Love

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 Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The epiphany of the cock. I love his cock. Every millimeter, every centimeter, every movement at every moment. His was the first that spoke to me, that took me personally, that never failed me. A-Man remains calm in the face of his own erection—the ultimate test of male dignity. In my experience, most men, when hard, don’t act as if their penis is their own, but as if they have suddenly become subject to some kind of erectile radar device that forces them to relinquish all responsibility for its erratic behavior. A-Man, however, presents a complete paradox. Filled with the same juices, the same desires, the same hardness, he never loses his head. He uses his desire to create an event, to push boundaries, to do something not done before. He is the only man I’ve seen who can walk around a room with a killer erection and still look like a man with a mission—focused, alert, self- contained, and mischievous. He has the most noble erection I’ve ever met. Sometimes we discuss just where exactly is his cock going in my body. Somewhere into the center, behind my belly button. We have even measured with the tape measure. Hard to tell the exact angle. What is sure is that he stirs my guts from right to left, forward, upward, sideways, and back. It really gets your attention, having a large cock in your ass, concentrates the mind. Each time, rebirth. Nearly a hundred and fifty so far. That is a lot of starting your whole life over. You might think, after all that ass-fucking, why am I still counting? I’m anal! There you have it. Back to the terrible twos. The best way to feel, to know, a man’s cock is through one’s ass, where the walls cling to every inch all the way to the head. A pussy has less feeling, fewer nerves, less strength, less muscular power—and, often, less interest. A pussy, genetically, wants impregnation, the juice; an asshole wants the ride of its life. Both holes, I would postulate, reconcile the problem of mortality as caverns for creation: vaginas for babies, asses for art. Speaking of Michelangelo, there is the question of trimming the bush, the male bush. A-Man trims. In the beginning he didn’t, and then one day I suggested that a trimmed rim around the base of his cock would look superb, like a samurai warrior. “Depilation is the act of a fastidious lover,” states the Kamasutra. He thought about it for a minute and then promptly went into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bathtub. As I held the flashlight, he trimmed. And trimmed, and trimmed. He went far beyond the original idea and just cut down the whole bush—sides, top, balls, underballs, everything. Now there’s no going back to the bush.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  My orgasm arc with him is an act of giving, opening, giving. With others it is withholding, a battleground of control. In the past, I have achieved orgasm through the paradoxical experience of maintaining control of my pleasure all the while that my orgasm, with a life force of its own, desires its own fruition. The battle—and it is a battle—always ends with an orgasm more potent for its release than for any emotional pleasure. There are quite a few men out there who want nothing more than to please. For them I come in angry triumph: the greater my contempt for their wishing-to-please, the greater my resistance; the greater my resistance, the greater my orgasm. This is the pleasure, literally—and clitorally—of the war between the sexes. Afterwards, so sensitized, I shun all touch and, like Garbo, want to be alone. To take notes, eat dinner, and read The New Yorker. Is this any way to come? Well, it is one way. With him I have learned another. The way of no resistance. Of infinite contractions and many arrivals. And it was not a struggle to give up the struggle. It just happened with him, as if my body knew—I sure didn’t—that he was the one, the one man I could trust, the one man I could give to without his misinterpreting the gift, taking advantage of it, making it mean what it didn’t mean. Perhaps it was his beauty. DNA to DNA. He does have, objectively speaking, the most beautiful physique of them all. Maybe my clit knew he was my sexual mate long before I did. Just as it knew that resistance was necessary to all those men whose DNA was not a match for mine. With them I come from hostility, with him from love. #181 Last night—181. I tell him, after, “A hundred and eighty-one.” And I point out that that is just ass-fucks, that does not count pussy warm-ups. “What does that tell you?” I say. “That tells me three-hundred and sixty-two,” he said, “that’s what that tells me. Three sixty-two tells me it’s a good year.” SOUVENIRS As we approached two hundred, I found that my desire for continual repetition, for impossible guarantees, was intensifying. Managing my relentless need to be in that place with him became a full-time job. There was the disastrous day when the cleaning lady grabbed his well-worn shirt off my bed with the sheets and I came home and saw, to my horror, that she had washed, dried, and neatly folded my aromatic lifeline. I had slept every night with the shirt that smelled like him. Now it smelled like Bounce.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  He stands by the bed naked, hard, and beautiful and says, “Show me your pussy.” He watches as I take off my thong, lie back on the bed, and bend my knees up and apart. Looking at my pussy, he says, “Spread it apart.” With a hand on each side I open my little pink pussy lips to him. He kneels before me and sucks on my clit, sings on my clit like a troubadour breaking all the rules. I flowed into his tongue and he murmured, “You like it when I eat your pussy, don’t you?” “I would die for it,” I admitted. I cannot imagine feeling greater love in all my life, nor do I expect to ever feel greater love, except for him. Nor would I ever ask or want greater love than I feel for him. With any others, after him, I will need to rest. THE UNWRITTEN RULES We are not domestic. We stay in the desire, in the bedroom—and out of the kitchen, the laundry, the office, and any other room that would threaten to bring in reality. We have, on a few occasions, when famished after sex, cooked dinner—well, actually he cooked it, but then we ate it in the bathtub with candles, floating a large metal bowl filled with tender rare meat between us. Both of us in the deep end, of course. We’ve never been to a movie and don’t plan on going to one, ever. Why would we? We are the movie: the porn that can never be—visually astounding, spontaneously inventive, genitally graphic, and viscerally soul-searing. It isn’t predictable with A-Man. The sex, the ass-fucking, that is the only constant. We never don’t fuck. We are not monogamous. Never have been and never will be. Neither of us has ever asked for it and neither of us has ever offered it. Offering it is the only way it could happen—neither of us would intrude on the other’s free choice. Free choice is at the core of what is hot between us. The subject has been discussed only to establish what is mutually understood. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is the basic policy. He says, “I don’t need to know.” He pays attention to what is, not what isn’t. Having never done this before, I thought about it plenty. If one has sex with someone other than the Beloved, what happens? Does one risk diminishing one’s affection for the Beloved? Does it contaminate the love? Or does it merely confirm the love in every way, the contrast illuminating the beauty of the Beloved yet again, in yet another way, from yet another angle. And this gift to each other—the freedom to allow for other experiences—only enhances the love. Love without chains is love.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Appreciating the deeply shared understanding and care that supports the micro-moments of love you feel with intimates can make you wonder whether newborns have the wherewithal to truly engage in love. While (most) parents love (most of) their newborns, are their newborns truly capable of loving them back? With their limited capacities, how can newborns muster up the selfless focus on others seemingly required by love? The trick is, they don’t need to muster at all. Under the right prenatal conditions, newborns arrive thirsty for connection with caring adults, trusting and open. From close range, they seek out your eye contact, body contact, and even synchronize their movements, to the extent they can, with yours. Ever the empiricist, I tested this claim out within minutes after my first son was born. As I held him skin to skin on my chest, we simply gazed at each other. Then I stuck my tongue out at him. It didn’t take but a moment for him to mirror me by sticking out his own tongue. I replicated my experiment some three years later when my second son was born and got the same result, a silly mother-son synchrony immortalized both times by my husband on film. Recasting love as positivity resonance makes it easy to identify micro-moment after micro-moment of love blossoming between infants and their responsive caretakers. Developmental science has shown that the attentive, infant-caregiver dance is absolutely vital to normal human development. As we’ll see in chapter 3, infant-caregiver synchrony runs deeper than visible behaviors; it coordinates biological synchrony as well. Babies live off this stuff. We all do. Like babies, we were all designed to thrive on love. Positivity resonance is a vital nutrient. This makes the fate of babies who, for whatever reasons, are deprived of positivity resonance all the more heart-wrenching. Sadly, not all children have the loving nourishment they need. Some, even as their other physical needs are met—for shelter, food, clothing, and such—have far too little experience sharing positive emotions with others. Love’s absence, research shows, can compromise nearly all aspects of children’s development—their cognitive and social abilities, their health. At one extreme, the stark and pervasive deprivation experienced by Romanian orphans reveals the painfully long shadow cast by early emotional neglect. Even among those orphans adopted and raised by loving Western families, developmental problems can persist for decades. More commonplace and poignant, however, is the unintentional emotional neglect that emerges within ordinary, even financially prosperous families.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Or does it merely confirm the love in every way, the contrast illuminating the beauty of the Beloved yet again, in yet another way, from yet another angle. And this gift to each other—the freedom to allow for other experiences—only enhances the love. Love without chains is love. The experience of being truly free, without recrimination, without judgment, to choose at any time, on any day, this one or that one, only reinforces love of the Beloved, reinforces the choice of the Beloved as the Beloved. Not being monogamous, and exercising that option, secures the great love—always being tested, it is confirmed, strengthened, reshaped, redefined. If a man can possess a woman sexually—really possess—he won’t need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers. In my experience of many lovers, only he has truly possessed me and so set me free. He fucks my ass for hours with a dick an inch too big for the job: that is possession. After a round like that he doesn’t need to infiltrate my life, my psyche, my time, or my wardrobe, because he has infiltrated the core of my being—the rest is just peripheral decoration. Domination—total and complete domination of my being—that is where I find freedom. I assumed from the beginning of our affair that he was probably fucking this other woman here or there or somewhere. And he knew that I knew. This was not the Pre-Raphaelite redhead but a pretty, quiet brunette who also exercised at the gym. I was even turned on by the power I assumed he had over her. I knew about her, but she didn’t know about me, and this worked just fine. I even had my own fantasies about her. About seducing her myself, about him telling her to eat my pussy while he watched. I ran into her on occasion at the gym and we were always friendly; she seemed like a nice woman, self- effacing. He and I had even discussed the idea of a three-way with her—we always reminisced fondly about the magic of our times with the redhead and wondered if it could be reproduced with someone else. But he said he was not sure that I would like her body. Proportion is important to me in matters of beauty, and though she was slim, she had no tits and a wide ass. Good enough for him, obviously, but perhaps not for me. A curious assessment, but probably correct. As time went on, however, this woman became increasingly abstract.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  A-Man and I exist in the land beyond the intercourse that breeds babies. That is good, too, don’t get me wrong. We do that, too, warm-up. But we live in the land beyond, behind. The place where depth is infinite and the love seems infinite, ever growing. Deep penetration, deep love. The physical depth somehow leads into that other depth as if my soul slept in my bowels and is now awakened. The directions are clear: if you want to procreate enter the front door, but if you really want to become a part of a woman’s internal workings, to penetrate her being most deeply, the back door is your portal. Anxiety, that ever-present agony, exists because of the inescapable knowledge that all must end. Enter an ass and you enter a passage that does not end. It is the exit to infinity. The back door to liberty. Besides, pussies have just been through too much. Give them a rest. They are old news—tired, betrayed, overused, reused, abused—and have been overly publicized, politicized, and redeemed. They are no longer naughty, no longer the place for defiance, rebellion, or rebirth. Pussies are now too politically correct. The ass is where it’s at: the playground for anarchists, iconoclasts, artists, explorers, little boys, horny men, and women desperate to relinquish, even temporarily, the power that has been so hard won and cruelly awarded by the feminist movement. Ass-fucking realigns the balance for a woman with too much power—and a man with too little. (I think this explains the prevalence of butt-fucking in heterosexual porn: masses of men, refugees from feminism, watching, hard and ever-hopeful.) In his forays inside me, A-Man hits new walls, new angles, new ends, and that self-preserving voice of “too much” echoes through my brain as I feel a kind of pressure, a resistance. But I have never said “too much.” Never. I breathe through, adjust the angle, and stay where he pushes until I open and receive him in farther. I expand into him and the pain subsides, transforms, into a profound sensation of freedom—freedom from pain, freedom to be crazy, freedom to harmonize with the universe. This is all physical. And it is the birth of love. His cock is my laser healer. Every point it probes inside me pierces my armor, the armor of self-protection, and the two fears—love and death—momentarily lose their grip and I experience a moment of immortality. #75 Vertical fucking. Upside down, legs over my head, knees by my ears, ass up, he perches over me like an acrobat and points his cock down into me. He thrusts downward to Earth’s center, and I am grounded. I point upward, outward to the sky, to the Milky Way, to heaven’s gate, and I see clearly between my legs his cock pumping like a piston. Angle is everything.

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

  III. In regard to its theology, this epistle belongs plainly to the school of Paul and strongly resembles the Epistle to the Hebrews, while at the same time it betrays the influence of Peter also; both these apostles having, in fact, personally labored in the church of Rome, in whose name the letter is written, and having left the stamp of their mind upon it. There is no trace in it of an antagonism between Paulinism and Petrinism.1206 Clement is the only one of the apostolic fathers, except perhaps Polycarp, who shows some conception of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. "All (the saints of the Old Testament)," says he,1207 "became great and glorious, not through themselves, nor by their works, nor by their righteousness, but by the will of God. Thus we also, who are called by the will of God in Christ Jesus, are righteous not of ourselves, neither through our wisdom, nor through our understanding, nor through our piety, nor through our works, which we have wrought in purity of heart, but by faith, by which the almighty God justified all these from the beginning; to whom be glory to all eternity." And then Clement, precisely like Paul in Romans 6, derives sanctification from justification, and continues: "What, then, should we do, beloved brethren? Should we be slothful in good works and neglect love? By no means! But with zeal and courage we will hasten to fulfil every good work. For the Creator and Lord of all things himself rejoices in his works." Among the good works he especially extols love, and describes it in a strain which reminds one of Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13: "He who has love in Christ obeys the commands of Christ. Who can declare the bond of the love of God, and tell the greatness of its beauty? The height to which it leads is unspeakable. Love unites us with God; covers a multitude of sins; beareth all things, endureth all things. There is nothing mean in love, nothing haughty. It knows no division; it is not refractory; it does everything in harmony. In love have all the elect of God become perfect. Without love nothing is pleasing to God. In love has the Lord received us; for the love which he cherished towards us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us according to the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our soul."1208 Hence all his zeal for the unity of the church. "Wherefore are dispute, anger, discord, division, and war among you? Or have we not one God and one Christ and one Spirit, who is poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ? Wherefore do we tear and sunder the members of Christ, and bring the body into tumult against itself, and go so far in delusion, that we forget that we are members one of another?"1209

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  After ten years I left my husband. He couldn’t see me any longer; and he never even knew I had an asshole. I had retired from dancing some years earlier because of a hip injury that had first surfaced six months into my marriage. Funny, that: life’s wicked signposts. A friend says hips represent where you hold trust in your body. Hokum? Maybe. Either way, both my right hip joint and my trust were shot. I became intolerable both to myself and my husband. A wailing banshee, a celibate nymphomaniac with a suitcase of resentments and matching lingerie. I listed fifty-two of the former and left with the latter. Freedom. Fear. THE MASSEUR This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere. —JOHN DONNE My first affair began a week after the end of my marriage. Amazing what two phone calls can precipitate: one ended a ten-year relationship, and the other booked a one-hour massage that began the rest of my life. The adorable masseur. I had already had two massages from him for my wounded hip, and I’d held my breath to conceal my desire: I was still married. But by the next massage I wasn’t, and I took my first bold step. I could tell that he was too professional to make an overture, so I decided it was up to me. I planned beforehand that if (ha!) I was aroused again, I would say something by the end of the session—but what? I didn’t want to embarrass myself; the risk was high. At the end of that third massage, dripping with a decade of sublimated desire, I asked him in a general kind of way, “Do your clients ever get aroused?” “Yeah,” he ventured, and got up from a chair on the other side of the room to come back to the table where I was lying. “But I just let it be.” He was young and handsome, with big blue eyes and soft full lips, but this was not the source of my attraction. It was those magic hands. He placed one below my throat and I lost all decency and self-control. He did not retreat but slid his hand under the sheet. In the next few hours, I learned about how his mouth and tongue held the same magic current as his hands, and I thought I would die from the pleasure he gave me. It was a dream of pleasure, of love—yes, love, physical love. And no fucking, just sucking.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I lay beside her, and put my arms about her. My own desire I quite forgot, and she made no move to remind me of it. I forgot, too, Gully Sutherland - who three hours before had put a gun to his own heart, because a man had sat through his routine unsmiling. I only lay; and soon Kitty slept. And I studied her face, where it showed creamy pale in the darkness, and thought She loves me, She loves me — like a fool with a daisy-stalk, endlessly exclaiming over the same last browning petal. The next morning we were shy together, at first - and Kitty, I think, was the shyest of all. ‘How much we drank, last night!’ she said, not gazing at me; and for a terrible second I thought it might really have been only the champagne that made her cling to me, and say that she loved me, so very very much ... But as she spoke she blushed. I said, before I could stop myself: ‘If you unsay all those things you said last night, oh Kitty, I’ll die!’ and that made her raise her eyes to mine, and I saw that she had simply been anxious, that I might only have been drunk... And then we gazed and gazed at one another; and for all that I had gazed at her a thousand times before, I felt now that I was looking at her as if for the first time. We had lived and slept and laboured, side by side, for half a year; but there had been a kind of veil between us, that our cries and whispers of the night before had quite torn down. She looked flushed, washed - new-born; so that I could hardly press her skin, for fear of marking it - so that I feared, almost, to kiss her lips again in case they bruised. But I did kiss them; and then I lay, quite at my leisure, and watched as she splashed water on her face and arms, and fastened on her underclothes and frock, and buttoned her shoes. As she worked at her hair I lit a cigarette: I struck the match and let it burn almost to my fingers, gazing at the flame as it ate its way along the wood. I said, ‘When I first knew you, I used to think that, whenever I thought of you, I was all lit up, like a lamp. I was afraid that people would see...’ She smiled.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  One student raised his hand to confess that he’d been practicing LKM for some weeks and had come to the conclusion that he was incapable of directing love to himself. Sharon recounted how stunned and puzzled His Holiness was. “You’re wrong!” he told the student, albeit in his characteristic light and loving tone. “You have Buddha nature!” he proclaimed, referring to the possibility of awakening that is ever-present in all people. The ability to direct warmth and tenderness to the self was apparently a nonissue for him and to those he most frequently taught. Sharon also tells me that the reason that the traditional Buddhist practice of LKM begins with the self is because the self is presumed to be an easy target for love. Indeed, wishing oneself well was thought to be as natural as breathing, or as seeking out food when hungry or water when thirsty. Having practiced the skill of cultivating loving-kindness for the easy targets, like a cherished teacher or mentor, a dear friend, or oneself, students will then have developed key skills before they approach the harder targets, like unknown or difficult people. The logic is not to slam those new to the practice with the hardest parts first, but rather to build their skills gradually, starting with easy targets and working up to the more difficult ones. Accordingly, if you find that directing love toward yourself is especially problematic, you might consider whether to practice with easier people first. Perhaps start with a teacher or mentor to whom you feel especially grateful, or a friend who the mere thought of can melt your face into a smile. After you’ve spent considerable time—perhaps even weeks—practicing cultivating warm and tender feelings for these people, then you can begin experimenting with cultivating warm and tender feelings for yourself. You may in fact be your own most “difficult” person on which to focus in the next stage of your practice. If so, you’re in good company. That’s a common experience. Rest assured, the order of targets to which you direct your warm wishes matters far less than the time and energy you devote to developing this habit and skill. Your aim is simply to condition your heart to be more comfortable and familiar with warm and tender sentiments. Sidestep Obstacles to Self-Love As I introduced the practice of LKM in the previous chapter, I suggested that you lightly reflect on the good qualities of the person or people for whom you are extending your good wishes. Here I expand on the logic of this. As you visualize a particular person, gently name what’s good about him or her: “Generous.” “Kind.” “Accepting.” “Honest.” “Grounded.” “Inspiring.” You don’t need a long list, one or two traits will do. Let yourself begin to see these one or two traits not simply as labels, affixed to these people in superficial ways, but rather as deep expressions of who they are in this world, of who they’ve been to you.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same . . . then you will enter the kingdom. One day, I ventured down on the Pre-Raphaelite. First time. Terrified. Curious. I wanted to see her pleasure in order to know my own. She was a genuine redhead. Eating pussy when you are a heterosexual woman is overwhelming. To confront a pussy that close for the first time—you can’t ever get that close, at that angle, to your own—is like looking narcissism in the face with a resounding Yes! Profound. Wet. It can sometimes be so hard to be oneself in one’s own sex life. With another woman, a woman’s identity receives a brutal jolt: she is me, I am her, her pleasure is mine, mine is hers. The source, the center, the origin of the human race becomes your only view. I bonded with my own sex and learned to love myself. I also developed a new compassion for the male divers. A pussy is a wild and watery landscape of hills and valleys and ravines and mighty holes that suck one in like quicksand. Once in, you cannot escape. Diving is an act of bravery. The redhead, however, demonstrated less hesitancy, and ate me like a woman who knows how. Naughty, considerate, and relentless. Her fingers felt like tongues, her mouth like a baby’s, sucking. I resist men’s fingers. Too rough, too big, too fast. My shield goes up, my clit hides. My orgasms with her were long, open, and free. The next New Year’s we three reconvened and she had a surprise for us: her beautiful young Belgian friend who was mourning the loss of her rock-star lover. One-two-three-four, three of one and one of the other. She and me and him . . . and her. I did a striptease to Led Zeppelin, swinging around the luscious green velvet curtains at the door of her boudoir—a kind of Gone With the Wind–Vivien-Leigh-Gone-Wild moment.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Is his love as deep as mine? I don’t care if it is as superficial as mine is deep as long as he, and his rock-hard desire, show up at my back door several times a week. Sodomy ignites a gratitude of great scope. I suspect that until he shattered the control panel of my being—my mental acuity and my physical power—I had never really loved before. How do you know it’s love, real love? When you meet the one with whom you are not afraid to die. The one who takes away that constant gnawing fear of death and gives one air to breathe. Not afraid to die, this is the feeling he generates when he fucks my ass. Pussy penetration does not delve this far into my psyche; does not break the barrier; does not stop the fear. Did the love or the sodomy come first? Love grows from lust. This I know. Besides, I don’t trust love. I’ve heard it declared too often. But I trust lust completely. #121 After, I say, “Maybe it’s not even sex. Something else. Beyond sex.” Did I have a regular battle-to-the-end clitoral orgasm? No. Had I even thought about it? No. Only a fool would hold on to what she knows while being shown some land of release beyond orgasm. The land of harmony, of deep harmony with another human being. Family. He is my family. K-Y “What’s your afternoon like?” It begins. He has an appointment at six, will be over at three. It is now two. One hour. The courtesan takes over. I turn on the bath, all hot, and let it fill. I check the condom stash and refill it, always having plenty, at least five, more is better, a feeling of bounty, of possibility, like popcorn. I check the K-Y tubes, pushing the insides to the opening end and then rinsing them off under the tap, sticky from last time. The heat rises as I wash those tubes. I use my pink nail brush to wash just under the ridge on the cap where his thumb pushes it open. Dirt always collects there; it’s how I know that tube was used. I adore washing those tubes smooth.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  If I asked A-Man to be monogamous, then I would always know I had taken his freedom, and I loved him basking in his freedom. I did not want to control him. I remembered him saying once, “You go out with a chick, you sleep with her once, and she hands you an armful of ‘do nots,’ and you’re looking at her great tits and her hot pussy and you’re looking at the ‘do nots’ in your arms and you hand them back. ‘Hey, I think these are yours.’” I had admired that—that’s why he was A-Man and not Any Man. He was not going to compromise himself for pussy, like so many men do. And I didn’t want to compromise a man with my pussy, I wanted a man to be true to himself . . . while desperately wanting my pussy. But this was only idle speculation, for I knew that A-Man would not be monogamous, even if I asked. He had told me long ago that he had tried being a boyfriend several times and always failed miserably. Better not to even try. I agreed. Failure is the great anti-aphrodisiac. Besides, if I wanted him to be only with me then I would have to return the favor and be only with him. And I knew that I couldn’t do that. I loved him too much. I was too vulnerable to give myself entirely to him. Without a commitment that might be broken, at least any pangs I might be feeling about the mousy brunette were not compounded by the self-righteous pain and anger of betrayal. So, I told myself, Do you know what you have to be if you’re not monogamous? Not jealous? No, jealousy is inevitable. Worth it. You’ve got to be worth it. He’s got to be worth it. The fucking has got to be worth it. Worth the occasional, gut-ripping insanity of jealousy. WAR As the days passed, however, I started feeling this overwhelming need to assert my authority over the mousy brunette. When I next saw A-Man I slyly suggested that we all get in bed together to assuage everyone’s pain with love and sperm. He smiled at me, loving that I was the kind of woman who would solve a problem with an orgy. Well, better than bayonets. He then said that he had actually suggested this to her during that first confrontation but that she had only cried harder in response, confessing that she would be too jealous. Damn. I knew if we could get her in bed, I could win. Suddenly winning became imperative. Winning what, exactly, I wasn’t sure, but the stakes seemed very high indeed. It was not about having him exclusively, it never had been; it was about knowing I was the most beloved.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  6. €v yap Xpiot@ ‘Inoov ovbte Tepitouyn Te ioyvea ove axpoBvotia, adda wiotis bu ayamns evepyouneyn. “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.” For the disclosure of the apostle’s fundamental idea of the nature of religion, there is no more important sentence in the whole epistle, if, indeed, in any of Paul’s epistles. Each term and construction of the sentence is significant. év Xpwot@ Inood (the bracketing of "Invotd by WH., because of its omission by B. Clem., seems scarcely justified) limits toyve.. It is not precisely equivalent to Tots éy Xpitt@ "Inoov, but means, rather, ‘‘on that basis which is created by Christ Jesus”; nearly equal, therefore, in modern phrase, to “in Christianity,” ‘on the Christian basis.” With toyver (from A’schylus down, “to have strength,” ‘to be able,” “to avail’’) is to be supplied, not duxaodv (“is able to justify”; cf. Acts 6'°), which would be to limit the thought more narrowly than the context would war- rant, but €is duxaroovyny, as suggested by the preceding sen- tence, and in the inclusive sense of the term as there used. By the omission of the article with teorTou7 and all the following nominatives, these nouns are given a qualitative force, with emphasis upon the quality and character of the acts. This might be expressed, though also exaggerated, by some such expression as, “by their very nature circumcision,” etc. The phrase 6 ayarns évepyoupern furnishes a most significant addition to the word méorts, which has filled so large a place in the epistle thus far. For not only has he not previously in 280 GALATIANS this epistle used the word a@ya7n, but, though often using each alone in other epistles (for méoTis, see Rom. 117 3”, etc.; and for ayamn, see esp. 1 Cor., chap. 13) he has nowhere else in any of his letters brought the two words into immediate connec- tion. The relation between the two terms, which is here ex- pressed but not perfectly defined by évepyoupevn did, “opera- tive, effective through,” “coming to effective expression in,” is made clearer by a consideration of the nature of the two re- spectively, as Paul has indicated that nature elsewhere. Faith is for Paul, in its distinctively Christian expression, a committal of one’s self to Christ, issuing in a vital fellowship with him, by which Christ becomes the controlling force in the moral life of the believer. See esp. 2° and cf. detached note on IIéo7ts and Ilicrevw, V B. 2. (e), p. 482. But the principle of Christ’s life is love (see 22°, TOU ayamnoarTos, etc.; Rom. 55-8 855-39), Faith in Christ, therefore, generates love, and through it becomes effective in conduct. See also v.”, where first among the ele- ments which life by the Spirit (which, as v.® indicates, is the life of faith) produces is love; and on the moral effect and ex- pression of love, see especially 1 Cor., chap.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  I. The verb éyaxéw is used in classical writers from Homer down, signify- ing with reference to persons, “‘to be fond of,” “to love,” “‘to desire”; with reference to things, “‘to be contented with,” “‘to take pleasure in.” If we seek a more definite statement of the content of the term, it appears that there are three elements which with more or less constancy and in varying degrees of emphasis enter into the thought expressed by the word: (a) “‘to admire,” “to approve,” ‘“‘to recognise the worth of,” “to take pleasure in,” (b) “‘to desire to possess” (c) ‘“‘to be well-disposed towards,” ‘to wish to benefit.” The first of these elements appears distinctly in Plato, Rep. 330B, C, yet blended with or shading into the second: todcou Evexa jodumny, hy & eye, bt wor B50Eas 08 apddea ayan&y te yonuata, toUto 3& noroUaw dc To TOAD of Ay wu) adtot xTHowWYTat: of S& xtHGkuUEvot StTAH Hol GAAot dondkLov- tat alta. oreo yxe ot nowntat tz abtHy mothuata xat ol matéoes todc Tatdac ayardot taltn te Sh xalt ot yonuattomuevor, meot te YoNUaTa omovddCoucty @s goyoyv EautHy, xa xat& thy yostav preo of &AAot. The third element is present, if at all in this example, only by suggestion in the words xa ot matéees tos matdacg d&yanot. There is, indeed, but slight trace of this element of meaning in the word as used by non-biblical writers of the pre- Christian period. Il. In the Lxx éyaxéw translates several Hebrew words, but in the great majority of cases (about 130 out of 160) the Kal of 27s, which is also rendered in a few cases (10) by gtAgw. 278 is used with much the same range of meaning as our English word love. Thus, e¢. g., it is used of the love of a parent for a child, Gen. 258; of a husband for a wife, Gen. 291® 85 of sexual love in which the element of passion and desire of possession is prominent, 2 Sam. 13} 4; of the love of friend for friend and of a people for a leader, 1 Sam. 181 3 18; of God’s love for Israel, Deut. 487 Hos. 113; of the love of men for God, Ex. 20° Deut. 6° 111; of the love of men for material things, Hos. 9!; and much more frequently for the love of immaterial things, good or evil, such as righteousness or peace, and their opposites, Ps. 45 (?) 117°) 335 Proy. 121. It is evident that into the thought of the Hebrew word enter all three of the elements named above, the emphasis upon the several elements varying in the various instances very greatly, even in some cases to the exclusion of one element or another. The element of admiration, approval, recognition of worth, is doubtless always present, whether one speak of the love of men for women, of men for men, of men for God, of men for righteousness, or even of God for men.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not make of no effect the grace of God; for if righteousness is through law, Christ died needlessly. UDB ier try op Oe do) IIg 15. “Hyeis pices lovdaios cal ov && éOvav duaptorol, “We though Jews by nature and not sinners of Gentile origin.”” The clause is concessive in relation to Kat jueis . . . éructevoaper, etc., below: though possessing by virtue of birth all the advan- tages of knowledge of law (cf. Rom. 3! *), and hence of oppor- tunity of obeying it and achieving righteousness through it (cf. Phil. 3 *), and not men born outside the law, and hence in the natural course of events possessing none of the advantages of it. On the use of pdcet, cf. Rom. 227 1171-24. 2& 20vayv (note the omission of the article) is qualitative in force. The phrase is one of origin, exactly antithetical in thought, though not perfectly so in form to obcet ’Ioudaior. &uaeptwrot is evidently used not in its strict sense denoting persons guilty of sin, not perfectly righteous (see detached note on ‘Auaetia Pp. 436), but, as often in N. T., ‘‘persons (from the point of view of the speaker or from that which he for the moment adopts) pre-eminently sinful,” ‘‘sinners above others,” “habitual transgressors of law.” So of the publicans and other Jews, who at least from the Pharisaic point of view were guilty of specific violation of the law, Lk. 7% 37 151, 2, etc., and of the Gentiles, like our word “heathen,” Mk. 144 Lk. 247; cf. r Mac. 134: xat ZOnxav éxet 2Ov0c auaetwrdy, &vSeacg maoavéuouc. Tob. 138: detxvbw thy loydy xal thy weyarwobyyy attod Over ducotwArAGy. 16. ciddtes dé Ort od SuxaodTar dvOpwros e& epywv vopov “yet knowing that a man is not justified by works of law.” In antithesis to the preceding concessive phrase this is causal, giving the reason for the émucTevoapev of the principal clause. To be justified, Ssmavodc Oar, is to be accounted by God accept- able to him, to be approved of God, accepted as being such as God desires man to be.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  In the case of the love of men for God it becomes worship, adoration, or at least approaches this; in the case of friends, it involves mutual admiration; when it is goodness that is loved, it is the object of approval and delight. The desire to possess is likewise usually present; in a gross form in such a case aS 2 Sam. 13!-¢ Hos. 91; of an elevated type in the love of men for 520 GALATIANS righteousness. The desire to benefit can not, of course, be included when the object is impersonal; it may be said to be driven out by desire to possess in such a case as 2 Sam. 131-4; in the case of men’s love for God it becomes desire to serve the person loved (Deut. 11! '); in the case of God’s love for men and in such injunctions as Lev. 1918 #4 Deut. 10! the desire to benefit is the prominent element. Ill. In the N. T. usage of &yankw the same elements appear, the word being used of personal friendship where the element of admiration, usually accompanied with desire to benefit, is prominent (Mk. 10% Lk. 75 Jn. 115 13%); of God’s attitude towards Jesus, where approval is evidently the chief element of the thought and the word approximates the meaning of éxAéyo, “to choose”’ (Jn. 3° Eph. 1°); of the love of God for men of good character, where the meaning is much the same save in degree of emphasis (2 Cor. 97); of the love of God and of Christ for even sinful men (Jn. 3!* Gal. 22° Heb. 12° 1 Jn. 41°»), where benevolence, desire to benefit, is the chief ele- ment; of the love which men are bidden to have for God and for Christ, and of Christ’s love for God, in which admiration is raised to adoration, and in- cludes readiness to serve (Mt. 2237 Jn. 141 21, 31 Rom. 828 1 Cor. 83 1 Jn. 420); of the love which men are bidden to have for one another, even their enemies, in which the willingness and desire to benefit is prominent, and in the case of enemies admiration or approval falls into the background (Mt. 2249 Jn. 13%4¢ Rom. 13% 9 Eph. 5% 28 1 Jn. 21°); and finally of the love of things, when admiration and desire to possess are prominent, to the entire exclusion of desire to benefit (Lk. 114% Jn. 124? 1 Jn.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  Jesus Christ: the Son of God, 51, 138 f., 216, 221; born of woman, born under law, 216 ff.; died, 139, 140 (cf. I1), on the cross, 143, 145 (cf. 168-175); raised from the dead by the Father, 6 f.; source and agent of Paul’s apostleship, 5; source of grace, 18, 20, 361; jointly with God the Father source of grace and peace, 11; gave himself for our SINS) Liye (Cees O) ecallingy: not ascribed to, 19; the gospe! of, 24; Paul a servant of, 32; is the content of the revelation by INDEXES which Paul received his gospel, 41-43, 50, 51; sent forth from God, 216, to deliver them that are under law, 219, that they might receive the adoption, 220; the sons of God receive his Spirit, 221; he is the basis and cause of Christian liberty, 83, 270; object of faith, 120 f., 123, 138 f., 196 f.; cf. 202; basis of justification, 124; his crucifixion participated in by Paul, 135; he lives in the believer, 136 f.; cf. 248; not distinguishable in ex- perience from the Spirit, 137; manifested his love in his gift of himself for men, 139 (cf. 11); his death evidence that righteous- ness is not through law, 140; set forth to the Galatians, crucified, 143; delivered men from the curse of the law, 168-171; be- came a curse for us, 171 ff., in order that we might receive the blessing of the Spirit, 176; the law a means of bringing men to him, 200; by baptism into him they acquire his standing, 203; in him all distinctions are abol- ished, 206 ff.; those who are his are heirs of the promise to Abra- ham, 208; they who have the Spirit of the Son recognise God as Father, 223; relation of Gen- tile believers to Christ de- stroyed by receiving circumci- sion, seeking to be justified in law, 272, 275; in him neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith work- ing through love, 279 f.; they who are his have crucified the flesh, 319; the Galatians ex- horted to fulfil the law of the 527 Christ, 329; his cross an occa- sion of persecution, 349, and the ground of glorying, 354; the apostle received as Jesus Christ by the Galatians, 242; bears in his body the marks of Jesus, 359 f. Jew, Jews, 108, III, 119, 206. Jewish Christians, 108 f.; eating with Gentiles, lix f., 116. Jews: religion of, 46; attitude towards Gentiles, lix, 104. John, 94. JosepHuS: use of geographical terms, xxxili; use of d:a0hxn, 499. Joy, 312, 314. Jubilees, doctrines of the book of, 158. Judaisers, see ‘‘Opponents of Paul.”’ Judea, 62 f., 435 f.; churches otf, 62s Justify, 119, 123 f., 159, 165, 201, 275, 460 ff. Kindness, 312, 315. Kingdom of God, 310 ff.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  The O. T. writers speak of God as Father of men rather rarely, yet often enough to make it clear that they employed the term not in any literal or physical sense, or to designate a relation of God to all men, but to ascribe to him ethical relations to certain men or to a certain people analogous to those which a human father sustains to his sons. The rela- tion which is in mind is sometimes authority, but especially love and watch- care. See Deut. 328 Isa. 631 Jer. 34 19 319 Mal. 16 2 Sam. 7% 1 Chr. 1733; cf. Deut. 141 Hos. 11! Ps, 27. The reference to creation in Mal. 21° is quite exceptional, but even here it is to be noticed that it is creation, not beget- ting or descent—hence, not fatherhood in a physical sense. In Ps. 27 the term “beget” is used, but it is evidently like the word “son” itself, em- ployed in a purely figurative sense denoting an ethical or representative relationship. When God is said to be the Father of Israel, this affrmation is wholly religious, designating God’s choice of the nation, and his love for it, and watch-care over it (Deut. 32-4), and the designation of him as Father of the King of Isracl or of the coming Messiah has the same significance. In the few instances in which it is used of individuals, Ps. 685 103%, it clearly tefers to his compassionate love and care. Ill. THE USAGE OF LATER JEWISH WRITERS. In the later Jewish writers the term retains the same general significance in reference to the nation, present or future (Tob. 134 Wisd. 111° Jub. 1% IIATHP AS APPLIED TO GOD 385 25; of. 2%). Clear instances of the designation of God as Father of the Messiah do not seem to occur; for Test. XII Patr. Jud. 24? speaks of God not as Father of the Messiah, but as the Holy Father (see also Levi 188), and Levi 17? employs the term only by way of comparison; the Ps. Sol. (1738) designate the Lord as the King, not the Father of the Messiah. On the other hand, the designation of God as the Father of the pious individual or individuals appears more frequently than in the canonical writings. Cf. esp. Wisd. 216-18: ‘He (the righteous) vaunteth that God is his father. Let us see if his word be true and let us try what shall befall him in the end of his life. For if the righteous man is God’s son, he will uphold him, and he will deliver him out of the hands of his adversaries.” See also Sir. 231 4 Ps. Sol. 1727, and Bous. Rel. d. Jud.?, pp. 432 ff.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  “Can’t I see her, too? You know, separately?” He thought it a fine idea—same mom, common ground, and similar information. She was less enthusiastic, but she finally agreed. Great—I finally had the shrink of my dreams, and she could now help me deal with the very annoying man who came with the deal. Here was a different kind of triangle—not sexual, per se—but more insidious. All my conversations with the Boyfriend were about our different, and occasionally mutual, therapy. In bed with Mom we certainly were—trouble was, I came to love Mom more than I loved him, while he remained convinced that he was her most cherished client. Just like when a man has bought three lap dances from a stripper, has a raging hard-on, and declares in all seriousness, “I think she really likes me!” When I initiated mistressing, our dear therapist announced that one of us had to go—or both. If we were potentially not monogamous and she knew it, the therapy would be poisoned. The Boyfriend announced that he’d had enough therapy and was ready to hit the road alone, comforted by the notion that when a man chooses his lover over his therapist it is a sign of his newly found independence and maturity. This was fortunate because I announced that I would definitely not give up the shrink no matter what. I chose my therapist over my lover, which was a sign of my own growing maturity: I had finally decided to choose a woman over a man. After four or five months of mistressing, I ended it completely and during the last phone call with the Boyfriend the elegant irony became apparent: he had now lost not only his lover but his shrink as well. I see it like this: you just never really can know what a particular connection is about—until later. The Last Boyfriend was about me finding a woman who would not only witness and analyze my misery but whose very presence in my life echoed my never-before-possible ability to endorse myself above, and beyond, any man. And when A-Man entered my world, she endorsed me from behind as well—while I learned to embrace my masochism sexually and leave it out of my life. DURING A-MAN You just don’t know when he’s going to show up. The one who is going to change everything forever, the one who’s going to rock your world. He might even be someone you already know. The Young Man had been gone for two years. In the meantime, I had acquired the Boyfriend, while the redhead Pre-Raphaelite had acquired a tall, skinny, rocker musician who wore more makeup than she did: they painted each other’s nails and were mad in monogamous love. So when the Young Man called, I knew it would have to be a two-way; the safety of a three-way sandwich was no longer an option.