Longing

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  To me—inasmuch as I could judge from my charmer’s part—it seemed to be a pretty dismal kind of fancy work, with echoes from Lenormand and Maeterlinck and various quiet British dreamers. The red-capped, uniformly attired hunters, of which one was a banker, another a plumber, a third a policeman, a fourth an undertaker, a fifth an underwriter, a sixth an escaped convict (you see the possibilities!), went through a complete change of mind in Dolly’s Dell, and remembered their real lives only as dreams or nightmares from which little Diana had aroused them; but a seventh Hunter (in a green cap, the fool) was a Young Poet, and he insisted, much to Diana’s annoyance, that she and the entertainment provided (dancing nymphs, and elves, and monsters) were his, the Poet’s, invention. I understand that finally, in utter disgust at this cocksureness, barefooted Dolores was to lead check-trousered Mona to the paternal farm behind the Perilous Forest to prove to the braggard she was not a poet’s fancy, but a rustic, down-to-brown-earth lass—and a last minute kiss was to enforce the play’s profound message, namely, that mirage and reality merge in love. I considered it wiser not to criticize the thing in front of Lo: she was so healthily engrossed in “problems of expression,” and so charmingly did she put her narrow Florentine hands together, batting her eyelashes and pleading with me not to come to rehearsals as some ridiculous parents did because she wanted to dazzle me with a perfect First Night—and because I was, anyway, always butting in and saying the wrong thing, and cramping her style in the presence of other people. There was one very special rehearsal … my heart, my heart … there was one day in May marked by a lot of gay flurry—it all rolled past, beyond my ken, immune to my memory, and when I saw Lo next, in the late afternoon, balancing on her bike, pressing the palm of her hand to the damp bark of a young birch tree on the edge of our lawn, I was so struck by the radiant tenderness of her smile that for an instant I believed all our troubles gone. “Can you remember,” she said, “what was the name of that hotel, you know [nose puckered], come on, you know—with those white columns and the marble swan in the lobby? Oh, you know [noisy exhalation of breath]—the hotel where you raped me. Okay, skip it. I mean, was it [almost in a whisper] The Enchanted Hunters?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Comedian Chris Rock said, “A man is basically as faithful as his options.” Phil’s professional success, good looks, and charming personality generated a constant stream of sexual opportunity. Many male readers are probably thinking, “Of course he was sleeping with another woman—or two! Come on!” But if you’re a woman, you may be thinking, “Of course his wife and daughters locked the pig out!” Is there any way to reconcile these two opposed perspectives on this all-too-common situation? What could possibly motivate so many men who are otherwise demonstrably intelligent, loving, and cautious to risk so much for so little? Everything from the respect of their friends to the love of their children can be lost in the quest for something as transitory and ultimately meaningless as a casual sexual encounter. What are they thinking? We asked Phil. “At first,” he said, “the sex was fantastic. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. I thought I was in love with Monica [the other woman]. When I was with her, it was like everything was stronger, you know? Food tasted better, colors were richer, I had so much more energy. I felt high all the time.” When we asked if the sex he had with Monica was better than it had been with Helen, Phil paused for a long moment. “Actually,” he admitted, “now that I think about it, sex with Helen was much better—the best I’ve ever had, really—at the beginning, you know, those first few years. I mean, with Helen it was never just sex. We both knew we wanted to spend our lives together, so there was a depth and, and, well, a love and spiritual connection I’ve never had with anyone else…. Even though Helen says she hates me now, I honestly believe we’ll always have that connection—even if she won’t admit it.” So what happened? “Over the years…you know how it is…the passion faded and our relationship changed. We became friends…best friends, but still…siblings, almost. It’s not her fault. I know this is all my fault, but what can I do?” His eyes tearing up, he said, “It felt like a life-or-death situation. I wanted to feel alive again. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but that’s how it felt.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Gently I rolled back to town, in that old faithful car of mine which was serenely, almost cheerfully working for me. My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old bobby pin of hers in the depths of the glove compartment. There was still that stream of pale moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights. Dark barns still propped themselves up here and there by the roadside. People were still going to the movies. While searching for night lodgings, I passed a drive-in. In a selenian glow, truly mystical in its contrast with the moonless and massive night, on a gigantic screen slanting away among dark drowsy fields, a thin phantom raised a gun, both he and his arm reduced to tremulous dish- water by the oblique angle of that receding world,—and the next moment a row of trees shut off the gesticulation. 35I left Insomnia Lodge next morning around eight and spent some time in Parkington. Visions of bungling the execution kept obsessing me. Thinking that perhaps the cartridges in the automatic had gone stale during a week of inactivity, I removed them and inserted a fresh batch. Such a thorough oil bath did I give Chum that now I could not get rid of the stuff. I bandaged him up with a rag, like a maimed limb, and used another rag to wrap up a handful of spare bullets. A thunderstorm accompanied me most of the way back to Grimm Road, but when I reached Pavor Manor, the sun was visible again, burning like a man, and the birds screamed in the drenched and steaming trees. The elaborate and decrepit house seemed to stand in a kind of daze, reflecting as it were my own state, for I could not help realizing, as my feet touched the springy and insecure ground, that I had overdone the alcoholic stimulation business. A guardedly ironic silence answered my bell. The garage, however, was loaded with his car, a black convertible for the nonce. I tried the knocker. Re-nobody. With a petulant snarl, I pushed the front door—and, how nice, it swung open as in a medieval fairy tale. Having softly closed it behind me, I made my way across a spacious and very ugly hall; peered into an adjacent drawing room; noticed a number of used glasses growing out of the carpet; decided that master was still asleep in the master bedroom.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  4I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel. I also know that the shock of Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout the cold years of my youth. The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today. Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  happening, she would relate to him as to her father. She would regress and play the baby." According fall in love. Freud called this phenomenon "transference," and it would be- to the psychiatrist Doi come an active part of his therapy. By getting patients to transfer some of Takeo this is the main key to understanding the their repressed feelings onto the therapist, he would bring their problems Japanese personality. It into the open, where they could be dealt with on a conscious level. goes on in adult life too: The transference effect was so potent, though, that Freud was often un- juniors do it to seniors in companies, or any other able to move his patients past their infatuation. In fact transference is a group, women do it to powerful way of creating an emotional attachment—the goal of any seduc- men, men do it to their 335 336 • The Art of Seduction mothers, and sometimes tion. The method has infinite applications outside psychoanalysis. To prac-wives. ...•... A tice it in real life, you need to play the therapist, encouraging people to talk magazine called Y o u n g about their childhood. Most of us are only too happy to oblige; and our L a d y featured an article (January 1982) on "how memories are so vivid and emotional that a part of us regresses just in talk-to make ourselves ing about our early years. Also, in the course of talking, little secrets slip beautiful." How, in other out: we reveal all kinds of valuable information about our weaknesses and words, to attract men. An American or European our mental makeup, information you must attend to and remember. Do magazine would then go not take your targets' words at face value; they will often sugarcoat or over-on to tell the reader how to dramatize events in childhood. But pay attention to their tone of voice, to be sexually desirable, no any nervous tics as they talk, and particularly to anything they do not want doubt suggesting various puffs, creams, and sprays. to talk about, anything they deny or that makes them emotional. Many state-Not so with Y o u n g Lady. ments actually mean their opposite: should they say they hated their father, "The most attractive for instance, you can be sure that they are hiding a lot of disappointment— women," it informs us, "are women full of that they actually loved their father only too much, and perhaps never quite maternal love. Women got what they wanted from him. Listen closely for recurring themes and without maternal love are stories. Most important, learn to analyze emotional responses and see what the types men never want to marry. . . . One has to lies behind them. look at men through the While they talk, maintain the therapist's pose—attentive but quiet, eyes of a mother. " making occasional, nonjudgmental comments. Be caring yet distant— — I A N BURUMA, BEHIND THE

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Then, “Wrong number,” he said to me and hung up. I took three Solfoton and six Benadryl, put Frantic in to rewind, cracked the window in the living room to circulate the air, found the blizzard was howling outside, and then I remembered that I’d bought cigarettes, so I smoked one out the window, pressed “play” on the VCR, and lay back down on the sofa. I felt my head get heavy. Harrison Ford was my dream man. My heart slowed, but still, I couldn’t sleep. I drank from the jug of gin. It seemed to settle my stomach. At eight A.M., I called Trevor again. This time he didn’t answer. “Just checking in,” I said in my message. “It’s been a while. Curious how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. Let’s catch up soon.” I called again fifteen minutes later. “Look, I don’t know how to say this. I’m HIV positive. I probably got it from one of the black guys at the gym.” At eight thirty, I called and said, “I’ve been thinking I might get a boob job, just take them clean off. What do you think? Could I pull off the flat- chested look?” At eight forty-five, I called and said, “I need some financial advice. Actually, I’m serious. I’m in a bind.” At nine o’clock, I called again. He answered. “What do you want?” he asked. “I was hoping to hear you say you miss me.” “I miss you,” he said. “Is that it?” I hung up. • • • I’D INHERITED the complete VHS set of Star Trek: The Next Generation from my father. Ordering those cassettes was probably the one time in my father’s life that he’d dialed a 1-800 number. Watching Star Trek as an adolescent was when I first came to regard Whoopi Goldberg with the reverence she deserves. Whoopi seemed like an absurd interloper on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Whenever she appeared on-screen, I sensed she was laughing at the whole production. Her presence made the show completely absurd. That was true of all her movies, too. Whoopi in her nun’s habit. Whoopi dressed like a churchgoing Georgian in the 1930s with her Sunday hat and Bible. Whoopi in Moonlight and Valentino alongside the pasty Elizabeth Perkins. Wherever she went, everything around her became a parody of itself, gauche and ridiculous. That was a comfort to see. Thank God for Whoopi. Nothing was sacred. Whoopi was proof. After a few episodes, I got up and took a few Nembutals and a Placidyl and guzzled another half a bottle of children’s Robitussin and sat down to watch Whoopi—in a cornflower blue velour tunic and an upside-down cone-shaped hat like a futuristic bishop—have a heart-to-heart talk with Marina Sirtis. It was all nonsense. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept watching. I went through three seasons. I took Solfoton.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  From your brain’s perspective, your body is just another source of sensory input. Sensations from your heart and lungs, your metabolism, your changing temperature, and so on, are like the ambiguous blobs of figure 2-1. These purely physical sensations inside your body have no objective psychological meaning. Once your concepts enter the picture, however, those sensations may take on additional meaning. If you feel an ache in your stomach while sitting at the dinner table, you might experience it as hunger. If flu season is just around the corner, you might experience that same ache as nausea. If you are a judge in a courtroom, you might experience the ache as a gut feeling that the defendant cannot be trusted. In a given moment, in a given context, your brain uses concepts to give meaning to internal sensations as well as to external sensations from the world, all simultaneously. From an aching stomach, your brain constructs an instance of hunger, nausea, or mistrust.8 Now consider that same stomachache if you’re sniffing a diaper heavy with pureed lamb, as my daughter’s friends did at her gross foods birthday party. You might experience the ache as disgust. Or if your lover has just walked into the room, you might experience the ache as a pang of longing. If you’re in a doctor’s office waiting for the results of a medical test, you might experience that same ache as an anxious feeling. In these cases of disgust, longing, and anxiety, the concept active in your brain is an emotion concept. As before, your brain makes meaning from your aching stomach, together with the sensations from the world around you, by constructing an instance of that concept. An instance of emotion. And that just might be how emotions are made. … Back when I was in graduate school, a guy in my psychology program asked me out on a date. I didn’t know him very well and was reluctant to go because, honestly, I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, but I had been cooped up too long in the lab that day, so I agreed. As we sat together in a coffee shop, to my surprise, I felt my face flush several times as we spoke. My stomach fluttered and I started having trouble concentrating. Okay, I realized, I was wrong. I am clearly attracted to him. We parted an hour later—after I agreed to go out with him again—and I headed home, intrigued. I walked into my apartment, dropped my keys on the floor, threw up, and spent the next seven days in bed with the flu.

• From Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1996)

  Each intersection would have a dry cleaner’s, a barber and a beauty shop, and either a drug store or a small five-and-dime. Most intersections would have a grocery store. The commissioners felt this was a practical design for the kind of city the three developers were building. The city was flat, and there, were sidewalks everywhere. In the early 1950s, housewives walked to the store, often two or three times a week, pushing babies in strollers or pulling older children in a red wagon behind them. Forty years later, these neighborhood shopping centers are still no further than a half-mile from any house. 191 In 1953, a reporter for Harper’s Magazine asked young wives living in my suburb what they missed most. The women usually replied, “My mother.” 192 I have a friend who grew up in the 1950s in the subdivision Clark Bonner planned. He lived in a house on one of Charles Hopper’s “semi-sustaining” lots, wide and deep enough for pole beans, an avocado tree, and a coop of chickens. After the Second World War, not many households kept chickens. My friend told me about his neighbors. They were Mexican. In the 1950s, that meant their parents—or even their grandparents—had originally come from Mexico. The husband and his wife were dark-skinned. He was a pilot who flew tourists from Long Beach to Catalina Island, twenty-six miles away. Before the pilot and his wife bought their house, the real estate agent told them about the racial restrictions in their deed. The young couple told the real estate agent they were originally from Spain, not Mexico. The real estate agent looked at the man and the woman, and signed the papers that sold them their house. 193 The subdivision Charles Hopper developed in 1934 didn’t have sidewalks. The residents said that sidewalks weren’t appropriate for their “garden suburb.” Some said they wouldn’t want children roller skating or riding their bikes on the sidewalk in front of their house. Some said they didn’t want to give up a narrow strip of their property for a public convenience. In 1953, before the election that annexed these neighborhoods to Long Beach, Long Beach city officials said they would not require sidewalks. By a majority of seventy-five votes, the residents of Clark Bonner’s subdivision agreed to join the city of Long Beach. The subdivision still doesn’t have any sidewalks. 194 Joe Eichenbaum later said that he built a shopping center for aircraft assembly workers and their wives. He said he gave them the largest suburban department store in the country. For a while, he was right. Mark Taper said that owning one of his houses made the owners part of the middle class. He was wrong. The houses never were middle class, nor were the people living in them. They became altogether something else. 195 As the planning commission hearing ended, the commissioners rolled up the bundle of engineering drawings and gave them back to Boyar.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  "What a sterile life," she wrote a friend. "Always the same routine: the Bois, the races, fittings; and to end an insipid day: dinner!" What wearied the courtesan most was the constant attention of her male admirers, who sought to monopolize her physical charms. Ah! always to be able to freely love the one whom One spring day in 1899, Liane was riding in an open carriage through one loves! To spend my life the Bois de Boulogne. As usual, men tipped their hats at her as she passed at your feet like our last by. But one of these admirers caught her by surprise: a young woman with days together. To protect long blond hair, who gave her an intense, worshipful stare. Liane smiled at you against imaginary satyrs so that I can be the the woman, who smiled and bowed in return. only one to throw you on A few days later Liane began to receive cards and flowers from a this bed of moss. . . . twenty-three-year-old American named Natalie Barney, who identified We'll find each other again in Lesbos, and when dusk herself as the blond admirer in the Bois de Boulogne, and asked for a ren- falls, we'll go deep in the dezvous. Liane invited Natalie to visit, but to amuse herself she decided to woods to lose the paths play a little joke: a friend would take her place, lounging on her bed in the leading to this century. I want to imagine us in this dark boudoir, while Liane would hide behind a screen. Natalie arrived at enchanted island of the appointed hour. She wore the costume of a Florentine page and carried immortals. I picture it as a bouquet of flowers. Kneeling before the bed, she began to praise the being so beautiful. Come, I'll describe for you those courtesan, comparing her to a Fra Angelico painting. All too soon, she delicate female couples, and heard someone laugh—and standing up she realized the joke that had been far from the cities and the played on her. She blushed and made for the door. When Liane hurried din, we'll forget everything out from behind the screen, Natalie chastised her: the courtesan had the but the Ethics of Beauty. face of an angel, but apparently not the spirit. Contrite, Liane whispered, —NATALIE BARNEY, LETTER TO LIANE DE POUGY,QUOTED IN "Come back tomorrow morning. I'll be alone." JEAN CHALON, PORTRAIT OF A The young American showed up the next day, wearing the same outfit. SEDUCTRESS:THE WORLD OF She was witty and spirited; Liane relaxed in her presence, and invited her to NATALIE BARNEY, TRANSLATED BY CAROL BARKO

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  On the carriage ride she turned this offer over in her mind, and once in Treviso she got her uncle alone and begged him to return to the village by himself, then come back for her in a few days. She was in love with Casanova; she wanted to know him better; he was a perfect gentleman, who could be trusted. The uncle agreed to do as she wished. The following day Casanova never left her side. There was not the slightest hint of disagreement in his nature. They spent the day wandering around the city, shopping and talking. He took her to a play in the evening Appendix A: Seductive Environment/Seductive Time • 439 and to the casino after that, supplying her with a domino and a mask. He gave her money to gamble and she won. By the time the uncle returned to Treviso, she had all but forgotten about her marriage plans—all she could think of was the six months she would spend with Casanova. But she returned to her village with her uncle and waited for Casanova to visit her. He showed up a few weeks later, bringing with him a handsome young man named Charles. Alone with Cristina, Casanova explained the situation: Charles was the most eligible bachelor in Venice, a man who would make a much better husband than he would. Cristina admitted to Casanova that she too had had her doubts. He was too exciting, had made her think of other things besides marriage, things she was ashamed of. Perhaps it was for the better. She thanked him for taking such pains to find her a husband. Over the next few days Charles courted her, and they were married several weeks later. The fantasy and allure of Casanova, however, remained in her mind forever. Casanova could not marry—it was against everything in his nature. But it was also against his nature to force himself on a young girl. Better to leave her with the perfect fantasy image than to ruin her life. Besides, he enjoyed the courting and flirting more than anything else. Casanova supplied a young woman with the ultimate fantasy. While he was in her orbit he devoted every moment to her. He never mentioned work, allowing no boring, mundane details to interrupt the fantasy. And he added great theater. He wore the most spectacular outfits, full of sparkling jewels. He led her to the most wonderful entertainments—carnivals, masked balls, the casinos, journeys with no destination. He was the great master at creating seductive time and environment. Casanova is the model to aspire to. While in your presence your targets must sense a change. Time has a different rhythm—they barely notice its passing. They have the feeling that everything is stopping for them, just as all normal activity comes to a halt at a festival. The idle pleasures you provide them are contagious—one leads to another and to another, until it is too late to turn back. Appendix B

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  One day, Chateaubriand told Récamier he had finally decided to finish his memoirs. And he had a confession to make: he told her the story of Sylphide, his imaginary lover when he was growing up. He had once hoped to meet a Sylphide in real life, but the women he had known had paled in comparison. Over the years he had forgotten about his imaginary lover, but now he was an old man, and he not only thought of her again, he could see her face and hear her voice. And with those memories he realized that he had in fact met Sylphide in real life—it was Madame Ré- Effect a Regression • 345 camier. The face and voice were close. More important, there was the calm spirit, the innocent, virginal quality. Reading to her the prayer to Sylphide he had just written, he told her he wanted to be young again, and seeing her had brought his youth back to him. Reconciled with Madame Ré- camier, he began to work again on the memoirs, which were eventually published under the title Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. Most critics agreed that the book was his masterpiece. The memoirs were dedicated to Madame Récamier, to whom he remained devoted until his death, in 1848. Interpretation. All of us carry within us an image of an ideal type of person whom we yearn to meet and love. Most often the type is a composite made up of bits and pieces of different people from our youth, and even of characters in books and movies. People who influenced us inordinately—a teacher for instance—may also figure. The traits have nothing to do with superficial interests. Rather, they are unconscious, hard to verbalize. We searched hardest for this ideal type in our adolescence, when we were more idealistic. Often our first loves have more of these traits than our subsequent affairs. For Chateaubriand, living with his family in their secluded castle, his first love was his sister Lucile, whom he adored and idealized. But since love with her was impossible, he created a figure out of his imagination who had all her positive attributes—nobility of spirit, innocence, courage.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  She tried to catch it in her fist (Charlotte’s method) and then would turn to the column Let’s Explore Your Mind. “Let’s explore your mind. Would sex crimes be reduced if children obeyed a few don’ts? Don’t play around public toilets. Don’t take candy or rides from strangers. If picked up, mark down the license of the car.” “… and the brand of the candy,” I volunteered. She went on, her cheek ( recedent) against mine (pursuant); and this was a good day, mark, O reader! “If you don’t have a pencil, but are old enough to read—” “We,” I quip-quoted, “medieval mariners, have placed in this bottle—” “If,” she repeated, “you don’t have a pencil, but are old enough to read and write—this is what the guy means, isn’t it, you dope—scratch the number somehow on the roadside.” “With your little claws, Lolita.’ ” 3 She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident “what d’you think you are doing?” was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would—invariably, with icy precision—plump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited a moment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly, I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke. Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impression that I did not manage to be happy. Reader must understand that in the possession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as it were, beyond happiness . For there is no other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a nymphet. It is hors concours , that bliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of sensitivity. Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise—a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames—but still a paradise. The able psychiatrist who studies my case—and whom by now Dr.

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

  I started walking down the steps but Josh didn’t move. He just sat there, hands folded as if in prayer. He looked down at me. “Tony? You do love me, too, right?” LATER, AFTER EVERYONE HAD PASSED OUT, I STRUGGLED TO sleep. The batting of the couch seemed to dig into my legs and bright spots danced in the darkness whenever I closed my eyes. The storm had passed, taking the wind and the front with it, and I missed the numbing noise. Upstairs, I could hear feet rustling in the hall, moving from room to bathroom and back, not bothering to try to walk lightly. After a couple hours, Kate came downstairs. She was still wearing the tank top but had left her jeans behind and her white panties clung tight to her hips. She started when she saw me sitting up, then said she needed a smoke and asked if I wanted to keep her company. Outside the air had turned crisp. Most of the clouds had moved on and through the suburban trees we watched the stars fading in and out behind the city’s atmosphere. Kate lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew a heavy column of smoke into the air. “I know you’re not gay,” she said, offering me a cigarette. I declined. “Never said I was,” I told her. “And I think Josh’s the only one who actually thinks I am. Doesn’t really make a difference. It’s just easier not to say anything.” “Doesn’t it bother you? When they call you a fag?” I shrugged. “They’re gonna call me that anyway.” Sitting next to her, I could see her blond hair was a dye job, and not a very good one. Strands of brown hiding near her scalp tried to come out, creating a spiderweb effect along her head that could only be seen up close. She dragged again and, as she blew the smoke out, said, “Insomnia’s a bitch, huh?” She rubbed her arms, which were covered in goose bumps. I wished I had a jacket for her, wished for better arms, for hands that could hold her without grabbing at her body. She flicked her cigarette into the grass. “I blame my dad,” she said suddenly. “I’m pretty sure he was the only one happier than me when I started growing these tits.” She watched me out of the corner of her eye. “If you know what I mean.”

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  In addition to a great deal of circumstantial evidence from societies around the world and closely related nonhuman primates, we’ll take a look at some of what evolution has spit out. We’ll examine the anatomical evidence still evident in our bodies and the yearning for sexual novelty expressed in our pornography, advertising, and after-work happy hours. We’ll even decode messages in the so-called “copulatory vocalizations” of thy neighbor’s wife as she calls out ecstatically in the still of night. Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution (hereafter shortened to “the standard narrative”). It goes something like this: 1. Boy meets girl. 2. Boy and girl assess one another’s mate value from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities: He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience, and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources. She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health, and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children (known as male parental investment). 3. Boy gets girl: assuming they meet one another’s criteria, they “mate,” forming a long-term pair bond—the “fundamental condition of the human species,” as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed: She will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving (vigilant toward signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection)—while keeping an eye out (around ovulation, especially) for a quick fling with a man genetically superior to her husband. He will be sensitive to signs of her sexual infidelities (which would reduce his all-important paternity certainty)—while taking advantage of short-term sexual opportunities with other women (as his sperm are easily produced and plentiful). Researchers claim to have confirmed these basic patterns in studies conducted around the world over several decades. Their results seem to support the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, which appears to make a lot of sense. But they don’t, and it doesn’t. While we don’t dispute that these patterns play out in many parts of the modern world, we don’t see them as elements of human nature so much as adaptations to social conditions—many of which were introduced with the advent of agriculture no more than ten thousand years ago. These behaviors and predilections are not biologically programmed traits of our species; they are evidence of the human brain’s flexibility and the creative potential of community.

• From The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change Your Life (2018)

  You can add additional dimension back in where needed. Storytelling Strategies LIVE EXAMPLE FRAMING SEQUENCE I could simply frame the story inside a simple story of me looking up a tree I’d like to climb, feeling reticent, even frightened. The story would then be a reflection upon the beginning of an act. After the reflection is finished, I climb the tree. It’s a little too simplistic, and I think I won’t ultimately use it, but it certainly serves the assignment. FOCUSING EVENT I like this idea more. I think one of the events would be the act of photographing, either the chair in the woods, or the upturned roots mentioned in one of my lists. I don’t know how deep or interesting that will get yet, but doing more writing and reflecting on it might help. Since I’m interested in seeing and art-making, I think this feels like a right direction to go. DIFFERENT STORYTELLING STYLES I love this idea too, and have been meaning to try it. But I think I don’t have enough material yet. My idea right now seems smaller, not large enough to handle too many different styles. LITERARY COMPARE AND CONTRAST It sounds random, and frankly it is, but I’ve had this list of notes about artist Franz Kline on my wall for years. I dreamt about him one morning and woke wanting to do a story about him. His giant, brushy lines could be compared to trees, I suppose, though in reality he was often painting the opposite: trains and other giant industrial forces.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  This pattern she explained from afar, apologetically (“Men will be men”); should she call him in? No. Standing in the middle of the slanting room and emitting questioning “hm’s,” she made familiar Javanese gestures with her wrists and hands, offering me, in a brief display of humorous courtesy, to choose between a rocker and the divan (their bed after ten P.M. ). I say “familiar” because one day she had welcomed me with the same wrist dance to her party in Beardsley. We both sat down on the divan. Curious: although actually her looks had faded, I definitely realized, so hopelessly late in the day, how much she looked—had always looked—like Botticelli’s russet Venus—the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty. In my pocket my fingers gently let go and repacked a little at the tip, within the handkerchief it was nested in, my unused weapon . “That’s not the fellow I want,” I said. The diffuse look of welcome left her eyes. Her forehead puckered as in the old bitter days: “Not who? ” “Where is he? Quick!” “Look,” she said, inclining her head to one side and shaking it in that position. “Look, you are not going to bring that up.” “I certainly am,” I said, and for a moment—strangely enough the only merciful, endurable one in the whole interview—we were bristling at each other as if she were still mine. A wise girl, she controlled herself. Dick did not know a thing of the whole mess. He thought I was her father. He thought she had run away from an upperclass home just to wash dishes in a diner. He believed anything. Why should I want to make things harder than they were by raking up all that muck? But, I said, she must be sensible, she must be a sensible girl (with her bare drum under that thin brown stuff), she must understand that if she expected the help I had come to give, I must have at least a clear comprehension of the situation. “Come, his name!” She thought I had guessed long ago. It was (with a mischievous and melancholy smile) such a sensational name. I would never believe it. She could hardly believe it herself. His name, my fall nymph. It was so unimportant, she said. She suggested I skip it. Would I like a cigarette? No. His name. She shook her head with great resolution. She guessed it was too late to raise hell and I would never believe the unbelievably unbelievable— I said I had better go, regards, nice to have seen her. She said really it was useless, she would never tell, but on the other hand, after all—“Do you really want to know who it was? Well, it was—” And softly, confidentially, arching her thin eyebrows and puckering her parched lips, she emitted, a little mockingly, somewhat fastidiously, not untenderly, in a kind of muted whistle, the name that the astute reader has guessed long ago. Waterproof.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  In politics the dangers are similar. Years after Kennedy's death, a string of revelations (his incessant sexual affairs, his excessively dangerous brinkmanship style of diplomacy, etc.) belied the myth he had created. His image has survived this tarnishing; poll after poll shows that he is still revered. Kennedy is a special case, perhaps, in that his assassination made him a martyr, reinforcing the process of idealization that he had already set in motion. But he is not the only example of an Ideal Lover whose attraction survives unpleasant revelations; these figures unleash such powerful fantasies, and there is such a hunger for the myths and ideals they have to sell, that they are often quickly forgiven. Still, it is always wise to be prudent, and to keep people from glimpsing the less-than-ideal side of your character. Most of us feel trapped within the limited roles that the world expects us to play. We are instantly attracted to those who are more fluid, more ambiguous, than we are— those who create their own persona. Dandies excite us because they cannot be categorized, and hint at a freedom we want for ourselves. They play with masculinity and femininity; they fashion their own physical image, which is always startling; they are mysterious and elusive. They also appeal to the narcissism of each sex: to a woman they are psychologically female, to a man they are male. Dandies fascinate and seduce in large numbers. Use the power of the Dandy to create an ambiguous, alluring presence that stirs repressed desires. The Feminine Dandy When the eighteen-year-old Rodolpho Guglielmi emigrated from Italy to the United States in 1913, he came with no particular skills apart from his good looks and his dancing prowess. To put these qualities to advantage, he found work in the thes dansants, the Manhattan dance halls where young girls would go alone or with friends and hire a taxi dancer for a brief thrill. The taxi dancer would expertly twirl them around the dance Once a son was born to floor, flirting and chatting, all for a small fee. Guglielmi soon made a name Mercury and the goddess as one of the best—so graceful, poised, and pretty. Venus, and he was brought up by the naiads in Ida's In working as a taxi dancer, Guglielmi spent a great deal of time around caves. In his features, it women. He quickly learned what pleased them—how to mirror them in was easy to trace subtle ways, how to put them at ease (but not too much). He began to pay resemblance to his father and to his mother. He was attention to his clothes, creating his own dapper look: he danced with a called after them, too, for corset under his shirt to give himself a trim figure, sported a wristwatch his name was (considered effeminate in those days), and claimed to be a marquis. In 1915, Hermaphroditus. As soon as he was fifteen, he left

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  he replies, "Are you not woman enough to know?" Yet she ends up falling there is such a girl [ engaged in love with him, as indeed women did in movie audiences all over the to you] , let me enjoy your love in secret: but if there is world, thrilling at his strange blend of the feminine and the masculine. In not, then I pray that I may one scene in The Sheik, the English lady points a gun at Valentino; his re-be your bride, and that we sponse is to point a delicate cigarette holder back at her. She wears pants; may enter upon marriage together." The naiad said he wears long flowing robes and abundant eye makeup. Later films would no more; but a blush include scenes of Valentino dressing and undressing, a kind of striptease stained the boy's cheeks, for showing glimpses of his trim body. In almost all of his films he played some he did not know what love exotic period character—a Spanish bullfighter, an Indian rajah, an Arab was. Even blushing became him: his cheeks were the sheik, a French nobleman—and he seemed to delight in dressing up in jew-colour of ripe apples, els and tight uniforms. hanging in a sunny orchard, In the 1920s, women were beginning to play with a new sexual free-like painted ivory or like the moon when, in eclipse, dom. Instead of waiting for a man to be interested in them, they wanted to she shows a reddish hue be able to initiate the affair, but they still wanted the man to end up sweep-beneath her brightness. . . . ing them off their feet. Valentino understood this perfectly. His off-screen Incessantly the nymph demanded at least sisterly life corresponded to his movie image: he wore bracelets on his arm, dressed kisses, and tried to put her impeccably, and reportedly was cruel to his wife, and hit her. (His adoring arms round his ivory neck. public carefully ignored his two failed marriages and his apparently nonex- "Will you stop!" he cried, istent sex life.) When he suddenly died—in New York in August 1926, at "or I shall run away and leave this place and you!" the age of thirty-one, from complications after surgery for an ulcer—the Salmacis was afraid: "1 response was unprecedented: more than 100,000 people filed by his coffin, yield the spot to you, many female mourners became hysterical, and the whole nation was spell-stranger, I shall not intrude," she said; and, bound. Nothing like this had happened before for a mere actor. turning from him, pretended to go away. . . . The boy, There is a film of Valentino's, Monsieur Beaucaire, in which he plays a total meanwhile, thinking

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Madame de Pompadour, genius of seduction, understood that inside Louis XV was a great man yearning to come out, and that his obsession with pretty young women indicated a hunger for a more lasting kind of beauty. Her first step was to cure his incessant bouts of boredom. It is easy for kings to be bored—everything they want is given to them, and they seldom learn to be satisfied with what they have. The Marquise de Pompadour dealt with this by bringing all sorts of fantasies to life, and creating constant suspense. She had many skills and talents, and just as important, she deployed them so artfully that he never discovered their limits. Once she had accustomed him to more refined pleasures, she appealed to the crushed ideals within him; in the mirror she held up to him, he saw his aspiration to be great, a desire that, in France, inevitably included leadership in culture. His previous series of mistresses had tickled only his sensual desires. In Madame de Pompadour he found a woman who made him feel greatness in himself. The other mistresses could easily be replaced, but he could never find another Madame de Pompadour. Most people believe themselves to be inwardly greater than they outwardly appear to the world. They are full of unrealized ideals: they could be artists, thinkers, leaders, spiritual figures, but the world has crushed them, denied them the chance to let their abilities flourish. This is the key to their seduction—and to keeping them seduced over time. The Ideal Lover knows how to conjure up this kind of magic. Appeal only to people's physical side, as many amateur seducers do, and they will resent you for playing upon their basest instincts. But appeal to their better selves, to a higher standard of beauty, and they will hardly notice that they have been seduced. Make them feel elevated, lofty, spiritual, and your power over them will be limitless. 36 • The Art of Seduction Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities— his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Keys to the Character Each of us carries inside us an ideal, either of what we would like to become, or of what we want another person to be for us. This ideal goes back to our earliest years—to what we once felt was missing in our lives, what others did not give to us, what we could not give to ourselves. Maybe we were smothered in comfort, and we long for danger and rebellion. If we want danger but it frightens us, perhaps we look for someone who seems at home with it. Or perhaps our ideal is more elevated—we want to be more creative, nobler, and kinder than we ever manage to be. Our ideal is something we feel is missing inside us.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Does it mean that love is a murderer's lair? And could it mean that "He" is leading me on? And ''for that"? At the point of my going under, "in Querelle," will I still be able to reach the alarm siren? (\Vhile the other characters are incapable of lyricism which we are using in order to recreate them more vividly within you, Lieutenant Seblon himself is solely responsible for what flows from his pen.) I would love it-oh, ! deeply wish for it!-if, under his regal garb, "He" were simply a hoodlum! To throw myself at his feet/ To kiss his toesl In order to find "Him" again, and counting on absence and the emotions aroused by returning to give me courage to address "Him" by his first name, I pretended to be leaving on a long furlough. But I wasn't able to resist. I come back. I see "Him" again, and I give "Him" my orders, almost vindictively. He could get away with anything. Spit m e in the face, call me by my first name. "You're getting overly familiar/" I'd say to "Him." The blow he would strike m e with his fist, right in the mouth, 24 I JEAN GENET would make my ears ring with this oboe murmur: "My vulgarity is regal, and it accords me every right." By giving the ship's barber a curt order to clip his hair very short, Lieutenant Seblon hoped to achieve a he-mannish ap-pearance-not so much to save face as to be able to move more freely among the handsome lads. He did not know, then, that he caused them to shrink back from him. He was a well-built man, wide-shouldered, but he felt within himself the presence of his own femininity, sometimes contained in a chickadee's egg, the size of a pale blue or pink sugared almond, but sometimes brimming over to flood his entire body with its milk. He knew this so well that he himself believed in this quality of weakness, this frailty of an enormous, unripe nut, whose pale white interior consisted of the stuff children call milk. The Lieutenant knew to his great chagrin that this core of femininity could erupt in an instant and manifest itself in his face, his eyes, his fingertips, and mark every gesture of his by rendering it too gentle. He took care never to be caught counting the stitches of any imaginary needlework, scratching his head with an imaginary knitting needle. Nevertheless he betrayed himself in the eyes of all men whenever he gave the order to pick up arms, for he pronounced the word "arms" with such grace that his whole person seemed to be kneeling at the grave of some beautiful lover. He never smiled. His fellow officers considered him stem and somewhat puritanical, but they also believed they were able to· discern a quality of stupendous refinement underneath that hard shell, and the belief rested on the way in which, despite himself, he pronounced certain words.