaluated. She felt only a little guilt about wanting to see dommes, because she believed that if she could simply achieve the needed release, she could return to Reese a whole girlfriend. Mindfulness Domme did not give Amy the needed release, because Amy’s issues, Amy decided, were mommy issues.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  “The expression. It refers to vinyl records, you know. Not that ’m old enough to have ever owned one.” He didn’t take the bait. “Whatever, you're the one telling me about vinyl.” Watching Stanley speak was like watching a movie she’d seen dozens of times—the familiarity of his expressions and gestures. She knew when Stanley would tilt his head, when he’d make that mock bashful expression and look sneakily to one side. Just then, the store manager walked back with Mark-Paul Gosselaar in tow. Here was distant TV and the distant past come to life at the same moment. Reese stood suddenly. “Oh, Stanley, I have to work now.” But Stanley stuck out his hand to Gosselaar, who shook it, and asked Stanley, “You’re Reese?” Stanley pointed at Reese. “No, sorry, that’s Reese. I’m just shopping.” Gosselaar took this in stride. He smiled, those good-natured nineties megawatts clouded only slightly by the beard and crow’s feet that now surrounded them. Clearly the man had grown accustomed to strangers shaking his hand on little pretext. “Nice seeing you,” Reese said to Stanley, because the manager had pulled out a set of keys to brusquely unlock a door, and was by then holding it open for Gosselaar. “Yeah,” said Stanley. But when Reese emerged from the storeroom twenty minutes later, she found Stanley still browsing sweaters. “I found the brevity of that encounter entirely unsatisfying,” he said. “Now can you show me which sweaters Zack Morris took? I’m going to get those.” “T have to go.” He stood in her path. “Please?” And this word, a simple “please,” had occurred so infrequently in the vocabulary that he’d once used with her that she had to wonder whether he’d changed and how much. And this, in turn, made her curious, or at least curious enough to acquiesce. That evening, Reese swept into Stanley’s apartment, holding shopping bags of clothing, mostly his, but he’d bought some for her from the various stores to which she’d taken him. He had sublet a loft in Williamsburg, owned by a chef, who was spending three months away on a culinary tour. That meant that Stanley was living among the chef's tasteful belongings, making it difficult for Reese to suss out clues as to the state of Stanley’s life. A weathered wooden upright piano stood against a wall in the living room, and Reese plinked a few keys. Along the other wall, shelves held glasses of all shapes, and above that, a selection of liquor put the average craft cocktail bar to shame. A collection of bottles of all colors, some gleaming, others ancient-looking, and half of them with labels she didn’t recognize. “Are you allowed to drink these?” she asked him. “Tm allowed to do anything I want. I haven’t yet, but I'll replace the bottles of anything you use,” Stanley replied. “Make me something. I haven’t had a woman bring me a drink in a while.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  The impromptu tour continued. Angela showing off the house, the furniture, trailing her fingertips lovingly over the decor as she confessed excitedly to Reese the price of various odds and ends. At the dining room set, Angela announced, “This is my favorite. I always knew I wanted a table like this because my grandmother had one. I didn’t see any in stores, so Chuck ordered this one custom as his own housewarming gift to me. We ordered it two months ago and it finally arrived.” Her fingers stroked the wood tenderly and Reese followed suit. The wood had been sanded to a velvet touch, barely recognizable by feel as wood. “It’s butcher block—it will last a century if we sand and oil it. You don’t even want to know what it costs.” The scrunchie in Angela’s hair matched her napkin rings. Reese knew it was intentional without asking. It was, indeed, a very beautiful and solid table. Reese’s most valuable possession was her laptop. “When you are in your thirties,” Angela told her, not unkindly, “you'll want one too. You'll want a table that will last your whole life.” The table fixed itself with totemic power into Reese’s brain. The butcher-block craftsmanship became for Reese an absurd-but-serious mental marker of a female bourgeois heterosexual temporality forever beyond her envious grasp: When a woman reaches a certain point in her thirties, she looks around and finds a good dining set with which to settle down. One afternoon, after having lunch with Amy, Reese took the subway over to the Paul Smith store, where her boss had arranged for Mark- Paul Gosselaar to select knitwear samples. But Gosselaar was running late. She waited on a plastic chair toward the back of the store, surrounded by muted sweaters and the smell of new wool. She had her headphones on, so she didn’t notice the man speaking to her until he loomed over her. Tall. A green field jacket. Floppy brown hair over a splash of grin. She emitted a little yip at the same time that her adrenal gland released. Stanley. He had lost weight, become lean. With his cheekbones showing beneath those pale eyes, his face had taken on a wolfish look. He ran his fingers down a sweater hanging near her face. She pulled off her headphones to hear him say “interesting spot for contemplation you ve chosen.” “Tm working,” she said quickly, getting her bearings. “You work here now?” “No, for a PR company that works with the store.” He widened his eyes. “Impressive.” She thought about deflecting the compliment, but no—let him think she was impressive. “Ts it in the fashion field?” “Usually.” “Great! Help me pick out something here.” “T can’t, ’m working! I’m waiting for Mark-Paul Gosselaar.” She dropped the name intentionally, meaning it as a brag, but Stanley just asked who that was. “Zack Morris! From Saved by the Bell!” He laughed. “That’s a deep cut.” “The expression ‘deep cut’ is a deep cut!” “What?”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese scooped her skirt beneath her and sat beside Amy. The women on the blanket were playing a casual game, one of those conversational exercises that fritter away time among acquaintances with whom you want to give the impression of high-spirited openness, but with whom you can only risk it obliquely. The rules: Pick three items from your local CVS that would most upset the checkout clerk when rung up at the counter. A sample from that conversation: “A dog collar, those long balloons that you twist into animals at children’s parties, and a tub of Vaseline.” “Sudafed, a kitchen knife, and some twine.” “Condoms, a shovel, and a Styrofoam cooler.” “They don’t sell shovels at CVS.” “Yes they do!” “Where are you from? Like Montana? They don’t in New York City.” “A trowel then, one of those little shovels?” “No.” “Fine, then I'll walk in carrying a shovel, and buy those other two things.” “That’s not in the rules. If you’re allowed to bring things in, there’s stuff way more disturbing than a shovel.” When the game came around to Amy, she said, “I think we aren’t really taking advantage of the rules. Like, everything you all said hints at sex or murder, which, yeah, is upsetting in a generalized scandalous way. But I think if you can trigger someone to make them sad about their own life, it’s way more upsetting. I’d find the checkout person who looks the most tired and lonely, and then I’d buy a huge tub of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream, a bottle of diet pills, and whatever women’s magazine has the saddest headline, like: How to Get a Job that Isn’t Degrading, or How to Not Still Be Alone Years After Heartbreak, or Orgasms! Will You Ever Have One? You'd have to pick the right clerk, but if you did, it'd be devastating.” Oh yes, Reese thought, this girl is for me. When the conversation turned to a cadre of literary-type punk girls in whom Reese had zero interest, she allowed her attention to drift. When she tuned back in, Amy was pointing to a cluster of buildings to the south that rose visibly above the rim of green encircling the field. She lived in one of those buildings. Reese didn’t bother to ask what Amy did. She already knew the equation: white young trans woman plus apartment right beside the park equaled job in tech. Reese barely paid attention to Amy’s actual words. She had the same mannerisms as Sebastian, but her voice, the way she used it, was flat and Midwestern with none of Sebastian’s charismatic pauses and accented flourishes. The phantom of Sebastian disappeared from her as she spoke and rubber-banded back when she went silent. Then, suddenly, the conversation split. Iris and Felicity got up, hunting to see who might have brought beer in a backpack, and Amy and Reese sat alone.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  But when the Colonel opened the door, I caught the edge of her scent: wet dirt and grass and cigarette smoke, and beneath that the vestiges of vanilla-scented skin lotion. She flooded into my present, and only tact kept me from burying my face in the dirty laundry overfilling the hamper by her dresser. It looked as I remembered it: hundreds of books stacked against the walls, her lavender comforter crumpled at the foot of her bed, a precarious stack of books on her bedside table, her volcanic candle just peeking out from beneath the bed. It looked as I knew it would, but the smell, unmistakably her, shocked me. I stood in the center of the room, my eyes shut, inhaling slowly through my nose, the vanilla and the uncut autumn grass, but with each slow breath, the smell faded as I became accustomed to it, and soon she was gone again. “This is unbearable,” I said matter-of-factly, because it was. “God. These books she’ll never read. Her Life’s Library.” “Bought at garage sales and now probably destined for another one.” “Ashes to ashes. Garage sale to garage sale,” I said. “Right. Okay, down to business. Get anything her aunt wouldn’t want to find,” the Colonel said, and I saw him kneeling at her desk, the drawer beneath her computer pulled open, his small fingers pulling out groups of stapled papers. “Christ, she kept every paper she ever wrote. Moby-Dick . Ethan Frome .” I reached between her mattress and box spring for the condoms I knew she hid for Jake’s visits. I pocketed them, and then went over to her dresser, searching through her underwear for hidden bottles of liquor or sex toys or God knows what. I found nothing. And then I settled on the books, staring at them stacked on their sides, spines out, the haphazard collection of literature that was Alaska. There was one book I wanted to take with me, but I couldn’t find it. The Colonel was sitting on the floor next to her bed, his head bent toward the floor, looking under her bed frame. “She sure didn’t leave any booze, did she?” he asked. And I almost said, She buried it in the woods out by the soccer field, but I realized that the Colonel didn’t know, that she never took him to the edge of the woods and told him to dig for buried treasure, that she and I had shared that alone, and I kept it for myself like a keepsake, as if sharing the memory might lead to its dissipation. “Do you see The General in His Labyrinth anywhere?” I asked while scanning the titles on the book spines. “It has a lot of green on the cover, I think.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  A woman has bought two $80 tickets to the theater. When she arrives at the theater, she opens her wallet and discovers that the tickets are missing. Will she buy two more tickets to see the play? A woman goes to the theater, intending to buy two tickets that cost $80 each. She arrives at the theater, opens her wallet, and discovers to her dismay that the $160 with which she was going to make the purchase is missing. She could use her credit card. Will she buy the tickets? Respondents who see only one version of this problem reach different conclusions, depending on the frame. Most believe that the woman in the first story will go home without seeing the show if she has lost tickets, and most believe that she will charge tickets for the show if she has lost money. The explanation should already be familiar—this problem involves mental accounting and the sunk-cost fallacy. The different frames evoke different mental accounts, and the significance of the loss depends on the account to which it is posted. When tickets to a particular show are lost, it is natural to post them to the account associated with that play. The cost appears to have doubled and may now be more than the experience is worth. In contrast, a loss of cash is charged to a “general revenue” account—the theater patron is slightly poorer than she had thought she was, and the question she is likely to ask herself is whether the small reduction in her disposable wealth will change her decision about paying for tickets. Most respondents thought it would not. The version in which cash was lost leads to more reasonable decisions. It is a better frame because the loss, even if tickets were lost, is “sunk,” and sunk costs should be ignored. History is irrelevant and the only issue that matters is the set of options the theater patron has now, and their likely consequences. Whatever she lost, the relevant fact is that she is less wealthy than she was before she opened her wallet. If the person who lost tickets were to ask for my advice, this is what I would say: “Would you have bought tickets if you had lost the equivalent amount of cash? If yes, go ahead and buy new ones.” Broader frames and inclusive accounts generally lead to more rational decisions. In the next example, two alternative frames evoke different mathematical intuitions, and one is much superior to the other. In an article titled “The MPG Illusion,” which appeared in Science magazine in 2008, the psychologists Richard Larrick and Jack Soll identified a case in which passive acceptance of a misleading frame has substantial costs and serious policy consequences. Most car buyers list gas mileage as one of the factors that determine their choice; they

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  oned in the same jail, showed him the incontrovertible proof of his sex did figure never fixing herself Bouriscout finally accept it. surely in the imagination. She is the memory of an experience, the point at which a dream is Interpretation. The moment Pei Pu met Bouriscout, he realized he had transformed into reality or found the perfect victim. Bouriscout was lonely, bored, desperate. The way reality into a dream. The he responded to Pei Pu suggested that he was probably also homosexual, or bright colors fade, her name becomes a mere echo— echo perhaps bisexual—at least confused. (Bouriscout in fact had had homo- of an echo, since she has sexual encounters as a boy; guilty about them, he had tried to repress this probably adopted it from side of himself.) Pei Pu had played women's parts before, and was quite some ancient predecessor. The idea of the courtesan good at it; he was slight and effeminate; physically it was not a stretch. But is a garden of delights in who would believe such a story, or at least not be skeptical of it? which the lover walks, The critical component of Pei Pu's seduction, in which he brought the smelling first this flower and then that but never Frenchman's fantasy of adventure to life, was to start slowly and set up an understanding whence idea in his victim s mind. In his perfect French (which, however, was full of comes the fragrance that interesting Chinese expressions), he got Bouriscout used to hearing stories intoxicates him. Why and tales, some true, some not, but all delivered in that dramatic yet believ- should the courtesan not elude analysis? She does able tone. Then he planted the idea of gender impersonation with his not want to be recognized "Story of the Butterfly." By the time he confessed the "truth" of his gen- for what she is, but rather der, Bouriscout was already completely enchanted with him. to be allowed to be potent and effective. She offers the Bouriscout warded off all suspicious thoughts because he wanted to be- truth of herself—o r, rather, lieve Pei Pu's story. From there it was easy Pei Pu faked his periods; it didn't of the passions that become take much money to get hold of a child he could reasonably pass off as directed toward her. And what she gives back is one's their son. More important, he played the fantasy role to the hilt, remaining self and an hour of grace in elusive and mysterious (which was what a Westerner would expect from an her presence. Love revives 300 • The Art of Seduction when you look at her: is Asian woman) while enveloping his past and indeed their whole experience that not enough? She is in titillating bits of history. As Bouriscout later explained, "Pei Pu screwed the generative force of an me in the head. . . . I was having relations and in my thoughts, my dreams, illusion, the birth point of